Throw Down

He needed to talk to the priest and the converted Hezbollah man. This was a golden opportunity—a one-in-a-million chance to learn the ins and outs of what else the terrorist group had planned for the near future. But that was not the primary goal at the moment. Before he interviewed the informant and the priest, he needed to keep Saint Michael’s Chapel from blowing up. And to do that meant both ridding the world of the terrorists on the ground floor and deactivating the bomb without destroying the chapel and the neighborhood surrounding it.

The Executioner’s brain continued to roll near the speed of light. He suspected this was a fairly low-tech operation on Hezbollah’s part. That meant that as soon as the terrorists began to think they were losing the gun battle, they would detonate the bomb by hand.

Slowly and quietly, Bolan began to descend the steps to the second floor. With each creak his boots made he paused, listening, to see if the men below had noticed it. But the gunfire continued, drowning out his quiet sounds on the stairs. Bolan realized the men below weren’t likely aware that he’d taken out their two snipers. That meant he still had surprise on his side.

And he’d need it. He was vastly outnumbered, and surprise was the only advantage he would have in this ongoing firefight.

Reaching the second floor, Bolan saw that it was as deserted as the third, and he realized that the terrorists’ plan for rifle fire had been as elemental as their plan for the bomb. Except for the two snipers he’d taken out on the roof, all of them were on the first floor.

Bolan halted his progress again, rapidly analyzing the situation. He could probably take out the men below by suddenly bounding down the final set of steps and launching a furious barrage of fire from the rear. But if he didn’t get the individual in charge of the bomb, or if the explosives were connected to a dead man’s switch, which would go off as soon as whoever was holding it relaxed his grip, Bolan might as well blow up the chapel himself.

He paused another moment before starting down the steps to the first floor. He had to admit, Hezbollah’s attack might be low-tech, but it included a well-thought-out battle plan. Men who didn’t mind dying, and thought it bought them a first-class ticket to paradise, held an incredible edge over warriors who were trying to kill the enemy and stay alive at the same time.

Bottom line in this situation was that the sooner Bolan wiped out all the terrorists on the first floor, the sooner the bomb would go off and destroy the chapel and probably the police officers surrounding it. Not to mention him.

He was fighting himself on this one.

* * *

THE CHAPEL WAS SMALL in comparison to most churches, and built of irregular stones that formed both the inside and the outside walls. One main room per story, with the staircase near the middle of each.

That meant that from where he stood presently, at the top of the steps, Bolan had a clear view of about half the ground level. The up side to this situation was his superior position. The down side was that many men firing out through the shattered stained glass windows could see him if they turned around.

And there were bound to be more Hezbollah out of sight behind the open staircase.

Luckily, the three men he could see were too engaged in their battle with the police to pay attention to their flanks or rear. So Bolan crept farther down the steps, the M-16 A-2 aimed and ready. He squatted momentarily, resting the rifle across his knees as he again sized up the situation. Blasts from the firearms of more men—unseen but heard—confirmed his suspicion that there were other terrorists at the rear. Exactly how many murderers there were in all was anyone’s guess.

Squinting slightly, Bolan searched the men he could see for any sign of a bomb or a remote detonator. Several wore rucksacks, and such packs could hold anything from the most simple dynamite or nitroglycerine explosives to a small tactical nuclear device. But the scanty intel he had received from Brognola told him there was no nuke involved. Not in this strike, at least.

The Executioner took in a deep breath. At least that was something. He nodded to himself as the gunfire below continued. What he was facing was most likely plastic explosives—probably Semtex left over from the old Soviet Union that had found its way into Hezbollah hands. If he fired quickly on semiauto, he suspected he could put a .223 caliber hollowpoint round into the back of all six brains before whoever had the explosives even knew what was happening.

But what of the men he couldn’t see, in the rear of the chapel? What if the bomb was with one of them? They would have more than enough time to see what had happened to their brothers in terror and detonate the explosive no matter how fast the Executioner descended the steps to take them on.

The gunfire both out and into Saint Michael’s Chapel continued relentlessly. Through shattered remnants of stained glass still stuck in corners of the windows, Bolan could see dust floating through the outside air—the product of police rounds striking the stones of the walls around the apertures. As he continued to watch, one of the terrorists took a round in the head and fell backward, dead on the cold stone floor.

That was good. But it didn’t change things much for the Executioner. Shooting two men and then turning toward the rear of the building was hardly different from killing three. The bomb would still have plenty of time to go off.

The unusual history of the antiquated chapel, and how out of place it looked in the neighborhood, ran through the Executioner’s mind once more. He was surprised that the city inspectors would have passed the candle and oil lamp lighting. Even more remarkable was that the Detroit Fire Department would have allowed a three-story structure to be built with only one way up and down. The chapel would be a death trap if any of the lamps or candles was ever mishandled.

The realization struck Bolan suddenly: the building inspectors might have insisted on a second escape route. One he couldn’t see. And medieval architecture was famous for hidden rooms, staircases and tunnels.

Quickly and quietly, he rose to his feet. There was a second way down; he could feel it. A route the terrorists would undoubtedly be unaware of, so that he could emerge suddenly, with surprise on his side.

He just had to find it.

But time had become a factor, too. Every second he took searching for the hidden route down was a second during which the Hezbollah might decide that the gunfight had gone on long enough. And that they should detonate the bomb.

The Executioner retraced his steps to the second floor and moved away from the staircase. Crouching near a stone wall, where he felt confident his whispers would not be heard by the men below, he pulled out his satellite phone once more. A few seconds later, he had Stony Man Farm on the line.

“Hal,” Bolan said to Brognola. “I’m in a fix here. I can take out the men in front of me. But if one of them isn’t in control of the bomb, then whoever is—that person being out of my field of vision—is going to detonate it and bring this place down as if it was built of straw instead of rock.” He paused a moment, taking a deep breath. “Do you have contact with the priest and Hezbollah informant?”

“That’s affirmative,” Brognola said.

“This place is built to look like it came straight out of King Arthur’s court,” Bolan said. “The only obvious way up and down is the main staircase. But there’s got to be another way out. The fire inspectors would have never passed it if there wasn’t. What’s more, I can feel it.”

It was Brognola’s turn to pause. Bolan knew the man was thinking. And that what he had told him last meant the most of all.

The director of sensitive ops never questioned the Executioner’s battle instincts. He knew that if Bolan sensed there had to be another set of stairs, there quite simply had to be one.

“Hang on,” Brognola said. “I’ve got the priest and his new convert on the other line.”

Bolan heard a click and found himself on hold. The gunfire below continued, and the seconds ticked away, feeling like hours. He knew it was a strange and precarious predicament they were in. The better the Detroit police did in this gun battle, the closer they’d be to destroying the chapel and themselves.

Finally, Brognola came back on the phone. “I just talked to the priest,” he said matter-of-factly.

“And?” Bolan answered.

“You’re on the second floor now, right?”

“Right.”

“Did you see a painting of Jesus and a crucifix on the wall?”

“I passed them on the way to the stairs,” Bolan said. “There’s an identical setup on the floor above me.”

“Okay,” Brognola said, and Bolan could practically see the chewed stub of the ever-present unlit cigar in the director’s mouth. “The picture and the crucifix work in conjunction. Take the painting off the wall and set it on the floor.”

Bolan slung the M-16 over his shoulder and turned to the wall. He lifted the painting of Christ off a nail and set it on the floor. “Done,” he whispered into the phone.

“Good,” Brognola said. “Now, go to the crucifix.”

It took Bolan only two steps to reach the metal cross. “I’m there,” he said quietly.

“The painting and the crucifix work together,” the Stony Man Farm director said. “The painting acts as sort of a safety. Now that it’s off the wall, twist the crucifix to the right.”

Bolan reached out and grasped the bottom on the cross. “How far?”

“You’ll know when you’ve gone far enough,” Brognola answered.

Bolan twisted the crucifix. When it reached a 45-degree angle, a section of wall began to slowly swing backward, revealing an opening.

“You got it yet?” Brognola asked in Bolan’s ear.

“Got it,” he confirmed. He squinted into the dark opening. “I can just make out steps. Can you tell me where they come out on the ground floor?” As he waited for an answer, he slipped the sling off his shoulder and readied the M-16 in front of him.

“You’ll exit in the middle of the bottom room,” the Stony Man director said. “Facing the rear.”

The exploding gunfire below had not let up as Bolan stepped into the secret staircase and slowly descended. Brognola was still on the line as he did so. “Is there a peephole or anything like that, Hal?” he whispered into the satellite phone. “It’d be nice to get an idea what’ll be in front of me when I come out of this thing.”

“Sorry,” Brognola said. “No ‘coming attractions’ on this one.”

“Then tell me how to get out,” Bolan said.

“A more simple setup, since it’s hidden,” Brognola said. “Just to the right of the exit you’ll see a very modern-looking red button. Push it and the panel will open.”

“I hope this one moves faster,” he said, remembering how slowly the panel above had opened.

“I’m afraid not,” Brognola grunted. “They were set up to satisfy the building code and for use in case of fire. No one had armed men and bombs on their minds when the place was built. I’m afraid it’ll be just as slow.”

“Okay,” Bolan said simply. “Sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got. One more thing, though. You still have your informants on the other line? The priest and former Hezbollah man?”

“I do.”

“Ask them about the bomb itself,” Bolan said. He stepped down onto a small landing, then turned to take the last set of steps. “I need to know for sure if there’s a remote detonator, and especially if it has a dead man’s switch. And ask our informant if there are any identifying features about the guy in charge of the bomb.”

Bolan heard another click in his ear as Brognola put him on hold once more. He wondered briefly how long it would take for the men on the ground floor to realize what was going on once the panel began to swing open.

A few seconds later, the Stony Man director was back. “I’m afraid that’s affirmative on both counts, big guy,” he said. “Remote detonator and dead man’s switch. The only good thing I can tell you is that there’s a three-second delay between the time the bomber lets up on the button and when the explosives—it is Semtex, by the way—detonates. If you can get to it within that time frame and press the button again you’ll be okay.”

“How about the description of the bomber?” Bolan asked.

“Our new man here says he always wears a red-and-white-checkered scarf tied around his neck.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” Bolan said. He had reached the bottom of the stairs and saw the red button glowing in the semidarkness. If he was lucky, the men he was about to face would be so intent on firing their weapons out the back that they wouldn’t notice him immediately. He’d have to scan them as quickly as he could, find the one in the red-and-white scarf and kill the others before taking out the one with the dead man’s switch.

Not to mention getting to the remote within three seconds.

“Okay, Hal,” the Executioner said. “I’m ending this call now.”

“Good luck,” Brognola said. “Not that you’ve ever depended on luck.”

Bolan didn’t bother answering. He switched off the sat phone, stuck it back in his blacksuit, then reached up and pressed the red, glowing button with his index and middle fingers.

* * *

SURVIVAL OFTEN HINGED on decisions made at lightning speed and at the last possible second. Some men credited training for honing such decision-making. Others argued that nothing but real live experience—and luck in staying alive until that experience was obtained—was the key to success in life-and-death situations.

But a warrior such as the Executioner knew that neither school of thought was completely right or completely wrong. And while it would be unlike Bolan to ever put such an idea into words, in his mind he knew that he fought out of instinct.

Vincent Van Gogh had been born a painter. Charles Dickens had been born a writer.

And in his very soul, Samuel Mack Bolan knew God had put him on this earth to be a fighter. His inborn talent was in taking up the slack when strong but vicious men of the world attempted to take advantage of their good but weaker brethren.

The wall creaked slightly, then began to move as Bolan made one of those last-minute decisions. This next step in saving Saint Michael’s Chapel and the police officers surrounding it called for stealth. So before the panel had opened even an inch, he had set the M-16 down and drawn the sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R. Forgoing the use of the folding front grip on the machine pistol—Bolan knew his other hand had a far more important task to fulfill—he thumbed the selector switch from safety to semiautomatic.

The escape door had swung out another two inches when Bolan saw the first of the Hezbollah at the rear of the chapel, and snaked the Beretta through the opening to aim it at him. The man was wearing the same OD green BDUs as the terrorists he’d seen on the roof and at the front of the chapel. On his head was a dirty white turban that jerked slightly with each shot the man fired from his AK-47. There was no red-and-white scarf around his neck.

The panel had opened roughly four inches when Bolan depressed the Beretta’s trigger and sent a subsonic 9 mm hollowpoint bullet from the barrel. The ignition made a soft, hissing sound, with the clank of the slide moving back and forth across the frame actually louder than the explosion itself. A thousandth of a second later, in addition to the BDUs and turban, the Hezbollah man wore something new.

A 9 mm hole in the back of his head.

The hidden staircase’s panel continued to swing wider and Bolan thrust his arm through the opening. The man next to the one he had just killed wore a scarf around his neck, but instead of red-and-white it was solid black.

Had there been a mix-up in communication? Had the alleged Hezbollah-terrorist-turned-Christian gotten the color wrong? Bolan knew it was often little mistakes like this that determined the success or failure of a mission. But when he turned his focus to the man’s hands, he saw they were wrapped around the pistol grip and fore end of another AK-47. And that sight caused him to pull the trigger once again, downing the man in the same fashion he had the first.

By this point, the door to the chapel was half open, and Bolan thrust his head around the still-moving panel. With a 180-degree view of the rear of the chapel, he spotted another terrorist to his far right—who did have on a red-and-white scarf. The man had noticed when his two comrades fell.

Bolan noted that in one hand, the terrorist held an old Soviet Makarov 9 mm pistol. But in the other was a device that looked little different than the remote control box for a television or a DVD player.

The Executioner had identified the bomber.

But there was a problem. There were still two Hezbollah firing out the broken windows at the other end of the room. And as quiet as the Beretta 93-R might be, they, too, had seen their brothers fall. The one nearest Bolan had begun to turn his way.

Bolan knew that as soon as he shot the man in the red-and-white scarf, he would have to dive forward to get to the dead man’s switch. Such a task would leave him in no position to return fire. But if he shot the others first, the man with the Makarov would have more than enough time to sight him in and kill him with the Soviet pistol.

Either way, Bolan would be unable to get to the detonator. He’d likely be dead even before the bomb went off, killing everyone else inside the chapel, as well as many of the cops surrounding the structure.

His decision was made faster than he could measure. Bolan had two gunners about to shoot at him from the far windows, and only one—the man with the Makarov and detonator—at the other. Two men with assault rifles had a better chance of killing him than one with a pistol, so he turned the Beretta to his left. As he fired another quiet round from the 93-R, Bolan heard the Makarov explode, and felt a 9 mm round sear past his ear. With the nerves of steel for which he was famous, he stuck with his plan as that first round from the Beretta sent a hollowpoint slug through the temple of the man he’d aimed at.

The Makarov exploded again, and this time Bolan felt heat on his forehead as the bullet passed within millimeters of his face. Every survival instinct he had screamed for him to alter his plan of attack and spin toward the man with the detonator. But years of hard-core battle experience trumped those instincts, and the old adage Never change horses in midstream crossed his mind.

Bolan took careful aim and sent a 9 mm twisting through the brain stem of the man next to the one who had just fallen. Behind the terrorist, splatters of blood and gray brain matter flew out of the fist-size exit wound to splatter against the wall and out through the chapel’s broken windows.

Another Makarov round caught the shoulder of Bolan’s blacksuit, ripping it open. The skin beneath felt as if someone had held a lit kitchen match to it, but Bolan could tell no real damage had been done.

Finally swinging toward the terrorist in the red-and-white-checkered scarf, he found that the man had turned to face him. The Executioner could see his frustration. He had missed three shots at reasonably close range, and was trying to line up his sights to keep from missing again.

The Hezbollah’s arm stopped in place just as Bolan swung the Beretta toward the red-and-white scarf. But the Executioner’s finely focused brain told him it was of no use. He was a microsecond behind the terrorist, who was carefully using the sights and this time would not miss.

A split second later, the man squeezed the trigger.

And Bolan heard a metallic clink as the hammer fell on an empty pistol.

The Executioner wasted no time. The Hezbollah bomber had run his weapon dry shooting from the windows, and had used his final three 9 mms trying to get Bolan. That was his bad luck. And Bolan was determined to make sure that bad luck stayed on the terrorist’s side.

Flipping the selector switch to 3-round burst, he sent a trio of rounds at the man’s chin and eyes. The Hezbollah terrorist flopped back against a shattered church window like a spineless rag doll as blood, gray matter and bits and pieces of skull flew out the back of his head.

All the terrorists at the rear of the chapel were dead.

But the danger was far from over.

Bolan watched as the detonator was jarred from the bomber’s lifeless fingers. It hit the floor, skidding several feet across the slick tile before hitting the wall and bouncing back a few inches.

Bolan kept the Beretta in his right hand as he dived across the room like a wide receiver going after a pass with too much lead from the quarterback. As he flew through the air, he counted off the seconds in his mind.

One thousand one...

The Executioner hit the floor and snatched the detonator off the tile in one swift motion, turning it face-up in order to read it.

One thousand two...

As he lifted the instrument to his eyes, he saw a series of numbers, with only one illuminated. Bolan had no idea if the light meant that button would halt the detonator or not. But he had to make another lightning-fast decision, and take a chance.

He pressed the button with his thumb and continued to count.

One thousand three...one thousand four...

He counted all the way to ten before allowing himself to feel certain the bomb would not go off. For most men, it would have been the longest ten seconds of their lives. Bolan had faced similar danger more times than he could recall, so it wasn’t the longest ten seconds, but it had to be close.

Finally looking up from the detonator, he saw the bomb itself for the first time. The Hezbollah had made no attempt to hide it; it had been placed against the back of the staircase, where Bolan had been unable to see it, coming out of the secret passageway. From where he presently sat, with his back against the wall, he could tell it was a relatively simple device constructed of Semtex, as he’d guessed it would be. He shook his head slightly, realizing he had passed within inches of it when he’d emerged from the hidden door.

Bolan stared at the bomb. He suspected he could disarm it himself if he had time. But he didn’t have time. He could still hear rifle fire from the front of the chapel, which reminded him that the battle was not yet over. There were still five men out there, doing their best to kill the SWAT officers and other cops on the street. Since he had control of the detonator, it made more sense to eliminate all the Hezbollah terrorists and leave the bomb neutralization to the Detroit PD bomb squad.

He paused a moment, listening and thinking. Luckily, there was no indication that the terrorists out front had taken notice of what happened behind them.

Bolan’s eyes rose slightly and he saw yet another crucifix on the wall, just above the body of the last man he had shot before going after the terrorist with the red-and-white scarf and the detonator. Was it truly luck that had kept the other men from noticing as he took out the bomber and the rest of the gunners at the back? Or was there indeed something more powerful working for him, here in Saint Michael’s Chapel?

Bolan didn’t know the answer to that. But he did know—deep in his soul—that if a force greater than he was guiding him, that force expected him to utilize the talents he’d been given to neutralize this situation.

The Executioner picked the Beretta up off the floor, dropped the partially spent magazine and replaced it with a full box mag from one of the carriers on the shoulder holster beneath his right arm. He had more work cut out for him. And it would have to be done one-handed if he wanted to keep the detonator depressed. He reached up and felt the torn cloth of the blacksuit on his shoulder. The skin beneath it still burned, but no real damage had been done. He thought of the three rounds the man in the red-and-white scarf had fired at him. He had missed all three times—at relatively close range. Most rookie cops could have put those rounds into the X ring of a silhouette target their first time at the shooting range.