Bolan’s thoughts turned to CLODO’s leader

He was the brains behind a number of attacks on computer manufacturers and related businesses during the past several months, and much more than computers had been destroyed.

Bombs, stray bullets and other collateral damage were always the result of warfare. But with terrorists, it became the objective rather than an unfortunate by-product. Since its reorganization, CLODO’s bombings, machine-gunning and other terrorist strikes had claimed hundreds of lives.

The Executioner’s jaw tightened as the bloody sight before him generated anger. He wasn’t responsible for the death and destruction at this CLODO safehouse.

Pierre Rouillan was responsible for the deaths of his men.

Killing Game

Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity…

—Aldous Huxley,

1894–1963

The stupidity, motivation and flawed thinking of certain individuals never cease to amaze me. We must stand on guard and protect the innocent from their deranged plans of carnage. Whatever it takes.

—Mack Bolan

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

Paris, France

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, glanced up at the sliver of moon in the otherwise darkened sky. Then, dropping his line of vision, he took another quick survey of the one-story suburban house in front of him and his black-clad companion. This house looked little different than the other homes lining both sides of the street in this upper middle-class Parisian residential neighborhood, but it was different.

This dwelling housed terrorists.

The Executioner pointed Russian Intelligence agent Marynka Platinov toward the side of the house, then tapped his wristwatch with the same hand. “Thirty seconds,” he whispered.

The beautiful blond-haired Russian agent glanced at her own watch, nodded, then took off in a jog around the corner.

Bolan couldn’t help but let his eyes fall to her hips as the well-developed muscles in her buttocks tightened. Platinov—often shortened simply to “Plat” when Bolan spoke to her—wore the same stretchy black battle coveralls, known as “blacksuits,” as him.

She and the Executioner had worked together several times in the past—first when she’d been a new KGB officer and later, when she’d emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union to rise in the ranks of the newly formed Russian Intelligence Bureau—and Bolan was one of only a handful of people who knew her whole story. He and the beautiful Russian woman had developed a solid working relationship.

The Executioner glanced at the weapons and other equipment that hung from Platinov’s blacksuit. A double shoulder rig with a matching pair of Colt Gold Cup .45s was stretched across her back, and a 1911 Government Model .45 rode on a curvaceous hip.

The Executioner glanced at his watch as his partner turned the corner. Twenty seconds remained. He pulled back the bolt of the Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun hanging from his shoulder on a sling, chambered the first round and flipped the selector switch from the safety position to 3-round-burst mode. As he methodically readied the weapon, his thoughts turned on Platinov and the only real area of disagreement that always stood between them.

The Russian woman was as loyal to her country as Bolan was to the U.S. And on rare occasions—even when their end objective was the same—those two loyalties conflicted. When that happened, problems arose. The Executioner didn’t foresee any such problems on the horizon for this op, however. The leader of CLODO—Computer Liquidation and Hijack Committee—and the rest of his newly vivified terrorist organization that they sought, were an equal threat to both countries. Yet, Bolan reminded himself, he would have to keep one eye on the enemy and the other on Platinov.

Bolan started up the concrete steps to the front porch of the CLODO safe house, taking them two at a time. At precisely the thirty-second mark, he slammed his right boot into the door just to one side of the dead-bolt lock. Wood cracked then splintered as the framework around the door exploded like a hand grenade filled with wooden shrapnel. A fraction of a second later, he heard a similar noise at the rear of the house and knew Platinov had entered the back entrance.

The front door swung open, crashing into the wall and rebounding back toward the Executioner as he raised the submachine gun to waist level. He pushed the door back again with his left hand. As the noise died down, the house went eerily silent for a second.

During that lull, the Executioner had time to quickly assess the interior of the house. He found himself standing on a ragged carpet in the living room. A soccer game was playing on a large-screen HDTV in the far corner, and set into the wall next to it was a fireplace.

Men, close to a dozen and many dressed similarly, sat around the living room on couches and in reclining chairs, watching the game, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns and pistols scattered throughout the area.

Platinov stood between the fireplace and a kitchen table in the far corner opposite the HDTV, her own MP-5 hanging from the sling over the shoulder of her blacksuit. Just to her side, Bolan could see a small breakfast table and chairs. The rest of the kitchen, he knew, had to be hidden behind the wall to his left.

The Executioner noted a dining-room table also to his left, with more men clustered around it, playing cards. Poker chips were stacked in front of each man. The terrorists cursed and dived for their weapons.

The Executioner triggered a 3-round burst of hollowpoint rounds at the CLODO gunner directly in front of him. The man wore a blue beret, a tan short-sleeved shirt and brown trousers.

Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm, had briefed Bolan and Platinov via satellite phone during their flight from Washington, D.C., to France. Along with the location of this only known CLODO safe house, the Executioner and Platinov had learned that the beret, shirt and pants were a sort of “unofficial” CLODO uniform. There was nothing particularly militant-looking about the garb and, indeed, many men on the streets of Paris who had nothing to do with this anticomputer terrorist organization wore basically the same clothing. But these specific items of clothing—always in the same colors and combination—were the first step in helping the terrorists identify one another. The next step was a series of coded, and frequently changed, nonsensical questions and answers to make sure that they had not just bumped into some non-CLODO-aligned Parisian on his way to a bocce game in the park.

Members of the CLODO organization had come to be known as CLODO men by all who opposed them. That included America, Russia and most other civilized countries of the world. CLODO had been active during the late 1980s, then had seemed to fizzle out, until a few weeks earlier. Then, all hell had suddenly broken loose with car-bombings, random machine-gunnings at shopping malls and other public places, and drive-by shootings at computer manufacturing plants, distributors, wholesalers and retail stores.

Another—and perhaps the most important—bit of intel that Bolan and Platinov had obtained was the name of the man who had revived CLODO—Pierre Rouillan. Now in his thirties, Rouillan would have been a child during the eighties, and the Executioner couldn’t help wondering what had turned the young man toward the all-but-dead organization and driven him to reanimate it.

Bolan dived to the floor as return fire sailed over his shoulder, coming to rest on his side directly against the back of a long, leather sofa.

Using the sofa for concealment, the Executioner raised the MP-5 with one hand, thumbed the selector from 3-round burst to full-auto and stitched the remaining rounds back and forth into the couch. Screams and moans met his ears from the other side of the sofa, and he saw a bloody mist rise up into the air.

The 9 mm RBCD total fragmentation rounds didn’t just penetrate their human targets, they shredded them.

Bolan hesitated only long enough to drop the empty 9 mm magazine from his weapon and ram home a fresh one. On the other side of the couch, he could hear more 9 mm fire that he knew had to be coming from Platinov’s subgun.

Though he was hidden from view of the men in the living room, the sofa was concealment rather than cover, as the Executioner had proved himself only moments earlier. In another second or so, the terrorists still standing on the other side of the sofa would realize where he was and begin firing into the couch. The four men who had sat there would obviously be dead, so the chance that they might accidentally hit one of their own would not hinder them in the least.

But an even more imminent problem faced Bolan. While he was still hidden from the men in the living room, he was on full display to the card players.

The Executioner rolled away from the sofa, flipping the H&K’s selector into 3-round burst mode, and rose to one knee. He opened fire, the first two 9 mm rounds striking a terrorist in the chest an inch apart. Bolan had allowed the subgun to rise slightly with the recoil of the second round, and the third hit the same man just above the nose in his forehead.

From the corner of his eye, the big American could see that Platinov had dropped to one knee as well. The ancient, antique-looking rocking chair behind which she knelt offered neither concealment nor cover, but it did distort her body enough to at least slightly confuse the gunner’s aims. The Russian agent had opened fire a split second after Bolan, and her first target had been a man who had taken cover from behind a chair against the wall, a SiG-Sauer pistol in his hand. Both she and the Executioner were using RBCD ammo, and a red mist hung in the air, floating slowly toward the floor in front of the dead body from which it had come.

As the Executioner opened fire again, he continued to eye Platinov from his peripheral vision. Two more of the card players fell as Bolan watched his Russian ally knee-walk swiftly up behind a man with his back to her. The terrorist was leaning forward to reach for a shotgun between his feet. But before his fingers could find the cold metal or wooden stock, Platinov had leaned forward and pressed the barrel of her weapon into the back of the man’s head at the base of his neck.

Bringing her left forearm up to cover her eyes, Platinov pulled the trigger. The contact shots caused almost as much blood and other gore to blow out the entrance holes as that which exited the terrorist’s forehead.

The terrorist fell forward onto the floor on his face. Or at least what was left of it.

Platinov, the Executioner knew, had covered her eyes to keep the residual blood out. She could hardly afford to “go blind” with blood obscuring her vision in the middle of a gunfight. It was a good strategy. Except for one thing.

By covering her eyes with her forearm, Platinov had temporarily blinded herself.

One of the gunners who’d been sitting on a couch against the side wall noticed her vulnerability and tried to take advantage of it. He raised what looked like an old Luger toggle-bolt pistol and stepped into a classic Weaver shooting stance. As she squinted slightly, the muscles in his hands and arms tightened as he pushed the pistol forward with his right hand and pulled it back toward him with his left. At the same time, he did his best to drop the Luger’s front sight on Platinov. The man, Bolan thought, looked as if he’d just received his certificate for completing one of the many shooting schools that had popped up around the world. Attendees shot hundreds of rounds as they went through these courses, always being trained to make sure the front sight was “flashed” on their target before squeezing the trigger.

They emerged from such schools as experts.

Experts, however, at putting holes in paper silhouette targets or making steel plates ding. Not experts at gun-fighting by any means.

Again, from the corner of his eye, the Executioner saw the man began to gently squeeze the trigger.

The soldier turned his weapon toward the man, pointed it and shot him.

Saving Platinov from the unseen attack had meant the Executioner had to momentarily ignore the return fire from the card players. As bullets and buckshot sailed past him, Bolan opened fire again, lacing one of the gamblers standing sideways from belt to armpit with three rounds into his ribs.

The gunner was already dead and on the ground by the time Platinov had fired the contact shots into the back of the other terrorist’s head. Now, she dropped her arm.

She would never know just how close to death she had come from the man who had drawn the Luger. Or that it had been Bolan who had saved her life.

Bolan decided not to press his luck any further with the surviving card players. He had already taken out the man who had sat with his side toward the Executioner, and now he dived to the side as return fire continued.

The Executioner rolled once, then came up on one knee again. Even this slight movement forced the hardmen to redirect their aim.

Bolan cut loose with another 3-round volley into the heart of a gunner wearing a beret. The man had been doing his best to gain target acquisition on the Executioner’s new position. That task was abandoned as deep, thick, red blood spurted from his chest, accompanied by the now-familiar mist that had become the RBCD rounds’ personal signature. At least one of the totally fragmenting rounds had also pierced a lung, and the man dropped his Uzi, twisted in the air with a scream and fell on top of his own weapon, his chest sucking up and down in dying breaths.

Bolan sought another target, zeroing in on a man wielding a Beretta 92. The round missed him by millimeters, coming so close to the Executioner’s ear that he could feel its heat.

But this was no game of horseshoes. “Close” didn’t count.

Bolan pumped another trio of rounds into the gunman, practically ripping his chest away from the rest of his body. He fell backward onto the table, his legs dangling down to spasm as if in some bizarre, predeath, dance ritual.

The gunner who had sat next to him had grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from somewhere beneath the table, and now he brought the shortened pump-action weapon around and racked the slide, chambering a shell. But he had no time to pull the trigger.

Bolan angled the H&K his way and cut loose with another 3-round burst, aiming at the man’s chest. But at the last second, the gunner crouched instinctively and all three 9 mm rounds sank into the top of his head, like electric drills boring down through his skull and into his brain.

So it didn’t make too much difference. The man was still as dead as disco before he hit the floor.

The card players were all dead now, and Bolan turned toward the living room, assisting Platinov as they rid the world of the final two CLODO terrorists. As the gunfire died down, Bolan’s thoughts turned again to Pierre Rouillan. The file he and Platinov had studied during their flight had contained several pictures of the man who had been responsible for CLODO’s revival. He was a little over six feet tall, dressed conservatively and appeared to have a strong attraction to beautiful women, wine and the finer things in life. He was also the brains behind a number of attacks on computer manufacturers and related businesses during the past several months, and much more than computers had been destroyed.

Bombs, stray bullets and other collateral damage were always the result of warfare. But with terrorists, it became the objective rather than an unfortunate by-product. Since its reorganization, CLODO’s bombings, machine-gunnings and other terrorist strikes had claimed hundreds of lives.

The Executioner’s jaw tightened as the bloody sight before him brought on anger rather than the frustration or fear or nausea that it might have inspired in a more common man. It was not he, or Marynka Platinov, who was responsible for the death and destruction at this CLODO safe house.

It was Pierre Rouillan who had brought about the deaths of his own men.

PIERRE ROUILLAN’S EYELIDS lifted the second he heard the doors crash open. As gunfire thundered in the other rooms, he swung his legs off the bed, grabbed his shirt and leaped to his feet. Silently, he thanked a God he didn’t believe in that he had not taken off his pants. Snatching the 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 compact pistol off the nightstand, he stuck it in his belt and hurried toward the window.

A moment later, he was in the backyard, half-expecting to suddenly be tackled and thrown to the ground by men dressed in SWAT-type gear.

He frowned when he found the backyard deserted.

The firing behind him was in full swing now. Rouillan slowly drew the pistol from his belt and held it close to his leg as he walked toward the open back door, curiosity getting the better of him. From several yards away, he could see that the back door had been kicked open. Moving to a window next to the door, he gazed at the flash-fire that accompanied each round. Rouillan would make his escape in a moment, but first, he had to know who had learned about the safe house and was now attacking it.

The back door opened directly toward the kitchen table, which meant the living room stood out of his line of vision. Dropping to both knees, Rouillan peered through the opening and angled to see around the corner, his nose almost dragging across the hard concrete of the single step that led to the entrance. As his eyes focused on the back of a blond-haired woman wearing black combat gear, he saw her lean forward and shoot.

He looked past her. Standing on the tiles by the front door was a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in an identical blacksuit. And, just like the woman, he was firing an H&K MP-5 submachine gun. He also carried two pistols—one was in a shoulder holster beneath his left arm and looked like it was long enough to have a sound suppressor threaded onto the barrel. The other gun—in a holster on his right hip—was huge. Rouillan wasn’t close enough to identify it.

The terrorist leader started to pull his Kel-Tec around the corner, then paused. Shooting the woman in the back would be easy. And the big man at the front of the house hadn’t noticed him yet, either. Rouillan might even be able to pump a couple of rounds into him as well.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to risk having the shot miss. While Rouillan knew he was a good shot, he wasn’t ready to gamble his life on the Kel-Tec. The hollowpoint rounds did not always open up after they’d left the short barrel, and the muzzle-flash in the doorway might well catch the attention of the big man at the front of the house.

And even though his face was deadpan as he fired his MP-5, there was something about the big, black figure that screamed at Rouillan to be careful.

This man was deadly.

No, the Frenchman thought, it was a chance better not taken. Better he make his escape while he could. After all, he had worked hard reestablishing CLODO. And without his leadership, the still-fragile organization was likely to crumble and then disintegrate altogether.

Another quick thought suddenly entered his mind, but Pierre Rouillan immediately pushed it out of his head. That thought was that he might not be all that concerned with CLODO, and that he might just be a simple old-fashioned coward, worried more for his own safety than the good of the organization.

That uncomfortable idea was pushed out of his head as quickly as it had come.

Rising to his feet, the CLODO leader replaced the pistol in his belt and took off at a jog across the grass toward the chain-link fence at the rear of the backyard. He had plenty of other men, and plenty of other safe houses, where he could hide out until it was time for the big strike.

He doubted that he would ever even see the big man and blonde woman again.

Rouillan smiled as he grabbed the top of the fence and swung his legs up and over the barrier. He jogged across the backyard of his neighbor’s house. CLODO was still known primarily for the bombing of the Phillips Data Systems in Toulouse in 1980, but his new CLOCO master plan was coming up.

When it detonated, nothing would explode.

But the whole planet would shut down in a screeching, screaming halt.

EMPTY BRASS CASINGS crunched under Bolan’s boots as he made his way toward Platinov, who stood in the center of the living room. He kept the H&K up and ready. Too many “dead” men had magically come back to life during his career for him to let his guard down yet. And when he looked at the Russian agent, he saw that she had learned the same lesson over the years.

Marynka Platinov’s submachine gun was still gripped with both hands, her right index finger on the trigger.

“We’re not going to have much time,” Bolan said as he knelt next to a body in the middle of the floor. “Neighbors will have already called the cops.”

“I’ll check the back rooms,” Platinov suggested.

Bolan nodded as he began going through the pockets of the man on the floor, who wore a blue beret like some of the others. But, otherwise, he was dressed in faded blue jeans, high-topped hiking boots and formerly-white T-shirt, now soaked crimson with blood. His pockets contained everything from a little .22 hideout Beretta to a receipt from a local laundry. In the left front pocket, Bolan discovered a small Spyderco Clipit knife being used as a money clip. It contained at least a thousand euros. Although he had unlimited operational funds from the U.S., the Executioner saw no reason to waste taxpayers’ money for his war chest. It was always a bonus to use the money of America’s enemies to finance their own destruction.

By the time he had finished searching the man in the vest, Platinov had returned to the living room. “I didn’t find anyone else in the house,” she said. “But there was someone.”

Bolan frowned as he waited for more information.

“The bed in the back,” Platinov went on. “The sheets are still warm.”

The Executioner nodded.

“And the window into the backyard is open,” she added. “He, or she, must have heard us come in and booked out of here.” She paused. “I couldn’t have missed him by more than a couple of seconds.”

Bolan knew such coincidences sometimes happened. They were the fortunes of war. “Rouillan himself, maybe,” he speculated.

Platinov shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. No way to know.” She paused for a moment, then added, “And you won’t believe what I found in another bedroom.”

“What’s that?” Bolan asked.

“A computer.”

“Why is that so unbelievable?” he asked.

Platinov stared him in the eyes. “Cooper,” she said, using Bolan’s cover name, “That’s what this whole group is about, remember, they are against computers. Their famous quotation is ‘Computers are the favorite instrument of the powerful. They are used to classify, control and repress.’”

Bolan nodded. “I remember it,” he said. “But all that a computer in the back room of this house means is that CLODO has modernized since the 1980s. They’ve learned that if you want to defeat the enemy, you have to first know him.”

“Yes,” Platinov replied. “But I still find it ironic.”

The Executioner agreed. “Help me search the rest of these bodies,” he said. “And be quick. We’re going to have to take off the second we hear the first siren.”

Platinov dropped to her knees on the carpet and began to go through the pockets of one of the corpses.

Hurriedly, and never leaving his knees, Bolan moved from corpse to corpse, going through the pockets of slacks, jeans and work pants, as well as shirts, vests and coats of all types. He found mostly the typical items that might be found on any man: money, keys, cell phones, cigarettes and a variety of paperwork. He had just come across another small hideout weapon—this one an old Baby Browning .25—when they suddenly heard the sirens of approaching Parisian police cars.

The Executioner had dropped everything that he’d found in the dead men’s pockets on the carpet next to them, and now he produced a folded canvas bag from a zippered pocket on the thigh of his blacksuit.

Platinov saw what he was doing, read his intentions and began scooping up everything from papers to loose change and wristwatches from the carpet.

Twenty seconds later, the bag was filled and Bolan was zipping it shut again. He handed Platinov his H&K, then slung the canvas bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll go through this stuff as soon as we’re out of the area.”

The Russian woman nodded, then turned to follow Bolan out the back door she had kicked in less than five minutes earlier.

As the sirens neared, the two black-clad figures took off, sprinting across the grass, disappearing into the night.

THE EXECUTIONER and the Russian agent came out from between two houses and spotted the Nissan exactly where they’d left it. Bolan pulled a key ring from his pocket and pressed the vehicle’s unlock button twice with his thumb. Both the driver’s and passenger’s doors clicked, and the headlights flashed on and off as they approached.

Yanking open the driver’s door, the Executioner tossed the canvas bag into the back of the Nissan as he slid behind the wheel. Between the houses, on the street a block over, he could see the flashing lights of the Parisian gendarmes. Good. As he’d suspected they would do, the French police had only blocked in the streets immediately around the safe house. He and Platinov had gotten out of their enclosure by the skin of their teeth.

Bolan stuck the key in the ignition as Platinov strapped herself in with the seat belt. The Russian agent had both of their MP-5s held between her thighs with the barrels resting on the floorboards.

A second later, the Executioner threw the vehicle into Drive and they drove quietly out of the neighborhood.

When they had crossed a bridge spanning the Seine River and were nearing the world-famous Paris-Sorbonne University, Platinov finally broke the silence. “Where are we going now?” she asked.

“We need to find a room somewhere,” Bolan said from behind the wheel. “Someplace out of the way where we won’t be conspicuous. And where we’ll have the privacy to go over all of the stuff in the bag.”

The Russian agent nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “But I believe we are going to be a little conspicuous no matter where we go, dressed as we are.” Without waiting for an answer, she unbuckled her seat belt, brought one of her shapely legs over the console between the seats and then used her arms to pull herself on into the back of the car.

Bolan heard the click as Platinov unsnapped the ballistic nylon gun belt from around her waist. His eyes rose briefly to the rearview mirror when the click was followed by a long, zipping sound that meant the Russian woman’s blacksuit was coming off.

Platinov met the Executioner’s eyes in the mirror. “Go ahead and look,” she said teasingly. “There is nothing here you haven’t seen before.”

Bolan chuckled as the woman behind him slipped out of her battle suit. He caught a quick glimpse of red thong panties—apparently the only underclothing she had worn beneath her blacksuit—as his eyes returned to the road. He heard another zipper as he drove on and knew Platinov had to be rummaging through one of their equipment bags for a less conspicuous outfit to put on.

A few minutes later, she climbed back between the seats to the front. As her legs crossed over the console, the Executioner saw that she had retained the red thong beneath a pair of flesh-colored pantyhose and a beige skirt. Above the skirt, she wore a matching jacket with a nondescript white blouse beneath it.

“Your turn,” the Russian woman said, ignoring her seat belt this time.

Bolan had turned onto a side street, crossed a bridge and knew he was nearing the Notre Dame area. The sidewalks were crowded with men, women and children taking in the nighttime beauty of the Seine and bartering with the vendors at the dozens of used-book and souvenir stands along the way. Traffic had all but halted anyway, so Bolan stopped the Nissan in the middle of the street, threw the transmission into Park and turned to Platinov. Without speaking, he twisted in his bucket seat and climbed into the back of the Nissan.

Platinov swung her legs over behind the wheel.

Quickly, the Executioner removed his own gun belt and shoulder rig, then stripped off the blacksuit. From one of the black nylon equipment bags, he pulled a folded, light blue dress shirt, a navy blue sport coat and a pair of carefully pressed khaki trousers. From another bag, he produced a pair of soft-soled hiking shoes and a dark blue socks. After buttoning the shirt and tucking it into his pants, he lifted the nylon shoulder rig that bore his sound-suppressed 9 mm Beretta 93-R and slid into it, fastening the retainers at the bottom to his belt. A close-fitting plastic belt holster went onto his hip, and he removed the.44 Magnum Desert Eagle from the web belt he’d worn over the blacksuit and snapped it into place.

Extra magazines for the Beretta, and a TOPS SAW—Special Assault Weapon—knife, in a sheath—hung under his right arm, helping to balance out the weight of the Beretta and sound suppressor. Pouches on his belt carried spare .44 Magnum magazines. He covered all of the weapons with the sport coat, then slid back between the seats as Platinov had done a few moments earlier.

By the time the Executioner had taken the passenger’s seat, the Russian woman had guided the Nissan out of the Notre Dame district into a quieter part of town. People still walked up and down the sidewalks, but those sidewalks were lined with hostels, hotels and bed-and-breakfasts.

“Where do you want to stop?” the Russian agent asked.

“One’s as good as another as far as I’m concerned. Just find a place to park.”

Platinov let a tiny laugh escape her lips as she spotted an open space along the street and pulled up to the side of the car in front of it, preparing to parallel park.

“Did I miss something?” the Executioner asked.

“Only something in my mind,” Platinov said as she twisted the wheel and her neck, backing up into the open space before pulling forward again. “I was just thinking about the fact that everywhere else I go, and everyone else I go there with, takes orders from me. When I am with you, however, I seem to automatically follow your lead.”

When Bolan didn’t respond, Platinov added, “I wonder why that is?”

Bolan still remained silent.

“Perhaps it is because we have slept together,” Platinov went on as she twisted the key and killed the Nissan’s engine. “I do not sleep with every male I work with, you know,” she added somewhat defensively as she pulled the key out of the ignition.

“I never thought you did,” Bolan replied. “Now, let’s get checked in and see what leads we can find in that bag, okay?”

Platinov nodded. “Okay,” she said simply and exited the vehicle.

Bolan and Platinov entered the lobby of a hotel directly in front of their car. Letting the straps from their nondescript equipment bags slide onto the hardwood floor as they reached the front desk, Bolan stared at an open door behind the counter. When no one appeared, he tapped a bell on the countertop.

A surly faced, unshaven man wearing a coffee-stained white undershirt and dark trousers appeared in the doorway, then waddled to the counter. The shirt stretched across his immense belly as tight as one of the Executioner’s own blacksuits, and the ribbed stitching threatened to burst apart with every bounce brought on by the man’s steps. The stub of a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, sending wisps of smoke upward into the air. Without bothering to greet them, the man in the filthy undershirt reached beneath the counter, pulled out a registry card and slid it across the slick top.

Bolan registered them as Mr. and Mrs. Josh Murphy, of Enid, Oklahoma.

The unshaven man dropped a key attached to a large wooden stick on the countertop and said simply, “Passports.”

Bolan reached into one of the bags and pulled out a pair of the blue booklets. They had been made up for both him and Platinov by experts at Stony Man Farm, the top-secret counterterrorist installation with whom the Executioner sometimes worked.

The man in the dirty clothing glanced at the pictures inside the passports. As the Executioner and Marynka Platinov moved toward the elevator, Bolan noticed him leering at the Russian woman’s buttocks as she walked.

Platinov appeared to notice it, too. A slightly disgusted frown spread across her face.

A few minutes later, Bolan unlocked a door beneath the number 307. Holding it open for Platinov, he looked in to see the sparsely furnished room. A threadbare brown plaid bedspread was stretched tightly across the twin bed, and a chipped wooden table and two chairs set against a wall. Other than that, the room was empty.

“You always take me to the nicest places, Cooper,” Platinov said, dropping her bags on the bed.

“Thanks, Plat,” he said simply. He dropped his own luggage on the ragged rug on the floor. But immediately, he picked up the canvas bag that contained what they had collected from the corpses at the safe house. Setting it on the table, he took a seat in one of the splintery wooden chairs.

Platinov sat down across from him.

Bolan unzipped the bag, then turned it over, dumping the contents onto the tabletop. Out came a wide variety of objects, from key rings and more hideout guns and knives, to folded papers, receipts, chewing gum wrappers, billfolds, money clips and broken cigarettes. One man had been a cigar smoker, and a leather cigar case carried three medium-sized cigars with Cuban wrappers.

Bolan examined the cigars, careful not to touch the label, which might retain a fingerprint. Rising to his feet, he dropped the cigar and moved to the bed. From one of the black, zippered cases he produced a small fingerprint kit and a package of blank index cards. He returned to his chair.

“Separate everything that might hold a print,” he told Platinov. “And get the laptop up and ready.”

The Russian woman rose to her feet as Bolan unscrewed the lid off of a small bottle of black fingerprint powder. Setting it down carefully, he did the same with a bottle of white powder.

The dark powder would be used on light-colored objects such as the keys. The white was for the cigars, the smooth leather cigar case and other darker items.

Fifteen minutes later, the tabletop was covered with both white and black powder. But the Executioner had lifted seven full prints and fourteen partials from the items that had been in the terrorists’ pockets. Two of the best had come from the cigar case itself.

“Is the computer up and running?” Bolan asked as he pressed the clear plastic tape of the last print onto its index card.

“Ready,” Platinov replied. She took the stack of index cards he pushed across the table to her and began to scan them via the mini-scanner plugged into one of the laptop’s USB ports.

Pulling his satellite phone from the front breast pocket of his blazer, the Executioner tapped in the number for Stony Man Farm. The call took several seconds to connect, bouncing off numerous satellites and running through various dead-end numbers to throw off anyone who might be trying to tap in to the call.

It was a precaution that everyone associated with Stony Man Farm always took.

Thirty seconds later, though, the Executioner heard Barbara Price’s voice on the other end of the call. “Yes, Striker?” she said.

“Tell Bear I’m getting ready to send him seven full fingerprints and fourteen partials,” Bolan answered. “I want him to run them through AFIS. But he also needs to hack in to the similar systems in Europe. Especially France.”

“Affirmative, Striker,” Stony Man Farm’s honey-blond mission controller replied. “Send them on.”

Bolan shut the phone and dropped it back into his coat pocket, then reached across the table and took the laptop from Platinov. Then, one by one, he called up the files and e-mailed them to Stony Man Farm.

Five minutes later, the laptop beeped and a mechanized voice said, “You have mail.”

Bolan tapped the appropriate keys to open the e-mail from Aaron the “Bear” Kurtzman, Stony Man Farm’s computer wizard.

When he had read the message, the soldier said, “We’ve got a hit. It leads to another safe house address.” He grabbed a large canvas-and-leather portfolio, which looked little different than a shoulder-carried bag any tourist or French businessman might have. Quickly, he unzipped it and pulled out a long, triangular-shaped canvas case with a zipper that ran three-fourths of the way around.

“What is that?” Platinov asked as he dropped the case into his shoulder bag and turned back to her.

“I could tell you—” he said as they started toward the door again.

“But then you’d have to kill me,” Platinov finished the tired, overused cliché as she rolled her eyes.

The Executioner chuckled as he led the way down the hall to the elevators, then pressed the down button.

A minute later, he and Platinov were striding out of the lobby of the hotel and back to the Nissan.

CHAPTER TWO

Bolan kept the Nissan just under the speed limit as he and Platinov made their way toward the next safe house. He had just checked in with Stony Man and learned that what had begun as mere rumors that CLODO was working up toward some kind of large-scale terrorist attack had now been confirmed by two independent CIA informants. And while Bolan wasn’t, and never had been, employed by the CIA—or any other government agency for that matter—he did retain an “arm’s length” relationship with Stony Man Farm. And Aaron Kurtzman, the wheelchair-bound computer genius at the Farm, regularly hacked through all of the Central Intelligence Agency’s security safeguards to obtain the intelligence information the “spooks’” field agents collected.

Word in the terrorism underground was that CLODO was building up to something big. Something, according to one of the CIA snitches, that would reputedly make the attacks on September 11, 2001 seem like a Fourth of July fireworks display by comparison.

Bolan knew it was true. He could feel it in his gut. Though not rigged for war, he had adequate weapons for the hit. In addition to his pistols, he had brought along his TOPS SAW knife, which was sheathed at the small of his back. Platinov had slid into the double horizontal shoulder rig that bore her twin Colt Gold Cup .45 pistols. Inside her skirt, she had the other 1911 Colt .45, and several spare mags that would fit any of the three pistols.

After crossing the Seine and traveling some distance, they arrived at a residential area of the city. While there were still lights on in a few of the house windows, the streets were devoid of pedestrians.

Bolan turned onto the Rue de Jeanette as Platinov pulled a small flashlight from her purse and unfolded a map of the city. Frowning in the semidarkness, she asked, “Can you see any of the house numbers?”

Bolan nodded. “There’s 1112,” he said. The Nissan continued to roll past the next house. “We’re at 1116.”

Platinov nodded back. “Good,” she said. “We’re going the right way. It should be about three blocks farther down on the left.” She cleared her throat. “Don’t you think it’s about time you told me the game plan?” She glanced over her shoulder at the Executioner’s bag, where the mysterious canvas case was hidden.

Bolan nodded. “Yeah.” He indicated the back of the vehicle with a twist of his neck, then said, “Grab the case I stuck in there.”

Platinov twisted between the seats and pulled the triangular object out of the Executioner’s bag.

“Unzip it,” Bolan said as he slowed, then stopped at a stop sign.

The sound the zipper made was loud inside the vehicle, which added to the rising tension as they inched their way down the dark and lonely Parisian street. When Platinov pulled the top cover back to reveal a giant revolver with a scope mounted on top of it, she burst out with, “Are we expecting these CLODOs to be elephants?”

The Executioner chuckled. “No. But by now, word of what we did at the other safe house will have reached this place. They’ll be on their guard, so the element of surprise is already lost to us. I think we should take out as many of them as possible from long range.”

“Well, this should do it,” Platinov said. “What is it? I’ve never seen one before.”

The former Olympic track and field star might never have seen that particular model of Smith & Wesson wheel gun, but she’d seen enough S&Ws to know how they operated. Pushing the latch on the side of the weapon with her thumb, she swung the cylinder away from the mammoth frame.

“It’s a 500 Smith and Wesson Magnum,” the Executioner said. “Meaning .50-caliber on Smith’s new X-frame.”

“It’s big, all right,” Platinov said. “But it holds only five rounds.”

Bolan drove on through the intersection as he said, “Imagine how big it would have to be to hold six.”

“Point taken,” Platinov agreed. “What you have here is a rifle disguised as a pistol.”

“Exactly,” Bolan agreed as he cruised slowly past the next block. “It was created for long-range silhouette shooting and big game hunting. But it’s easier to carry and conceal than a sniper rifle, and for what we’re about to do it should be more than accurate enough.”

Platinov agreed. “We don’t need the pinpoint accuracy of a true sniper rifle from across the street,” she said, nodding. “How long is this barrel?”

“Eight inches,” Bolan said. “But the last inch, you’ll notice, is actually a recoil compensator.”

“I expect it still has quite a kick,” the Russian agent said, turning the weapon around in her hand to stare at the compensator holes.

“Well, I think you’ll know you’ve fired something. There’s factory ammo on the market with bullets up to 500 grains. But since we’re after men instead of dinosaurs, I’ve got it loaded down with 325-grain hollowpoints.”

“I suspect I’ll still feel quite a jolt,” Platinov said.

Bolan laughed. “It doesn’t scare you, does it, Plat?”

Platinov looked up from the gun, a quick trace of anger on her face. “Of course not,” she said.

One of the many things the Executioner had learned about the beautiful Russian woman over the years was that she couldn’t stand her courage, or dedication to an assignment, being questioned. Another was that while her days of Olympic stardom might have ended, she had retained the same competitive mind-set that had won her the gold medals.

Bolan stared ahead but watched Platinov out of the corner of his eye. Almost as quickly as the grimace of anger had appeared, he saw it disappear, leaving her face deadpan. “No, it doesn’t scare me,” she said again in a voice that betrayed only a slight degree of irritation. “Have you shot it yet?”

The Executioner nodded.

Platinov’s smile was as plastic as a smile could get. “Then it should be quite easy for me,” she said with phony pleasantry.

Bolan let the Nissan roll on as he suppressed a smile. One of the things he liked most about working with Platinov was her competitive nature. He didn’t know whether she’d been born with it or had it taught to her as she grew up in one of the Soviet Union’s “athletic schools,” but she definitely had it now. It made no difference whether she was sprinting or running hurdles in the Olympics, or helping him take down a terrorist cell during a firefight, Marynka Platinov was going to win.

Platinov broke the icy silence by saying, “Okay, that childish little outburst of ego was my fault and I apologize for it. Now—” she paused to draw in a deep breath “—does all this imply that I’m the one who’s going to be shooting this monstrosity?”

“That’s right, Plat,” Bolan said. “I’m going to park somewhere down the block, then give you time to find a decent place to snipe from. I’ll make my way up next to the house before you start shooting, then hit them up close and personal.”

Platinov nodded. “Makes sense. Is that all there is to it?”

“No. Couple of other things.” He twisted at the waist and reached into the bag in the backseat. Pulling out a plain brown paper bag, he set it in his lap, opened the top and pulled out a round steel object with .500 Magnum rounds sticking out from it in a circle. “The .500 wasn’t designed as a combat weapon,” he said. “And nobody makes speed loaders for it. So I had a friend do a little gunsmithing on it. He had to bevel out the holes in the cylinder so the moon-clips would fit. But now you can load all five rounds at the same time.”

Platinov frowned, tipped the big pistol up in her hand and caught the 5-round bundle already loaded as it fell out. She nodded as she skillfully stuck it back into the weapon, then took the sack filled with full moon clips from the Executioner. She began transferring the extra ammo from the sack to the side pockets of her jacket.

“There’s one other thing,” Bolan said as he drove on. “And it’s the most important of all.”

Platinov waited.

“Once I enter the house, I’ll be close to your targets. Don’t shoot me by mistake.”

Platinov laughed. “If I ever shoot you, Cooper,” she said, “it will not be by mistake.” Now her smile turned seductive. “Besides, I have other plans for you. And I’ll need you alive for them.”

Bolan grinned. It seemed there was no getting around the attraction between them. “Then it sounds like I’m safe until then,” he said.

“Yes, certainly until then.”

Bolan slowed the Nissan as they passed the address Kurtzman had sent them. It was a split-level clay house, at least a century old. Nothing unusual about it. Nothing that made it stand out from any of the other older dwellings up and down these residential streets.

Except for the fact that an oversized picture window was set in the front of what Bolan expected would be the living room. The curtains were tightly closed, but a light glowed brightly behind the draperies.

And unless there was some kind of party going on inside the house, there were far too many vehicles in the driveway, and along the curb, for it to be occupied by just one family.

Bolan circled the block, passed the safe house again, then pulled over to the curb as soon as he found an open space just past the other parked vehicles.

The Russian agent got out of the car, then paused, looking back in. She held the huge S&W 500 in her right hand, and the side pockets of her jacket bulged with the extra moon clips. “I’m going to see if I can get up on top of that house without waking anyone inside,” she said, pointing to the darkened structure directly across the street from the safe house. “From there I should have a direct shot into the living room through that front window.” She paused a second, then said, “Get that curtain out of my way as soon as you can.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Bolan stated. “Signal me with your flashlight when you’re in place and ready.”

“I will. But what—”

The Executioner held up a hand to cut her off. “I’ll signal you the same way when I reach the corner of the house.” He paused a moment, thinking through his strategy once again. “When you see my beam, take out that front window with your first shot. Then wait. I’ll be diving through the broken glass and, with any luck, taking the curtains down to the floor with me when I land inside. That should not only get me in, but give you a wide-open view of the inside of the house at the same time.”

Platinov quietly closed the car door and headed out.

Bolan turned toward the safe house. Every so often, he glanced to the house across the street, waiting for the flashlight to tell him it was time to go into action.

Five minutes later he saw a light flash on, then off, atop the roof of the house where Platinov had taken up her post. A couple of seconds later, he saw the signal once again.

Show time.

The Executioner got out of the Nissan slowly, closed the door behind him, then sprinted across the street. Seconds later, he was over the curb and up on the grass of the yard next to the safe house. He ducked into the shadows and pressed his back against the wall.

All of Bolan’s senses went into high gear as he waited to see if his movement had been noticed by anyone keeping watch over the safe house. It was not unusual for at least one member of a terrorist cell to remain outside to keep watch over the house’s exterior. But as he watched, listened and even noted the smells around him, Bolan saw no indication that that was the case here. If there were outside sentries, however, they would already have alerted the terrorists inside the house via cell phone or walkie-talkie that something strange was going on. There was no sense in wasting any more time, either way.

Bolan sprinted from the house next door to the corner of the safe house nearest the picture window. Then, pulling a small flashlight from the side pocket of his blazer, he pointed it across the street and flashed it on and off twice.

A second later, he heard an explosion erupt atop the house across the street, then saw at least three feet of flames burst from the barrel of the big S&W. At the same time the picture window next to him all but disintegrated.

The Executioner wasted no time. Rounding the corner of the safe house, he dived into the curtains, the fingers of both hands grabbing the velvety material as he flew through the air. A screeching sound rent the air as the metal curtain rod above him was pulled from the wall, and then he fell to hardwood floor, entangled in the mass of material and thin steel. The soldier drew the SAW knife with his left hand, the Desert Eagle with his right. It would take far too long to find his way out from inside the curtains, which meant that the only sensible action was to create his own opening.

Bolan rose to his knees. Thrusting the knife tip through the curtain material directly in front of him, he sliced down as far as he could. Then, still holding the knife and the big .44 Magnum pistol, he reached forward and grabbed the sides of the opening, clutching them between his fingers and the two weapons.

Ripping both hands apart, Bolan caught his first glimpse of light since diving through the window. A man wearing a blue beret and brown slacks was bringing a British Sten submachine gun to bear.

Pulling the Desert Eagle’s trigger, the Executioner caught the terrorist in the chest, driving him back.

Another mammoth blast came from across the street, covering fire from Platinov, but another enemy gunner fired on Bolan, rounds tearing through the curtain missing his left ear by a millimeter.

He had to get out of these curtains of death, and he had to do it now. Bolan rose from his knees to his feet as first his head, then his shoulders, and finally his legs came up and out of the curtains. Then he stepped away from the tangled material as the real battle began.

The Executioner took in his environment in a heartbeat. Just as he’d guessed, he was in the safe house’s living room. He could hear a television almost directly behind him. Against the other three walls were sofas and chairs, and the time it had taken him to untangle himself from the curtains had given the terrorists time to push away from the walls and take cover behind the furniture.

Bolan knew it hadn’t been him who had prompted such actions. Had he dived through the window and into the curtains alone, the hardmen inside the living room would have had only to draw their weapons and send a massive hailstorm of gunfire into the disarrayed clump of curtains. It had been Platinov’s fire from the roof across the street that had saved his life. The terrorists now taking cover were doing so to avoid the thunderous assault that was coming from somewhere outside of their house.

But now that they could see Bolan, and the giant pistol in his hand, they turned their attention his way.

The Executioner fired another round directly into a stuffed armchair behind which he had seen the top of a balding head. The 240-grain Magnum round easily penetrated the leather cover material and stuffing, then hit the man behind the chair somewhere critical enough to send him sprawling out to the side in instant death.

Return fire suddenly poured from the other men around the room as they recovered from their initial shock. Covered on three sides in the living room, Bolan knew it could only be a matter of seconds before he’d be nailed.

To his side, an archway led from the living room into a dining area. Firing two more quick rounds from the Desert Eagle, Bolan heard the springs inside one of the sofas sing out as the bullets shredded through them and took out another terrorist hiding behind them. The man had just enough life left in him to stand up, but not enough to lift the heavy Thompson submachine gun in his hands before he fell forward over the back of the couch.

As soon as he’d pulled the trigger the second time, Bolan dived toward the archway. He had not yet had time to sheath his knife, so he tucked both the blade and the Desert Eagle flat against his chest. The shoulder roll took him out of the living room into the entryway behind the front door, and he rolled back to his feet at the foot of a staircase that led to the second floor of the house.

The Executioner ducked and pivoted back around as gunfire sailed over his shoulder. The men in the living room had now been forced out from behind the couches and chairs in order to get into a position from which they could attack. And as yet another sonic boom sounded from across the street, Bolan watched one of the men’s heads totally disintegrate atop his neck.

Bolan leaped to the third step of the staircase. He had seen no one at the first landing of the split-level home, and could see no one at the top, either. This unconventional tactic provided him with no cover or concealment, but it made the men trying to kill him pause for a few tenths of a second.

Which was more than enough of an edge for the Executioner.

Bolan had finally sheathed his knife, and now he drew the Beretta 93-R. Thumbing the selector switch to 3-round-burst mode, he cut loose with a trio of 9 mm rounds that stitched another CLODO terrorist from navel to neck. The man’s eyes widened in disbelief, then he fell forward onto his face, dropping the .357 Magnum Taurus 8-shot revolver he had been about to bring into play.

The Executioner’s unorthodox movement had worked once. So he reversed it, jumping downward, landing on his rubber-soled hiking shoes with the grace of a cat. But the roar that came out of the Desert Eagle was that of a lion as he pressed the big pistol’s barrel directly into the chest of a young terrorist, pulverizing his heart.

Bolan ducked back from the archway, climbing up one step again to avoid the torrent of lead that zipped his way. When he leaned back around with the Desert Eagle, he spotted another younger terrorist sprinting toward the window.

The Executioner raised the Beretta to fire, but another loud blast kept him from wasting his ammunition as Platinov sent yet another 325-grain semijacketed hollowpoint into the man’s chest.

Bolan watched him hit the floor on his back like a sack of potatoes falling off the back of a truck. The young man had just enough strength left to crane his neck up and look at his ruined chest.

Then he closed his eyes forever.

According to Bolan’s count, Platinov had fired all five of the rounds in her weapon. Now, she would have to reload the big X-frame wheel gun and, even with the full moon clips, that would take time.

Time during which he couldn’t count on getting any cover fire from her.

Only two CLODO men remained in the living room, and the dining room across the entryway appeared empty. The Executioner pulled the triggers of both pistols at the same time. A .44 Magnum round ended the life of a French terrorist when it drilled through his black T-shirt and into his even blacker heart. At the same time, a left-handed 3-round burst of 9 mm slugs cut through the ragged tweed sport coat of another hardman.

Bolan dropped the nearly spent magazine from the Desert Eagle as he transferred the Beretta from his free hand to his armpit. Jerking another box mag of .44 Magnum rounds from his belt, he jammed it into the butt of the huge Israeli-made pistol.

He had seen the glitter of brass at the top of the ejected magazine as it fell from the Desert Eagle’s grips before hitting the floor. He had not been able to keep count during this battle, but the mere fact that at least one round was left in the discarded magazine assured him that another was already chambered in the .44.

No sooner had he reloaded the Desert Eagle than the Executioner’s fine-tuned ears heard movement above him, at the top of the staircase to his side. His head jerked that way and he saw yet another terrorist in a blue beret. The man wore the same brown slacks as many of the others. But it looked as if a tie-dyed T-shirt covered his chest—at least at first glance. As he turned toward the threat and got a closer look, the Executioner realized that the man was actually shirtless. His chest and belly had been completely covered with tattoos.

And he was aiming a Mossberg JIC—Just in Case—12-gauge shotgun down the steps.

The Mossberg—with a stubby eighteen-inch barrel, pistol grip and no stock—came as close to being the perfect close-quarters-combat firearm as any one gun could. But it was as useless as a stalk of dry spaghetti if a bullet took the shotgun’s wielder before he could pull the trigger.

Twisting at the waist, Bolan let the Desert Eagle rise, as if on its own accord, to shoulder level. He stopped as soon as the heavy barrel pointed at the nose of the man atop the steps.

The terrorist had obviously trained in the “competition style” of shooting, in which the shooter always tried to superimpose the front sight over the target before squeezing the trigger. There were several drawbacks to that style of shooting when it came to a real gunfight rather than a pistol match at a gun range. First of all, it went completely against human nature, during times of life or death, to focus on anything but the threat itself. The rear, ancient, primordial part of the brain literally screamed at the defender to look at the threat rather than the front sight or anything else.

Trying to find the front sight under such emotional strain was further complicated by the fact that the eyes got the message from the brain as well, and fought against focusing on the end of the gun when it was the target that was about to kill him.

And last, but hardly least, was the theory that the trigger should be gently squeezed rather than pulled. Under such tension, the human body’s small motor functions shut down and sent blood and adrenaline flowing to the larger muscle groups to increase strength. A death grip was automatically taken on the gun, and the trigger was pulled, not squeezed, regardless of what the shooter had been capable of doing during practice.

A true life-or-death gun battle was as different from a practice session at a gun range as a karate tournament was from a street fight. And, as he pulled the trigger of the big .44 Magnum pistol, Bolan thought of the moronic firearms instructors he had heard say that the stress of losing a pistol match duplicated the stress of a true fight to the death.

Such range “masters” had obviously never been in a real gunfight themselves. They might have trophies filling their living rooms and dens which they could show off to their friends, but they had never shot at anything that was shooting back at them.

The Executioner’s 240-grain, point-aimed, RBCD total fragmentation round drilled through the tattooed man’s nose and angled up into his brain before exploding. The now familiar pink mists shot out of the terrorist’s head from the front, back and both sides, hanging in the air for a moment like a quartet of crimson clouds. The terrorist dropped the shotgun, which bumped down the stairs, coming to a halt directly in front of the Executioner as if to say, “Use me.”

Bolan holstered both the Desert Eagle and Beretta, then reached down and lifted the shotgun in both hands. Racking the slide back far enough to see that a shell had already been chambered, he flipped off the safety with his thumb and stepped to the side to allow the near-headless body of the Mossberg’s former bearer to tumble down past him.

Behind him, the Executioner heard the explosion of Platinov’s 500 S&W Magnum revolver from across the street again. Good. The Russian woman had successfully reloaded the mammoth handgun and begun sniping again. But all of the men on the ground floor had been eliminated by now, so he had to guess she was taking potshots through the curtained windows of the floors above him. His suspicion was confirmed a second later when he heard the tinkling sound of broken glass above him.

Bolan raised the Mossberg’s stumpy barrel up the steps just as another pair of hardmen appeared on the landing, both armed with AK-47s. The man on Bolan’s right was right-handed and prepared to shoot that way. The terrorist to the Executioner’s left was a southpaw.

Standing side-by-side as they were, they looked almost like mirror images of each other.

Raising the shotgun to shoulder level, Bolan sent a load of double-aught buckshot into the throat of the man on his right. Rivers of crimson shot from the arteries in the man’s neck, and his head fell to his right shoulder, still attached to his body but only by the few tendons and ligaments.

The man to the Executioner’s left screamed out loud as his partner’s blood sprayed his face. Panicking, he pulled the trigger of his Soviet-made assault rifle and sent a fully automatic burst of 7.62 mm rounds flying high over Bolan’s head.

The big American took his time, steadying the shotgun, his eyes planted firmly on the blood-covered terrorist’s chest—just an inch to the right of center. A second later, he pulled the trigger and the 12-gauge buckshot spread into a tight, inch-and-a-half grouping as the lead balls struck home.

Both corpses fell headfirst down the steps past the Executioner to join their fellow terrorist at the foot of the steps.

Bolan racked the slide of the Mossberg to chamber another round. So far, he had fired two of the double-aught shells. The magazine held only five, so he had either three or four rounds left in the weapon, depending on whether the man who had introduced the shotgun into the fight had topped off the magazine after chambering the first round.

At this point, the Executioner had no way of knowing. What he did know was that he’d have to be ready to drop the scattergun and draw one or both of his pistols at a second’s notice.

The firing from across the street had ceased, which meant Platinov had come down off her perch to join him in the ongoing battle. Between the roars of the firearms, Bolan had heard enough noise above him to know there were more terrorists upstairs, on the second level and maybe even the third.

One thing was for certain. The fight wasn’t over yet.

Not by a long shot.

CHAPTER THREE

The smell of spent gunpowder burned the Executioner’s nostrils as he mounted the steps of the CLODO house, grasping the grip and fore end of the Mossberg JIC. He kept the barrel aimed slightly upward, roughly at waist level, ready to raise or lower his aim with lightning speed should an enemy face or body appear in the doorway or the window next to it. By the time he was a quarter of the way up the steps to the house’s second level, he could see half of the next set of stairs that led to the third, and top, tier of the dwelling.

The rooms on the second landing were all to his right. At the top step the Executioner dropped to one knee and inched an eye around the corner. The layout was simple. A bedroom stood just to his right. Another, next to it, faced him. And across the hall, he could see a bathroom.

The doors to all three rooms were wide open, which didn’t necessarily mean they were empty.

The Executioner knew there were plenty of hiding places. He would have to search them all, and any hidden enemies would see him long before he saw them. They might even get off a round or two before he pinpointed their location.

Switching the shotgun’s pistol grip to his left hand, Bolan rose to his feet and stepped around the corner. Slowly, and as silently as the aged wood allowed, he pressed his back along the hallway wall and moved to the first bedroom. When he reached the open door, he halted, waiting, listening, trying to hear anything that might give away the presence of anyone inside the bedroom.

For a moment, the Executioner’s thoughts drifted to Plat. Where was she? It had been several minutes since he’d last heard the roar of the 500 S&W Magnum, which meant she’d had plenty of time to scramble down off the roof and join him inside the house. Yet he had seen no trace of her. And there was another possibility.

There might have been one or more hidden outside sentries whom they both had missed. If that was the case, Platinov would have been mere child’s play to locate when she fired the gargantuan S&W. One or more of the terrorists could easily have slipped up onto the roof behind her and taken her out while her attention was on the house across the street.

As far as he could tell, there had been no small-caliber shots fired from across the street—just the Magnum booms of the .50-caliber revolver. But there could be many explanations for his not hearing more gunfire, and the Executioner forced those thoughts, too, away from his mind. Platinov was either alive or dead. But either way, there was nothing he could do to assist her at this point, and worrying about her would do nothing but distract him from what he had to do himself.

Still holding the Mossberg left-handed, Bolan suddenly stepped into the doorway. A brief glance into the bedroom revealed a man wearing a blue beret. The terrorist made no attempt whatsoever to hide. He sat confidently, his lips almost smiling, with his back against the head of the bed.

Bolan pivoted away from the threshold, recognized the weapon propped between the man’s legs, and aimed at the doorway. The Browning .50-caliber machinegun was identifiable by the spade handle grips, plain-sided receiver, canvas cartridge feed belt and the open top of the ammunition box on the tripod upon which the giant rifle rested.

He also IDed the rifle by the deafening roar it made as the .50-caliber rounds—longer, and even more penetrative than the 500 S&W Platinov had been using—shot through the open door and then moved to the wall as he hit the wooden floor on his belly.

White dust and chunks of plaster rained on the Executioner’s head as the big .50-caliber slugs tore the wall to shreds above him. The gunner inside the bedroom kept up a steady stream of fire, shooting blindly, obviously counting on the probability that at least one of his stray rounds would find the Executioner.

What he didn’t consider was that the giant holes he was making in the wall could work both ways.

Bolan rolled onto his side, placing the JIC on the floor next to him and jerking the Desert Eagle from his hip holster. So far, the machine gunner had fired all his rounds at waist level or above. But the Executioner knew it would be a matter of seconds before he began shooting lower—assuming that if the man he’d seen in the hallway was still alive, he would have taken to the ground.

Bolan wasn’t wrong.

A few seconds later, the giant chunks of plaster began to blow out holes closer to the floor. Bolan waited, breathing in through his nose, then out through his mouth, in order to remain calm and collected for the task he knew he had to perform.

Finally, a giant, ragged hole appeared in the wall three inches above the Executioner’s line of sight. Exhaling another deep breath, he peered through the new opening.

In an instant, Bolan saw that while the hole was large enough to see through, or shoot through, it wasn’t big enough to do both. The big frame of the Desert Eagle would block any view he tried to take as soon as he stuck the barrel through the opening. So, frowning as his brain took a mental “photograph” of the exact angle of trajectory from the hole to the chest of the man on the bed, Bolan dropped low again, raised the .44 Magnum pistol above his head and stuck the barrel through the opening. The angle was awkward, and required him to twist his wrist and put his thumb on the trigger instead of his index finger. But the Executioner was used to improvising, and as the random .50-caliber blasts to the wall continued, he used the picture he had taken in his head to angle the .44 at the man on the bed.

A second later, the Executioner pulled the trigger with his thumb.

And a second after that, the machine-gun blasts from inside the bedroom halted.

Bolan withdrew the Desert Eagle, holstered it and picked up the short-barreled shotgun once more. Rising to look into the same hole through which he’d just shot, he saw that his blind aim had been slightly high.

The .44 Magnum round had taken the terrorist in the throat rather than the chest.

Not that it mattered. The man had already bled out and was staring lifelessly at the wall he had all but demolished.

The roar in his ears had barely died down when the Executioner heard the creak of wood behind him. During the duel with the Browning, he had been forced to concentrate his efforts there and turn his back to the rest of the second level of the split-level safe house. But now, he rolled over so he could view both the other bedroom and bathroom.

And he did so none too soon.

Obviously assuming that their comrade would end the threat with his Browning, two men in the second, smaller bedroom had stayed out of sight. But they were not amateurs, and had been well-trained in one of the many terrorist “boot camps” operating throughout the world. Now that the firing had ceased, and the last roar they’d heard had come from a pistol, they could tell that the fight had not gone their way. And now they both stepped into view through the doorway, holding Barrett M-468 assault rifles.

Looking somewhat like the standard M-16 series, the M-468s were chambered for the newer, more powerful, .270-caliber cartridge. But as Bolan had already proved several times during this encounter, calibers didn’t fight calibers.

Men fought men.

It didn’t matter a bit that the two terrorists held the latest technology in small-arms warfare after the Executioner had ended both of their lives with a pair of old-fashioned 12-gauge shotgun shells.

The Mossberg JIC either had one round left in it or none. But either way, the Executioner decided it could no longer serve as his primary weapon. Letting the short-barreled shotgun fall to the floor, he drew the Desert Eagle with his right hand, the Beretta 93-R with his left. Pushing the big .44’s safety lever forward with his thumb, he moved the smaller 93-R’s selector switch to 3-round-burst mode.

Bolan moved cautiously toward the staircase that led to the top level of the house. Below him, on the first floor at the rear of the house, he heard more pistol fire—what sounded like 9 mm and .45s. His guess was that Platinov had now abandoned the huge 500 S&W Magnum gun and circled the house, coming in some back entrance with her top-of-the-line .45-caliber Colt Gold Cups. Whoever she was shooting it out with down there had to be welding the 9 mms.

When he reached the corner, the Executioner inched an eye around the barrier, the Beretta in his left hand hanging at the end of his arm in front of him, ready to rise and fire if he saw any sign of the enemy. He didn’t, and another step around the corner found him slowly, and cautiously climbing the final flight of stairs.

A thin, well-worn carpet ran down the middle of the stairs, leaving a foot or so of exposed wood on either side of each step. Bolan stayed on the carpet, both pistols in front of him, ready to send a .44 Magnum RBCD total-fragmentation round or a 3-round burst of the same “exploding” bullets in 9 mm, up the stairwell. The carpet muffled the sounds of his hiking shoes. But the ancient wood still creaked with every step.

Bolan knew there were more CLODO terrorists upstairs, and they knew he was on the way.

Just before he reached the top step, the Executioner stopped and dropped to his knees, leaning forward to peer around yet another corner. He could see roughly half of the room, and it looked like it had been set up as a young boy’s bedroom by the previous owners. Posters of rock bands and rap groups covered the walls, European, American and Japanese. He could also see two half doors against the far wall that reached from the floor to the point where the ceiling sloped downward.

Closets, the Executioner realized, with latch locks to keep the doors closed.

But although the doors were both closed, the latches hung straight down, unlocked. It didn’t take a genius to assume that if there were terrorists on this floor of the house, they’d be inside the closets.

The Executioner straightened and took the last step to the landing just outside the top bedroom. He peered around the last corner, surveying the other half of the room. It appeared devoid of human beings, but the front wall of the room contained one more of the odd, slanting closets

Bolan stepped into the room. The floor was bare wood, and he took advantage of the soft rubber soles of his hiking shoes to make the least amount of noise possible as he moved to the closet to his right. A large window looked out over the backyard next to the unlatched door, and he glanced that way for a second.

The light had been on in the upstairs bedroom when he’d arrived, adding to his suspicions that the room was occupied. That meant that his vision out of the window into the backyard was limited, while anyone behind the house could see him clearly.

But no one fired at him, which told the Executioner that Platinov had taken out any of the terrorists who might have been in the backyard.

Holstering the Desert Eagle, Bolan transferred the Beretta 93-R to his right hand and stepped just to the side of the closet door. The way the roof angled downward, he was forced to stoop slightly and bend his knees. From this uncomfortable, semibalanced position, he reached out with his left hand, grasped the door latch and swung the door open.

A second after that, a hailstorm of gunfire blew out of the opening just to his side. Bolan waited for the blasts to die down. Then, during the lightning-fast millisecond when the shooters wondered why they saw no dead body in front of them, he curved his arm around the corner into the short closet, blindly spraying four 3-round bursts up, down and to both sides.

With only four rounds left in the Beretta, Bolan dropped the magazine and inserted a fresh 15-round box. Inside the closet, he could hear a soft moaning and the deep intakes of breath. He kept the Beretta close to his shoulder as, still stooped, he leaned around the doorway and angled the pistol inside the tiny room.

Lying on the floor were four CLODO terrorists. Three wore the tan shirts and brown trousers that the group used for identification purposes. The fourth was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt that bore the likeness of the American comedian Jerry Lewis.

Two of the men, both wearing these unofficial CLODO uniforms, lay on the floor, obviously dead. They were as still as rocks, having taken the frangible 9 mm rounds in their heads. The third man in brown and tan lay across them. It was he who was doing the moaning as he clutched his lower abdomen with both hands.

A 3-round burst into the man mercifully ended his moaning.

Shotguns, pistols and rifles were scattered across the floor and on top of the bodies.

Bolan knew that the men in the other two closets had to have heard the gunfire. So as he backed out of the room, trading the Beretta in his right hand for the Desert Eagle. This time, he moved in front of the door of the second closet but fired an entire magazine of Magnum rounds through the splintery wood before reloading and holstering the big .44, all the while keeping the door covered by the Beretta.

The wood of the door was now splintered and warped, so rather than open it, the Executioner lifted a foot and kicked. Sharp pieces of wood flew into the closet ahead of him as the door disintegrated. Forced to bend his knees and stoop again, Bolan stepped forward and surveyed the contents of the closet. Only two of the terrorists had chosen this tiny room in which to take refuge, and both lay dead on the ground.

There was no reason to waste any more time, or ammo, here.

The Executioner turned toward the third closet, which was set into the wall facing the front of the house. He still hadn’t checked under the bed but now he saw an arm reach out from beneath the bedspread holding a 9 mm SiG-Sauer.

Bolan aimed at the weapon and shot it out of the hand holding it. The gunner beneath the bed screamed in pain and jerked his arm back beneath the bed. The soldier dropped to the floor, facing the bed. Beneath the box spring, he could see the man with the bloody hand as well as two more of the CLODO terrorists. He wasn’t surprised.

But having their attacker drop down into firing range shocked the men under the bed, which caused them to hesitate.

And hesitation cost them their lives.

Bolan peppered the underside of the bed with 3-round bursts as the men tried to bring their weapons into target acquisition. It was a losing battle for them, and a second later they, too, lay dead in an ever-spreading pool of mixed blood.

The only place left that could have hidden a CLODO man was the final closet. The Executioner bounded back to his feet and squinted at the door. Its latch was down, too.

The roof in the front wall of the house was higher, so this door and closet were not as slanted as the other two had been. The Executioner moved swiftly now, speed having taken precedence over stealth.

This time, he didn’t have to open the door himself. It flew forward on its own, and a terrorist stepped out, aiming a 12-gauge Remington autoloading shotgun at the Executioner.

Bolan dived to the floor, as a heavy load of buckshot sailed over his head, missing him by millimeters. He twisted on the slick hardwood floor, then slid to the foot of the bed and turned onto his shoulder, the Desert Eagle aimed upward.

A moment later, two .44 Magnum rounds had destroyed the intestines and heart of the man with the Remington. He fell backward as the Executioner sprang to his feet again, ready to take out the next terrorist who came out of the closet.

But there were no more.

As the roar of the gunfire faded and the smell of cordite settled into his nostrils, Bolan heard footsteps on the stairs just outside the bedroom. A moment later, they stopped and a heavily Russian-accented voice said, “Don’t shoot, Cooper. It’s me.” Without waiting for an answer, Marynka Platinov stepped into the room. She had discarded the jacket that, along with the matching skirt, formed her suit. Both of her Colt Gold Cup pistols hung at the end of her arms, aimed at the floor.

The enormous Smith & Wesson 500 was tucked into her waistband along with her third .45.

The Russian quickly took in the dead men in the room, then turned to the Executioner. “You leave a trail of bodies that make finding you as easy as following bread crumbs,” she said, referring to the old fairy tale.

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “But how could you be sure it was me still alive up here?” Bolan asked her.

Platinov chuckled. “I have worked with you several times now, Cooper,” she said, “and you always seem to come out on top.”

Before Bolan could reply, the sound of distant but rapidly approaching police sirens broke the stillness on the top floor of the split-level house.

“We’d better search these guys for leads, and do it fast,” the Executioner said.

“Yes,” Platinov agreed.

The Executioner dropped to his knees and began going through the pockets of the last CLODO man he had killed. He pulled a wallet and a key ring out as he said, “How’d you like the 500 Magnum?”

Platinov tapped the Pachmayer grip covering the butt of the colossal revolver, which still stuck up out of the waistband of her skirt. “I’m keeping it,” she said. “You’ll have to get another one.” Then she sank to her knees and began helping Bolan with the search.

THE NISSAN PASSED several approaching police vehicles as Bolan and Platinov made a slow-speed, nondescript getaway from the split-level safe house. Just as they’d done before, they had hurriedly gathered all items of interest from the men’s pockets into a pair of sturdy canvas equipment bags and pulled away from the curb only seconds before the first flashing lights had appeared.

The French police would be operating off of the vague information given to them by their dispatcher, which would have originated from the telephone call of one of the neighbors. At this point, it would be thought of no differently than any of a half-dozen “disturbance” calls that they’d probably already worked that evening.

So as Bolan and Platinov looked at the two gendarmes, and the gendarmes returned the look as the vehicles passed each other, no one was stopped, questioned, or searched. Instead, all four heads within the vehicles nodded polite “hellos.”

The two drove on in silence as they headed back toward their hotel to go over the contents in the bags. Something had been bothering the Executioner ever since the first gunfight at the other house, and that concern had grown while they’d filled the bags with possible evidence. Now, as he turned onto Rue de La Foyette, what was bothering his unconscious finally surfaced in his mind.

It was not anything that he and Marynka Platinov had found at the two CLODO safe houses that bothered him. It was what they hadn’t found.

Platinov had evidently been thinking along the same lines because as they neared the hotel, she said, “Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time CLODO did anything big—I mean really big—was when they bombed the Phillips Data Plant way back in the 1980s, right?”

“Right,” Bolan said, pulling the Nissan into the hotel’s parking lot.

“And since Rouillan revived them a year or so ago, everything they have done has involved explosives of one kind or another. Correct?”

Bolan could tell she was headed in the same direction he’d been thinking. “Or guns,” the Executioner said. “Bombings and random machine-gunnings at train stations and other public places are pretty much their trademark.”

“Then why haven’t we found any bomb-making supplies at either of the safe houses we’ve hit?” Platinov asked bluntly. “Or weapons? Oh, we’ve found these men’s personal weapons. But we haven’t found either stores of arms and ammunition or the ingredients it takes to make bombs.”

Bolan nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “All we’ve come across are personal arms. The biggest and ‘baddest’ thing so far was that lone Browning on the second level back there.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Where are they storing their other rifles, hoarded ammunition, and everything else along that line if not at the safe houses? If CLODO’s really back in business, and going to war with the computer companies and everyone who uses computers, what are they planning to destroy everything with? Sledgehammers?”

The last suggestion had been meant to be sarcastic and Platinov took it as such. “That is bothering me, too,” she said. “Do you believe it is likely that their other weapons and explosive materials are hidden at some other location we haven’t come across yet?”

“That’s one possibility.”

For a moment, silence reigned over the Nissan again. Bolan parked the car, they got out, and he opened one of the rear doors. Then Platinov said, “Your tone of voice indicated that you believe there are other possibilities.” She opened the back door on her side of the vehicle.

“There are,” Bolan answered as they each pulled out one of the canvas bags and started toward the main entrance of the hotel. “But let me mull them around a little longer before I tell you about them,” he said. “I’m not all that straight with it myself, yet.”

Platinov had slipped back into her suit jacket to cover her double shoulder rig and now she shrugged. “Okay.”

Bolan shook his head at the bellmen when they hurried down the steps to help them with their bags. A moment later, Bolan and Platinov were picking up their key at the front desk, then boarding the elevator toward the third floor.

Once in the room, Bolan took a look at his watch. It was nearly 0200 hours in Paris, which would mean it was around 9:00 p.m. back home in the eastern States. Pulling his satellite phone from the inside pocket of his jacket, Bolan dialed the number to the Farm.

Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, answered. “Hello, Striker,” she said, using his mission code name. “What do you need?”

“Nothing at the moment.” He gave her a quick rundown of what had happened since their last conversation, then said, “I’ll probably be calling you back with more after we go through these bags.” He glanced at the two canvas bags that contained all of the evidence they’d taken from the safe house. “In the meantime, pass what I’ve just told you on to the Bear and see if he can make use of any of the information. He not only speaks, he thinks in computerese, so he may come up with some way to use some of this intel that would never cross the rest of our minds.”

“Will do, Striker,” Price said. “May I assume that you’re still working with Agent Platinov?”

There had been no trace of jealousy in Price’s voice. And no one who had heard the question would even notice that a tiny amount of resentment had even been in the question. But Bolan knew Barbara Price better than anyone else in the world, and he had picked up on it.

Barbara Price was a world-class beauty in her own right. And while both she and the Executioner were far too professional to allow their mutual attraction to interfere with the Farm’s operations, on the rare nights when he was able to stay over at Stony Man, Price had his undivided attention.

Finally Bolan said, “It’s still a joint op between us and Russia, but I’ll be the one who calls you.”

“Affirmative,” Price said. “Stony Man out, then.”

“Striker clear,” the Executioner said before tapping the “call kill” button. He looked across the bed to where Platinov sat cross-legged. She had already kicked off her shoes and dumped the contents of the canvas bags onto the bed in front of her. In her hands, she squinted at a scrap of paper that looked to have been folded and unfolded dozens of time.

Bolan joined her, and they came across the usual things found in men’s pockets—billfolds, keys, a few French Lagouille pocketknives. Hideout weapons such as fixed blade knives in ankle holsters, and one tiny .22 short North American Arms minirevolver. Some of the terrorists had carried several sets of IDs in different names—passports, driver’s licenses and other picture identification cards. When he had finished inspecting everything in his bag, Bolan frowned. There was a lot of stuff here. But as far as he could tell, none of it would lead them on down the trail toward Rouillan, his revived terrorist organization, or their upcoming big strike that was rumored to soon take place.

As he had searched the contents of the canvas bag, the Executioner had seen Platinov out of the corner of eye as she dug through her own pile of personal effects. But when he looked up now, he saw that the woman was again holding the same folded, then unfolded, scrap of paper he’d seen her looking at earlier.

“Got something?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Platinov said. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Let’s see,” the Executioner said.

Platinov had moved up on the bed to rest her back against the wall and sat cross-legged, looking as if she might break out in some yoga mantra at any moment. But the posture had caused her skirt to ride up.

Forcing his eyes down to the scrap of paper, Bolan studied it. It looked to have come from a yellow legal pad and had been torn off rather than cut. It read: Chartres—Achille LeForce, 4:00 p.m. At the bottom of the scrap of paper was a date.

That very day.

Bolan looked up at Platinov. “Whatever it is, it takes place this afternoon,” he said.

“LeForce is a common French name,” Platinov said. “So is Achille, for that matter. And Chartres is a village in the province of Touraine. It’s southwest of here.”

Bolan stood up, walked swiftly to a leather briefcase on top of the other equipment bags they had dropped in the corner of the room and brought it back to the bed before opening it. Pulling out a manila file envelope, he shuffled through the papers contained inside.

“What are you looking for?” Platinov wanted to know.

Bolan held up one hand to silence her as he continued to sort through the intel reports. A moment later, a hard smile curled the corners of his lips.

“What is it?” Platinov demanded again.

“We had limited time to go over this file during the flight to Paris,” he said. “But one little detail—a detail that seemed insignificant at the time—evidently stuck in my head.”

“What’s that?” Platinov asked.

“Chartres is Rouillan’s home town. He was born and grew up there.”

“Then it is likely he might pick Chartres for whatever that scrap of paper indicates,” Platinov said. “He would be familiar with the area. And know all of the possible escape routes if something went wrong.”

Bolan nodded. He knew the area, too, from past missions. Several roads led in, and out, of the small French village that was famous for the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres. This structure ranked right alongside Notre Dame as an example of the greatest Gothic architecture in the world. The cathedral was particularly noted for its lavish stained-glass windows. “That’s the ‘up’ side of things,” he said almost under his breath.

But Platinov’s hearing was acute. “What is the ‘down’ side you are insinuating with that remark?” she asked.

“Everyone in Chartres will know him,” Bolan said, replacing the file in the briefcase and closing the latches. “And some will be his friends.”

When Bolan hadn’t spoken again for several seconds, Platinov finally said, “So…do we go there or not?” She uncrossed her legs but made no effort to pull down her skirt.

Slowly, Bolan nodded. “We go there,” he said. Staring straight ahead at the wall, he added, “We don’t have much to go on and the odds are stacked highly against us. Chartres isn’t very big. But it’s big enough that we’ll have to find some way of locating Rouillan once we’re there. And as soon as we start asking questions, word will be out all over town that we’re looking for him.” He stuffed the paper into the side pocket of his jacket. “But, the way I see it, it’s all we have at this point.”

Bolan turned to face Platinov now, and saw the same “come hither” smile on her face that he’d seen so many times before. The beautiful Russian woman’s skirt was still hiked up almost to her waist, and the muscles in her Olympic sprinter’s legs all but rippled through her transparent hosiery.

“Whatever this note means,” Platinov purred seductively. “It will not take place until four in the afternoon. We have nearly twelve hours, and Chartres is only a short drive from here.” She cleared her throat with a husky sound. “I wonder how we could pass the time between now and then?”

Bolan stared at her. He was only human, and he and Marynka Platinov had been attracted to each other like magnets since the first time they’d met. For a moment, he was tempted to take the Russian woman up on what was a blatant offer of pleasure.

But then the warrior in the Executioner’s soul took charge of him again.

Bolan stood up next to the bed. “I think the best way to spend that time is to get to Chartres and start snooping around. We need to find out what’s supposed to happen at four o’clock and where it’s supposed to go down.” He cleared his throat and glanced at his watch. “We may not have enough time already.”

Platinov’s smile turned to a slight frown and then a sigh escaped her lips. “You are hard on a woman’s ego, Cooper,” she said as she stood up, lowered her skirt, then smoothed it out again by running the palms of her hands up and down her thighs.

Bolan laughed softly. “Don’t take it as a rejection,” he said. “It’s just that finding Rouillan has got to come first.”

Platinov had taken off her jacket but left the shoulder rig carrying her twin Gold Cup pistols in place. Now, she lifted her Model 1911 from the nightstand where she’d set it earlier, and returned it—along with the inside-the-waistband holster—to the rear of her skirt.

Bolan watched her run her fingers around the waistband, making sure that the Spyderco Military Model folding knife was clipped in place. As she slid her arms into the suit jacket, she said, “Business before pleasure, I believe is the way that you Americans put it.”

The Executioner nodded.

“Then let’s go,” the Russian woman said. One at a time, she pulled out all three of her .45s, checked to make sure a round was in each of the chambers, then returned them to their hiding place. Bolan did the same with the Desert Eagle and Beretta.

The Executioner made one final check at the small of his back. The TOPS Special Assault Weapon, or SAW as it was more commonly called, was clipped in place in its sheath.

They were ready. A moment later they were out of the door.

And a moment after that, they were on their way to Chartres.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was just as the Executioner had feared it would be as he guided the Nissan down Chartre’s main street. As he and Platinov passed, everyone on both sides of the street looked up to take note of them.

They were strangers. And just as it was in small towns all over the world, strangers were duly noted by the locals, which meant that he and Platinov stood out.

Mentally, Bolan shrugged. There was no sense worrying about it because there was nothing he could do to change that fact. All he could hope for was that they could pass themselves off as tourists. The problem with that was the majority of such visitors arrived on tour buses or by train. Driving a car put them in a whole new minority of what was already a minority.

Bolan lifted his satellite phone from his lap and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm. When Barbara Price answered with, “Yes, Striker?” he said simply, “Put the Bear on.”

A moment later, the call had been transferred to Aaron Kurtzman in the Computer Room. “What can I do for you, big guy?” the computer wizard asked.

“You can hack your way into the French police files,” Bolan said. “I need anything you can get on Achille LeForce from Chartres.”

“Easy enough,” Kurtzman said. “Hang on. I’ll put you on the speakerphone while I search.”

A moment later, Bolan heard a click. Then the tapping of fingertips on a computer keyboard. Thirty seconds later, Kurtzman was back. “Found him,” he said.

“Never dreamed you wouldn’t.”

“Achille LeForce,” Kurtzman said. “Five feet ten inches tall, two hundred and forty pounds. Brown curly hair, and a scar on the left side of his forehead. Quick summary—small-time criminal. Arrests for burglary, drug dealing, firearms and parole violations. Never served more than three months on any of them.” The wheelchair-bound computer genius paused to take a breath. “But the part that’ll interest you is his known associates. Any idea who tops the list?”

“Pierre Rouillan.”

“Well, if you smoked cigars I’d buy you an Arturo Fuente Gran Reserva,” Kurtzman said.

Bolan chuckled. “Give it to Hal,” he said, referring to Stony Man Farm’s director, who usually had a stubble of cigar in his mouth.

“He’d just chew it up,” Kurtzman said. “That’s about it on LeForce. Anything else I can get for you?”

“You find an address for him?” the Executioner asked.

“Got more than two dozen,” Kurtzman replied. “Most current is six months ago. You know how it is—small-time crooks are the same the world over. They never stay in one place very long.”

“I hear you, Bear.” Bolan had known that a current address was improbable but it had been worth a try. “Talk to you later.” He hung up.

As they had driven down the street, both Bolan and Platinov had looked at the faces they passed. Men, women and children glanced up, frowned slightly, then returned to whatever they’d been doing before. The frowns told the Executioner that these citizens were noting that something was different about the two people in the Nissan. They didn’t know exactly what. But they knew.

Bolan knew it was going to get worse. As soon as he and Platinov started asking about Rouillan, they’d be branded as police, or intelligence officers, or some other branch of the French or another government looking for the newly infamous terrorist. Word of their inquiries would spread like wildfire and reach Rouillan’s ears if he was anywhere near Chartres.

They were already running against the clock. If Rouillan heard about them, he’d be gone quicker than a flash of lightning.

Platinov stared out of her side window, doing her best to look like a rubber-necking sightseer. They had stopped at Versailles to gas up the automobile, and the Executioner had decided at the last minute that a change of clothing was appropriate. So, within the confines of the gas station’s unisex rest room, he had traded his blue blazer and slacks for a baggy green T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts. With his broad shoulders and narrow waist, he was able to leave the Desert Eagle in the close-fitting holster and jam the sound-suppressed Beretta into his waistband on his other side. The TOPS knife stayed at the small of his back, and he filled the cargo pockets of his shorts with extra magazines for both pistols. The low-cut hiking shoes he’d worn with the blazer and slacks worked just fine with his “new look” as well.

Drawing his pistols and reloading would be slower than if he’d worn the weapons openly, but for their visit to Chartres, blending in as much as they could with the scenery took a much higher priority than speed.

His mission, at this point, was to gather intelligence on Rouillan. He wasn’t expecting to run into a gunfight.

But he was ready if one came running at him.

Bolan turned a corner off the main downtown street. As he began looking for a place to park, the Executioner glanced again at Marynka Platinov. The Russian beauty drew attention no matter where she was, or how she was dressed. He had done his best to keep his eyes to himself while they’d changed clothes back at the gas station. But he couldn’t avoid an occasional glimpse of her naked breasts after she’d shed the suit jacket, white blouse and bra, and replaced it with a blue short-sleeved sweatshirt that read Sorbonne and featured the world-famous French university’s logo. The sweatshirt had been cut off just below her breasts, and what was left of the tail now hung straight down at least three inches from her bare midriff. Platinov, too, now wore khaki cargo shorts. But unlike the Executioner’s, which extended almost to his knees, the Russian woman’s shorts barely covered her posterior. Her hosiery had gone back into a suitcase, and white Puma athletic shoes were tied at the end of her shapely, well-muscled legs. Platinov had threaded a leather belt through the belt loops of her shorts, but the cut-down sweatshirt barely hid her breasts, let alone any weapons. So she had been forced to put her matching Gold Cup .45s and the extra 1911 pistol into a canvas bag. It would be slung over her shoulder, and she could even keep her hand out of sight inside the bag, holding one of the guns, if they sensed danger.

The Executioner turned another corner onto a side street, still looking for a place to leave the car. He knew there were other items in Platinov’s bag as well. He’d watched her drop both Russian-French and English-French language dictionaries in to cover weapons from sight should anyone get close enough to look directly down into the bag. He wondered for a moment what they were for. He had heard Platinov speak French on numerous occasions, and her command of the language was impeccable.

The Executioner’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted when he spotted an empty parking spot along the side street. Pulling up next to the car in front of it, he backed in to parallel park, then turned to Platinov as he twisted the key to kill the engine. “You ready?” he asked.

“Aside from feeling like a complete fool in this ridiculous American-tourist-geek getup, you mean?” she answered. “I feel like I should be wearing mouse ears at Disney World.”

Bolan grinned. “Yeah. Besides that. Any ideas where to start?”

Platinov turned to him and frowned. “We know that something is supposed to take place here at 1600. And we know—or at least think we know—that it involves Rouillan’s friend Achille LeForce. And we hope it involves Rouillan.”

The Executioner nodded. “The trail’s thin, I admit,” he said. “But it’s all we’ve got. We don’t know whose pocket that scrap of paper came out of before we found it, and it probably wouldn’t do us any good if we did. Maybe one of the dead men back at the house was supposed to meet Rouillan and LeForce here. It could be that LeForce is bringing in that cache of weapons or bomb-making materials we speculated about earlier. Or he might have cocaine, or heroin, or ice or crack or any of a number of other drugs, the profit from which Rouillan uses to finance CLODO. Or there could be a bomb set somewhere in town that’ll detonate at 1600 hours. The possibilities are endless.”

Platinov nodded. Twisting in her seat, she reached behind her and grabbed the leather briefcase Bolan had opened back in their room and set it in her lap. Flipping the latches, she opened the file on Rouillan and began shuffling through the pages. Finally, she pulled out a photo of Rouillan. In it, the French terrorist was talking to another man. The picture had obviously been taken with the aid of a long-range, telescopic lens. But it showed Rouillan’s face and the other man’s quite clearly.

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