Silent Threat

“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.