Hell Night. Don Pendleton

on the line.

      “All right,” he said into the instrument. “Let’s cut the formalities. What do you want in exchange for the hostages?” He thumbed another button and activated the speakerphone so Bolan could hear the other end of the conversation, too.

      The raspy cough of a heavy cigarette smoker sounded over the speakerphone. “Every damn penny we’ll be hauling out of this bank,” the bank robber declared. “And five million more for the inconvenience you’ve caused us.” The voice paused and took in a hacking breath. “After that, the usual. A chopper big enough to take thirty people—that’ll include some of the hostages—to the airport, a plane full of fuel ready to take off and a pilot who isn’t a disguised cop.” The man coughed again. “We find a weapon of any kind on him, or anything else that makes us think the flyboy’s a pig, and we’ll blow his head off.”

      Glasser looked toward Bolan. Even though he was technically in charge of this operation, the SWAT commander had just spent a month enduring the most rigorous cutting-edge training he’d had in his career, and Bolan had taught several of those classes. Hostage negotiation had been one of them.

      Bolan answered the unasked question by silently mouthing the words, “You know what to do. Stall.”

      “I don’t have the authority to meet your demands,” Glasser said into the cell phone. “It can be done. But it’s going to take time.”

      “You’ve got time,” the man across the street rasped. “Twenty minutes.”

      “I can’t even get clearance for the chopper and plane in that length of time,” Glasser said. “Let alone raise five million bucks for you.”

      “Well, you’d better try,” the gravelly voice snapped. “Because each minute you’re late means another dead hostage.” There was a pause, then a low, phlegm-sounding chuckle. “I’ll just shoot them, then toss them out the front window you guys blew out so you can see them.” He finished with, “You’ve now got nineteen minutes.” The line clicked dead.

      Glasser cut the call at his end and turned once again toward the Executioner. He had known Bolan as Matt Cooper while training at the Farm, and still did. “Any suggestions, Cooper?” he said.

      “Yeah,” Bolan said. “Get on the phone and start trying to get clearance for the chopper and plane. And check with the local Secret Service field office. See how much counterfeit money they’ve got on hand.” He looked the burly man in the eye. “These guys aren’t going to have the time or the equipment to check out good fakes, and it’ll be a lot easier than trying to talk any other bank or rich individual into gambling with five million real dollars.”

      Glasser nodded and began tapping numbers into his phone.

      Rising to his feet, the Executioner stayed low, bending over to whisper into Glasser’s ear. “You’re never going to make the twenty-minute deadline,” he said.

      Glasser had just hung up the phone. “I know,” he said.

      “And if the guys inside are from the Rough Riders, they aren’t bluffing,” Bolan said just as quietly. He remembered a recent intelligence report that Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman—Stony Man Farm’s chief computer expert—had put together about this militant faction of the American Nazi Party. The Rough Riders were suspected in several murders and—like so many homegrown American terrorist groups—relied on bank robbery as their primary means of support.

      “Do we know how many hostages are inside?” the Executioner asked.

      Glasser shook his head as he touched the cell phone to his ear for the next call. “Not exactly,” he said. “There’ll be twenty to thirty employees, plus however many customers happened to be there at the wrong time.”

      Bolan nodded and started to move past the man.

      Glasser reached out and grabbed Bolan’s arm. “Where are you going?” he asked.

      The Executioner squatted again. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “And if you don’t know it, you can’t accidentally give it away to the enemy.” He paused for a deep breath, then went on. “Just conduct this operation as if I wasn’t here. But when you hear shots fired inside the bank again, move your men in as fast as possible. Got it?”

      “Got it.”

      “And give me one of those two-ways so I can keep track of you,” the Executioner said.

      Glasser waved at one of his SWAT men, a slender sergeant with dark brown hair. “Give Cooper here your radio and mike,” he said. “Then go back to the van and get another one for yourself.”

      The sergeant didn’t even bother to ask who Cooper was. Jerking the radio from his belt and the microphone from his shoulder, he handed them over.

      The Executioner snapped the radio onto his belt, checked the earpiece connection, then shoved the tiny plastic receiver into one ear. He clipped the microphone to the shoulder of his blacksuit. He looked at his watch.

      Not quite ninety seconds had passed since the raspy voice inside the bank had given them their twenty-minute deadline.

      The innocents inside had roughly eighteen and a half minutes.

      Police cars completely surrounded the bank. Three of the building’s four sides faced streets, and here the vehicles were lined up practically bumper to bumper. To the rear of the bank—beyond the drive-through windows—was a housing complex. Here, the police cars had pulled directly onto the grounds beyond the windows, doing their best to provide a buffer zone between the innocent residents in their houses and the miscreants in the bank. Behind the circle of cars knelt uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives and the rest of Glasser’s SWAT crew, each of the men training a weapon on the bank.

      Moving to the rear of the bank, Bolan sprinted for one of the marked units separating the bank from the residential area. But no shots followed him.

      Dropping down behind the black-and-white patrol car, Bolan found himself next to a portly patrolman resting his Glock 21 across the hood and aiming it toward the drive-through window into the bank. The man’s uniform cap had been discarded and lay next to him on the ground. Coarse but sparse red-and-gray hair stuck up from his receding hairline and balding pate.

      The patrolman glanced at Bolan, then back to the bank.

      “You seen any activity through that teller’s window since you’ve been here?” Bolan asked.

      The patrolman nodded. “Some. There’s a guy with a ski mask just out of sight below the glass. He pops his head up every few seconds and—” The blue head suddenly appeared as the officer spoke. “There! You see him?”

      Bolan nodded. “You see anyone else?”

      The balding man shook his head. “Just him.”

      The Executioner drew back slightly, taking in the rear of the bank as a whole. The First Fidelity Bank was a one-story building. Awnings covered the three drive-up windows with brick columns supporting what looked like shake-shingle roofs. He wondered whether they would support his two-hundred-plus pounds.

      He suspected he was about to find out.

      “What’s your name?” Bolan asked the cop next to him.

      “Coleman,” said the man. “Call me Ron.”

      “You might want to hold back on that familiarity until you hear the rest of what I’m about to say,” Bolan told him.

      “Huh?”

      “You wearing a vest, Coleman?” Bolan asked.

      “You better believe it,” said the man with the sparse red-and-gray hair. “I’ve got a wife and kids I like to go home and see every night.”

      “Shock plate inserted?” Bolan asked.

      “Right over the old ticker. Thickest steel they make ’em in.” The KCPD officer’s voice was starting to sound suspicious