he was armed, not necessarily as well as he’d have liked, but adequately. He could kill a small battalion if his luck held, and he clung to the advantage of surprise. They shouldn’t know that he was hunting them, not yet, but in the real world nothing could be taken on blind faith.
The arms dealer, for instance, would have underworld connections. Absolutely, beyond doubt. If he was talkative, told someone of the hardware he’d furnished to a foreigner—more to the point, a westerner—the ripples might begin to spread. Nothing that would identify the hunter yet, but once suspicion had been raised, the creatures dwelling in the city’s netherworld would be alert. Watching and listening, reporting back to someone at the center of the loathsome spiderweb.
It was the spider that he wanted. Maybe more than one. But he’d be satisfied to save the gnat they’d snared, if only he could rescue her unharmed.
But if he’d come too late, as he feared—if she had been defiled, or worse—the stranger reckoned that a life or two in recompense might not be satisfactory.
He’d have to wait and see, after he checked the address he’d obtained from a young woman of the streets. She hadn’t been insulted when he told her that seventeen or eighteen years placed her beyond the pale of his desires. In her profession, he supposed that she had heard and seen it all. Of course, he had to pay the normal hourly rate and more besides, but once the deal was struck she had been happy to oblige.
Or simply bored and sending one more pervert on his way.
Whatever.
Motive didn’t matter to the stranger. All that counted was the end result.
The street was named for some war hero of a bygone century who would have been forgotten, otherwise. He didn’t rate a statue, but they’d loaned his name to seven seedy blocks that boasted tattoo parlors, pawnshops, hot-sheet hotels and diners whose special was ptomaine roulette.
He’d spotted the red door, confirmed its street number. No sign on the filthy brick wall to explain what went on inside the three-story building. But then, he supposed, if you had this address there was no explanation required.
He rang the bell, waited and kept his face deadpan as someone scrutinized him through a peephole. Thirty seconds later the door opened to reveal a bullet-headed, no-neck slab of muscle in a pin-striped suit who glowered at the new arrival from behind an often-broken nose.
“Kdo jste?” he inquired. “Co chceš?”
Tone dictates meaning, and the stranger on the stoop replied in German.
“Ich bekam diese Adresse finden sie ein Mädchen.”
The man with the bullet-shaped head considered it, then stood aside. He switched to German.
“Hereinkommen.”
Stepping past him, waiting for the door to close, the stranger timed his move, drawing his pistol, turning on his heel to swing it as a bludgeon. But the target had already moved, a big fist looping toward the gunman’s face to strike him with explosive force. He fell, half-conscious, clinging to the pistol for a moment, until more men suddenly surrounded him and wrenched it from his grasp.
The man with the bullet-shaped head leaned close enough for drops of spittle to make impact as he spoke. English this time.
“You’re one dumb bastard, eh? Who helps your little girlie now?”
1
Prague, Czech Republic
The Vltava River winds through Prague’s heart like a bloated, indolent serpent, winding under eighteen bridges, gliding past squatting warehouses and spires of classic architecture, passing stately homes and tenements. At first glance it seems lazy, placid, but its name derives from the Old German phrase wilt ahwa—and it still claims lives and property from time to time, as when it overflowed its banks in August of 2002.
Mack Bolan watched a ferry pass beneath the Palackého Bridge, checking his watch, then turned away and crossed a nearby street on foot. Sparse traffic let him take his chances without blaring horns. Orange streetlights lit the bridge and avenue beyond, while side streets made do with old-fashioned lamps on the corners and whatever light spilled from windows or small neon signs.
It was a seedy neighborhood, not criminal per se, but savvy residents of Prague knew better than to walk its streets alone by night, if that could be avoided. Muggers and pickpockets were a problem in the Czech Republic’s capital and largest city, but they didn’t worry Bolan. If his size, attitude and the expression on his face did not dissuade such people, he was carrying an ALFA semiautomatic pistol—the Defender model, used by many Czech police and military officers—chambered in .40 S&W with a twelve-round magazine and one round in the chamber. Extra magazines were slotted into Bolan’s pockets, and he also carried a collapsible baton that added twenty inches to his normal reach.
His destination was a boxing gym called Oskar’s, situated half a block west of the the Palackého Bridge. He wasn’t looking for a sparring partner, and in fact was hoping that the place might already be closed. Civilians made things awkward and potentially disastrous, a fact his very presence in the city verified.
It was a rescue mission, plain but not so simple, since it currently involved two captives in distress, presumably confined at different locations. That is, if both were still alive.
The whole trip might turn out to be a waste of time, for all its planning and the hours that he’d spent in transit. If he reached the scene too late, there’d be no happy ending. Only payback, which was one of Bolan’s specialties. Failing to save the day, he could at least do everything within his power to make sure the predators responsible did not survive to go on and commit such horrors again.
Time was not on Bolan’s side. Before he’d even taken off from the United States, one of the prisoners he sought to liberate had already spent two days in hostile custody. The other had been gone for nine days, and he didn’t want to think about what might have happened to her in that time.
He didn’t want to, but the thoughts were unavoidable.
The ideal outcome of his mission would be the extraction of two living, healthy captives from whatever hell they’d been consigned to by their kidnappers. Bolan would settle for the living part, and cherished no illusions that the pair he’d come to find were being pampered by their captors as the days and nights went by. Whatever he found waiting for him at the end of his grim journey, Bolan understood that he was not responsible for healing. Saving lives—or ending them—was all that he aspired to on this night in Prague.
Business as usual.
Employing Bolan was a last resort for any situation. He was only called when every other means had failed and time was absolutely of the essence. And planning could only reach so far in the situations he found himself dealing with. The rest came down to raw audacity and ruthlessness.
He was the cleanup man.
The Executioner.
On this night, in Prague, he still had hope, but it was frail. He harbored no illusions about what might lie in store for him at Oskar’s gym, or wherever the journey took him after that. He felt a sense of urgency, restrained by long experience, and had already steeled himself against the worst possible news.
Which wasn’t death. Not even close.
Bolan
