The next floor was wide open. The walls had been taken down, and the place was used for storage.
Cartons were piled everywhere. A quick look told Bolan the place was an armory. Guns and ammunition were stacked in one corner. It seemed carelesseauntil he reached the next landing. A steel door barred the way. Before even turning the knob, he knew it would be locked. It was.
He knew there would be grenades and plastique in the storeroom. The latter would come in handy now.
Back on the fourth floor, he found the plastique and cut a block of C-4 big enough to take out the door. In a half-empty carton there were detonators, wire and radio transmitters.
Rigging the door to blow on the first attempt, he quickly planted the plastique, set up a detonator and reclimbed the steps. In one open crate he found a half-dozen Ingram MAC-10 submachine guns. Selecting one, he checked it out. It was a bit rusty, so he pulled another from the crate. This one was satisfactory.
He fitted the SMG with its bulky sound suppressor. Now for ammunition. On steel shelving against one wall, Bolan found several cases of ammunition. He grabbed several clips and stuffed them into his coat pockets. He was as ready as he'd ever be. Standing away from the stairway, he pressed the button. Before the smoke had cleared, he was at the bottom of the steps and through the splintered doorway. The Ingram ready, he checked both ends of the hall. Below, he could hear footsteps. The surprise wouldn't last long. He kicked in the first door he came to, but the room was empty. As was the next. In the third, a man was sitting upright in bed, the covers drawn up to his chin. He was groggy, uncertain of where he was.
"What the hell's going on, man?" he asked.
"I'm looking for somebody," Bolan growled.
"If it ain't me, I can't help you, man."
"It's not you, pal," Bolan snapped. He slugged the man in the forehead with the Ingram. The man would sleep through.
Out in the hall, shouts echoed up the stairs. As Bolan kicked in the fourth and last door, two men ran into the hall from the stairwell. Both were armed.
Bolan stepped through the doorway just ahead of a burst of gunfire. Several slugs tore into the wooden doorframe, sending splinters in every direction.
"Cover me," one of them shouted. Bolan could hear footsteps pounding toward him. The guy bounced through the doorway. Like an idiot, he had put himself between his quarry and his companion. Bolan squeezed off a burst from the Ingram. The .45 caliber slugs ripped into the commando, knocking him back into the hall again. Stitched by the hellfire from collar to belt, his spine had been severed in three places.
A rain of slugs poured through the doorway. Bolan slid along the wall, making certain he was out of the line of fire.
When the gunner paused to change magazines, Bolan burst through, squeezing off a short burst to keep the guy's head down. He raced toward the stairs and dived headfirst past the opening. Spraying fire down the steps as he sailed by, Bolan caught his adversary by surprise. He waited long enough to be certain that the guy was out of action, and then slipped back to the stairwell. The second gunner lay sprawled on the stairs. His eyes were rolled back, as if trying to look through the ugly, round red hole in the middle of his forehead.
Grabbing the guy's gun, Bolan jammed a new clip into place, then reloaded his own weapon and slung it over his shoulder. Stepping over the dead man, he worked his way down to the second floor.
This one, too, had been gutted; the rooms had been dismembered to make way for a dormitory. Three rows of bunks, all empty, filled the space.
Bolan heard a shout as he crossed toward the stairs to the first floor. Another gunner bounded up the steps and burst into the sleeping quarters. Bolan sprayed lead in his direction and dived for the floor.
One of the .45 caliber Ingram rounds shattered the newcomer's right hand. His gun clattered to the floor. Before he could retrieve it with his left, Bolan was on him. Grabbing the man by the collar, he hauled him to his feet.
"Don't shoot me, please," he screamed. Reaching for Bolan's hands, he tried to free himself from Bolan's grip, more in desperation than rage. "Please, don't shoot me."
"I'm looking for somebody," Bolan snarled. "I can see she's not here. But somebody knows where she is. I want that somebody to get a message. Do you understand?"
The young man nodded. "What message?"
"You tell him I'm coming. You tell him I'm going to find him. Tell him that if anything happens to Rachel Peres, he'll wish he'd never been born. Understand?"
"Who... who am I supposed to tell? Who's the message for?" The young man's eyes were rolling. His voice was barely intelligible through the blubbering.
"You just tell everybody you know. He'll get the message. Understand? Because if he doesn't get it, I'll be back." Bolan tossed the injured man to the floor and returned to ground level, unopposed. If anyone else had been there, he was long gone. Rousting punks was something Bolan had been doing forever. Or so it seemed. Ever since the Mafia wars, it had been necessary. But the punks had never learned, and this new breed was no different. Just harder to understand. The mob had wanted money, and it did whatever it could to get it. But terrorists were either true believers, or cynics.
The true believers never saw the contradictions. They preached the sanctity of personal freedom and made a living by violating it, or denying it to those who opposed them.
Worst of all were the cynics. They would say or do anything to advance their aims. And when you sloughed off all the rhetoric, ripped the curtain of bullshit aside, it was all about power. Power over people who had precious little of their own. Not over their lives, their futures, not even over the time of their own deaths. The terrorist slime that was spreading over the planet, like mold on a piece of exposed cheese, had to be stopped. But first somebody had to get their attention.
Hell, it wasn't Bolan's choice for a hobby, but somebody had to do it. And with Rachel's life hanging in the balance, he had all the reason he needed. The armory in the East Village would never be the same. But it had seemed like an empty exercise. For all Bolan knew, those guys at the crash pad were blameless. But when somebody comes after you with an SMG, Bolan knew you had better assume he was up to no good. There was another stop he wanted to make, and this visit would be quick. The whole point was to make it clear that the houses weren't as safe as their residents thought. They had no secrets. Not from the Executioner. The thing they never seemed to understand about a rat hole was that there was only one way in. And sometimes no way out.
Bolan drove across town to the docks. South of Fourteenth Street, New York's West Side was a nightmare after dark. The area consisted of winding streets and row after row of abandoned warehouses. It was so gloomy and oppressive that even the hookers preferred to ply their trade farther north under the lights. It was a place where anything was possible.
And where anything could hide.
Hal Brognola knew a great deal about Parsons's little game. And it was becoming increasingly evident that Parsons was little more than the mouth that roared.
Someone else was calling the shots. Bolan's lead on Glinkov looked promising. They didn't have everything yet, but they would shortly. And what they already had told them they were playing with people who operated in the big leagues. It meant Parsons couldn't be in control. He was small time.
Parsons had never been involved in the kind of thing they were turning up. Public disturbance was his ball game, not murder. True, there were links to Parsons, but some of them were merely circumstantial. And some of them looked manufactured. It was as if someone wanted Parsons on the hook. Or already had him there.