Hell Night. Don Pendleton

in his tracks. “You get a look at the vault?” he asked.

      The SWAT man nodded.

      “Can the door be opened from the inside once it’s locked?”

      The man holding the door for the hostages nodded. “I just caught a glance at it earlier when I ran by. And I’m no safe expert, but it looked like it to me.”

      Bolan hurried through the swinging door, stepping over several dead bodies in coveralls as he made his way to the back of the bank. He passed several private offices as he ran down an empty hallway. Turning a corner, he passed two more SWAT team members who lowered their AR-15s as soon as they recognized him.

      The two men appeared to have gotten Glasser’s orders that Bolan was in charge. They both saluted as he ran by.

      At the end of the hallway, Bolan found both the closed and locked vault door, and SWAT Captain Tom Glasser along with more of his men. A half dozen more dead Rough Riders, all dressed in coveralls and blue stocking caps, had been piled unceremoniously against the wall, out of the way.

      Which was fine with the Executioner. Terrorists deserved no ceremony when they were righteously killed.

      “What’s going down?” the Executioner asked the recent Stony Man Farm graduate.

      Glasser’s eyes reflected a deep confusion. “They’ve barricaded themselves in the vault, and they’ve got hostages,” he said. “It’s really no different than when they held the whole bank a few minutes ago. The playing field’s just become smaller.”

      “How many of them left?” Bolan asked.

      “The bad guys? Five, maybe six. And they’ve got three or four hostages. Can’t be certain.” He paused a second, then went on. “That raspy voice we heard on the phone?”

      “Yeah?” the Executioner said.

      “He’s one of them.”

      Bolan nodded. “Same demands?” he asked.

      Glasser nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “but at least we can probably get them to settle for a smaller helicopter this time.”

      The Executioner nodded at the attempt at dark humor on Glasser’s part. It was one of the ways cops and soldiers relieved tension.

      Then he turned and looked at the vault door.

      There would be no skylight to bust through here.

      So he would have to come up with an alternate plan, and come up with it fast.

      2

      “You inside the vault!” the Executioner yelled at the top of his lungs. “Can you hear me?” He got no response. But a few seconds later, the walkie-talkie on Glasser’s hip screeched. Then the voice of a female dispatcher said, “Base to SWAT 1. Come in, 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