“Yes,” Nitzche said. “They wish me free so they may deal with me themselves. They will not trust the courts to do it a second time. We have amassed as much information about the Nazi-hunter groups as they have amassed about us. We knew almost everything there was to know about Lantern before they ever had me in their clutches. Doubtless I have few secrets from them, either. That is how they knew where to send the bounty hunter to take me. How goes that operation, incidentally?”

  “Our men in Hawaii are closing in,” Indio said.

  “I want him killed,” Nitzche stated, nodding, “but slowly. Make him suffer. Record it, so that we may distribute the video online. I wish it known what happens to all who presume to make a fool of Klaus Nitzche.”

  “Of course, sir,” Indio said. “My leader, I have taken the opportunity of…disciplining the men assigned to guard you the day the bounty hunter captured you. Had they followed protocol, they would never have been separated from you.”

  “Such,” Nitzche said, “is the price of one’s appetites.” The old man had, in fact, been visiting Buenos Aires’s most exclusive brothel the day the bounty hunter captured him. Nitzche had grown somewhat complacent in his later years, making a habit of visiting the establishment every Sunday. This practice had no doubt become known to Lantern’s intelligence network. He’d made such trips with minimal guard for the sake of discretion, something he would know better than to indulge in again.

  Nitzche knew, too, that Indio’s idea of “discipline” was to gouge out a man’s eyes with his knife before killing him. It was one of the things that made his assistant so valuable. A fit of rage on the big man’s part made it possible to extract the harshest penalty for failure, while maintaining the fiction that he cared deeply for all his men and would never treat them so harshly. What was it that old Italian had said? “It is better to be feared than loved when one of the two must be lacking.” Yes, it was something like that.

  Nitzche understood the value of creating both emotions in his followers.

  Feeling his belly full at last, he handed the thermos back to Indio and gestured with his pipe. The rear portion of the large transport helicopter was full of the kneeling hostages and their armed guards. Among those Nitzche had captured was the judge, one Amy Ballard. She was a gray-haired, severe woman with a matronly demeanor and a miserable tongue. During his preliminary appearances before the court, she had grandstanded from the bench more than once, expressing her contempt for Klaus Nitzche and everything she believed he stood for.

  Also present were the court reporter―a fairly attractive young woman—and a handful of other court functionaries and spectators. The prosecutor, an older man named Lars Kinsey, was there, as was Nitzche’s own sniveling court-appointed defense counsel, Kevin Orwin. There were also two bailiffs. Their weapons had been taken from them.

  “Have you heard from the men we stationed to cover our departure?” Nitzche asked.

  “No, sir,” Indio said. “There has been no call. Each man had a prepaid wireless phone, but they may have fallen to the operative in black.”

  “That wouldn’t explain why the men stationed in the courthouse itself also fail to report,” Nitzche said. “But no matter. There are two court guards among the hostages.”

  “Yes, my leader,” Indio said.

  “Bring them to me. Separately.”

  “Yes, my leader.” Indio produced a shoe box from under his crash seat and opened it. Inside, swathed in a soft cloth, was a beautifully maintained presentation-grade Luger pistol. As Nitzche watched, Indio checked the magazine and chambered a round, operating the toggle action. He reversed the burnished, heavily engraved weapon and handed it over almost reverently, bowing his head.

  Nitzche felt the grip of the familiar weapon fill his hand. The sensation of the steel and wood against his palm chased away the pain of his arthritis.

  The first bailiff, sensing what awaited him, began to tremble with fear as he was forced to his knees before the old Nazi.

  Smiling, Klaus Nitzche pointed the barrel of the Luger between the man’s eyes and, without a word, pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 5

  “They were fit to be tied, Sarge,” Grimaldi said. The two conversed through their shared transceiver link.

  Bolan, resupplied and with a replacement canvas war bag to haul his extra munitions, was as prepared as he was likely to be. “I don’t have any patience for these jurisdictional games,” he admitted.

  “Neither does Barb or Hal, from the sound of it,” Grimaldi told him. “The report should be coming through now, if the relay from the gear up here is working like it should.”

  “It is,” Bolan said. His secure satellite smartphone was vibrating, indicating that intelligence files were once more incoming from Stony Man Farm. He read through them, skimming the reports of communications between Operations at the Farm, Brognola’s office, the Justice Department officially, and both Brognola and Price unofficially. The messages painted a pretty bleak picture of the complex halls of power both the Farm’s operatives and Brognola, as director of the Sensitive Operations Group, were forced to travel during a given mission.

  Authorization for the police interference with Grimaldi’s mission had indeed come from highly placed personnel in D.C., though of course not from the very top. It was the top, after all, from which Bolan and the Farm got their orders. A lot of fingers were being pointed, but nobody had stepped forward or thrown anyone else under the bus. All the Farm had right now was conjecture.

  That conjecture pointed in each case to Lantern and the Berwalds. The group was known to have plenty of influence in government circles. It was through use of this influence that the illegal extradition―some of the tabloids and all of the racist shortwave and internet radio broadcasts called it “illegal kidnapping”—of Nitzche had been overlooked, so that the old Nazi could be processed through and put on trial in the United States judicial system. Clearly, the Berwalds had called on some bureaucrat or a group of them, planting the idea that to interfere with the chopper would be to signal the death of all aboard. Weaker men and weaker minds had prevailed, resulting in the temporary blocking of Bolan’s operation. All this happened regardless of the Farm’s presidential authority. Having the ear, and the orders, of the Man wasn’t always enough.

  The awkwardness of the situation was compounded by the fact that Grimaldi would have blasted his way through just about any opposition—except law enforcement. The cops were, even when working against the Farm in this case, still on their side. Jack Grimaldi would no more pull the trigger on a law-enforcement officer than would Mack Bolan.

  When Bolan had drawn down on the two “firemen,” it had been a near thing. He had fired into the sidewalk near their feet, seeking to provoke a reaction that would confirm or deny the men’s friend-or-foe status. He wasn’t disappointed. At the first sign of gunfire both men had dropped and spun, pulling pistols from under their shirts. Bolan had put each of them down, risking getting shot by the locals for his efforts. It wasn’t until an official from DCFD confirmed that the pair weren’t his men that the SRT and police officers agreed to release the man they thought was “Matthew Cooper.”

  The operation so far had been fraught with problems. Bolan didn’t like it. Success in combat involved momentum. You had to seize and keep the momentum going to ensure victory. Every complication, every false start, every detention at the hands of the forces that were supposed to be helping him robbed him of that momentum. His current journey with Grimaldi was part of the effort to retake the initiative in this small war with Klaus Nitzche. The Farm had arranged a series of refueling stops, using mobile tanker trucks, to help get the pair where they needed to go.

  While Grimaldi had been helpless to do anything with police choppers blocking him, the Farm had responded to the pilot’s calls for help by using its network of satellite access points. High-resolution imaging from space had enabled them to track Nitzche’s chopper to its ultimate destination. The old Nazi had gone to ground in a large tract of privately owned property in rural Kansas.

  Thermal imaging of that property had proved interesting. The land was registered to a holding company that Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman and his cybernetic team at Stony Man Farm had traced to Nitzche’s covert network. Staying low-profile as he had, over the years, Nitzche had amassed quite an empire, spanning financial reserves and real property. Quite a bit of that was in Argentina, but the man obviously believed in planning ahead. Heil Nitzche held several properties and business entities in the United States, most likely to serve Nitzche in the event that he was ever brought there—or anywhere in North America, for that matter—for trial. It made sense. Such an eventuality would be something that would weigh heavily on the mind of a war criminal like Nitzche. While the man probably felt no remorse for his crimes, he most certainly would have a healthy aversion to being caught and held accountable for them.

  The Farm had produced, and sent to Bolan’s phone, an extensive set of maps detailing the tunnel and trench system surrounding the center of the property. The satellite imagery had also determined that Nitzche’s safehouse―really a fortified bunker, far from what passed for civilization in that part of Kansas—was protected by antiaircraft weaponry. That meant Bolan would have no choice but to insert at the edge of the property and then sneak, creep and fight his way through the maze of defenses that Nitzche and his very well-manned, well-equipped group had erected. This bunker was, after all, Nitzche’s go-to-ground spot; it would be designed to make him feel safe despite whatever threats faced him. Such a bunker was the very definition of a “hard site.” It wouldn’t be easy to breach.

  The rolling grasslands were quite flat, affording Nitzche and his men a very good field of fire. There were, however, variations and hillocks, including a small stand of trees at the far southern edge of the area where Bolan’s plans said the bunker trenches began. The grove extended for some distance. Possibly it delineated a property border. Bolan didn’t care, as long as he could get in. Grimaldi would have to withdraw to a safe distance, out of range of the bunker’s antiaircraft weapons.

  Fully equipped and ready, the Executioner hit the grass as the chopper dipped and hooked skyward once more. It paused long enough to throw a salute to Grimaldi before making his way into the small stand of trees. The relative flatness of the terrain, and the distance he could see accordingly, was amazing.

  Crouching to present a smaller target, and keenly aware of the possibility of sniper fire from the direction of the bunker, Bolan used his satellite phone to guide him. The device gave him a GPS reference coordinate and would lead him to the outermost tendril of the extensive network of trenches dug into the Kansas soil.

  He was on his own from this point. Grimaldi was available for emergencies, but losing the chopper, not to mention one of Bolan’s oldest friends, made the prospect of forcing the pilot to dodge anti-aircraft missiles or machine-gun fire a less than attractive prospect.

  The leading edge of the trench was flush with the earth and camouflaged by green-and-brown spray paint. The paint had been used to match, roughly, the surrounding grass. Bolan moved in a half crouch as he took the path leading down, impressed by how smoothly and evenly the trench had been dug. Someone, or more probably, a lot of someones, had spent a great deal of time digging these fortifications with precision equipment or a lot of human muscle.

  While there was still plenty of light from above, the trench grew darker as it deepened. Bolan removed the combat light from his gear and thumbed it on as he walked. The bright LED beam revealed no sign of tripwires or sensors, although he knew of plenty of means of intrusion detection that would be invisible to the intruder himself. He would never see a buried piezoelectric sensor, for example, but the pressure of his passing would trip the alarm. Even the chopper insertion could have alerted the nest of neo-Nazis to Bolan’s presence. He was resigned to the fact that surprise wasn’t on his side, or couldn’t be for long.

  The trench was soon deep enough that it extended about two feet above his head. He could see evidence of wiring strung along the walls, from which common task lights had been hung. These weren’t lit. He walked up to one and tried to switch it on, but nothing happened. It either wasn’t connected to a functioning power source, or was controlled from somewhere else, possibly the bunker.

  Bolan squatted and consulted his phone, shielding the display with his hand. He verified where he was, memorized the layout of the next few passages and put the phone away. He could repeat the process indefinitely if necessary, working his way through the maze of trenches in chunks, until he finally encountered serious resistance.

  The hostages, and Nitzche himself, were at the other end of this yellow brick road. It was time to go calling on the Wizard.

  Bolan reached a junction where two trenches met two tunnels. The tunnels ran left and right, while the trenches continued on, toward his goal. A small room of sorts had been dug out here. There was quite a bit of space in which to wait or to fight. He was about to move on when something, some sixth combat sense, alerted him.

  He wasn’t alone.

  The soldier felt the oncoming foe before he heard or saw him. The floor of the trench transmitted vibration. He had just enough time to raise his arm before the black-clad opponent crashed into him. Bolan took the impact and swiveled, throwing the attacker over his hip. The dark figure rolled to the floor of the trench.

  There were more. They wore black BDUs, and black balaclavas over their faces. They moved inexpertly, or at least the first two did. Bolan managed to throw the second one, pushing him off balance easily. The third one, however, was another matter.

  Bolan heard the metallic snick of an expanding baton opening. The weapon whistled through the air above his head a moment later. He ducked, stepped in and threw a short punch that staggered the baton-wielder. Then he turned and stripped the weapon from the man’s hand.

  Armed with the baton now, Bolan gripped the foam rubber handle and whipped the weapon this way and that. The two men he had thrown were back on their feet and eager for more. He didn’t disappoint them.

  They hadn’t tried to shoot him. They wore holstered sidearms, but hadn’t gone for them. That told him they weren’t Nitzche’s men, who had no compunctions about gunning down anyone. These weren’t law-enforcement personnel, either, if Bolan was any judge of their demeanor and their gear.

  These could only be Berwald’s Lantern operatives.

  Lantern was well financed and highly motivated, unafraid of direct action. While their budget was probably dwarfed by Nitzche’s own, given that the old Nazi had what amounted to a private army, Lantern was the opposite side of the Heil Nitzche coin. One was good, if misguided; the other was evil. The two were going to collide, with disastrous results, unless Bolan did something about it. These Lantern people had no concept of the meat grinder they were about to drop themselves into.

  Bolan allowed the two black-clad foes to dance in and out for a while, testing him. At least they thought they were testing him. In reality he was toying with them, selecting the best options for neutralizing them without hurting them too badly. While the Lantern operatives weren’t law enforcement and were operating outside the law, he could hardly fault them for the latter on moral grounds. Still, they were relative amateurs from the look of them, and they had no business playing around on turf that would get them hurt or killed. They were little better than a distraction, from that point of view.

  The third fighter was up again, and now all three circled Bolan like sharks. Each time they closed the distance with a kick or an out-of-range punch, the soldier whipped them with the tip of the baton, producing several hisses of pain and grunts of discomfort. Finally, Bolan decided he had indulged them enough. They were wasting his time and weren’t getting the hint he was trying to give.

  Bolan stopped moving.

  He stood completely still, the baton held low in front of his body. He rested his left hand on the end of the stick and simply waited.

  They thought it was a trick at first, and froze with him. Finally, the one he had punched, perhaps looking for some payback, took a step in. Bolan watched that step and saw, in the dim light, the man turn his heel inward for a roundhouse kick. Bolan let it come, shifting to meet it at the last instance, slamming the baton across the knee joint. He was far gentler than he could have been.

  The man went down, shrieking, holding his knee.

  The second fighter came in. Again Bolan held completely still, until the last moment, when he whipped the baton up in a backhand arc. He pulled the blow at the last moment, but still laid the weapon across the man’s face.

  “You son of a―” began the second fighter thickly. From the sound, his lip was split and bloody, swelling rapidly.

  Bolan stepped forward. He raised the baton and swung it at the third man’s face, stopping just short of his target.

 

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