Splinter Cell. Don Pendleton

bottle into the palm of his opposite hand. Satisfied, he tied his shoe back onto his bare foot.

      “We don’t know what’s in the attaché cases yet,” Bolan whispered. “Maybe guns. Maybe a bomb. Maybe both.” He let out a breath. “Our only chance is to get the jump on them.”

      “And if they turn out to be just four Arabic businessmen who happen to have the same kind of briefcases?” Paxton asked.

      “We’ll apologize,” Bolan said. “And offer to pay the hospital bill for them.”

      Paxton chuckled, low and deep. “That’s not going to be the case, though, is it,” he said in a tone of voice that made his words a statement rather than a question.

      “No,” the Executioner said. He unbuckled his seat belt. “I’m heading to the coach cabin. You concentrate on the man here in first class.”

      Paxton’s eyebrows lowered. “You’re gonna take out three of them?” he said. “No, I’ll go with you. We’ll get those three, then—”

      “We don’t have time to argue,” Bolan ordered. “If we’re both in the back, and this clown across from us has a bomb, he’s only a few steps from the pilot. And he’ll get plenty of warning if there’s a scuffle behind him.”

      Paxton saw the logic in the Executioner’s plan. He nodded.

      Bolan stood up. The man with the attaché case had glanced at his watch twice before Bolan could even turn down the aisle away from the cabin.

      Whatever the four men were planning was about to go down. Soon.

      The flight attendant seemed to appear from nowhere as Bolan stepped through the door from first class to coach. “Oh, sir,” Margie said, bumping into him. “I’m sorry.”

      “No problem,” said the Executioner, and started to step around her.

      “Sir, where are you going?”

      “Restroom,” Bolan said, again trying to step to the side in the narrow aisle.

      “But there’s a much better one in first class,” Margie said.

      “It’s taken,” Bolan said. Beyond the flight attendant, he saw sweat and tension on the faces of the other three men who had pulled the attaché cases down from the overhead compartments. As the nervous man in first class had done, they all glanced at their wristwatches.

      Then three hands moved to the latches on the cases.

      Bolan shoved Margie to the side and sprinted down the aisle. Whatever was about to happen was no longer about to happen soon.

      It was happening now.

      THE THREE Arabs all looked up at the big man running toward them, and Bolan was reminded that the almost supernatural sense of danger was never limited to the good guys. Criminals, terrorists and other miscreants developed it just like good soldiers, cops and other warriors.

      A glint of fire suddenly appeared in the eyes of the three men. They stood up as they opened their cases.

      Bolan continued to run down the aisle past the curious faces of the other passengers. He still didn’t know what was in the black attaché cases. But it was a good bet that it would be either guns, bombs or both. Neither did he know how the terrorists had gotten the cases past security and on board the plane.

      But that hardly mattered now. The reality of the situation was that they had gotten the cases onto the plane, and he would have to deal with that reality as it stood. If guns were their only weapons, he stood a good chance of saving the hundreds of people on board the 747. But if there were four bombs on the plane, not even the Executioner would be able to get to them all before at least one was detonated.

      Bolan didn’t break stride as he drew the broken plastic spoon from his pocket and drove the sharp point into the dark-skinned throat above the SIG-Sauer pistol his adversary had pulled from the attaché case. A chortling sound issued forth with the blood that shot out of the man’s jugular vein, staining his white shirt and beige suit. The Executioner reached out, grabbing for the SIG-Sauer.

      He was a split second too late.

      Waving his arms wildly in the throes of death, the would-be gunman released the SIG. It flew out over the passengers and fell somewhere behind Bolan.

      The black attaché case dropped to the deck of the plane, open. Two shirts and a pair of slacks flew out from between the sides. But no bomb.

      The terrorist in the beige suit fell to the floor on top of the mess.

      Bolan leaped over the still-convulsing body and continued down the aisle, jerking the tightly wrapped magazine from inside his jacket as he ran. By now, the second man—wearing a light blue suit and darker blue necktie—had pulled a Glock from his attaché case. His hand shook nervously as he tried to steady his aim on the Executioner.

      Bolan ducked low, praying that like most nervous men, the would-be hijacker would shoot high. Not just high enough to miss him, but high enough to miss all of the seated passengers as well.

      His prayer was answered.

      The Glock exploded with an almost deafening roar in the tight confines of the cabin. More screams threatened to burst the Executioner’s eardrums. But Bolan could tell by the angle of the barrel that the shot had gone to the ceiling and exited the plane. The hole it made was far too small to affect the cabin pressure. But too many of the passengers had seen movies where such tiny openings sucked everyone out into the sky, and more panicky screams added to the chaos around Bolan.

      Bolan didn’t give the man with the Glock a second chance. With a sudden leap, he reached the terrorist and swung the rolled magazine like a short billy club. The hardened pages caught the man in the Adam’s apple and crushed his larynx. Bolan followed through with a left hook, connecting with the man’s temple with the force of a jackhammer.

      The Glock fell to the seat behind the terrorist. The man’s lifeless body began to fall backward on top of it.

      Bolan reached out, grabbing the second terrorist by the shoulders and throwing him to the other side of the aisle, out of the way. But when he looked down to the seat for the Glock, it was gone.

      But the Executioner had no time to waste. Rather than go searching for the Glock, the Executioner continued down the aisle until the final terrorist in coach class shouted in heavily accented English, “Halt! Stop now, or I will blow up the plane!”

      Still a good twenty feet from the man, Bolan could see the arrogant smile on his face. He wore a black suit with light pin-stripes. He had opened his attaché case and turned it to face the Executioner.

      Bolan stared into the open case. This man had no pistol for him to worry about.

      What he did have, however, was a bomb.

      The Executioner stood motionless as the terrorist had ordered. “What is it you want?”

      “First,” the man with the bomb said sarcastically, “is for all of these swine to…shut up!” He shouted the last two words at the top of his lungs. And they had the desired effect. The last of the screaming, moaning and crying turned to an eerie silence as the passengers quieted, frozen in fear.

      “All right,” Bolan said, standing upright in the center of the aisle. “You got your first wish. Now what?” He stared into the open attaché case, trying to make out the details of the bomb under the shadows created by the lid. He couldn’t be sure but it looked as if the case contained a substantial amount of plastic explosive—probably Semtex. The shiny, polished steel of what had to be a detonator flashed at him. The item most easy to see and recognize was a common digital kitchen timer.

      There didn’t look to be anything high-tech about the explosive device. It was simple. Very simple.

      But still lethal.

      Satisfied that Bolan had seen what was in the case, the terrorist in the black suit now closed it partway but kept his left hand inside.