Edge Of Hell. Don Pendleton

but enough to have still been the talk of the diner where Bolan had eaten.

      Bolan disappeared into the shadows of the alley, the blunt nose of the suppressor leading the way.

      What he stumbled upon was a scene out of madness. A woman lay on the glistening ground, her eyes still open, staring sightlessly. Her belly was slit from pubis to sternum, the sheets of abdominal muscle parted and rolled over the sides of her body like rubbery flats. Her stomach was emptied out, her intestines thrown over one shoulder, like a thick, rubbery boa. Bolan’s jaw clenched as he watched the man over her finish scrawling, in blood, a cryptic phrase.

      “The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.”

      The man himself was an image out of a fever dream—a monstrosity ripped from a Victorian nightmare and made real. Draped in a long flowing cloak, the kind worn by period actors, and with a top hat adorning his head, he moved with an eerie swiftness and efficiency. He was tall and long-limbed, black gloves covering his big hands, and Bolan could have concealed a bazooka under the loose cloak the stranger wore. The Executioner wasn’t a man given to cold fear, but surprise and shock washed over him.

      The part of his mind that was the man, Mack Bolan, reeled, stunned by the combination of atrocity and the knowledge of a century of legend and mythology smacking him in the face. He half hoped that there was a movie camera nearby, that this was the filming of some movie. But the Executioner knew better.

      There was no faking the stench of a disemboweled person, no faking the ugly swelling of a slashed throat. Not to someone who had seen similar atrocities in the basement abattoirs of Mafia turkey doctors.

      The Executioner snapped up the Beretta and triggered a 3-round burst, catching the graffiti-writing murderer between the shoulder blades, smashing him facefirst into his own work, smearing some letters as he slumped down the wall. Shooting a man in the back didn’t even register in Mack Bolan’s mind.

      There was no need for judge and jury in this case. The murderer was caught, literally red-handed. Bolan approached the two bodies, keeping the Beretta’s muzzle aimed at the head of the unmoving figure.

      Blank eyes stared at him from the dead woman, and once more, Bolan was reminded of the niggling anger he’d unleashed on Sonny Westerbridge. Perhaps if he’d arrived a few minutes earlier, those eyes would still see, instead of glaring sightlessly.

      Bolan closed his eyes, trying to banish the thoughts. He was only human. He couldn’t swoop down and save the world from itself.

      Something rustled and Bolan snapped his attention to the figure of the Jack the Ripper imitator on the ground. He was twirling, leg lashing up and knocking the Beretta from his grasp with a bone-jarring impact.

      Bolan lunged and grabbed the leg.

      Unlike with Westerbridge, however, this fighter was prepared. He was already retrieving his limb from the Executioner’s reach, one foot slamming into Bolan’s ankle. Only the tough leather of his boot kept bone and muscle from being anything more than bruised by the kick, but it still took the soldier off his feet.

      The Ripper rolled to his knees, sneering, his top hat fallen away to reveal a face obscured by black makeup across his eyes and cheeks. Bolan only had a glimpse of the face, before he returned his attention to protecting himself, lifting a forearm to block a second kick aimed for his head. The strike hurt like hell, but he didn’t feel numbed paralysis in his fingers signaling a broken arm, and it was better than a skull fracture.

      The Executioner lunged at the Ripper, shoulder cutting across the murderer at knee level and sending him toppling into the corpse of the murder victim. With all the strength he could muster, Bolan swung a fist toward the head of the murderer, but the cloaked killer lifted his shoulder and blocked the blow with a solid knob of muscular flesh and bone. The Ripper hooked his hand over Bolan’s forearm and pulled back hard, drawing a knife into the fight. Bolan raised his other forearm, catching his adversary across his wrist, blocking a lethal downward stab.

      This wasn’t the blade of Jack the Ripper. It was a Gerber Light Military Fighter, six inches of razor-sharp, stainless steel with a decidedly modern glass-injected, nylon handle. Either way, it was sharp, it was pointy, and if Bolan slipped, he would be heartbeats away from being carved into thin slices.

      The two men struggled against each other, the Executioner off balance, but his back and legs holding him up against the splayed-out but aggressive Ripper. They held that pose, a long tense moment, muscles straining, breaths creaking from closed-off throats, sweat soaking down through matted hair. It was a fight that would go on until they both suddenly gave out, muscles collapsing, and in that moment, the killer would have the slight edge. It was do or die, so Bolan let himself be folded under the pressure.

      The Executioner rolled with the momentum of his opponent’s pull, dropping himself farther out of the knife’s slicing arc, and allowing himself the leverage to bring both boots up and rocketing into the Ripper’s knife-arm and chest. The impact jarred them both apart, separating them and giving Bolan breathing space to somersault back and go for his Desert Eagle.

      So much for stealth. Bolan knew the Ripper had to be wearing some kind of armor, armor that needed more penetration than the Beretta’s hollowpoint rounds could provide. Even if he brought down half of the London Police Force and a regiment of SAS troops, this dangerous psychotic needed to be taken out of action, and that meant only the special kind of bone-shattering force that a 240-grain hollowpoint round could provide.

      He triggered the big pistol, and the Ripper leaped for cover, his cloak obscuring the outline of his head. The fact that he was still moving meant that Bolan’s snap-shot missed. The Ripper’s dash continued, his head and body obscured by the cloak, making it almost impossible to determine where to shoot for a solid stop.

      For the second time that night, Bolan offered up a grudging helping of respect for an opponent. This man may have proved a mentally unstable slasher, but he was also a formidable combatant. The Executioner chased him with three more .44 Magnum slugs in rapid succession, but between his armor and his speed, the Ripper reached the shielding bulk of a trash Dumpster, Bolan’s last two shots hammering steel instead of flesh.

      The soldier took the brief pause to reload his Desert Eagle when the flashing outline of the cloak whipped around the corner of the garbage container. He triggered a fresh slug into the shadowy mass, and was answered with the sudden flare of a muzzle-flash. Impacts hammered along the Executioner’s chest, knocking him back on his heels, and Bolan fell to the ground, burning pain searing across his ribs.

      The killer stepped out into the open, leveling the boxy frame of an Uzi- or Ingram-style machine pistol at Bolan’s fallen form. He inched closer, keeping the muzzle aimed at the downed warrior, then cursed, looking both ways up and down the alley.

      “R-1, R-1, report,” came the crackle of a radio from inside the folds of the Ripper’s cloak.

      “I’ve encountered resistance, I had to take action,” the killer answered. “Christ! I need help cleaning up this shit.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “What do I mean? This bloke comes out of nowhere and shoots me in the back. Next thing I know, a perfectly good serial killer scene is sporting enough brass from automatic weapons to start a fucking band!”

      “Who was he?” the radio called.

      “How the fuck should I know? We’ll run his face and prints after we dump him,” the Ripper replied.

      “Dump him?”

      “Of course dump him, you idiots,” the killer snapped. “What, we’re supposed to have the police believe that someone pulled an imitation of Jack the Ripper, and then, in the same alley in the same night, a heavily armed commando-type gets shot to death?”

      “We’ve been yanking their chains for years, Ripper One.”

      “Just get here and help me out.”

      “We’re on our way, hold your ground,” came the answer over the communicator.

      Ripper