Crucial Intercept. Don Pendleton

the presumably fleeing Baldero, were now well beyond the range at which he could reacquire and pursue them. There was nothing he could do; he had to deal with the immediate threat, or he wouldn’t be alive to continue with the mission.

      It had only been by the blind luck of the battlefield that he had stumbled across the rolling gun battle in which he was now involved. Whoever these shooters were working for, whatever the connection to Baldero, erasing them and removing them from the combat equation was the one possible option.

      Bolan threw himself flat again, lined up on the row of feet on the other side of the van and held the 93-R sideways to aim below and across the big vehicle’s undercarriage. Then he triggered several 3-round bursts.

      Two of the men dropped, screaming, their ankles shattered. Bolan put a burst into each one of them, ending their misery. Then he was up again, coming around the front of the van.

      The driver was still in position, holding a pistol that looked like a SIG-Sauer. Bolan put a single round through the glass and reloaded on the move, swapping the 20-round magazine for a fresh one from his shoulder harness.

      There wasn’t much time. The police would be on the scene before long, responding to what would have to be countless phone calls about the war going on in the middle of the street in this mixed commercial district. His Justice credentials would put him above suspicion, at least eventually, and Brognola could always intervene on his behalf if he got embroiled with the locals, but it would cost time, and time was what he didn’t have. He could hear the combat clock ticking in his head.

      He heard the second vehicle moving in from behind him; the throaty roar of the heavy cargo van was unmistakable. There were still shooters from the closer van to deal with, so he focused on those, maneuvering to put this threat between him and the newer group.

      Risking a glance around the corner of the near van, he sighted down the driver’s side flank. Two men using the engine block for cover returned fire from where they crouched by the van’s grille. Bolan ducked back just in time, as bullets sparked and ricocheted from the metal of the rear corner of the vehicle.

      He considered going for foot shots again, but he dared not place himself prone as the other group moved in from the passenger side. Bolan was already outnumbered and was going to be outflanked, if he was not careful.

      The soldier reached into the war bag and found the familiar cylinder of a smoke grenade. The metal was cool to the touch. He drew the canister, popped the ring and let the smoke bomb fly into the midst of the enemy gunners.

      The cloud of acrid purple smoke that erupted was a tribute to Kissinger’s skill with ordnance of that type. It immediately enveloped the shooters, obscuring their view of Bolan. They began firing blindly through the smoke. The Executioner hurried, moving to circle their position. As he did so, he drew the Desert Eagle from its hip holster and jacked the hammer back.

      The first of the shooters burst from the cloud of smoke, assault rifle blazing. Bolan put him down with a single shot to the head from the big .44 Magnum pistol. The next man came, and the next, but they were blinded by the smoke, shooting wildly, their rounds far off the mark. The Executioner stood his ground and, gun in each hand, shot each man as he cleared the cloud of purple haze.

      The gunners weren’t stupid or suicidal. As soon as they figured out what was happening, the parade of half-blinded men stopped.

      Then a grenade rolled out of the smoke.

      Bolan didn’t pause, didn’t deliberate and didn’t question his instincts. He simply kicked the bomb under the closer van and ran.

      The explosion rocked the cargo van, pushing the nose up into the air as if the vehicle were rearing back on its hind axle. Thrown onto his stomach on the asphalt, Bolan felt the sudden wave of heat on his back. The breath was forced from his lungs and he lost his grip on his weapons. The spray of glass, plastic and metal fragments pelted his neck with tiny needles. There was no time to check himself for injuries, though he felt blood trickling down the back of his shirt.

      Some sixth sense, some combat instinct—or perhaps just his awareness of the nature of battle—warned the Executioner that death was coming for him. He rolled over onto his back in time to see another man stagger through the last wisps of purple smoke. He had no weapon that Bolan could see. Blood trailed from his ears and his face was burned. He had been too close to the explosion, apparently.

      Fixing Bolan with a hateful glare, the wounded man came straight for him. Bolan crabbed backward but had no time to regain his feet. The olive-skinned man landed on him, causing pain to shoot through Bolan’s battered ribs and up his lacerated back.

      Fingers wrapped around Bolan’s throat. The weight pressing down on his stomach forced from him what little breath he had managed to regain. Suddenly he was fighting simply to draw air, dark clouds swirling around the edges of his vision.

      The man on top of the soldier was screaming in what might have been Farsi. It might also have been simple gibberish; he was clearly mad with pain. Bolan could see burned skin peeling from his attacker’s face as the man roared his fury.

      The Executioner’s hand fell to the right front pocket of his blacksuit pants. There, clipped inside his pocket, was a tactical folding knife with a wickedly serrated hawkbill blade. Bolan’s hand clenched around the textured plastic handle of the knife and yanked it free. As he did so, his thumb found the hole cut into the blade. He snapped the folding knife open and heard it lock into place.

      The attacker’s eyes widened as the blade flashed into his view. Then he screamed. The Executioner brought the serrated blade down and across the man’s arm, working his way around the arm closer to his strong side. As the grip on his neck loosened, Bolan arched his back, ignoring the pain it caused. He threw the shrieking would-be killer off his chest and rolled over with the man, taking the dominant position.

      The attacker was struggling to pull a pistol, apparently forgotten until that moment, from his belt. The Executioner’s knife flashed once across the man’s neck. He died, loudly, and Bolan released the knife, snatching the gun from its position in the dead man’s belt.

      Bolan rose to a half-kneeling position, checking his immediate field of vision and also risking a quick glance behind him. His trained, experienced gaze missed nothing—a quick look was all he needed to assess the situation. Then he ejected the magazine in the pistol, checked it and slammed it home again. Press-checking the pistol showed him a 9 mm round in the chamber.

      The pistol, which Bolan had first thought to be a SIG, was in reality a PC-9. He needed no reference book to call up what he knew of the handgun. Battlefield experience had made him a walking encyclopedia of firearms data. The weapon was an unlicensed, unauthorized copy of the SIG-Sauer P-226—and it was manufactured in Iran.

      His own guns were somewhere on the pavement, but there was no time to look for them. Figures were moving through the pall of black smoke cast by the twisted, burning wreckage of the first van. Bolan detected police sirens in the distance. The clock had run out. He was out of time, his targets slipping that much farther out of his reach, and this fight wasn’t over.

      Again employing his gliding, half-crouching fighting gait, the Executioner moved through the smoke to the opposite side of the remaining van. A man holding an assault rifle saw him and drew down on him. Bolan put a single 9 mm round between his eyes.

      As he closed on the van and on the shooter’s position, Bolan caught movement from the corner of his eye. He turned in time to intercept a rush of men rounding the passenger side of the van’s grille. He fired quickly in a two-handed grip, first one, then another, and another. The first man fell with a bullet through his brain. The second was clawing at his throat where Bolan’s 9 mm bullet had pierced his neck; the light was already fading from his eyes as he fell to his knees, gurgling and trying to scream. The third man took a slug directly through his heart. He was dead before he finished falling over.

      There were still shooters beyond the van, the last of the armed resistance. They fired at Bolan, but the angle was wrong. Both the soldier and his enemies were using the van as the only available cover between them, which meant the gunners had to be content with chewing