The Killing Rule

The giant Irishman yanked the soldier into his embrace by the face and rammed it with his hip. A second later he’d spun Bolan and stood behind him, the huge shillelagh pressed against one side of his throat, a brawny arm squeezed against the other. The huge hand had slid from Bolan’s face to the back of his head and shoved his face forward into the strangle. It was the figure-four choke out, aided and abetted by three feet of Irish firewood.

Caron whispered in Bolan’s ear like a lover. “Yer going to go to sleep now, boyo, and when you wake? It’ll be me standing over you. Not with my pride and joy, now—” Caron cinched the strangle deeper with a practiced shrug of his shoulders “—but with a knife from the kitchen. We’ll have a long talk you and I, before I send you to the Old Place, at the bottom of the Thames.”

Bolan couldn’t break the hold. His trachea compressed and sparkly things danced in his vision. He regretted not having drawn his pistol. The Beretta was in a small-of-the-back holster and wedged against Caron’s massive middle. He was swiftly running out of air and options. Caron knew what Bolan was thinking from long practice, and he buried his face into Bolan’s back to prevent any eye gouging.

The Executioner lifted his knee to his chest and stomped down with all of his might on the Irishman’s two broken digits, breaking a third in the bargain. Caron groaned, and Bolan raised his foot and stomped his heel down again. The Irishman couldn’t help himself. He instinctively lifted his mangled foot from the floor to protect it. Tottering on one leg, he lost all his leverage. Bolan grabbed the club pressed against his neck, dropped to one knee and heaved.

The three-hundred-pounder flew over Bolan’s shoulder in a textbook judo “flying-mare” throw.

O’Maonlai screamed as the giant beached like a whale across his broken legs. Bolan gasped air into his lungs. Caron was already struggling to rise. The soldier strode forward and kicked the Irishman in the side of the neck. The blow had far more power than a karate chop, and the bartender went limp. The shooter with the broken sternum lay gasping weakly and staring up into the lights. His gun hand lay like a broken bird protectively between his legs. MacGowan was reaching through the rubble for Bolan’s fallen shillelagh. His open eye widened in terror as Bolan loomed over him. The soldier gave him another finger poke in the swollen hinge of his jaw. The thug passed out without even screaming.

The remaining shooter had risen to his knees and elbows and was making an admirable attempt to wrap his broken hands around his silenced pistol. He looked up just in time to receive Bolan’s foot in his teeth. He fell onto his back and took the soldier’s second kick between the legs. He curled fetal, spitting teeth and vomiting up stout.

Bolan relieved both shooters of their pistols. He shot out the overhead lights, blew out the mirror behind the bar and with a twinge of conscience expended the remaining bullets on the vintage ports and the decades-aged single malts on the top shelf. It was a shame to shoot up a historic pub like this, but it had become a nest of serpents, and it was a calculated affront. He wanted the IRA enraged. He wanted the hotheads among them to search him out for payback.

Bolan tossed the spent pistols onto pile of humanity on the floor. He tucked his shillelagh back up his sleeve and scooped up Caron’s, as well.

Now he had two.

CHAPTER THREE

“Well, Bear—” Bolan held up wood in each hand for the satellite camera “—now I have two.”

Kurtzman grinned. “That’s very nice, Striker, but did you really have to go back and beat up everyone a second time?”

Bolan considered. “No, but I felt like it.”

Kurtzman’s faced showed what he thought of that, and Bolan knew he was right. It had been close. Two CIA field agents were dead, and so far all Bolan had to show for it were two pub brawls and a couple of bludgeons. He just had to hope he’d stirred things up enough that someone higher up the food chain would reveal himself. “Have Shane, Caron or any of the boys showed up in any hospitals?”

Kurtzman shook his head.

It was a long shot. The IRA would have some doctors in London to take care of these kinds of things on the quiet. Bolan considered all they had, which wasn’t much. The Pentagon had gotten hold of some pretty wild chatter about the IRA getting its hands on weapons of mass destruction. Britain’s MI-5 had put the vague rumors on their very low order of probability list and continued with much more promising lines of investigation of terrorism in the U.K. However, the CIA had a sleeper asset in place with the IRA. That asset had gone active, quietly investigating the rumor, and he had swiftly wound up dead. So had his replacement. Despite their losses, MI-5 seemed to consider the matter a nonissue. At least they did not appear to be assigning any of their own assets to it.

Of course MI-5 probably wasn’t pleased that the U.S. had gone ahead and staged an operation on U.K. soil without telling them. Intelligence agencies, even those of staunch allies, were extremely territorial. There would be directors in MI-5 who on some level were secretly pleased and felt the “Yanks” had gotten a deserved comeuppance for playing cowboy games on British soil. Still, two dead CIA agents should have merited some attention. Hard-won instincts told Bolan that there was something wrong with the situation. He couldn’t say why, but to him it felt like the whole matter was being swept under the rug.

“Bear, who would have the power to hush this up?”

“A whole lot of people, but you also have to factor that the CIA blundered and got a bloody nose. It’s causing quite a little stink between our intelligence communities. There’s every reason to suspect that MI-5 is running its own operation on the matter right now and feels no compunction at all to inform the U.S. about it much less involve us.” Kurtzman pointed a condemning finger. “For that matter, once the Brits find out that you’re running your own gambit over there, which they will, considering how you’re leaving a trail of broken Irishmen everywhere you go, things are going to get downright frosty across the pond.”

Bolan knew that all too well. “Well, I guess I’m just going to have to pay MI-5 a visit.”

Kurtzman just stared. “Really.”

“Like you said, they’re going to find out about me sooner or later. I might as well give them a courtesy call.”

“They’re going to read you the riot act and have you shipped home, and that’s best-case scenario.”

“Probably, but there’s something going on here. Something more than the CIA failing to penetrate the IRA. So if I take out some low-level thugs and then go to MI-5, I think my cache as a target will increase. I have to rattle some more cages.”

“You know, Striker, I’d be real careful rattling MI-5’s cage. They’re some of the best in the world, and they don’t mess around.”

Bolan knew that, too. In fact he was banking on it.

MI-5 London Headquarters

BOLAN SAT ON A FOLDING CHAIR in a “white” or interview room. It was actually a neutral beige. There were no furnishings other than a table and two chairs. Several cameras were positioned in the ceiling and a CD recording device sat on the table. The gray-haired woman sitting across from Bolan looked like a stereotypical British grandmother right down to her horn-rimmed glasses, frumpy tweed jacket and gray wool skirt. Bolan had not been offered any coffee, tea or sherry. He sat, maintaining a professional and calm demeanor while Assistant Director Heloise Finch quietly and, with a British upper-class politeness so stiff it was insulting, lit into him.

Phrases like “poor spirit of cooperation,” “endangering a relationship that had thrived since World War II” and Bolan’s own “temerity” were tripping off her tongue forward, backward and sideways. It appeared that the director was finally winding down.

“…and while I do appreciate the courtesy of your taking the time to call upon us, I’m really not sure in what capacity I or my department can be of any assistance to you.”

Finch didn’t appreciate the visit at all. She was clearly appalled by the whole situation. Bolan smiled winningly. “Would it be shabby of me if I asked for your help anyway?”

Finch steepled her hands and stared at Bolan for long moments. “You know, I believe it would.”

“I can see how you’d feel that way.”

“The CIA has—”

Bolan cut in before she could work up a fresh head of steam. “Director Finch, I don’t work for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“You know—” Finch flipped open a thin manila folder “—I have something of a file on you, or at least someone matching your description. Much of the intel is above my pay grade and security clearance. Barely a pamphlet, actually, but it appears you have operated within the United Kingdom before, sometimes in what can loosely be described as cooperation with British Intelligence and apparently sometimes without the permission of Her Majesty’s government.”

Bolan saw no reason to lie. “That’s essentially correct.”

Finch was somewhat taken aback by Bolan’s directness. “I have received a report of a disturbance over at Pub Claddagh last night.”

Bolan shrugged.

“May I state that Her Majesty’s government does not appreciate American citizens coming to her shores and engaging in donnybrooks and shillelagh battles in her pubs.”

MI-5 clearly had informants in the London IRA infrastructure. Bolan maintained his poker face.

“However, MI-5 has received rather veiled suggestions from some very strange quarters that it would not be ‘unappreciated’ were my department to show you whatever professional courtesy seems appropriate.” Finch leaned forward and peered over the rims of her glasses. “I have taken this to mean I should not have you immediately detained and deported.”

“That would be preferable.”

“However, to reiterate, I am not sure what if any assistance I am willing to provide you.”

Bolan smiled.

Assistant Director Finch’s cool reserve broke as she smiled resignedly. “Of course, I have already been of assistance to you. You are sticking your nose into the IRA doings, and your taking a meeting at MI-5 HQ ups your market value.”

Bolan didn’t bother to deny it.

“I will be blunt with you. My superiors and members of the government concerned with this organization consider this rumor of the IRA acquiring weapons of mass destruction rather something of a wild-goose chase, and your government’s dogged pursuit of it puzzling if not downright ridiculous, as well as a strain on the relationship between our two countries.”

“Director Finch, the fact remains that two CIA intelligence agents have been killed.”

“The CIA agents in question were trying to infiltrate the Irish Republican Army’s London infrastructure, and that, and I say this in all modesty, if it is attempted without the help of my department is an excellent way to commit suicide. Their loss is indeed regrettable, however, it is not totally surprising.”

“I appreciate your candor. Let me blunt, as well.” Bolan’s smile fell away from his face. “There is something very wrong going on here, and you know it.”

Finch sighed. “Other than your two dead CIA agents, what proof do you have that the IRA is up to anything worse than usual?”

“Nothing. Just a hunch. Just like you.”

Finch stared at Bolan for long moments. He knew he’d read the woman correctly. Finch knew something was wrong, as well. MI-5 was one of the top internal intelligence agencies on the planet, second only perhaps to the FBI. Like all internal intelligence agencies they had civilian oversight. The FBI was responsible to congress. MI-5 was responsible to the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Throughout their illustrious history, MI-5 was known far and wide for spending almost as much time battling English bureaucracy as they did enemies of the United Kingdom.

“You are playing a very dangerous game, and I cannot even begin to describe my feelings toward yet another U.S. citizen engaging in rogue intelligence operations under my nose.”

“However,” Bolan countered, “you know there is something bigger going on here, and for whatever reason your department has been told to low priority the situation or ignore it completely.”

Finch’s face set in stone. “For the record, you are not to engage in any intelligence operations against the IRA on English soil. For that matter, you are not to ‘operate’ on English soil in any capacity at all unless directly requested to by Her Majesty’s government. If you are caught doing so, it would be my duty to have you at the very least detained and deported if not brought up on criminal charges.”

Bolan nodded. “I understand.” He glanced at the recorder on the table and Finch clicked it off. “For the record, any and all intelligence I might gather if I engaged in such a questionable activity would be immediately shared with Her Majesty’s government, and done so through your offices exclusively.”

“I believe we understand each other.” Finch placed her business card on the table and pressed the intercom button. “Security, please have our guest escorted off the premises.”

BOLAN GLANCED at his watch as he drove through traffic. His modified wristwatch was blinking at him, which meant that someone had gone into his hotel room without deactivating the security suite. Bolan drove an extra block past his hotel and then circled around to approach from the back, heading into the hotel loading dock. A man in a purple hotel jacket looked at his vehicle askance. Bolan exited the vehicle and handed him a fifty-pound note, and the man went back to overseeing the off-loading of towels from a linen truck. Bolan followed the pallets of towels into the laundry.

His watch peeped at him again. Someone had opened his laptop.

Bolan approached two men in white uniforms speaking what Bolan was pretty sure was a Nigerian dialect and smoking cigarettes. “Say, can I ask you a favor? Could you go up to the fifth floor and see if anyone strange is lurking around outside room 502?”

One of the men grinned. “Sorry. We’re on break.”

Bolan peeled off another fifty-pound note. “There’s no way I can convince you?”

The second Nigerian snatched the note. “I am convinced.” He pinched out his cigarette and carefully placed it back in the pack. “I’ll be back.”

His partner scowled after him as he disappeared into the service elevator.

Bolan smiled sympathetically. “I might have a job for you in a minute.”

The man peered at Bolan narrowly. “This is nothing illegal, then?”

Bolan was almost positive the two men were illegal immigrants. They were probably in desperate need of money but even more desperate to have no attention drawn to themselves. Bolan shrugged. The man clapped a hand to his forehead as if he had a migraine. “Oh, man…”

Ten minutes later Bolan’s scout returned. He shook his head. “This real James Bond shit, you know.”

Bolan nodded. “How many?”

“Two. One big. One little. Nasty-looking white men. Lounging about. I don’t know, but beneath their jackets I think they have guns.” He peered at Bolan in identical suspicion as his partner. “That your room?”

Bolan held up his key. “Can I ask you gentlemen a favor?”

They blinked in unison. “Oh?”

“I need a diversion.”

They stared at Bolan noncommittally.

The big American turned to his scout. “What’s your name?”

“Musa Balam.”

“Musa, nice to meet you.” He turned to the other man. “And you?”

He stared at Bolan defiantly. “Sheriff Modu.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Matt. What I want you to do is this. I want you both to go back up the elevator. When it opens, Musa, you run down the hall to the stairs, and you? You chase him, yelling in Hausa.”

Modu looked at Bolan as if he were insane. “Not for fifty pounds.”

“How about a hundred?” Bolan grinned. “Each, and another hundred once it’s done.”

Balam peered curiously. “And after it is done, what?”

“You’re better off not knowing. You just run for the stairs and keep going.”

A furious exchange in Hausa ensued. Balam apparently won. “Show us the money.”

Bolan peeled several bills from his money clip. Even the reticent Sheriff Modu’s eyes lit up. Bolan handed them a hundred each and followed them into the elevator. Modu took a wet towel from a bin and coiled it into a rat’s tail. The door pinged open on the fifth floor. Balam ran out screaming and Modu raced after him, shouting in scathing Hausa and snapping the towel like a whip. Bolan waited four seconds until he knew they had passed his door and then filled his hand with his Beretta 93-R and stepped out of the elevator.

As Balam had said, two men stood near his door. Both men had short, brush-cut blond hair and wore leather jackets. By the bulges under their left arms, his scout was right. They were packing substantial heat. The smaller man held a cell phone, obviously waiting for warning from the men watching the garage and the lobby. The two Nigerians were almost to the stairs at the end of the hall. The big man shook his head in disgust at their antics. “Agh, can you believe those bloody foreigners.”

The accent told Bolan that the man was a South African. Bolan strode up to him, the big man catching the movement a second too late. Bolan cracked the slide of his Beretta machine pistol across the side of the man’s face, laying the cheek open to the bone. He whipped the 93-R backhand across the bridge of the little man’s nose and shattered it. The big man had bent over with pain and clutched his face. The butt of the Beretta crunched into the back of his skull and dropped him unconscious to the ground. Bolan rammed the muzzle of the Beretta into the side of the little man’s neck and he fell to the carpet.

Bolan knelt over the big man and took his ID. Beneath his jacket he was wearing Threat Level II soft body armor. In a shoulder rig he was carrying a BXP submachine gun with the stock folded and a sound suppressor fitted over the barrel. The weapon was basically an American MAC-10 cleaned up and improved to South African specifications. Bolan took the weapon and checked the load. It was loaded with hollow point rounds. He took the little man’s BXP, as well, and checked his watch. Someone was still messing with his laptop. That laptop had been designed by Akira Tokaido, one of Stony Man Farm’s cybernetic experts. The Farm’s resident armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, had installed a number of security devices that had nothing to do with binary code. Bolan pumped the bezel of his watch three times and was rewarded with a scream as the right-hand speaker in the laptop’s monitor frame spewed a compressed stream of pepper spray into the operator’s eyes.

Bolan kicked open the door of his hotel room.

A redheaded woman was on the floor in front of Bolan’s laptop clutching her face. The man who had been in guard position looked up from where he bent over her. His BXP was in his hand but on the wrong side of his body. Bolan put the red-dot sight of his right-hand weapon on the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The BXP stuttered and twenty-two rounds of 9 mm hollowpoint ammo jackhammered into the gunner’s chest as Bolan held the trigger down on full-auto. The man’s armor held, but he still had to absorb the bullets’ energy and his body took a beating like he was being kicked to death by a mule. The BXP clacked open on empty, and Bolan helped the man onto his back and into unconsciousness by flinging the five and half pounds of smoking steel into his face.

The redhead squirmed across the carpet, her hands clawing for her own fallen submachine gun. Bolan pressed the muzzle of his second weapon against her cheek and pinned her head to the floor. “One more move and I’ll turn your head into applesauce. You understand?”

The woman nodded, her eyes streaming and wincing as her lower lip split beneath the pressure of the submachine gun.

Bolan backed the weapon off her mouth. “Who are you?”

She glared up at Bolan in red-eyed defiance. Bolan reached into his jacket and clicked open his phone. He pressed a preset number and Assistant Director Finch answered on the first ring. “You have reached MI-5. This is Assistant Director Finch.”

“We spoke earlier today.”

Her voice replied curtly. “Yes.”

“I have something for you. In my room.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, you should send a team down here. You have three suspects.”

The redhead stared up in alarm. She was part of a four-man team.

“They’re suffering from various broken bones and contusions,” Bolan continued. “One at least appears to be of South African extraction.”

“South African?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” Finch registered genuine surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I’ll have a team there in ten minutes.”

“I won’t be here.”

“I’m not entirely surprised.”

Bolan was about to hang up when Finch spoke. “You’re to be arrested on sight.”

“I’ll call you later.” Bolan clicked off. He didn’t have much time. “You.” He pointed the BXP back at the woman’s head. “You’re coming with me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

CIA safe house, London

“Running the prints now, Striker.”

Bolan had taken the woman’s fingerprints and faxed them to Kurtzman. She sat on a chair with her hands cuffed together in front of her and her ankles bound to the front chair legs with plastic zip restraints. The gun Bolan had held in his hand during the ten-minute drive to the safe house had kept the woman docile. Bolan had washed out her eyes with water. They were still red-veined from the gas and still glared bloody murder at Bolan.

Kurtzman got back to him almost instantly. “I have a hit on the Interpol database.”

The woman went rigid on the chair.

“What have you got?”

The computer whiz hit a key and a police photo of the woman popped up on the screen. “Sylvette MacJory, born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Attended Strathclyde University and received her degree in computer science. In 2005 she was accused and convicted of cybernetic crimes in the U.K., including identity theft and criminal hacking into the databases of several major U.K. financial institutions. Sentenced to five years, sentence reduced to two years probation and public service. Current residence in London. No further criminal record.”

Sylvette’s face clouded with rage.

“So who are your South African friends?” Bolan asked.

“Piss off, Yank!”

“You should try to come up with something more original than that.”

“You’re no cop, then.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re holding me illegally. I want my lawyer.”

“You’re right. I’m not a cop, and you’re not being held.” Bolan clicked open his phone and punched a button. “You’ve been abducted.”

MacJory swallowed with difficulty as her position became more clear to her.

Assistant Director Finch answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“Did you get the package I left you?”

“Yes,” Finch admitted.

“I have another.”

There followed an appalled silence. “Listen to me. You really must—”

“Her name is Sylvette MacJory. You’ll have her in your files. Felony computer hacker. She was attempting to get into my laptop.”

“Did you know we detected pepper spray within the room?”

“She tried to get into my laptop,” Bolan reiterated.

Finch tried a different tack. “You shot one of the suspects twenty-two times. He survived only because he was wearing body armor.”

“I shot him twenty-two times precisely because he was wearing body armor and I knew you would want him alive.”

“Mr.—”

“The large one out in the hall is South African. Did you get an ID on the other two?”

Bolan was pretty sure she would have hung up had she not been attempting to trace the call. The NSA satellite Bolan was bouncing his signal through made that a losing proposition, but it would take the MI-5 communications people a little while to figure that out. Finch let out a long, grudging breath. “You’re correct. The large one is Ruud Heitinga, South African citizen, as is the other, one Kew Timmer.”