Treason Play. Don Pendleton

stayed rooted to the spot. “Who are you?” she repeated.

      “I’m a U.S. federal agent. I’m here because of Terry Lang.”

      “Terry?”

      He nodded. “Let’s go.”

      When they stepped into the hallway, the man stopped.

      She noticed that even while standing still, he radiated an energy as though he were coiled, ready to strike. He wheeled ninety degrees, his gun coming up at the same time. Gillen stared after him and saw the cause of his consternation. A man was stepping into view from an adjoining hallway, an assault rifle clutched in his arms, the barrel tracking in on her and her companion.

      BOLAN SENSED THE FIRST attacker before he came into view. He wheeled around, the Beretta’s snout zeroing in on his target, a man toting an AK-47. The Executioner squeezed the trigger and the Beretta spit a triburst of 9 mm manglers. The slugs hammered into the man’s chest and caused him to freeze in midstride before he collapsed to the floor.

      A second shooter moved in on Bolan and Gillen. The hardman’s machine pistol spewed fire and lead. Bullets sliced through the air inches above the soldier’s head. A double tap of the Beretta’s trigger and the gun coughed out a flurry of six rounds that didn’t strike flesh, but drilled into the wall just behind his attacker, forcing him to take cover.

      Bolan whipped his head toward Gillen.

      “Move,” he shouted, gesturing at the mouth of a nearby hallway.

      Nodding, she turned and sprinted for the corridor.

      The Executioner squeezed off two more bursts from the Beretta. The cover fire put his enemies on the defensive. He ejected the handgun’s magazine and slammed another into the weapon’s grip. In the same instant, another gunner mistook the lull in firing as a chance to catch his opponent by surprise. He came around the corner. The move exposed the shooter’s face and his gun hand. Bolan’s Beretta chugged out a volley of 9 mm rounds. Simultaneously the other man’s own weapon cracked, spitting jagged tongues of flame from its muzzle. A couple of bullets from the AK ripped through the fabric of Bolan’s windbreaker while other rounds slammed into plasterboard or ripped through carpet and wood.

      The 9 mm slugs from the Beretta drilled into the gunner’s face. The impact spun him violently. Even as the guy slammed to the floor, Bolan heard metal clicking on metal behind him. He wheeled and saw that Gillen had disappeared from view. Moving through the mouth of the corridor into which she’d just disappeared, he spotted a metal door with an exit sign fixed above it at the end of the hallway. The soldier marched toward the door, hoping he could catch up with the woman before Nawaz Khan and his people found her.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      Aleksander Mazorov knew he needed to move fast.

      The big Russian raced up the stairs with a stealth that belied his size. In his right hand, he clutched a Browning Hi-Power. He heard a door snap closed from a couple of flights of stairs above. A smile ghosted his lips. He guessed, hoped, that the woman was coming his way, perhaps with the bastard who’d shot his men right at her side. His grip on the Browning tightened, but he kept it flat against his thigh while he continued to climb the steps. He needed to grab the woman and get the hell out of the building as soon as possible, before the local police arrived and he either got scooped up by them or had to shoot his way out of the situation.

      From above, he could see a shadow moving over the wall, could hear the slap of her feet against the stairs as she rushed down.

      He raised the Browning. A heartbeat later he saw calves clad in dark slacks fall across his line of sight. When the woman came into view, her eyes seemed to look first at the gun barrel and widen with surprise and terror as she realized what she’d come up against. She froze. Mazorov guessed her mind was racing, ticking through her options, weighing whether to pivot and run or to perhaps rush him. Or she could just be frozen with terror, though he somehow doubted it. Considering that she’d met her initial attackers with a pistol, he guessed she wasn’t the shrinking violet type.

      Maybe, he decided, she just needed some prompting.

      “Hands up,” he said. “Or I’ll kill you.”

      She brought her hands up slowly, elbows cocked at nearly ninety-degree angles. He stepped to one side and motioned for her to move down the stairs. She brushed past him and continued down the steps.

      He allowed himself a tight smile. Mission accomplished.

      GRIMALDI CROUCHED BETWEEN a pair of parked cars. Peering around the rear of one of the cars, a red BMW, he watched as the panel van’s rear door fanned open and four shooters piled from the vehicle onto the concrete. He keyed his throat mike.

      “Striker?”

      “Go.”

      “The van has more hostiles unloading. I count four.”

      “They coming my way?”

      “Not if I can help it,” Grimaldi said.

      “Clear. Thanks.”

      With the Colt Commando leading the way, the lanky Stony Man pilot came up in a crouch and closed the distance between himself and the group of shooters. As he neared them, he heard snatches of muttered conversation. He recognized a couple of words as Russian. What the hell was going on? he wondered. What did the Russians have to do with this? Where they Russian mafiya?

      One of the gunners gestured at the door leading from the garage into the apartment building. The others stood by, listening to his orders. Grimaldi listened just long enough to realize he’d garner no good information from them as long as they continued to speak Russian. He came up from the shadows, raised the Commando to his shoulder, the retractable buttstock snug against his body.

      One of the hardmen saw him. The Russian simultaneously opened his mouth to shout a warning and brought up his hand, which clutched a submachine gun. Grimaldi triggered the Commando and unleashed a swarm of 5.56 mm rippers from the weapon that drilled into the guy’s chest. His target jerked in place for a moment under the onslaught of autofire. Grimaldi turned slightly and caught a second hardman under a withering hail of fiery death.

      Simultaneously the man who’d been handing out orders moved into action. He spun in Grimaldi’s direction, dropped into a crouch and loosed a burst of autofire from an Uzi. The rounds hammered into the concrete just in front of Grimaldi. While the guy tried to improve his aim, the Stony Man pilot returned the favor with another burst from the Commando. The bullets sliced the air just past the man’s face. Though they missed flesh, the guy jerked back hard to get out of the line of fire, and the motion caused him to lose his balance and stumble back a couple of steps. In the same instant Grimaldi triggered his weapon again. The ensuing burst stitched across the guy’s torso, causing a trail of crimson geysers to explode from his chest before he collapsed to the ground.

      Tires squealed, and Grimaldi responded by wheeling around toward the noise. The van was hurtling toward him, quickly gaining speed. The pilot dived sideways, throwing his body between a pair of cars. He grunted when his body hit the concrete, and bolts of pain shot out from his shoulder where it collided with the ground. The van roared by, just missing him.

      Pulling himself to his feet, Grimaldi caught sight of the van. Brake lights glowed red and rubber squealed against concrete as the vehicle slowed. He rested the Commando on the roof of the parked car in front of him and tapped the trigger. The 5.56 mm slugs hammered into the van, sparking off its steel skin.

      The weapon ran dry, and Grimaldi let the weapon hang on its strap while he replaced it with the Beretta 92 that rode in a shoulder holster. He raised the weapon and tried to draw a bead on the van. Before he could line up a good shot, the vehicle had turned a corner and was rolling down a ramp to a lower floor.

      The pilot sprinted forward, but by the time he reached the ramp, the van had disappeared. He heard tires squealing from the floor below him. Whoever was driving obviously wanted to get the hell out of the garage and put some distance