Final judgment, p.13
Final Judgment, page 13
But it was too late. Even as he said it, Brognola was aware of a presence above them. Simms produced another blade, ready to deliver a killing blow.
Brognola’s gun hand was pinned beneath the security guard. He saw a second guard coming for them, saw the man begin to draw the pistol on his belt. The assassin saw it, too, and flipped the knife in his hand before hurling it with what appeared to be all his strength. The weapon spun and struck the guard in the face. Grabbing at his eye and screaming in pain, he fell to his knees.
A third knife appeared in the assassin’s hand. Up close, Brognola realized what he was seeing. The blades were made of plastic, which was why the killer had thrown the last one so hard. They had almost no weight, and no metallic signature to set off the metal detectors in the lobby of the building.
Simms kicked the security guard in the head. The weight pinning Brognola’s gun arm became heavier; the guard was out cold. Simms knelt over them and brought the knife up for a killing stab.
“Justice,” he said, “has a long memory!”
“Glock has a short trigger pull,” Brognola replied.
His own gun was pinned, but the one on the guard’s hip wasn’t. Brognola had drawn the weapon with his left hand and now pointed it at the killer. He fired off three rounds.
The gunshots echoed through the building, scattering bureaucrats. Simms collapsed on top of Brognola, his last breath rattling in his throat.
The big Fed lay there, staring at the ceiling. He still held the gun. He could hear urgent footfalls.
“Hal! Hal! Are you all right?” somebody called.
Then another security team arrived, come to save him at last. Brognola closed his eyes and wished he was anywhere but Washington. His chest heaved.
Appointment at the gym, hell, he thought, struggling to catch his breath. He was going to go eat a steak, have a drink of Scotch and then take a nap.
Chapter 13
“I see them,” Grimaldi reported. “They’re going straight for the roadblock. Sarge, they’re not stopping!”
The line of cargo vans was traveling through the congested streets of Williamsburg. Grimaldi brought the chopper as low as he dared, but there was no clear shot, not while the vans moved in and out of civilian traffic as they were doing. The Stony Man pilot tried to radio ahead to the state troopers manning the “sobriety checkpoint,” but there wasn’t enough time. The first of the vans hit the flimsy wooden barricades and smashed them. The other vans followed in its wake.
“Jack, give me the law-enforcement officers and first response frequencies,” Bolan said. “They may not be able to answer, but hopefully, they’ll hear us.”
Grimaldi made an adjustment on the retrofitted communications package in the Cobra. “You’re go, Sarge.”
“This is Federal Task One,” Bolan said into his transceiver. “An armed force of hostiles led by escaped fugitive Klaus Nitzche is targeting an office building at—” He paused and checked his secure phone, reading off the address given in the Stony Man files for the Lantern offices. “These men are heavily armed and extremely dangerous. I am the leader of a Justice Department task force assigned to neutralize this threat. You will be advised of future developments as needed. Federal Task One, out.”
Grimaldi switched off the link. “Think it will help, Sarge?”
“It might or it might not,” Bolan said. “Come on, let’s get in the fight.”
“You read my mind,” Grimaldi said. The Cobra dived sharply.
They came in as fast as Grimaldi dared push the chopper. The buildings to either side of the street, and the traffic below, made for tight quarters. They started taking ground fire as soon as they got near the building. Some of it was coming from the neo-Nazis in the vans. The rest was coming from the law-enforcement officers at the broken cordon.
“Well, that was helpful,” Bolan said.
“Guess they don’t listen too well,” Grimaldi stated.
The vans were taking up positions to form a cordon of their own, blocking the front of the Lantern offices. From the building itself, gunfire erupted from T-shaped openings in metal shutters drawn across the windows.
“Sarge, do you see that?”
“Looks like Lantern knew something we didn’t when they decided to stay put,” Bolan said. “Can you target them from here?”
“Watch me.”
The Stony Man pilot triggered the Cobra’s minigun. Four thousand rounds per minute tore into one of the vans at the midpoint of Nitzche’s column. The heavy 7.62 mm rounds tore the van open as if it were made of aluminum foil. The gas tank detonated and the entire vehicle went up in a gout of flame.
“I’ll bet you a dollar you can’t do that again,” Bolan said.
Grimaldi whooped. The Cobra slid left and he very carefully tore open the next van in line. From the vans ahead of and behind the target vehicle, small-arms fire poured bullets in their direction. Grimaldi ignored it, although he did angle the chopper’s nose up slightly. Both seats were armor plated, as were the engine and transmission covers of the aircraft. The canopy, however, was Plexiglas, selected over armored glass for its lighter weight.
“They’re moving,” Grimaldi reported. “I’ve got a stream of them headed for the front entrance, probably barricaded against—”
The explosion from the front door of the Lantern offices produced a plume of black smoke.
“So much for that,” Bolan said. “Looks like they’ve blown it. Keep on them, Jack.”
“You want me to chance the rockets?”
“Too risky. We don’t know how many people are inside the Lantern offices. We don’t want to risk taking off the front of the building.”
Grimaldi nodded. “I’d have argued with you if you said otherwise.” He pushed the Cobra up slightly, then backed along the column of vehicles, tapping the minigun’s trigger and alternating with grenades. The vans began exploding in sequence, but the process was too slow. The full destructive power of the Cobra still couldn’t be unleashed. There were too many occupied buildings, too many civilian vehicles. Whether Nitzche knew he was using innocent people as human shields to protect against heavy weapons attack from above wasn’t clear. If his actions weren’t deliberate, the HN forces were certainly lucky.
“Put us down over there,” Bolan said, pointing. “That parking lot. Time to get personal.”
The Cobra didn’t so much land as its rotors kissed the asphalt, giving Bolan enough time to hit the pavement and take to the street. Grimaldi lifted off just as quickly, withdrawing to take up a covering position. This time, there would be no choppering out of the target zone with an airborne bus full of hostages. Grimaldi and his electric cannon would be there to cut off Nitzche’s escape route.
Bolan, rigged for full battle, made his way along the front of the building. The burning vans now screened him from the street, which had been part of the plan. Denying Nitzche his most obvious means of extraction also protected civilians, cutting off the neo-Nazis from the rest of the area and obscuring visibility of the surrounding structures. The heat of the burning hulks made Bolan sweat as he moved toward the entrance.
Stony Man Farm had provided floor plans of the building itself, which he had studied in transit. According to the plans, there had once been a rear exit to the building. Satellite photo imagery showed that this egress had recently been bricked up. That fit with the relatively recent militarization of Lantern. Eliminating points of vulnerability, in the form of extraneous entrances and exits, was just basic security tactics.
It also meant that if Bolan was going to get into the building, he was going to have to do so where the HN forces had.
They had left plenty of men behind to guard the door. When they saw the soldier, they opened fire.
Bolan was getting tired of standing on the business end of Kalashnikov rifles.
Pieces of the building’s facade were blasted apart as he ran, pelting him with sharp fragments of brick. The only cover to be had was a large metal trash receptacle set along the sidewalk against the building. He crouched behind it.
“Sarge?” Grimaldi asked in Bolan’s ear. “You okay?”
“Temporary setback only,” Bolan said. Not for the first time, he mentally thanked Gadgets Schwarz for designing the “smart” earbud headpieces, which filtered out noise above a certain decibel. When slaved to the communications link he shared with Grimaldi—and therefore with the Farm, through the pilot’s commo package in the chopper—the tiny earbuds’ relay prevented him from constantly broadcasting to Grimaldi and the Farm the deafening sound of incoming gunfire—not to mention his own shots.
The metal trash bin began to vibrate as the neo-Nazis concentrated their fire on it, but the bullets didn’t penetrate the receptacle’s heavy steel. Bolan considered his options, weighed the relative risks and decided that any nominal friendlies wouldn’t be in the vicinity of the entrance as long as Nitzche’s people effectively controlled it.
That brought Bolan to the thorny issue of just who to consider “friendly.” Lantern had, by rejecting the suggestion they evacuate the building, made their position obvious. They were going to stand against Nitzche on their terms. Would they consider Bolan an enemy and shoot him on sight? It was possible. It was equally possible he would be shot simply by mistake, as relative amateurs under fire would be unlikely to discriminate when choosing targets. If there was any way possible, however, Bolan wouldn’t shoot the men and women of Lantern. They weren’t his enemies. They weren’t predators. Foolhardy and untrained they might be, but their goals were self-preservation, not victimization.
The garbage bin continued to shudder. Bolan risked a glance past the edge of the steel enclosure. It was a straight run from his position to the doors. He just had to get past a wall of gunfire first.
A renewed salvo scored sparks from the top of the trash bin. Bolan pressed himself against it, trying to lower his profile further. Something was jabbing him in the back. He looked down.
The garbage bin was on wheels. Its foot brake had been gouging him in the spine. He looked left, then right, then removed several white phosphorous grenades from his war bag.
Popping the pins on the half-dozen grenades, he threw them into the garbage receptacle, then lowered his shoulder and slammed into the trash bin with all the strength he could manage.
The bin rolled. Bolan kept pushing, and it picked up speed. When he reached what he judged its maximum, he let it go. The neo-Nazis continued to spray bullets at the bin, heedless of the danger as it bore down on them.
There was a tremendous crash as the metal garbage container struck the entrance. The white phosphorous grenades exploded a heartbeat later, bathing the front of the building in actinic glare.
Human torches ran shrieking from the site.
The neo-Nazis screamed as they went, blind and damned, their flesh alive with a fire that would gnaw through their bodies until the phosphorous was denied oxygen. Bolan brought the M-4 to his shoulder and quickly sighted, squeezing the trigger as his optics found their target. He shot each man through the skull, ending his screams, delivering final mercy.
Some men were evil, their souls blackened by a cancer that could only be burned away in cleansing fire.
Nitzche was one such man.
Bolan reached the entrance and took cover by the corner of the doors. Several corpses were scattered in the corridor beyond the burned, twisted metal that had been the security barrier. They wore black BDUs, in contrast to the camouflage fatigues of Nitzche’s HN goons.
Lantern’s people were already paying the price for standing against Nitzche’s private army.
The foyer of the building was full of spent shells and smelled of soot. A stairwell led up to the next level; the elevator doors had been blown apart and empty shafts leading to the basement were visible beyond. Bolan cleared the space with his M-4 before judging it safe.
But it wasn’t. They had been hiding in the stairwell above, waiting for him. When he paused to check his smartphone for the floor plans, they sighted from the next landing and opened fire, very nearly hitting him. The chatter of the Uzis in their fists was high and rapid. Micro-Uzis, Bolan thought. Their high cyclic rate of fire always gave them away.
The only cover, apart from bodies on the floor, was a reception and security desk. He dived behind it, feeling the bullets tear into it and gouge out chunks and splinters. The gunners emptied their weapons in series, staggering their reloads, giving Bolan no chance to counter. He lay as flat as he could as the tenuous cover of the desk was shattered piece by piece.
“Now! Do it now!” he heard one of the gunners say.
He heard the metallic spring of a grenade spoon releasing.
Bolan pushed himself up, popping from hiding like a jack-in-the-box. The grenade came sailing at him, as he expected it would.
He caught it.
As he snatched the grenade from the air, he was turning, spinning, and sending the bomb back the way it had come.
It hit the stairwell, then exploded.
The screams of his enemies were cut short as the fragmentation grenade blew them apart. Limbs and chunks of singed flesh splattered the stairwell.
Bolan’s ears rang again. He vaulted the bullet-riddled desk and paused at the base of the stairwell. He could hear gunfire from somewhere distant in the building. Nitzche’s forces were working their way upward. Berwald’s offices were supposed to be near the top of the structure. If he and his people had made a stand there, they were trapped.
“Jack,” Bolan said, “see if you can line up some more air support by way of transportation.”
“You thinking roof evac, Sarge?”
“Exactly right.”
“Please…” a woman’s voice said. “Help…”
Bolan quickly scanned the bodies. Curled at the base of the stairwell was a woman in black BDUs and a Star of David necklace. Her face was bloody, and her stomach had been ripped open by gunfire. She was holding her guts in with her hands.
Bolan knelt by her.
“They’re…moving up,” she said. “Clearing the building. Eli and our forces are at the top. Can you…help?”
“That’s what I’m here to do,” Bolan said. “But how did you know I would?”
“You aren’t like them,” the woman said. “You are a soldier. It shows.”
An alarm Klaxon began to sound. A recorded voice spoke with it. “Attention,” it said. “Attention. All Lantern personnel. Flee the building. Failsafe plan. Execute failsafe plan.”
“What is it?” Bolan asked. “What does it mean?”
“Nitzche’s men have overrun our defenders at the halfway point,” the woman said. “Aaron’s plan was to evacuate if we couldn’t stop them before then. He didn’t want us…to be overrun.” She coughed blood. “I was told…Aaron died.”
“He fought bravely,” Bolan said. “I was there when he died, too.”
“How thoughtful…” she said. “Such a…handsome angel of death you make.” She smiled up at him, her features twisted in pain.
Bolan bowed his head. The woman began to convulse then, and he held her as tightly as he dared. When the convulsion passed, she stared at him. Her eyes were badly bloodshot.
“It’s too late, isn’t it?” she asked.
Bolan paused, then nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve seen it before.”
“It hurts so much,” she said. “Will it be over soon?”
He shook his head. “It may take a while.”
“I can’t stand the pain,” she moaned. “Please. Please, help me.”
“You know what you’re asking?”
“Please,” she said. “Don’t make me suffer like this.”
Bolan nodded again. He held her close for a moment, then lowered her gently to the floor as he knelt beside her. He drew the Beretta.
“What’s your name?” he whispered.
“Madelaine,” the woman said quietly.
“Close your eyes, Madelaine.”
When she complied, Bolan squeezed her hand, then quickly ended her suffering.
Chapter 14
Flanked by his men, Klaus Nitzche laughed with unbridled joy as he emptied his Luger pistol into the chest of one of Berwald’s Lantern commandos. The young man screamed as the bullets tore into his flesh. The HN men flanking the old Nazi carried Kalashnikovs with bayonets affixed. They thrust their blades into the young man again and again.
Nitzche laughed again.
Glorious. It was glorious!
“They will pay! These pigs will all pay! We will gather the survivors and put them in camps! We will restore the glory of the Third Reich!”
He noticed the two HN men guarding him exchange glances, but he didn’t care. They wouldn’t understand. He didn’t truly believe the things he was saying, but he wasn’t mad. He was simply overwhelmed with the release, the purity of finally killing his enemies. To bring them pain, to bring them blood, to bring them death: that was what he desired most. Berwald and his fools had humiliated Klaus time and again. They had dragged him from the comfort of his redoubt in Argentina and made him live like an animal. They would have watched, gladly, as he was paraded for the television cameras, less than a man, less than a human being.
