Killing Game. Don Pendleton

late 1980s, then had seemed to fizzle out, until a few weeks earlier. Then, all hell had suddenly broken loose with car-bombings, random machine-gunnings at shopping malls and other public places, and drive-by shootings at computer manufacturing plants, distributors, wholesalers and retail stores.

      Another—and perhaps the most important—bit of intel that Bolan and Platinov had obtained was the name of the man who had revived CLODO—Pierre Rouillan. Now in his thirties, Rouillan would have been a child during the eighties, and the Executioner couldn’t help wondering what had turned the young man toward the all-but-dead organization and driven him to reanimate it.

      Bolan dived to the floor as return fire sailed over his shoulder, coming to rest on his side directly against the back of a long, leather sofa.

      Using the sofa for concealment, the Executioner raised the MP-5 with one hand, thumbed the selector from 3-round burst to full-auto and stitched the remaining rounds back and forth into the couch. Screams and moans met his ears from the other side of the sofa, and he saw a bloody mist rise up into the air.

      The 9 mm RBCD total fragmentation rounds didn’t just penetrate their human targets, they shredded them.

      Bolan hesitated only long enough to drop the empty 9 mm magazine from his weapon and ram home a fresh one. On the other side of the couch, he could hear more 9 mm fire that he knew had to be coming from Platinov’s subgun.

      Though he was hidden from view of the men in the living room, the sofa was concealment rather than cover, as the Executioner had proved himself only moments earlier. In another second or so, the terrorists still standing on the other side of the sofa would realize where he was and begin firing into the couch. The four men who had sat there would obviously be dead, so the chance that they might accidentally hit one of their own would not hinder them in the least.

      But an even more imminent problem faced Bolan. While he was still hidden from the men in the living room, he was on full display to the card players.

      The Executioner rolled away from the sofa, flipping the H&K’s selector into 3-round burst mode, and rose to one knee. He opened fire, the first two 9 mm rounds striking a terrorist in the chest an inch apart. Bolan had allowed the subgun to rise slightly with the recoil of the second round, and the third hit the same man just above the nose in his forehead.

      From the corner of his eye, the big American could see that Platinov had dropped to one knee as well. The ancient, antique-looking rocking chair behind which she knelt offered neither concealment nor cover, but it did distort her body enough to at least slightly confuse the gunner’s aims. The Russian agent had opened fire a split second after Bolan, and her first target had been a man who had taken cover from behind a chair against the wall, a SiG-Sauer pistol in his hand. Both she and the Executioner were using RBCD ammo, and a red mist hung in the air, floating slowly toward the floor in front of the dead body from which it had come.

      As the Executioner opened fire again, he continued to eye Platinov from his peripheral vision. Two more of the card players fell as Bolan watched his Russian ally knee-walk swiftly up behind a man with his back to her. The terrorist was leaning forward to reach for a shotgun between his feet. But before his fingers could find the cold metal or wooden stock, Platinov had leaned forward and pressed the barrel of her weapon into the back of the man’s head at the base of his neck.

      Bringing her left forearm up to cover her eyes, Platinov pulled the trigger. The contact shots caused almost as much blood and other gore to blow out the entrance holes as that which exited the terrorist’s forehead.

      The terrorist fell forward onto the floor on his face. Or at least what was left of it.

      Platinov, the Executioner knew, had covered her eyes to keep the residual blood out. She could hardly afford to “go blind” with blood obscuring her vision in the middle of a gunfight. It was a good strategy. Except for one thing.

      By covering her eyes with her forearm, Platinov had temporarily blinded herself.

      One of the gunners who’d been sitting on a couch against the side wall noticed her vulnerability and tried to take advantage of it. He raised what looked like an old Luger toggle-bolt pistol and stepped into a classic Weaver shooting stance. As she squinted slightly, the muscles in his hands and arms tightened as he pushed the pistol forward with his right hand and pulled it back toward him with his left. At the same time, he did his best to drop the Luger’s front sight on Platinov. The man, Bolan thought, looked as if he’d just received his certificate for completing one of the many shooting schools that had popped up around the world. Attendees shot hundreds of rounds as they went through these courses, always being trained to make sure the front sight was “flashed” on their target before squeezing the trigger.

      They emerged from such schools as experts.

      Experts, however, at putting holes in paper silhouette targets or making steel plates ding. Not experts at gun-fighting by any means.

      Again, from the corner of his eye, the Executioner saw the man began to gently squeeze the trigger.

      The soldier turned his weapon toward the man, pointed it and shot him.

      Saving Platinov from the unseen attack had meant the Executioner had to momentarily ignore the return fire from the card players. As bullets and buckshot sailed past him, Bolan opened fire again, lacing one of the gamblers standing sideways from belt to armpit with three rounds into his ribs.

      The gunner was already dead and on the ground by the time Platinov had fired the contact shots into the back of the other terrorist’s head. Now, she dropped her arm.

      She would never know just how close to death she had come from the man who had drawn the Luger. Or that it had been Bolan who had saved her life.

      Bolan decided not to press his luck any further with the surviving card players. He had already taken out the man who had sat with his side toward the Executioner, and now he dived to the side as return fire continued.

      The Executioner rolled once, then came up on one knee again. Even this slight movement forced the hardmen to redirect their aim.

      Bolan cut loose with another 3-round volley into the heart of a gunner wearing a beret. The man had been doing his best to gain target acquisition on the Executioner’s new position. That task was abandoned as deep, thick, red blood spurted from his chest, accompanied by the now-familiar mist that had become the RBCD rounds’ personal signature. At least one of the totally fragmenting rounds had also pierced a lung, and the man dropped his Uzi, twisted in the air with a scream and fell on top of his own weapon, his chest sucking up and down in dying breaths.

      Bolan sought another target, zeroing in on a man wielding a Beretta 92. The round missed him by millimeters, coming so close to the Executioner’s ear that he could feel its heat.

      But this was no game of horseshoes. “Close” didn’t count.

      Bolan pumped another trio of rounds into the gunman, practically ripping his chest away from the rest of his body. He fell backward onto the table, his legs dangling down to spasm as if in some bizarre, predeath, dance ritual.

      The gunner who had sat next to him had grabbed a sawed-off shotgun from somewhere beneath the table, and now he brought the shortened pump-action weapon around and racked the slide, chambering a shell. But he had no time to pull the trigger.

      Bolan angled the H&K his way and cut loose with another 3-round burst, aiming at the man’s chest. But at the last second, the gunner crouched instinctively and all three 9 mm rounds sank into the top of his head, like electric drills boring down through his skull and into his brain.

      So it didn’t make too much difference. The man was still as dead as disco before he hit the floor.

      The card players were all dead now, and Bolan turned toward the living room, assisting Platinov as they rid the world of the final two CLODO terrorists. As the gunfire died down, Bolan’s thoughts turned again to Pierre Rouillan. The file he and Platinov had studied during their flight had contained several pictures of the man who had been responsible for CLODO’s revival. He was a little over six feet tall, dressed conservatively