time to look up from the opened briefcase in his lap when Bolan stuck the sound suppressed Beretta into the guy’s mouth and pulled the trigger.
The Executioner had wanted this man alive so he could question him. But it hadn’t worked out that way. So be it, Bolan thought. He’d just have to find another method of learning the ins and outs of the Rough Riders.
Less than one second had elapsed when the Executioner closed the briefcase, hid the Beretta behind it and started toward the other chopper. The angle of the sun made it difficult to see details inside the chopper. But at least he saw no flurries of movement that led him to believe the Rough Riders inside knew what had just happened in the other chopper.
He hoped.
“What are you doin’ bringin’ that thing here?” said a Rough Rider in a slow Southern accent. “It ain’t me who needs to check the money.” As Bolan walked confidently on, a cloud drifted over the sun behind him as if by an act of God, and suddenly he could see clearly into the helicopter. The man who had spoken had his hand taped to the gun which was, in turn, taped to the back of the head of a short, pretty brunette.
“Don’t ask me,” the Executioner said, simply to stall for time while he walked the last several steps. “Your boss told me to come show it to you, too.”
It was enough to confuse the men in the second chopper while Bolan took the final steps to the open helicopter door. When his thighs were pressed against the deck, he dropped the briefcase and put another near silent 9 mm round into the brain stem of the man with the taped hand.
The final Rough Rider was the one who had guided the pregnant woman out of the vault. And though he had the muzzle of his .45 pressed against her head now, it wasn’t taped. And he chose to swing his weapon toward the Executioner rather than kill the woman.
It was a mistake he would not live long enough to regret.
The man had the big automatic halfway to Bolan’s chest when the Executioner fired his last round into the head. The .45 went off but blew past Bolan’s side, harmlessly entering the bank through the broken window to lodge itself somewhere inside the lobby.
Suddenly, all of the Rough Riders were dead.
Bolan looked at the trembling little brunette and said softly, “Relax. It’s all over.” He reached up and flipped the safety on the gun still taped to the back of her head, then pulled a TOPS Special Assault Weapon knife—more usually referred to simply as a SAW—from the sheath on his belt. Carefully, he began cutting the tape away from the young woman’s head. Both she and the pregnant woman were crying, and Bolan had to stop the mother-to-be from hugging him. “Careful,” he smiled as her arms reached out. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your hairdo.”
The woman giggled nervously. “My hair doesn’t seem very important right now,” she said, and circled her arms around the Executioner’s chest, pressing her tear-stained cheek against his as well.
Bolan felt her extended abdomen against his belly. Inside was a totally innocent little boy or girl—a totally innocent baby who had come within a hair of dying by the hand of a group of whacked out, home-grown American terrorists. If not for him, both mother and child would more than likely be dead, and in a sudden epiphany the Executioner was reminded why he’d been put on this planet called Earth and given the special abilities that he had.
To save the weak and innocent from the strong and evil.
Bolan looked back toward the other chopper.
Glasser and one of his SWAT team men were cutting the pistols away from the hostages heads as Bolan had done. The rest of the men stood back, waiting.
As he started toward Tom Glasser, the cell phone in one of the pockets of his blacksuit suddenly rang.
The Executioner walked back into the bank lobby and thumbed the Talk button. “Striker,” he said.
“Hello, big guy,” came the voice of Hal Brognola from the other end of the line. “Anything happening on your end?”
Bolan suppressed a chuckle. “No, Hal,” he said. “Things are actually pretty quiet where I am now.”
“Yeah, now it is,” Brognola said. “But ten minutes ago we were watching the whole bank thing go down on FOX news.”
Bolan stiffened slightly. “Was I on it?” he asked. The last thing he needed was his face splattered all over the newspapers.
“I saw you,” Brognola said. “But there was never a clear shot of your face. The newshounds and ambulance chasers must have been using long-range equipment because the Kansas City PD wouldn’t let them within a country mile of the action. I don’t think you have anything to worry about in regard to being IDed.” The high-ranking Justice official and director of Stony Man Farm’s Sensitive Operations Group paused long enough to take a breath, and Bolan could almost see the unlit cigar sticking out between his teeth.
“Hold on,” Brognola said. “Because we’re about to get hooked into a three-way conference call to the White House.”
Bolan frowned but didn’t speak. While he often took advantage of the equipment, computers, communication networking and other benefits of Stony Man Farm, in truth he answered to no one, though he did operate with the sanction of the President of the United States. He rarely talked to the Man. The fact was, when he and the President actually did speak, it was always something big. Very big. Usually of global importance.
“Hang on a few seconds,” Brognola said. “Aaron’s connecting the three-way call right now.” Aaron was Aaron Kurtzman, Stony Man Farm’s computer wizard.
Outside, sirens sounded in the distance. Bolan waited silently as they grew louder, and then watched as ambulances and hearses arrived to cart off the bodies of the Rough Riders. He wondered exactly what was going on in Washington. The big story currently was that Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah—based in Lebanon—was firing short-range missiles and rockets at each other with far more innocent civilians being killed than soldiers or militia. It had all started over the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, and quickly escalated into a full-scale war.
Phoenix Force—one of the counterterrorist groups that worked out of Stony Man Farm—was in Beirut right now, trying to cull the terrorists from the innocent Lebanese among whom Hezbollah hid. So the Executioner suspected this call from the President meant he was about to join the other Stony Man Farm crew in the Middle East.
Bolan was rarely wrong. But this was one of those rare times.
“Hello, Hal?” the President’s voice finally said over the line.
“Hello, Mr. President,” Brognola replied. “I’m here. And Striker’s tapped in with us, as well.”
“Hello, Striker,” the Man said.
“Mr. President,” Bolan said. The noise level outside had risen again to the point where it was hard to hear the voices over the cell phone, so he moved into the private office just off the lobby and closed the door behind him. Through the glass wall he could see white-clad EMTs entering the bank to begin removing the dead men up and down the halls. And through the window to the street, he watched the Kansas City SWAT teams and other cops break into small groups to discuss what had just happened.
“We’ve got a problem,” the President declared. “Actually, we’ve got a lot of them.” He paused to draw in a breath. “But we’ve got one big problem, and you’re the only man I trust to handle it. What’s probably the worst, most organized threat to this country that’s ever come across the board is sneaking in under the radar.” He paused again. “If it’s successful, it’ll make 9/11 look like a Sunday School weenie roast.”
Bolan waited silently. He knew the Man would go on as soon as he’d picked the right words.
“You’ll probably find this as hard to believe as I did at first,” the Man finally said, “but an alliance has been struck between the Rough Riders and Hamas.”
Bolan