The Killing Rule

Jennings stared up at Bolan with renewed purpose. “The police have been alerted. I suggest you leave while you still can.”

“Blow his brains out,” Lord William suggested.

A phone to one side of the desk rang. Bolan recognized the receiver as a satellite link. Jennings jerked and stared at the sat link in horror. “No,” Bolan said. “He’s going to answer that phone.”

“No, I’m—”

“Do it or I’ll kill you.”

Jennings stared once more into Bolan’s eyes and whatever recidivist bravery he had summoned wavered. He and Bolan both knew he was one pound away on a cocked, two-pound trigger toward death.

“I—”

The phone chimed.

“Do it,” Bolan ordered.

“But—”

“You’re out of time.” Bolan pulled the pistol away from Jennings’s temple and pointed it at the Englishman’s face.

“No!” Jennings lunged for the satellite phone.

Lunk’s paws slammed down on his shoulders. “Compose yourself.”

Jennings took a shuddering breath.

“Better.” Bolan nodded. “Put it on speakerphone.”

Jennings pressed a button on the link. A deep, British upper-class voice came across the speaker. “Clive, we need to talk.”

Bolan watched Clive’s face closely. He’d broken into a sweat.

“I agree,” Jennings replied.

“Listen,” the voice continued. “I’ve spoken with our counterparts in the East. We are in agreement. We need to step up the timetable.”

Jennings looked like he might throw up.

Lord William cocked his head. Clearly something about the voice was familiar. Jennings got that staring-into-the-middle-distance, everything-unraveling look on his face again. He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“I say,” the voice said. “Clive, are you there?”

Bolan silently mouthed the words “keep talking” at Clive.

“I…”

Lord William suddenly beamed and leaned in toward the intercom. “Parky, you old sod! How the bloody hell are you?”

Jennings’s jaw dropped. Lunk shot Bolan a knowing grin. The voice on the other side of the secure link paused in shocked silence. “To whom am I speaking?”

“Why, Ian, it’s Bill! Bill Glen-Patrick! Haven’t seen you since I last voted in Lords! By God, when was that? Aught 2, then?”

The voice on the other end was clearly stunned. “Clive, what is going on?”

“I…” was all Jennings could manage.

Bolan subvocalized to Lunk. “Who?”

Lunk muttered under his breath, “His Lordship Ian Parkhurst, if I’m not mistaken.”

Bolan had never heard of Lord Ian, but then there were close to seven hundred members of the English peerage. “Is this bad?”

Lunk’s craggy brow furrowed. “Bad enough. Lord William is a baron. Parkhurst is an earl.”

“Listen, Parky,” Lord William continued. “Your lad Clive has cocked things up a bit. I’m doing a little spring-cleaning around the old office. I’m putting a stop to whatever he’s up to. I do hope you won’t be inconvenienced.”

“Glen-Patrick,” the voice said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave my office.”

“Your office?”

“Yes, William. Just who do you think it was who took your wretched little box of tin soldiers away from you? Surely not that pissant Clive?”

“Well, truth be told, yes,” Lord William admitted. “Not quite cricket, Ian. Peers turning on each other like this, is it, old bean?”

“You know, I never really considered you a peer,” the voice stated. “None of us ever did. You’re just a jumped-up country squire who never knew his station. You spent more time on your sordid little escapades and in the tabloids than you ever did voting in the house.”

Bolan listened to the exchange with interest. Whoever Parkhurst was, he was an amateur. He was gloating and monologing when he should have kept his mouth shut. Bolan silently mouthed the words “keep him talking” to Lord William. The baron nodded.

“Listen, Parky. We have dead CIA agents, the IRA, whispers of mass destruction, Aegis somehow involved. I was looking into this out of duty, you know. Queen and country and all that. But you know something, Parky? Now I think it’s personal.”

“Do you know what one does with toothless, barking old dogs?” The voice went utterly cold. “One puts them down. However, I’ve come to learn that you’re not an old dog. You, William, are a cockroach. A pest that refuses to be crushed. And I’ll tell you something, William. When Clive failed to kill you in Guernsey, I had a thought you might show up at the offices.”

“Oh? And what might that thought—”

“Goodbye, William.”

The line clicked dead.

Lunk was peering out the window toward the river. “Company, Lord William, coming to kill us quiet.”

Bolan gazed out the window. Men were spilling out of a pair of Volkswagen vans. They were dressed in civilian clothing, but each one was sporting a micro-Uzi machine pistol with the long black tube of a sound suppressor screwed over the stub barrels. The gunners’ torsos had the barrel shape of men wearing body armor beneath their clothing. Bolan counted ten of them and was pretty sure there would be more coming around the back. If Lord Parkhurst was telling the truth about owning the company, the killers would probably have their own keys.

He turned on Clive. “Where are the guns?”

“Your guns?” Jennings stared up at Bolan in confusion. “Grietje has them in the safe downstairs. You know that—”

“No, Clive. Where are your guns?”

“Mine? You have my—”

Bolan seized Jennings by his hand-painted Italian silk necktie. “You’re a boy who likes playing with the grown men’s toys, Clive. Where’s your toy box?”

“I—”

Bolan’s eyes flicked around the room and instinctively came to rest on the hoplite shield mounted on the wall.

Lord William’s mustache lifted in a curtain of amusement. “Oh, jolly good.”

Bolan nodded. “Lunk?”

Lunk happily wrapped his fingers around the edges of the shield. His knuckles went white as he pulled. Wood splintered, cracking and breaking around the hidden lock. Lunk let out a groan of effort, and the Aegis ripped away from the wall.

The shield formed the door of a recessed gun cabinet.

Lunk picked an inch-long splinter out of his palm. “Little boys with grown men’s toys.” The Welshman grinned. “Have to remember that one.”

Clive Jennings had some toys.

“My rifle!” Lord William exploded in outrage. “My bloody fucking Falklands rifle!”

Jennings cringed.

Lord William stalked to the ruptured gun cabinet and ripped a 1980s-era British L-1 A 1 SLR rifle off the rack. He racked the action on the big black .308 self-loading rifle and peered through the SUIT optical sight. “You son of a bitch! You told me it’d been lost!”

Bolan made his choice from the cabinet. “Lunk, mind Clive.”

Lunk slammed his hands on Jennings’s shoulders as Bolan pulled out something a little more modern. Personally, he had little use for the SA 80 assault rifle. Despite its futuristic good looks and compact bullpup design, it had been plagued with problems. In both Iraq wars it had been found that it jammed at the slightest bit of dirt or fouling, various parts broke off or bent with frightening regularity and many came home held together with duct tape. The magazine release was so poorly designed that it often spontaneously ejected when shouldered by men wearing armor and web gear, and there was a persistent rumor that at desert temperatures, with prolonged firing, and with the right combination of British army-issue insect repellant and cam cream on the user’s hands, the plastic parts would melt.

The SA 80 really only had one virtue, and that was that the combination of rifle and its SUSAT 4X scope was one of the most accurate out-of-the-box assault rifles available.

Bolan inserted a loaded magazine and racked the action. He had hopes that the trouble-plagued weapon might hold together for one firefight in Amsterdam. He pointed the assault rifle between Jennings’s eyebrows as Lunk pulled a Steyr AUG light machine gun out of the cabinet and clicked in a 100-round C-Mag double drum magazine.

Bolan’s PDA cheeped as it finished swallowing the contents of Clive Jennings’s computer. “We’re out of here.”

Downstairs Grietje let out a scream.

Lunk prodded Jennings with the muzzle of his machine gun. “Let’s move.”

The Executioner took point with Lord William behind him. Lunk rumbled as he took up the rear position with the machine gun. “You heard the man, blast you. Move along already—Bloody hell!”

Bolan whirled in time to avoid 280 pounds of flying Welshman. Lord William didn’t and they collided in a tangle. The SA 80 rifle cracked three times in Bolan’s hands, but Jennings had already risen up out of his throw and lunged back into the office. Bolan flicked his selector switch to full-auto and sprayed a burst around the doorjamb before lunging in. The eastern wall of the office had slid open, and Jennings ducked in as it began to slide shut again. Wood paneling flew as Bolan fired, but he knew it was hopeless. The door hissed shut, and he could hear the heavy mechanical bolts tumbling into place.

Jennings had built a panic room into his office.

“We’ve lost him.”

Lunk was already up and pulling Lord William to his feet. “Oh, what I owe that one.”

LordWilliam winced as he stood. “Do we have a plan, then?”

“Well—” Bolan could hear the thudding of boots even in the soundproofed office building “—we’ve lost our meat shield. I guess we’ll just have to make a door and take a van.”

“Meat shield…” Lunk’s laugh was like distant thunder.

“Cover your eyes.” Bolan raised his rifle and put a bullet into the window overlooking the river. The cracked window failed to shatter. The windows were armor glass. Bolan lowered his assault weapon. “Bill?”

Lord William shouldered his big .308 battle rifle and began squeezing off shots. Bits of glass flew like shrapnel throughout the hall. The glass was bullet resistant, not bulletproof. At point-blank range the rounds began to punch holes. Lord William lowered his rifle on a smoking empty chamber. “Bloody hell.”

The window looked like the surface of the moon but seemed far from falling apart. Jennings had built himself a fortress.

Bolan heard the door to the stairwell open down the hall. “Here they come.”

A cylinder skipped through the cracked door spewing CS gas.

Bolan strode forward, firing short bursts from his rifle at the door. Lunk fell into line behind him. The big man snapped open one leg of his machine gun’s bipod and came forward with his machine gun in the hip-assault position and spraying it like a fire hose. Bolan held his breath, but the rapidly expanding gas began stinging his eyes instantly.

The door was riddled with bullet holes under the onslaught. Bolan roared over the sound of gunfire, “Lunk! Door!”

Lunk kept moving forward and firing. When he was muzzle distant from the door, he put his size-16 boot into it. The wood buckled beneath the blow. Two men in gas masks reeled back as the door slammed off its hinges and into them. Bolan’s rifle cracked once, shattering the left-hand lens of one man’s mask. Lunk hammered the second man down with a long burst. Lord William moved onto the crowded landing, racked with coughing. His spent rifle was slung over his shoulder. He scooped up the fallen men’s Uzis.

Bolan calculated. He had about five rounds left in his rifle. Jennings undoubtedly had the spare ammo and supplies in his panic room, and he had said the police had been alerted. The enemy couldn’t afford a siege, and Bolan and his crew didn’t have the ammo to hold one off. He figured they were about to be rushed. Gas was filling the hall behind them.

The only way to go was down.

Bolan glanced back at Lord William, who was leaning heavily on the rail and limping slightly. He was an older man and having Lunk thrown on top of him had hurt more than he had let on.

But that gave Bolan an idea.

“Lunk?”

“Aye?”

Bolan nodded at the two dead men.

Lunk’s eyes widened. “Meat shield, then?”

“More like meat missile.” Bolan coughed.

“Oh—” Lunk shook his head and dropped his machine gun on its sling. “He’s a clever dick, this Yank is.” Lunk heaved up a dead man like a sack of potatoes. “On your go.”

Bolan slung his rifle and took Jennings’s commandeered 9 mm pistol in two hands.

A voice shouted out downstairs in command. “Go! Go! Go!”

Another gas grenade clattered onto the bottom landing.

“Now!” Bolan boomed.

Four men spilled into the stairwell spraying their silenced weapons upward. Lunk used the military press to raise the dead man over his head with a grunt and then dropped him over the rail. The stairs were narrow, and there was no cover to be taken. The two-hundred-pound corpse fell on its comrades, and two of them fell ugly beneath it. The other two barely kept their feet, as limp arms and legs clubbed them. Bolan was already moving. His pistol barked twice, and both men went limp from the head shots. The Executioner kept firing as he moved down the stairs and into the gas cloud. More men leaped into the stairway to meet him. They didn’t know what had happened, but they charged in depending on gas, body armor, numbers and firepower to win.

The second corpse fell onto the two lead men like a ton of bricks as Lunk gave the cadaver the bum’s rush from above. Lord William fired bursts from his Uzi. Bolan reached the ground floor grimacing into the gas. He was right on top of the grenade. Gas sprayed from the crevices between the piled bodies in gray geysers. Bolan stuck the SIG-Sauer pistol around the corner and fired it dry. He dropped the spent pistol and picked up a pair of Uzis for himself.

“Move! Move! Move!”

Lunk came halfway down the stairs and then leaped over the rail. Lord William came down the stairs as fast he was able. Bones broke and living men screamed as the giant Welshman landed on the pile. Lunk fell back against the wall and began firing bursts from his machine gun into the downstairs hall. “Go!”

Bolan rolled into the hall with an Uzi in each hand.

A voice was shouting in near hysterics. “Heavy resistance! Repeat! We are encountering heavy resistance! Automatic weapons! Request—”

Bolan could barely see the man down the hall crouched behind the reception desk. Bolan thrust out his Uzis and held down the trigger. Wood stripped and splintered and the man behind the desk screamed and fell. Bolan dropped the spent machine pistols and pulled his PPK. He moved to the courtyard door and scanned the outside.

It was blissfully clear of gas or men with Uzis.

Lunk ushered Lord William forward. The older man was gagging and clutching his face. Bolan himself could barely see or breathe. He took the baron’s arm, led him to the fountain and shoved his head under the water. Bolan let him go and rammed his own head under the surface. A few startled koi huddled in terror as Bolan swept his head back and forth and washed out his eyes. He surfaced to hear the strident sound of European police sirens in the distance. Lord William came up a second later with a gasp.

“Well…that’s a bit…better, then.” He sat heavily on the side of the fountain.

Lunk stood in the doorway, his eyes a solid red of inflamed blood vessels, and tears streaming down his cheeks. He held his eyes open and focused as he scanned down the hall through some superhuman act of Welsh willpower.

Bolan eyed the drainpipe Lunk had used to make his entrance and then glanced at Lord William. The old warrior wouldn’t make the climb and even Lunk wouldn’t be able to scale the slick iron carrying him. Even if he could, the two-story drop on the other side would be problematic.

“Lads.” Lord William was reading Bolan’s mind. “Just go. I can deal with the law, as well as Clive or any other bastard still running hot around the premises.”

Lord William would be facing weapons charges, unexplainable firefights, the use of war gas and possible multiple murder counts at a business that he was still officially the president of. Jennings was still in his panic room, and Bolan had a pretty good idea who would win in a “his word against mine” situation in a Netherlands courtroom.

Bolan grinned. “The hell you say.”

They were just going to have to go out the front door.

“Lunk?”

“I see movement in the lobby.”

“Let’s go.”

Bolan threw Lord William’s arm over his shoulder. He passed him off to Lunk at the doorway and the three of them moved down the hall. Bolan had counted ten out front before the engagement and had figured maybe the same number out back. They’d taken a terrible toll. There couldn’t be more than two or three fighters left among the enemy.

Lunk groaned. “Wait…” He dropped his weapon on its sling and propped Lord William against a wall. The Welshman ripped the 18-liter reservoir out of the lobby water cooler and upended it overhead his face. Lunk washed, gargled, snorted, spit and finally dropped the keg-size cooler with a thud. He shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry about that, but I haven’t been gassed since basic.”

Bolan caught movement outside. Two men were running for one of the vans. One of them had Miss Grietje Van Jan. Bolan threw open the glass doors and roared. “Freeze!”

One man whirled and the PPK snapped four times in Bolan’s hand. Two shots took the man in the chest and the second double tap took him in the head. Lunk and Lord William fell into formation on either side of Bolan. The second man kept his Uzi rammed into Grietje’s side. “I’ll kill her!”

“Let her go!”

“Drop your weapons!”

“I said let her go!”

“I’ll cut her in two!”

Bolan didn’t doubt it. He dropped the Walther to the pavement. “Lord William?”

Lord William dropped his Uzi and shrugged off his rifle with an exhausted sigh.

“Lunk.”

“The bloody hell I—”

“Lunk!” the baron snapped.

Lunk unslung the AUG light machine gun and dropped it in disgust. He glared, red-eyed, at the assassin. “I’ll see you in—”

Bolan blurred into motion.

He spun the SA 80 rifle around on its sling and shouldered it. The assassin’s face instantly filled the 4X scope and Bolan squeezed the trigger. The killer went limp as the bullet traversed his skull, and Miss Van Jan screamed anew as she was sprayed with blood and bone.

Bolan whipped his rifle around and aimed at the man behind the wheel of van with the engine running. The man screamed and dived out the driver’s door. “No! Please, God, no! Please!”

Bolan flung the spent SA 80 into the river and scooped up his PPK and reloaded. Lunk scooped up his machine gun by the barrel. The driver screamed as the giant stomped forward. “Please! God! No! I—”

“Shut your cakehole!” Teeth flew as Lunk swung the light machine gun by the barrel like a cricket bat. The man dropped unconscious and drooling blood. “Bloody hit men.” He tossed the AUG into the river, then helped Lord William into the van as Bolan slid behind the wheel.

“Bill?”

“Yes, Cooper?”

“We’re going to need some men.”

The baron smiled wearily as Bolan pulled away from Aegis. “Oh, I have a few in mind.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Guernsey

It had taken two days to get back to Lord William’s manor in the Channel Islands. Bolan had assumed both the British and American embassies were being watched, so they had simply driven to Belgium. At the U.S. Embassy Bolan had used their satellite link to download his PDA into the Farm’s computers. Lunk had started making phone calls. Lord William had rented a French turbo-charged Socata Trinidad aircraft and flown them to the neighboring island of Jersey. From there he had hired a fishing captain he knew to sail them to Guernsey in the dead of night.

They sat in front of the fire and compared notes and files. Lord William had filled Bolan in on his peer. Lord Ian Parkhurst was a hereditary earl, a senior member of the House of Lords, and sat on the Appellate Committee of Law Lords. As a teenaged lieutenant in World War II he had won two wound stripes and the Victoria Cross in desperate rear guard actions during the terrible withdrawal at Dunkirk. He’d twice been a British ambassador, and he’d been knighted for his philanthropic activities in former British colonies. He was a very wealthy man with international business interests and despite being a Lord he was very active in the liberal British Labor Party. He lent his name, money and political clout to a number of British environmental and political activist groups.

None of which explained why he’d sent men to kill Lord William in Amsterdam.

Bolan knew that with a man of Lord Ian’s wealth, influence, title and popularity he could put a smoking gun in his lordship’s hand and still get zero cooperation from MI-5 or any other British law-enforcement agency. Bolan would have to gather the evidence himself. No one would help him, no one would thank him, and indeed he would be resisted all the way if not arrested and deported.

Most of the news was bad.

McCarter had phoned from London. Assistant Director Finch had been cordial but had little new information to offer. The barristers of Sylvette MacJory, Ruud Heitinga, Kew Timmer and Guy Diddier had arranged for their clients’ release on bail, and all four had promptly dropped off the face of the planet. MI-5 had no idea of their whereabouts.

Lord William was wanted for questioning in the Netherlands regarding his role in the firefight at the Aegis offices in Amsterdam. Clive Jennings was wanted for similar questioning. According to Dutch authorities and Interpol, Mr. Jennings’s whereabouts was currently unknown.

The first thing to come out of the stolen files from Aegis was the current roster. There were 315 men and seven women on it, each with an accompanying personal file. The majority of the contractors were former soldiers in the British and American armed forces with a sprinkling of other nationalities. Most of the active ones were working as VIP protection contractors in Afghanistan and to a lesser extent Iraq and Pakistan. A few were doing similar work in Central and South America, mostly Colombia. Again there was a sprinkling of strange and out-of-the-way destinations but all could be classified as world “trouble spots” where above-average men of above-average martial ability could expect to be paid top dollar for their skills and services.

That was one of the problems. The mission profiles were not matching up with reality. Ruud Heitinga and Kew Timmer were supposedly in Afghanistan at the moment. According to the files, Guy Diddier and Miss MacJory were currently on jobs in Vietnam.

The next problem was that neither Lord William nor Lunk knew very many of the men on the list. They’d been out of the game for a decade. Most of the names they did know were on separate inactive and reserve lists of old soldiers like themselves. Nevertheless they knew a few, and Lunk had been making some calls. Lunk swallowed a pint of ale in a gulp. “Well, the good news is Partridge is in and ready for anything. He got hold of Layland and Layland got hold of Lovat. Lovat thinks Thapa might be in, but only if you ask him personal.”

“Thappy!” Lord William straightened in his chair. “By God, we could use that little bugger!”

Bolan glanced at files. Alvin Partridge was a fellow Welshman and fellow Royal Marine of Lunk’s. He’d made Mountain Leader Grade 2 in the Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre. Nick Lovat had been a corporal in the U.K.’s 5th Airborne Brigade and a sniper. Scott Layland was a former Australian SAS sergeant.

Bolan paused at the next file. Thapa Pun had been a member of Queen Elizabeth’s own 6th Gurkha Rifles and gone on to join the Gurkha Independent Parachute Company. He’d served on detachment to the Sultan of Brunei, returned to Nepal and then joined the Indian army’s 8th Gorkha Rifles and reached the Indian NCO rank of subedar. He’d been decorated in all three services, and had seen heavy counterinsurgency fighting in Kashmir.