Death Run (6 page)

"Striker, you know that would be wrong."

"Meaning you can do it?"

"Piece of cake."

"Good. Could you get Barb on the line?"

Kurtzman passed the phone to Stony Man's mission controller.

"What do you need, Striker?" Price asked.

"I need some security on the Anderson kid. Do you have any blacksuits you can put on it?" Blacksuits were operatives, often law-nforcement officials, who had been through advanced training at Stony Man Farm, though they never knew exactly where they had received the training. This training helped them better perform their jobs, and in return they often assisted Stony Man operatives in the field.

"I'm one step ahead of you," Price said. "I've already sent one of our best men in the area, a former detective with the San Francisco PD named Delbert Osborne, to guard Anderson."

"Thanks, Barb. That's one less thing I have to worry about."

The maître d'at Masa's Restaurant, a nice eating establishment on San Francisco's Nob Hill, led Bolan down to the Wine Cellar, the restaurant's private meeting room. Musa bin Osman had wanted to meet in his suite at a nearby hotel, but Bolan had insisted on taking his potential business partner out to dinner. Most likely bin Osman knew that the soldier was just trying to evade whatever trap he might have planned by meeting in a public place, but the Malaysian business man couldn't protest too vehemently without giving away his intentions.

Bin Osman arrived with an entourage of four men who seemed uncomfortable in their bespoke suits. These hard-looking men seemed like they'd be more at home in prison jump suits. They were definitely not cut from the same corporate cloth as bin Osman, and they said little while Bolan and bin Osman went through the motions and discussed the details of CCP Petroleum possibly sponsoring Team Free Flow Racing. The Executioner had studied the intricacies of sponsoring a MotoGP race team on the flight from Qatar, and he proved remarkably adept at portraying a racing fuel sales rep.

Not that he expected bin Osman to buy a word of it. Bolan was certain that the Malaysian knew every detail about what had transpired in Qatar. The real reason he and bin Osman attended the meeting was because they wanted to size each other up.

"I'm glad you could make it to dinner tonight, Mr. Cooper," bin Osman said, "given the adventure you had at the track today. The television portrayed you as some sort of superhero."

"I got lucky," Bolan replied. "I remembered my military training."

"Were you with Special Forces?"

"Just a run-of-the-mill grunt," Bolan said. "I did have some sniper training, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary."

"Ah, a sniper," bin Osman said. "Retired, I hope."

"Correct, and more than a bit rusty, but when I saw the attempted kidnapping, I was still able to do what I needed to do."

"You seem more than capable," the Malaysian said.

Bin Osman continued to grill Bolan throughout dinner. By the time he'd finished his dessert, the Executioner had no doubt that bin Osman intended to kill him. And maybe he would, but not before Bolan retrieved the plutonium. And if this turned out to be the Executioner's last mission, he intended to take bin Osman with him into the next world. When he looked at the man sitting across from him at the table, he saw something he'd seen far too many times in his life — pure evil.

Musa bin Osman needed to size up the American before having him dispatched. He'd learned that Cooper was not affiliated with CCP Oil, though he would not have learned that going through proper channels. Whoever had created Cooper's identity had been good, and every attempt by bin Osman to discredit the Cooper's credentials had proved fruitless.

Cooper certainly looked the part. He dressed well enough so that he would fit in at a restaurant like Masa's, but not so well that anyone would wonder why he worked for a living. His clothes were expensive, but off-the-rack and not bespoke, though his broad shoulders obviously required some tailoring. Everything was perfect, from his sport jacket — which likely disguised at least one firearm, and perhaps two, judging by the nearly undetectable square-edged bulges beneath his armpits and at his waistline — to his shoes. Cooper didn't just dress like a sales representative; he dressed like a very successful sales representative.

Bin Osman hadn't been able to learn anything about Cooper through proper channels, but he'd had better luck going through unofficial channels. CCP Oil had many ties with the Islamic world, including groups that bin Osman counted among his own acquaintances. Through his connections with such groups in Asia and the Middle East, he'd learned that no one within the CCP organization seemed to personally know this Cooper. This wasn't unheard of when it came to an outside sales representative, but bin Osman already knew that Cooper was no peddler of racing fuel.

Who he really was presented another question entirely. It was as if Matt Cooper had emerged from some chrysalis as a fully formed warrior. He seemingly had no past. This was, of course, impossible, and throughout the evening bin Osman studied the American as if through a microscope. Only one thing was certain; Cooper was dangerous.

Whatever his name, the man seated across the table from him wasn't sizing him up. Cooper knew for certain what he was dealing with when it came to his adversary; of this bin Osman had no doubt. He knew that this secretive warrior would have no trouble killing him. Rather the big man sized up the situation. Bin Osman admired the man's certitude and his efficiency. He would welcome the chance to practice the art of torture on such a specimen, but he realized that this man was not to be taken lightly. Although bin Osman ached to know how much the man would take before he snapped, he had a mission and this man posed a serious threat to the completion of that mission. No, he would have to deny himself that pleasure and dispatch of this man as efficiently as possible.

After Cooper left the table, bin Osman produced a cell phone from the vest pocket of his linen suit. "He's left the building," he said into the phone. "Get ready."

Bolan didn't have to wait long before bin Osman made his move. While he stood beside his motorcycle parked outside the restaurant and put on his riding gear, a black Hummer H2 with dark tinted windows rolled by at too slow a pace for the occupants not to be checking him out. With one eye on the slow-moving SUV, the soldier folded his sport jacket and put it in the top box over the bike's rear fender. Then he put on his two-piece riding suit, prepared to draw his weapon and take cover should the Hummer occupants start shooting at him. After the SUV rolled around the corner, Bolan changed from his dress shoes into his riding boots, then put on his helmet and riding gloves. He took his time, watching to see if the Hummer reappeared. Sure enough, minutes later the Hummer rolled by again.

Bolan waited until it once again rounded the corner, then rode away from the curb. He made a left turn onto Stockton Street and watched his mirrors until he saw the Hummer turn onto the street about three cars behind him. The Executioner made a left turn onto Pine Street without signaling his turn. Traffic was relatively light on the big four-lane street and when the Hummer came around the corner there were no cars between the soldier and the big, black SUV.

The Hummer accelerated hard, but Bolan jammed on the throttle, hoisting the front wheel of the motorcycle as if gravity had no effect on the big bike. He was doing seventy miles per hour by the time he reached Powell Street. The soldier checked his mirror and saw that the black H2 was driving even faster than he was. Bolan cranked the throttle to the stop, riding like a crazed kid with a death wish — motorcyclists called them "squids" because of the squid-like stains they left on the pavement when they crashed — and was doing ninety by the time he reached Taylor Street. He saw that the light in the intersection had turned from yellow to red. He knew he'd get through before the Taylor Street signal lights turned green, so kept the throttle pinned, sending the speedometer past one hundred.

By the time the Hummer reached the intersection, the signal light on Taylor Street had been green long enough that cars were entering the intersection. The Hummer ran the red light and nailed the front bumper of an older Chrysler minivan. The bumper flew off as if it had been shot out of a cannon and the minivan spun off the road, landing on the sidewalk.

When Bolan got to the intersection of Pine and Hyde, he tapped the rear brake, put his foot down and pinned the throttle again, breaking the rear tire loose and sliding out, executing a perfect Super-motard-style right-hand turn, hanging the rear wheel out all the way onto Hyde Street. This left him going the wrong way on a one-way street, so he aimed his bike between two cars waiting at the traffic light and passed between their two lanes, the hand guards on his bike knocking the sideview mirrors off of the cars on his left and right, missing their doors by millimeters. The Hummer screamed around the corners and didn't miss the doors, or any other parts of the cars. Bolan looked in his mirrors and saw the two cars spinning up onto the sidewalks on either side of the road. This slowed the Hummer somewhat, but Bolan still hadn't shaken it off his tail.

When Bolan crested California Street he caught nearly a foot of air and landed on the back tire. He kept the throttle pinned as he roared up Hyde Street, which went back to being a two-way street after it intersected with California. Bolan rode at triple-digit speeds down Hyde Street, keeping just ahead of his pursuers. He rode over the Broadway Tunnel and saw a car coming at him on Broadway Street. If he kept his speed up, he might make it through before the car entered the intersection so he kept the throttle twisted. He ran the Stop sign and squeezed through ahead of the car, but again the Hummer wasn't so lucky. It sheared the car in two; the passenger compartment skidded through the intersection while the front clip disintegrated beneath the Hummer's mangled bumper.

The Hummer looked like a wreck. Its headlights were gone, its fenders crumpled and torn, but judging by the lack of steam, the radiator was intact, probably thanks to the gigantic brush guard on the front of the truck. It had driving lights on the roof that lit up the night much brighter than any headlights. Bolan rode as fast as he dared without hurting any innocent bystanders, but if he kept this up, the Hummer bearing down on him was either going to kill him or kill someone else. The soldier had to bring this to an end. With Lombard Street, San Francisco's famous narrow road that switchbacked down toward the sea, coming up on his right, he formulated a plan to do just that.

When he neared Lombard Street, he slowed a bit to let the Hummer close in on him. With its prey in its sights, the Hummer sped up to run down the Executioner, but just as it neared him, Bolan swerved to the right and jammed on the brakes. On most bikes it would have been the start of a terrible crash, but because of BMW's anti-lock brakes Bolan was able to stop almost instantly while the Hummer sailed past him. Physics were on the soldier's side; six hundred pounds of motorcycle stopped much more quickly than six thousand pounds of sport utility vehicle, and Bolan was able to hang a hard right onto Lombard Street and fly down to the intersection with Leavenworth Street as the big Hummer screeched to a stop halfway down the block. Bolan threw the big motorcycle from right to left to right like an overgrown BMX bicycle and was past the turn onto the Montclair Terrace, a dead-end street that T-boned Lombard Street about halfway through the switchback section between Hyde and Leavenworth, by the time the Hummer started descending the wildly twisting street. Bolan could hear the Hummer crashing into parked cars and banging off the short concrete retainer walls that ran alongside the street as he rode to the bottom of the hill.

At Leavenworth Street, Bolan hung a hard right and rode up on the sidewalk. He parked the bike and ran to the edge of a garage on the street corner, drawing his Desert Eagle on the way. He leaned up against the edge of the garage, waiting for the Hummer to crash its way down. As the cab of the Hummer appeared in his field of vision, the Executioner lined up the sights of the gun right about where he figured the driver would be sitting, compensating for the change in angle that the spalling of the glass would cause. He emptied a magazine into the glass. His calculations must have been fairly accurate because the Hummer ran through the intersection and crashed into the corner of the building on the northeast corner of the intersection.

Bolan ran toward the wreck, reloading on the way. He hoped to find a survivor, but before he reached the vehicle a man stepped out of the rear door, which had flown open on impact with the building, and raised a SAR-21 rifle, a bull-pup-style rifle built in Singapore — and never legally imported into the U.S. market. He fired. The man could barely stand, and his shaky stance made his shooting inaccurate. The 5.56 mm NATO bullets from the stubby gun went wide. Bolan raised the Desert Eagle and drilled a 240-grain hollow point through the shooter's forehead. Bolan kept the gun trained on the open door in case anyone else inside the vehicle might try to attack him.

When he got to the truck, he could see no one was going to cause him any problems. No one in the cab had worn a seat belt, so the air bags that deployed in the front seat hadn't been much help to its occupants. Judging from the .44 caliber hole in the driver's temple, he hadn't been alive when the air bags deployed. The front-seat passenger must have been holding a SAR-21 between his legs because the combined force of the crash and the airbag deployment had driven the stubby barrel into his throat, burying it all the way up to the plastic foregrip. It had hit the jugular and the man had bled out before Bolan reached the Hummer.

The last man in the cab was still alive, but just barely. Like the others, he was a Filipino, and Bolan saw the telltale question mark tattoo on the bare shoulder that showed beneath his dirty wife beater undershirt. He was conscious, but blood ran from his mouth, nose and ears, and he looked like he was fading out. Bolan grabbed his shirt and gently slapped his face, trying to get him to wake up. The man's eyes opened and he smiled. Then he spit blood and tooth fragments at the soldier and laughed.