Don Pendleton: Edge Of Hell

Bolan hooked his right arm behind the giant’s good leg and yanked back hard, punching the Englishman hard in the crotch. Westerbridge toppled backward, arms windmilling, fat, stubby fingers clawing at air and crates to keep from crashing to the floor. It was to no avail, and Bolan kept up the attack. Even as the British kingpin’s foot left the floor, Bolan rolled forward. Using his own broad, muscular chest for leverage, he heaved with all the strength in his right arm on the big man’s leg, hammering his left elbow with punishing force into Westerbridge’s lower gut. The sound of a popping knee joint accompanied a strangled belch and the smell of vomit in the wake of the attack.

The Executioner lunged off Westerbridge’s body, grabbing the Beretta and the Desert Eagle. His right arm still felt like limp spaghetti hanging from a battered shoulder, and his left forearm still tingled from the gangster’s chop, but he twisted, aiming both cannons as Westerbridge was clawing for his revolver in its holster.

There was no contest this time in the fast draw. Bolan had the drop on Westerbridge and triggered both his handguns, only marginally recognizing the feeling of a heavy .44-caliber slug rolling across his ballistic-nylon protected ribs. The big man’s head exploded. One lifeless blue eye stared at the ceiling, the other dangling from its socket from the impact of a .44 Magnum slug that had cratered his cheek.

The Executioner staggered to his feet, breathing hard. He shrugged his right shoulder, and from experience knew that it was only a minor injury, at worst a hairline fracture. He was certain that his left forearm was similarly bruised and battered from the way it tingled. Everything else, he could tell from a few twists of his torso, were mere bruises.

Bolan looked at the corpse at his feet, and frowned.

He wouldn’t have much time to rest and mend.

There were plenty of murderers like Westerbridge in the world, and perhaps because the Executioner had waited too long to take his shot at the English kingpin, a cop was dead.

The howls of London’s police cars reached his ears.

It was time to go.

Mack Bolan stopped at his war bag, sore and aching, but the first thing he did was pull out a bottle of antiseptic, no-rinse cleaning gel, and squeezed a healthy blob into the palm of his hand. Rubbing them together, then across his face and up into his hair, he smelled the rapidly evaporating alcohol content of the gel burning in his nostrils. After a few moments, his hands and face were dry, and the smell of gunpowder and blood on him was cut by half. He pulled out a packet of paper towels and gave himself another squeeze of the gel, and wiped the grime off his hands and face, so he wouldn’t look like he’d just been engaged in a commando raid.

The approaching London police cars were small little boxes that the Executioner knew no American lawman would ever want to be driving around in. He stuffed the broken Colt SMG and its grenade launcher into his war bag, and covered himself up with a boot-length black duster that he had rolled up inside.

The Underground entrance at Brunel Road wasn’t busy at that time of night, and dressed in black, with his collar flipped up, he didn’t look so much like a badass as someone trying to dress too hip for his age group. Bolan wasn’t interested in making the cover of GQ, though, so he didn’t worry about what people thought of the big guy in a black turtleneck, the duster and boots. In fact, he encountered more than a couple of people who made him look positively tame, adorned in black leather and gleaming, reflective steel studs and body piercings.

He collapsed into a seat on the train and allowed himself to relax, rummaging a bottle of acetaminophen out of a side pocket of his bag and swallowing four of them dry. The ache in his bones subsided some as they came out from under the river and stopped at Wapping to take on and let off passengers. By the time he reached his stop, he was feeling refreshed and revitalized.

Getting up and out of the Underground system, he jogged north, stopping occasionally along the way to check for any tails.

There were no hunters in evidence, so Bolan pulled a bottle of water from his gear bag and took a sip, then continued walking toward the bed-and-breakfast where he’d rented a room.

Bolan passed a small synagogue and was crossing Nelson Street when a police car crawled around a corner. The soldier lowered his head and casually stepped into an alley without skipping a beat.

His shoulders tightened, instincts kicking into gear, footsteps softening to mere whispers as he gently put his weight on the balls of his feet. The war bag was lowered gently to the ground, the duster’s front flap opening so that Bolan could reach the Beretta 93-R under his left arm.

He’d ducked into the alley to avoid police attention, and anything louder than the sound-suppressed Beretta would bring that weight down on him like a ton of bricks.

The Executioner had sworn an oath long ago—never to take the life of a lawman trying to do his job. He didn’t think that would be a risk. London policemen were rarely armed, and any cops who did pack heat were members of the famous “Flying Squad.” And by all reckoning, the Flying Squad would be back at Rotherhithe, all the way across the river, cleaning up the carnage of Westerbridge’s shattered empire.

Danger was always present, though. He remembered that over the past couple months, there had been a series of murders in the area. Nothing recent enough to make the headlines, but enough to have still been the talk of the diner where Bolan had eaten.

Bolan disappeared into the shadows of the alley, the blunt nose of the suppressor leading the way.

What he stumbled upon was a scene out of madness. A woman lay on the glistening ground, her eyes still open, staring sightlessly. Her belly was slit from pubis to sternum, the sheets of abdominal muscle parted and rolled over the sides of her body like rubbery flats. Her stomach was emptied out, her intestines thrown over one shoulder, like a thick, rubbery boa. Bolan’s jaw clenched as he watched the man over her finish scrawling, in blood, a cryptic phrase.

“The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing.”

The man himself was an image out of a fever dream—a monstrosity ripped from a Victorian nightmare and made real. Draped in a long flowing cloak, the kind worn by period actors, and with a top hat adorning his head, he moved with an eerie swiftness and efficiency. He was tall and long-limbed, black gloves covering his big hands, and Bolan could have concealed a bazooka under the loose cloak the stranger wore. The Executioner wasn’t a man given to cold fear, but surprise and shock washed over him.

The part of his mind that was the man, Mack Bolan, reeled, stunned by the combination of atrocity and the knowledge of a century of legend and mythology smacking him in the face. He half hoped that there was a movie camera nearby, that this was the filming of some movie. But the Executioner knew better.

There was no faking the stench of a disemboweled person, no faking the ugly swelling of a slashed throat. Not to someone who had seen similar atrocities in the basement abattoirs of Mafia turkey doctors.

The Executioner snapped up the Beretta and triggered a 3-round burst, catching the graffiti-writing murderer between the shoulder blades, smashing him facefirst into his own work, smearing some letters as he slumped down the wall. Shooting a man in the back didn’t even register in Mack Bolan’s mind.

There was no need for judge and jury in this case. The murderer was caught, literally red-handed. Bolan approached the two bodies, keeping the Beretta’s muzzle aimed at the head of the unmoving figure.