Nightmare Army. Don Pendleton

didn’t hear any sort of alarm or doors opening did he whisper, “Striker is down. Overshot primary landing zone, had to go for secondary. No injuries.” He began to stuff the paraglider into his backpack.

      “You’re a good half klick from your target and you have to improvise a way past his house guards. And the sun’s about to come up.”

      Bolan glanced east and confirmed Kurtzman’s biggest concern—the sky on the horizon was already shaded with pink and orange from the oncoming daybreak. “Then I better move out.”

      “Striker, you don’t think we should abort?”

      “Absolutely not, Bear. Look, I’m here now. Even if we called it off, I’d have to get out somehow anyway, so I might as well get what I came for before I do.” Bolan shrugged out of his harness and added it to the backpack, which he hid beneath one of the water tower’s steel legs.

      “Well, watch your ass,” Kurtzman said. “The way this op started, it wouldn’t surprise me if you tripped, fell off the roof and broke your neck.”

      Despite the circumstances, Bolan couldn’t help grinning at the very real concern he heard under Kurtzman’s grumbling. “Have I ever told you how much I love your optimistic attitude, Bear?”

      “No, ’cause you know better.”

      “Exactly. Striker out.” Trotting to the side of the building, Bolan tested the seemingly sturdy ceramic drainpipe that went all the way to the ground. When it didn’t move under his weight, he swung a leg over, braced his feet on the wall and gripped the pipe with both hands as he descended to the ground. Halfway down, the pipe shifted enough to make him stop and wait in case it was coming loose. It didn’t move again, and Bolan reached the alleyway without further incident.

      At this hour the town was still quiet, although Bolan saw lights coming on in various windows as the populace began to wake up. There were still plenty of shadows to hide in, and Bolan made the best of it, flitting from darkness to darkness, all the while keeping an eye on the walls overhead.

      He covered the distance to Sevan’s villa in less than ten minutes and took a position in a narrow alley between what appeared to be a bakery—the smell of bread baking filled his nostrils—and what looked to be either an abandoned or holiday house for someone, with tightly shuttered windows and a securely locked door.

      Bolan’s attention, however, was on the front gate made from thick, black iron bars that guarded the entrance to Sevan’s estate. The rest of the perimeter was enclosed by an eight-foot-high stone fence that had matching vertical iron bars at the top, which were themselves topped by welded spikes sticking out at a forty-five-degree angle. Two guards paced back and forth in front of the gate. Unlike the slackers on the wall, both these guys looked alert and ready. He studied the pair for a few minutes, noticing that although they were definitely on guard, they also seemed oddly distracted. One shook his head every few seconds, as if trying to clear it. The other kept wiping his forehead and cheeks with his sleeve. Viewing them in the monochromatic night vision, Bolan couldn’t tell if either man was flushed or showed any other signs of incapacitation.

      “Striker to Stony Man, I’m going to need that security window and camera break, after all,” he muttered as he melted back into the shadows. “West wall, corner.”

      “Roger that, Striker,” Tokaido replied. “What is your position?”

      By the time the hacker finished replying, Bolan was at the rear corner of the empty house. As he knew from the overhead view, the road cornered at the fence and followed the perimeter. “Ten meters away.”

      “All right...bringing security camera online...”

      Bolan divided his attention between the two guards who had paused by the gate and the steadily lightening eastern sky. “Let’s go, Akira, the sun isn’t going to stop rising.”

      “Just making sure the inside is clear. Won’t help much if you drop down into the arms of a couple goons, now, would it? Okay, go on my mark... Three, two, one, mark.”

      Still mindful of the two guards, Bolan stepped out from cover and walked casually across the street to the corner of the fence, slightly stooped over, even muffling a yawn. Just another early riser heading to work. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw one of the guards look in his direction, but he didn’t turn or quicken his pace in any way as he reached the stone wall.

      The second he was around the corner and out of view, Bolan leaped for the top of the fence, grabbing the rough stone with his gloved hands. Pulling himself up, he threw a leg over, grabbed the row of iron spikes and held there for a few seconds while scoping the inside. True to Tokaido’s word, the immaculate lawn was deserted, with the villa increasingly lit from behind as the sun kept rising. Bolan gave it another five count, then climbed over the spikes and jumped to the ground, staying in the shadows formed by the inside wall corner. The area here was calm, with no breeze.

      “I’m on the grounds,” Bolan reported. “Keep that camera looped for another minute. I’ll contact once I’m inside the building.”

      “Roger that.”

      Drawing an odd weapon that looked like a small paint gun, Bolan removed a plastic vial from a waist pouch and screwed it on to the receiver just ahead of the trigger. Taking his SIG-Sauer in his right hand, he checked right and left one last time, then started down the wall on his left, wanting to be sure he was out of sight of the gate guards before entering the main building.

      He had only taken a few steps when two black-brown shapes trotted around the corner. Upon seeing him, the two Doberman-Rottweiler mixes didn’t snarl or bark, just accelerated into a silent run, muscular legs churning the grass as they sped toward their target.

      Waiting until they were only a few steps away, Bolan squeezed the trigger of the strange pistol in his left hand twice. The gun spit a fine mist into the dogs’ path as they leaped at him. The second they jumped, Bolan dropped to the ground and rolled out of their path. After two turns, he rolled onto his back, brought the real pistol up and aimed at the dogs behind him.

      Deprived of their target, the dogs landed on the ground and turned to come at him again. However they weren’t moving as quickly as before; in fact, both dogs stumbled as they tried to charge at him and ended up sinking back to the ground, whining in confusion as they struggled to get back on their feet. Within a few seconds, both dogs were out cold.

      Bolan got up, careful to stay several feet away from the dissipating cloud of a fast-acting, powerful tranquilizer. With a silenced pistol not all that silent, and dart guns, blowguns or crossbows only able to shoot one projectile at a time, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man Farm’s chief armorer, had come up with the best way to silently eliminate multiple guard animals with minimal risk of injury to the defender. The spray pistol had been extensively tested, and other than wind dispersal, performed excellently in the field.