Radical Edge. Don Pendleton

had told Bolan everything he needed to know about the layout.

      There were two skinheads, writhing on the floor, a revolver and a sawed-off shotgun nearby. When the pair heard Bolan’s footfalls, they clawed along the floor for their lost weapons.

      The Executioner walked through a kick to the head of the closer target, which snapped the skinhead’s skull to the side. He couldn’t reach both men in time; the second had his hand wrapped around the cracked wooden grips of the oldest and rustiest revolver Bolan had seen in a long time. A single burst from the Beretta put a stop to that.

      He heard the scream then. Of course. There would be women here. Wherever there was human trash, there were dissolute paramours. Whatever their sins, if the women weren’t skinhead terrorists themselves, they were innocents.

      But there was no way to tell, quickly, which they would be.

      He heard the shuffle of feet on the other side of the plywood wall he faced, almost felt the clack of a shotgun pump being racked. He threw himself to the floor as the blast punched first one, then another, then a third quarter-size hole through the crumbling wood. The shooter was loading deer slugs.

      From his sight angle on the floor, Bolan could see movement behind the slug holes. He waited until the gunman—who was tall and wide enough, from what Bolan could see, that he must be male—blocked the light over all three holes. Bolan heard the sound of the shotgun pump being hauled back again. He lined up his target at the center of the three-hole group and squeezed the Beretta’s trigger.

      The Executioner’s 3-round burst provoked a grunt; the body blocking the holes fell away. Bolan could feel the vibration of the gunman as he dropped to the floorboards.

      The soldier pushed himself back to his feet, staying low. The doorway leading beyond was really just a ragged opening in the plywood walls. It offered no true cover, only concealment. He would have to stay mobile to clear the rest of the house. A spray from an automatic weapon could rip through the entire structure with ease, ending his life while mowing down anyone else who happened to get in the way. That option wasn’t open to Bolan.

      He heard the scream again, followed by an angry retort. That was a male’s voice.

      “Shut up! Stand there! He’s coming!”

      That was all Bolan needed. He had the man’s position fixed and, diving through the doorway, he punched the Beretta up and out from the floor, flicking the selector to single shot as he did so.

      The skinhead, crouched behind a three-legged wooden table, had a naked, bleached-blond, heavily tattooed woman in a headlock. She wriggled and squirmed, trying to escape the line of fire in which her captor had put her. When she screamed again, the would-be domestic terrorist tightened his arm, choking off her cries. The skinhead glared at Bolan. He held a huge Bowie knife in his hand.

      “You just back off, man, or I’ll—”

      Bolan fired.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Bolan’s bullet plowed a furrow through the skinhead’s cheek and kept on going at an angle, blowing his brains out the back of his head. The woman screamed again, falling to her knees as the corpse dragged her to the floor. She had been sprayed with the punk’s blood.

      The soldier reached for her, pushing to one knee. She would need treatment for shock.

      The blade came up in a wild arc that nearly laid open his face, the lightning-bolt SS tattoo on her wrist flashing across Bolan’s vision. He counter-slashed with the barrel of the Beretta, knocking the Bowie knife aside, feeling the edge dig into the steel of the pistol’s slide. He dropped to a crouch and whipped the pistol against the woman’s temple. She bleated once, then folded. The knife she had taken from her dead companion clattered on the floor.

      Boot steps on the plywood floorboards were all the warning Mack Bolan needed. He rolled onto his back and pumped several bursts into the corridor opening as more terrorists approached.

      They boiled through the opening like angry ants, firing without aiming. Two had heavy pistols; a third had a semiauto MAC-11. Bullets tore runnels in the floor, the walls and in the stunned woman on the floor behind Bolan. She yelped once as her fellow terrorists killed her.

      Bolan breathed. He didn’t think about the enemy fire; he didn’t let the urgency of the moment push him to clumsy haste. He simply aimed and fired, aimed and fired. The 20-round magazine shot free as if of its own accord; the spare magazine rose in his off hand in a single, fluid movement. Then he was racking the slide as he rolled through the filth and debris on the floor of the house, coming up to engage the enemy, pulling the Beretta in close to his body.

      He fired from retention, blasting away as the skinheads crashed into him, colliding with him in their panicked rush. He heard the grunt of the first man’s death as 9 mm hollowpoint rounds from the Beretta tore into the skinhead’s gut three at a time. The weight of the collision bore the Executioner back to the floor, under the dying man, his blood soaking them both.

      “Get him! Get him!” someone shouted.

      “Renny’s in the way!”

      “Screw Renny! Kill the bastard!”

      Bolan rolled the hapless and dying Renny off his chest to the side. From his back, he had only his legs to protect him. It was enough. As the pair continued to push toward him, dumbly rushing on top of him, he snapped a savage piston kick into the closer man’s shin. His heavy combat boot struck with enough force to produce an audible crack.

      The scream the skinhead made was inhuman. Bolan drew his Beretta through an arc that covered both the screaming man and the confused skinhead behind him. He pulled the trigger twice for each, taking them out of play.

      Covered in blood, sawdust and pieces of trash, Bolan surged to his feet. He was nearly through the doorway to the rear of the house when yet another skinhead terrorist collided with him, this one from behind.

      Instinct had Bolan swiveling before the skinhead could complete the attack. He fired the Beretta empty as the terrorist, an enormous bodybuilder type wearing only camouflage pants, smashed him against one of the plywood walls. The skinhead roared and pulled a double-edged dagger from a leather sheath on his belt.

      The Executioner was faster.

      He opened his hand and let the Beretta fall away. From his waistband he drew the black-coated Sting dagger. Locking his left hand in an iron grip on the skinhead’s knife arm, he succeeded in stopping the blade as it slashed toward him. The wounded bodybuilder howled again, his eyes bulging with shock and pain.

      Bolan’s knife stabbed into a brick wall. The barrier constricted and now the soldier’s own wrist was being crushed under his opponent’s left hand. The two men were frozen like that for an instant, the terrorist’s strength slowly ebbing from his wounded body, his breath coming in rasps and snarls as he tried to bull Bolan over with his superior size.

      The soldier had been careful to position his hand on the terrorist’s upper arm, where the dagger could not catch him. The skinhead had taken no such precaution. Bolan curled his dagger around the other man’s wrist, carving his way through and out of his viselike grip.

      The bodybuilder didn’t react as Bolan cut to the bone. The man’s tendons gave way, and as they did so, his grip on Bolan’s arm released. The Executioner shoved the knife deep into his flank, jamming the short, double-edged blade in and out.

      Finally, the skinhead’s strength gave out. His resistance dissolved and he crashed to the floor like a felled tree.

      Bolan left the knife lodged in his enemy, scooped up the Beretta and dropped to one knee, ready to slam the other into the dying skinhead’s chest, should he rally and try for another charge. The rattle that caught and churned in the big man’s throat belied any horror-movie last stands. Bolan waited nonetheless, listening carefully for some sign of further resistance.

      He counted off a full two minutes in his head. Most men thought themselves patient, but given a full minute