a man’s voice, distant in relation to the place where Bolan stood, growling what could have been a question. Seconds later, in the place of a response, there came a gasping cry of pain.
Drawing his pistol, Bolan started down the stairs.
EMIL REISZ WAS TIRED. His fists ached, even though he’d worn a pair of lightweight boxing gloves while hammering the prisoner. His punches had been interspersed with questions that—so far—had gone unanswered but for curses. It was time to pass the gloves, he thought. Let Alois or Ladislav try their hands with the sphinx who would say nothing.
Or, perhaps they ought to try some other tools.
There’d be a mess to clean up afterward, but Oskar’s gym had seen its share of blood over the years. A bit more wouldn’t change the ambience significantly. Truth be told, it might help some of Oskar’s fighters find their courage for a change.
In fact, they didn’t need much information from the prisoner. Reisz knew his name and where he’d come from, not to mention why he’d come. No secret there. But orders had come down to find out whether anyone had helped the fool in transit, fed him any inside details of their operation to support his hopeless quest. If there was someone else behind him, sponsoring the effort, measures would be taken to eliminate that threat.
But only if they could obtain the names.
And so far, nothing.
He was fluent in profanity, this one. During the ordeal of interrogation he had cursed them up and down in English, German, Russian, not forgetting to include their mothers, grandmothers and all the smallest branches on their family trees. It was inspiring to a point, his tolerance for pain, the grim defiance even when he must have known he was as good as dead.
But then, beyond that point, it just became a tiresome exercise. Reisz thought he might as well be pounding steak for dinner. That way, at the very least, his efforts would produce a meal instead of aching knuckles.
Time for pliers, possibly. Or a truck battery with alligator clips.
Reisz checked his watch after he had removed the boxing gloves. Another fifteen minutes until change of shift, but their replacements could arrive any second. Let them pick up where he’d failed, and if some criticism fell upon him, then so be it. Three days, and no one else had managed to wring answers from the stubborn pi
If Reisz was criticized, there would be plenty of blame to go around.
“Enough for me,” he told his two companions standing by. “Somebody want to have another go at him before we leave?”
“Forget it,” Alois Perina said. “Let Ji
“And mop up when they’re done,” Ladislav Seldon said.
“Suits me,” Reisz answered as he tossed the bloodied gloves aside. “I think he’s nearly finished, anyway.”
“If there was someone else behind him, he’d have said by now,” Perina opined.
“Probably,” Reisz said, still not convinced. “I doubt we’ll see this one again, regardless.”
“And good riddance,” Seldon said.
“All right, who wants a drink?” Reisz asked.
“What are we celebrating?” Perina asked.
“Who needs an excuse?” Seldon chimed in. “Make mine a double.”
Reisz was moving toward the liquor cupboard, something that had always struck him as incongruous for a gymnasium, when he was suddenly distracted by a shadow in the doorway to his left. Ji
He was tall and well-proportioned, dressed in dark clothes, with a solemn face that Reisz was sure he’d never seen before. Vaguely Italian in its aspect, but that could mean anything or nothing. More important was the pistol in his hand.
“What’s wrong with you, Emil?” Perina asked, then tracked his gaze to spot the stranger watching them. Reisz didn’t have to issue any orders. All three reached for guns at once, Reisz hoping he could draw his own before the grim-faced prowler fired.
BOLAN HAD NOT ATTACHED the ALFA’s silencer before he left his hired car for the trek to Oskar’s gym. It didn’t matter at this late hour, on the top floor of a gym surrounded by commercial buildings that had shut down for the night.
He shot the seeming leader of the three men first, drilling his chest an inch or so off-center from a range of twenty feet. The guy went down without a whimper, slack and boneless when he hit the concrete floor. It seemed to take his backup by surprise, but neither faltered in attempts to pull their weapons.
Bolan ducked and tagged the shooter on his right, who seemed to be the faster of the two remaining on their feet. Not quite a perfect shot, but Bolan saw him lurch and stagger from the impact, then lose his footing, tumbling. If he managed to recover, it would cost him precious time, and Bolan used that breather to take care of number three.
The last man had his weapon drawn, some kind of automatic with a shiny stainless frame and blue-steel slide, maybe a Czech CZ 75. The piece was moving into target acquisition when the third round out of Bolan’s ALFA struck its owner just below his left eye socket, snapping back his head and ruining his aim forever. Even then, the dead man got a shot off as he toppled over backward, setting free a rain of plaster dust from overhead.
Bolan rose from his crouch, surveyed the fallen and discovered that the second man he’d shot was still alive. Crossing the room to reach him, Bolan kicked his gun away and made a quick assessment of his wound. It would be fatal without treatment, but he couldn’t pin it to a deadline. Rather than take chances, Bolan put another .40 S&W round between the shooter’s eyes and finished it.
That done, he moved to stand before the bloody figure of a man dressed in only a pair of boxer shorts, secured to a wooden chair by strips of silver duct tape wrapped around his torso, wrists and ankles. He was conscious, barely, using some reserve of energy to hold his head up, watching Bolan through the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. Mouth-breathing since his nose was flattened from repeated blows.
Bolan knelt on concrete, outside the ring of blood spatters, and peered into the mottled face, which at present was barely recognizable from photographs he’d seen before he left the States. Playing it safe, he leaned in closer and addressed the human punching bag.
“Andrew Murton?”
The head bobbed once, then sank onto the captive’s chest. Bolan worked quickly with his knife, slitting the duct tape, peeling it away. There was no way to spare the prisoner that ripping pain, but Murton barely seemed to feel it.
“Clothes?” Bolan asked.
Murton nodded vaguely to his left and answered, “Ober dere.”
Bolan
