a rocket launcher down there,” the bobby at the desk told him.
Bolan laughed. “That’s why I pack this bazooka.” He patted the Desert Eagle.
That elicited a grin from the traditionally unarmed British peace officer. “Oh, good. Usually you Yanks don’t pack your senses of irony for a trip over here.”
“I found room in my carry-on bag,” Bolan returned with a smile. The light banter helped Bolan fit in despite the firepower he was packing. A little humor was one of the Executioner’s favorite tools for forging a quick friendship. The shared joke now could mean a vital trust gained later on.
Bolan slowed down as he saw a trio of men wearing coveralls and carrying toolboxes cross an intersection ahead of him. While it wasn’t uncommon to see maintenance men walking through the halls of any building, there was something in the brief glimpse Bolan had caught that set his neck hairs to stand. Though not a student of metaphysics and the scientific explanations for sixth senses and danger precognition, the soldier was aware that the subconscious mind had a vastly more powerful means of analyzing potential threats. He was aware simply because he had experienced it on countless occasions, to the point that he trusted his hunches as much as the latest satellite or radio intelligence.
Doing a quick review of his memory of the three men, he envisioned them in his mind’s eye. His subconscious mind opened up and that was when Bolan pegged the trio as Slavic men with traditional mafiya tattoos visible on their necks. The precise formation that they walked in pegged them as military men and their coveralls were loose, yet lumpy enough to be concealing more than just cell phones and pocketknives.
Bolan picked up his pace, rounding the corner in time to see the three men halted at a checkpoint just outside of the morgue. The policeman at the entrance was asking for their identification. Bolan’s combat computer kicked into overdrive as one of the “workmen” knifed a rigid hand into the peace officer’s throat. He charged down the hall as the British cop seized up. Bolan recognized the blade hand technique as being a Spetsnaz unarmed attack meant to collapse a person’s windpipe.
The cop had only a minute left in his life as he would choke to death. The trio of assassins pushed past him into the morgue. Bolan plucked his pocketknife out of its sheath and skidded to the police officer’s side. “I need a straw or a pen!”
The order was brusque and direct, and while the sudden bark was stunning and confusing, one of the nurses caught on to him, spotting the bruise rapidly forming on the policeman’s throat and the knife in Bolan’s hand. “A tracheotomy!”
She plucked a pen from her pocket, biting one end, then the other off. Bolan held the policeman still, kneeling on the man’s forearm to keep him from blocking the incision. To punch a knife point through the tough, fibrous material of the trachea was difficult, but could be done quickly. Bolan speared the blade in vertically, along the grain of the windpipe, rather than go crosswise. Air suddenly hissed out through the blood-burbling wound, and the nurse pushed the hollow body of the pen tube into the cut.
“I’m going after the men who did this,” Bolan told her. “Keep him stable!”
Before she could even sputter “be careful” the warrior pulled his Desert Eagle and charged after the covert kill squad. Bolan couldn’t spare any more time than was necessary to rescue a fellow warrior from choking to death on a collapsed airway. The cleanup crew was on a kill mission to eliminate the evidence of their conspiracy.
More people would end up dead if the Executioner didn’t act quickly.
L UKYAN B ELKIN, THE LEADER of the cleanup crew, rubbed his sore fingertips after spearing them into the throat of the nosy, interfering bobby in the role of “rental cop” outside the morgue. He noticed a blur of movement from down the hall, but not seeing a gun in the running man’s hand, he pushed into the crime laboratory’s medical-examination ward. “Lock the door behind us.”
One of his companions leaned into the heavy steel door and threw the bolt. The squad member jammed a desk against the door to further hamper pursuit through the doorway. Once it was secured, Belkin reached into his toolbox, casting aside the drawer of utensils. Screwdrivers and hammers clattered onto the floor, revealing an area denial mine inside the case. The bomb was basically a canister of flammable fuel that could be dispersed by a nonincendiary charge. Once the fuel spread into a room-filling cloud, a spark would ignite the airborne droplets. The resultant fireball would incinerate everything in the morgue.
Obviously, Belkin didn’t intend to stay in the area when the blast occurred. His other companion cuffed a white-coated woman in the head with the butt of his machine pistol. The woman collapsed to the floor, staggered by the force of the blow. Belkin set about placing the trio of thermobaric charges at various points in the morgue to insure maximum devastation. The ally who had barred the doors threw open cabinets in the wall where the corpses were laying in cold storage. Their orders were to eliminate any evidence of the dead assassins found at the docks.
The fuel-air explosives would render everything in the morgue a useless, pulped and scorched mass. No chances were being taken in this regard.
A .44 Magnum round smashed through the lock that had just been secured. The metal door shuddered, and Belkin froze in surprise. He hadn’t seen any gunmen in the hall, and few London cops had handguns. Fewer still carried hand cannons with the power to penetrate a fireproof door. A powerful shoulder forced the door open, hurling aside the desk that was supposed to have barred it shut. Whoever was interfering with the cleanup crew had to have had prodigious strength. Belkin unslung his MAC-10 machine pistol from its coverall concealed holster, then fired the weapon at the door. A spray of 9 mm rounds splashed off of the steel panel of the bashed-open door. A huge muzzle flash filled the air where the door had opened, and Belkin grimaced as he took a thunderbolt to his chest armor.
The other two Russian hitters whipped their MAC-10s up in response to the Desert Eagle’s roar, but the Executioner had already slithered through the narrowly opened doorway, dropping prone to the floor. He was behind the cover of a countertop and cabinets where coroners would store their surgical supplies and wash up in the sink. The heavy countertop and the strong wood needed to support it gave the interloper considerable protection from the lightweight machine pistols that the team had brought with them.
“Get the woman!” Belkin shouted. “We need a hostage!”
The Russian operative winced as he crawled behind an overturned autopsy table. Being struck in the chest with a .44 Magnum slug, even while wearing body armor, was not one of the things that Belkin had ever wanted to experience. He was fairly certain that the bullet had broken a rib or two. He looked to see where his compatriots were and what they were doing. The unconscious morgue attendant laying on the floor stirred, but the two cleaners were cut off from her as the man behind the counter pinned them down with blazing fire from his entrenched position.
“I have a clean shot at the woman!” Belkin announced loudly. “Desist and pull back, or I’ll kill her!”
A smoking hole punched in the steel of the autopsy table, the bullet having penetrated mere inches from Belkin’s head.
“You try making that shot, your body won’t have to be taken very far,” Bolan returned. “Your choice!”
Belkin snarled. It was a standoff, and the timers on his bombs were counting down.
Only two minutes remained before the morgue would disintegrate in a fireball.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mack
