Crucial Intercept. Don Pendleton

littered the street and curb. Those were not the sounds that worried Bolan most.

      The police sirens were growing louder; the local authorities would be on the scene in moments. The Executioner did not dare let that happen. Deadly experience, always his guide, told him that the first thing the Farsi-speaking shooters would do, if confronted by police cars, would be to turn their automatic weapons on the law-enforcement officers. Though perhaps well-trained and well-equipped, the cops would not be prepared to roll straight into a barrage of automatic gunfire. Even a S.W.A.T. team would have a hard time coping with so sudden a burst of violence, and the new arrivals were likely road patrol responding to numerous calls of shots fired.

      The Executioner had cut a bloody swath through the ranks of the criminal underworld and the international terrorism scene during his endless war for justice. Regardless of the side of the law on which he operated—and he’d spent plenty of time exacting a righteous toll on society’s predators on the “wrong” side of law and government, whenever that had been necessary to get the job done—he had done so while always respecting one rule above all else. He would not take innocent life, and he would not take the life of a law-enforcement officer who was simply doing his or her duty.

      Given that, Bolan would no sooner allow those law-enforcement officers to stumble blindly into a killing field that was partly of his own making. It would be like herding cattle through the gates of an abattoir.

      Bolan scooped up a fallen assault rifle and snatched two magazines from the belt of the dead man who had wielded the weapon.

      The weapon was one he knew, but which he had not encountered often. It was a Khaybar KH 2002, a bullpup weapon based internally on the M-16 A-1 that looked like an ungainly cross between a Steyr AUG and a French FAMAS. He checked the rounds in the magazines by simple eye—this rifle fired the same 5.56 mm round as did the rifles that had inspired its design.

      The Executioner took only a second to verify that the weapon was chambered and ready. Then, holding the rifle close to his body, he threw himself prone and rolled across the pavement, his head pointing toward the enemy.

      The enemy gunners saw him but had been waiting for a target at waist level. Their fire went high and, before they could compensate, Bolan unleashed a series of tightly controlled bursts from the muzzle of the futuristic-looking rifle.

      The 5.56 mm rounds tore through the knot of men, splaying them in every direction. One of them screamed; the others died silently. The screamer managed to clench the pistol grip of a small submachine gun as he left this world. The rounds it discharged caused Bolan to flinch from a fresh spray of sharp asphalt shards that drew blood from his cheek.

      The gunfire echoed away at last. Bolan got to his feet, the Khaybar stock tight against his shoulder. He moved quickly and cautiously forward and around the vehicle, checking every direction with fast glances side-to-side and behind him. There was no more movement from among the gunmen. He had killed them all.

      The first of the police cars reached him, LED light bars strobing, sirens howling. Immediately, officers threw open their doors and leveled their pistols at Bolan, shouting for him to drop his weapon and make no sudden moves.

      The Executioner held the rifle up over his head in both hands. The shouting continued.

      “I am an agent of the United States Justice Department,” he said very deliberately, emphasizing each syllable so they could hear him over their sirens. “I have engaged these men to—”

      “Shut up!” one of the officers ordered. Two more came up on either side, all of them keeping a prudent distance from the soldier. “Place your weapon very slowly on the pavement!”

      Bolan did so. “I am an agent of the United States Justice Department,” he repeated patiently. This was nothing he had not endured before. “I have credentials and identification on my person.”

      “Hands behind your head!” the officer shouted again. “Interlace your fingers! Do it now!”

      Bolan did as instructed. He was seized, cuffed none too gently and then patted down. The frisk was halted abruptly when the officer realized just how many pouches and pockets the blacksuit had, and how many of these had something lethal in them. His war bag, still slung over his shoulder, was brimming with things that would give an ATF agent apoplexy. Bolan could only imagine how the police would react when they got to that.

      “Holy shit,” one of the cops muttered. “This guy is loaded.” He called for the other two officers, the ones who had braced Bolan. The soldier was half pulled, half dragged upright and escorted to a police cruiser. There, his war bag was placed heavily on the trunk as the officer resumed the frisk. The two backup men held their weapons on Bolan the entire time.

      The sat phone Bolan carried, which was now on the trunk in a growing pile of his personal weapons and accessories, began to vibrate, skittering across the trunk a few inches as it did so.

      That was probably the Farm. Once he spoke to them, word would get passed to Hal Brognola that he would need to intercede, yet again, on Bolan’s behalf. The big Fed had logged far too many hours of his life calming anxious representatives of local law enforcement who did not take kindly to Bolan’s wars waged through their bailiwicks.

      Brognola was probably in the middle of having breakfast. Bolan imagined this would ruin his appetite.

      3

      Bolan sat in the open side doorway of the one intact cargo van, turning the small submachine gun over in one hand. He had his sat phone open and against his ear. Barbara Price’s voice, as sexy as ever to him despite her all-business tone, came clearly across the scrambled link to Stony Man Farm.

      “Cowboy verified it based on the photos you snapped and transmitted to us,” Price said. “The weapon is an MPT9K—an Iranian copy of the Heckler & Koch MP-5 K. That makes it a clean sweep, Striker. He says your identifications of the rifle and the pistol you picked up were dead-on.”

      The Executioner was not surprised. After a tense half hour during which he had been allowed, on the strength of his Justice credentials, to contact Brognola, who then placed an immediate call back to the police department and local FBI offices, Bolan had been released. The grudging attitude of the officer who had cuffed him hadn’t prevented the man from doing his job in an efficient manner, especially after his own superiors had contacted him and doubly confirmed what Bolan had tried to tell him.

      The soldier’s weapons and personal effects had been returned to him, at which point Bolan asserted Justice’s jurisdiction, at least at the outset. The officers had stood back while he used the digital camera in his sat phone to snap pictures of the dead men, their equipment, and the scene of the destruction Bolan had wrought on the street. He had transmitted them to the Farm for analysis.

      A crime-scene team had since taken over, scouring the area and tagging and bagging anything that wasn’t nailed down. Once he had his photographs, Bolan had no further need to take charge of the aftermath of the fight. He was content to let the Farm run diplomatic interference behind the scenes. A great deal of covering up of the true nature of the shooters would likely have to be done, if reports of further terrorist shootings were to be averted. Already, several media crews were being kept at bay by uniformed officers wielding collapsible roadblocks and what appeared to be several miles of yellow caution tape.

      “I’m done here,” Bolan informed Price.

      “We’ll transmit directions to your phone’s GPS application, as usual,” Price said. “I assume you’re headed toward Norfolk.”

      “Yes, since that’s the direction our boy was heading when I stumbled into this. You can get the field team moving there, if you haven’t already.”

      “They’re well on their way,” Price confirmed. “They’ll beat you there and will act as our advance eyes and ears. Maybe we can yet get you ahead of the Iranians.”

      “Iranians?” Bolan asked. “We have confirmation?” While all the weapons the shooters had used were Iranian, and rare enough in the United States, he would not assume