Assault on Soho

Ann!'

Bolan quietly said, 'All the crying concern for the security of your members. You've been gouging them all along, for one hell of a long time before Nick Trigger came on the scene. So why did you import me, Major? Was Nick muscling in on your gravy train?'

'Shut up, Bolan,' the Major said. 'Pass your pistol back here, carefully now.'

Bolan did both, and sat in silent contemplation of his errors as Ann expertly wheeled through the streets of midday London. Twice they were delayed at intersections, once by a screaming procession of police vehicles descending on Tower Hill, and both times Bolan briefly considered making a break but capitulated to logic and to the ancient hope that has forever dwelt in the breasts of nearly-dead men—he would not rush death, he would wait it out and see what developed.

Nothing whatever developed throughout that silent ride, and when Ann parked the car at the curb outside Museum de SadeBolan began to get the idea that the most likely thing to develop for him now was mortal agony. His skin was crawling with the memory of those torture cells as he quit the car and went up the steps ahead of Major Stone. He paused at the door and stared back down at the car; Ann was remaining there, obviously.

He called back, 'Okay, the pact is dissolved. You may as well come in and watch the grand finale.'

There was no movement from the vehicle. The stiff little man jabbed Bolan's ribs with hard steel and pushed him on inside. Nick Trigger was at the bar in the clubroom, drinking gin straight out of a bottle. He came slightly unglued at the sight of Bolan, and then crowed with delight upon noticing the pistol in the Major's hand. He ran over and slugged Bolan with the back of his hand and yelled, 'You rotten shit!'

Bolan shook off the blow and muttered, 'It takes one to know one.'

The Major shoved Nick away. 'None of that just now!' he snapped. 'Keep your distance! You're aware of the danger of this man!'

'Sure, just be patient, Nick,' Bolan said. 'You'll get your chance to watch me squirm.'

'Screamis the word, Bolan,' the Major corrected him. He shoved Bolan on across the clubroom and marched him through the travesty of erotic delights and up to the maze. Bolan had not until that moment caught the significance of the labial doorway. Back into the womb, it meant. Not merely death, but an unborning.

Bolan halted in the gray light of the little ante-room and snarled, 'You're not going to lock me into one of those things while I'm living, Major.'

Stone replied, 'You are quite wrong about that, Bolan.'

Bolan saw the barrel of the pistol chopping toward him. He managed to get inside and take it on the shoulder and he abruptly lost all strength in that arm, but he was plowing forward in a body-block that would have made his old football coach proud, and the three men hit the floor in a sprawling tangle.

Nick Trigger was trying to smother him with his big belly and Bolan was fighting to get clear and become the first man up. He threw Nick away from him and went into a roll, then the barrel of the Major's revolver again loomed into view and smashed into his skull with a jarring crunch.

Bolan grunted and pitched onto his back, not all the way out but sick and groggy and utterly without strength. He was aware of being pushed and dragged in a background of foul mouthings by Nick Trigger and the hoarse panting of Major Stone. Then his clothes were being dragged away from him and the disembodied voice of Nick Trigger was saying, 'Aw shit, why go through all this?'

But apparently the Major felt some compulsion to mix pleasure with business, and even in his giddy state Bolan recognized and was appalled by the depths of the man's sickness.

Stone was telling Nick, 'Do not presume to deny me my simple pleasures, my friend. After all, it is you who demanded immediate action. I would have given the poor fellow another day or two, if only for Ann's sake.'

Through Bolan's swirling nausea, Nick was arguing, 'Christ, this is no time for pleasures, yours or hers or anybody else's. I mean, we got the two finks outta the picture and I'm in a hell of a bind over on my side now. I gotta have this guy's head; to hell with your kicks.'

The Major was breathing heavily and clamping something cold and hard about Bolan's forehead. He tried to struggle away, but a knee in his throat held him pinned and he was simply too weak to do anything about it. Stone's stiffly precise voice was saying, 'There wouldn't have been the problem of the two finks, as you put it, but for your monumental greed, Nick. In all the years I've been at this, I've incurred not one serious threat, not one. And now six months after your intrusion into my little world, I find myself the object of scrutiny from every direction. No. No, Nick. Don't attempt to hurry me along now.'

Clamps were going about Bolan's ankles. The hands down there were fumbling about, as though trembling almost out of control. Bolan fought the nausea and willed his strength to return. It would not.

'Shit, you're just plain crazy!' Nick yelled.

'Get out of here!' Stone cried. 'Will you get out of here?'

'You kiss my ass!' Nick retorted. 'You fuckin' queer, you're gonna fuck up everything.'

'Look who is speaking!' The Major's voice came with cutting sarcasm. 'Youare the one who said bring Bolan over! Youare the one who said let Bolantake the blame! Youare the one who said—'

'Awright, now I'm saying let's kill 'im and get it over with. This kind of shit gives me the creeps and you know it. Anyway, I'm the one under the pressure, not you. I'm the one crossed up the family, not you. If you'd just listened when I wanted to drop those finks in the river with cement suits on, there wouldn't be—'

'Oh to be sure, that would have been jolly. Brigadier Edwin Charles turns up in the Thames from his latest assignment and where does that leave the ambitious Mr. Nicholas Woods? Not, of course, to mention the Sade Society and our beautiful little goldmine. Honestly, Nick, sometimes you behave as a very dull fellow. Now here, give me a hand with this beauty, will you?'

Bolan was being hauled and lifted, the clamps at head and ankles beginning to take the weight and compress the flesh over protesting bones. Then he was up and momentarily floating free only to be abruptly jerked to a spine-crunching arrest. Full consciousness returned on floodwaves of shriekingly alarmed nerve-centers, and Bolan knew with a tortured clarity where he was and what sort of a pickle he was in.

His hands were manacled behind his back and he was suspended from the ceiling by three chains. One of these was attached to a steel band that was fitted about his forehead, the other two held his ankles, and he was dangling in a belly-down suspension several feet above the floor.

Nick stook in a corner, glowering at the Major. Stone was shoving a boxlike affair across the cell, obviously intent on positioning it beneath Bolan's belly. It slid under easily, clearing by several inches, then the Major appeared at Bolan's head. He looked into his eyes and said, 'Ah good, our astronaut is conscious. Listen and let me explain our little game. I've put a clever machine beneath you, Bolan. It's a simple little box with a spring-loaded mechanism inside and a rather wicked steel blade mounted on the outside, across the top. When I release the brake, the blade will move quickly back and forth across the top of the box, you see. Now it might scrape you a bit here and there if you get too relaxed. Keep your spine nice and straight, though, and you'll have nothing to fear. And be on the lookout for, uh, dangling objects. You might lose something you prize highly. Be ready, now, keep a stiff back there, that's a good fellow.'

Something went spronnngbeneath him, and he felt the air of the whisking blade as it moved back and forth just below.

Bolan had known for quite some time that he was not going to live forever. He had known that intimate association with death on many occasions, and he had long been prepared to die. But not like this. Not a slow and gradual scraping away. First it would be genitals, probably in one or two whacks, as soon as the muscles around the spine atrophied and collapsed and sent him plunging into range of. that shuttling blade. Then the weakness and further collapse would sag the abdomen down there, and layer by layer of him would be laid open until he was totally disembowelled and hacked in two.

Well, he would not take it that way. He himself had always tried to kill quick and painlessly, and he was going to go out the same way. He steeled himself and began preparing the command to his muscular structure that would send him all the way down in one disemboweling plunge.

And then he became aware of a movement at the doorway dead ahead of him. Ann Franklin stepped in, and she had the big Weatherby cradled tightly to her body, and he thought thank God she's going to give it to me right.