Battle Cry. Don Pendleton

All ready to do this, he thought, and watched the big hand creep around toward twelve.

      THE SHOP ON Dalhousie Street, in Garnethill, was closed when Bolan parked a half-block south of it, but he had been forewarned of that. A knock on the glass door produced a slim man in his fifties, salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back from a craggy face that had absorbed its share of blows, and then some. His suit was Savile Row, though Bolan didn’t know enough about the London fashion scene to peg a tailor.

       The proprietor beamed a smile at Bolan through plate glass, then unlocked and opened the door. “Mr. Cooper, you would be?” he inquired.

       Bolan nodded and said, “Mr. Watt?”

       “In the flesh, sir. Come in, won’t you please?”

       Bolan scanned the merchandise while Watt secured the door behind him, checking out the street. He stocked a bit of everything, it seemed, from jewelry and musical instruments to antique silverware and china. Clearly, there was money to be made from someone else’s disappointment.

       “Just in from America, you’d be,” Watt said as he returned, no longer asking questions. “And looking for some tools of quality.”

       “Assuming that the price is right,” Bolan replied.

       “I take it that you understand our situation here. We haven’t got a constitutional amendment giving us the right to carry guns, and all. The scrutiny is fierce.”

       “And yet.”

       “And yet. Of course. Just so you realize that heat increases costs for merchants and their customers.”

       “The money’s not a problem,” Bolan said.

       “In that case,” Watt replied, “please follow me. The merchandise you’re looking for is kept downstairs.”

       He trailed Watt through a minioffice to a storage space in back, then down a flight of stairs concealed behind a steel door labeled Private—No Admittance. Watt turned on a bank of overhead fluorescent lights as they started their descent, bleaching the basement arsenal’s beige paint and striking glints from well-oiled pieces of his secret stock.

       The climate-controlled room measured right around three hundred square feet, running twenty feet long east to west, and fifteen wide, north to south. Within that space, Watt had collected an impressive cache of automatic weapons, shotguns, pistols and accessories for every killing need.

       There was a .460 Weatherby Magnum for would-be elephant poachers, and a .50-caliber Barrett M-82 semiautomatic antimaterial rifle for hunters who wanted to bag an armored personnel carrier.

       Speaking of big guns, Watt also stocked a 40 mm Milkor MGL 6-shot 40 mm grenade launcher, a Czech SAG-30 semiauto launcher for smaller 30 mm grenades, and a South African Vektor Y3 AGL that required a tripod or vehicle mount for its full-auto spray of 280 grenades per minute.

       “Much call for that in Glasgow?” Bolan asked his guide.

       “If someone asks,” Watt said, “I aim to please.”

       The remainder of his inventory was more convention, including various assault rifles, submachine guns and sidearms manufactured in Europe. Price tags were nowhere to be seen.

       Bolan’s first choice was a 5.56 mm Steyr AUG, the modern classic manufactured in Austria and carried by soldiers of twenty-odd nations, and by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Its compact bullpup design, factory-standard Swarovski Optik 1.5x telescopic sight, and see-through plastic magazines all made for a convenient, reliable combat rifle.

       For backup and variety, Bolan next chose a Spectre M-4 submachine gun, manufactured at the SITES factory in Turin, Italy. Feeding 9 mm Parabellum cartridges from a four-column casket magazine, the Spectre carried fifty rounds to the average SMG’s thirty or thirty-five. Its double-action trigger mechanism allowed safe carriage while cocked, and its muzzle was threaded for a suppressor, which Bolan added to his shopping cart.

       Last up, for guns, he chose another Italian: the same selective-fire Beretta 93-R pistol that he favored in the States. It was no longer in production, but the piece Watt had acquired was brand-new in appearance, and a quick look proved it fully functional. In essence, with its muzzle brake, folding foregrip, and 20-round magazines, the 93-R gave Bolan a second SMG to play with. He picked a fast-draw shoulder rig to carry it, with pouches for spare magazines, and started shopping for grenades.

       His choice there was the standard British L109 fragmentation grenade, a variant of the original Swiss HG 85 that had replaced the older L2A2 in the early 1990s. Each grenade weighed one pound and had a timed fuse, with a Mat Black Safety Clip similar to those found on American M-67 frag grenades.

       Bolan bought an even dozen, just in case, added a KA-BAR fighting knife on impulse and decided he was done.

       With ammunition, extra magazines and gun bags to conceal his purchases, the total was a flat eight thousand pounds. Say thirteen grand, in round numbers.

       “I have a counteroffer for you,” Bolan said.

       “Not quite the way it works, friend,” Watt replied.

       “You haven’t heard it, yet.”

       “Go on, then. Make me laugh.”

       Before Watt reached his pocket pistol, Bolan had the KA-BAR’s blade against his throat.

       “A name and address for your life,” he said.

      IT DIDN’T QUITE work out that way. Watt thought about it for a minute, then gave up the information Bolan needed, but it went against the grain. He could’ve simply spent the afternoon in handcuffs, in his soundproofed arsenal, but something in the Gorbals sense of “honor” made him try his hand against the Executioner, and Bolan left the KA-BAR stuck between the man’s ribs to dam the blood flow, while he took another to replace it from the dealer’s stash.

       He left the shop with two gym bags, locked the door and dropped Watt’s keys into a curbside rubbish can. Someone would come to look for Watt, sooner or later, and eventually they would find him with his basement cache of arms.

       Or not.

       It made no difference to Bolan, as he loaded the rental car with tools for the continuation of his endless war and left the neighborhood of Garnethill behind him, heading west along New City Road to Bearsden.

       A slightly richer neighborhood, that was, and Bolan thought about the name while he was driving. He had no idea if there had ever been a bear in the vicinity, or if its den was anywhere nearby, but he was looking for a predator among the stylish homes that lined attractive streets, all redolent with history.

       The target’s name was Frankie Boyle. He’d dominated Glasgow’s rackets for the past decade or so, his interests covering the normal range of gambling, prostitution, drugs, extortion, theft and loan-sharking. Through Ian Watt and several others like him, Boyle also controlled a fair piece of illicit trafficking in arms for Glasgow and environs, which, as Bolan understood it, covered most of Central Scotland east of Edinburgh.

       It was the weapons trade that sent Bolan in search of Boyle this afternoon. Or, more specifically, some of the people who were purchasing his wares. A group of homegrown terrorists whose war, though dormant for a time, had flared to life again in recent weeks with grim results.

       Bolan would happily have turned the tap to halt on illegal weapons sales worldwide, but that would never happen, realistically. One major reason was that most of the world’s industrial nations—the United States included—constantly sold guns and bombs to other countries who were ill-equipped to make their own. Official sales were perfectly legitimate, but once a load of hardware was delivered, the security surrounding it depended on a cast of human beings who were fallible at best, malicious and corrupt at worst.

       Add in the thefts from military arsenals and legal shipments, and you had a world armed to the teeth, with an insatiable craving for more guns, more ammunition, more grenades and rocket launchers.