Hell Night. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ SWAT 1.”

      Glasser leaned toward the microphone on his shoulder and said, “SWAT 1, here.”

      “Ten-four, SWAT 1,” the woman on the other end said. “Be advised we just received a cell phone call from a man claiming to be inside the vault at your location. He wants your cell phone number. Should I give it to him?”

      Glasser’s face turned into a mask of both outrage and astonishment. “Of course you should give it to him,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

      The woman on the other end either didn’t catch the SWAT captain’s tone or didn’t care. Her voice remained colorless. “Ten-four, SWAT 1,” she said, then ended the call.

      Bolan and Glasser glanced at each other as they waited for the call they suspected would be coming from inside the vault. The Executioner had not been surprised that he’d gotten no response to his yelling—the vault door was thick steel and sealed tightly around the edges. What did surprise him was that the Rough Rider’s cell phone had worked from within the vault. He’d have bet against it. But there was no rhyme or reason to cell phones, it seemed, and he was glad he’d been wrong.

      Without some way to communicate with the Rough Riders still alive inside the vault they’d remain at this stalemate indefinitely.

      Less than a minute after the radio transmission had taken place, Glasser’s cell phone rang. Pulling it from his belt, he glanced to the Executioner.

      Bolan reached out for it, and Glasser gave him the phone. Bolan thumbed the talk button, pressed the instrument to his ear and said, “Go ahead.”

      “We seem to be at a Mexican standoff,” said the same raspy voice Bolan had heard over the cell phone’s speakerphone earlier.

      “I think we’ve got a slight advantage over you,” the Executioner came back. “We’ve got access to all the food and water we need out here. We can just wait you out. Of course you could try eating the money all around you in there. Try the hundreds—I hear they’re the best.”

      “Nice try,” said the gravelly voice. “But you don’t have the advantage. We do. You see, any time I decide to do it, my men and I can kill the bank people in here, drop our weapons, then open the door and come out with our hands up.” He laughed in a low, guttural tone. “You’re cops. We’ll be unarmed and you’ll have to take us into custody instead of killing us.”

      Bolan turned and walked away from the other men, going to the opposite end of the hallway, out of earshot. In a whisper, he said, “Everybody out here is a cop except me. And I promise you that if you kill those innocent people in there with you, I’ll gut shoot every one of you and make sure you die slow.”

      “Bullshit,” rasped the voice inside the vault. “If you weren’t a cop, you wouldn’t even be in the bank right now.”

      Bolan’s jaw set firmly, his teeth grinding together slightly. It was the response he’d expected, so he wasn’t surprised. Ironically, it was the truth. He would execute the remaining men if they harmed their innocent hostages. But the man with the cigarette voice would never believe it.

      “Okay,” the Executioner said. “You have some plan on how we can all come out of this alive?”

      “I’ve already given you the plan,” the voice said. “Five million, and a chopper to take us to the airport.” Then, ironically, he repeated what Glasser had said as a joke. “We can settle for a smaller helicopter now. But it’ll need to carry nine people.”

      “How many hostages do you have?” Bolan asked.

      “Four.”

      “I’ll expect you to let one of them go when the helicopter arrives, you get the five million, and you’re onboard.”

      “Fair enough,” the Rough Rider said. “Got a pregnant woman in here I’ll give you just to show good faith. Sort of ‘two for the price of one’ deal.” He laughed over the phone, but the laughter brought on another coughing fit.

      Bolan paused. Once the pregnant woman had been freed, there would be five of the terrorists, including the man on the phone, still alive to deal with. That could be crucial information down the road. “I’ll expect you to give me the other three people at the airport,” he said.

      “I’ll give you two of the three at the airport.” the Rough Rider coughed.

      “What do you plan to do with the last one?” the Executioner asked.

      “I’ll cut him loose him when we land.” A chuckle brought on another cough. “You’ll understand, I’m sure, if I don’t tell you exactly where that’s going to be.”

      The Executioner noted that the raspy voice rose a little with the man’s final words. That was one of the indicators of a lie. Letting the final hostage go free when they landed would be too risky. What the cigarette-smoking Rough Rider really had planned was to kill the final hostage. They’d either throw him out of the plane once they were in the air or shoot him or cut his throat.

      Which meant the Executioner couldn’t afford to let them reach the airplane. He had to end this game either before they got into the chopper or somewhere between the helicopter and the airplane.

      “All right,” Bolan said into Glasser’s cell phone. “When do you plan to come out?” He paused a second, then said, “I’d like to get all this done before you die of emphysema.”

      An eerie silence filled the wireless cell phone connection, and Bolan could tell he’d hit a sore sport with the man. The raspy-voiced Rough Rider either did have emphysema or lung cancer or some smoking-related disease that was slowly killing him.

      Which, Bolan reminded himself, only made the man more dangerous and unpredictable. Men who knew they were dying anyway were often willing to take chances that other men weren’t.

      “We’re coming out right now,” the grating voice finally said into his cell phone. “So you boys move down to the end of the hall unless you want some dead bank employees on your hands.”

      The Executioner turned toward Glasser and the other SWAT men gathered around him. But he had no need to issue an order. All of them double-timed it down to the other end of the hall. Bolan followed them.

      “Are you away from the door yet?” the gravelly voice asked.

      “We are,” the Executioner said.

      The vault door began to swing slowly open. Then a blue-ski-masked face peered around the heavy steel at Bolan and the rest of the SWAT warriors. Seemingly satisfied, the man wearing the mask and coveralls pushed the vault door the rest of the way open to the wall, making sure no one was hiding behind it.

      Stepping brazenly out of the vault, the man who had opened the door coughed as he waved for the men still inside to come out. One by one, they did.

      But it wasn’t really one by one. More like two by two. Because three of the men had duct-taped pistols to the backs of the hostages’ heads. More duct tape secured the guns to the Rough Riders’ hands, and a strip of the sticky gray tape was across the eyes of the young man and two women who were pushed out and down the hall. All of the terrorists had pulled their blue ski masks down over their faces again. Their right hands held the pistols. Two AK-47s and an M-16 similar to Bolan’s СКАЧАТЬ