Edge Of Hell

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

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

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

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

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

“Go! Go! Go!” the Ripper shouted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3

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

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

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

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

Tern shook his head.

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

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

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

“You fucking liar!” the kid bellowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“De Simmones…” Tern began.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, it wasn’t easy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tern smirked.

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s this about?” Brognola asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re joking with me, right?”

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

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

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

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

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

“For what?”

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

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

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

“Any solved?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Three weapons?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are we done taking pictures of the body?”

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

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

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

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

The vibes given by the scene were strange.

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

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

This was different. There was no emotion in this.

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

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

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

There’s no such thing as coincidence.

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

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

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

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

4

Try as he might to put aside his theories and memories about the previous night’s murder, Mack Bolan couldn’t shake them. But he wasn’t completely left cold.

As he showed up at the offices of London’s Metropolitan Police Homicide East unit, the Executioner felt the usual tingle he felt whenever he entered a police station while on a mission. Hal Brognola had arranged credentials that were so far above reproach they could bounce a small nuclear warhead. But none of that gave Bolan the impression that he was truly safe. The gulf that stood between the lone soldier and the forces of law enforcement was one that was hard to cross without the sense that he was walking a tightrope.

There were just too many variables for him to truly feel comfortable working inside a system—the possibility of dealing with corruption, of losing brave allies, of being too constrained by the rules and allowing his enemy to slip away to cost more lives…

Bolan took a deep breath. He had no patience for those who got away, literally, with murder. And so, he spoke to those killers in their own bloody language—regardless of laws.

He reached the watch commander, a sturdily built, square-shouldered, full-faced woman with long, once black hair shot through with streaks of silver. She was in her fifties, no longer the fresh-faced youthful beauty she had once been, but something shined through the crow’s-feet and smile lines. She had a sharp eye as keen and hardened as any beat cop. She looked down on him with a matronly glower.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked.

“I’m here to see Detectives Dean and Goh, Homicide East.”

She pursed her full lips, studying him for a moment, disapproval crossing her face. She cleared her throat. “Their desks are on the second floor, in the Homicide East squad room. They’re expecting you, Detective Cooper.”

“Thank you,” Bolan replied.

He followed the desk sergeant’s directions and was soon at the desk of an unlikely couple of lawmen sitting at face-to-face desks, paperwork and foam cups littering them, computer screens displaying crime scene reports.

Goh looked up at Bolan, dark eyes taking him in with a single glance as his raven hair fell in sheets off his collar.

Dean had short blond hair that stopped at her collar and piercing, pale blue eyes that almost mirrored his own. She studied him as well, her gaze penetrating, trying to cut through the layers of pretense he was hiding behind. While Goh was offering his hand in greeting, she was holding back, tense and withdrawn, in observer mode.

Bolan took Goh’s hand.

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan offered.

“Kevin Goh.” The detective’s flawless East End accent indicated he was London born and raised, or at least raised. His grip was strong and firm. “This is Melissa Dean.”

“Pleasure,” she said, but making no effort to act like it was.

“Likewise,” he answered. He was sincere about it, but wondered how far behind he was on his rapport with these two.

“So you’re interested in the latest run of Ripper killings?” Goh asked.

“Yeah. I was interested in the case. Meredith Jones-Jakes, about five months ago, was the last one I’d heard about,” Bolan explained. “Then this morning, there was supposedly another one?”

“You seem to have learned about it pretty quickly,” Dean spoke up in a stinging broadside. “Coincidence?”

He met her gaze unflinchingly. “There’s no such thing as coincidence.”

“So what are you doing so far from the colonies?” Dean pressed.

“You have the paperwork sitting on your desk.”

Dean pushed it aside. “Administrative leave from the Boston Police Department. That’s the reason. What’s the story?”

“I’m set to testify in three months,” Bolan told her. “And I’m under a gag order about anything else.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “A mobster?”

“Make of it what you will.”

“That’s why you’re traipsing through a Met station packing a hand cannon under your jacket? The Mafia doesn’t have roving hit squads around the world, Detective.”

Bolan was tempted, for half a heartbeat, to tell her that she was wrong. Early on in his career, he’d run into more than enough heavily armed gangsters in Soho, giving him his first experiences with the awesome Weatherby Mark V and the efficient Uzi 9 mm submachine gun. And only a few hours previously, he could have shocked her with the level of hardware at Sonny Westerbridge’s Rotherhithe warehouse.