Final judgment, p.10
Final Judgment, page 10
Bolan stepped on the handgun the man was reaching for. The neo-Nazi looked up at him and snarled.
Bolan delivered a mercy round, shooting him through the head.
He hit the kitchen cafeteria at a run. It was a big, wide-open space, with little opportunity for cover. Where cover couldn’t be had, mobility would have to do. He switched to a crouch-walk in midstride, moving smoothly heel to toe, the M-4 carbine shouldered and ready.
They thought they were going to surprise him. The neo-Nazis had arrayed themselves behind the long plank tables, bracing their weapons on the tabletops. As he cruised through the room, they tried to take Bolan out, but failed to lead him sufficiently.
He was mobile. They were stationary. It was no contest.
The Executioner shot them, sweeping his carbine left and right, ignoring their return fire. If a bullet was to find him, so be it; he was long overdue. He would accept his fate.
When the soldier reached the kitchen, his carbine was empty again. He reached for a spare magazine from his web gear.
The cleaver sang as it plunged past him, narrowly missing him, striking sparks from the stainless-steel frame of the industrial-size sink behind him. The neo-Nazi let out a battle cry and tried once more to plant the heavy, square blade in his adversary’s head. He collided with the soldier and pressed him back against the sink. Bolan had just enough time to get a hand up and block the arm. The edge of the cleaver hung suspended above his face.
“You’re going to die today,” the neo-Nazi gritted. His shaved head and face bore the same length of stubble. He used both hands to try to drive the blade into Bolan’s skull.
“Hand free,” the soldier said.
“Huh?” The neo-Nazi looked confused.
“I said—” Bolan nodded to his right hand “—I’ve got a hand free.” He yanked his combat dagger from its sheath and plunged it into the terrorist’s stomach, jerking the blade over, up and in. Blood, hot and wet, gushed over his hand and arm. The neo-Nazi collapsed, bleeding out.
Chapter 10
The motor pool was empty when he got there. Bolan searched the bays. One Jeep remained in the multiunit carport, but its tires had been slashed, most likely by Nitzche to cover his escape. Bolan looked left, then right, assessing his options.
A tarp covered an object next to the far wall. He went to it and pulled it off. The Nazi, in his haste to flee, had forgotten this, or perhaps thought it unimportant. It was a Kawasaki KLX and the keys were in the ignition.
The vehicle roared to life under him when Bolan gave it some gas.
He exited the motor pool and pushed the bike as fast as he dared for the terrain. Nitzche and his men had a head start, but it wasn’t insurmountable. Taking the compact field glasses from a pouch on his web gear, the soldier scanned the road ahead and spotted the dust cloud raised by the fleeing vehicles. The preceding weeks had been very dry.
Nitzche and his men were traveling in heavy four-door Jeeps. Bolan’s Kawasaki was considerably faster. He leaned forward, riding out the ruts, pouring on the speed. When they saw him, they started shooting from the windows of their vehicles.
“Jack, I need you!” Bolan said. “Striker to G-Force, requesting air support this position, south of the bunker!”
“I read you, Sarge,” Grimaldi said. “I’m already on my way to… Sarge! I’m getting a tone that says I’m locked!”
Bolan looked back to see the plume of the rocket rising from the bunker. There were still men in there somewhere, and they had what Bolan guessed were Stinger antiaircraft missiles.
The Cobra heeled about and deployed countermeasures, going low to avoid the rocket. Bolan couldn’t see what happened next; the bunker itself was between him and his line of sight to Grimaldi. He heard and saw the explosion, however.
“Jack! Talk to me!”
“Still here, Sarge,” Grimaldi reported through Bolan’s transceiver. “But it looks like the intelligence was dead-on. They’ve got Stingers and a good field of fire. I can’t get close enough to hose them clean without risking them taking a shot at me.”
“Don’t try, Jack,” Bolan said. “I’ve got this.”
“I can try to make a run at them,” Grimaldi suggested. “All I need is long enough to line them up, and then I can raise the roof on that joint.”
“If you can get a shot, go ahead and take it,” Bolan said. “But don’t risk yourself. We need you.”
“And my chopper,” Grimaldi cracked.
“And your chopper,” Bolan agreed.
Bullets struck pieces of lime-green plastic from the Kawasaki, narrowly missing Bolan. He weaved back and forth along the roadway, making himself harder to target. As he neared the rear Jeep, he saw the neo-Nazis within, aiming their folding-stock Kalashnikov rifles.
Nitzche had to have lucked into a fire sale on the things, Bolan thought, which wasn’t surprising. There were parts of the world where fully automatic AK rifles could be purchased for less than 20 USD each. The weapons had been plentiful on the open market even before the power vacuum created by the collapsing Soviet Union flooded world arms markets with surplus Russian hardware.
The road began to grow more difficult. Bolan started to lose ground as the Kawasaki’s ability to cope with the terrain paled in comparison to the four-wheel-drive Jeeps. Automatic gunfire poured from the open windows of the neo-Nazis’ vehicles, making it that much harder for the soldier. He had to try to maintain his speed while dodging the worst of the ruts and holes, all while trying not to be shot in the process.
There was no point waiting any longer. He snapped open the breech of the grenade launcher attached to his carbine, aimed from the hip and fired.
The shot was inaccurate, with both vehicles moving, but it had the desired effect. The grenade struck the rear driver’s-side tire of the last Jeep and detonated, blowing it apart, sending the vehicle flipping up and over. It crashed in the middle of the roadway, a pyre for the men trapped inside. Bolan barely had time to dodge to one side and skirt the burning wreckage.
Seeing their fellows die prompted the men in the next Jeep to hose down the road. A curtain of bullets cut Bolan off; he brought the bike up short, skidding to a stop, almost laying it down. The engine stalled.
The Jeep stopped, backed to the side and then completed its turn, roaring full speed at Bolan.
The enraged neo-Nazis were going to run him down.
He stood as if frozen. Bullets struck nearby, but they were less a danger now than the bouncing, speeding Jeep itself. Bolan waited with his arms outstretched and his knees slightly bent, balancing on the balls of his feet inside his combat boots.
If he ran in any direction, he would find no cover. He would not be able to get the Kawasaki restarted and up to speed in time. He couldn’t tip the driver to his maneuver until the last moment.
“Well,” Bolan said, “come on if you’re coming.”
The grille of the Jeep bore down on him. At the last instant, he threw himself to the side. The vehicle flew past, sideswiping the burning wreckage behind Bolan. The Executioner popped back up and, targeting the rear window of the Jeep with his M-4 carbine, held back the trigger with the weapon on full-automatic.
The glass of the Jeep’s rear window splintered, becoming a spiderweb red with blood. Bolan kept shooting, turning the interior of the vehicle into a kill zone of pebbled glass and flying lead. He looked behind him, forward up the road. The Jeeps protecting and conveying Nitzche were getting farther away by the moment.
The one he had just shot up was now a ghost ship on four wheels, carrying no one but the dead to no destination at all. It slowed to a crawl, rolling slowly in a wide circle.
He approached the vehicle cautiously. Any one of the dead men might not actually be a corpse yet. Any of them could be shamming, lying in wait. He held the M-4 to his shoulder and checked first the back, then the front. Blood was everywhere. Every window had been shattered.
The engine was still running.
He looked back once more and saw the receding dust cloud. The Kawasaki had served him well, but it wouldn’t put him in reach of his quarry. He opened each door and dragged the dead men from their seats, dumping them on the ground. Less weight meant more speed.
He climbed into the driver’s seat, hit the gas and sent the Jeep speeding after the fleeing enemy.
Bolan drove so quickly that he nearly bounced against the roof. The powerful truck roared over the dirt road, eating up the terrain, achieving air as it roared over the larger dips. He urged it to go faster, ignoring the bone-crunching punishment he was taking, and the damage to the shocks and undercarriage. The vehicle had to last for only another mile or two. He just needed to get close enough to Nitzche to stop him.
Three Jeeps were left in the convoy. Bolan could see the rear of the closest one again. He was going to catch up.
There was an earsplitting peal of thunder. Bolan looked into the rearview mirror to find the top of the bunker was exploding, spewing black smoke and fire into the sky.
Grimaldi had gotten his shot.
“Hold on, Sarge,” the pilot said through Bolan’s transceiver. “I’m on my way!”
“Circle them and cut them off, Jack,” Bolan said. “Blow them up if you have to, but try not to kill Nitzche. I want him alive so we can bring him back for trial.”
“To make a point?” Grimaldi asked.
“Yeah,” Bolan said. “A point about strength.”
“You got it,” his friend replied.
Bolan drew abreast of the last Jeep. The neo-Nazis inside cut loose with a fusillade that shot up the side of the soldier’s ride. The tires blew. He struggled with the vehicle, trying to prevent it from flipping and crashing.
The Executioner shoved the muzzle of the carbine through the glassless windshield and pulled the trigger of his grenade launcher.
At that range the heat and concussion were enough to make him flinch. He peeled away, slowing his damaged vehicle, as the men in the one he’d targeted died fiery deaths. The noise of the Cobra attack helicopter roaring past above him was one of the most beautiful sounds Bolan had ever heard. He climbed from his dying truck and watched.
Grimaldi was finally free to put the Bell AH-1 through its paces. The Model 209 slid sideways through the sky as Jack fired up the M-28 turret in the Cobra’s nose. Boasting an M-134 minigun and an M-129 40 mm grenade launcher, the turret was linked to four thousand rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition for the electric multibarrel cannon and three hundred grenades for the launcher. The hardpoints on either side of the chopper also mounted Hydra-70 2.75-inch rockets.
Bolan would bet even money that Nitzche was in the lead vehicle. Grimaldi obviously thought the same thing, for he avoided that Jeep while targeting the second with the M-134 minigun, strafing the roof. At four thousand rounds per minute, it took fractions of a second to rip open the truck like a tin can, turning the men inside to shredded meat. Bolan watched as the heavy 7.62 mm NATO rounds coated the Jeep’s windows dark red from the inside before blowing them out.
The Cobra gained altitude, turned and ducked its nose, hot after the last fleeing vehicle. Bolan gave chase on foot, changing magazines in his carbine as he jogged.
Grimaldi used the grenade launcher, setting up an arc of explosions that cut across the road and forced the Jeep to swerve. The Stony Man pilot continued to harry it back and forth, firing into the edges of the dirt road with the minigun, showing the driver where the lines were drawn.
At any moment, with either his grenades or the rockets in the Cobra’s pods, Grimaldi could erase that Jeep off the map. He was showing considerable restraint. Bolan very much wanted Nitzche back in a cell, to show that the American justice system could deal effectively with such a creature of hate. But he would settle for Nitzche’s death if it meant the threat HN and Klaus Nitzche represented was ended for good.
The vehicle stopped. Playing chicken with a helicopter gunship evidently wasn’t a game that Nitzche and his bodyguards thought they could win.
Grimaldi hovered. He fired a couple of warning shots from the M-134. This prompted the men in the Jeep to stick their arms out of the windows, casting aside their weapons.
Bolan shouldered his carbine and began walking toward the Jeep.
They had him. They had captured the bastard.
“Sarge, this is G-Force,” Grimaldi said. “I’m getting a transmission from the Farm. The force of blacksuits they dispatched is on-site and mopping up. They’re clearing the bunker, encountering minimal resistance. Barb reports that if any of Nitzche’s HN types were still there, they were hiding or making their escape.”
“The hostages?” Bolan asked.
“Safe. Except for Kinsey. Barb said he was DOA.”
“Looked like a heart attack,” Bolan reported. “He went down swinging, that’s for sure. He was protecting the other hostages from Nitzche’s bloody games when it took him.”
“I’ll relay to Barb,” Grimaldi said. “She says Kinsey and Brognola were close.”
“Yeah,” Bolan replied. “Another good man lost.”
“You okay, Sarge?” Grimaldi asked.
“I’m always okay,” he said. “Cover me. I’m going for the Jeep.”
“I’m your guardian angel,” Grimaldi told him. Bolan could almost hear the tip of a hat in the veteran pilot’s voice.
“You in the vehicles!” Bolan ordered. “Step out, one at a time! Driver first, then passenger, then rear seats. Nitzche, stay where you are!”
Bolan waited. The neo-Nazis appeared to comply. They climbed out of the Jeep, swaying in the blast of rotor wash from the chopper overhead, and arrayed themselves around the vehicle. Bolan didn’t like it the moment he saw how they were standing. He went to a kneeling shooting position with his carbine.
“Don’t try it!” he ordered.
They did, anyway. Each man was carrying a concealed handgun of some kind. They went for the weapons, which were thrust in their belts. Two of them got off shots that narrowly missed the soldier.
He stroked the trigger of the M-4. It was easy to ride the relatively light recoil of the weapon as he passed over each man with the red-dot optics. Wherever the circle alighted, someone died. He shot one man through the head, then another. The remaining two broke and ran.
“Leave me mine!” Bolan ordered. He pushed off and was running again.
In his peripheral vision, Bolan saw Grimaldi chase the other man with the chopper. This required very little effort on the pilot’s part. When the neo-Nazi raised his .45 automatic pistol and triggered several rounds at the Cobra, Grimaldi squeezed a brief burst from the minigun. The dragon’s tongue muzzle-blast burned brightly in the Kansas sky.
The neo-Nazi’s head was vaporized.
Bolan shot his quarry through the leg, taking careful aim to make sure he hit nothing vital. Trick-shooting of that kind was always a risk, because you could never be absolutely certain of not tagging an artery. Bolan caught up with the downed man, took his gun and dragged him back to the Jeep, supporting him as they went. He threw the neo-Nazi to the ground near the rear of the vehicle.
Nitzche, frozen with fear, hadn’t moved from his place in the backseat. That was good. Bolan wasn’t interested in chasing the man down on foot.
“Hands where I can see them,” Bolan ordered. “You and your man here are going to stand trial. Maybe they’ll even let you bunk together… .” He stopped talking. Something wasn’t right.
He took a closer look at Klaus Nitzche.
The thing dressed in Nitzche’s smoking jacket, wearing a slouch cap and matching scarf, wasn’t a person at all. It was a mannequin.
The neo-Nazi on the ground started laughing.
“He outsmarted you,” the man said. “He outsmarted you all! Heil Nitzche! You will never defeat us!”
“Where is he?” Bolan demanded.
“He was never here.” The terrorist grinned. “It was a ruse, to draw you away while he escaped. You will never find him. He is long gone now, Jew-lover!”
Bolan drew his Desert Eagle and cocked the hammer.
“Enough,” he warned.
To Grimaldi, he said, “Jack. Land. We’ve got work to do. I need a patch to the Farm. Whatever magic Bear and his people can work, we need them to do it. We’ve got to figure out what Nitzche’s next move is before the trail goes completely cold.”
“Coming in,” Grimaldi replied.
Chapter 11
“He was too young,” Eli Berwald said.
Tears tracks marked his heavily lined face. He held the phone to his ear as if it were a snake, coiled to bite him. He couldn’t bring himself to accept what he was being told.
“He was, sir,” said Avi Kurz. A member of Aaron Berwald’s commandos, Kurz had accompanied him on the raid of the Kansas bunker, where Lantern’s intelligence indicated the old Nazi most assuredly would hide. They had been right about that. They had simply been wrong about everything else.
