Survival Mission

If Reisz was criticized, there would be plenty of blame to go around.

“Enough for me,” he told his two companions standing by. “Somebody want to have another go at him before we leave?”

“Forget it,” Alois Perina said. “Let Ji

í and his men finish the job.”

“And mop up when they’re done,” Ladislav Seldon said.

“Suits me,” Reisz answered as he tossed the bloodied gloves aside. “I think he’s nearly finished, anyway.”

“If there was someone else behind him, he’d have said by now,” Perina opined.

“Probably,” Reisz said, still not convinced. “I doubt we’ll see this one again, regardless.”

“And good riddance,” Seldon said.

“All right, who wants a drink?” Reisz asked.

“What are we celebrating?” Perina asked.

“Who needs an excuse?” Seldon chimed in. “Make mine a double.”

Reisz was moving toward the liquor cupboard, something that had always struck him as incongruous for a gymnasium, when he was suddenly distracted by a shadow in the doorway to his left. Ji

í arriving early for a change, he thought, instead of twenty minutes late as usual. But when he turned to face the door, Reisz did not recognize the man who occupied the space.

He was tall and well-proportioned, dressed in dark clothes, with a solemn face that Reisz was sure he’d never seen before. Vaguely Italian in its aspect, but that could mean anything or nothing. More important was the pistol in his hand.

“What’s wrong with you, Emil?” Perina asked, then tracked his gaze to spot the stranger watching them. Reisz didn’t have to issue any orders. All three reached for guns at once, Reisz hoping he could draw his own before the grim-faced prowler fired.

BOLAN HAD NOT ATTACHED the ALFA’s silencer before he left his hired car for the trek to Oskar’s gym. It didn’t matter at this late hour, on the top floor of a gym surrounded by commercial buildings that had shut down for the night.

He shot the seeming leader of the three men first, drilling his chest an inch or so off-center from a range of twenty feet. The guy went down without a whimper, slack and boneless when he hit the concrete floor. It seemed to take his backup by surprise, but neither faltered in attempts to pull their weapons.

Bolan ducked and tagged the shooter on his right, who seemed to be the faster of the two remaining on their feet. Not quite a perfect shot, but Bolan saw him lurch and stagger from the impact, then lose his footing, tumbling. If he managed to recover, it would cost him precious time, and Bolan used that breather to take care of number three.

The last man had his weapon drawn, some kind of automatic with a shiny stainless frame and blue-steel slide, maybe a Czech CZ 75. The piece was moving into target acquisition when the third round out of Bolan’s ALFA struck its owner just below his left eye socket, snapping back his head and ruining his aim forever. Even then, the dead man got a shot off as he toppled over backward, setting free a rain of plaster dust from overhead.

Bolan rose from his crouch, surveyed the fallen and discovered that the second man he’d shot was still alive. Crossing the room to reach him, Bolan kicked his gun away and made a quick assessment of his wound. It would be fatal without treatment, but he couldn’t pin it to a deadline. Rather than take chances, Bolan put another .40 S&W round between the shooter’s eyes and finished it.

That done, he moved to stand before the bloody figure of a man dressed in only a pair of boxer shorts, secured to a wooden chair by strips of silver duct tape wrapped around his torso, wrists and ankles. He was conscious, barely, using some reserve of energy to hold his head up, watching Bolan through the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. Mouth-breathing since his nose was flattened from repeated blows.

Bolan knelt on concrete, outside the ring of blood spatters, and peered into the mottled face, which at present was barely recognizable from photographs he’d seen before he left the States. Playing it safe, he leaned in closer and addressed the human punching bag.

“Andrew Murton?”

The head bobbed once, then sank onto the captive’s chest. Bolan worked quickly with his knife, slitting the duct tape, peeling it away. There was no way to spare the prisoner that ripping pain, but Murton barely seemed to feel it.

“Clothes?” Bolan asked.

Murton nodded vaguely to his left and answered, “Ober dere.”

Bolan recovered shirt, slacks, socks and loafers from a corner of the gym and brought them back to Murton, helped him dress himself, acutely conscious of the fact that they were wasting precious time. Whether his gunshots had been noted in the seedy neighborhood or not, there was a chance that reinforcements might arrive at any moment. If that happened…

Murton wobbled on his feet as Bolan held him upright, then took baby steps in the direction of the exit. “Godda go,” he said. “Somebud comin’.”

Bolan didn’t question that, assuming there’d been some form of communication with his captors during Murton’s ordeal, or that Murton had a rough idea of when new torturers arrived to spell the old. Whatever, it was time for them to hit the street.

The prisoner would need a medic, then they’d need to talk about the other prisoner whom Bolan had been sent to rescue, if that still was possible. In either case, his job was half-done, more or less.

If they could only make it back to Bolan’s car alive.

He helped Murton limp down three flights of stairs to the ground floor, led him to the main street exit and unlocked it from inside. The cool night air seemed to refresh Murton a little, helped him to pick up his lagging pace. They’d covered half a block when headlights washed across them, from behind. Doors slammed, and Murton turned back toward the sound.

“Shid!” he exclaimed. “Run now!”

Bolan glanced back in time to see four new arrivals on the sidewalk, staring after them and jabbering together, one of them already reaching underneath his jacket for a weapon.

Murton had it right.

Run now!

2

Half carrying the man he’d rescued moments earlier—one-ninety if he weighed an ounce—Bolan reached the nearest corner, ducked around it and stopped there. Propped Murton up against the rough brick wall and peered back toward the place they’d come from, gun in hand.

“Why stoppen?” Murton asked him, slurring.

“To see if I can end it here,” Bolan replied, his index finger on the ALFA’s trigger.

But it wasn’t meant to play that way, apparently. Instead of giving chase, the four goons from the car—it could have been a Citroën, maybe something manufactured locally—were piling back into their vehicle. It bought Bolan a little time, but precious little. And none to waste on conversation with a man who was barely conscious.

Bolan made his choice. He half crouched and drove his shoulder into Murton’s gut, already bruised and aching. With a whoof! the battered man slumped over Bolan’s shoulder, perfectly positioned for a fireman’s carry. Bolan flexed his legs and bore the weight, turned toward the nearby darkened side street where he’d left his Volvo S80 and broke into the fastest run that he could manage under the circumstances.

It reminded him of combat on another battlefield, retrieving wounded comrades under fire. He’d always done his best to keep faith with the Special Forces credo that no soldier stays behind. That wasn’t always possible, of course—sometimes you had to make the choice of dying with a corpse or moving on to fight another day—but his record was better than average.

And leaving Murton alive with the men who’d abducted him wasn’t an option.

Bolan heard an engine growling as he reached the Volvo, used its tab to pop the door locks from a distance, and upon reaching the vehicle he began the chore of putting Murton in a seat. He chose the rear, where Murton could lie down and be out of sight, though not entirely safe from any bullets slicing through the Volvo’s coachwork. At the very least, a backseat ride would keep him out of Bolan’s lap and clear from Bolan’s line of fire.

Murton cooperated to the best of his ability, huffing and groaning as he rolled onto the Volvo’s rear bench seat and drawing in his legs as Bolan slammed the door. A quick dash to the driver’s side, key twist, ignore the chime that warned him of a shoulder harness left unfastened, and they pulled out from the curb just as the other car found them with its headlights, closing in.

The Volvo’s five-speed automatic transmission left both of Bolan’s hands free for driving—or for fighting, if it came to that. The duffel bags containing most of his new weapons were concealed in the sedan’s trunk, out of reach for the moment, but he still had the ALFA autoloader with nine rounds remaining and four extra magazines secured in pockets. If he couldn’t stop the chase car and its occupants with fifty-three live rounds…well, then, what good was he?

But Bolan’s first choice was evasion and escape.

He’d killed three men already, in their lair at Oskar’s gym, but that was vastly different than a running firefight through the streets of Prague. Even at night, the city never really slept. A fair share of its approximately 1.2 million inhabitants had work to do at any hour of the day or night, including a municipal police department with fifteen district headquarters spotted around the 192-square-mile metro area. He could meet one of their silver Škoda Octavia prowl cars at any turn, and since his private code barred any use of deadly force against police, most of his options would be lost in that event.

He drove without a plan so far, aware that he was winding toward Old Town, the ancient heart of Prague where early settlers had put down roots nearly twelve hundred years ago. It was the last place where he wanted to be trapped, surrounded by the landmarks that drew tourists, with a greater likelihood of meeting the police, and so he scrolled a street map of the city that he’d memorized while he was airborne, seeking options.

If he had it right, they were about to exit Prague 5—one of Prague’s twenty-two administrative districts—and enter Prague 4, specifically a suburb known as Kunratice. If he could lose the Citroën in its winding streets, so much the better. And if not…

It would be time for drastic action.

JI

Í KOSTKA CLUTCHED his pistol tight enough to make his knuckles ache, bracing his free hand on the Citroën’s dashboard as they swerved around another corner, entering a residential street. The Volvo they were chasing showed no signs of slowing down, so Kostka snapped an order at his driver, Ivan Durych.

“Overtake them, will you? If you can’t do that, pull over now and let me drive!”

“This is a DS4,” Durych reminded him, keeping his eyes locked on the target. “Not a goddamned Maserati.”

“Can you get us within shooting distance, or is that too much to ask?” Kostka demanded.

“Don’t you think I’m trying?”

“Well, stop trying, then, and do it!”

Kostka realized his anger was misplaced, but he was known for his explosive temper, one of several qualities that had resulted in his elevation to the post of squad leader within the Werich syndicate. Unlike some blowhards he had met, Kostka’s bite was worse than his bark, a fact well recognized by everyone who knew him. He would strike without a second thought and kill without remorse.

So why, in God’s name, had he let the runners slip away from him outside Oskar’s gym?

Something about the tall man, when he turned to glare at Kostka on the sidewalk, had persuaded Kostka in a heartbeat that they would be wise to let him think he had escaped, then run him down and kill him while his back was turned, and either retrieve their prisoner or eliminate him at the same time. That would leave important questions still unanswered, but Kostka thought that was preferable to the American’s escape.

No one could blame him for the breakout. That would fall on Emil Reisz—who, if he had an ounce of luck at all, was lying dead at the gymnasium with his two stooges. Kostka had been early to relieve Reisz, and for that reason alone had caught the prisoner and his still-unknown benefactor at the scene. Five minutes later, and they would have gotten clean away.

Still, if he lost them, there would be no one else Kostka could blame. They were in hot pursuit, well armed, but if they could not salvage the debacle he would be the loser. Might wish he was dead himself when time came to deliver the bad news.

Just make it right, he thought, and hissed at Durych with a fresh demand for speed.

“We’re gaining,” Durych snapped. “Be ready!”

In the backseat, Kostka heard his other soldiers—Michal Lobkovic and Zden

k Vojan—cocking pistols. They were both fair shots, but Kostka didn’t like the thought of either firing past him from the rear while they were racing through the streets. Half turning in his seat, he said, “Be careful if there’s shooting. I don’t want a goddamned bullet in my ear from one of you!”

Vojan grinned back at him and said, “I never shot a man by accident.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” Kostka answered, turning back to watch the Volvo as it swung around another corner, vanishing from sight.

“Will you—”

“I know,” Durych said, interrupting him. “Speed up! Get closer! Work a miracle!”

“I need a driver, not a priest!” said Kosta.

“Hold on!” Durych warned as they reached the corner, rounding it in a skid that was barely controlled.

Cursing came from the backseat as momentum threw Vojan and Lobkovic together for a second, banging shoulders. Kostka powered down his window, sight wind whipping at his face and ruffling his short hair as he thrust his shooting arm outside the car. Another half block closer, and he could attempt a shot. One of the rear tires, or perhaps the driver, if he got a lucky break.

Where was the passenger? Kostka saw nothing of him, guessed that he was probably slumped over, maybe rolling in the backseat. Either way, it helped to have him clear of any shot that Kostka tried to make. Retrieving him alive would be a bonus; catching both runners alive would be sweet icing on the cake.

But he would settle for a pair of corpses if it was the only way to stop them.

Dead men couldn’t answer questions, but neither could they squeal to the police.

ANOTHER BLOCK, and Bolan heard a heavy, restless shifting in the seat behind him. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw Andrew Murton’s head block out the glare of headlights from the chase car.

“Better stay down,” he advised his passenger. “They could start shooting anytime.”

“Ah wanna hep.”

“You want to help?” Bolan said. “Lie back down so I can use the mirror.”

“Gimme guh.”

Not likely, Bolan thought. The last thing that he needed was a punch-drunk shooter blasting out the Volvo’s windows, peppering the houses that lined both sides of the street.

“I say again—”

He saw the muzzle-flash before his lips could form the order, jigged the steering wheel and knew they’d literally dodged a bullet in the night.

“Get down!” Bolan barked, relieved to see the shadow figure in his mirror disappear. Bolan knew Murton had endured an ordeal that would break a lesser man, but that would not prevent him from knocking Murton cold if it became a matter of survival.

One more muzzle-flash from the pursuit car, just as Bolan swerved into a side street on his left. Again, the shot went wild, buzzing away to who knew where. With any luck, the slug would strike a tree trunk or an empty vehicle. The flip side was a bedroom wall or window pierced, a sleeper shocked awake by sudden agony—or never waking up at all.

The hunters didn’t give a damn about potential bystanders. They had a job to do and they were focused on it to the exclusion of all else. Professionals. Nothing but victory or death would stop them.

Bolan was determined that they would not win.

Which left one option.

First, he had to find a killing ground that minimized the prospects of collateral damage. There, if he could locate such a place before a bullet found one of the Volvo’s tires, its fuel tank or its engine block, he’d make a stand and see what came of it.

Back to the map he’d memorized from the internet. Off to the east, three-quarters of a mile or so, the Vltava River surged against its banks, the waterfront including warehouses for cargo shipped by barge from Germany and Austria. Deliveries might be ongoing at this hour, but the traffic should be relatively light, and there would be no tourists loitering around the docks to serve as targets in a shooting gallery.

The chase car lost a little ground to Bolan on the turn but soon began to make it up again. He gave the driver credit, wishing at the same time that he’d blow a gasket, have a heart attack, whatever might truncate the chase without a battle to attract police.

Too late, he thought.

Some neighborhoods of Prague might tolerate a shot or two around midnight, but Kunratice did not strike him as one of those. If someone—make that several someones—hadn’t called the cops already, Bolan would be very much surprised. That thought turned up the ticktock volume of the numbers falling in his mind, but Bolan dialed it back again and focused on his half-formed plan.

If he could—

Hold on, what was this? Another pair of headlights coming up behind the chase car, not dawdling like a local coming home after a night out on the town. He couldn’t call it a pursuit, at least not yet. There were no flashing lights, no siren to suggest an officer behind the wheel.

A second chase car? Reinforcements summoned via cell phone or some other means to help the first team close their trap? If that were true, there might be anywhere from two to five or six guns in the second vehicle. The odds against survival may have doubled.

And what difference did it make?

Bolan had never been a quitter, knew the meaning of surrender but had never practiced it. Eight guns—or even ten—made life more difficult, definitely. But he had beaten worse odds in the past and walked away from the situation. The bottom line: even if death was certain for himself and his companion, he would fight until his last round had been fired, then take it hand to hand. Unless they dropped him with a lucky shot, the hunting party’s scarred survivors would not soon forget their meeting with The Executioner.

He might even return to haunt them in their dreams.

“WE HAVE A TAIL,” Durych announced to no one in particular.

Kostka spun in his seat so quickly that he strained his neck and almost yelped at the onslaught of sudden, piercing pain. He saw headlights behind them, clearly following the Citroën.

“Who is it?” he demanded.

“Do prdele! How should I know?” Durych answered sharply.

“Not the policajti,” Vojan offered. “They’d have lit their Christmas tree by now.”

“Friends of the one we’re chasing, maybe,” Lobkovic suggested, sounding worried.

“Only joining in just now?” Kostka replied, half speaking to himself. “Where have they been?”

“Who cares?” Vojan retorted. “Do you want me to get rid of them?”

“Not yet. The one we want’s still in the car ahead. But watch them and be ready if they try to overtake us.”

Kostka wondered if he ought to call for help, but how would he explain the situation? Truth be told, he couldn’t say exactly where they were, so asking for a backup team would be superfluous. He wished they’d come prepared with more than pistols—automatic rifles, maybe shotguns—but it didn’t help.

What was the old saying? “Bez pen

z do hospody nelez.”

Without money do not go to the pub.

Translation: Be prepared. You have to pay to play.

And who thought up this stuff? Likely someone who’d bitten off more than he could chew but lived to tell about it afterward.

Kostka could only hope he’d have the same good luck. One thing was certain, though. If he broke off the chase from fear of being trapped, his end was certain. When he took the story back to Lida Werich he would find no mercy waiting for him. Failure was not tolerated. It would certainly not be tolerated, much less favored with an amnesty.

And if survival was not one of Kostka’s options, he would choose the quick death of a bullet over anything that Werich might devise to punish him. No contest there. Be sure to save a bullet for himself, in case it all went wrong.

“They’re heading for the river,” Durych said.

“The river? Why?”

“I’m not a zasranej mind reader, am I?”

Kostka nearly pistol-whipped him then, but that would be the same as suicide, the speed at which they were traveling. Instead, he satisfied himself with muttered curses, leaning from his open window to attempt another shot.

And missed, of course. Just as he squeezed the CZ’s trigger, his intended target made another sharp turn, this one to the right, and Kostka’s bullet screamed away downrange to find some unknown point of impact in the night. As Durych made the turn, Kostka could see the waterfront ahead of them. He smelled the river, with its scent of dead fish, diesel fuel and dreams vanished downstream.

“Maybe he has a boat,” Durych said.

“Then we have to stop him now,” Kostka replied, “before he gets aboard and goes somewhere that we can’t follow.”

“Jo, jo. I’m working on it!”

“So, work harder!”

“Seru na tvojí matku!” Durych snapped, but stood on the accelerator, somehow wringing more speed from the growling Citroën. “Unless that crate can fly, we have them now!”

WITH SOMETHING LIKE a hundred yards of pavement left before he hit the water, Bolan made his move. It wasn’t complex, but it still required precision timing, with coordination of the Volvo’s brake and its accelerator. If he did it properly, the car would make a sharp one-eighty, wind up facing back in the direction they’d just come from, stopping with its high beams aimed into the chase-car driver’s face. And if he blew it, they’d go tumbling ass-over-teakettle down the dock, hammered unconscious—maybe dead—before they plunged into the water.

One chance. But that was all a soldier could expect.

“Hang on!” he warned his backseat rider, hoping Murton had the sense and strength to brace himself. A wrong move, and it wouldn’t matter if he picked up any more new bruises.

But it worked. The Volvo nosed down, slowing sharply, and began to fishtail just as Bolan cranked the steering wheel hard left and stamped on the accelerator. By the time it came to rest again, four heartbeats later, he was facing toward the chase car with the ALFA in his left hand, out the open driver’s window, while his right hand gripped the wheel. Behind him, Murton mumbled something like a curse, and Bolan let it pass.

He watched the two cars bearing down upon him, closing fast. The first, with four opponents the big American had already seen, was in his sights. The second, still an unknown quantity, was bringing up the rear, joining the play for reasons Bolan hadn’t grasped yet. Nine rounds in the ALFA, and he could reload in seconds flat if he was free and clear. Driving at speed would complicate the process, but—

Bolan attacked, gunning the Volvo forward on a clear collision course and rapid-firing with the ALFA autoloader. Three, four, five rounds through the chase car’s windshield as the gap between them narrowed. Then his enemy was swerving off to Bolan’s left, plowing into a trailer clearly built for catering, its drab facade showing a poor painted rendition of a sausage on a bun.