The Killing Rule. Don Pendleton

to meet you. I’m Matt. What I want you to do is this. I want you both to go back up the elevator. When it opens, Musa, you run down the hall to the stairs, and you? You chase him, yelling in Hausa.”

      Modu looked at Bolan as if he were insane. “Not for fifty pounds.”

      “How about a hundred?” Bolan grinned. “Each, and another hundred once it’s done.”

      Balam peered curiously. “And after it is done, what?”

      “You’re better off not knowing. You just run for the stairs and keep going.”

      A furious exchange in Hausa ensued. Balam apparently won. “Show us the money.”

      Bolan peeled several bills from his money clip. Even the reticent Sheriff Modu’s eyes lit up. Bolan handed them a hundred each and followed them into the elevator. Modu took a wet towel from a bin and coiled it into a rat’s tail. The door pinged open on the fifth floor. Balam ran out screaming and Modu raced after him, shouting in scathing Hausa and snapping the towel like a whip. Bolan waited four seconds until he knew they had passed his door and then filled his hand with his Beretta 93-R and stepped out of the elevator.

      As Balam had said, two men stood near his door. Both men had short, brush-cut blond hair and wore leather jackets. By the bulges under their left arms, his scout was right. They were packing substantial heat. The smaller man held a cell phone, obviously waiting for warning from the men watching the garage and the lobby. The two Nigerians were almost to the stairs at the end of the hall. The big man shook his head in disgust at their antics. “Agh, can you believe those bloody foreigners.”

      The accent told Bolan that the man was a South African. Bolan strode up to him, the big man catching the movement a second too late. Bolan cracked the slide of his Beretta machine pistol across the side of the man’s face, laying the cheek open to the bone. He whipped the 93-R backhand across the bridge of the little man’s nose and shattered it. The big man had bent over with pain and clutched his face. The butt of the Beretta crunched into the back of his skull and dropped him unconscious to the ground. Bolan rammed the muzzle of the Beretta into the side of the little man’s neck and he fell to the carpet.

      Bolan knelt over the big man and took his ID. Beneath his jacket he was wearing Threat Level II soft body armor. In a shoulder rig he was carrying a BXP submachine gun with the stock folded and a sound suppressor fitted over the barrel. The weapon was basically an American MAC-10 cleaned up and improved to South African specifications. Bolan took the weapon and checked the load. It was loaded with hollow point rounds. He took the little man’s BXP, as well, and checked his watch. Someone was still messing with his laptop. That laptop had been designed by Akira Tokaido, one of Stony Man Farm’s cybernetic experts. The Farm’s resident armorer, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, had installed a number of security devices that had nothing to do with binary code. Bolan pumped the bezel of his watch three times and was rewarded with a scream as the right-hand speaker in the laptop’s monitor frame spewed a compressed stream of pepper spray into the operator’s eyes.

      Bolan kicked open the door of his hotel room.

      A redheaded woman was on the floor in front of Bolan’s laptop clutching her face. The man who had been in guard position looked up from where he bent over her. His BXP was in his hand but on the wrong side of his body. Bolan put the red-dot sight of his right-hand weapon on the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger. The BXP stuttered and twenty-two rounds of 9 mm hollowpoint ammo jackhammered into the gunner’s chest as Bolan held the trigger down on full-auto. The man’s armor held, but he still had to absorb the bullets’ energy and his body took a beating like he was being kicked to death by a mule. The BXP clacked open on empty, and Bolan helped the man onto his back and into unconsciousness by flinging the five and half pounds of smoking steel into his face.

      The redhead squirmed across the carpet, her hands clawing for her own fallen submachine gun. Bolan pressed the muzzle of his second weapon against her cheek and pinned her head to the floor. “One more move and I’ll turn your head into applesauce. You understand?”

      The woman nodded, her eyes streaming and wincing as her lower lip split beneath the pressure of the submachine gun.

      Bolan backed the weapon off her mouth. “Who are you?”

      She glared up at Bolan in red-eyed defiance. Bolan reached into his jacket and clicked open his phone. He pressed a preset number and Assistant Director Finch answered on the first ring. “You have reached MI-5. This is Assistant Director Finch.”

      “We spoke earlier today.”

      Her voice replied curtly. “Yes.”

      “I have something for you. In my room.”

      “Oh?”

      “Yes, you should send a team down here. You have three suspects.”

      The redhead stared up in alarm. She was part of a four-man team.

      “They’re suffering from various broken bones and contusions,” Bolan continued. “One at least appears to be of South African extraction.”

      “South African?”

      “Yes.”

      “Really?” Finch registered genuine surprise. “Are you sure?”

      “Pretty sure.”

      “I’ll have a team there in ten minutes.”

      “I won’t be here.”

      “I’m not entirely surprised.”

      Bolan was about to hang up when Finch spoke. “You’re to be arrested on sight.”

      “I’ll call you later.” Bolan clicked off. He didn’t have much time. “You.” He pointed the BXP back at the woman’s head. “You’re coming with me.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CIA safe house, London

      “Running the prints now, Striker.”

      Bolan had taken the woman’s fingerprints and faxed them to Kurtzman. She sat on a chair with her hands cuffed together in front of her and her ankles bound to the front chair legs with plastic zip restraints. The gun Bolan had held in his hand during the ten-minute drive to the safe house had kept the woman docile. Bolan had washed out her eyes with water. They were still red-veined from the gas and still glared bloody murder at Bolan.

      Kurtzman got back to him almost instantly. “I have a hit on the Interpol database.”

      The woman went rigid on the chair.

      “What have you got?”

      The computer whiz hit a key and a police photo of the woman popped up on the screen. “Sylvette MacJory, born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Attended Strathclyde University and received her degree in computer science. In 2005 she was accused and convicted of cybernetic crimes in the U.K., including identity theft and criminal hacking into the databases of several major U.K. financial institutions. Sentenced to five years, sentence reduced to two years probation and public service. Current residence in London. No further criminal record.”

      Sylvette’s face clouded with rage.

      “So who are your South African friends?” Bolan asked.

      “Piss off, Yank!”

      “You should try to come up with something more original than that.”

      “You’re no cop, then.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re holding me illegally. I want my lawyer.”

      “You’re right. I’m not a cop, and you’re not being held.” Bolan clicked open his phone and punched a button. “You’ve been abducted.”

      MacJory swallowed with difficulty as her position became more clear to her.

      Assistant Director Finch answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

      “Did