A dozen men against Mack Bolan was hardly fair at all…to them.

  He drew his blade against the arm of one attacker, using a scissors motion that practically deboned the enemy’s limb. He used the butt of the knife to strike another man’s arm up and over, then drew the reversed blade across the man’s throat.

  He cut a weapon from a neo-Nazi’s hand by slicing the tendons on the back.

  Blood sprayed; men screamed. Bolan fought them all, his economy of movement bewildering to behold. It was as if his movements were choreographed as he slid among them like oiled death and rended limbs, speared throats, opened guts. He picked one man up and threw him onto the bar, dragging him across the glassware there, to land in a heap at the other end. The soldier stabbed a third through the eye socket and pinned him to the pool table—the pool table bearing Mack Bolan’s weapons.

  Too late, the few surviving neo-Nazis realized their mistake. Bolan snatched up his pistols and fired, two-handed, in two directions at once, splitting skulls and punching open chests.

  When the Executioner ran out of human targets, he whirled, targeted the karaoke machine and pumped the last of his .44 Magnum bullets into it, on principle alone.

  Then there was silence.

  Bolan stood, breathing heavily, his clothes covered in the blood of his enemies, his pistol barrels burning. He was surrounded by the dead.

  “It isn’t might that makes right,” he said to no one. “Strength flows from justice.”

  “And justice,” said a soft voice, “has a long memory.”

  Bolan followed the sound and found Aaron Berwald on the floor. He was critically wounded. Blood flowed from his mouth. Even if he were lying in an emergency room, there would be no way to save him. He was dying.

  “Cooper,” he said.

  “I’m here, kid,” Bolan told him. He helped Berwald into a half-sitting position against the wall.

  “I screwed up,” Aaron Berwald said. “They’re…they’re all dead, Cooper.”

  “That’s war,” Bolan stated. “People die. Good people. More than you’ll ever believe you can lose and still go on.”

  “I’m…sorry,” Berwald said. “I shouldn’t have…tried…to make justice.”

  Bolan closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked straight at the dying Aaron Berwald and made a decision.

  “I want to tell you something before you go, Aaron,” he said. “You weren’t ready. You weren’t prepared. But the urge for justice, to want to do what’s right, is never wrong. Don’t die believing that.”

  “But I lost…everyone… .”

  “And I’ve lost people, too,” Bolan said.

  “How do you…live with it?” Berwald was very close to the end now.

  “They died for what was right, too. In their own way, every one of them fought with me. Even the ones who never picked up a gun.”

  “My…ring…” Berwald gasped. He was wearing a gold ring of ornate design. It looked very old.

  “Yes?” Bolan asked.

  “My…father…gave it to me… .” Berwald said. “When I…took over…Lantern. Please give it back to him. And tell him…”

  Bolan waited. Aaron Berwald stared at nothing. He was dead.

  “Yeah, kid,” Bolan said. “I’ll tell him.”

  Chapter 9

  When Bolan found the soundproof room where the hostages were being kept, he understood why none of Nitzche’s men had reacted to the massacre in the recreation room. That was so typical of these supremacist types, Bolan thought. Arrogance and overconfidence were frequently their undoing.

  He had stuck his knife through the necks of a pair of lazy sentries to get here, but for the most part, Nitzche and his thugs believed themselves to be safe. It made a certain sense. The invasion by enemy forces they had anticipated had come, and the intruders had been defeated. Lantern’s best vigilante force had been fielded and destroyed. The government, which the members of HN so feared and hated, was represented by Bolan, and he, too, had been neutralized. There were probably hidden cameras in the recreation room. Possibly Nitzche had seen to the murder of other victims in that room, and Bolan wouldn’t be surprised if there was a room full of recordings of each of those deaths. The arrangement Nitzche had built for captives only strengthened that suspicion.

  The old Nazi had taken the time to build or, more accurately, have built, an elaborate two-way mirror setup, not unlike a police interrogation room. Actually, the more Bolan looked at it, the more it resembled the viewing theaters used for state executions. On one side of the one-way glass, an observation room with couches and chairs had been set up. On the other, a large cinder-block holding cell contained the hostages taken from the courthouse.

  Bolan recognized the prosecutor. Lars Kinsey was an old friend of Hal Brognola’s and he had sent a lot of people to prison.

  Bolan didn’t see the court reporter. Her name, according to the files, was Jennifer Galloway. Counting the entrance he had used to access this viewing room, there were three exits total. One was the connecting door to the cell. The other was, according to the Farm’s thermal imaging, a small room large enough for storage or…a bedroom.

  Trust Nitzche to have a purpose-built holding cell complete with voyeur glass and attached rape room. Bolan contained his disgust. He went to that door and listened.

  He could hear the sounds of a struggle, and a woman’s protests. She sounded as if she was screaming through a pillow.

  Very carefully, he tried the door. The knob didn’t move under his hand. He removed his lock picks from a pouch on his blacksuit. Slowly, quietly, he began to jimmy the lock open.

  The doorknob finally gave under pressure, turning to the right.

  Bolan stepped inside the room. The giant, Indio, was on the bed, holding Jennifer Galloway down. He was indeed smothering her with a pillow, and had been about to pull off her skirt. The angle was bad and, given the height of the bed, it was easy enough for Indio to drag the court reporter in front of him.

  The giant looked up into the barrel of Bolan’s suppressed 93-R. He shifted Galloway so that she completely shielded him.

  “I will dump all twenty rounds into you if I have to,” Bolan warned.

  “Not much room in here to fight,” Indio said, grunting.

  “I’m not going to fight you, either,” Bolan said. “You’re too big and too strong. I can’t afford to play with you. I’ll just have to kill you.”

  “Not an easy shot,” Indio pointed out.

  “I’ve made worse,” Bolan replied.

  They stared each other down for a long moment before Indio finally shrugged. He gave Galloway a push, dumping her on the floor in front of Bolan. The soldier helped her up. She wasn’t hurt.

  “Take her,” Indio said. “I can get another.”

  “Just like that?” Bolan asked.

  “You would kill me.” Indio shrugged. He was completely certain. The killer in Indio recognized the counter-predator in Bolan. The big man was taking no chances. As he slowly reached under the mattress, Bolan shot him in the forehead.

  The soldier clapped his hand over Galloway’s mouth before she could scream. She looked at him, wide-eyed, terrified. Bolan managed to get her to calm down before he released her.

  “Quietly,” he said. “The others aren’t far away.”

  “You murdered him in cold blood!” she whimpered.

  “He was reaching for a weapon under the mattress. And he was going to rape you,” Bolan said. “Would you rather I had left you to him?”

  “No, but—” Galloway shook her head “—didn’t you have a deal? You let him live and he lets me go?”

  “All bets were off when he made his move. Besides, I couldn’t leave him alive and mobile to come at us from behind. Nitzche still has a lot of men up and walking, and he’s in the next room. Come on.”

  They moved back to the observation room. Bolan walked up to the glass, holstering his Beretta and selecting the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. He would need firepower to punch through the thick glass and still take out targets beyond.

  Nitzche was there now, waving his Luger, flanked by his guards and clearly enjoying himself. His words, and the voices of the hostages, were transmitted to the observation room by speakers, obviously connected to a pickup in the holding room.

  “And so I have come to inform you that the amusements you afford my men are drawing to a close,” Nitzche was saying. “You are here, and suffering, because you are instruments of the corrupt legal system that sought to punish me. I, in my strength, have turned the tables, and now I punish you.”

  “You sure talk a lot, little man,” Lars Kinsey said. He was rubbing his arm and shoulder as if they pained him, but managed to stand at his full height with quiet dignity as Nitzche stared him down.

  “Little man?” the old Nazi exclaimed. “Little man? I am Klaus Reinhardt Nitzche! I command an army! I was the terror of Schlechterwald!”

  “I’ve dumped bigger things than you after a heavy breakfast,” Kinsey said, sneering. He ran three fingers through his salt-and-pepper beard.

  “You insolent whelp!” Nitzche said. He pointed the Luger. “I came here to kill one of you. Now I know which one it shall be!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, Colonel Obvious,” Kinsey said. He winced as if he had pulled a muscle. “‘Insolent whelp?’ Who talks like that? You’re like some central casting villain from a black-and-white movie.”

  “Movies? You want movies? I have many in my collection. In each of them, one or more of my enemies is dying!”

  “Do you always spend this much time giving speeches?” Kinsey demanded. “Or is this something that gets worse with age? Because you are a wrinkly old bastard, at that.”

  Nitzche stopped talking. Bolan saw his finger tighten on the trigger of the Luger.

  “Hurry up and shoot me, already,” Kinsey said. “I’m getting damned tired of waiting.”

  Bolan fired.

  The .44 Magnum bullet tore through the one-way glass and would have hit Nitzche. At the moment Bolan chose to fire, however, the Nazi was raising his Luger to pistol-whip the belligerent prosecutor. The round meant to take the old man’s hand off at the wrist instead punched through one of his guards, splitting his neck and nearly decapitating him.

  Nitzche ran for the door while his men returned fire.

  Bolan emptied the .44 Magnum pistol, aiming for the guards, but really more interested in punching his way through the glass barrier. Reloading the weapon, he lowered his shoulder and bulled his way through, sending pebbles of glass in every direction. Bolan paused just long enough to shoot first one, then a second neo-Nazi guard, cracking open their sternums with the Desert Eagle’s powerful rounds.

  “Help us! Help us!” one of the hostages cried. She was an older woman. He remembered her face from his briefing: Joyce Caldwell, an assistant to the late Kevin Orwin. She was kneeling next to the supine form of Lars Kinsey.

  “What’s happening here?” Bolan asked. He went to one knee next to Kinsey and checked for a pulse. There was none. Galloway joined him and, without being prompted, started CPR.

  “It’s his heart,” Caldwell said. Tears began to stream down her cheeks. “He…he knew they were coming to kill one of us. Nitzche, that sick bastard, gets off on it. He likes to do it himself. Lars knew they were coming to take one of us. He angered Nitzche on purpose, tried to draw the old man’s attention. He sacrificed himself for the rest of us.”

  “How long had he been having chest pains?” Bolan asked.

  “All morning.” Caldwell shook her head. “I think he knew. He never said a word about it. He just stood between the bad guys and us.”

  Galloway stopped giving CPR. She looked to Bolan and shook her head. She was crying silently.

  The soldier nodded soberly. “Thank you for trying.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” she said.

  “Stay here,” Bolan told the hostages. He went to the dead neo-Nazis and collected their weapons, producing two pistols and a micro-Uzi. “Who here can use a gun?”

  Three men and Caldwell raised their hands. Bolan handed out the weapons, skipping the most nervous-looking of the male hostages.

  “What do you want us to do?” Caldwell asked.

  “I’ve got work ahead,” Bolan said. “Stay here. Help will come. Nitzche’s forces are depleted and he’s on the run now. You should be relatively safe until I can have backup brought in to sweep this place. Watch the doors and, if you have to, choose a room with only one door and shoot whoever sticks their head in…unless it’s the cavalry, of course.”

  “Mister?” Galloway called after him.

  He looked at her over his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t say thank you.”

  Bolan nodded and hurried on.

  The shotgun blast nearly took his head off when he hit the next corridor.

  Nitzche wasn’t stupid. He had left several men behind in an attempt to kill Bolan and cover his own retreat. He had demonstrated more than once that he was an able tactician. The exit route Nitzche had taken led to the rear of the bunker, which, above ground level, resembled a stone house. Bolan had memorized the basic layout well enough to know that a dormitory of sorts, followed by a cafeteria and a kitchen, lay between him and what he assumed was Nitzche’s goal: an extensive carport sheltering the motor pool. From there, a dirt road led across the property, ultimately leading to Highway 400.

  Once on that road, there was a good chance Nitzche could escape. Bolan didn’t intend to let it happen a second time.

  He had rescued the hostages and broken the back of Nitzche’s organization, at least insofar as the fortress here in Kansas went. While the old Nazi still had ample soldiers to fight by his side, the power of Heil Nitzche was considerably attenuated.

  Bolan could, he knew, trust to time and old age to do in Klaus Nitzche. With so many men and resources lost, and exposed to the authorities as he now was, Nitzche would probably attempt to emigrate back to Argentina, there to live out what remained of his days. That was the most logical scenario. Old age might kill Klaus Nitzche sooner rather than later.

  But Bolan couldn’t just forget the man. Not now, not ever. Not knowing that good people, innocent people, people doing their jobs in and out of the United States legal system, had died at his sick whims. Even actively hunted for the rest of his days, Nitzche would know something like peace if he was permitted to dig in and hide again. The Executioner couldn’t permit that, couldn’t live with the thought of it.

  Pressed against the wall, Bolan waited as the shotgunner triggered another round into the wall. There was a distinct click-clack between shots, then another blast. A pump gun. While the gunman was trying to jack a new shell into the chamber of his weapon, Bolan broke from cover, punching the man through the neck with a .44 Magnum hollowpoint round.

  The pump gun hit the floor. Bolan, about to enter the dormitory used by Nitzche’s men, paused when the fallen weapon caught his eye. Kneeling, he lifted it and eyed it curiously. The strange-looking gun had a flashlight mount and a squared handle, like that of a chain saw. The muzzle of the shotgun was affixed with a crenellated breaching ring. The weapon resembled nothing so much as the bastard offspring of a pump gun and a chain saw.

  “Now I’ve seen everything,” Bolan muttered.

  He rose to his feet and listened at the closed door to the dormitory, a hollow-core model, cheap and easily broken. He could hear the opposition muttering to one another. They were lying in wait for him, doubtless because Nitzche had instructed them to do so.

  Bolan kicked the door in but didn’t dive through. His action prompted a firestorm, as the neo-Nazis inside emptied their weapons. Bullets chewed the door apart, spraying splinters through the corridor. The soldier waited, counting. Sustained fire could be maintained for only so long before magazines cycled dry, and when they did…

  The Executioner dived, rolling through the opening, ignored the ragged edges of the door still clinging to the hinges, and came up firing. The M-4 snarled like a buzzsaw as he fired bursts of 5.56 mm death from the barrel.

  As he stalked through the dormitory, bullets ripped up through the mattresses of two of the bunk beds. The terrorists were under the beds, concealing themselves, trying to catch him in a cross fire. He knelt and wrenched the first bed up and over, pinning the man beyond. Then he turned and stitched the second mattress, emptying the M-4’s magazine. A rapidly spreading pool of blood stained the floor.

  Bolan switched out magazines. He made a circuit of the room, shooting whatever moved. Finally, when he’d completed his circle, he stood over the man pinned by the bed. His leg had been caught at an odd angle. Bloody bone jutted through the skin.

 

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