He was in rampage mode

It was time to stop playing by the enemy’s rules, and to start doing things his way. Mack Bolan had never been the kind of man to sit back and allow the savages to assault him.

The plan was simple; one the Executioner had used countless times before.

Lean on the enemy. Lean on the enemy’s friends. Lean on the enemy’s enemies. Apply as much pressure as possible until his target popped into view.

Then drop the hammer.

MACK BOLAN®

The Executioner

#250 Warning Shot

#251 Kill Radius

#252 Death Line

#253 Risk Factor

#254 Chill Effect

#255 War Bird

#256 Point of Impact

#257 Precision Play

#258 Target Lock

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

The Executioner®

Edge of Hell

Don Pendleton

The god of war hates those who hesitate.

—Euripides: Heraclidae ca. 425 B.C.

Even as I stand at the edge of hell, I will not hesitate to take action against the enemy.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

She stumbled out of the bed, sheets snarling around her feet. Her hands broke her fall, and she swore she heard something pop in one wrist, but no pain was worming its way up her arm. The high hadn’t worn off yet. The floor was cold and bare, good for mopping up ink, coffee and bloodstains.

The sheets finally released her ankles and she slithered free, pulling herself to her knees. The buzz rolling around her bloodstream wasn’t done yet, but she was already feeling the panic in her chest, and the twisting of her gut, demanding more release. She had to get dressed quickly and head back. She brushed her hand across her stomach, one fingertip finding the odd itch in her navel, all along the freshly mended flesh of some kind of scar. In her befuddled mind, she wondered what that was. She didn’t shoot in there, she shot inside her thighs, where no man would look, let alone put his mouth—at least none of the men who paid her for the company they sought.

She reached for the pile of clothes, yanking aside the man’s jacket in her rush to get to her own stuff, but she paused when she felt the weight of the wallet clump across her knee. It was heavy, which was always a good sign, and she tore it open, looking within, as if she expected to find food inside.

There was money, enough pound notes to choke a horse. She crumpled them in one hand and reached for her miniature purse. They would help her out. Trembling fingers let go of the wallet, dumping it flat on the floor, and for a moment, she feared he’d wake up.

She struggled to her feet, slipping her legs through the tiny vinyl shorts she’d bumped and ground so seductively to get the man to come to bed with her. He didn’t tell her his name, but she knew the kind of man he was, old money or some governmental import, a stiff conservative type who repressed his sexuality to the point that he was almost ready to explode. Those were the types who gave her most of her business.

She bent over double. Her stomach was sick, as if there were a solid lump of lead inside it. Her balance gave out and she grabbed the doorjamb, barking her forearm. The fresh pain cut through the haze of her dizzied brain and nausea for a few moments. Then she twirled back into the haze.

She couldn’t find her baby-T in the dark, and she didn’t want to hang around any longer. Something started to smell in the room, and her instincts told her to leave.

She grabbed her jacket and shrugged it over her shoulders, tugging it down and closed to cover her breasts. She hoped that nobody would catch her before she got home.

Home was a swirling morass of half-remembered images. Once she got some fresh air, or at least London air, into her lungs, she figured she’d feel better. Her head was pounding, and she could barely maneuver her feet into her calf-length boots. When she bent to pull the zipper up on one, she tumbled to the floor again.

Bile rose in her throat, and she spit a wad onto the floor. Vile sourness permeated her mouth, but she wasn’t sticking around even to wash it clear. She bent and yanked up the zipper on the other boot and staggered back to her feet. Pain raced through her body like a jet of flame, but she managed to make it down three flights of steps without tumbling to her death or falling and breaking a leg.

The front desk was abandoned, and she thanked a God she wasn’t sure she believed in. Some bit of vanity made her not want to know what she looked like, at that moment. Nauseous, limping, wishing she was dead, she opened the door and a cool breeze hit her face. She closed the door tightly behind her and leaned back against it, gulping lungs full of air.

It wasn’t much, but the sweat soaking her skin had been whisked away, or at least nullified by the misty fog resting at street level. She looked both ways and tried to remember where she was.

Houses were packed tightly together, roads twisting at angles to each other. She could walk for a whole night before finding a path out of this maze. She shook the thought from her mind.

People lived here. All she had to do was pick a street, start walking and keep going. She had to keep an arm out to stay upright.

The road was quiet and empty, and for that she was thankful. If there were any potential customers still out…

I’m not a bloody whore. The thought came to her in a disjointed jumble.

She tugged her jacket tighter around her.

She heard footsteps behind her and turned, seeing a tall man, dressed in a long flowing coat and what looked like a top hat. She knew she had to be seeing things.

He was upon her in an instant, his hand reaching up for her throat, catching and closing around it in a viselike grip. She tried to squeak a cry for help past her constricted windpipe, but she was shoved down a causeway between buildings, her heels skidding as she tried to resist the strength of his pull. Her hands slapped at his forearm, but he wasn’t letting go.

That’s when she saw the flash of a knife.

Then she remembered why she was sick, why she couldn’t focus, and who this man was.

But by then, the Ripper was already beginning his grisly work.

1

Mack Bolan was nearing the end of the night’s grisly work. The iron grip of his hand clenched tight around the sentry’s throat, his Hell’s Belle Bowie knife plunging deep into the viscera of the mobster, all eleven inches of razor-sharp steel perforating and carving organs with ease. The man gurgled as the Executioner twisted and pulled the knife through his aorta, blood bubbling through half-dead lips before he was lowered, still twitching, to the ground.

There was never anything pretty about the work the Executioner did, but when it came to using a knife, that was some of the ugliest work of all. Even with the opened chest and belly of the guard facing away from him, Bolan could smell the hot, coppery scent of blood mixed with the stench of opened bowels. He concentrated on wiping the blood from his knife to prevent rust and stink sticking to the war blade, ruining its cutting strength and stealth fighting ability.

Sonny Westerbridge had mobbed up hard. The Bolan Effect was going according to plan—a series of skirmishes that raised the heat, forcing the enemy to draw all his resources together to protect himself. It was an old tactic, so tried and true that the Executioner could have plotted the maneuvers in his sleep.

“Hell!” came an angered cry off to his left, an unnecessary reminder to the soldier that while he could run a strategy like clockwork, all it took was one wrong glance at the wrong time to send things awry.

Stealth flew away on the wings of the guard’s cry, but Bolan’s sound-suppressed Colt spoke anyway. The lack of muzzle-flash from the weapon, and the muffled sounds would at least make the man in black that much harder to spot. A triburst of 9 mm slugs tore open the British gangster’s chest and throat in a straight line going up his breastbone. An unfired pistol clattered from the corpse’s unfeeling fingers just before he tumbled facefirst into the ground.

“They’re coming in from the west! Move in!” Westerbridge’s voice crackled from the dead sentry’s radio.

Bolan was caught between cursing the big London gangster and giving him a greater helping of respect. The soldier always respected that his enemies could kill him at any time. He never thought of himself as immortal or bulletproof. And Westerbridge had been prepared for him, springing a trap.

Bolan grabbed the radio off the dead man and stole into the darkness behind a couple of cargo containers as men moved with precision, covering one another as they began to swarm the lot. Crouching, the Executioner disappeared into the shadows, checking the odds against him.

“It’s just one man,” someone spoke up over the radio, and Bolan spun, diving from his hiding spot. Bullets sparked on the steel of the container he’d crouched against moments before. Leveling the 9 mm submachine gun with one hand, he triggered a burst from hip level, driving the two mobsters back behind their own cover.

Around him, gunners cut loose, their weapons speaking in the dark. He counted muzzle flashes, getting up to fifteen.

“Is that positive?” Westerbridge asked.

“Just one man,” came the answer.

Just one man, Bolan thought. Keep thinking that and lose your advantage.

“I don’t care, keep up the pressure,” the mobster said. “He’s done enough damage for a small army.”

Bolan decided to punctuate that statement with a special delivery from an attachment under the barrel of the submachine gun. Bolan had chosen the 9 mm Colt for two reasons—one was his familiarity with the line the Colt was descended from—the other was the weapon’s forearm was identical to the short-barrel M-16s favored by Special Forces. This made mounting the M-203 grenade launcher easy.

He triggered the first 40 mm shell at a point where a heavy concentration of muzzle-flashes originated. Six ounces of explosive core burst a shell of notched razor wire with terrifying effect. Once the thunderclap faded, screams of agony could be heard from wounded men.

Confusion coursed over the radio’s speaker, and the Executioner burst from the shadows, racing to the cover of another cargo container. Gunfire lapped at his heels, sparks rebounding off steel and concrete as he made a final, desperate dive for the protection of the huge trailer.

Two more gangsters swung around the area where Bolan had been moments before, but instead of finding their prey pinned down, they realized they had exposed themselves too soon. The Colt burped again, two salvos of slugs smashed into Westerbridge’s men, sending them into the next life.

“Everyone, switch to the alternate channel!” Westerbridge called desperately. The radio suddenly went dead.

Bolan knew Westerbridge was smart and he was scared. Most of the time, the Executioner could count on scared being more powerful than smart, mistakes giving him an easier path to victory. That was in an ideal situation, though.

Gunfire hammered the container he was behind, keeping him from popping out on either side to fire off another grenade. It was obvious that the gangsters didn’t really like the idea of being blown to shreds.

The Executioner slung the Colt, braced himself, then sprung for the top of the container. He gripped the edge and hauled himself up, looking for signs of other shooters who took to elevated fields of fire. There were two, at separate corners of the warehouse roof. Swinging the Colt around, he targeted one through his Aimpoint sight. Holding high against bullet drop, he stroked the trigger and planted a burst into the head of one gangster. Considering he was holding for center of mass, he was glad for any kind of hits. He swung toward the other gunner, who jolted at the sight of his partner going down.

Bolan’s night-black penetration clothing had made him nothing more than a dark smear against the roof of the container, one more shadow against other shadows. Westerbridge had radios and automatic weapons, communications and coordination, but he lacked night vision for his men.

A wild spray of gunfire rained on the container, but Bolan targeted the muzzle-flash, held slightly lower this time and drilled the other shooter.

The sound suppressor on the Colt made the signature of his kills imperceptible above the sporadic suppression fire clanking off the rolled steel construction beneath his feet. He stuffed a fresh 40 mm shell into the M-203, gave the Colt itself a fresh stick of Parabellum rounds and worked to the middle of the roof.

Westerbridge didn’t have night vision, but as the Executioner rose to his feet, staring down from the high ground at the London hardmen who had doubled in number, he did find that Westerbridge had lights.

Suddenly, everything was bathed in the yellowed, tired glow of dozens of lamp units. Two groups of men were caught out in the open, trying to flank what they thought was Bolan’s position, but the Executioner himself was instantly bathed in the harsh illumination, a tall, terrifying figure in black, festooned with lethal weaponry and grim resolve.

Bolan triggered the M-203 into the group on his left, then swinging the Colt to his right and holding down the trigger, ignored the blast that hammered into the heart of the squad of shooters. Body parts and weapons flew, chunks of shattered asphalt also raining on the containers around him, rattling like a brief hailstorm.

The Executioner held down the trigger, fanning the stunned and shocked second group, peppering them with a different kind of hailstorm—a barrage of high velocity, copper-jacketed hollowpoint rounds that punched and tore through flesh and bone, swatting bodies off their feet. The gunmen below struggled to regain their footing, scrambling for their lives, trying to avoid the lethal marksmanship on display.

The Colt finally locked empty, and the ragged troop of mobsters gathered themselves. Those who escaped the grenade blast with minor wounds and the effects of the concussion were already turning toward Bolan, weapons brandished, ready to give the man in black some payback now that he was empty.

The Executioner simply let his weapon drop on its sling, hands diving for the Beretta 93-R and Desert Eagle in a practiced double-draw that had carried him through countless such fights. In three steps, he was airborne, dropping off the edge of the cargo container. The handguns hammered out 9 mm and .44 Magnum missiles as the shooters aimed where he’d been only a heartbeat before. It wasn’t the most accurate use of his handguns, but Bolan was at close range, and he was working on instinct and a lifetime of practical experience. Whenever the muzzle of one of his handguns intersected the body of a fighting enemy, he pulled the trigger, dropping the gangster in a heap with a high-powered bullet through a vital organ.

The Executioner wasn’t standing still. He was charging his foes, moving among them and between them, so that when they turned to shoot at him, they would also catch themselves in their own cross fire.

The Desert Eagle locked open empty and he let the big hand cannon fall to the ground, snaking his arm around the throat of one gangster. With a shrug, Bolan swung the mobster across the front of his body, a living shield that was instantly greeted by a burst of gunfire.

Bolan jammed the still-loaded Beretta down the front of the dying gunman’s waistband, shifted his grip on the would-be killer and clutched the Englishman’s right hand, which was holding an Uzi. His trigger finger pressed down his shield’s finger, and the Uzi opened up on another gunman who pumped round after round from a heavy revolver into the mortally wounded man. Bolan could feel the spent energy of bullets sieving through his shield’s bloody torso into his armor.

The soldier spared the shooter a second burst of 9 mm slugs from the borrowed Uzi, then heaved the dead man aside, using the handle of his Beretta as leverage to spin the corpse into the arms of another gangster charging into the fray. The man dropped his weapon to catch what was left of his partner in crime, then looked in horror down the 9 mm muzzle instants before a single shot sent his brains vomiting out the back of his skull.

Bolan pivoted and dropped to one knee, dumped the almost empty magazine from his Beretta, slapped home a fresh one and continued to look for targets. He flicked the 93-R to burst mode, swatting two more mobsters off their feet with triple-shot salvos of supersonic slugs.

And then it was over.

The silence was deafening.

Bolan reloaded the guns he had on him, then went to retrieve his Desert Eagle from where he’d thrown it down. He checked the battlefield which was the cargo container yard, eyes surveying the carnage. Each body was checked to make sure it was dead and out of the fight. Using the partially spent Beretta, Bolan finished off those who were wounded and suffering from his grenade attacks, giving them a final pill to release them from their pain.

Westerbridge wasn’t among them.

Bolan picked up a new radio and listened to the mobster barking orders. What was left of his hardforce was bracing themselves, getting ready to repel the Executioner when he came for them in the warehouse.

The warehouse that an Interpol agent had lost her life trying to locate. Her murder had drawn the Executioner’s attention. Inside, Westerbridge was trafficking in everything from heroin to enough small arms to equip a small army. That traffic had cost a fellow warrior her life.

Bolan hadn’t known her personally. Neither had Hal Brognola. But Westerbridge was a vermin the Executioner had been intending to visit with a torch of cleansing flame. Other missions had popped up, delaying his actions.

And now, a cop was dead.

Bolan thumbed a 40 mm antiarmor shell into the breech of the M-203, targeted the loading dock doors and fired.

The explosion was sudden and violent. Two mobsters standing near the doors were thrown aside, a third almost cut in two by a quarter ton of steel slamming into his torso.

SONNY WESTERBRIDGE WAS pulling open the crate when the dock doors were hammered off their hinges by an invisible freight train of force. He was startled, but the surprise didn’t leave him flat-footed or numb.

Westerbridge hadn’t fought his way to the top of his organization only because he was six foot eight and 320 pounds of pure muscle. He was a man who fought for every bit he owned, learning every angle, his brain as formidable as his physical form. He wasn’t going to let some asshole in black take everything he had and flush it into the sewers.

Ham-sized hands wrapped around the grips of two Ultimax light machine guns. Built in Singapore, they resembled beefy Thompson submachine guns, just like in the old American gangster movies. Except, instead of holding pistol bullets, their big, fat round drums held one hundred rounds of high-powered 5.56 mm NATO ammunition capable of slicing a person in two.

Westerbridge slung two of the machine guns, then pulled out two more. These were on top of the big Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver he wore in a shoulder holster.

“By God, you fucking son of a bitch, you’re not going to take me down without a fight!” he shouted at the phantom fighter.

Gunfire rattled as two more of his shooters opened up on the shattered entrance. They swept the dock with automatic fire, making it inhospitable for any living creature trying to get through. Westerbridge’s instincts, however, warned him something was wrong.

The regular access door beside the opening suddenly kicked open, and the bastard in black stepped through, his weapon spitting a red pencil of flame, barely visible in the backlighting from the lot. Westerbridge watched another of his men spasm, pierced in a half-dozen locations.

“Eat shit and die!” Westerbridge snapped, lifting one Ultimax in his beefy hand and spraying an extended burst at the doorway. Sparks flew, chunks of wall and crates exploded in puffs as the mysterious attacker dived out of harm’s way.

The massive gangster sidestepped on the platform, held out his other hand and pulled the trigger on the other Ultimax, hosing the area where he thought his assailant was going to be with a stream of 5.56 mm slugs. Instead, he chewed up empty floor.

A round object sailed over the crates as his men took up firing positions. The gang boss bellowed a cry of warning, but the ball bounced and disappeared in a flash of thunder, smoke and chunks of shattered humanity. Westerbridge swung both guns back to where the grenade originated, holding down the trigger and shooting through the crates, splintering wood and denting metal with his firestorm of slugs. Even his thick, powerful arms ached from controlling the weight and recoil of the light machine guns. Sweat soaked through his suit as he cut loose with a throat-ripping roar of fury.

A shadowy form flashed around one aisle and Westerbridge sidestepped, taking cover behind a column of stored military supplies. He checked the load on both Ultimaxes, realizing that he was almost empty. He dropped the near empty guns and snatched a fresh one from its sling.

This time, he wasn’t going to grandstand and waste ammunition like an amateur. Just because he had four hundred rounds of firepower didn’t mean that it would find its target on automatic pilot. Both hands on the weapon, he stalked, keeping tight against the crates or anything that would stop a bullet.

Westerbridge didn’t have the benefit of the smaller attacker’s fleetness of foot and agility to dart between shelters from automatic fire. He poked slowly around one corner, spotting another gunman coming around the other way. The gangster’s mind flashed quickly on the fact that this guy wasn’t dressed in street clothes, and his face was smeared with black grease paint.

The massive gangster pulled the trigger a heartbeat before the man in black, pressing himself flat to the corner. A fireball from the front of the Ultimax burned like the inferno of hell just where he intended the mystery man to go.

THE EXECUTIONER HIT the ground as Sonny Westerbridge’s torrent of machine-gun fire exploded. The big man may not have been able to beat Bolan in a footrace, but with his finger on the trigger, and at eight hundred rounds per minute, he had the advantage, Kevlar body armor or not, with the deadly weapon. Bolan rolled hard to keep out of sight and out of the way of the blistering fusillade.

From behind the sheltering concrete of a support column, Bolan weighed his options. The distance was too short for a 40 mm grenade to prime and explode. One of his conventional fragmentation grenades would likely take him out as well, if the shrapnel and shock wave weren’t both deflected by the rows of shipping crates.

“You’re gonna die, little man,” Sonny Westerbridge said with a chuckle. “Your choice how—”

The Executioner wasn’t a man who was afraid to die. Whether it was in the terrorist wars of the Middle East, stopping a Chinese spy plot threatening world peace, or just locked in battle with gangsters in Soho, he knew that one day his luck would run out, defending the weak and helpless on any scale. He wasn’t, however, going to give up.

“Was that the same choice you gave Brenda Kightley, Westerbridge?” Bolan called out. This fight wasn’t going to be won with mere bullets and brawn. The giant gangster was too savvy, too tough for a simple slug in the brain box.

“Kightley, Kightley… I don’t remember no whore named Kightley, mate,” Westerbridge answered. He was moving. Trying to home in on the Executioner’s voice.

“An honest cop, ended her days with her head twisted 180 degrees, floating in Surrey Water,” Bolan returned. He shifted his position after speaking, getting ten feet away from where he’d hidden. Neither man could see the other, though Bolan heard the indefinite scuffle of Westerbridge’s heavy tread.

“Oh her. Fiery little minx… She really kicked when I gave her pretty little head a turn. You her partner? Naw, you’re a Yank, and packing way too much firepower to be a London cop. Boyfriend?”

Bolan paused. The row he was heading toward was composed of cardboard boxes filled with contraband electronics. They’d provide some protection against a salvo of 5.56 mm military rounds, but hardly enough. Westerbridge was herding him toward a position of weakness. The Executioner cursed himself for not being fully aware of his battlefield. It was a small detail, but it could mean the difference between a crippled arm and full protection.

A minor, hairbreadth mistake could put him at a disadvantage in a serious, up close conflict. Bolan pulled one of his fragmentation grenades off his harness and cupped it gently. He rolled the mini-blaster on the floor, making sure it clattered and skittered on the hard concrete.

Westerbridge spotted it and bounced into view.

Bolan opened fire, but the big gangster’s light beige suit only registered blackened tears as Parabellum rounds struck and were stopped by a layer of Kevlar. He went for a “failure drill,” swinging from center of mass to the head, ripping off another burst, but the big man’s skull and shoulders were back behind the protection of metal-skinned containers. Hollowpoint rounds sparked off steel, and the soldier stopped shooting.

The London giant was not going to be easy.

The Ultimax’s barrel of the Ultimax poked around a corner, flaming, but Bolan was as well entrenched as Westerbridge. This would keep up until the law responded to the gunfire and explosions.

With his back to the hard concrete wall the warehouse’s office stood on, Westerbridge was hard to approach.

Bolan’s eyes narrowed, and he stuffed a new 40 mm shell into the breech of the grenade launcher. The stubby little M-576 round held scores of buckshot pellets, making the M-203 the equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun.

The Executioner stepped into the open, figuring his angles like a pool player, and triggered the blast from the rifle-grenade launcher combo, spitting out pellets in a sizzling barrage at the concrete embankment at Westerbridge’s back. The big gangster might have been unapproachable, but the swarm of round projectiles struck stone hard. Some embedded in the concrete, others bounced and sprayed back in a fan of peppering projectiles.

The gangster growled and grunted in rage and discomfort, stumbling into the open and spraying wildly. His pant leg on one side was soaked with blood, and his face was twisted into a mask of fury. Bolan felt two hammer blows strike him as he sidestepped. One round smashed his weapon from his fingers, plucking it from his hands and sending it hammering back into his chest. A second impact rolled off his vest-protected shoulder, the hit feeling like someone had dropped a small safe on his collarbone.

Westerbridge’s Ultimax locked open empty, but Bolan could see that the man had a massive revolver holstered, and another light machine gun slung over his shoulder. Right arm numbed, Bolan was slow in grabbing for his Desert Eagle, his left hand instead twisting and plucking the Beretta from its shoulder holster, trying to outdraw the huge mobster.

But Westerbridge wasn’t going for a fast draw. Instead, like a freight train, he lunged at Bolan, using the empty Ultimax like a spear and jarring Bolan’s left forearm. The Italian machine pistol went flying from the Executioner’s numbed fingers, but he managed to swing up his right fist, stuffed with the Desert Eagle, to jam it into Westerbridge’s gut.

The wounded giant didn’t even flinch from the impact, nor did he react to the first gunshot that exploded against his heavily muscled, Kevlar-wrapped side. Instead, massive arms slammed down on Bolan’s shoulders, driving him to his knees with almost crippling force.

“I told you! I told you, but you didn’t believe me!” Westerbridge shouted. “You’re gonna get like that Kightley bitch, except I’m twisting your head all the fucking way off!”

Bolan hooked his right arm behind the giant’s good leg and yanked back hard, punching the Englishman hard in the crotch. Westerbridge toppled backward, arms windmilling, fat, stubby fingers clawing at air and crates to keep from crashing to the floor. It was to no avail, and Bolan kept up the attack. Even as the British kingpin’s foot left the floor, Bolan rolled forward. Using his own broad, muscular chest for leverage, he heaved with all the strength in his right arm on the big man’s leg, hammering his left elbow with punishing force into Westerbridge’s lower gut. The sound of a popping knee joint accompanied a strangled belch and the smell of vomit in the wake of the attack.

The Executioner lunged off Westerbridge’s body, grabbing the Beretta and the Desert Eagle. His right arm still felt like limp spaghetti hanging from a battered shoulder, and his left forearm still tingled from the gangster’s chop, but he twisted, aiming both cannons as Westerbridge was clawing for his revolver in its holster.

There was no contest this time in the fast draw. Bolan had the drop on Westerbridge and triggered both his handguns, only marginally recognizing the feeling of a heavy .44-caliber slug rolling across his ballistic-nylon protected ribs. The big man’s head exploded. One lifeless blue eye stared at the ceiling, the other dangling from its socket from the impact of a .44 Magnum slug that had cratered his cheek.

The Executioner staggered to his feet, breathing hard. He shrugged his right shoulder, and from experience knew that it was only a minor injury, at worst a hairline fracture. He was certain that his left forearm was similarly bruised and battered from the way it tingled. Everything else, he could tell from a few twists of his torso, were mere bruises.

Bolan looked at the corpse at his feet, and frowned.

He wouldn’t have much time to rest and mend.

There were plenty of murderers like Westerbridge in the world, and perhaps because the Executioner had waited too long to take his shot at the English kingpin, a cop was dead.

The howls of London’s police cars reached his ears.

It was time to go.

2

Mack Bolan stopped at his war bag, sore and aching, but the first thing he did was pull out a bottle of antiseptic, no-rinse cleaning gel, and squeezed a healthy blob into the palm of his hand. Rubbing them together, then across his face and up into his hair, he smelled the rapidly evaporating alcohol content of the gel burning in his nostrils. After a few moments, his hands and face were dry, and the smell of gunpowder and blood on him was cut by half. He pulled out a packet of paper towels and gave himself another squeeze of the gel, and wiped the grime off his hands and face, so he wouldn’t look like he’d just been engaged in a commando raid.

The approaching London police cars were small little boxes that the Executioner knew no American lawman would ever want to be driving around in. He stuffed the broken Colt SMG and its grenade launcher into his war bag, and covered himself up with a boot-length black duster that he had rolled up inside.

The Underground entrance at Brunel Road wasn’t busy at that time of night, and dressed in black, with his collar flipped up, he didn’t look so much like a badass as someone trying to dress too hip for his age group. Bolan wasn’t interested in making the cover of GQ, though, so he didn’t worry about what people thought of the big guy in a black turtleneck, the duster and boots. In fact, he encountered more than a couple of people who made him look positively tame, adorned in black leather and gleaming, reflective steel studs and body piercings.

He collapsed into a seat on the train and allowed himself to relax, rummaging a bottle of acetaminophen out of a side pocket of his bag and swallowing four of them dry. The ache in his bones subsided some as they came out from under the river and stopped at Wapping to take on and let off passengers. By the time he reached his stop, he was feeling refreshed and revitalized.

Getting up and out of the Underground system, he jogged north, stopping occasionally along the way to check for any tails.

There were no hunters in evidence, so Bolan pulled a bottle of water from his gear bag and took a sip, then continued walking toward the bed-and-breakfast where he’d rented a room.

Bolan passed a small synagogue and was crossing Nelson Street when a police car crawled around a corner. The soldier lowered his head and casually stepped into an alley without skipping a beat.

His shoulders tightened, instincts kicking into gear, footsteps softening to mere whispers as he gently put his weight on the balls of his feet. The war bag was lowered gently to the ground, the duster’s front flap opening so that Bolan could reach the Beretta 93-R under his left arm.

He’d ducked into the alley to avoid police attention, and anything louder than the sound-suppressed Beretta would bring that weight down on him like a ton of bricks.

The Executioner had sworn an oath long ago—never to take the life of a lawman trying to do his job. He didn’t think that would be a risk. London policemen were rarely armed, and any cops who did pack heat were members of the famous “Flying Squad.” And by all reckoning, the Flying Squad would be back at Rotherhithe, all the way across the river, cleaning up the carnage of Westerbridge’s shattered empire.

Danger was always present, though. He remembered that over the past couple months, there had been a series of murders in the area. Nothing recent enough to make the headlines, but enough to have still been the talk of the diner where Bolan had eaten.

Bolan disappeared into the shadows of the alley, the blunt nose of the suppressor leading the way.

What he stumbled upon was a scene out of madness. A woman lay on the glistening ground, her eyes still open, staring sightlessly. Her belly was slit from pubis to sternum, the sheets of abdominal muscle parted and rolled over the sides of her body like rubbery flats. Her stomach was emptied out, her intestines thrown over one shoulder, like a thick, rubbery boa. Bolan’s jaw clenched as he watched the man over her finish scrawling, in blood, a cryptic phrase.

“The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.”

The man himself was an image out of a fever dream—a monstrosity ripped from a Victorian nightmare and made real. Draped in a long flowing cloak, the kind worn by period actors, and with a top hat adorning his head, he moved with an eerie swiftness and efficiency. He was tall and long-limbed, black gloves covering his big hands, and Bolan could have concealed a bazooka under the loose cloak the stranger wore. The Executioner wasn’t a man given to cold fear, but surprise and shock washed over him.

The part of his mind that was the man, Mack Bolan, reeled, stunned by the combination of atrocity and the knowledge of a century of legend and mythology smacking him in the face. He half hoped that there was a movie camera nearby, that this was the filming of some movie. But the Executioner knew better.

There was no faking the stench of a disemboweled person, no faking the ugly swelling of a slashed throat. Not to someone who had seen similar atrocities in the basement abattoirs of Mafia turkey doctors.

The Executioner snapped up the Beretta and triggered a 3-round burst, catching the graffiti-writing murderer between the shoulder blades, smashing him facefirst into his own work, smearing some letters as he slumped down the wall. Shooting a man in the back didn’t even register in Mack Bolan’s mind.

There was no need for judge and jury in this case. The murderer was caught, literally red-handed. Bolan approached the two bodies, keeping the Beretta’s muzzle aimed at the head of the unmoving figure.

Blank eyes stared at him from the dead woman, and once more, Bolan was reminded of the niggling anger he’d unleashed on Sonny Westerbridge. Perhaps if he’d arrived a few minutes earlier, those eyes would still see, instead of glaring sightlessly.

Bolan closed his eyes, trying to banish the thoughts. He was only human. He couldn’t swoop down and save the world from itself.

Something rustled and Bolan snapped his attention to the figure of the Jack the Ripper imitator on the ground. He was twirling, leg lashing up and knocking the Beretta from his grasp with a bone-jarring impact.

Bolan lunged and grabbed the leg.

Unlike with Westerbridge, however, this fighter was prepared. He was already retrieving his limb from the Executioner’s reach, one foot slamming into Bolan’s ankle. Only the tough leather of his boot kept bone and muscle from being anything more than bruised by the kick, but it still took the soldier off his feet.

The Ripper rolled to his knees, sneering, his top hat fallen away to reveal a face obscured by black makeup across his eyes and cheeks. Bolan only had a glimpse of the face, before he returned his attention to protecting himself, lifting a forearm to block a second kick aimed for his head. The strike hurt like hell, but he didn’t feel numbed paralysis in his fingers signaling a broken arm, and it was better than a skull fracture.

The Executioner lunged at the Ripper, shoulder cutting across the murderer at knee level and sending him toppling into the corpse of the murder victim. With all the strength he could muster, Bolan swung a fist toward the head of the murderer, but the cloaked killer lifted his shoulder and blocked the blow with a solid knob of muscular flesh and bone. The Ripper hooked his hand over Bolan’s forearm and pulled back hard, drawing a knife into the fight. Bolan raised his other forearm, catching his adversary across his wrist, blocking a lethal downward stab.

This wasn’t the blade of Jack the Ripper. It was a Gerber Light Military Fighter, six inches of razor-sharp, stainless steel with a decidedly modern glass-injected, nylon handle. Either way, it was sharp, it was pointy, and if Bolan slipped, he would be heartbeats away from being carved into thin slices.

The two men struggled against each other, the Executioner off balance, but his back and legs holding him up against the splayed-out but aggressive Ripper. They held that pose, a long tense moment, muscles straining, breaths creaking from closed-off throats, sweat soaking down through matted hair. It was a fight that would go on until they both suddenly gave out, muscles collapsing, and in that moment, the killer would have the slight edge. It was do or die, so Bolan let himself be folded under the pressure.

The Executioner rolled with the momentum of his opponent’s pull, dropping himself farther out of the knife’s slicing arc, and allowing himself the leverage to bring both boots up and rocketing into the Ripper’s knife-arm and chest. The impact jarred them both apart, separating them and giving Bolan breathing space to somersault back and go for his Desert Eagle.

So much for stealth. Bolan knew the Ripper had to be wearing some kind of armor, armor that needed more penetration than the Beretta’s hollowpoint rounds could provide. Even if he brought down half of the London Police Force and a regiment of SAS troops, this dangerous psychotic needed to be taken out of action, and that meant only the special kind of bone-shattering force that a 240-grain hollowpoint round could provide.

He triggered the big pistol, and the Ripper leaped for cover, his cloak obscuring the outline of his head. The fact that he was still moving meant that Bolan’s snap-shot missed. The Ripper’s dash continued, his head and body obscured by the cloak, making it almost impossible to determine where to shoot for a solid stop.

For the second time that night, Bolan offered up a grudging helping of respect for an opponent. This man may have proved a mentally unstable slasher, but he was also a formidable combatant. The Executioner chased him with three more .44 Magnum slugs in rapid succession, but between his armor and his speed, the Ripper reached the shielding bulk of a trash Dumpster, Bolan’s last two shots hammering steel instead of flesh.

The soldier took the brief pause to reload his Desert Eagle when the flashing outline of the cloak whipped around the corner of the garbage container. He triggered a fresh slug into the shadowy mass, and was answered with the sudden flare of a muzzle-flash. Impacts hammered along the Executioner’s chest, knocking him back on his heels, and Bolan fell to the ground, burning pain searing across his ribs.

The killer stepped out into the open, leveling the boxy frame of an Uzi- or Ingram-style machine pistol at Bolan’s fallen form. He inched closer, keeping the muzzle aimed at the downed warrior, then cursed, looking both ways up and down the alley.

“R-1, R-1, report,” came the crackle of a radio from inside the folds of the Ripper’s cloak.

“I’ve encountered resistance, I had to take action,” the killer answered. “Christ! I need help cleaning up this shit.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? This bloke comes out of nowhere and shoots me in the back. Next thing I know, a perfectly good serial killer scene is sporting enough brass from automatic weapons to start a fucking band!”

“Who was he?” the radio called.

“How the fuck should I know? We’ll run his face and prints after we dump him,” the Ripper replied.

“Dump him?”

“Of course dump him, you idiots,” the killer snapped. “What, we’re supposed to have the police believe that someone pulled an imitation of Jack the Ripper, and then, in the same alley in the same night, a heavily armed commando-type gets shot to death?”

“We’ve been yanking their chains for years, Ripper One.”

“Just get here and help me out.”

“We’re on our way, hold your ground,” came the answer over the communicator.

Ripper One stepped even closer, kicking the Desert Eagle out of Bolan’s limp fingers. The massive handgun clattered down the alley, and the murderer stepped back, flexing his grip on the handle of his MAC-11. Since the Executioner was down, he popped the empty clip and fed it a fresh one, never letting the muzzle sway from the motionless soldier. If there was any life in him, he’d have at least one shot to put things right if the man moved in mid-reload.

“You were pretty heavily armed for a short jaunt tonight, eh? A machine pistol and that fucking bazooka… I’ll be sporting bruises for a month. I wonder who you are?”

Ripper One tapped his toe into Bolan’s ribs, looking for any response. The man in black didn’t move in response to the kick. The Ripper realized that Bolan had only barely fallen for the oldest trick in the book, and only after a fight that left him battered and bruised. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake that the Executioner had and let his attention wander from a fallen foe.

At least not until he heard the scrunch of wheels at the close end of the alley.

“It’s about time,” the Ripper said, looking over his shoulder.

I agree, the Executioner thought, still feigning death.

Bolan was waiting to make a move the moment the killer dropped his guard, but so far the man was a by-the-book professional. Only a reluctance to have to police more bullet casings on his otherwise “pristine” murder scene had kept the madman from pulling the trigger and splattering Bolan’s brains all over the alley. But a gory head shot would have made even more of a mess of bloody evidence that wouldn’t match.

Whoever this guy was, he was obsessive about maintaining an image. Obsessive to the point that he might be in fear for his life if his ruse was blown by the slightest misstep.

The stench of a cover-up overwhelmed the stink of gore and gunpowder in the alley.

Bolan’s arm was starting to fall asleep, folded under his back, the steel frame of the Beretta poking him in the back and making him ache all the more. Falling on the gun was like taking a massive stapler to his spine, and his arm felt like it was going to pop from its socket.

But it was better than the pain of having his lungs collapse if the Ripper’s bullets had gotten through Bolan’s Kevlar vest—and it made him look like a convincing corpse.

The Ripper and his friends surrounded Bolan, three of them in total, and they bent to hook his shoulders and his feet. The Executioner’s gun hand dangled, Beretta still fisted. He fired point-blank into the foot of one man, his 9 mm slug smashing through leather, flesh and bone, raising a howl of agony.

Curses of fright filled the air and Bolan exploded into action, firing at the Ripper at crotch level. The killer managed to back off and reach for his own machine pistol.

Bolan had registered that his enemies had almost full-torso protection on their armor, even having a groin tabard. A pelvic hit would have dropped a man instantly thanks to the vulnerable bones and blood vessels at that intersection of the body. The Executioner fired a second burst at the Ripper to discourage him, then swung his weapon toward the man over his shoulder. A kick lashed out to disarm him again, but Bolan rolled out of the way. He was sick of being left weaponless this night. To express his displeasure at the subsequent effort, he fired a burst that tore out the thigh of the attacker.

Another man appeared from the van, aiming a weapon that outclassed the machine pistols and handguns at play in the alley—a Belgian Minimi-SAW. The weapon had two hundred rounds and was meant for use against vehicles, large concentrations of enemy troops, and as a force multiplier for small units against larger forces, much like the Ultimax that had nearly claimed Bolan’s life only an hour earlier.

Unlike Sonny Westerbridge, this guy knew how to lay down suppressive fire with a squad automatic weapon, dividing the alley between the Executioner and his opponents. The gunner was good, creating a wall of flying lead that would prove lethal to Bolan should he try to attack the Ripper and his crew, but stopped short of harming the trio. Bolan dived for cover behind a Dumpster as the storm of autofire hammered at him. Even the rolled steel shell of the container didn’t stop some of the slugs and bullets whizzed through perforated steel. The Ripper limped rapidly past him, and Bolan aimed for his head, triggering a 9 mm slug, but was driven back under cover by the rain of doom from the vehicle.

“Go! Go! Go!” the Ripper shouted.

Bolan made mental notes about the mysterious killer. Full-torso body armor, communications, unmarked transport and a machine gunner whose skill with a light machine gun rivaled his own—this guy was no simple madman.

The Ripper came back for his men, hauling them along while the gunner in the van continued his rock-and-roll serenade. He pushed his companions into the side door of the van, a black Volkswagen. The Executioner swung around, firing the Beretta until it ran dry, but the vehicle tore off, wheels screaming like a ghost, disappearing into the streets of Whitechapel.

Bolan raced to catch a sign of the van, but it whirled out of sight.

Breathless, exhausted, covered with more injuries, Bolan contemplated the deadly mix of horrific history and decidedly modern technology.

Bolan glanced back to the lifeless form of the woman, defeat weighing him down as much as exhaustion.

Brass casings surrounded her, like a halo of golden tears flickering in the half-light spilling off the street. Her blue eyes met his, one final question in them, maybe even an answer that she would know, but could not tell anymore, an answer that would only come to light by finding her murderers.

He pulled out the small digital camera he kept in his pocket, a flat, bleeding-edge piece of technology that would allow him to take photographs of evidence he’d stumble across in the course of his battles. He got a picture of the victim’s face, though not quite sure what he’d do with it. Maybe Aaron Kurtzman back at Stony Man Farm could run the image, give him a head start on investigating the woman’s past and figure out why an armed commando team would dress as the Jack the Ripper and murder her in Whitechapel.

The weary soldier retrieved his Desert Eagle and his war bag, and limped off toward his room.

He was going to have to get as much rest as he could before morning because he was going to bring judgment to Jack the Ripper.

3

Liam Tern rubbed his chest, feeling the sore spots where two .44 Magnum slugs had connected solidly with his rib cage, hammering him even through the Kevlar body armor he wore. Suddenly, he was glad to have been wearing the heavy vestments of his Jack the Ripper disguise. Its flapping folds had obscured his body, throwing off the shooter’s point of aim.

“How are Danny and Serge?” he asked, entering the improvised sick bay.

“Serge looks like he’s gonna lose his leg. Danny’s foot is a hell of a mess,” the old man said, stripping off his rubber gloves. He hobbled over to the sink and Tern glanced over to Serge, who was in a doped-out state on the table. His leg had been torn apart by a point-blank burst of autofire, the muscle shredded away to expose gleaming white bone, shattered by a single 9 mm slug.

Danny was sitting in the corner, looking at the table, his face gaunt, his eyes wide with fear. “If Serge is going to lose that leg—”

Tern shook his head.

“Take it easy, Danny. He’ll be looked after,” Tern cooed in reassurance. He smiled gently at the young man, giving his brush-short red hair a tousle.

Tern glanced back at the old man, who shrugged and turned his back.

The blade’s handle was in Tern’s palm, but the wounded young man heard the sound of para cord striking the professional’s grip. Danny’s forearm bore down hard across Tern’s, his hazel eyes going wide, seeing betrayal.

“You fucking liar!” the kid bellowed.

Tern swept his hand down into Danny’s face, plunging his thumb into his eye. There was a grunt and a grimace, but the youngest member of the Ripper crew wasn’t letting go. The kid wasn’t distracted by the attack. An eye gouge wasn’t like getting a belly full of steel. Tern didn’t blame the kid as he pushed to get his knife up and into Danny’s gut.

“Just relax and die, Danny,” Tern snarled.

“Oh for God’s sake,” the old man grumbled.

Danny’s forehead suddenly exploded, blood spraying across Tern’s features, stinging his eyes. Hazel eyes stared sightlessly, head lolling on the shoulders of the dead man.

Tern dumped Danny on the table against the wall and turned just in time to see the old man level his pistol and put a mercy shot into Serge’s forehead. Serge jerked with the single impact, then was still. He couldn’t feel any more pain.

The old man unscrewed the sound suppressor from his pistol and plopped it in his pocket, holstering the gun.

“De Simmones…” Tern began.

“Lift with your knees, not your back,” the old man said with a wink. “We’ll dispose of them later.”

Tern sighed and shoved his shoulder under Danny’s sternum, lifting him up and flopping him onto Serge’s corpse.

He regretted having to kill Danny and Serge. Having two injured men would have alerted the authorities. A man with a leg broken by a point-blank burst of submachine-gun fire would have made any hospital suspicious. Serge would have bled to death in the amount of time it would have taken to find a physician with the skill and facilities to save his life. The man’s bleeding and the loss of the limb were his doom anyway.

Danny, on the other hand, was an even greater risk. He hadn’t been prepared for resistance, and getting shot gave Tern an expectation of what the kid was going to be like. He’d signed onto the job easy enough, having cut his way through the ranks, proving his toughness against the untrained shit-kickers in Ireland.

It was one thing to handle disorganized protesters and terrorists who were more successful at blowing themselves up with their own bombs. Against a fighting man like the soldier they’d just faced, Tern had realized Danny folded. He’d seen a killing machine whirling in action. Two of them, when Tern counted himself. The display had unseated Danny. In the future, there would have been too much of a pause, that niggling panic waiting to flare up and slow down the young fighter.

Tern rolled Danny’s eyelids closed then wrapped both of the dead bodies in plastic tarp.

“De Simmones said you needed help,” Carlton said as he entered the room. He was much shorter than Tern, only five foot six, but his upper body was thick and broad. Forearm muscles were laid in thick, rippling sheets poking out from under rolled-up sleeves, and he hefted one end of the tarp-wrapped body pack as easily as he handled the monstrous recoil of a machine gun.

“Makes you wonder what’ll happen when it’s our time,” Tern said.

Carlton shrugged his blocky shoulders. “We may get lucky and go out fast. Frankly, I always save a bullet for myself, so I don’t end up suffering like Serge.”

Tern shook his head. Serge had been a member of their team for a while. He was a vetted, blooded soldier. Unlike Danny, Serge had been hardened against tough odds.

As depressing as it was for the new kid to turn out to be a failure, it was worse when a longtime partner was dropped, and so easily.

No, it wasn’t easy.

The man in black was a damned good fighter. And Serge’s mangled leg was the source of agony. Tern still felt the bruises on his forearm where his fingers had dug in.

Tern took the other end of the tarp and they carried it to the van. “We’ll take the bodies to an incinerator.”

Carlton nodded as he backed into the van, the doors being held open by De Simmones and Courtley, the driver.

Tern glanced at De Simmones who just smiled. The smile said everything that Tern suspected. He and his men were expendable, and De Simmones wasn’t afraid to put a bullet into any of their heads.

“Come on, we have a long day ahead of us,” De Simmones replied.

“What about the man in black?” Carlton asked.

“I’ve called up Ripper Two for this job,” Tern told him. “If there’s anything left of him when they’re done with him, we’ll get called in for the kill.”

“Right now, we need distance,” De Simmones stated. “We’re an organization. Let’s take advantage of our strength in numbers, all right?”

Tern smirked.

He was glad, for now, that he was counted as a useful number. He still intended to keep his guns close in case that ledger ever changed against him.

HAL BROGNOLA KNEW the mathematics of asset versus risk that Mack Bolan provided to the Stony Man Farm project. While he was a useful member in the program to keep America safe from threats foreign and domestic, there was also a factor of risk whenever the Executioner was involved.

At that moment, the only mental math he wanted to do was to add five hours to the time to figure out where his longtime friend was while he was stuck in the Farm’s War Room, keeping a close eye on a Phoenix Force mission.

“It’s almost six there, isn’t it?” Brognola asked.

“That’s right,” Bolan answered. “You’re burning the midnight oil.”

“What’s this about?” Brognola asked.

“I was on the way back to my place when I came on a murder scene, and the murderer,” Bolan explained. “He was wearing body armor and packing a machine pistol. And he is good.”

“‘Is,’ as in still running around?” Brognola inquired.

“Still driving around, with a van full of automatic weapons, two injured coworkers, and one of the best machine gunners I’ve ever run across,” Bolan said. “I’ve been cleaning up injuries from that fight for the past couple hours.”

“All this to murder some woman in…” Brognola began. “Whitechapel?”

“Yeah. The killer was dressed up as Jack the Ripper.”

“You’re joking with me, right?”

“Have I ever yanked your chain before, Hal?”

“Jack the Ripper–style killing, in Whitechapel, with a machine gunner for backup?”

Bolan grunted in affirmation. “At the very least. He had two more and a driver. But one suffered some severe injuries. He might not make it.”

Brognola picked up his coffee mug. “Nothing major is going on here that you have to attend to. It sounds like you should stay and see what’s behind this murder.”

“Thanks, Hal. Think you can get me some authorization?”

“For what?”

“I want to work with the local Ripper task force.”

“You think this guy’s been doing this for a while?” Brognola asked.

“I did some research. I ran across references to Ripper-style murders, and there have been nine in the past three years.”

“Any solved?”

“Only one. Scotland Yard couldn’t link the other eight to the guy they caught, so they think he was just a copycat,” Bolan answered. “I’m not much of a gambler, but I’m betting there was a very definite pattern on mutilation going on.” Bolan described the murder scene he’d stumbled across.

“The intestines were thrown over the right shoulder, just as in the original Ripper murders? Wasn’t that an execution according to Masonic ritual?” Brognola asked.

“No. When the Masons executed their victims, they removed the heart and threw it over the left shoulder,” Bolan answered. “There’s a belief that the ‘Juwes’ graffiti was meant to throw authorities off the trail.”

“I’ll make some calls to Scotland Yard,” Brognola said. “Maybe I can get you in on the investigation.”

“Even if I only touch base with them for a few hours, it’ll still give me some leads to go on. If I can’t, then I’ll do some bouncing around the underworld. Someone had to supply those guys with their hardware. Machine pistols might be easy to sell, but I took out one major dealer who sold squad automatic weapons. There can’t be many of those in England, let alone London.”

“Striker, just be careful. I’ll call you later. Get some rest, okay?” Brognola said.

“I’ll try,” Bolan answered over the phone link, before it died.

THE SUN’S RISING did nothing to lighten Inspector Melissa Dean’s mood as she got out of her car. Officers were surrounding the alley, and she had passed by the other street. It was cut off on both ends, the flickering lights atop police vehicles splashing the slick streets with reds and blues. She walked closer, knowing from the call what to expect.

It still wasn’t a pretty smell, the stench of a gutted body yet fresh in the air.

It also smelled like the aftermath of a fireworks display. She bent and picked up a piece of brass, rolling it between her fingertips. The bottom had no stamp of caliber or maker, let alone a lot number, and she frowned. From the look of it, it was a simple 9 mm case. She’d seen enough of them working homicide, but none so clean.

There was a polite cough and she looked up to see a tall Asian man standing nearby. She recognized his pale, round face instantly, his long black hair flowing in the wind.

Kevin Goh managed a weak smile as he walked over to her, holding a plastic evidence bag full of similar brass casings. On the ground, white tape marked where each cartridge had been found. More tape marks were on the walls, pointing out bullet impacts.

Dean started to count them as Goh walked with her, but the number of holes and casings was enormous.

“Sorry to ring you up so early,” Goh said, shrugging against the cold.

“A Ripper-style murder and a gunfight?” Dean asked, looking around.

“Yeah. At the other end of the alley, there’s disintegrating belt links as well as rifle ammunition. NATO caliber.”

“In English for those of us who don’t speak gun,” Dean said.

Goh smirked. “Someone used a full-blown machine gun, as well as at least three other weapons here last night.”

“Three weapons?”

“A pistol. And two different kinds of submachine gun. One was firing 9 mm shorts. One was firing 9 mm Luger rounds. And the pistol was a Magnum autoloader.”

Dean shook her head, running her fingers through her short blond hair. “Magnum.”

“Forty-four to be exact,” Goh told her.

Dean pursed her lips. “Someone with a Dirty Harry complex?”

“Someone took a big bite out of Sonny Westerbridge’s skull last night. And .44 Magnum and 9 mm machine pistol ammunition mixed in with what Sonny’s men had,” Goh replied. He plucked the casing from her fingertips and showed her the blank end stamp. “The Magnums were also unmarked.”

“But Sonny’s usually based out of Rotherhithe,” Dean said.

“Not anymore. He and nearly forty-five of his men are dead. Gunfire, explosions and one knifing.”

Dean shook her head. “I’m sure the knife job wasn’t like this.”

Not if it’s like our usual boy, she added mentally.

Goh looked at her for a moment, and Dean realized that the Asian detective was a recent addition to London’s finest. Homicides West, East and South, as well as the Serious and Organized Crime unit, were familiar with a pattern, over the years, of criminals and terrorists who came to brutal ends.

There were rumors that these were covert SAS operations, or even the work of men from overseas. When the homicide teams tried to come up with a clue, they were usually stonewalled. The stonewalling was frustrating, but since the victims were thugs and murderers themselves, the police reluctantly dropped the cases. One of these common links was the blank ammunition, and the predominant calibers used. Forty-four Magnum and 9 mm Luger.

They never had much more on this mystery force except that it was small, efficient and rarely brought harm to any bystanders. Dean decided to keep quiet about this, but she couldn’t help wonder if the death of Westerbridge and his men were related to this alley fight in any way other than the mystery fighter.

“Two sides shooting at each other and using the same kind of phantom ammo,” Dean said. “Any information on the victim?”

“No bullet holes in her, except for what looked like an old scar on a flap of her stomach,” Goh told her.

Dean walked toward the body, Goh on her heels. She knelt before the dead woman. The body had been disturbed, half pushed onto its side, probably by fighters bumping into her. The grime on the floor of the alley was scuffed with boot marks where big, heavy men had battled.

“Are we done taking pictures of the body?”

Goh nodded toward the crime-scene photographers. “They’ll be taking her to forensics in a few minutes.”

Dean sighed. “I’ll look around here and try to get a feel for the crime scene.”

Goh tilted his head. “You seem to have a feeling already, Melissa.”

Dean swept the alley, drifting off for a moment, looking at the pockmarks from weapons, smelling the stink of urban warfare and serial murder all sewn up into a tiny corridor of stone and garbage. It was a claustrophobic place where men had tried to kill each other, and one presumably innocent woman lost her life.

The vibes given by the scene were strange.

If enigmas had a scent, Melissa Dean now knew how to recognize it.

Sometimes, if you’ve been to enough murder scenes, you developed a taste for what it was all about. Some were madness. Some were fury. Fueled by jealousy, betrayal, loneliness—she’d had felt them all.

This was different. There was no emotion in this.

The body was too perfectly filleted, too neatly placed. Just how the other Ripper kills were set up.

But the addition of Westerbridge’s killer…that was a new twist.

How could it not be? The kind of firepower used doesn’t show up more than once a year in London’s back streets, she thought. Now twice in one night?

There’s no such thing as coincidence.

Dean shook her head. “Where are you heading now?”

“Back to the station. Need a lift?” Goh offered.

“I have my own wheels,” Dean replied. “But I’ll meet you there.”

The mental images of two horrors, one a century and a half old, and one thoroughly modern formed an amorphous blob of murder and mayhem in the middle of the city she was sworn to protect. The burden hung on her, troubling her on the drive back.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.