Bolan was counting on speed and audacity to get his work done. The Zastava was suited for such action. He stuffed the muzzle through the canvas curtains over the doorway, using it as a spear to cleave his way into the firelit room. Men rose, scrambling and crying out at the sight of the Executioner, tall and fearsome with his hands and face smeared black with grease paint, clad head to toe in black clothing and black military gear.
“On the ground now!” he shouted in Arabic, repeating the sharp command that Laith had taught him.
Some dropped at the sound of his bellowing voice, but others weren’t buying orders, even from Death himself.
One robed thug was scrambling for a rifle in the corner, but a more immediate threat was a second man, pulling his knife and charging, letting out a shrill scream of challenge. Bolan swung his weapon around and stroked the trigger. A blistering salvo of slugs smashed into the attacker, ripping him from crotch to beard, sending him flying backward. In the enclosed space, the roar of the short rifle was staggering.
The guy reaching for the rifle stopped short at the thunderstorm that signaled the gore-splashed demise of his comrade, shock widening his eyes. Bolan tracked the PVC-piped muzzle of the Zastava around to catch the gunner, but the Taliban rifleman got his weapon and dived into the next room as bullets smashed the wall where he had been moments before.
“Laith, keep these guys honest,” Bolan shouted, pointing to the prisoners.
There was a moment of conflict in the younger man’s face as he watched the doorway through which Bolan’s quarry disappeared. The Executioner respected that the Afghan fighter acknowledged his responsibilities over glory. There still was the danger that the moment Bolan left the room, his presence would no longer cow the trembling Taliban supporters face-down on the floor.
Bolan didn’t envy Laith’s task should a melee take place. He plunged through the doorway, hit a shoulder roll and kept tight to the ground. His low-down approach kept him alive to fight another day as not one but three muzzle-flashes lit up the hallway, bullets chewing into the door frame as he tumbled past it. Throwing himself on his stomach, the Executioner brought up his rifle and triggered off four short bursts, sweeping the darkness where he remembered the muzzle flashes originating.
Only one cry of agony answered Bolan’s hellstorm of fire. The soldier cursed, knowing that he was in the open, his position given away by the harsh flare of his rifle’s muzzle, and flat on his belly with his hands full. A shadow swung around the corner, and wild gunfire ripped all along the hallway, still at chest height as the enemy muzzle-flash bobbed up and down as if to the beat of some macabre sing-along. With a hard shove, Bolan pushed himself to one side in time to avoid a blast of slugs that chewed along the floor he was slumped on. He abandoned his rifle and watched as impacts propelled the weapon down the hall.
Bolan’s hand had dropped to his thigh, grabbing for the holstered .44 Magnum Taurus when, over the ringing in his ears, he heard the metallic thunk of a canister bouncing off wood. Looking up, he saw the unmistakable shape of a fragmentation grenade thumping toward him.
3
The sound of AK-47s going off was Rosenberg’s signal to get up and charge toward the squat hovel that the Taliban suspects had chosen to call home. She recognized one of the two men making the assault on the thugs inside, and even though she had watched him battle a mine complex full of heavily armed killers, she couldn’t sit idly by and watch him risk a chestful of rifle fire in conflict with a room full of hashed-up terrorists.
On her heels Sergeant Wesley was grunting and huffing as he tried to match his long strides with her short, pumping legs. Over her LASH headset, she listened to Montenegro shouting about rules of engagement and Captain Blake.
There was a time to play by the rules, she thought.
And there was a time to play it like the man she knew as Striker.
Usually, that time came the moment the big mystery soldier strode onto the scene, making his presence felt like a herd of bison crashing across a plain.
A firefight was blazing inside, but nobody was making a break for it. She reached the front in time to see a figure fly backward out the door, his rifle blazing as the canvas draping the entrance fluttered closed. She struck the wall beneath the window, crouching. She watched as Wesley, not even pausing, bent and scooped up the lithe young form with the rifle and dragged him away from the doorway in time to avoid a hail of gunfire punching through the curtains.
“What?” she heard the fighter say as he realized he was being handled like a rag doll.
The thunderous sound of gunshots filled the air from the other side of the opening. A heartbeat later, a tall lean figure burst through the curtain, pistols in each hand. The compression wave and its subsequent debris cloud chased the diving form of the man as he somersaulted away from the doorway.
He came up, almost like a snake in his speed and agility, leveling two long-barreled guns at her, but only for a heartbeat before raising the muzzles skyward.
“I figure at least two gunners are making a break for it out the back,” he said. “We need someone to interrogate in case nobody survived the explosion.”
Rosenberg watched him in amazement for a moment, then pressed her throat mike tighter to her voice box. “Sergeant Montenegro, we need suppression fire. No fatalities.”
The Special Forces weapons officer had quit complaining about rules of engagement and answered with a terse “Affirmative.”
The night lit up as in the distance, Montenegro’s Squad Automatic Weapon spewed a line of heavy fire across the darkness. Rosenberg looked back and saw that the warrior was gone, vanished like a shadow.
“Go get ’em Striker,” she whispered.
MACK BOLAN’S EYES FOCUSED on the grenade in an instant, the bouncing hellbomb grabbing his attention in an almost fatal stranglehold.
Almost.
The grenade’s pull ring and spoon were still locked in place, despite the rolling jumps it was making toward him. Bolan had used a similar tactic many times in the past, throwing a grenade with the pin still in it to flush out an enemy into shooting range.
Instead, Bolan held his ground. He fisted the Taurus as he got up from all fours, and lowered his hand to scoop the RPG-1 grenade as it came to him. Throwing himself against the near wall, he thumbed the pin loose from the miniblaster and launched it back where it came from.
Gunfire erupted wildly in the main room, and the Executioner caught a glimpse of Laith in full retreat, blasting away. His voice, almost smothered by the roar of his rifle blazing in full fury, was shouting warnings. The body of one Taliban supporter jerked violently under a salvo of savage strikes, fatal impacts driving the dead man’s corpse into two of his allies.
The Executioner straight-armed the Taurus. He drew the NP228 with his free hand and pumped the triggers of both handguns to lay down a wall of bullets that crashed into the disorganized gunmen while their backs were still to him. He plunged through the room, the mighty .44 Magnum empty but still clicking as he pulled the trigger, the 9 mm weapon still spitting its quiet payloads of death. He was out the door just as the grenade went off. The fatal blast radius of the grenade was ten yards, and Bolan wasn’t sticking around to be sliced to ribbons by hurtling shrapnel.
The whole event took moments, and Bolan dived into a shoulder roll, tumbling so as to reverse himself and not present his back to the enemies he knew were behind him.
What he didn’t expect was