Don Pendleton: The Killing Rule

The bartender squinted at the photos and shrugged. “Can’t say’s I have, but then I can’t say’s I haven’t.” He gave Bolan a merry smile. “Y’see we are London’s most famous Irish pub. We get a lot of American tourists and businessmen coming in.”

Bolan hadn’t said the two dead agents were Americans, but he was willing to chalk that up to an assumption on the bartender’s part. Bolan took out Liam’s and Shane’s ID cards and placed them on the bar. “You know these two?”

The bartender had an excellent poker face, but his face froze for the barest instant and he knew it. He lost his veneer of friendliness. “And where’d you get those, then?”

“From Liam and Shane,” Bolan said.

“Are they under arrest?”

“No.” Bolan smiled. “But I left their crippled asses lying in the street a couple of minutes ago.”

The bartender’s thick fingers clenched into fists. He took a long breath and unclenched them. “You know, I think you’d best be leaving.”

Bolan feigned surprise. “But I haven’t finished my beer yet.”

The bartender’s lazy eye suddenly swung into line and the big man glared at Bolan in binocular anger. He slowly leaned forward, worked his jaws a moment and spit into Bolan’s half and half. “Take your time, then.”

Bolan scooped up his pictures and pushed away from the bar. He went from table to table, showing the pictures and asking the same questions while he felt the bartender’s eyes burning holes in his back. A glance back showed him the bartender talking rapidly into a cell phone. Bolan went on with his interviews. Most of the Claddagh’s patrons genuinely didn’t recognize the pictures. A few clearly recognized Liam and Shane. When Bolan responded that no, he was not with the police, he was informed of several unique places he could “bugger off” to.

The big American concluded his interviews, leaving a card with a phone number and the address of the hotel he was staying at with whomever would accept one. Bolan pulled on his cap and stepped out into the London night.

Liam and Shane were gone. Rooted in the same spot where the fight had occurred stood two men of equally goonlike dimensions. They wore long coats with hooded black sweatshirts underneath. The hoods were pulled low over the men’s brows to throw their faces into shadow. A similar pair of men stood directly across the street from Bolan. One of them held a cell phone to his ear. Standing there like stones with the fog creeping around them, they looked like the IRA’s own Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Bolan’s hand went to the grips of the Beretta 93-R machine pistol beneath his coat.

The IRA was different from a lot of terrorist organizations. They had what some might describe as a vaguely achievable goal of driving the British out of Northern Ireland and uniting their country. Driving the Protestants into the sea was part of it, but driving out the British had to come first. IRA members also tended not to be suicidal. Martyrdom usually wasn’t on the agenda, and they wanted to get away with their bombings and killings. However, like any such organization, they had their hardcore “soldiers.” Men who were ready to die beneath the bullets of British soldiers or do a life sentence in an English supermax prison standing on their heads and not talking.

Bolan faced four of them now.

One of the men across the street took a single step forward. He twisted his wrist and a length of wood slid down out of his sleeve. The weapon was a shillelagh, the ancient Irish war club. Only this wasn’t one of the walking sticks sold to tourists in the airports. The tapering blackthorn terminated in a root-ball the size of a human fist.

The weapon was not a total anachronism.

During a riot when British soldiers were wielding batons, firing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets and the rioters responded with bricks and stones, an IRA man could produce his shillelagh and crush the skull of a traitor or political target. One more fatal head trauma would go unnoticed in the melee.

Bolan didn’t currently want to shoot any of these men. He wanted the men controlling them. The Executioner took out his cell phone and punched a preset number. A cheerful Englishwoman asked him if he required a cab and he provided the address of the pub and then waited. He stared at the Irish, and they stared at him.

A London black cab turned the corner and proceeded up the street. The clubman threw his weapon, and it clattered across the cobblestones to rest at Bolan’s feet. The four men melted away into the fog. Bolan scooped up the shillelagh, surprised at its weight and heft. He tucked it under his coat and climbed into his cab. The club was a challenge. The IRA had dropped a punk card for Bolan and dared him to pick it up.

The Executioner had picked it up, and he’d left ample calling cards in the bar.

Bolan lay on the bed of his hotel room and examined his new club. The three-foot length of blackthorn was three inches in diameter and varnished against the elements. The Irish craftsman had added a brass cap on the tapered end to prevent splitting. The most interesting aspect of it was the business end. The ugly lump of the root-ball had been partially drilled out, and molten lead had been poured in to “load” the stick. It was a club that would not just crack a human skull but go through it.

He sat up as the satellite link peeped at him from its aluminum case. Bolan flipped open the attached laptop and clicked a key. Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman’s craggy, bearded face appeared on the eleven-inch monitor in real time all the way from Stony Man Farm in Virginia. Bolan held up his shillelagh for the camera. “Look what I got.”

Kurtzman’s brow furrowed. “Nice battle bludgeon you got there. Who gave it to you?”

“A nice Irish lad.” Bolan tossed the cudgel onto the bed. “Speaking of likely lads, what did you get on the two IDs I faxed you?”

United Kingdom criminal justice forms began to scroll on the screen beneath Kurtzman’s image. Liam and Shane had rap sheets. “We have Shane O’Maonlai and Liam MacGowan, both born in Ulster, Northern Ireland. Shane did two years for assault at Magilligan prison where apparently he was recruited by Liam. Both men have had multiple cases of assault lodged against them, though in almost all cases the charges have been dropped.”

Bolan nodded. “They’re low-level muscle.”

“Yeah,” the computer expert agreed. “Their MO seems to be cracking heads and keeping people in line for the IRA in London, but by their rap sheets they’ve also dabbled in leg-breaking and loan-sharking for the London Mob to earn pocket money.” His eyes flicked to the bed. “The shillelagh strikes me as a bit odd. Liam and Shane do their work with their hands.”

“I didn’t get it from them. Like you said, they’re leg-breakers. When I left them on the ground and started poking my nose around the pub, the bartender called in some heavy hitters.”

Kurtzman frowned. “You took it off one of them?”

“No, they gave it to me.”

“As a gift?”

“No, it’s a challenge.”

Kurtzman sighed. It was one of Bolan’s usual tactics. When all else failed, he stuck his head out and waited to see who took a swing at it. “I don’t suppose you got any fingerprints off it?”

“They were wearing gloves, and it’s as clean as whistle.”

The computer wizard regarded Bolan dryly. “I gather you left a road map to your exact location.”

“Pretty much,” Bolan admitted. “You get anything on the bartender at the Claddagh?”

“Ronald Caron, former Irish wrestling champion, former military policeman in the Irish Defence Forces, suspected of gun trafficking, suspected of harboring fugitives, suspected of assault, twice arrested on conspiracy charges but released for lack of evidence and a ‘person of interest’ in nearly every alleged IRA action in London for the past two decades.”