Executioner 059 - Crude Kill Page 2

  "We're all sorry, Striker. I know you two were longtime friends." Brognola paused for a moment and the line hummed, softly, respectfully silent.

  Brognola broke the quiet. "Striker, it's far past time that this madman Lutfi was brought to justice. You have all possible latitude. Our intel shows the mission is still as hard as they come: search and destroy. Find Lutfi."

  Bolan took a second deep breath. His brain was whirling. He heard all that Brognola said, but he was still weathering the shock. Walt, damn. He had been a fine soldier. Yeah, and he would be missed. The Executioner had been in Nam with the big redhead. They had worked many missions side by side in the days of Able. Then the guy took a field commission, was wounded and shipped stateside. The day Walt received his Army discharge, he joined the State Department. The man had become a popular and outstanding politician. Later he had secretly renewed his friendship with Mack Bolan during Bolan's incarnation as Colonel John Phoenix, to become one of the few men in Washington that Bolan could personally relate to. Bolan liked him for his directness, his energy, his ability to get things done. He was not a pencil pusher, he was a man of action. Right up to his death.

  Bolan jerked his attention back to the phone.

  Kurtzman was talking. "We'll telemeter anything else we can get on Lutfi to your Rome office. You'll have everything I dig up. It'll be there in the morning. This is a guy who likes to function on his own most of the time, Mack."

  "Send it all to London, instead," Bolan said. He gave them a quick recap of his firefight in Milan.

  "I saw a picture of a ship, the Contessa, one of those huge oil tankers. Does the name mean anything to anyone?"

  Brognola responded. "I remember something about her. Biggest tanker in the world. Cost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to build. Do you think she ties into the Lutfi mission?"

  "Probably not. Nothing points that way. The picture was in a British newspaper in Lutfi's Milan headquarters. It was just one shot among a lot of them. The others had people and firms circled in red ink. The circles could mark a group of potential targets for Lutfi. On this one we cover all the angles." He paused. "Why don't you dig up anything you can find about the ship and send it along to London."

  "You got it, Colonel," Kurtzman said.

  "The problem is going to be finding Lutfi," Bolan said. "I've got two addresses to check out, but I don't have much hope. If I knew his next target, his next operation, we'd have something firm. It all depends on the situation and terrain, as my old sergeant used to say in Germany."

  Bolan paused briefly. "Jack and I'll be taking off in the Cat for London tonight. Anything else for me?"

  "All clear here with me," Brognola said.

  "I'm getting to work," Kurtzman said, signing off.

  "Boss Lady?"

  "Yes, Mack," April Rose said in her business-efficient voice. "Everything is geared up to assist. You'll have all the input we can find by morning. I'm sure you can obtain any tools of the trade you'll need."

  "True."

  The line was silent for a few seconds.

  "The others are off the line," she said. Another pause. "I still don't like goodbyes, Mack."

  "This isn't a goodbye, Lady. I'll be back." But a sudden uneasiness had crept into his inflection, a huskiness into his voice.

  "You better be, Mack. We had that picnic all planned, the sandwiches made."

  The line was silent.

  "We'll have that picnic. We'll have sand and ants and maybe a rain shower, don't worry." There was a pause. "I have to go now."

  "Yes. I know that. Go, Striker. Please be careful."

  "Roger, Lady. Careful."

  The Executioner heard the connection break and put the big handpiece back on the cradle.

  A half hour later Mack Bolan and Jack Grimaldi took off from Rome in a U.S. Air Force F-14 Tomcat. Somewhere high over Paris the bird gulped down a large drink of jet fuel from a USAF flying tanker. The nozzle came away, Bolan waved at the 20,000 foot- high filling-station crew and the Tomcat streaked on toward London, cruising at just over 600 miles per hour.

  Before daylight, Grimaldi dropped the jet into a top-security military air base near London. Within an hour both men were bedded down in bunks. As they slept, the Tomcat was serviced, inspected, fueled and put in top shape ready for another trip at a moment's notice.

  COLONEL JOHN PHOENIX left the BOQ just after ten that morning wearing English-cut slacks, a brown jacket and a tie. The jacket was a loose fit, hiding the Executioner's professional tools.

  He caught a cab into the city. En route he changed taxis twice, making sure no one followed him, and then took a third to the address provided by the wounded terrorist in Milan.

  The small retail shop looked particularly unproductive. The name over the windowed door read: Resonor's, Gentlemen's Apparel.

  The moment Bolan entered the shop he felt unseen eyes evaluating him, the same way he had felt on that sour recon patrol in Nam a few seconds before the Charlies opened up on his squad.

  The nightfighter turned and received sudden smiles from a pair of frumpy, sixtyish shop owners. The men were short, ruddy complexioned, gray haired and smoked identical briar pipes. One man stood, grumbled and came forward with a sprightly walk. He studied Bolan a moment and nodded.

  "Aye, guv'nor. What might I help you with this morning?"

  "Looking, just looking," Bolan announced. The shop owner frowned.

  "Well, actually I'm interested in a good tweed jacket, if it isn't too expensive."

  "Young man, in good clothing quality never comes cheap. This way, please. I have some interesting jackets to show you."

  Bolan followed the man toward the rear of the shop and, for the next five minutes, pretended to be interested in tweed jackets. At the same time, he reconned the place. Nothing suspicious, no weapons showing, no hardcases lurking.

  The small Englishman showed the Executioner a tweed suit, which he said was the finest in all of London. The price was three hundred pounds. Bolan shook his head.

  "Too much for me," Bolan said. Suddenly, without any obvious cause, he again felt danger with his sixth sense. There were spying eyes trained on the back of his neck.

  The Executioner turned quickly, staring behind him.

  Nothing.

  A door closed softly, nearby.

  "I'll browse around for a while," Bolan said, moving slowly toward the sound of the door. He found only more displays of suits and counters of accessories. Then the aisle dead-ended at a wooden panel. The shopkeeper trailed him, talking constantly.

  "Perhaps something in a Donegal with a hint of green in the pattern? Tweeds are going to be the style this coming season."

  There was something different about the wall ahead of the nightfighter. It was plain, but it was unusual, like a stage setting. Then he saw the hint of a door outlined in the wood-grained vertical pattern. A concealed door.

  Bolan took three quick steps and hurled his bulk at the wall, jumping at the last second and slamming both boots against the wood three feet off the floor. A two foot wide vertical section of the wall propped inward, ripping screws from wood, shredding a concealed doorjamb, splintering the veneer.

  Behind Bolan the small man screeched in protest. The Executioner's force carried him into the hidden adjoining room. The room was small, with a table, typewriter, stacks of newspapers, books and a World War II-type hand grenade lying on the papers. Just beyond, a flight of steps led upward.

  Bolan grabbed the grenade, made sure the safety pin was in place and dashed up the steps three at a time. His 93-R Beretta was too big to carry comfortably under the sport jacket, but on the lanyard there was room enough. He pulled the Beretta from inside his coat as he charged up the steps. At the top he found a room full of workbenches. Spread on one bench was a layout of quarter-pound rectangles of C-4 plastique explosive, sophisticated radio timer-detonators, cardboard boxes, packing, wires, small antenna and, strangely enough, an assortment of fancy birthday-gift wrappings. It was
a bomb factory.

  A door opposite him burst open and a man charged through with a pistol belching angry lead. The Beretta sneezed twice, and the charging man's nose disintegrated as the burrowing 9mm slugs cut upward into his brain, pulping half a dozen vital activity centers, dumping the lifeless hulk against the wall where it slid slowly to the floor.

  Behind the first man a second materialized, holding a submachine gun. The guy's trigger finger was tightening when Bolan's 93-R wheezed. The shots slapped through the terrorist's neck. Blood vomited onto the wood floor in a growing pool where he fell. The dark stain grew until the man's heart stopped pumping.

  Movement sounded in the corridor out the far door. The Executioner ran to the door, squatted and peered around the jamb: he saw a hallway with two doors.

  He fisted his .44 AutoMag and took a cautious step into the hall. Before he could draw a second breath, a blur of an army-fatigue-clad figure surged from a door fifteen feet ahead of him with a chatter gun firing on full automatic. Melting lead burned past Bolan's shoulder. Even with his speed it took a fraction of a beat to lift Big Thunder and fire twin demons of death at the figure.

  Bolan heard the double roar of the minicannon in the narrow hallway and saw both rounds hit home.

  The Executioner's head ached from the sound of the booming firefight in the confined space. Then suddenly it was graveyard quiet. Rapidly he checked both rooms; they were empty. He bent over the figure wearing fatigues. As Bolan rolled the corpse over, long blond hair tumbled from a green army cap. No Italian woman terrorist, this one, not with her soft blue eyes and English bone-china complexion.

  She could not have been more than seventeen.

  Bolan cursed softly as he ran to the end of the hallway. A terrorist was a terrorist, no matter what sex, age or national origin. They all had the same right to believe what they wanted to, but when they met the Executioner they also had the right to die.

  The hallway was empty. He turned into the closest room, which he had already checked. It was a storage area, a supply room for bombs, detonators, fuses, tape, timers, packaging of all kinds, electronic parts and more C-4.

  The next room was rigged as a barracks with bunks four high, a jumble of clothing and an alarm clock. He ran back to the bomb-assembly room and looked at the markings on the plastique: British made, but with Italian words. Bolan pushed two of the cubes of death into his pocket and opened a cupboard. Two pages of the London Times lay there, both marked in red. One had a circled picture of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. The second had red marker-pen lines around a story about a rich industrialist and his hideaway mansion in the Lake District, and a picture of Prince Charles double circled.

  On the lower half of the page from the Times was a picture of a ship, the Contessa. Bolan stopped. It was the same tanker he had seen in the paper in Milan. In both cases the ship was not circled. Why did it stop him? Coincidence? The Executioner had long since learned there is no such thing as coincidence. A soldier had to believe that and act on it if he wanted to stay alive for long. He folded the sheet of newspaper and put it in his pocket.

  If Lutfi was lining up a new target, planning a new operation, the chances were that the circled newspaper items held the key.

  He continued his quick search of the cupboard and found a copy of the Paris Daily Ship Sailing Log. It reported daily on every major French port, printing the name of ships that had docked and had cleared. Ships again.

  On the bottom shelf he found a recognizable item: a magnetic Limpet mine to attach to a ship. This one was rigged with a directional charge of C-4 plastique—a hull-splitting weapon. Ships once again.

  A door slammed somewhere below and Bolan knew it was over. Downstairs in the store, he saw that the English pair had gone and that the outside door stood open as if the shop had been abandoned in haste.

  The Executioner, too, left the store. He was a block away before he heard the sirens of the approaching police cars.

  LATER, AT THE COMPANY'S LONDON OFFICE, The Executioner checked in and listened to a briefing from a CIA agent he had never met before. The man's name was Perkins, and he seemed to be in charge of more than just the London operation. He was tall, thin, sharp, quick, friendly and helpful.

  "The Yard tells us the bomb factory you found is a new one," Perkins said. "There is a definite tie-in with the Italian Red Brigades. The Yard thanks you for your assistance. However, they were a bit upset about finding three dead bodies. Two of them were English nationals, and one they think was an Arab. The corpses will be handled without any unfavorable publicity. Auto accidents, most likely." Perkins paused, offered Bolan an English filter tip, and they both lit up.

  "The newspaper you brought was very interesting. We're talking with MI-6 about it now. They're shaken by this development. There is, of course, constant security surrounding Prince Charles. Any blatant preparations, any tracking of the Royal Family is a crisis situation for these people."

  A clerk knocked, came in and gave Perkins a thick envelope. The agent checked the name on the front and handed it to Bolan.

  "Your signals have arrived."

  The Executioner opened the envelope and spread out the material on the edge of the CIA man's desk.

  There were four pictures of Lutfi, all candids, taken with long lenses. Bolan knew the terrorist was six foot two, but in the pictures he looked shorter. He wore a hat and sport clothes. His face was long and narrow, with a sharp nose, wide-set eyes and the shadow of a heavy beard. He had a slight build. None of the international KGB killers he had eliminated so far fit that description. Lutfi was thought to be Italian, Turkish, or even Polish, not Arabic as his name suggested.

  Bolan put aside the typed material on Lutfi and found the six sheets of data on the supertanker. He flipped a picture of the ship to the agent.

  "Yes, the Contessa ," Perkins said. "I've heard of her."

  Bolan nodded, suddenly restless in the office. He gathered the material and stuffed it back in the envelope. He would digest it later.

  "Normally I work alone," Bolan told Perkins.

  "But on this one I may need support." Bolan looked at the picture of the supertanker and pushed it in the envelope. "My job now is tracking Lutfi. I want anything you hear about him. If he sneezes, drops his socks or burps, you tell me about it." He nodded to Perkins and left the office.

  The Executioner felt strange as he stepped into the London street. He was having a weird series of hunches that did not seem to make sense.

  No platoon leader in his right mind would go into combat with the Intel Bolan now had on this mission.

  His only remaining lead was an address in Paris, given to him by a wounded terrorist half out of his mind with pain. But Bolan knew he had to check it out.

  The Tomcat would be ready; Grimaldi was always ready. Something ticked away in the back of Bolan's brain, but it would not come to the surface. Nothing seemed to fit. He had to work it out. Lutfi was there, but the victim was in shadows.

  He had to beat back the mists and the darkness. It would not be easy, but he had to do it.

  3

  The northern Italian sky, with a million white-hot holes burned into it, twinkled in the far reaches of hyperspace and relative time. Two Italian jet interceptors whistled off a runway to the east. Lutfi nodded as he lay on the ground, twenty yards from a four-foot-high, eight-foot-wide, double-apron combat fence that the Italians had erected around the far end of their airfield. He smiled at how easy it would be. His spies had told him there was no electronic warning system around the airfield.

  Lutfi turned his head, watching the six men crawl up to his heels and wait. He had trained them in the mountains for three days for this strike. All would perform brilliantly, since Lutfi himself had handpicked the men from twenty volunteers. All would gladly die before failing this mission.

  Lutfi was not a leader who sent in men where he would not go himself. The success of this strike depended on penetration and rapid neutralization. Lutfi wou
ld lead the attack.

  He waved the squad forward. The men stayed low, moving on elbows and toes. At the fence, Lutfi snipped a path through the lowest strands with a pair of wire cutters. He squirmed on his back under the barbed wire, cutting his way, pushing the wire upward and to the side to form a small tunnel. Moments later he was inside the Italian air force field. He waited for his men to go under the fence. Then they stood, formed what Americans called a "column of ducks," and jogged at a seven-minute per-mile pace through the darkness.

  After covering a mile toward the security lights to the south, the men moved into a sandy ditch, lay down and waited.

  Lutfi checked his digital watch. Eleven minutes to spare—he had allowed ten minutes for holdups, but they had found no problems so far.

  When his watch reached four minutes after midnight, Lutfi formed his unit and marched openly toward a series of low mounds of dirt and sand three hundred yards to the right. All his men wore regular Italian military-fatigue uniforms. Lutfi wore the rank of captain. He swung the six men to a halt in front of a four-foot-square sentry box outside the first dirt-covered concrete bunker.

  Lutfi moved quickly to the guard post and returned a salute.

  "Captain Lutfi to relieve you of that special shipment of plastic explosives," he said.

  The guard frowned. "Sir. I have no written authorization for any material transfer." The soldier choked his objection when he saw Lutfi lift a silenced pistol. The terrorist fired twice and only a soft cough came from the silencer. Both 9mm parabellum rounds from the Mauser Parabellum Swiss pistol tore through the guard's temple, ripping off half his skull, dumping him to the floor of the guard shack.

  Two more Italian guards walked around the side of the bunker. They came from where Lutfi knew they would. He cut them down with four shots from the chugging Mauser. That was the last of the guard force.

  The six raiders hurried into action with practiced precision. Two men blasted the locks on the bunker door with a minimum charge of plastique. A third punched up the telephone in the guard shack and reported that nothing unusual was going on. When the heavy steel munitions bunker door swung open, Lutfi ran inside and with his pocket flashlight, made sure the explosives were there on the pallet board. Then he hurried outside the ammo bunker, took a small red box from his pocket and pressed its black button twice.