The Killing Rule. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ