Читать книгу Killing Game - Don Pendleton - Страница 6

Paris, France

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, glanced up at the sliver of moon in the otherwise darkened sky. Then, dropping his line of vision, he took another quick survey of the one-story suburban house in front of him and his black-clad companion. This house looked little different than the other homes lining both sides of the street in this upper middle-class Parisian residential neighborhood, but it was different.

This dwelling housed terrorists.

The Executioner pointed Russian Intelligence agent Marynka Platinov toward the side of the house, then tapped his wristwatch with the same hand. “Thirty seconds,” he whispered.

The beautiful blond-haired Russian agent glanced at her own watch, nodded, then took off in a jog around the corner.

Bolan couldn’t help but let his eyes fall to her hips as the well-developed muscles in her buttocks tightened. Platinov—often shortened simply to “Plat” when Bolan spoke to her—wore the same stretchy black battle coveralls, known as “blacksuits,” as him.

She and the Executioner had worked together several times in the past—first when she’d been a new KGB officer and later, when she’d emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union to rise in the ranks of the newly formed Russian Intelligence Bureau—and Bolan was one of only a handful of people who knew her whole story. He and the beautiful Russian woman had developed a solid working relationship.

The Executioner glanced at the weapons and other equipment that hung from Platinov’s blacksuit. A double shoulder rig with a matching pair of Colt Gold Cup .45s was stretched across her back, and a 1911 Government Model .45 rode on a curvaceous hip.

The Executioner glanced at his watch as his partner turned the corner. Twenty seconds remained. He pulled back the bolt of the Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun hanging from his shoulder on a sling, chambered the first round and flipped the selector switch from the safety position to 3-round-burst mode. As he methodically readied the weapon, his thoughts turned on Platinov and the only real area of disagreement that always stood between them.

The Russian woman was as loyal to her country as Bolan was to the U.S. And on rare occasions—even when their end objective was the same—those two loyalties conflicted. When that happened, problems arose. The Executioner didn’t foresee any such problems on the horizon for this op, however. The leader of CLODO—Computer Liquidation and Hijack Committee—and the rest of his newly vivified terrorist organization that they sought, were an equal threat to both countries. Yet, Bolan reminded himself, he would have to keep one eye on the enemy and the other on Platinov.

Bolan started up the concrete steps to the front porch of the CLODO safe house, taking them two at a time. At precisely the thirty-second mark, he slammed his right boot into the door just to one side of the dead-bolt lock. Wood cracked then splintered as the framework around the door exploded like a hand grenade filled with wooden shrapnel. A fraction of a second later, he heard a similar noise at the rear of the house and knew Platinov had entered the back entrance.

The front door swung open, crashing into the wall and rebounding back toward the Executioner as he raised the submachine gun to waist level. He pushed the door back again with his left hand. As the noise died down, the house went eerily silent for a second.

During that lull, the Executioner had time to quickly assess the interior of the house. He found himself standing on a ragged carpet in the living room. A soccer game was playing on a large-screen HDTV in the far corner, and set into the wall next to it was a fireplace.

Men, close to a dozen and many dressed similarly, sat around the living room on couches and in reclining chairs, watching the game, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns and pistols scattered throughout the area.

Platinov stood between the fireplace and a kitchen table in the far corner opposite the HDTV, her own MP-5 hanging from the sling over the shoulder of her blacksuit. Just to her side, Bolan could see a small breakfast table and chairs. The rest of the kitchen, he knew, had to be hidden behind the wall to his left.

The Executioner noted a dining-room table also to his left, with more men clustered around it, playing cards. Poker chips were stacked in front of each man. The terrorists cursed and dived for their weapons.

The Executioner triggered a 3-round burst of hollowpoint rounds at the CLODO gunner directly in front of him. The man wore a blue beret, a tan short-sleeved shirt and brown trousers.

Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm, had briefed Bolan and Platinov via satellite phone during their flight from Washington, D.C., to France. Along with the location of this only known CLODO safe house, the Executioner and Platinov had learned that the beret, shirt and pants were a sort of “unofficial” CLODO uniform. There was nothing particularly militant-looking about the garb and, indeed, many men on the streets of Paris who had nothing to do with this anticomputer terrorist organization wore basically the same clothing. But these specific items of clothing—always in the same colors and combination—were the first step in helping the terrorists identify one another. The next step was a series of coded, and frequently changed, nonsensical questions and answers to make sure that they had not just bumped into some non-CLODO-aligned Parisian on his way to a bocce game in the park.

Members of the CLODO organization had come to be known as CLODO men by all who opposed them. That included America, Russia and most other civilized countries of the world. CLODO had been active during the late 1980s, then had seemed to fizzle out, until a few weeks earlier. Then, all hell had suddenly broken loose with car-bombings, random machine-gunnings at shopping malls and other public places, and drive-by shootings at computer manufacturing plants, distributors, wholesalers and retail stores.

Another—and perhaps the most important—bit of intel that Bolan and Platinov had obtained was the name of the man who had revived CLODO—Pierre Rouillan. Now in his thirties, Rouillan would have been a child during the eighties, and the Executioner couldn’t help wondering what had turned the young man toward the all-but-dead organization and driven him to reanimate it.

Bolan dived to the floor as return fire sailed over his shoulder, coming to rest on his side directly against the back of a long, leather sofa.

Using the sofa for concealment, the Executioner raised the MP-5 with one hand, thumbed the selector from 3-round burst to full-auto and stitched the remaining rounds back and forth into the couch. Screams and moans met his ears from the other side of the sofa, and he saw a bloody mist rise up into the air.

The 9 mm RBCD total fragmentation rounds didn’t just penetrate their human targets, they shredded them.

Bolan hesitated only long enough to drop the empty 9 mm magazine from his weapon and ram home a fresh one. On the other side of the couch, he could hear more 9 mm fire that he knew had to be coming from Platinov’s subgun.

Though he was hidden from view of the men in the living room, the sofa was concealment rather than cover, as the Executioner had proved himself only moments earlier. In another second or so, the terrorists still standing on the other side of the sofa would realize where he was and begin firing into the couch. The four men who had sat there would obviously be dead, so the chance that they might accidentally hit one of their own would not hinder them in the least.

But an even more imminent problem faced Bolan. While he was still hidden from the men in the living room, he was on full display to the card players.

The Executioner rolled away from the sofa, flipping the H&K’s selector into 3-round burst mode, and rose to one knee. He opened fire, the first two 9 mm rounds striking a terrorist in the chest an inch apart. Bolan had allowed the subgun to rise slightly with the recoil of the second round, and the third hit the same man just above the nose in his forehead.

From the corner of his eye, the big American could see that Platinov had dropped to one knee as well. The ancient, antique-looking rocking chair behind which she knelt offered neither concealment nor cover, but it did distort her body enough to at least slightly confuse the gunner’s aims. The Russian agent had opened fire a split second after Bolan, and her first target had been a man who had taken cover from behind a chair against the wall, a SiG-Sauer pistol in his hand. Both she and the Executioner were using RBCD ammo, and a red mist hung in the air, floating slowly toward the floor in front of the dead body from which it had come.

As the Executioner opened fire again, he continued to eye Platinov from his peripheral vision. Two more of the card players fell as Bolan watched his Russian ally knee-walk swiftly up behind a man with his back to her. The terrorist was leaning forward to reach for a shotgun between his feet. But before his fingers could find the cold metal or wooden stock, Platinov had leaned forward and pressed the barrel of her weapon into the back of the man’s head at the base of his neck.

Bringing her left forearm up to cover her eyes, Platinov pulled the trigger. The contact shots caused almost as much blood and other gore to blow out the entrance holes as that which exited the terrorist’s forehead.

The terrorist fell forward onto the floor on his face. Or at least what was left of it.

Platinov, the Executioner knew, had covered her eyes to keep the residual blood out. She could hardly afford to “go blind” with blood obscuring her vision in the middle of a gunfight. It was a good strategy. Except for one thing.

By covering her eyes with her forearm, Platinov had temporarily blinded herself.

One of the gunners who’d been sitting on a couch against the side wall noticed her vulnerability and tried to take advantage of it. He raised what looked like an old Luger toggle-bolt pistol and stepped into a classic Weaver shooting stance. As she squinted slightly, the muscles in his hands and arms tightened as he pushed the pistol forward with his right hand and pulled it back toward him with his left. At the same time, he did his best to drop the Luger’s front sight on Platinov. The man, Bolan thought, looked as if he’d just received his certificate for completing one of the many shooting schools that had popped up around the world. Attendees shot hundreds of rounds as they went through these courses, always being trained to make sure the front sight was “flashed” on their target before squeezing the trigger.

They emerged from such schools as experts.

Experts, however, at putting holes in paper silhouette targets or making steel plates ding. Not experts at gun-fighting by any means.

Again, from the corner of his eye, the Executioner saw the man began to gently squeeze the trigger.

The soldier turned his weapon toward the man, pointed it and shot him.

Saving Platinov from the unseen attack had meant the Executioner had to momentarily ignore the return fire from the card players. As bullets and buckshot sailed past him, Bolan opened fire again, lacing one of the gamblers standing sideways from belt to armpit with three rounds into his ribs.

The gunner was already dead and on the ground by the time Platinov had fired the contact shots into the back of the other terrorist’s head. Now, she dropped her arm.

She would never know just how close to death she had come from the man who had drawn the Luger. Or that it had been Bolan who had saved her life.

Bolan decided not to press his luck any further with the surviving card players. He had already taken out the man who had sat with his side toward the Executioner, and now he dived to the side as return fire continued.

The Executioner rolled once, then came up on one knee again. Even this slight movement forced the hardmen to redirect their aim.

Bolan cut loose with another 3-round volley into the heart of a gunner wearing a beret. The man had been doing his best to gain target acquisition on the Executioner’s new position. That task was abandoned as deep, thick, red blood spurted from his chest, accompanied by the now-familiar mist that had become the RBCD rounds’ personal signature. At least one of the totally fragmenting rounds had also pierced a lung, and the man dropped his Uzi, twisted in the air with a scream and fell on top of his own weapon, his chest sucking up and down in dying breaths.

Bolan sought another target, zeroing in on a man wielding a Beretta 92. The round missed him by millimeters, coming so close to the Executioner’s ear that he could feel its heat.

But this was no game of horseshoes. “Close” didn’t count.

Bolan pumped another trio of rounds into the gunman, practically ripping his chest away from the rest of his body. He fell backward onto the table, his legs dangling down to spasm as if in some bizarre, predeath, dance ritual.

The gunner who had sat next to him had grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from somewhere beneath the table, and now he brought the shortened pump-action weapon around and racked the slide, chambering a shell. But he had no time to pull the trigger.

Bolan angled the H&K his way and cut loose with another 3-round burst, aiming at the man’s chest. But at the last second, the gunner crouched instinctively and all three 9 mm rounds sank into the top of his head, like electric drills boring down through his skull and into his brain.

So it didn’t make too much difference. The man was still as dead as disco before he hit the floor.

The card players were all dead now, and Bolan turned toward the living room, assisting Platinov as they rid the world of the final two CLODO terrorists. As the gunfire died down, Bolan’s thoughts turned again to Pierre Rouillan. The file he and Platinov had studied during their flight had contained several pictures of the man who had been responsible for CLODO’s revival. He was a little over six feet tall, dressed conservatively and appeared to have a strong attraction to beautiful women, wine and the finer things in life. He was also the brains behind a number of attacks on computer manufacturers and related businesses during the past several months, and much more than computers had been destroyed.

Bombs, stray bullets and other collateral damage were always the result of warfare. But with terrorists, it became the objective rather than an unfortunate by-product. Since its reorganization, CLODO’s bombings, machine-gunnings and other terrorist strikes had claimed hundreds of lives.

The Executioner’s jaw tightened as the bloody sight before him brought on anger rather than the frustration or fear or nausea that it might have inspired in a more common man. It was not he, or Marynka Platinov, who was responsible for the death and destruction at this CLODO safe house.

It was Pierre Rouillan who had brought about the deaths of his own men.

PIERRE ROUILLAN’S EYELIDS lifted the second he heard the doors crash open. As gunfire thundered in the other rooms, he swung his legs off the bed, grabbed his shirt and leaped to his feet. Silently, he thanked a God he didn’t believe in that he had not taken off his pants. Snatching the 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 compact pistol off the nightstand, he stuck it in his belt and hurried toward the window.

A moment later, he was in the backyard, half-expecting to suddenly be tackled and thrown to the ground by men dressed in SWAT-type gear.

He frowned when he found the backyard deserted.

The firing behind him was in full swing now. Rouillan slowly drew the pistol from his belt and held it close to his leg as he walked toward the open back door, curiosity getting the better of him. From several yards away, he could see that the back door had been kicked open. Moving to a window next to the door, he gazed at the flash-fire that accompanied each round. Rouillan would make his escape in a moment, but first, he had to know who had learned about the safe house and was now attacking it.

The back door opened directly toward the kitchen table, which meant the living room stood out of his line of vision. Dropping to both knees, Rouillan peered through the opening and angled to see around the corner, his nose almost dragging across the hard concrete of the single step that led to the entrance. As his eyes focused on the back of a blond-haired woman wearing black combat gear, he saw her lean forward and shoot.

He looked past her. Standing on the tiles by the front door was a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in an identical blacksuit. And, just like the woman, he was firing an H&K MP-5 submachine gun. He also carried two pistols—one was in a shoulder holster beneath his left arm and looked like it was long enough to have a sound suppressor threaded onto the barrel. The other gun—in a holster on his right hip—was huge. Rouillan wasn’t close enough to identify it.

The terrorist leader started to pull his Kel-Tec around the corner, then paused. Shooting the woman in the back would be easy. And the big man at the front of the house hadn’t noticed him yet, either. Rouillan might even be able to pump a couple of rounds into him as well.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to risk having the shot miss. While Rouillan knew he was a good shot, he wasn’t ready to gamble his life on the Kel-Tec. The hollowpoint rounds did not always open up after they’d left the short barrel, and the muzzle-flash in the doorway might well catch the attention of the big man at the front of the house.

And even though his face was deadpan as he fired his MP-5, there was something about the big, black figure that screamed at Rouillan to be careful.

This man was deadly.

No, the Frenchman thought, it was a chance better not taken. Better he make his escape while he could. After all, he had worked hard reestablishing CLODO. And without his leadership, the still-fragile organization was likely to crumble and then disintegrate altogether.

Another quick thought suddenly entered his mind, but Pierre Rouillan immediately pushed it out of his head. That thought was that he might not be all that concerned with CLODO, and that he might just be a simple old-fashioned coward, worried more for his own safety than the good of the organization.

That uncomfortable idea was pushed out of his head as quickly as it had come.

Rising to his feet, the CLODO leader replaced the pistol in his belt and took off at a jog across the grass toward the chain-link fence at the rear of the backyard. He had plenty of other men, and plenty of other safe houses, where he could hide out until it was time for the big strike.

He doubted that he would ever even see the big man and blonde woman again.

Rouillan smiled as he grabbed the top of the fence and swung his legs up and over the barrier. He jogged across the backyard of his neighbor’s house. CLODO was still known primarily for the bombing of the Phillips Data Systems in Toulouse in 1980, but his new CLOCO master plan was coming up.

When it detonated, nothing would explode.

But the whole planet would shut down in a screeching, screaming halt.

EMPTY BRASS CASINGS crunched under Bolan’s boots as he made his way toward Platinov, who stood in the center of the living room. He kept the H&K up and ready. Too many “dead” men had magically come back to life during his career for him to let his guard down yet. And when he looked at the Russian agent, he saw that she had learned the same lesson over the years.

Marynka Platinov’s submachine gun was still gripped with both hands, her right index finger on the trigger.

“We’re not going to have much time,” Bolan said as he knelt next to a body in the middle of the floor. “Neighbors will have already called the cops.”

“I’ll check the back rooms,” Platinov suggested.

Bolan nodded as he began going through the pockets of the man on the floor, who wore a blue beret like some of the others. But, otherwise, he was dressed in faded blue jeans, high-topped hiking boots and formerly-white T-shirt, now soaked crimson with blood. His pockets contained everything from a little .22 hideout Beretta to a receipt from a local laundry. In the left front pocket, Bolan discovered a small Spyderco Clipit knife being used as a money clip. It contained at least a thousand euros. Although he had unlimited operational funds from the U.S., the Executioner saw no reason to waste taxpayers’ money for his war chest. It was always a bonus to use the money of America’s enemies to finance their own destruction.

By the time he had finished searching the man in the vest, Platinov had returned to the living room. “I didn’t find anyone else in the house,” she said. “But there was someone.”

Bolan frowned as he waited for more information.

“The bed in the back,” Platinov went on. “The sheets are still warm.”

The Executioner nodded.

“And the window into the backyard is open,” she added. “He, or she, must have heard us come in and booked out of here.” She paused. “I couldn’t have missed him by more than a couple of seconds.”

Bolan knew such coincidences sometimes happened. They were the fortunes of war. “Rouillan himself, maybe,” he speculated.

Platinov shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. No way to know.” She paused for a moment, then added, “And you won’t believe what I found in another bedroom.”

“What’s that?” Bolan asked.

“A computer.”

“Why is that so unbelievable?” he asked.

Platinov stared him in the eyes. “Cooper,” she said, using Bolan’s cover name, “That’s what this whole group is about, remember, they are against computers. Their famous quotation is ‘Computers are the favorite instrument of the powerful. They are used to classify, control and repress.’”

Bolan nodded. “I remember it,” he said. “But all that a computer in the back room of this house means is that CLODO has modernized since the 1980s. They’ve learned that if you want to defeat the enemy, you have to first know him.”

“Yes,” Platinov replied. “But I still find it ironic.”

The Executioner agreed. “Help me search the rest of these bodies,” he said. “And be quick. We’re going to have to take off the second we hear the first siren.”

Platinov dropped to her knees on the carpet and began to go through the pockets of one of the corpses.

Hurriedly, and never leaving his knees, Bolan moved from corpse to corpse, going through the pockets of slacks, jeans and work pants, as well as shirts, vests and coats of all types. He found mostly the typical items that might be found on any man: money, keys, cell phones, cigarettes and a variety of paperwork. He had just come across another small hideout weapon—this one an old Baby Browning .25—when they suddenly heard the sirens of approaching Parisian police cars.

The Executioner had dropped everything that he’d found in the dead men’s pockets on the carpet next to them, and now he produced a folded canvas bag from a zippered pocket on the thigh of his blacksuit.

Platinov saw what he was doing, read his intentions and began scooping up everything from papers to loose change and wristwatches from the carpet.

Twenty seconds later, the bag was filled and Bolan was zipping it shut again. He handed Platinov his H&K, then slung the canvas bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll go through this stuff as soon as we’re out of the area.”

The Russian woman nodded, then turned to follow Bolan out the back door she had kicked in less than five minutes earlier.

As the sirens neared, the two black-clad figures took off, sprinting across the grass, disappearing into the night.

THE EXECUTIONER and the Russian agent came out from between two houses and spotted the Nissan exactly where they’d left it. Bolan pulled a key ring from his pocket and pressed the vehicle’s unlock button twice with his thumb. Both the driver’s and passenger’s doors clicked, and the headlights flashed on and off as they approached.

Yanking open the driver’s door, the Executioner tossed the canvas bag into the back of the Nissan as he slid behind the wheel. Between the houses, on the street a block over, he could see the flashing lights of the Parisian gendarmes. Good. As he’d suspected they would do, the French police had only blocked in the streets immediately around the safe house. He and Platinov had gotten out of their enclosure by the skin of their teeth.

Bolan stuck the key in the ignition as Platinov strapped herself in with the seat belt. The Russian agent had both of their MP-5s held between her thighs with the barrels resting on the floorboards.

A second later, the Executioner threw the vehicle into Drive and they drove quietly out of the neighborhood.

When they had crossed a bridge spanning the Seine River and were nearing the world-famous Paris-Sorbonne University, Platinov finally broke the silence. “Where are we going now?” she asked.

“We need to find a room somewhere,” Bolan said from behind the wheel. “Someplace out of the way where we won’t be conspicuous. And where we’ll have the privacy to go over all of the stuff in the bag.”

The Russian agent nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. “But I believe we are going to be a little conspicuous no matter where we go, dressed as we are.” Without waiting for an answer, she unbuckled her seat belt, brought one of her shapely legs over the console between the seats and then used her arms to pull herself on into the back of the car.

Bolan heard the click as Platinov unsnapped the ballistic nylon gun belt from around her waist. His eyes rose briefly to the rearview mirror when the click was followed by a long, zipping sound that meant the Russian woman’s blacksuit was coming off.

Platinov met the Executioner’s eyes in the mirror. “Go ahead and look,” she said teasingly. “There is nothing here you haven’t seen before.”

Bolan chuckled as the woman behind him slipped out of her battle suit. He caught a quick glimpse of red thong panties—apparently the only underclothing she had worn beneath her blacksuit—as his eyes returned to the road. He heard another zipper as he drove on and knew Platinov had to be rummaging through one of their equipment bags for a less conspicuous outfit to put on.

A few minutes later, she climbed back between the seats to the front. As her legs crossed over the console, the Executioner saw that she had retained the red thong beneath a pair of flesh-colored pantyhose and a beige skirt. Above the skirt, she wore a matching jacket with a nondescript white blouse beneath it.

“Your turn,” the Russian woman said, ignoring her seat belt this time.

Bolan had turned onto a side street, crossed a bridge and knew he was nearing the Notre Dame area. The sidewalks were crowded with men, women and children taking in the nighttime beauty of the Seine and bartering with the vendors at the dozens of used-book and souvenir stands along the way. Traffic had all but halted anyway, so Bolan stopped the Nissan in the middle of the street, threw the transmission into Park and turned to Platinov. Without speaking, he twisted in his bucket seat and climbed into the back of the Nissan.

Platinov swung her legs over behind the wheel.

Quickly, the Executioner removed his own gun belt and shoulder rig, then stripped off the blacksuit. From one of the black nylon equipment bags, he pulled a folded, light blue dress shirt, a navy blue sport coat and a pair of carefully pressed khaki trousers. From another bag, he produced a pair of soft-soled hiking shoes and a dark blue socks. After buttoning the shirt and tucking it into his pants, he lifted the nylon shoulder rig that bore his sound-suppressed 9 mm Beretta 93-R and slid into it, fastening the retainers at the bottom to his belt. A close-fitting plastic belt holster went onto his hip, and he removed the.44 Magnum Desert Eagle from the web belt he’d worn over the blacksuit and snapped it into place.

Extra magazines for the Beretta, and a TOPS SAW—Special Assault Weapon—knife, in a sheath—hung under his right arm, helping to balance out the weight of the Beretta and sound suppressor. Pouches on his belt carried spare .44 Magnum magazines. He covered all of the weapons with the sport coat, then slid back between the seats as Platinov had done a few moments earlier.

By the time the Executioner had taken the passenger’s seat, the Russian woman had guided the Nissan out of the Notre Dame district into a quieter part of town. People still walked up and down the sidewalks, but those sidewalks were lined with hostels, hotels and bed-and-breakfasts.

“Where do you want to stop?” the Russian agent asked.

“One’s as good as another as far as I’m concerned. Just find a place to park.”

Platinov let a tiny laugh escape her lips as she spotted an open space along the street and pulled up to the side of the car in front of it, preparing to parallel park.

“Did I miss something?” the Executioner asked.

“Only something in my mind,” Platinov said as she twisted the wheel and her neck, backing up into the open space before pulling forward again. “I was just thinking about the fact that everywhere else I go, and everyone else I go there with, takes orders from me. When I am with you, however, I seem to automatically follow your lead.”

When Bolan didn’t respond, Platinov added, “I wonder why that is?”

Bolan still remained silent.

“Perhaps it is because we have slept together,” Platinov went on as she twisted the key and killed the Nissan’s engine. “I do not sleep with every male I work with, you know,” she added somewhat defensively as she pulled the key out of the ignition.

“I never thought you did,” Bolan replied. “Now, let’s get checked in and see what leads we can find in that bag, okay?”

Platinov nodded. “Okay,” she said simply and exited the vehicle.

Bolan and Platinov entered the lobby of a hotel directly in front of their car. Letting the straps from their nondescript equipment bags slide onto the hardwood floor as they reached the front desk, Bolan stared at an open door behind the counter. When no one appeared, he tapped a bell on the countertop.

A surly faced, unshaven man wearing a coffee-stained white undershirt and dark trousers appeared in the doorway, then waddled to the counter. The shirt stretched across his immense belly as tight as one of the Executioner’s own blacksuits, and the ribbed stitching threatened to burst apart with every bounce brought on by the man’s steps. The stub of a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, sending wisps of smoke upward into the air. Without bothering to greet them, the man in the filthy undershirt reached beneath the counter, pulled out a registry card and slid it across the slick top.

Bolan registered them as Mr. and Mrs. Josh Murphy, of Enid, Oklahoma.

The unshaven man dropped a key attached to a large wooden stick on the countertop and said simply, “Passports.”

Bolan reached into one of the bags and pulled out a pair of the blue booklets. They had been made up for both him and Platinov by experts at Stony Man Farm, the top-secret counterterrorist installation with whom the Executioner sometimes worked.

The man in the dirty clothing glanced at the pictures inside the passports. As the Executioner and Marynka Platinov moved toward the elevator, Bolan noticed him leering at the Russian woman’s buttocks as she walked.

Platinov appeared to notice it, too. A slightly disgusted frown spread across her face.

A few minutes later, Bolan unlocked a door beneath the number 307. Holding it open for Platinov, he looked in to see the sparsely furnished room. A threadbare brown plaid bedspread was stretched tightly across the twin bed, and a chipped wooden table and two chairs set against a wall. Other than that, the room was empty.

“You always take me to the nicest places, Cooper,” Platinov said, dropping her bags on the bed.

“Thanks, Plat,” he said simply. He dropped his own luggage on the ragged rug on the floor. But immediately, he picked up the canvas bag that contained what they had collected from the corpses at the safe house. Setting it on the table, he took a seat in one of the splintery wooden chairs.

Platinov sat down across from him.

Bolan unzipped the bag, then turned it over, dumping the contents onto the tabletop. Out came a wide variety of objects, from key rings and more hideout guns and knives, to folded papers, receipts, chewing gum wrappers, billfolds, money clips and broken cigarettes. One man had been a cigar smoker, and a leather cigar case carried three medium-sized cigars with Cuban wrappers.

Bolan examined the cigars, careful not to touch the label, which might retain a fingerprint. Rising to his feet, he dropped the cigar and moved to the bed. From one of the black, zippered cases he produced a small fingerprint kit and a package of blank index cards. He returned to his chair.

“Separate everything that might hold a print,” he told Platinov. “And get the laptop up and ready.”

The Russian woman rose to her feet as Bolan unscrewed the lid off of a small bottle of black fingerprint powder. Setting it down carefully, he did the same with a bottle of white powder.

The dark powder would be used on light-colored objects such as the keys. The white was for the cigars, the smooth leather cigar case and other darker items.

Fifteen minutes later, the tabletop was covered with both white and black powder. But the Executioner had lifted seven full prints and fourteen partials from the items that had been in the terrorists’ pockets. Two of the best had come from the cigar case itself.

“Is the computer up and running?” Bolan asked as he pressed the clear plastic tape of the last print onto its index card.

“Ready,” Platinov replied. She took the stack of index cards he pushed across the table to her and began to scan them via the mini-scanner plugged into one of the laptop’s USB ports.

Pulling his satellite phone from the front breast pocket of his blazer, the Executioner tapped in the number for Stony Man Farm. The call took several seconds to connect, bouncing off numerous satellites and running through various dead-end numbers to throw off anyone who might be trying to tap in to the call.

It was a precaution that everyone associated with Stony Man Farm always took.

Thirty seconds later, though, the Executioner heard Barbara Price’s voice on the other end of the call. “Yes, Striker?” she said.

“Tell Bear I’m getting ready to send him seven full fingerprints and fourteen partials,” Bolan answered. “I want him to run them through AFIS. But he also needs to hack in to the similar systems in Europe. Especially France.”

“Affirmative, Striker,” Stony Man Farm’s honey-blond mission controller replied. “Send them on.”

Bolan shut the phone and dropped it back into his coat pocket, then reached across the table and took the laptop from Platinov. Then, one by one, he called up the files and e-mailed them to Stony Man Farm.

Five minutes later, the laptop beeped and a mechanized voice said, “You have mail.”

Bolan tapped the appropriate keys to open the e-mail from Aaron the “Bear” Kurtzman, Stony Man Farm’s computer wizard.

When he had read the message, the soldier said, “We’ve got a hit. It leads to another safe house address.” He grabbed a large canvas-and-leather portfolio, which looked little different than a shoulder-carried bag any tourist or French businessman might have. Quickly, he unzipped it and pulled out a long, triangular-shaped canvas case with a zipper that ran three-fourths of the way around.

“What is that?” Platinov asked as he dropped the case into his shoulder bag and turned back to her.

“I could tell you—” he said as they started toward the door again.

“But then you’d have to kill me,” Platinov finished the tired, overused cliché as she rolled her eyes.

The Executioner chuckled as he led the way down the hall to the elevators, then pressed the down button.

A minute later, he and Platinov were striding out of the lobby of the hotel and back to the Nissan.