Savage Rule. Don Pendleton

invading troops. He wasn’t concerned with hitting them; he wanted them to hear the gunfire and respond. Moving as quickly as he was, in a full sprint, he could have aimed precisely if he wished, but he could move faster by focusing on his destination: the nearest of the Saladins.

      The six-wheeled light tank was an old British model equipped with a single 76-mm gun. Typically, such a vehicle also mounted coaxial and antiaircraft 7.62-mm machine guns, but Bolan saw no evidence of such weapons mounted externally on his target. There was no gun atop the turret, and the barrel of the machine gun that would otherwise poke from the turret parallel to the main gun was missing, the hole sealed and painted over.

      The all-welded steel hull of the Saladin—more an armored car than a tank, really—had been painted a sloppy camouflage pattern more or less suitable to the jungle environment surrounding him. As he ran, his mind was already sorting through his extensive military knowledge, as if calling up an imaginary file. The Saladin, developed by the British in the 1950s, predated tracked light armor like the Scorpion combat reconnaissance vehicle, the Saladin’s British successor. This specimen, from what little Bolan could see of it, was likely quite old, probably manufactured in the late sixties or early seventies. It would have a gas-guzzling 8-cylinder engine mounted at the rear—though this could have been upgraded to diesel, for all he knew—and a crew of two or three. The driver would be seated forward, behind a hinged hatch, and the gunner would be to the left of the center-mounted turret. If there was a third man, a loader for the gun, he would be seated to the right of that center position.

      None of this mattered. Bolan had no time to waste, not if he didn’t want to be bracketed and gunned down. He reached the tank, leaped onto the hull and pulled a pair of M-67 fragmentation grenades from his harness. Then he yanked the pin with his thumb and jammed the bombs down the barrel of the 76-mm gun.

      He continued to run as gunfire erupted with much greater force around him. The muffled, staggered explosions came five seconds each after he’d pulled the grenades’ pins, doing the men inside the Saladin no good and hopefully at least distracting and confusing them. It was doubtful the blasts would cause any serious damage, given that the gun was designed to contain the force of the shells it fired, but there was at least a chance that the grenades might cause a problem. At the very least, the explosions would add to the insanity Bolan was manufacturing for the enemy to experience.

      He was just getting started. He jacked open the M-203 launcher and loaded an M-576 buckshot round. Then he crouched, blending into the dancing shadows, and paused.

      The enemy fire became even more intense. They were shooting in all directions, lit by the dancing fires of the burning vehicles. It was clear they thought they were being attacked from all sides, which was what Bolan wanted them to think.

      The Executioner waited for the first knot of confused, frantic soldiers to close on his position, shouting to one another in Spanish. They were craning their necks at the tree line beyond their clearing, shooting sporadically into it, their fear-twisted features lit by the muzzle-flashes of their M-16 rifles. Bolan counted to three and, when they had come as close as they were likely to, he triggered the M-203.

      The withering blast of buckshot from the giant bore of the 40-mm grenade launcher cut them down at waist level, leaving them broken and screaming, killing the nearest of the men who had taken the brunt of the widespread blast. Bolan was up then, squeezing precise bursts from his M-16 A-3, a veteran and virtuoso on the trigger of the familiar weapon. Soldiers, little more than thugs, fell before Bolan, who was himself the most lethal soldier they would ever encounter.

      He paused, loaded another HEDP round in the M-203, and blasted yet another parked truck. The deafening sound of countless automatic weapons rolled over him in waves, much like the clouds of fitful, caustic smoke that poured from the burning vehicles. Two of the Saladins were mobile now, and one got its 76-mm gun working. It barked in Bolan’s general direction, off by many meters, the shots themselves random.

      Bolan was rapidly using the ordnance with which the Farm had equipped him, but he saw no reason to hold back now. He loaded yet another HEDP grenade and, moving in a half crouch through the smoke, avoiding clumps of wildly shooting Honduran soldiers, he angled around to the rear of the closer Saladin. Lining up on the other six-wheeled tank, he punched it hard with his grenade.

      The battered vehicle shuddered, but through the haze and the strobe lights of the enemy guns Bolan couldn’t tell how badly he had damaged it. Predictably, the turret traversed to bracket the Saladin next to which Bolan squatted. The soldier sprinted clear as the wounded tank fired again, this time hitting the closer vehicle.

      Bolan stopped near the corpse of one of the fallen Honduran military men. He scooped up the boonie hat that many of the soldiers wore, and planted it on his own head. Then, trusting that his silhouette more closely resembled those of the invading troops, he started running urgently from group to group and shouting in Spanish, pointing at the next cluster of frenzied shooters.

      Bolan hit the dirt as answering fire threatened to cut him down. The soldiers were soon eagerly, desperately shooting into their own numbers. The cry that infiltrators were among them was taken up by others. In the fusillades that ensued, Bolan was forced to roll close to one of the still-undamaged trucks to avoid the wild automatic gunfire. It wasn’t long before those in charge began shouting in Spanish for the men to cease firing. At least one of these voices was cut short, screaming, when someone else trained a gun on the man and pulled the trigger.

      Creeping along over the flattened undergrowth that had been crushed by the wheels of the enemy column’s vehicles, Bolan held his rifle along his side, careful to keep it from dragging. He drew the Beretta 93-R machine pistol, flicked the weapon’s fire selector switch to single shot and began peppering the enemy again. The sound suppressor threaded onto the pistol’s barrel reduced the noise of his 9-mm rounds to a discreet cough—a sound drowned out by the automatic gunfire, terrified yelling and dying screams of the men all around him.

      There was a rhythm to any combat operation, a palpable sense of motion and vibration that Bolan could feel, could pick out, thanks to so many years in the field. He rode that momentum now, felt that pulse, as he crept along in the darkness and placed his shots for maximum effect. Honduran troops fired their weapons into the trees beyond the clearing, and as they did so, several men at their left flank were felled, so it seemed, by the gunfire. When individuals there began to return fire, their shots were strangely, almost impossibly accurate, their wild blasts somehow becoming precisely aimed head shots. Bolan became the grim reaper among the disorganized, berserk gunmen, playing to their fears. By the time he was done firing covertly, the Honduran invaders seemed to be convinced, to a man, that a large group of enemy sappers had somehow penetrated their ranks.

      Then the Executioner’s knives came out.

      The longer blade almost leaped into his right hand, the coarse weave of the handle wrap firm in his grip as if welded there. He drew the shorter blade, its textured handle stippled for traction, and spun the knife on his palm into a reverse grip, the edge oriented toward his own body. Moving silently, Bolan used the flickering shadows, the dancing flames and flashes of gunfire to his advantage, entering his enemies’ midst, his blades flashing, stabbing and carving.

      The first few soldiers went down silently, dead before they knew it. Bolan, implacable as he moved surgically forward, took no emotion from the act. There was no feeling of triumph; there was no sense of victory. He was simply performing a necessary function, grim purpose his only guide. The faces of the enemy invaders who fell before him were flash-burned onto his memory, joining the ranks of the countless others whose lives had ended as invisible notches on the grips of the Executioner’s weapons. He remembered them all; he wasn’t some unfeeling, unthinking mass murderer. The Executioner was a force for righteous redress, and as the agent of Justice, he would never shrink from acknowledging his lethal acts in that blindfolded figure’s name.

      The silent knifings did more damage than Bolan’s clever shooting could have. As men began screaming, and then dying quietly, choking and gurgling in pain, a wave of renewed panic spread through the ranks of the already disorganized, terrified fighting men. Bolan narrowly avoided being shot by several Honduran soldiers who began firing at one another, screaming curses in Spanish.