Agent Of Peril. Don Pendleton
As Bolan was reloading, he spotted the drumlike extension on the wing stub of the Dauphin, reminiscent of the artillery rocket launchers of the old Vietnam helicopter gunships. On a hunch, the Executioner swung and aimed at the drum and pumped four .303 rounds into the launcher. The fourth shot gave the Executioner results as the helicopter disappeared in a massive shock wave.
The sales ground was sprayed with even more shrapnel and fire. Panicked buyers and sellers raced about, security men and bodyguards firing brutal bursts into one another.
A little panic goes a long way, the Executioner thought, scrambling closer to the battleground after feeding the Enfield some fresh rounds. A spray of bullets smashed into a rock off to the soldier’s right and he went to the ground, feeling pebbles stab into his ribs and knees, elbows barking on stone.
Bolan shouldered the Enfield and spotted a half dozen men working their way toward him. A second spray of autofire was a massive sheet sweeping through the air, pounding and deflecting like copper-jacketed rain on the barren hillside. In a heartbeat, the front sight of the Enfield was on the lead gunner, a .303 round punching through his chest and bursting out his spine in a single gore blast at a range of seventy-five feet.
Bolan threw the bolt and turned on another gunman. Slugs from the security man’s Uzi sliced the air, kicking up chips of slate and granite as they bounced off the ground short of Bolan’s position. The soldier took care of that situation with a single decapitating .303 Enfield round that hit the killer’s throat. Bolan rose and was moving hard to the left, bullets chasing him.
The Enfield dropped on its sling around the Executioner’s neck as he swept up the Skorpion from where it hung and held down the trigger. The 9 mm rounds spit at the enemy hardforce, four men scrambling for their own cover as they sent lead his way.
Unfortunately, the Skorpion rattled apart in a savage, recoil-induced field stripping that left the Executioner’s right hand numb with shock. He should have known the knockoff would prove useless. None of his rounds hit anything, though they did drive the enemy to cover.
Curling his right hand to his belly for protection, Bolan snaked his left hand around, freed one Taurus and straight-armed the 9 mm pistol at one of the Pakistanis who was rising again. A chopped-off AK-47 in the gunman’s hands swung toward Bolan’s midsection as he saw the tall, powerful terrorist charging him.
The Executioner’s sole saving grace was to get within bad-breath distance of the enemy fighter. He tripped the trigger on the Taurus twice, bullets slamming hard into the hollow of the terrorist’s throat and his chin. Jaw shorn away, the guy whirled, his AK tumbling from lifeless fingers. By the time the others were adjusting their aim against Bolan, he went to the ground again right in the middle of the three remaining men. Bullets swept the air from one overanxious machine gunner, autofire ripping like a steel storm through his two comrades as he tried to track his executioner.
Bolan rewarded the wild man’s efforts with two bullets through his groin and one in his stomach.
It was about then that Bolan started getting feeling back in his right hand. It hurt like hell, but he could move the fingers, and looking around, he saw three severely wounded gunmen, their fight gone, blood pumping out on charcoal-colored rock. Testing his weight on the right hand, Bolan got back on his feet and spared a single 9 mm bullet into each dying man’s head, granting them a swift release from their pain. Bolan was not a man to leave an enemy to suffer, no matter what they did.
A quick reload, and the Taurus went to Bolan’s right hand. He crouched and grabbed the chopped-off AK of the man he charged, as well as a pouch of magazines. Satisfied the weapon was in working order, he holstered his pistol and found the rifle was an AKSU in 5.45 mm Soviet. With the stubby barrel of the chop job, the rounds would put out a fireball the size of a watermelon, but wouldn’t have much more punch than a Magnum pistol, and have very limited range.
But the gun wasn’t going to shake to pieces and bruise Bolan’s battered hand any worse.
The Executioner looked over and saw that the Hezbollah hardforce had picked up a bunch of new shooters, and they’d noticed the conflict on the hillside. The range couldn’t have been more than sixty yards, and even for the most ill-educated thug, the math couldn’t have been difficult.
There was a stranger approaching in the wake of the destruction.
He was armed.
Bolan hit the ground again, using a large piece of debris for a shield as bullets raked the side of the hill. Sparks flew as copper jackets hit granite and flint, and crimson puffed skyward as slugs impacted on stilled corpses. The Executioner fisted the AKSU and poked it over the piece of metal, firing the contents of the clip already in place. It was a full load, and three seconds of mayhem swept in response to the crackling salvos downhill.
A bullet hammered into the frame of the AKSU and sent it flying again from the Executioner’s hand before he could pull it back to reload. Not wasting a moment, Bolan tucked tight and rolled, rocks stabbing along his body as he scrambled behind a flat plate of stone. Another wave of hellfire hammered a nearby corpse, reducing the lifeless body to a pulpy stew. Surrounded and outgunned, Bolan didn’t have many options. He took a look at the slab of granite he was behind and felt its thickness with his fingertips. Thick enough to stop enemy bullets for a while.
Long enough, Bolan realized, for his enemy to flank and kill him.
The hollow that he rested against was curved. The soldier could work with that. He wouldn’t have much of a chance, but it was a thread of hope. He began packing C-4 into the hollowed cavity, flattening the kilogram blocks like putty in three strips, kneading them like dough. Bolan pulled a radio detonator and plugged a wire into each strip, sticking it to the center patch of explosive.
Bolan poked up his head and saw the enemy was charging. He pulled both Taurus pistols and dived backward away from the rock, scrambling in frantic retreat. The pistols barked out hot 9 mm pills until the left one ran dry. A couple slugs plucked at the Executioner, and one bullet hammered into the Enfield’s stock, cracking it against the soldier’s ribs. A bullet creased Bolan’s elbow skin, not touching bone. He probably had as much accuracy as his enemy.
On the run, the enemy had no aim as they charged, a small favor to the Executioner as long as they were at a decent distance. If they got closer, though, he was hamburger.
The nearest gunman was almost at the rock that Bolan had mined.
The soldier dropped his left Taurus and slapped the radio detonator’s switch. The hill shook before him, and the shock wave nearly blew out his eardrums.
While Bolan was slammed by a pressure wave, his enemies fared far worse. The granite slab that the plastic explosives were jammed into fragmented instantly, shattering like a fine crystal goblet under the force of a sledgehammer. The shards of the slab didn’t just sit around, however. Thrown at 1500 feet per second, in a widespread cone of bloody murder, the pulverized stone became a gigantic shotgun round.
Whether the chips of granite were blunt pebbles or razor sharp, they still went through human flesh like hot knives through butter. The lead gunner, jumping onto the rock, sailed through the air over Bolan’s head, slamming into the hillside headfirst.
Where once there were men, suddenly there were ghosts, the debris wave flashing at them, then passing on, bloody stumps standing in the wake of the improvised Claymore. The whole scene was a panoramic widescreen display in Bolan’s pressure-wave-shocked brain. His perceptions warped in time and space so that he could see the pulped cores that used to be humans pouring and melting down to the ground, any pretense at being a solid long stripped by the brutal death wave that crushed through them.
Bolan felt the back of his head, scalp split, blood flowing hotly down the neck of his black BDU blouse. He sensed a concussion, but he sat up, reloading his last remaining pistol. The other Taurus had been lost, swept away in the shock wave. He looked for signs of the enemy.
Everything was still, except for one squirming figure, trying to crawl up the side of the Abrams tank. Staggering to wobbly feet, Bolan got up, feeling weak and dizzy. He had business