Blood Testament

23

"Gino, bring them out."

She heard the shuffling footsteps, recognized the sound of death, and pressed a finger to her lips before she took her place behind the door. The children nodded understanding — Jeff with something very much like eagerness, Eileen with trepidation written on her face.

They had no chance at all, but if they surrendered meekly, they would only be cooperating in their own destruction. Better to make a stand right here, inflict whatever injuries they could, and by their deaths create a further inconvenience for their captors.

Someone would be forced to clean up afterward, remove all signs of violence. The house was meant to be a prison, not an execution chamber, and it pleased her now to think that by seizing the initiative she might destroy the careful plans of men who meant to harm her family. The longer she delayed them, forced them to remain behind scrubbing bloodstains and patching bullet holes, the better chance there was that Hal would find them. And justice would be done.

She stopped herself.

Not justice.

Justice would have seen her children safely out of there, alive, unharmed. If there was any justice in the world, Eileen and Jeff would never have been taken hostage in the first place.

No justice, then... but there was retribution. And revenge could be the next best thing, especially if it was the only course of action still available.

The footsteps paused outside their door, no more than eighteen inches from her now, and Helen realized that she was trembling. She bit her lip and clutched the makeshift spear against her chest, prepared to strike the moment the gunman showed himself. As planned, Eileen was standing to the left, her weapon clutched behind her back, and Jeff was seated on the bed, the staff concealed beneath the bed frame at his feet. It would require precision timing if they hoped to pull it off, but...

Helen stopped herself before the thought could form. They didn't have a hope in hell of pulling anything off, and she knew it. At best they were engaged in a delaying action that was certain to spell their end. Any victory would lie in taking one of their abductors with them.

But if they could take him fast enough, if she could seize his gun, then what? Then kill the others, dammit. Or at least attempt to kill them. Anything was better than waiting to be snuffed out like some pesky insect.

She heard the doorknob turn, and braced herself. The bedroom door swung inward, and she felt her enemy as he surveyed the room, a heartbeat's hesitation on the threshold.

"It's time to go," he growled. "Where's Momma?"

"In the bathroom," Eileen told him meekly.

"Get her off the pot, sweet thing. We got a schedule here."

Just one more step.

He cleared the doorway, visible to Helen now, and she was moving, pushing off from her position in the corner, knowing he would hear her, feel her coming at him from behind, not caring anymore. She held the makeshift lance in both hands, leveled from the waist, her target area the roll of flesh above his belt, right side.

There was a kidney there, the stomach, liver, small intestines. Could she skewer him? Or would the homemade spear glance off, producing no more than a bruise?

The gunman sensed his danger and swiveled to meet her as she charged, his movement altering the target area an instant short of impact. He was bringing up his submachine gun, but she did not flinch. Peripherally, she saw her children closing for the kill as she made contact below the rib cage. She felt her metal shaft punch through the fabric, flesh, and then it kept on going, in and in.

His scream was punctuated by the rapid-fire explosions in her face. The muzzle-flash of Gino's weapon seared her cheek, and Helen caught a whiff of burning hair before the weapon's recoil drove it up and backward, riddling the ceiling. Traveling on sheer momentum, she collided with the gunman, knocking him off balance. She recoiled and went down on one knee. He kept falling and spastic fingers released the submachine gun as he hit the floor.

She heard something whistle past her face, and Helen saw the wooden closet rod strike home against the gunner's nose, flattening on impact, bright blood jetting from his nostrils. And again, across the eyes, with enough force that something fractured audibly — the pole? his skull? From nowhere, Eileen fell upon him, slashing at his face and throat with jagged steel until her hands and shirt were slick with blood.

Helen realized she had no time to watch him die. She scrambled for the submachine gun, metal warm and deadly in her hands, wondering if it would respond. There must be more to it than simply pulling on the trigger. But she had no opportunity for study now. Already there were pounding footsteps in the corridor outside and startled voices clamoring for Gino.

She rose to meet them, tasting death and knowing that no matter what should happen next, she had already left a mark upon her enemies.

From his position in the darkened kitchen, Bolan watched the gunner amble past in the direction of the bedrooms. The Executioner began to move, prepared to take his target from behind when further movement from the living room delayed him. The other guns were stirring, and he still had no idea of their numbers or their capabilities.

Two voices, he figured, by the sound of it, though there might be others who refrained from speaking. If the crew was small enough, the risks were lessened, but it only took a single bullet to drop a woman or a child. One lucky round could stop a hellfire warrior in his tracks and bring his everlasting war to an immediate conclusion if he took foolhardy chances.

They wouldn't kill the hostages inside. Too messy in a safe house they had obviously used before and would want to use again. Discretion would compel them to remove the prisoners to another site where blood and noise would cause no inconvenience. Someplace where the bodies could be made to disappear forever.

He was in the doorway when he heard the ragged scream, a man's voice, tattered on the razor's edge of unexpected pain. A burst of automatic fire eclipsed the scream and was itself immediately silenced. Sounds of struggle came to him through the open doorway, and he glimpsed a slender woman kneeling on the gunner's chest, her hands descending, wrapped around a makeshift dagger, stabbing at his throat, his eyes.

The door swung wide, and Bolan recognized Brognola's wife from photographs that he had seen years before. She was moving toward him, cradling an Ingram she had captured from the fallen hardman, locking eyes with Bolan for a startled instant. There was nothing close to recognition in her face, and as he heard the enemy approaching on his blind side, the soldier knew that he could run or stand and die.

He spun in the direction of the open kitchen doorway, hit a flying shoulder roll as Helen fired. The parabellums buzzsawed into plaster, woodwork, gnawed a twisting track along the wall where Bolan had been standing seconds earlier. A second stutter gun responded from the living room, and Helen kept on firing, fighting to control the unfamiliar weapon as the magazine ran dry. The enemy was answering with short, precision bursts that drove her back and under cover.

"Goddammit, Gino, answer up!"

But Gino's comrades weren't expecting an answer from him now. They were already sealing off the corridor, preparing to attack, aware that Helen or whoever must be running low on ammunition now, perhaps already out. If they could just be sure...

"Get in there, Carmine."

"Fuck you!"

"I said get in there!"

Lying prone in darkness, pressed against the bullet-punctured wall, the Executioner could imagine Carmine staring at the muzzle of an automatic weapon, ticking off his options in the fractured second that remained. No options, really, when you thought about it that way.

"Shit."

Bolan heard him coming, braced the AutoMag in both hands, sighting down the slide at empty space before the crouching figure showed itself. He was no more than fifteen feet away when Bolan stroked the trigger, sent 240 grains of screaming death across the intervening space at 1,500 feet per second.

Impact lifted Carmine off his feet and slammed him against the wall. He hung there for an instant, crucified, then gravity tugged at him, leaving traces of himself behind as he began the dead-end slide.

"Carmine!"

Number three was all alone in there; the soldier would have bet his life on that. In fact, he had already bet his life, for now he had to cross the narrow no-man's-land of empty corridor, past Carmine's body, in the face of pinpoint automatic fire, to tag his final enemy. As long as number three remained in place, alive and capable of fighting back, the soldier's only other move was a withdrawal from the kitchen, leaving Helen and the kids pinned down, alone.

No options, right. Like always. And the flow of combat, the relentless give-and-take of battle was determining his moves. It was the price of taking on an unknown enemy on strange terrain. One on one, he had a chance: no more, no less.

The way to take it would be low and fast, assuming that his enemy would fire instinctively at waist level. Bolan would have seconds to spot the bastard's muzzle-flash and pin him down before he could correct his aim.

Unless the shooter was professional enough to know that he would come in beneath the normal line of fire.

The AutoMag's report would be enough to tell him that he wasn't facing down Brognola's woman now. He would be conscious of an armed intruder in the house, aware that he was on his own against a nameless, faceless enemy.

That made them even. And anything that shook the bastard's confidence from here on in would be a point in Bolan's favor.

But he was out of time, and stalling put the ball in his opponent's court. He could not afford to lose his slim advantage. He had to move right now, and once the move was made, he knew there could be no turning back.

Brognola heard a muffled scream and recognized the voice as male. It might be Jeff, and yet...

A burst of automatic-weapon fire ripped through the house as Hal kicked savagely against the door twice. If there was anyone inside the living room, they had to hear him now. They would be waiting for him if and when he crashed the door, their weapons swiveling to cut him down before he crossed the threshold.

More staccato firing came from inside, and Brognola threw his shoulder against the door, grunting with the impact, startled as the door gave way and sent him sprawling onto slick linoleum.

Somehow he retained his grip on both revolvers, and now he crawled across the entry hall on knees and elbows, keeping low, expecting to be shot at any moment. From somewhere to his front, the roar of stutter guns was etching out a heavy-metal harmony. Two weapons answering a third, their bursts precise and economical in contrast to the other's angry rattling.

A firefight, then, and he was closing on their flank, apparently unnoticed. It was too damned good...

He froze as ringing silence suddenly descended on the firing line. Then he heard someone calling for Gino.

There was no answer, and Brognola prayed that Gino was among the dead. The silence seemed to stretch for hours, though it must have only been a moment.

The same voice called out again, this time for Carmine.

From his hidden vantage point, Brognola risked a glance and spied two gunmen crouched on either side of what appeared to be a darkened hallway. At the far end light was spilling from an open doorway. The leader, blond and muscular, was leveling a mini-Uzi at one of them. Brognola realized this guy must be Carmine.

Carmine hesitated for another instant, finally took it in a rush, hunched over, fading into darkness. Hal was braced to make his move when he was stricken by a thunderclap that seemed to shake the very walls around him. Carmine's silhouette obscured the muzzle-flash, but there was no mistaking the report of Bolan's AutoMag. The single round eliminated Carmine as a threat and left the blond alone.

With Hal.

Whatever waited for him down that darkened corridor now demanded action. Hal was scrambling to his feet before the thought took conscious form, already firing as he rose, half-blinded by the fury that consumed him in the presence of his enemies.

The first two rounds were wide, the Glasers gouging plaster, detonating harmlessly on either side of his intended target. Now the blond was pivoting, the Israeli-made SMG tracking onto target, yellow flame erupting from the muzzle as he fought back skillfully. He was firing high, and the vest Hal wore would not have saved him if it weren't for Bolan, bursting from the kitchen, blazing with Big Thunder as he came.

The hardman hesitated, torn between two targets, and the delay was all Hal needed. Firing for effect, he unloaded with the Bulldog and the snubby .38 until the hammers fell on empty chambers, clicking like metallic pincers. In all the blond had taken seven of the Glasers, two of them directly in the face. The bastard was already dead before he toppled backward to the carpet, leaking like a human sieve.

But Hal could not stop squeezing off, the dry-fire clatter of his weapons coming to him from a distance, through the mist that fogged his mind. He kept on squeezing until the Executioner stood before him, reaching out to twist the empty guns from his hands, which had already started trembling.

"It's over."

Bolan's voice seemed distant, hollow in Brognola's ears. How could the soldier be so far away and still reach out to touch him? Hal's mind was grappling with the problem when a hint of movement on the edge of vision brought him right around to face the hallway, with its lighted doorway standing open at the end.

And he was dreaming, had to be. His mind had snapped. How else could he be seeing Helen and the children when he knew that they were dead before he crashed the door? How could they be alive and calling to him now?

Bolan slapped him on the shoulder, but Brognola was already running, sweeping Helen up in one arm, reaching for his children with the other, and he couldn't see them clearly now, goddammit. There was something in his eyes.

But he could hold them, touch them, hear their voices. And he knew, incredibly, that he was not too late.

It was enough. For now.

"We need to move."

Mack Bolan didn't want to break Brognola's mood, but there had been too damned much shooting even for a sparsely settled neighborhood. Unless the other residents were deaf or comatose, police would be arriving soon. The family reunion would have to be postponed.

Four faces, wreathed in smiles that contradicted teary eyes, were beaming at him now. Brognola nodded, herding Helen and the children past the riddled corpses toward the door. Outside, they found a sprinkling of porch lights burning in the neighborhood, illuminating former darkness, adding urgency to Bolan's own demand for haste.

"I'll follow you," he told Brognola. "When you've got them safe, we need to talk."

Brognola's smile had disappeared.

"It isn't finished."

"No."

Not while the brains behind Brognola's grief were still at large. Not while a crony of Lee Farnsworth still held power in the CIA. Not while Nicky Gianelli walked the streets of Washington as free and clear as any decent citizen.

They owed a blood debt to Brognola, to the Executioner. Before the final curtain fell on Bolan's hellfire tour of Wonderland, the cannibals would have to pay. In full.

"I'll follow you," he said again, already moving toward his car half a block away. There was whispering behind him as Hal conducted his family toward his own sedan.

The drive would give him time to think, collect the final scattered pieces of the puzzle. Motive still eluded Bolan, but he had enough to surmise that Gianelli was the guiding force behind the move against Brognola's family. Elimination of a ranking enemy at Justice had been tantalizing, obviously, but it took a back seat to the ambush laid for Bolan. Gianelli had been banking on the Executioner's assistance to a friend in need, and he had very nearly pulled it off. As for the CIA involvement, underworld connections with Clandestine Ops ran deep at Langley. Bolan had no reason to believe they had been terminated during the investigations of the seventies, any more than they had been eliminated by the dictates of a president in the early sixties. Indeed, there were suspicions — some still nurtured within official circles — that the gangland-CIA connection had been linked somehow to the removal by assassination of that President. Some even whispered that his brother, running for the presidency in 1968, had been taken out by agents of the same unholy coalition.

Bolan had no hard and fast opinion on the deaths of presidents and candidates. He knew enough about clandestine Washington to realize that Gianelli might have had a dozen different handles on the Company — from Asian heroin through all the machinations aimed at Castro in the days before detente. If Cartwright was a carbon copy of his mentor, Farnsworth, he was rotten to the core.

If not, then he was dirty all the same. The Executioner had never shrunk from the concept of guilt by association. Public figures who aligned themselves with public enemies were worse than savages in Bolan's mind. They consciously abandoned sacred oaths of office, violated public trusts in the pursuit of private gain, and Bolan didn't buy their hollow protestations of indignant innocence. When you lay down with jackals, you got up with fleas... or worse.

It wasn't finished while the architects of Hal Brognola's private hell were still alive. So long as any vestige of the Farnsworth clique survived at the CIA, the Executioner himself had debts to collect. For April Rose, Andrzej Konzaki, Aaron Kurtzman — all the others who had suffered through the treachery of men presumably committed to protection of their country and its people.

It would not be finished until that debt was paid.

And then?

He shrugged the question off and knew that then would take care of itself. His debt was here and now. Before another dawn broke over Washington, the soldier meant to close that overdue account and wipe the ledger clean.

With blood.