As the two vehicles collided, he raised his mini-Uzi and hosed down the windows. The 9 mm bullets chewed through the two men still inside, spreading them over the dash, the seats and even the roof.

  Bolan climbed out and surveyed his work.

  So much for the forward guard.

  He turned and ran toward the cordon of vehicles around the motel. There was no police response to all the destruction. The longer that went on, Bolan figured, the greater were the chances that Nitzche had bribed or otherwise influenced the relevant local law-enforcement concerns.

  The sounds of battle had drawn out many of Nitzche’s men. They stood ready behind the cordon of their vehicles, Kalashnikovs and other automatic weapons at the ready. Bolan decided he would see just how many he could draw away from the improvised battlements. He lay flat in the darkness and made a variety of clicking noises, imitating a battery-powered radio. Several of the neo-Nazis peeled off from the main contingent, holding flashlights cautiously before them.

  He didn’t use his guns. Instead, he worked his way through the terrorists using his knife, quietly and efficiently killing each man. It wasn’t long before the tactic had the desired effect. The neo-Nazis began to freak out and call to one another, trying to determine what was going on.

  “My leg! My leg!” Bolan cried in a high-pitched voice. “Oh God!”

  “Who’s out there?” demanded one HN guard. “Show yourself!”

  “We should all just kill ourselves now!” Bolan yelled.

  “There’s got to be a full squad out there!” one of the terrorists shouted to his fellows.

  It was time. The soldier picked his way through their lines, using their frightened voices to fix them in the night. Then he came up behind one and, grabbing the neo-Nazi around the mouth, stabbed him to death with the combat dagger.

  Skulking among the enemy, Bolan continued attacking them silently, from behind their line. When they finally caught on, they began screaming to one another in renewed fear. A predator was loose in their midst, and for once, none of the neo-Nazis were themselves that predator. They were instead the prey, a role that came none too easily to such brutal, simple men.

  Bolan picked up his pace. He ran back and forth among the neo-Nazis, skirting the fronts of the motel doors, weaving in and out of the parked SUVs. His knives found their mark wherever he went, rending and tearing, stabbing and cleaving. Finally, perhaps on an order from Klaus Nitzche himself, the remaining neo-Nazis rallied and pulled portable spotlights from their vehicles. The handheld light guns were of the type that plug into a vehicle’s cigarette lighter, producing bright beams of white light.

  Bolan was caught in the glare.

  “There!” somebody shouted. “That’s him! Kill him, kill him!”

  “No!” The order came from Nitzche, closer than Bolan had thought the old Nazi would be. “You have him now! Take him alive! Move in, move in! I want him groveling before me!”

  A lack of discipline, Bolan thought, and an overabundance of pride. Incompetence and overconfidence killed more of his foes than his bullets ever could.

  Bolan stopped moving. He let the neo-Nazis come, moving to surround him, creeping ever closer. They were truly in fear of him now. They had seen how many of their number he had killed with only a knife. The big combat dagger dripped blood, which was visible in the bright lights from the vehicles.

  Wait for it, Bolan thought.

  “Now, Sarge?” Grimaldi asked in his ear.

  “Not yet,” he whispered.

  Nitzche left his motel room. He held his Luger in his hand again and seemed intent on using it. Bolan let him come. The sound of the Cobra gunship was now just perceptible to those on ground. A slight breeze kicked up by the rotor blades blew grit against Bolan’s feet.

  “So,” Nitzche said. “The mighty Matthew Cooper of the United States government. How did you find me, Cooper?”

  “The same way Lantern did,” Bolan said.

  “Like lambs to slaughter, I led them to me,” Nitzche crowed. “Are you now to follow them? Honestly, Cooper, I had thought the resistance you offered me would be so much greater. At every turn, my vast superiority has been proved by—”

  “A lack of discipline,” Bolan said, “and an overabundance of pride.”

  “What?” Nitzche said. He peered at Bolan, suspicious. “What do you mean?”

  “Reaper,” the Executioner said.

  The first SUV in the cordon exploded.

  The Cobra gunship floated overhead. Grimaldi operated the minigun like a surgeon, destroying each truck in succession, creating a raging ring of fire around the motel. When he had finished strafing the trucks with the electric cannon, the Stony Man pilot began firing incendiary grenades. The circle of fire grew higher and hotter, burning with an intensity that threatened to scorch the paint from the walls of the motel.

  Hell had come to Klaus Nitzche’s doorstep.

  The neo-Nazis were now trapped within the ring of fire. Bolan went to work with his Uzi, firing on full automatic, running to and fro among the flames, blasting each man he acquired. Screams filled the air once more. Bolan began throwing open the doors of the motel room’s west wing, the area protected by the now-burning cordon. He cleared room after room, emptying the Uzi and all his spare magazines for it, discarding the weapon when it was no longer useful.

  A pistol in each hand, Bolan continued shooting. The neo-Nazis who tried to engage him fell before his guns. Whether hiding behind cover or rushing him in the open, they had no chance. Bolan was an avenging fury.

  He emptied his pistols, reloaded, fired again. Over and over again, he blasted the weapons dry, until the barrels of both pistols were burning hot and he had depleted all the rounds he carried with him. With every step he took, he walked on empty shell casings and through puddles of blood. The Executioner had created a killing ground penned in by fire and drenched in fear. For the Heil Nitzche fighters, it truly was hell on earth.

  And then they were all dead.

  Bolan stood, breathing heavily. His weapons were too hot to holster. He placed them, and his war bag, on the blood-soaked pavement. Bending to pick up a revolver from a dead man’s hand, he opened the cylinder and checked the cartridges. The man hadn’t gotten off a single shot. Bolan closed the weapon and, gun in hand, went for the only door that was still closed. It was the last motel room. Nitzche would be hiding there. He would be cowering, having retreated during the furious carnage Bolan had just wrought.

  He would die.

  Bolan didn’t knock. He kicked the door open and then pressed himself against the doorjamb as bullets burned the air where he had been. He answered the shots with his revolver, dropping the neo-Nazis where they stood. When the gun was empty, he threw it aside.

  Only Nitzche remained.

  The aged Nazi held his Luger under Claire Berwald’s chin. “You remember the young lady?” Nitzche growled. “Or have you two not yet met? There are so many of these Berwalds, it seems. It is hard to keep track.”

  “I haven’t really had the pleasure,” Bolan said. “Not properly.”

  “I have.” Nitzche smiled lasciviously. “Or at least, I have started to. When you are dead, I will leave this place and make her suffer a thousand humiliations before I finally kill her. She will go to her dead father and brother a broken woman.”

  Bolan’s jaw tightened. “You really are an evil piece of filth,” he said, drawing his knife.

  “You dare?” Nitzche snarled. “Perhaps I will kill her right now.”

  “She’s the only thing keeping you alive,” Bolan said.

  “Damn you. Damn you!”

  Claire rammed her elbow up into the hollow of Nitzche’s throat. The old Nazi’s head snapped back and he made a horrible choking noise. He began to crumple.

  Claire leaped out of the line of fire. Bolan reversed his blade and flipped it, end for end, with all his strength. The razor-sharp knife bit deep, burying itself in Nitzche’s neck. Blood sprayed everywhere. The old man sank to the floor, clawing at the hilt of the knife jutting from his throat, rolling back and forth. He was saying something, screaming something, but his words were unintelligible, given the blood roiling in his throat.

  Claire Berwald made a soft noise. Her eyes began to roll up in her head.

  Bolan grabbed her before she fell. He pulled her to him, held her close, as the adrenaline dump hit her hard, causing her to shake as if she were having a seizure.

  “Claire,” Bolan said. “Claire! Stay with me! It’s shock. You’re all right. You’re going to be all right.”

  She looked up at him. “You…saved my life. Freed me.”

  He reached into his pocket and produced the ring Aaron Berwald had given him. “Your brother wanted you to have this. I was with him…at the end.”

  Claire looked down at the ring. “You tried to help him?”

  “I did everything I could,” Bolan said. “It wasn’t enough.”

  “Sometimes,” she murmured, “it isn’t.” She looked at the dead bodies everywhere. “This place is a charnel house.”

  “My people will see to it,” Bolan told her.

  He put two fingers to his ear for her benefit. “Jack,” he said, “call our mutual friends. Have them send a cleanup crew to this location. There’s one hell of a mess down here.”

  “You got it,” Grimaldi said.

  “You are…?” Claire looked at the soldier, confused.

  “Matthew Cooper. I’m with the Justice Department. When Nitzche first took the courthouse, I was assigned to intercede. I’ve been pursuing him ever since.”

  As if remembering the evil Nazi, Claire turned and stared. Nitzche was still writhing on the floor, bleeding out. His movements were becoming weaker.

  “He’s still alive,” she said, her voice full of wonder. “How can a man live through that?”

  “He can’t,” Bolan said. “Not this one.” He leaned down and, making eye contact with Nitzche, wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the big knife. “I want you to know something,” he told him. The Nazi’s eyes were wide with outrage. He was pale and cold. He didn’t have long.

  “When you get to hell,” Bolan told Nitzche, “I want you to know it was a Jew-lover who sent you there. A man who believes in everything you despise. A man who thinks there is no lower human being on this earth than a Nazi…unless it is the neo-Nazis who follow him. Go to hell, Klaus Nitzche, and may your suffering be as dishonorable and unclean as your death.”

  Bolan wrenched the knife back and forth, then removed it.

  Nitzche died staring toward the ceiling, surrounded by a spreading pool of his own blood.

  Claire turned away. Bolan stood. He started for the exit.

  The door to the connecting room opened.

  Indio, Nitzche’s Uruguayan lieutenant, stood there.

  “None of us is leaving here alive,” the giant told them.

  Chapter 18

  The giant had a large bandage over his forehead. He pointed at the bloody gauze. “You shot me in the head,” he said. “But on the streets of Buenos Aires I was once struck in the skull with a steel pipe. I might have died. Instead, I was given a metal plate.”

  Indio gestured for the door. “The parking lot,” he said. “I will fight you, government man. You have killed my leader, and for that I will make you suffer greatly. But unlike my leader, I respect my enemies when they prove worthy. You are a very worthy fighter. I have always enjoyed combat. This will be very good indeed.”

  “You don’t seem too broken up about Nitzche,” Bolan observed.

  “I was not so blindly loyal as he thought,” Indio said, “nor as simpleminded. Perhaps I will take the reins of Heil Nitzche. Perhaps he will become a symbol, a beloved martyr, better remembered than obeyed.”

  “I doubt it,” Bolan said.

  “I doubt it, too,” Indio agreed. “I have no desire to go to prison. But soon this place will be overrun with police, and I will have no choice. I would rather die on my feet. If there’s time, I will rape the woman until she begs me to kill her, too.” He drew a large bowie knife from his belt. “And I would like to very much to stab you to death.”

  “Well,” Bolan said, “let’s do it.”

  Indio charged; Bolan dodged the knife. He hit the door and ran for the parking lot, drawing Indio away from Claire before the giant got any ideas. The two squared off outside, in the shadows of the smoldering trucks. Indio stepped in, slashing and stabbing.

  Bolan knew there was a very good chance Indio was more skilled in this particular method of combat. He focused only on the most basic elements, remembering all his training, all his experience. To fight a man with a knife was one of the most dangerous things a human could do. Indio was intent on killing him, and should he succeed, Claire would suffer a horrible, painful death by sexual torture.

  Bolan stood with his arms out at his sides, making sure his limbs weren’t within the “barrel,” the area in which an enemy knife could strike. Indio advanced, cutting and slashing widely. Bolan dodged, using his footwork and his body positioning to keep him out of danger.

  This tactic soon began to frustrate Indio. The scars along his left forearm told the tale. The giant was accustomed to “stand up” knife fights in which the combatants traded blows and cut each other. Doubtless, his sheer size was an advantage in such a war of bloody attrition, for Indio could afford to take knife wounds that would kill a smaller, lighter man.

  Back and forth they fought. Each time Indio came in for a pass, he was closer to scoring a deadly blow. Bolan realized he was tiring, and when his strength finally gave out, the Uruguayan would win. The knife was deadly precisely because it required very little skill or strength to operate. All Bolan had to do was screw up badly enough and he would die. It wouldn’t take much on Indio’s part to manage it.

  “Why are you afraid?” Bolan asked. It was a dangerous gambit, but it was all he had.

  “I’m not afraid of you!” Indio insisted.

  “You begged Nitzche to let you kill me,” Bolan said.

  “Yes,” Indio replied. “It would have been better for him.”

  “But that was your fear talking, Indio,” Bolan taunted. “Nitzche was unafraid.”

  “He was frequently reckless.”

  “Face me like a man,” Bolan said. “Face me without a weapon.” He sheathed his knife.

  Indio smiled. He threw his bowie knife aside. “I will show you,” he stated. “I will show you why so many fear me.” He advanced; Bolan backed away. The two men started circling each other, stepping over bodies and debris in the parking lot. Indio was flexing his fingers, clearly picturing getting his enormous hands on Bolan and rending him limb from limb. Only the giant’s ego gave Bolan any advantage. Indio was, for all his strength, insecure about his abilities, forever concerned about proving himself.

  The Uruguayan tried to shoot in for a takedown several times. In all cases, Bolan avoided it. The soldier was leading Indio farther and farther from the motel, through the parking lot, away from Claire. He led the big man past the cordon of smoking trucks and farther still. Finally, he was satisfied with their position, and looked at his opponent.

  “I’m not actually interested in fighting you, Indio.”

  “But I very much wish to fight you. You do not have to fight back. I can simply kill you, if you wish it to be quick.” Indio shot in again, and this time succeeded in taking Bolan to the ground, knocking the breath out of the soldier.

  Indio went to punch Bolan from the mount position. Were he to land a blow to the body like that, he might quite possibly pulp one or more of Bolan’s organs. The soldier was ready for that and managed to shift to the side. Indio struck the pavement instead. He roared in pain. Wrapping his fingers around Bolan’s throat, he went for the choke. The soldier hammered away at Indio’s elbows with the edges of his hands and managed to dislodge the giant’s arms.

  “You offer much more sport than my usual wrestling partners.” Indio grinned. “Do you know what I enjoy most about raping a woman?”

  “Not interested,” said Bolan, who could feel his ribs being crushed.

  “I enjoy her hope,” Indio stated. “Her belief that perhaps she will escape. There’s nothing like taking a woman who doesn’t believe such a thing could happen to her, who thinks that surely help will come at the last moment. The light dies in their eyes when they realize it is going to happen, it is happening, it has happened, and nothing for them will ever be the same again.”

  “Killing you,” Bolan said, “will be doing the world a great favor.”

  “Perhaps,” Indio admitted.

  “Will you indulge a dying man in one last story?” Bolan asked.

  “Very well,” Indio said loosening his grip as he stood up, making sure to keep his position over Bolan. “You amuse me, government man. I grant you life long enough to continue doing so. For a moment, at least.”

 

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