Bolan shook his head

He’d seen plenty of fanatics willing to die for their cause. Call it a gut instinct, but these two women didn’t seem to be the type to take their lives for an abstract slogan. In Bolan’s experience, this type of brutal self-sacrifice was committed for a dynamic personality.

This force, this entity, this malevolent being stood at the center of the maelstrom of violence threatening to storm across Germany.

Just who could inspire this kind of bloodshed?

The Executioner ®

Silent Threat
Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712–1778

The true fanatic can be mesmerized by a charismatic leader, forced to harm or to kill in the name of the cause. My cause is Justice, and I’ll mete out my brand of judgment to those killers with extreme prejudice.

—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

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

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

1

The wet streets of Berlin reflected the headlights of passing cars and the multicolored glow of countless shop signs. The clouds covering the leaden skies appeared to give no ground to the approaching twilight, but as the rain grew colder, the coming darkness closed over the busy streets like a clenching fist. Heedless of the rain, dressed in a brown trench coat and matching snap-brim hat, a man crossed the street in front of a popular coffee shop. He was one figure among many, but his presence caught the eye of one of the shop’s customers, who had taken a table near one corner. The table offered a good view of the large picture windows in front.

The man in the trench coat paused to remove his hat and run his fingers through his hair. His coat was open, and the watcher sitting in the corner noted the butt of the revolver just barely visible in the newcomer’s waistband.

“You are not difficult to spot,” said the man in the trench coat, moving to sit at the corner table without invitation.

“You’re fairly conspicuous yourself,” said Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner. “What’s with the third-rate spy novel getup?”

The man in the trench coat knew Mack Bolan as Matt Cooper, and for all his faults was probably well aware that the name was an alias. “I don’t see any reason to be insulted, Cooper,” he said.

Bolan gave him a hard look. “You don’t have something more important on your mind, Rieck?”

Adam Rieck, Bolan’s Interpol liaison, grimaced. “A fair point,” he said. He produced a folded sheaf of papers from inside his coat. “This is it.”

Bolan took the papers, glanced around and began shuffling through them under the edge of the table. There were laser-printed color photographs, a complete itinerary and some computer-generated maps indicating where the itinerary stops correlated physically. Bolan nodded.

“This will be plenty,” he said.

“Then I guess we’d better get going.” Rieck nodded in turn.

Bolan eyed him again. “Taking you along wasn’t part of the deal.” Of course, he’d known that it very well could be, and Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, whose base of operations was at Stony Man Farm, Virginia, had said as much in describing the operation.

“Germany is in trouble,” the big Fed had said, speaking to Bolan from Washington using a secure, scrambled satellite phone.

“The whole country?” Bolan had asked.

“On certain levels,” Brognola said. “You’re aware of the push for greater security, greater governing controls on strategic industries worldwide.”

“Sure,” Bolan replied.

“The German government recently initiated a series of protocols intended to protect strategic industries from being bought out by what they call ‘locusts’—potentially hostile foreign investors, ‘undesirable’ hedge funds, and so on. In today’s political and war-fighting landscape, this is no surprise. Aaron and his team regularly monitor this type of activity.”

“I follow you,” Bolan said, knowing that Brognola referred to Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of the Farm’s team of computer wizards.

“While following up on the proposed controls and investigating some of the investment funds flagged as ‘undesirable’ foreign interests, Bear and his people found a subtle pattern. They tracked it and produced a very disturbing picture, something that only becomes apparent when you look at investments in strategic industries a few steps removed. Holding companies controlling holding companies influencing local German investors, in other words, but ultimately all linked to a central source.”

“Someone is buying into strategic industries in Germany. Someone with less than patriotic intentions.”

“Yes,” Brognola confirmed. “Specifically, a business entity calling itself Sicherheit Vereinigung, the Security Consortium. On its face, there’s no reason a company wouldn’t try to consolidate domestic industries when permitted, to secure a vertical hold on the market. But when that company does so but tries to conceal what it’s doing, it begs the question…why?”

“The Security Consortium. Sounds bland.”

“It’s meant to,” Brognola said. “They even have a Web site, Bear tells me. It’s completely harmless at first and second glance—just another among a seemingly endless list of financial services and investment companies. This one is headquartered in Germany, but Bear and his people have uncovered several backdoor ties to international interests. Those including rogue nations like Syria and Iran, countries that definitely do not have the interests of the Western industrialized world at heart.”

“There has to be more.”

“There is,” Brognola said. “Purchases of major German interests have gone mysteriously well for the Consortium. You might say they have miraculous corporate luck. If a local politician or businessman stands in the way of an acquisition, he either changes his mind quickly or has a perfectly explainable accident. No less than a dozen deaths, all officially classed as natural causes or freak misadventures, have been linked to chains of events that all ended in successful acquisitions by the Consortium.”

“So you think they’re muscling their way in, quietly.”

“And insidiously,” Brognola said. “More problematically, we theorize they have access to a potentially huge pool of foot soldiers, a dangerous group of people who are unpredictable. It’s a group called Eisen-Donner, or ‘Iron Thunder.’”

“Never heard of it,” Bolan admitted. “Is it a gang?”

“It’s a German cult, actually,” Brognola said, “and an underground one. The government is less tolerant than some others when it comes to these modern religious groups. You recall the uproar over there regarding that Hollywood actor and his religious ties, the one who wanted to film the World War II movie on site there.”

“Vaguely,” Bolan said wryly. “I don’t have a lot of time to read the entertainment news.”

“Iron Thunder is, from all we can uncover, a high-tech death cult. Their adherents use file-sharing technology to stay in touch and spread their nihilist, hedonist, death-to-the-world, free-yourself-from-earthly-pain message. They’ve grown remarkably in just the last two years, leveraging the popularity of worldwide video clip and social networking sites. Their leader, the Jim Jones to this happy little Internet Jonestown, is a man named Helmut Schribner. Schribner calls himself Dumar Eon.”

“Anything on him?”

“Not really,” Brognola said. “A few minor investigations for cybercrimes, bank fraud, that kind of thing. Nothing that stuck. One abortive investigation into production of pornography, a local obscenity rap that escalated because he was transmitting the material on the Web. No convictions. Schribner, or ‘Eon,’ is smart, technically savvy and very charismatic. He’s the Pied Piper here. If the online posts are any indication, his followers are devoted, and dangerously so.”

“That sort of thing usually leads to worse, sooner or later,” Bolan said. “Like the skinhead in California who attacked that interracial couple. The group he said gave him the idea got sued into bankruptcy. This cult see anything like that?”

“Nothing criminal,” Brognola said. “They’ve skirted the other side of the law a few times, officially, and been the target of at least one lawsuit in the United States because a high-school kid committed suicide after watching a bunch of their video clips. On the whole, though, nothing is traceable to them that would prompt more serious legal intervention.”

“How are they tied to the Consortium?” Bolan asked.

“One of the recent ‘accidents’ befell a man named Hermann Gruebner, owner and CEO of something called Arbeit Technopolitik. It’s a small company that makes printed circuit cards that eventually find their way into military equipment. Gruebner was supposedly mugged and strangled by a drug addict while jogging early one morning. Happened a couple of months ago. His mugger was stabbed in prison after a fast-track trial and conviction. The company, of course, was sold in the wake of his tragic death. We’ve traced the new owners to the Consortium.”

“Tidy,” Bolan said.

“Too tidy,” Brognola agreed. “Bear’s team ran a background check on the mugger, including known aliases off- and online, and they got a bunch of hits for videos uploaded to a popular video sharing and social networking site. All of them were Iron Thunder clips—proselytizing for the cult.”

“So a member of a German underground techno-death-cult murdered this CEO for reasons unknown, and took those reasons to an early grave at the end of a shank.”

“Exactly,” Brognola said. “Once we had that, and knew what to look for, we were able to turn up several more hits, some solid, some tenuous. Many of the accidents can be linked to persons with ties to Iron Thunder. It looks as if the Consortium is using the cult as street muscle to do the dirty work, clear the way for these strategic takeovers where necessary. Some purchases go down completely aboveboard. Some are problematic, and any obstacles are mysteriously and quickly removed, permanently. We figure they’re using a tried-and-true combination of bribery, influence peddling, intimidation and outright murder when needed.”

“And so the Consortium gobbles up business after business.”

“Yes,” Brognola said. “And that’s the problem. All the while it’s doing so, it’s trying to hide what’s going on. And that tells me, and the Man, that the Consortium is making a play for control of Germany’s strategic industries. Whether for pure profit, selling war matériel to the highest bidder, or out of some agenda to help hostile nations, we don’t know. The outcome is more or less the same. Whether terrorists or rogue nations that sponsor terrorists, Germany’s industries form key links in the global technology chain. If Germany falls behind the scenes, it puts the United States and the rest of the Western world in peril.”

“Why me, then, Hal?” Bolan asked. “What is SOG’s interest in this? Sounds like a job for more…mainstream government agencies.”

“It would be,” Brognola said, “if we had anything that the international law enforcement community would consider solid proof. We’ve got leads, correlations and damning circumstantial evidence, all of it turned up through mostly extralegal computer searches and traces run by Bear and his team. None of it is enough to convince the powers that be that official action is necessary.”

“What about the German government?” Bolan asked.

“As far as it’s concerned,” Brognola said, “this isn’t happening. The Consortium is a good domestic company and therefore trustworthy, officially. Whether the Germans are blind to what’s going on or just trying to cover their collective backsides, we don’t know. But they’re not happy that we’ve even raised the question. I spent several hours on the phone through channels, pulling strings and busting heads. They don’t like it, but they’ve reluctantly agreed to allow what is officially being considered an Interpol investigation.”

“Interpol?” Bolan asked.

“It gets us in the door,” Brognola said. “It doesn’t matter who they think we are, as long as you can get in and get it done. Basically, the Man wants you to go in and fix this problem. If you can get proof and we can secure further international cooperation, or direct cooperation with the Germans, that’s fine. If you can’t, you can still do what you do, burn them out and down, and put an end to this threat. Those are the President’s instructions.”

“Why not simply go to the source, then? We eliminate the Consortium and its heads. Problem solved, except for some mop-up of the cult.”

“Won’t work,” Brognola said. “The Consortium closely guards its membership rolls. We don’t know who they are, though we suspect in many cases. There are maybe three or four executives we could put you on, but that won’t begin to solve the problem. You need to find out who you’re dealing with, on the ground, by following the slime trails back to their source.”

“I’m a soldier, not a detective, Hal.”

“I’m not asking you to detect,” Brognola said. “I’m asking you to perform reconnaissance, then search and destroy.”

“Understood.”

“Let the Germans and Interpol think you’re who we tell them, unless and until you identify your targets. Then work around to the enemy, regardless.”

“Just how hostile will the locals be to my presence?”

“Officially, we’re letting them believe you’re one of the blacker sheep within the CIA,” Brognola said. “You’ll get nominal support and lip service, but don’t expect open arms.”

“Business as usual, then,” Bolan said.

“Yes,” the big Fed went on. “It doesn’t end there. In order to get local cooperation we’ve agreed to let Interpol assign us a contact. The Man himself secured their consent to work with us on this. They’ve been made aware of the broad strokes, or at least a sanitized version of them, though they have no idea who is behind this in truth.”

“Of course,” Bolan said.

“Stand by,” Brognola told him. “I’m transmitting you the contact’s dossier now. He’s relatively green, but nevertheless attached to one of the more shadowy branches of the Agency and its German equivalent. Born to German and American parents, educated here in the States. Did a few years abroad and in the Army, all of it post–iron curtain.”

“Can we trust him?”

“As far as we can trust anybody,” Brognola said. “Interpol thinks it’s taking the lead on this issue now, and we’re happy to let it. It allows us to operate under its umbrella, since we don’t officially exist. Your contact may even produce some worthwhile leads, or relay what Interpol manages to produce between now and when you hit ground in Germany.”

“All right, then,” Bolan had agreed. “I guess I’d better get going.”

“I guess you better,” Brognola had replied. “Good hunting, Striker.”

“Right.” Bolan had closed the connection.

Now, hours later, Bolan and Rieck sat facing each other over the dossier Interpol had managed to put together, and which Rieck had turned over. Bolan nodded, finally, jerking his chin toward the photographs and looking at Rieck. To his credit, the man understood without being told that Bolan wanted a synopsis.

“That,” Rieck said, indicating a photograph, “is Hans Becker, the president of Becker Aerospace. BA produces key missile guidance systems. It’s considered a prime ‘get’ in strategic industrial circles, and in the last several months it’s been having financial problems. An accidental warehouse fire here, a few key developers lost to a car accident there. Word is it’s ripe for buyout, but Becker, who owns the controlling interest, is resisting. It’s a family-owned company and always has been.”

“A prime target, in other words,” Bolan nodded. Watching the doorway from his seat, he saw a trio of young people, possibly students, wearing disposable plastic ponchos. Two of them had backpacks slung over one shoulder.

“Yes,” Rieck said. “Our analysts predict that BA is the most probable object of the Consortium’s interests. It’s financially vulnerable, it produces a strategically critical line of components, and Becker has reported some harassment to the local authorities.”

“Harassment?”

“Being followed, some late-night hang-up calls, and a few incidents of vandalism at his home here in Berlin,” Rieck said, pulling a hard copy of a digital photograph from the stack. The building it depicted appeared to be an apartment or condominium high-rise, its architecture a blend of old-world charm and modern efficiency. It looked pricey, if Bolan was any judge. It was, in other words, just the sort of place a president or CEO would call home in this German city.

“And BA itself?” Bolan asked. The students he had noticed before, a young man and two women, were settling at a table by the corner. One woman was blond, the other brunette. The blonde in particular was a striking Norse beauty. Bolan had seen plenty of beautiful women in his unending war against terror. He’d seen more than a few who had been pretty before the predators got done with them, too. It was a sobering thought.

“Offices here, on Reinickendorfer Strasse,” Rieck said, “and a secondary manufacturing facility maybe an hour from the city, in Muencheberg.”

“Were does Becker spend his time?”

“The accidental deaths of some of his contemporaries in the high-tech field here in Germany haven’t gone unnoticed to Becker,” Rieck said, as if he and Bolan were sharing a very important secret. “He’s been holed up in his suite for the last week, and we know he has employed a bodyguard agency here in the city. They’re expensive, thoroughly licensed and heavily armed.”

“Your recommendation?” Bolan asked, ignoring Rieck’s conspiratorial tone.

“I would start with Muencheberg,” Rieck said. “If Becker’s holdings are being monitored, we might be able to find some of the operatives responsible. We might even catch them in the act of vandalizing Becker’s property. These incidents have increased sharply in the past several days. There have been three reports in the last week alone.”

“It’s a start,” Bolan said. “But if Becker is the target, it’s Becker we should begin with. He’s the key. Removing him removes the primary obstacle to the Consortium’s acquisition of his company. If they orchestrated the problems that have put BA in deep, which it’s likely they have, it makes even more sense that they’re setting him up for a heavy fall.”

“But he’s guarded,” Rieck said. “Won’t that keep him out of play for now?”

“I’ve never known it to mean much in the past,” Bolan said. “Hired guards are hired guards. They’re good as far as they go. But his apartment is no fortress. How could it be? I’ve seen hard targets, Rieck. This won’t qualify.”

“Well, all right,” Rieck began, “but I don’t see why—”

The beautiful blonde at the table in the corner reached into her backpack. Bolan was watching her out of the corner of his eye. When her arm came up with a micro-Uzi submachine gun in her small fist, he had just enough time to register the threat. He put one hand against the table and pushed off.

Automatic gunfire ripped through the coffee shop.

2

“Down!” Bolan roared, throwing himself back and off his chair. Rieck reacted quickly and hit the floor. The burst of bullets went wide but stitched the wall behind and between the two men nonetheless. Rieck would have been dead had he stayed seated a fraction of a second longer.

Screams erupted as the coffee shop’s customers registered what was happening. Suddenly the shop was full of running, hysterical men and women, shouting in at least three languages.

Rieck upended the table and crouched behind its dubious cover, drawing his four-inch Smith & Wesson. Bolan had seen this type of scenario go down more than once, and knew that hiding or playing a time-compressed waiting game simply wouldn’t work. With each passing second, the risk that an innocent civilian would be hit increased. He pulled the Beretta 93-R from its custom leather shoulder rig, flipped the selector to single shot and brought the snout of the evil-looking little machine pistol on target. Then he charged forward, moving left, then right, crouching low, being careful not to put innocents into the line of fire by getting between them and the shooters. The Beretta led the way, and as he charged, Bolan fired.

The desperate offensive took the momentum from the attackers. The Executioner had seen that sudden look of confusion before, the instant when an enemy, having visualized the killing time and again, suddenly locked up or froze when confronted with something unexpected. These shooters were the hunters, in their minds; they had come to deal death. They didn’t expect to see death hurtling back at them. The enemy broke under the onslaught, scattering. Bolan caught the blonde with the Uzi first.

She was trying to swing her submachine gun onto him when Bolan reached her, slamming a brutal elbow up and across her chin, knocking her sprawling. The Uzi slid from nerveless fingers as she went down and out. The man, not as young as his college dress had made him seem from a distance, had drawn a small automatic pistol from under his clothes and was taking aim. Bolan put a single 9 mm bullet between his eyes, and he collapsed to the floor of the coffee shop.

The third shooter, the other woman, screamed as she traded fire with Rieck. The Interpol agent’s shots were truer, clipping her in the arm and sending her screaming to the ground. Bolan scooped up the revolver she’d been carrying, turned and stood over her, the Beretta aimed at her head. “Do not move,” he ordered.

Rieck, coming up to stand behind him, said something in German, which Bolan understood to be the same instructions. The young woman, pretty enough, with dark, naturally curly hair and fine-boned features, looked at them with such hatred that her face became a mask of ugly evil. She cursed in German. Bolan spared a glance at Rieck.

“She says you will know everlasting peace,” Rieck said, nonplussed.

“That’s a new one,” Bolan said. “Let’s get this mopped up.”

Rieck proved his worth, barking orders, taking immediate charge of the chaotic scene. His Interpol credentials got a workout as he directed the customers to sit and calm down, while ordering the nearest shop attendant to call the appropriate authorities. Bolan, meanwhile, secured the two women with plastic zip-tie cuffs, searched them and then searched the corpse. He found nothing useful. There were only a few personal items like combs and brushes, a small folding knife in the dead man’s pocket, and extra ammunition for the weapons they carried. Bolan unloaded and set aside the Uzi, the dead man’s ancient Colt .380 automatic pistol, and the Smith & Wesson snub nose the wounded woman had tried to use.

Flashing blue lights outside alerted the men to the approach of the local police. “There they are,” Rieck said, rising to look over the shell-shocked customers one last time. He nodded to Bolan. “I’ll make sure that ambulance is on the way.” There was no telling how many of the shop’s customers were suffering shock. Routine medical treatment was needed as part of containing the shooting and its aftermath.

The front door of the coffee shop opened again.

The men who entered, dressed in dark suits, carried Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns. The man in the lead raised his weapon at Rieck. The killing intent in his eyes was unmistakable. This wasn’t backup.

Rieck went for his gun, but there was no way he would make it in time. Death waited for him in the chamber of the lead shooter’s MP-5.

Bolan’s Desert Eagle thundered.

The .44 Magnum hollowpoint round took the gunner in the face, rocking him back. The gunner behind him faltered as he watched his partner suddenly go down, and Bolan shot him neatly through the neck. Yelling for Rieck to get down—the agent obligingly flattened himself—the big American emptied the Desert Eagle’s magazine through the doorway, targeting the silver Mercedes parked at the curb outside. The heavy rounds punched through the passenger-side front tire and fender, skimming across the hood and driving another gunner to cover behind the engine block.

“Go, go!” Bolan directed. Rieck scrambled forward, snatched up the Uzi Bolan had taken from the blonde, and slammed its magazine home on the move. Unbidden, the Interpol agent broke right while Bolan broke left, both men pushing through the doors and into the nighttime hellstorm outside.

The soldier quickly assessed the scenario. There were two vehicles, both silver Mercedes. He quickly counted targets. There were a half-dozen men, at least, moving in and around the cars, weapons at the ready. He ducked and dodged aside, Rieck mirroring his movements, as gunfire struck the windows behind them. There were more screams from within the coffee shop. Bolan snapped his gaze back long enough to confirm that the customers were on the floor, out of the direct line of fire. Grimly, he ripped the Beretta from its holster, both pistols in his fists now as he aimed first the Desert Eagle, then the Beretta, and pulled the triggers.

The 3-round burst from the Beretta 93-R caught the nearest shooter as he bobbed up from behind the engine block of the shot-up Mercedes. The man went down with a burst through his throat. Then the Executioner was up and over, throwing himself across the hood of the car. He came down on the other side next to the dead man, surprising two shooters crouched in the open driver’s doors.

One of the men got off a shot that went wide as Bolan triggered a .44 round through his face. At the same moment, the Beretta 93-R barked, punching a 3-round burst through the heart of the second man. Both gunners went slack in their seats.

The unmistakable chatter of an Uzi, so familiar a sound to Bolen after years on international battlefields, erupted from behind the second vehicle. Rieck was crouched low and moving smoothly behind the rear of the car. He was canted slightly forward, leaning into the submachine gun, triggering short, controlled bursts. It was textbook mechanics for such a weapon. Bolan raised his mental estimation of the agent once more; the man thought clearly enough under fire to recover the terrorist weapon and use it to good effect, and he obviously had the training to do it properly. Rieck’s 9 mm bursts dropped two more of the suited shooters.

The last two men—no, three, Bolan revised, as a third man came from around the corner of the coffee shop and ran for the street—began to withdraw, covering each other in turn with their weapons. The suppressing fire from first one, then the other MP-5 pushed Bolan and Rieck back down behind the two Mercedes sedans.

Bolan went prone, rolling into position under the middle of his car. He placed the Beretta on the pavement and aimed the Desert Eagle with both hands, targeting the retreating, then running men. These would be difficult shots.

There was no better marksman than the Executioner.

The first .44 slug caught the trailing shooter in the ankle. He screamed and fell, rolling on the wet pavement. The MP-5 was still in his fists, so Bolan dealt him a shot to the head.

The soldier’s third bullet caught the middle runner in mid-calf. He folded over without a sound, almost somersaulting as he lost his footing. Bolan could hear his skull crack on the pavement.

Bolan’s fourth bullet took the farthest gunner in one thigh. He stumbled and nearly fell, but somehow managed to keep moving. The momentary crouch was all the Executioner needed. He snapped another long-distance shot into the man’s head. The body hit the sidewalk on the far side of the street, a crumpled heap beside a storm drain.

Rieck popped up and brought the Uzi forward. He stalked ahead, just a few steps at a time, scanning the surrounding area. Bolan did the same, watching his side while the Interpol agent covered the other. They moved around the cars once, then again, checking to make sure all of the new shooters had been taken.

“Clear!” Rieck called.

“Clear,” Bolan stated. He checked once more, then reloaded and holstered the Desert Eagle. The Beretta 93-R he reloaded but kept at the ready.

“Start checking bodies,” he instructed Rieck. “I’ll see if we’ve got any live ones.” Specifically, he was interested in the gunner who’d hit his head. It was possible he was still alive. Bolan checked the other two first, confirming they were dead, then knelt next to the man in question. He fingered the neck for a pulse and then rolled the body over.

The man stared back, eyes lifeless and glassy. Bolan could tell from the angle the head lolled that the shooter had broken his neck in the fall. Bolan swore. He’d hoped for a live enemy to interrogate, but that couldn’t be helped. Searching through the man’s pockets, he found an extra magazine for the MP-5 in the suit jacket. There was also a fixed-blade fighting knife strapped inside the dead man’s waistband at the small of his back. He carried nothing else. No identification. Bolan left the knife where it was and stood. Rieck was quietly and efficiently going through the other dead men’s pockets.

In the distance, the seesaw foghorn of German police sirens could be heard. The legitimate German authorities were responding, either to Rieck’s calls or to the sounds of gunfire. Bolan saw civilians, bystanders, poking their heads out from behind improvised cover: a man behind a kiosk here, a woman with two small children, out late, hiding in a doorway there. Keeping these people from the cross fire was the primary reason he had brought hell to the enemy, yet again.

Rieck looked mildly wild-eyed. He shucked the empties from his Smith & Wesson—a .357 Magnum, Bolan noted—and popped in a speedloader of fresh rounds.

“Did you find anything?” he asked.

“No.” Bolan shook his head. “You?”

Rieck held out a single laminated ID card. It bore credentials in German, with a photo ID. The name Sicherheit Vereinigung.

“The Security Consortium.” Bolan looked up at Rieck.

“Do you think those three in the shop—”

“No,” Bolan said. “Not likely, anyway.”

“I don’t understand what happened,” Rieck said. “First those three in the shop, and then this group.”

“Assassins,” Bolan said. “That much is obvious. The first three were amateurs. Vicious, but amateurs. These—” he nodded to the bodies of the shooters from the Mercedes “—are professionals. The Consortium sent its hired guns after you. Somebody wants you dead, Rieck.”

“But how? And why?”

“You had to have been followed,” Bolan said.

“I could believe I was followed by those three kids,” Rieck said. “They’d blend in easily enough. But three kids and a parade of Mercedes sedans full of professional soldiers? I may not have your experience, Cooper, but I’m not that stupid.”

“All right.” Bolan nodded. “These Consortium shooters’ involvement remains an unknown. But suddenly you’re very popular.”

“How do you know it was me, and not you?”

“Well,” Bolan said, “you’re the only person locally who even knew to meet me. I find it hard to believe my mission has been blown completely so quickly. That girl with the Uzi targeted you first, too.”

“You saw that?”

“I see everything,” Bolan said dismissively. “That’s not the point. Those ‘kids’ were obviously after you, so they must have been following you, unless someone else knew where we’d be meeting. It’s the only logical answer.”

“No,” Rieck said. “I picked the shop myself and had your people relay it. I assume you trust them and their communications?”

“Absolutely,” Bolan said. There was no way his secure satellite phone or Stony Man Farm’s scrambled up- and downlinks could be compromised, at least at this stage of the game. If the Consortium already knew he was here, and where to find him, the mission was over before it had started. He didn’t think that likely, though he’d been party to plenty of operations in which everything that could go wrong had.

“Did anyone else at Interpol locally know to whom you’d been assigned, or why?” Bolan asked.

“A few,” Rieck admitted. “I’d hate to think we have a leak in the agency.”

“You might,” Bolan said. “That, too, is the simplest explanation.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Rieck said. “Once they’ve been checked by the medics we’ll get those two women across the table in an interrogation room and see if we can get them to tell us anything.” They had reached the front of the coffee shop. Rieck put his hand out, swinging the door open.

He stopped. Somewhere in the corner of the shop, one of the witnesses was sobbing. Another man began to protest loudly in German. Bolan didn’t know the words, but he knew the tone: Hey, man, it wasn’t me, I didn’t do anything.

“Jesus,” Rieck said. The toe of his shoe was red with blood.

Bolan pushed past him and checked first one, then the other prisoner. He didn’t blame the bystanders for not interfering. Chances were, they’d been unaware of precisely what they were seeing until it was too late. Only a few minutes’ inattention, while Bolan and Rieck were contending with the new shooters, was all the captured shooters had needed. The two women had pushed themselves together on the floor, presumably after the blonde had regained consciousness. Then the two of them had evidently opened each other’s necks…with their teeth.

“Sweet mother of…” Rieck muttered. “Cooper, what could inspire such an act?”

Bolan looked down at the two dead women, adding the ghastly scene to the too-long catalog in his mind.

“Are they?” Rieck asked.

“Yeah,” Bolan said. “They are.”

The sirens outside grew louder. Rieck checked, his hand on his gun, ready for anything. “The police and two ambulances. Too late for them, I guess.” He nodded to the dead women.

Bolan shook his head. He’d seen plenty of fanatics willing to kill or die for their cause. Call it a gut instinct, but these women didn’t seem to be the type to take their lives for an abstract slogan. No, rather than a cause, rather than a vague “what,” this type of brutal self-sacrifice was most often, in Bolan’s experience, committed for a “who.”

So Rieck’s question stood. They’d have to answer it, too, because it was central to the battle they now fought. This force, this entity, this malevolent being, stood at the center of the maelstrom of violence now threatening to storm across Germany. They needed to know, sooner rather than later.

Just who could inspire this kind of bloodshed?

3

The man known to followers worldwide as Dumar Eon leaned back in his swiveling office chair, steepling his fingers as he stared out the grimy window to the rain-soaked nighttime streets of Berlin. The distant traffic, its rattle and roar incessant and rhythmic, was like a heartbeat. Often he listened to the city, this delightfully sick, this terminally ill city, and fancied he would be there on the day that Berlin’s heart stopped forever.

The austere and immaculately clean office was incongruous in the otherwise decrepit building it occupied. This was the heart of the worst, most crime-ridden, most crumbling section of Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood. Dumar Eon had heard of Neukölln referred to as a “dynamic” and even “vibrant” suburb, and he supposed there were portions of it that could be considered that. The Neukölln he knew, however, was considerably more deadly than anyone might see written up in real estate periodicals.

Eon stood and went to the window, which was covered with dust. The rain and the headlights of passing vehicles on the narrow streets all but obscured the view, but he peered out placidly as if he could see every crack in the mortar of the surrounding structures. The vaguely L-shaped building, a throwback to the older European architecture of this part of the neighborhood, squatted miserably on a bustling corner, boarded windows like broken or missing teeth marring its otherwise graffiti-covered facade.

The heavy walnut desk that dominated the room was worth more than the building itself, he imagined. It was covered with multiple flat-screen monitors, not to mention a webcam and microphone. Behind the desk, centered in the webcam’s frame, was the black-and-white banner of Iron Thunder: a sledgehammer and a stylized chainsaw in white silhouette on the black field. Thus did the ranks of Iron Thunder smash and clear-cut all those who stood in their way, all those who refused to accept their message. Dumar Eon was well aware that the iconography was slightly less than timeless, but that didn’t matter. Iron Thunder was a religion for today, for the technology of today, and like a shark, it would have to keep moving forward if it wasn’t to die.

Of course, death was the ultimate message of Iron Thunder, the goal toward which they all worked, the gift they sought to bring others. Certainly, the sect was also devoted to the pleasures of the flesh, to the indulgence of all worldly desires, for as long as the curse of life was inflicted on each adherent. But the final purity, the cleansing toward which all Iron Thunder followers marched, was of course the sweet oblivion of nonexistence. No afterlife, no heavenly reward, no eternal damnation—only the long, endless expanse of peace that was not to be. Eon thought to himself that, were he not so very busy bringing Iron Thunder’s message to the world, he might take the revolver from his desk drawer and put it in his mouth right now. He smiled at the thought, knowing that eternal release was only a few pounds of trigger pressure away at any moment.

This was, of course, the tightrope he and all of Iron Thunder’s believers walked, though he was much more keenly aware of it than were they. Daily, weekly, monthly, the problem that Dumar Eon faced was simple enough: How could he keep Iron Thunder’s ranks growing, convince those within those ranks that death was the highest ideal, yet forestall their suicides for as long as possible in order to further Iron Thunder’s work? He supposed that was the sacrifice that all great men, all leaders, endured each day. The greatest saints never knew the blessings they brought to others, so busy were they doing the work that conferred those blessings.

Eon folded his hands behind his back and continued to stare out the window. He cut an imposing figure as he did so. He was tall, an inch over six feet. He wore a tailored black suit, pressed white shirt and matching black silk tie. His shoes were Italian imports, as were the black leather gloves on his hands. The black, wire-rimmed sunglasses he wore, even now, cost nearly as much as the shoes, and were preferred among international film stars and other luminaries. Above a clean-shaved, strong-jawed, chiseled-chinned face just starting to show the hint of five-o’clock shadow, Eon wore his lustrous black hair straight to his shoulders, maintained by weekly visits to an exclusive and obscenely priced Berlin salon.

The revolver in Eon’s desk was an expensive, engraved .357 Magnum Korth with a four-inch barrel. The watch on his wrist was a Rolex. The wallet in his jacket held nothing but a fake ID and an equally fake passport, while the money clip in Eon’s pants was gold-plated and crammed with a small fortune in euros.

Life, for Dumar Eon, was good.

Death would be better. But it would wait.

With a wistful sigh, he returned to his desk, and to the state-of-the-art computer and satellite Internet connection that waited for him.

The multiple monitors were all linked to the same PC. Dumar paused to take in the charts and scrolling figures that represented his various stock holdings. He frowned as he compared New York to Tokyo. He took a moment to fire off an encrypted e-mail to one of his brokers, stipulating a pair of stocks to dump on the TSE. Then, casting a baleful eye over the NASDAQ and assessing, mentally, the implications of an impending commodities report—the streaming video from the world’s largest cable news network appeared as a picture-in-picture window on his right-hand monitor—the man born as Helmut Schribner tapped a few entries into his record-keeping spreadsheet.

His holdings continued to grow. It was a fundamental principle of investing that he who has money can make more of it relatively easily. Helmut Schribner’s experience had proved no exception to that rule. Born into a poor family in Stuttgart, he had once thought to end his days as little more than he had started them—a line worker in a screen printing shop. He had always known ambition, but lacked the tools, the direction, to channel it. Thus did Helmut Schribner live his life day to day in a state of dissatisfaction, a vague unease.

Every day he would leave the printing shop and spend what precious little disposable income he had at a pub around the block. He hadn’t yet learned, in those days, to mask his feelings. Clearly, then, his thoughts had shown on this face, for one day a man sat next to him and told him those thoughts.

“You,” the stranger said in accented but fluent German, “are not happy.”

Helmut Schribner eventually learned that this man, in his late fifties and born in England, was named Phineas Elmington. Elmington was a British expatriate. He alluded to some crime he had committed, something for which he’d fled England. Schribner assumed that the name “Phineas Elmington” was an alias. It hardly mattered. For whatever reason, Elmington, a sadist and a sociopath, saw some manner of kindred spirit in Schribner. The more they talked over their beers, the more both men came to realize that.

“You are not happy,” Elmington said to him. “You live wondering what should be different. You live wondering what should be your purpose. You come here and drink away your money because you do not know what else to do.”

Schribner had to admit that this man was right. As they spoke at length, night after night, discovering they shared common perspectives on the world around them, Elmington’s questions grew bolder and more direct.

“Look around you, Helmut,” he said one fateful evening. “Do you see your fellow men? Do you wish to cherish them and help them? Serve them? Or do you see so many insects, so many irrelevancies? Do you see men or do you see bags of meat?”

“Bags of meat,” Schribner had answered without hesitation.

“You have always hated them, haven’t you?” Elmington asked. “I could see it in your eyes before I first spoke to you. You hate them as I do.”

“I…I suppose I do,” Schribner admitted.

“And you would kill them, if you could.”

Schribner looked at the Englishman, eyes widening. “Why…yes. Yes, I would. It would be nothing.”

“It would be nothing to you,” Elmington nodded. “That is what I saw in your eyes. That is what you can be.”

“What do you mean?” Schribner asked.

“I want you to kill me,” Elmington said.

It hadn’t been as preposterous as it first sounded. Elmington revealed that he was dying. It was cancer of the pancreas, and he had perhaps months. He had learned all that only a few weeks earlier, a single day before approaching Schribner in the pub.

“I find, as I stare into the face of death,” Elmington said, “that it is a gift. It is the greatest gift. It is peace. It is oblivion. I wish to have this gift, now, before my suffering grows great. I have always known that it was a gift one could give to others, but now I wish to have it for myself. You may be the one to give it to me, I think.”

“I suppose…I suppose I could.” Schribner licked his lips at the thought. He found the idea intriguing, even exciting.

“To kill is no small thing,” Elmington warned. “It requires a mind like iron. You must have a hard will to withstand the storm. For when death comes, it does not come quietly, no matter how silently the victim dies. No, when death comes, it rolls across you like thunder, and leaves behind only those touched by its gift—and of course those left alive to witness its passing.”

Like a moth to a flame, like a man hypnotized, Schribner followed Elmington to the man’s flat in Stuttgart. There, at an ancient rolltop desk, Elmington removed several ledgers from a drawer and placed them in Schribner’s hands.

“These are my account books,” he said. “They contain everything required to access their contents. Account numbers, passwords, balances. Special conditions of the concealment of various funds. I want you to have it.”

“What is all this?” Schribner asked, looking down at the notebooks in his hands.

“The accumulation of a life’s work,” Elmington said. “Passed on to you, in reward for the gift you are about to bestow.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Schribner murmured. He placed the ledgers on the nearby end table. Elmington was searching through the top drawer of his desk and finally produced a pistol.

“This is a Luger,” Elmington said. He pulled on a portion of the pistol at its rear, causing some sort of toggle to flip out and back from the top. “It dates to World War II. It is in perfect working order. I have placed a round in the chamber. Take it, but be very careful. Do not touch the trigger.”

Schribner took the weapon gingerly. Elmington positioned himself on the settee, propping a pillow under his head. He took the second throw pillow and gestured with it.

“I am going to place this over my head,” he said. “I want you to put the barrel of the gun to the middle of the pillow and pull the trigger twice.”

“All right,” Schribner nodded. He felt strangely at ease with this act.

“Thank you,” Elmington said. He placed the pillow over his head.

The shots were muffled. Elmington trembled once and then was still. Schribner stood over him for a long time, just watching him, before he realized that were the police to be alerted, he would be caught and taken away for murder. Gathering up the ledgers, he left, careful not to run lest he draw attention.

It took him a few days to go through everything Elmington had given him. When he was ready, he went to one of the new Internet cafés and began accessing the accounts. As he did so, his face grew hot. He couldn’t believe just how much money Elmington had. It was a small fortune, enough to keep him in beer for the next two decades, or enough to build a much greater fortune, if wisely invested.

Before he realized what was happening, Helmut Schribner spent twelve hours at the computer. He didn’t eat. He didn’t move. Only when he realized just how badly he needed to use the restroom did he come up for air. By then, he knew what lay before him.

Helmut Schribner, previously at a loss for focus, had finally found two. The first, as he educated himself on finance and investing, moving from Web site to Web site, from resource to resource, was money. With the funds available to him, Schribner could build true wealth.

The second focus for Schribner’s life came quite unexpectedly. He was intensely curious as to the history of his sudden benefactor. None of the account names he had received, of those that bore names at all, carried the name Phineas Elmington. When he searched this identity on the Internet, he discovered why. “Phineas Elmington” was a rather notorious English serial killer.

The news photos he was able to find showed that Elmington had changed his face, somehow, prior to going into hiding. There were various subtle differences, but it was clear that the man Schribner had shot was indeed the man wanted for multiple grisly murders in Great Britain. Schribner read everything he could about the case. Elmington’s victims had nothing in common, nor did Elmington’s murders share many traits to connect them. This had allowed him to become one of the most prolific serial killers in history. He had attacked men, women, children, the elderly…basically, anyone who happened to cross his path during the course of his life. He had strangled them, stabbed them, shot them, bludgeoned them, crushed them with furniture and, once, burned an entire apartment building just to see how many people wouldn’t get out. When finally caught, he had told the authorities he wasn’t a murderer at all, but a man bringing the gift of peace to those whose lives he took. He had been tried, but before he could be sentenced, he had disappeared from prison. Three guards died during the escape. Phineas Elmington had never been heard from again. The hunt for him had obsessed Great Britain for a time, but eventually it had been called off, and Elmington was believed, perhaps, to have taken his own life, based on some of the writings found in his home in London. Those writings had extolled the virtues, the blessing, of death.

When, during his search for information on Elmington, Schribner had found videos on a video-sharing Web site devoted to the man, he was both surprised and mesmerized. It seemed there was no shortage of devotees to so famous a murderer, and he found more than one video clip that either paid a kind of homage to Elmington—or other killers like him—or professed an outright admiration. Many of those sitting before low-quality webcams proclaiming their obsession with death and killing were young people, some costumed in various goth outfits and makeup. They were from all walks of life, apparently, and from all over the world.

It was then that Helmut Schribner had the idea that would become the second focus for his life, and what he would come to consider his true mission, his real purpose. The money he would make, the money he would use, would be a means to this end. For as he stared at the flickering, sometimes blurry, always hypnotic images on the monitor, he realized just how much power there was in this virtual environment, how much value there was in being able to reach out through the computer to touch lives and those who lived them all around the planet.

Having spent so much of his own life merely waiting for something to happen, Schribner could be very patient. He did his homework, studying fully the medium he planned to use to execute his plan. Phineas Elmington had shown him the way. When Schribner had pulled the trigger of that pistol, he had known a sense of satisfaction, even of pleasure, that was unlike anything he had previously experienced. He yearned to feel it again, and more, to share it with others. He would use this new and marvelous worldwide Web to spread his message, to gain converts to what he could only describe as a religion. A religion of death. A religion of oblivion. A religion of ultimate pleasure.

As he studied, and as he began to notice the fanciful names and nicknames used by those who created accounts on the file-sharing sites he visited, Schribner realized that the task before him wasn’t one for a “Helmut Schribner.” No, he would require a new name, one that held within it a hint of the future, one that concealed his past while showing the way ahead. He thought, very briefly, about adopting Phineas Elmington’s name, but that wouldn’t do. Elmington’s time was past, and to appropriate his name seemed almost disrespectful to his legacy.

Looking through the ledgers, Helmut found it.

One of the account names in the ledger, one of the pseudonyms—many of them almost gibberish, nonsense words that Elmington had used as placeholders to keep the accounts separate—was “Dumar Eon.” He liked it; “Dumar” sounded vaguely German, while “Eon” held a hint of timelessness. It was, simply put, the name of someone who could lead others, the name of someone who could share the gift, and the giving of that gift, that Phineas Elmington had demonstrated and experienced.

And so Helmut Schribner became Dumar Eon.

The name of the organization he would eventually form, in order to give Elmington’s gift and his cause an identity that lent itself to marketing, he took from Elmington’s own words: Iron Thunder.

In the coming months and then years, Dumar Eon learned he had a natural gift for marketing, an intuitive showmanship. He spread the word of Iron Thunder’s beliefs, which he codified on several anonymous Web sites. Like a virus, word of Iron Thunder grew among those receptive to its message. The appeal of the sect cut across demographics, reaching something primal.

All the while, Dumar Eon’s fortune grew.

Through shrewd, patient, long-term investing, Eon managed to multiply his start-up funding tenfold, then a hundredfold, then beyond. It was, therefore, only a matter of time, as he grew more educated in such matters, that Eon thought to create a German investment fund of his own. He located men and women he could trust, people who, even if they were not members of Iron Thunder, were either sympathetic to his cause or so blinded by desire for money that they cared little what he did. These he put in charge of the corporate face and broadening ventures of his new Security Consortium. And he implemented his long-term plan: to use the resources of the Consortium, first to gain control of certain very important industries in Germany, and then to funnel the matériel produced thereby to those international entities who could—however unwittingly—continue to carry the gift of death.

It had worked so well. The Consortium had grown larger than any one person could manage, and he put the appropriate individuals in place to run it. He had made sure to choose only those who valued secrecy, who safeguarded their identities, as did he. If he chose his most trusted operatives from among the shadows, they would remain within them. Thus they all had something to lose if they were exposed, and all would look to their own interests and preserve the whole.

Recently he had, as was only expected, become aware of the Interpol investigation. It paid to have the right people in the right places. To preserve Iron Thunder, it was necessary to stop the investigation before it began. And so he had dispatched the appropriate personnel. Eon imagined they were even now bringing peace to the would-be crime fighter Interpol had assigned. With the agent dead, the whole affair could be quietly covered up. A little push here, some thoughtfully used influence there, perhaps a bribe or two. The authorities could be bought, or otherwise contained. An object lesson now and then helped keep them in check. As for his own organization, the killing of a single bureaucratic drone, or even a swarm of them, would draw little attention.

Over time he had learned that, except for those true believers from among the ranks of Iron Thunder, very few of the people running the Consortium cared what went on, where the money went, what the investment fund’s ultimate goals were, or what actions were taken in pursuit of those goals. They cared only to fill their own pockets. Eon preferred that. It was predictable, and predictable quantities were quantities that could be managed and manipulated for his own purposes. Those purposes were what truly mattered. Those purposes would be poorly understood by certain less…spiritual entities within the Consortium, and thus those entities didn’t need to know what Dumar Eon really wanted.

In the long term, Dumar Eon sought to burn the world.

He wished to cleanse it with the fires of pure oblivion. He would, if he could, kill everyone and everything in and on it, everything moving across the face of the earth. Eventually.

There really was no hurry. As he contemplated the finer things he had acquired and did enjoy, he thought that while the final and most blissful peace of death was undeniable, neither was there any reason to rush toward it.

There was so much work left to be done.

4

Adam Rieck drove the BMW, which Bolan gathered was a rental, bringing it smoothly to the curb a block away from the building that housed Becker’s residence. Bolan got out and turned his back, using the interior of the car to discreetly check his weapons. It was dark and getting quite late, and there were no people on the street that they could see, but it always paid to assume unseen eyes were watching.

They had endured no small amount of bureaucratic wrangling from the local authorities. Rieck had been forced to phone his contacts at Interpol, which prompted several more calls back and forth before all the red tape was untangled. The police were none too happy to let Bolan and Rieck go, especially armed as they were. Bolan had seen it countless times before. When the lead started flying, those left standing were immediately assumed to be at fault in some way.

Rieck used his trench coat to shield the bulk of the 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun he carried. He had begged, borrowed or otherwise obtained the weapon from one of the responding German police units; Bolan didn’t know exactly how he’d managed it and didn’t care. The Uzi and the other recovered weapons had of course been taken as evidence, and Bolan was happy to leave that cleanup to the local authorities.

He turned to face the entrance to the building, surveying the block and scanning the windows. He saw nothing. The street was unnaturally quiet. A dog barked, somewhere faraway. He watched an empty coffee cup roll in lazy semicircles back and forth, stirred by a strong night breeze, grime from the wet street clinging to paper. He looked left, then right again. Something was wrong. Something subtle…

“Rieck,” he said, “do you smell that?”

“Smell what?” The Interpol operative paused and sniffed at the air. Then he caught it. “Smoke,” he said.

“Move,” Bolan commanded. He drew the Beretta 93-R and hit the front door, shoving the glass-and-metal barrier aside and covering the corridor beyond. Rieck followed. The two men covered each other in turns as they worked their way up the corridor. Bolan followed his nose, more concerned with clearing each space than in reaching Becker’s dwelling.

They cleared the first floor without incident, but on the second, the smoke became a visible haze. At the stairwell exit to the third floor, they found a body sprawled in the doorway. The man wore a suit and stared blankly in death, his hand clutching a walkie-talkie.

“Becker’s security,” Rieck whispered.

Bolan nodded curtly and motioned for silence.

The double doors leading into Becker’s condominium—his name and address were on a burnished plate mounted outside—had been smashed inward, possibly with a portable battering ram. The lights were out. Bolan, his Beretta pointed before him, tried a wall switch. There was no response; the power had probably been cut, either to the flat or to the building. The walls and floors were scorched and cloying smoke filled the air around them, but there were no fires evident.

“Homemade flash-bangs,” Rieck whispered. “Sort of a poor man’s incendiary charge. Burns hot, fast and bright, but often won’t set a blaze.” He looked around. “Lots of hardwood floors here. Not a lot of carpets. We’re lucky the building’s not on fire.”

“We need to clear this area,” Bolan said. “Now.”

Rieck nodded. Bolan unclipped his SureFire Combatlight, bracing it under his gun hand as he flashed the ultrabright xenon lamp, always moving, the barrel of the Beretta ready to acquire targets. Rieck had a small LED light of his own; he held it against the shotgun’s pump and did a passable job of checking his own side of the condominium. They found more dead men. Pools of blood, scorched furniture and empty brass shell casings were everywhere.

A voice shouted weakly in German from the last room of the apartment.

Rieck and Bolan hit the room high and low, respectively. The soldier kicked the door in and his Interpol counterpart followed with the shotgun. They found no resistance; there was only Hans Becker himself, secured to a chair in the center of the room, surrounded by three dead bodyguards in a room that had been largely untouched by the fast-burning charges that had scorched the rest of the condominium.

There was something strapped to his chest.

Becker looked at them, wild-eyed. He had been beaten; a livid bruise was spreading across his left cheek, and the eye on that side was bloodshot and partially swollen shut. He had been duct-taped to a straight-backed antique chair. He was barefoot, wearing slacks and shirtsleeves. He said something weakly in German, his voice faltering. Bolan imagined he’d shouted himself hoarse after his tormenters had left him like this.

“He says it’s a bomb,” Rieck reported.

The device was a shoebox-size oblong wrapped in layer after layer of the same duct tape that was holding Becker in place. Canvas straps ran from the box across Becker’s shoulders and under his arms, attached to the box from the back by some unseen means. Bolan eyed it, hard, but didn’t reach for it. Becker’s eyes followed Bolan’s.

“Eisen-Donner,” Becker whispered.

“Iron Thunder.” Bolan nodded. He bent to examine the bomb. Becker immediately became agitated and started hissing in rapid-fire German, shaking his head.

“He says they warned him it would go off if it was touched,” Rieck stated. “He has been trying not to move, while crying for help. He wants to know if we could please summon the police, and begs that we not touch the bomb.”

“He’s going to be disappointed then,” Bolan said grimly, bending to place his ear near Becker’s chest. “This thing is ticking.”

“Wouldn’t it anyway?” Rieck asked.

Bolan looked up at him. “The only reason for there to be timing connected to an explosive, is to set it off after a predetermined interval.”

“So it’s ticking….” The Interpol agent said.

“Because it’s going to explode,” Bolan finished.

“Your call, Cooper,” Rieck stated.

Bolan looked at the box, then at Becker. Without a word, he drew a dagger from his waistband. Then he spared a glance at the agent. “Get out of here, Rieck. Phone it in.”

“You sure?”

“There’s nothing you can do,” the Executioner said. “I’ll take this.”

“We could wait for the bomb squad.”

“We could if we knew how long we have,” Bolan answered. “We don’t. It’s only in the movies that the bomb has a big red LED readout staring you in the face.”

Rieck looked at him, then at Becker. “You could…I mean, it’s not your responsibility. You could get to safety.”

Bolan eyed him hard. “The hell it’s not.”

Rieck nodded. “Then I’ll stay with you. You can’t watch your own back and deal with this, too. We’ve no idea who might still be around. The people who did this might return to watch the fireworks. This apartment is not secured.” With that he checked his shotgun and stood back a few paces.

Bolan again raised his mental estimation of the Interpol agent.

Becker began muttering in agitated German. The soldier didn’t bother asking Rieck to translate; the executive was clearly convinced any tampering with the bomb would cause it to go off. He was probably right. But Mack Bolan would no more retreat to safety and watch an innocent man be blown to bits than he would pass a wounded stranger on the sidewalk. With that thought foremost in his mind, he hefted the dagger and got to work.

Using the keen edge of the compact fighting knife, Bolan made an incision around the oblong. The tape separated easily under the knife’s tip. Then, very carefully, Bolan peeled back the square of tape, making sure there were no wires or leads connecting it to the interior of the bomb. He set the tape carefully aside and took a long look at the inside of the casing. The ticking was much louder now, and came from a rotary clockwork of some kind that was spinning ominously near the bottom edge of the device. There was a fairly sizable chunk of plastic explosive buried in its heart, connected with wires to the clockwork and also to what looked like pieces of a wireless phone. Bolan leaned in and smelled the explosive.

“Semtex,” he whispered. Becker’s eyes widened. The German knew the word.

Rieck started to say something and stopped, dumbfounded, when Bolan took his phone from his pocket. Snapping it open, he used the secure phone’s camera feature to snap a picture of the interior of the bomb. He pressed the speed-dial key that would transmit the photo, scrambled, to the Farm. Then he paused, glaring at the spinning mechanism, hoping they would have enough time.

There was no telling just what Iron Thunder had thought to accomplish by rigging Becker and then leaving him. The cult didn’t seem terribly concerned with efficiency. They were more into statements, into style over substance. It was that ragged edge that separated the Iron Thunder cultists from those professional soldiers who’d attacked Rieck and Bolan at the coffee shop.

There was, however, no time to ponder that mystery now. It occurred to the soldier, as he waited, listening to the doomsday numbers fall, that there might be a camera somewhere nearby. The Iron Thunder terrorists who’d done this to Becker could be watching to see the man blown up, savoring his last fear-filled moments on earth. If the bomb was capable of remote detonation, however, it stood to reason that anyone with a finger on that button would have pressed it as soon as Bolan started to tamper with it.

The secure phone began to vibrate, and Rieck nearly jumped out of his skin. Bolan glanced at him before keying the reply button. “Cooper,” he said. Answering with his cover identity told anyone on the other end that he wasn’t alone.

“Mr. Cooper,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman said, being cautious lest whomever was with Bolan could overhear, “I’ve just received your message. You’ll be pleased to know that Mr. Akira has found corresponding schematics. I’m transferring you now.”

“Understood,” Bolan said quietly.

“Akira here,” Akira Tokaido said. The young computer hacker was all-business now. He was particularly good with intricate electronic devices, which was likely why Kurtzman had tasked him with this problem. “It is a fairly conventional device,” Akira reported. “Our recognition programs have identified all of the visible components as COTS,” he continued, “commercial and off-the-shelf. That block of plastic explosive, is it C-4?”

“Semtex, by the odor,” Bolan corrected.

“Ah, the color of the photo is a little washed out. No matter. You are ready?”

“Hurry,” Bolan said.

“The two cards connected to the small transmitter on the right-hand side,” Tokaido stated. “Those are from a cell phone. They can be removed without detonating the device. Simply pull them out and yank the wires free.”

Bolan gritted his teeth, reached out and pulled the components free. Becker shut his eyes tightly. No explosion came.

“Still here,” Bolan said softly.

“Now, the timer circuit,” Tokaido said. “This is more complicated. There should be a third wire, not visible to me, somewhere near the two that are visible at the base of the rotary timer. You will have to find that third wire and cut it. Cut only the third wire.”

Bolan set the phone on the floor and used the tip of his knife as a probe, careful not to slice into the insulation covering the two wires that had been visible in the photograph. He eased these aside, prying them gently, careful not to separate them. Beneath these black wires he found a third, blue wire, well hidden and also connected to the timing mechanism.

“I have a blue wire,” he said, picking up the phone.

“The color is not important,” Tokaido said. “The third wire is the detonation one. Cutting it alone deactivates the timer. Sever either of the other two wires and the circuit closes, detonating the bomb.”

“Copy that,” Bolan said. Once more setting down the phone, he put his fingers to his lips and then placed his hand on Becker’s shoulder. He pointed at the bomb and then gestured with the dagger. The meaning was clear enough. Becker closed his eyes again and did his best to stay very still.

The timing cylinder began to spin more quickly.

“Great,” Bolan muttered.

Rieck, looking over his shoulder, gasped. Like Bolan, he could understand what that meant: the timer had run down and the mechanism was going to trigger the explosive.

Bolan cut the wire. All three men held their breath.

There was a loud metallic ping as the mechanical trigger closed.

“Well,” Bolan said. “That’s that.” He cut the straps holding the bomb to Becker’s chest, removed the device and set it next to the chair.

Becker breathed hard, muttering “thank you” in German over and over again.

“Now what?” Rieck asked. He stepped to the nearest window and glanced out, checking the street beyond.

“Now we keep moving,” Bolan said. “Obviously, Iron Thunder has been and gone. We need to follow the next lead in the chain. That means—”

“Cooper,” Rieck interrupted. “Trouble.”

“How many?” Bolan asked, checking his Beretta.

“Two more cars full of our well-armed, well-dressed friends.”

“This is starting to get repetitive,” Bolan said, nodding to Becker. “Explain to him what’s going on.” He looked around, noted the incongruously large bathroom off this room, which was apparently Becker’s study. “Tell him to get into the bathtub and keep his head down. Tell him to stay down until the shooting stops. Stay here and shoot anyone who comes through that door that isn’t me.”

“And you?”

“I’m taking the fight to them.” He secured the Beretta 93-R with a full 20-round magazine, then drew the Desert Eagle and checked it. A .44 Magnum round waited in the chamber and the magazine was topped off.

“I don’t blame you,” Rieck said.

“What?”

“Well, after all that trouble we took to save him,” Rieck said with a grin, “I’ll be damned if it’s fair to have the second string take him out.”

Bolan offered him a vertical salute with the barrel of the Desert Eagle. He let the weapon lead him as he walked out into the scorched corridor beyond.

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