Killing Game

Bolan’s thoughts turned to CLODO’s leader

He was the brains behind a number of attacks on computer manufacturers and related businesses during the past several months, and much more than computers had been destroyed.

Bombs, stray bullets and other collateral damage were always the result of warfare. But with terrorists, it became the objective rather than an unfortunate by-product. Since its reorganization, CLODO’s bombings, machine-gunning and other terrorist strikes had claimed hundreds of lives.

The Executioner’s jaw tightened as the bloody sight before him generated anger. He wasn’t responsible for the death and destruction at this CLODO safehouse.

Pierre Rouillan was responsible for the deaths of his men.

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity…

—Aldous Huxley,

1894–1963

The stupidity, motivation and flawed thinking of certain individuals never cease to amaze me. We must stand on guard and protect the innocent from their deranged plans of carnage. Whatever it takes.

—Mack Bolan

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

Paris, France

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, glanced up at the sliver of moon in the otherwise darkened sky. Then, dropping his line of vision, he took another quick survey of the one-story suburban house in front of him and his black-clad companion. This house looked little different than the other homes lining both sides of the street in this upper middle-class Parisian residential neighborhood, but it was different.

This dwelling housed terrorists.

The Executioner pointed Russian Intelligence agent Marynka Platinov toward the side of the house, then tapped his wristwatch with the same hand. “Thirty seconds,” he whispered.

The beautiful blond-haired Russian agent glanced at her own watch, nodded, then took off in a jog around the corner.

Bolan couldn’t help but let his eyes fall to her hips as the well-developed muscles in her buttocks tightened. Platinov—often shortened simply to “Plat” when Bolan spoke to her—wore the same stretchy black battle coveralls, known as “blacksuits,” as him.

She and the Executioner had worked together several times in the past—first when she’d been a new KGB officer and later, when she’d emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union to rise in the ranks of the newly formed Russian Intelligence Bureau—and Bolan was one of only a handful of people who knew her whole story. He and the beautiful Russian woman had developed a solid working relationship.

The Executioner glanced at the weapons and other equipment that hung from Platinov’s blacksuit. A double shoulder rig with a matching pair of Colt Gold Cup .45s was stretched across her back, and a 1911 Government Model .45 rode on a curvaceous hip.

The Executioner glanced at his watch as his partner turned the corner. Twenty seconds remained. He pulled back the bolt of the Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun hanging from his shoulder on a sling, chambered the first round and flipped the selector switch from the safety position to 3-round-burst mode. As he methodically readied the weapon, his thoughts turned on Platinov and the only real area of disagreement that always stood between them.

The Russian woman was as loyal to her country as Bolan was to the U.S. And on rare occasions—even when their end objective was the same—those two loyalties conflicted. When that happened, problems arose. The Executioner didn’t foresee any such problems on the horizon for this op, however. The leader of CLODO—Computer Liquidation and Hijack Committee—and the rest of his newly vivified terrorist organization that they sought, were an equal threat to both countries. Yet, Bolan reminded himself, he would have to keep one eye on the enemy and the other on Platinov.

Bolan started up the concrete steps to the front porch of the CLODO safe house, taking them two at a time. At precisely the thirty-second mark, he slammed his right boot into the door just to one side of the dead-bolt lock. Wood cracked then splintered as the framework around the door exploded like a hand grenade filled with wooden shrapnel. A fraction of a second later, he heard a similar noise at the rear of the house and knew Platinov had entered the back entrance.

The front door swung open, crashing into the wall and rebounding back toward the Executioner as he raised the submachine gun to waist level. He pushed the door back again with his left hand. As the noise died down, the house went eerily silent for a second.

During that lull, the Executioner had time to quickly assess the interior of the house. He found himself standing on a ragged carpet in the living room. A soccer game was playing on a large-screen HDTV in the far corner, and set into the wall next to it was a fireplace.

Men, close to a dozen and many dressed similarly, sat around the living room on couches and in reclining chairs, watching the game, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns and pistols scattered throughout the area.

Platinov stood between the fireplace and a kitchen table in the far corner opposite the HDTV, her own MP-5 hanging from the sling over the shoulder of her blacksuit. Just to her side, Bolan could see a small breakfast table and chairs. The rest of the kitchen, he knew, had to be hidden behind the wall to his left.

The Executioner noted a dining-room table also to his left, with more men clustered around it, playing cards. Poker chips were stacked in front of each man. The terrorists cursed and dived for their weapons.

The Executioner triggered a 3-round burst of hollowpoint rounds at the CLODO gunner directly in front of him. The man wore a blue beret, a tan short-sleeved shirt and brown trousers.

Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm, had briefed Bolan and Platinov via satellite phone during their flight from Washington, D.C., to France. Along with the location of this only known CLODO safe house, the Executioner and Platinov had learned that the beret, shirt and pants were a sort of “unofficial” CLODO uniform. There was nothing particularly militant-looking about the garb and, indeed, many men on the streets of Paris who had nothing to do with this anticomputer terrorist organization wore basically the same clothing. But these specific items of clothing—always in the same colors and combination—were the first step in helping the terrorists identify one another. The next step was a series of coded, and frequently changed, nonsensical questions and answers to make sure that they had not just bumped into some non-CLODO-aligned Parisian on his way to a bocce game in the park.

Members of the CLODO organization had come to be known as CLODO men by all who opposed them. That included America, Russia and most other civilized countries of the world. CLODO had been active during the late 1980s, then had seemed to fizzle out, until a few weeks earlier. Then, all hell had suddenly broken loose with car-bombings, random machine-gunnings at shopping malls and other public places, and drive-by shootings at computer manufacturing plants, distributors, wholesalers and retail stores.

Another—and perhaps the most important—bit of intel that Bolan and Platinov had obtained was the name of the man who had revived CLODO—Pierre Rouillan. Now in his thirties, Rouillan would have been a child during the eighties, and the Executioner couldn’t help wondering what had turned the young man toward the all-but-dead organization and driven him to reanimate it.

Bolan dived to the floor as return fire sailed over his shoulder, coming to rest on his side directly against the back of a long, leather sofa.

Using the sofa for concealment, the Executioner raised the MP-5 with one hand, thumbed the selector from 3-round burst to full-auto and stitched the remaining rounds back and forth into the couch. Screams and moans met his ears from the other side of the sofa, and he saw a bloody mist rise up into the air.

The 9 mm RBCD total fragmentation rounds didn’t just penetrate their human targets, they shredded them.

Bolan hesitated only long enough to drop the empty 9 mm magazine from his weapon and ram home a fresh one. On the other side of the couch, he could hear more 9 mm fire that he knew had to be coming from Platinov’s subgun.

Though he was hidden from view of the men in the living room, the sofa was concealment rather than cover, as the Executioner had proved himself only moments earlier. In another second or so, the terrorists still standing on the other side of the sofa would realize where he was and begin firing into the couch. The four men who had sat there would obviously be dead, so the chance that they might accidentally hit one of their own would not hinder them in the least.

But an even more imminent problem faced Bolan. While he was still hidden from the men in the living room, he was on full display to the card players.

The Executioner rolled away from the sofa, flipping the H&K’s selector into 3-round burst mode, and rose to one knee. He opened fire, the first two 9 mm rounds striking a terrorist in the chest an inch apart. Bolan had allowed the subgun to rise slightly with the recoil of the second round, and the third hit the same man just above the nose in his forehead.

From the corner of his eye, the big American could see that Platinov had dropped to one knee as well. The ancient, antique-looking rocking chair behind which she knelt offered neither concealment nor cover, but it did distort her body enough to at least slightly confuse the gunner’s aims. The Russian agent had opened fire a split second after Bolan, and her first target had been a man who had taken cover from behind a chair against the wall, a SiG-Sauer pistol in his hand. Both she and the Executioner were using RBCD ammo, and a red mist hung in the air, floating slowly toward the floor in front of the dead body from which it had come.

As the Executioner opened fire again, he continued to eye Platinov from his peripheral vision. Two more of the card players fell as Bolan watched his Russian ally knee-walk swiftly up behind a man with his back to her. The terrorist was leaning forward to reach for a shotgun between his feet. But before his fingers could find the cold metal or wooden stock, Platinov had leaned forward and pressed the barrel of her weapon into the back of the man’s head at the base of his neck.

Bringing her left forearm up to cover her eyes, Platinov pulled the trigger. The contact shots caused almost as much blood and other gore to blow out the entrance holes as that which exited the terrorist’s forehead.

The terrorist fell forward onto the floor on his face. Or at least what was left of it.

Platinov, the Executioner knew, had covered her eyes to keep the residual blood out. She could hardly afford to “go blind” with blood obscuring her vision in the middle of a gunfight. It was a good strategy. Except for one thing.

By covering her eyes with her forearm, Platinov had temporarily blinded herself.

One of the gunners who’d been sitting on a couch against the side wall noticed her vulnerability and tried to take advantage of it. He raised what looked like an old Luger toggle-bolt pistol and stepped into a classic Weaver shooting stance. As she squinted slightly, the muscles in his hands and arms tightened as he pushed the pistol forward with his right hand and pulled it back toward him with his left. At the same time, he did his best to drop the Luger’s front sight on Platinov. The man, Bolan thought, looked as if he’d just received his certificate for completing one of the many shooting schools that had popped up around the world. Attendees shot hundreds of rounds as they went through these courses, always being trained to make sure the front sight was “flashed” on their target before squeezing the trigger.

They emerged from such schools as experts.

Experts, however, at putting holes in paper silhouette targets or making steel plates ding. Not experts at gun-fighting by any means.

Again, from the corner of his eye, the Executioner saw the man began to gently squeeze the trigger.

The soldier turned his weapon toward the man, pointed it and shot him.

Saving Platinov from the unseen attack had meant the Executioner had to momentarily ignore the return fire from the card players. As bullets and buckshot sailed past him, Bolan opened fire again, lacing one of the gamblers standing sideways from belt to armpit with three rounds into his ribs.

The gunner was already dead and on the ground by the time Platinov had fired the contact shots into the back of the other terrorist’s head. Now, she dropped her arm.

She would never know just how close to death she had come from the man who had drawn the Luger. Or that it had been Bolan who had saved her life.

Bolan decided not to press his luck any further with the surviving card players. He had already taken out the man who had sat with his side toward the Executioner, and now he dived to the side as return fire continued.

The Executioner rolled once, then came up on one knee again. Even this slight movement forced the hardmen to redirect their aim.

Bolan cut loose with another 3-round volley into the heart of a gunner wearing a beret. The man had been doing his best to gain target acquisition on the Executioner’s new position. That task was abandoned as deep, thick, red blood spurted from his chest, accompanied by the now-familiar mist that had become the RBCD rounds’ personal signature. At least one of the totally fragmenting rounds had also pierced a lung, and the man dropped his Uzi, twisted in the air with a scream and fell on top of his own weapon, his chest sucking up and down in dying breaths.

Bolan sought another target, zeroing in on a man wielding a Beretta 92. The round missed him by millimeters, coming so close to the Executioner’s ear that he could feel its heat.

But this was no game of horseshoes. “Close” didn’t count.

Bolan pumped another trio of rounds into the gunman, practically ripping his chest away from the rest of his body. He fell backward onto the table, his legs dangling down to spasm as if in some bizarre, predeath, dance ritual.

The gunner who had sat next to him had grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from somewhere beneath the table, and now he brought the shortened pump-action weapon around and racked the slide, chambering a shell. But he had no time to pull the trigger.

Bolan angled the H&K his way and cut loose with another 3-round burst, aiming at the man’s chest. But at the last second, the gunner crouched instinctively and all three 9 mm rounds sank into the top of his head, like electric drills boring down through his skull and into his brain.

So it didn’t make too much difference. The man was still as dead as disco before he hit the floor.

The card players were all dead now, and Bolan turned toward the living room, assisting Platinov as they rid the world of the final two CLODO terrorists. As the gunfire died down, Bolan’s thoughts turned again to Pierre Rouillan. The file he and Platinov had studied during their flight had contained several pictures of the man who had been responsible for CLODO’s revival. He was a little over six feet tall, dressed conservatively and appeared to have a strong attraction to beautiful women, wine and the finer things in life. He was also the brains behind a number of attacks on computer manufacturers and related businesses during the past several months, and much more than computers had been destroyed.

Bombs, stray bullets and other collateral damage were always the result of warfare. But with terrorists, it became the objective rather than an unfortunate by-product. Since its reorganization, CLODO’s bombings, machine-gunnings and other terrorist strikes had claimed hundreds of lives.

The Executioner’s jaw tightened as the bloody sight before him brought on anger rather than the frustration or fear or nausea that it might have inspired in a more common man. It was not he, or Marynka Platinov, who was responsible for the death and destruction at this CLODO safe house.

It was Pierre Rouillan who had brought about the deaths of his own men.

PIERRE ROUILLAN’S EYELIDS lifted the second he heard the doors crash open. As gunfire thundered in the other rooms, he swung his legs off the bed, grabbed his shirt and leaped to his feet. Silently, he thanked a God he didn’t believe in that he had not taken off his pants. Snatching the 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 compact pistol off the nightstand, he stuck it in his belt and hurried toward the window.

A moment later, he was in the backyard, half-expecting to suddenly be tackled and thrown to the ground by men dressed in SWAT-type gear.

He frowned when he found the backyard deserted.

The firing behind him was in full swing now. Rouillan slowly drew the pistol from his belt and held it close to his leg as he walked toward the open back door, curiosity getting the better of him. From several yards away, he could see that the back door had been kicked open. Moving to a window next to the door, he gazed at the flash-fire that accompanied each round. Rouillan would make his escape in a moment, but first, he had to know who had learned about the safe house and was now attacking it.

The back door opened directly toward the kitchen table, which meant the living room stood out of his line of vision. Dropping to both knees, Rouillan peered through the opening and angled to see around the corner, his nose almost dragging across the hard concrete of the single step that led to the entrance. As his eyes focused on the back of a blond-haired woman wearing black combat gear, he saw her lean forward and shoot.

He looked past her. Standing on the tiles by the front door was a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in an identical blacksuit. And, just like the woman, he was firing an H&K MP-5 submachine gun. He also carried two pistols—one was in a shoulder holster beneath his left arm and looked like it was long enough to have a sound suppressor threaded onto the barrel. The other gun—in a holster on his right hip—was huge. Rouillan wasn’t close enough to identify it.

The terrorist leader started to pull his Kel-Tec around the corner, then paused. Shooting the woman in the back would be easy. And the big man at the front of the house hadn’t noticed him yet, either. Rouillan might even be able to pump a couple of rounds into him as well.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to risk having the shot miss. While Rouillan knew he was a good shot, he wasn’t ready to gamble his life on the Kel-Tec. The hollowpoint rounds did not always open up after they’d left the short barrel, and the muzzle-flash in the doorway might well catch the attention of the big man at the front of the house.

And even though his face was deadpan as he fired his MP-5, there was something about the big, black figure that screamed at Rouillan to be careful.

This man was deadly.

No, the Frenchman thought, it was a chance better not taken. Better he make his escape while he could. After all, he had worked hard reestablishing CLODO. And without his leadership, the still-fragile organization was likely to crumble and then disintegrate altogether.

Another quick thought suddenly entered his mind, but Pierre Rouillan immediately pushed it out of his head. That thought was that he might not be all that concerned with CLODO, and that he might just be a simple old-fashioned coward, worried more for his own safety than the good of the organization.

That uncomfortable idea was pushed out of his head as quickly as it had come.

Rising to his feet, the CLODO leader replaced the pistol in his belt and took off at a jog across the grass toward the chain-link fence at the rear of the backyard. He had plenty of other men, and plenty of other safe houses, where he could hide out until it was time for the big strike.

He doubted that he would ever even see the big man and blonde woman again.

Rouillan smiled as he grabbed the top of the fence and swung his legs up and over the barrier. He jogged across the backyard of his neighbor’s house. CLODO was still known primarily for the bombing of the Phillips Data Systems in Toulouse in 1980, but his new CLOCO master plan was coming up.

When it detonated, nothing would explode.

But the whole planet would shut down in a screeching, screaming halt.

EMPTY BRASS CASINGS crunched under Bolan’s boots as he made his way toward Platinov, who stood in the center of the living room. He kept the H&K up and ready. Too many “dead” men had magically come back to life during his career for him to let his guard down yet. And when he looked at the Russian agent, he saw that she had learned the same lesson over the years.

Marynka Platinov’s submachine gun was still gripped with both hands, her right index finger on the trigger.

“We’re not going to have much time,” Bolan said as he knelt next to a body in the middle of the floor. “Neighbors will have already called the cops.”

“I’ll check the back rooms,” Platinov suggested.

Bolan nodded as he began going through the pockets of the man on the floor, who wore a blue beret like some of the others. But, otherwise, he was dressed in faded blue jeans, high-topped hiking boots and formerly-white T-shirt, now soaked crimson with blood. His pockets contained everything from a little .22 hideout Beretta to a receipt from a local laundry. In the left front pocket, Bolan discovered a small Spyderco Clipit knife being used as a money clip. It contained at least a thousand euros. Although he had unlimited operational funds from the U.S., the Executioner saw no reason to waste taxpayers’ money for his war chest. It was always a bonus to use the money of America’s enemies to finance their own destruction.

By the time he had finished searching the man in the vest, Platinov had returned to the living room. “I didn’t find anyone else in the house,” she said. “But there was someone.”

Bolan frowned as he waited for more information.

“The bed in the back,” Platinov went on. “The sheets are still warm.”

The Executioner nodded.

“And the window into the backyard is open,” she added. “He, or she, must have heard us come in and booked out of here.” She paused. “I couldn’t have missed him by more than a couple of seconds.”

Bolan knew such coincidences sometimes happened. They were the fortunes of war. “Rouillan himself, maybe,” he speculated.

Platinov shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. No way to know.” She paused for a moment, then added, “And you won’t believe what I found in another bedroom.”

“What’s that?” Bolan asked.

“A computer.”

“Why is that so unbelievable?” he asked.

Platinov stared him in the eyes. “Cooper,” she said, using Bolan’s cover name, “That’s what this whole group is about, remember, they are against computers. Their famous quotation is ‘Computers are the favorite instrument of the powerful. They are used to classify, control and repress.’”

Bolan nodded. “I remember it,” he said. “But all that a computer in the back room of this house means is that CLODO has modernized since the 1980s. They’ve learned that if you want to defeat the enemy, you have to first know him.”