Don Pendleton - Cold War Reprise

The woman limped toward a wall panel. She was bleeding from the forehead where the skin had been split, and it was likely that she had suffered head trauma when the Russian had struck her. “Ventilation shutoff…”

Bolan hauled the last thermic mine into his grasp and saw that there were no more empty shelves. He rushed to one of the sliding drawers where a dead Russian lay, his body riddled with bullet holes. Bolan grabbed the corpse under the arm and dragged him off the metal sliding slab. A spill on the floor would likely contaminate whatever evidence was on the body. If the mine detonated, it would kill dozens of people in the halls outside of the morgue.

The corpse flopped on the tile and Bolan shoved the mine in place. Slam! Latch! Hiss! Sealed.

Bolan spun away from the wall and dived toward the emergency ventilation cutoff. He punched the button hard enough to open a laceration on his palm, and the whole morgue seemed to gasp as if it were a living creature. Bolan scooped the woman into his arms and tucked her tightly into the corner, using his broad back to shield her. He’d equalized the pressure in his ears before firing the first shot from his bellowing Desert Eagle, so any explosion wouldn’t rupture his eardrums. He hoped that his body was enough to shield the morgue attendant, his hands cupped over her ears to protect them.

Belkin moved groggily, reaching for the handgun tucked under his coveralls. “Fucking…interloper…”

Those were the conspirator’s final words. If he had a thought behind them, it was cut off. The whole wall of the morgue devoted to body storage shook as if a train had crashed into the building. The hatches that contained the bombs were torn off of their hinges. One of them pulverized Belkin as it rocketed off, powered by the force of the explosive mine. The concussion wave bleeding off the wall hurled bodies to the floor, both the living and the dead. Bolan and his charge had been lifted off their feet by the heaving wall, but the soldier twisted so that the morgue attendant was cushioned by his body.

The storage drawers had done their job perfectly. Despite the wreckage wrought by their blasted hatches and a few fluttering pieces of burning paperwork that had been stored too close to the wall, the murderous power of the bombs had been smothered.

Bolan helped the woman to her feet, one hand under the back of her head to keep her stable. “Are you all right?”

“I’m Annette Brideshead,” she answered, large brown eyes blurry and unfocused. “I’m the medical examiner in charge of this shift.”

Bolan supported her, sliding his arm under her shoulder to keep her upright. Obviously she was mentally disconnected, not answering the question offered. “Can you walk?”

Brideshead’s unfocused eyes danced across Bolan’s face. He knew that her head would be wobbly atop her neck if he hadn’t been holding her. “I’m forty-five years old. I’ve been walking most of…Oh, dear.”

Bolan turned and saw that the leader of the cleanup crew was sandwiched between a storage hatch and the twisted wreckage of an autopsy table. At least Bolan assumed it was the leader. The ragged, bloody stump of a neck was all that remained above the shoulders. “Sorry for the mess, Annette.”

“The doors…You said those were bombs. Poison gas doesn’t act like that when it’s released, does it?” Brideshead inquired.

“Not gas, not like you thought. But it was good that you shut down the negative air pressure in the drawers,” Bolan replied. He didn’t want to think of the destruction that would have occurred if the aerosolized fuel had spread to the ventilation system, sucked up by the intake valves.

A policeman, the one Bolan had joked with only moments before, entered. He had a Glock 17 in hand and was ready for action. The bobby relaxed upon seeing Bolan ministering to Brideshead. “I thought you were only kidding about rocket launchers.”

Bolan looked around the corpse-strewed, blast-shaken morgue. He sat Brideshead down and folded his jacket to cushion her head. “Someone didn’t want me looking at the bodies stored here.”

“Haven’t these chaps heard of court orders?” the bobby asked as he holstered his pistol.

“That’s not the way these people operate,” Bolan replied. “Are there paramedics on the way?”

“Yes. Was that you that gave me mate a straw in the neck?” the officer asked.

“Headless over there crushed his trachea. He all right?” Bolan asked.

“Well, he was already laying down when the building bounced. He’s mighty thankful to you, Agent Cooper,” the cop said. Looking around at the mess, he sighed. “And for saving the rest of us from a right nasty bump, I’m adding my thanks, too.”

Bolan nodded in appreciation. “The sad thing is, I’m not done here.”

The British cop chuckled. “If it’s all the same, I won’t go running to any Russian restaurants for a while, Mr. Mafiya task force member.”

Bolan managed a weak smile for the officer. He patted the notebook in his pocket, unable to keep such a promise.

I T HAD TAKEN HOURS for Bolan to be cleared after the battle of the morgue. It took that long for the London Metropolitan police to be convinced of the order of events, especially the slicing open of the windpipe of a fellow officer, even with a crushed trachea. It also took that much time for the lawmen to return Bolan’s Desert Eagle, not that the Executioner hadn’t had spares stored back at his safehouse.

At least Bolan got a couple of mugs of coffee out of the interview process, which he followed up with an order of fish and chips to fill his empty stomach. Bolan tossed a French fry out the car window and picked up his PDA, dialing the Farm.

“Talked your way out of another mess, Striker?” Hal Brognola’s voice came over the line. Brognola was the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia.

“Can’t go running to Daddy every time I stub my toe. I handled it,” Bolan replied. “I suppose Aaron let you in on my progress so far.”

“Two gun battles in less than twenty-four hours. He couldn’t keep me out of the loop after that. I’m sorry, Striker, but as much as you want to keep this away from government interference, this has become an issue of national security,” the big Fed told him.

“What have you picked up on this thing?” Bolan inquired.

“The two faces you sent Aaron belong to Spetsnaz troopers reported killed in action by the Russian Department of Defense,” Brognola stated. “Officially, you didn’t kill anyone.”

“So I’m fighting the Special Forces of the living dead?” Bolan asked. He couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “I knew the trend in horror movies was for smarter and faster walking dead, but they’re as much corpses as I am, Hal.”

“Now they really are dead.” Brognola sighed. “Of course, you remember your friends in Russian Intelligence.”

“Friends for real, Hal?” Bolan asked. “I’m a little too tired for wordplay.”

“No. Real friends,” Brognola emphasized. “A Russian Intel operative named Kaya Laserka just avoided being killed by a couple of thugs.”

“Laserka? She was Alexandronin’s trainee and partner. Did she get an e-mail from Vitaly?”

“Apparently so. She reported the incident and a friendly operator to Stony Man gave the report to us,” Brognola said. “She couldn’t get directly involved, and I don’t want to compromise her identity.”

“A friendly Russian agent?” Bolan asked. That lifted his mood some. “And a woman, so that really doesn’t narrow things down. Where is she?”

“Well, she’s holed up in her apartment for now. She was given a quick ‘how-to’ on going to ground. Barb gave her the lesson.”