Plains Of Fire. Don Pendleton

him to the safe house,” Bolan told James. “I’m not finished yet.”

      James glanced back at the carnage that he and Encizo had inflicted with their sabotage efforts. “You’re going to slip in among the Russians?”

      Bolan nodded. “It will take them a few moments before they realize that a third party caused all this ruckus. Hopefully, Bashir’s second in command will take in the surviving Russians.”

      Bolan gave Bashir’s collar a sharp tug as the African militiaman’s eyes grew wide at the sound of his own name. “Yes. I know your name. And I know that Captain Aflaq is your aide and principal bodyguard.”

      “Want me to talk to him?” James asked, pantomiming an injection. With Encizo’s aid, the Phoenix Force medic would undoubtedly strip Bashir’s defenses and whatever intelligence he carried with him via a shot of scopolamine. The drug was a powerful inhibitor, making people more susceptible to questions and suggestion, and James was skilled enough to administer the drug without causing undue cardiac stress.

      “Do it,” Bolan said. “I’ll see if I can get anything on the Russians and the Thunder Lions, then get some wheels and meet you back at the safe house.”

      Encizo helped Bolan push Bashir into the backseat of the Fiat. Bolan’s statement of getting his own wheels wasn’t lost on the Cuban. “Bring me back something nice and shiny.”

      Bolan glanced around. “In this neighborhood?”

      Encizo chuckled. “Take care, Striker.”

      The Executioner whirled and disappeared into the shadows.

      BOLAN FLIPPED OPEN Anatoly’s cell phone and went through the programmed numbers. His limited knowledge of Russian Cyrillic symbols helped him to decipher the dead sentry’s phone book, and he had the name of the man who was likely Anatoly’s field supervisor, a Russian midlevel crime boss named Grigorei. He hit Send, then stuffed a pair of disposable earplugs up his nostrils to add to his planned ruse.

      The phone rang, and Grigorei answered on the third ring.

      “Anatoly?” Grigorei asked.

      “Where is everybody?” Bolan asked, his words slurred and distorted by the earplugs blocking his exhalations. It was a simple means of disguising his voice.

      “Anatoly?” Grigorei asked again. Bolan waited a moment.

      “It’s me,” Bolan answered. “I got smacked in the face with a plank. I think my nose is broken.”

      “Sounds like it,” Grigorei said. “What the hell happened on the gangplank?”

      “I saw a flash of metal in the distance,” Bolan responded. “I thought they were going after the African.”

      Bolan heard Grigorei’s voice, muffled by a hand. “Anatoly is confirming that there were third-party snipers.”

      “That sounds possible,” Aflaq said. “Neither of our groups had pistol-caliber submachine guns, and yet I have wounds on several of my men matching low-powered carbine hits.”

      “Same here,” Grigorei concurred. The Russian’s voice grew clearer as he removed his hand. “Anatoly, where are you?”

      “Hard to tell, all these docks look the same,” Bolan lied. “Especially since all I have is one eye working.”

      “Where is Bashir?” Aflaq’s voice was audible over the speakerphone function of Grigorei’s set.

      “I lost track of him. We got separated. I tried to hold on to him, but he fought too much.” It was a partial truth. Bolan simply omitted the fact that when he became separated from Bashir, it was on dry land and into the custody of Calvin James and Rafael Encizo.

      “Sadly, the major is a poor swimmer,” Aflaq said.

      “I’m sorry,” Bolan returned.

      “I’m sure you are,” Aflaq responded.

      Bolan tensed. He could detect the skepticism in the African militiaman’s voice.

      “We’ll send someone for you,” Grigorei explained. “Head to the nearest access road.”

      “Sure,” Bolan replied. He snapped the cell phone closed and glanced around. He still retained the AK-47 he’d taken from Anatoly, but the assault rifle would make far too much noise. He knelt and dismantled the Beretta 93-R and the Heckler & Koch MP-5. Both the 9 mm handgun and the machine pistol had suppressors mounted on them, and he had to make certain their mechanisms were in good condition. A quick examination confirmed that they were ready for the upcoming fight. The quiet guns would be his advantage. The AK-47’s dunking wouldn’t have proved a problem even if Bolan had swum through sewage thick enough to stand a fork in. The Desert Eagle would require a more intensive inspection, but he didn’t have time for the detail stripping necessary to restore his confidence in the massive handgun.

      He wrapped a length of cloth around his head, covering one eye to give himself as much of a cushion of uncertainty on the part of his enemy as possible. The AK hung in full view, loose on its lanyard. Bolan limped to a corner to maintain his ruse as the battered Anatoly.

      If the voices of Aflaq and Grigorei together hadn’t convinced Bolan that the two factions had reunited in the wake of the freighter’s destruction, then the sight of a jeepload of white and black men sitting side by side and armed to the teeth with assault rifles would have clinched it. Fortunately, the Executioner was fully aware that the surviving gunmen from the covert meeting had banded together. He swept the shadows in alleys, looking for the betraying signs of a jeep heading down a parallel road to flank him.

      Bolan’s hand radio hissed to life through the universal earplug he’d locked into it.

      “We see him,” came a Russian voice. Bolan was glad that when he’d looked through Anatoly’s cell phone, he’d found the emergency alternate frequency for the Russian gangsters’ communication. Sure enough, they doubted the Executioner’s identity as one of their own, because they were speaking over the channel that Anatoly had put into a memo note on his cell phone. As the jeep rolled closer, Bolan bided his time, knowing that his ruse was crumbling rapidly.

      “Is he reacting to you?” Grigorei’s voice asked. “Try to take him alive. We could get some information out of him.”

      “Right, sir,” the gangster in the jeep said.

      That was all the Executioner needed to hear. He whirled, bringing up the silenced MP-5 like a handgun, his other hand tugging his fake bandage aside, then unleathering the Beretta in his shoulder holster. Bolan’s initial salvo of suppressed slugs chugged out of the end of the blunt canister. Since the suppressor only captured the muzzle gases without retarding the velocity of the 9 mm rounds in the magazine, he had opted for extra-heavyweight, subsonic 9 mm rounds—squat, fat barrels of lead with a flat, ugly nose meant for contacting as much enemy flesh as possible, all wrapped around an overweight core of dense tungsten. The Parabellum slugs erupted out of the suppressor at a speed of 1000 feet per second, just slow enough to avoid producing a supersonic crack, but the bullets weighed in at a full 180-grains, more than sufficient to produce the kind of momentum and penetration that made up for the subsonic velocity.

      The jeep’s windshield disintegrated, shattered glass and deformed blobs of lead and tungsten vaulting into the face and chest of the African militiaman at the wheel. The broken windshield carved only minor slashes on the Thunder Lion’s face, but the quiet and deadly bullets smashed through the driver’s rib cage, shattering bone into splinters and tumbling petals of flattened lead whirling like the blades of a lawn mower to slash brutally through lung tissue. The coalition jeep lurched violently as one slug stopped cold in the thick and heavy muscle of the African’s heart, dying reflex causing him to jerk the steering wheel violently to the right. The dead man’s companions scrambled to bring up their assault rifles and return fire, but their formerly steady platform was now out of control, forcing them to pay more attention to hanging on for dear life than opening fire on the