“One of the punks was fussing with some shit and tried to get our boys to move aside,” Weaver answered. “We’re just having a little fun. They won’t hurt him. Much.”
Bolan caught the grin on Weaver’s face. “I don’t like bullies. Or racists,” the Executioner growled.
Weaver’s eyes flashed in confusion moments before Bolan pierced his windpipe with the Karambit blade he’d slipped out of a sideways sheath on his belt. The Karambit was a hooked talon of steel with a ring at one end. That ring was at an angle where he could put his finger through it to grant a more secure hold on the blade and gain better leverage. The blade reminded Bolan of an eagle’s beak or a velociraptor’s deadly killing claw. Either way, it parted flesh and the tough, cartilaginous material of Weaver’s windpipe. A savage twist and yank left the team leader in free fall back against the railing of the boat.
“What the fuck?” a mercenary called, confused, as he saw his boss collapse to the deck clutching a crimson fountain at his throat.
Bolan was on the confused gunman in two strides and slashed the hooked talon across the middle of the man’s face, splitting flesh to the bone and popping an eyeball. The guy shrieked in horror and agony, but the Executioner put all of that to an end with a draw of the Beretta from shoulder leather. The silenced machine pistol burped a single 9 mm pill up under the mauled mercenary’s chin and flicked his hat from its perch on his scalp.
Others to the rear of the vessel heard the sounds of confusion and the thuds of the bodies that tumbled to the deck, and looked away from a bloodied, roughed-up Riley. Dozens of eyes locked on Bolan as he took down a third man. The Executioner had plunged the Karambit into the man’s clavicle and then ripped from one side to the other, the blade above the neck of his target’s body armor to carve blood vessels and muscle freely. A fourth hardman who’d reached dazedly for the pistol he wore in a thigh holster dropped to the deck, a 9 mm bullet through his kneecap. An easy head shot from the Executioner finished him off.
As one, the surviving men surged forward. They were in shock and uncoordinated, some not quite secure in the belief of the carnage before them. Audacity produced shock in the assembled killers, and Bolan seized upon that. He kicked one man in the chest with all of his strength. The mercenary wobbled off balance and back into the surge of hired guns behind him. Suddenly six men were off balance instead of one.
The Executioner flipped the 93R to 3-round-burst mode and swept the staggered group with three quick bursts. Faces erupted in geysers of gore, brains scrambled as the suppressed Beretta hammered out its deadly rhythm. Bolan twirled the Karambit, got it off his index finger and whipped it at another of Flyright’s guns for hire. The blade was not a good throwing knife, but the round ring bounced off a broken nose and left his target stunned.
Bolan cleared the Desert Eagle from hip leather and followed a swat of steel to the face with a .44 Magnum round to the throat. These mercenaries had body armor, so the Executioner had to focus on head shots, or find other ways around their bullet resistance. The Desert Eagle hammered a shot through one man’s shoulder, striking where only a few layers of Kevlar looped to hold up the more reinforced torso shell. Blood fountained as the wounded gunman spun.
Another took a Magnum impact in center of mass, and it stopped him in his tracks. In the meantime, the enemy opened up with their weapons. Handgun fire caught the poor bastards stuck between the Executioner and the shooters in their backs. Some dropped immediately with a bullet through the base of their skulls, others stumbled to the deck with arms ripped apart.
Bolan booted one more man in the crotch. Very few militia wannabes thought about a protective shield for their groin. A bullet would prove fatal in the right part of an enemy’s groin, but right now Bolan needed his firepower for deadlier targets. The gunner went to his knees, testicles burst by the steel toe of the Executioner’s boot. Bullets plunked into Bolan’s center of mass, and though the wind was knocked from him, his armor kept his rib cage intact.
The Beretta and Desert Eagle barked and boomed until they ran dry, and by this time, there were five of the mercenaries left. Bolan let the pistols drop to the deck and grabbed the gun hand of the closest shooter. He drove the muzzle toward the guy’s four compatriots, and Bolan forced his trigger finger back. One man died instantly as a .45 bullet punched through his temple, brains erupting from a gaping cavity in the other side of his skull.
Another of the mercenaries had the wherewithal to fire at Bolan’s face level, but he had a living shield. Had was the operative word here. The sharpshooter took off the face of the Executioner’s captive, slowing and deflecting the bullet meant to stop the suddenly deadly killer in their midst. Bolan pulled the corpse’s lifeless trigger finger again, this .45 meant for the guy who nearly domed him.
One round slapped the very top of the mercenary’s vest, slowing him. The Executioner rode the recoil of the .45 and yanked the dead man’s trigger a third time. The gunman’s jaw split violently as a heavy slug struck his chin, punched through his tongue and took out the top of his spine. Bolan swung the corpse in his hands toward the last two mercenaries who rushed to reload their handguns. He ripped the fighting knife from the vest sheath of one of the gunmen as they worked their slides.
“Bad choice of placement,” Bolan said as he returned the combat knife to its owner, down into his rib cage. He cranked the handle of the knife to make sure he tore apart bronchial arteries in the guy’s lung. With his other hand, he grabbed the dying goon’s pistol and fired two shots into the groin of the last merc. The man folded over in agony, and Bolan finished the gruesome battle with one bullet to the now exposed back of the neck.
Riley gasped in horror at the sight of the Executioner, triumphant over a group of armed killers. Bolan’s face was spattered with blood, and his armored vest was in tatters where bullets had shredded pockets before being stopped by reinforced Kevlar and carbon-fiber chain mail beneath. He ached, but the battered young crewman was alive.
“Get to the bridge,” Bolan said. “You’re safe now.”
“You...”
“I know what I just did. Get to someone who can take care of your injuries,” Bolan told him.
“My injuries? Who’s got you?” Riley asked.
Bolan gave the guy a ghost of a smile then sat on a crate of long guns. “I’ll be okay.”
* * *
“The Ajax is arriving,” Joseph Burns announced, pulling Morris Flyright from his meditation. The evangelist watched his father on a wide-screen TV. The sound was off, because the religious pap that poured from the elder Flyright’s lips was far from the beliefs that guided him. Sure, his dad had some good ideas, like shunning and ostracizing the queers and the coloreds, but then there was all of this shit about forgiveness, submission, duty to fellow men.
“The Ajax?” Flyright murmured. He turned off the television. “Oh, the last boat carrying in troops for me.”
Burns was the head of security on Dolphin Island. So far, he’d done a good job of coordinating and organizing the extra gunmen into a ring of fire and steel to meet the crusader who’d just threatened him. “Something’s weird, though. They’re a half hour late, and nobody is hailing us on the radio.”
“Nothing on the radio?” Flyright asked. “Get some—”
“We’ve got sharpshooters on the dock. Scopes are trained on the boat, but they’re still too far out to make out any more than heads on deck,” Burns said.
“How much firepower do we have on the island?” Flyright asked. “We might just have to blow that tub out of the water.”
“You think we’ve been compromised? I mean, there’s supposed to be twenty men on board. I don’t think your crusader could have cleared them out and replaced them...”
“I want rockets and grenades to destroy that thing before it docks,” Flyright said. “He’s on board!”
Burns seemed to waver for a moment, but realized that Flyright was co
rrect. There was something seriously wrong with the Ajax and its approach.
Burns excused himself.
Flyright had a new gun to replace the Desert Eagle he’d left on his office floor. It was a big fat Glock .45, and even though it carried two columns of nearly half-inch slugs, it fit better in his hand than the big cannon. The bandage around his palm proved little hindrance to handling the weapon.
He was tempted to turn the television back on, but the approach of the Ajax, taken over or not, had his nerves on edge. Flyright gritted his teeth. All of this over a fucking abortion clinic? Who the hell came to the defense of a baby-murdering doctor? Who targeted a man of God and his chosen warriors? What kind of hubris did this crusader bear?
He aimed the .45 at his reflection in the black television screen, squeezed the trigger and rode out its recoil. The bullet splintered the screen, produced a crater where the fat bullet hit. Flyright looked at his reflection, then weighed the pain of the recoil in his hand. It was totally comfortable, much more so than the .50 Magnum round from the other pistol.
Burns ran back into the office, carbine at the low ready. “Sir? Are you all right?”
“Trying out my new toy,” Flyright answered. “Sorry for the drama.”
Burns looked around. He saw the damage done to the big-screen TV. “I understand. Had you fired it before?”
“No. Just getting my hand in. Trigger’s mushy,” Flyright murmured.
“Would you like something else?” Burns asked.
Flyright shook his head. He adjusted the load in the handgun. “No. I like this. Fourteen shots before I have to reload? It’s like one of those pussy 9 mm’s, except, you know, effective.”
Burns chuckled. “Sure thing, sir.”
Something thumped in the distance. Burns raised his carbine and then took Flyright by the wrist. “We need to get you away from a window.”
“What was that?”
“It sounded like a sniper rifle. An anti-materiel rifle to be specific,” Burns told him. “Fifty-caliber, can hit targets at up to two miles away.”
“One of ours?” Flyright asked as Burns led him through the door of his office.
“We don’t have anyone with that here on the island. We’re lucky that we have a couple of grenade launchers and a mortar,” Burns returned. “The Ajax was bringing in more guns and ammo.”
A beefy thwoop resounded. “That’s the mortar.”
“Yes, sir. It should be able to take out the boat,” Burns said.
The head of island security put his finger to the earpiece he wore. His features grew ashen. “Listen, you fucking rain hell on that bitch!”
Suddenly the building shook. Pieces of the ceiling rained to the floor, and both Flyright and Burns stumbled under the sudden upheaval. The security chief threw himself across the back of his boss; plaster filled the hallway. Flyright could only hear the piercing wail of... He couldn’t figure out what it was, until he realized that his head swam and his eyes had trouble focusing.
Burns spoke, but as his lips moved, only murmurs made it past the ringing in the evangelist’s ears.
“What was that?” Flyright asked. Burns spoke, and he could lip-read mortar.
“Don’t understand...”
Burns pulled his boss farther along the hallway from his office, and Flyright looked back. Mangled metal and bones sat in a heap in the middle of the corridor. A chunk of the ceiling and roof was gone entirely. He blinked and could hear more.
“The crusader shot the mortar ammunition! He detonated a dozen 81 mm shells on the roof...” Burns said.
Flyright scowled. “You put that many bombs on top of my house? Where they could almost kill me?”
“I didn’t anticipate anyone—”
Flyright grabbed Burns by the collar. “Listen, Weasel lips. I hired you to lead an army if you had to! You almost blew me up!”
“—Needed line of sight...”
Flyright backhanded Burns. “What about the grenade launchers?”
“I don’t know!” Burns replied. He pried Flyright’s hand from his shirt, eyes hot with rage. “You put hands on me again—”
Flyright pulled the trigger on the .45 and Burns’s face disappeared in a cloud of scarlet. He staggered away from the dead man, wiped the gore from his eyes and looked down at the dead security chief. “You don’t threaten me. Nobody threatens me!”
He fired three more shots into the fallen man. “Not you. Not some self-righteous bastard who says I can’t kill some abortionist.”
Flyright realized that he’d cut off his only means of monitoring the men he’d hired to fight for him. He pulled the earpiece out of Burns’s ear, then followed the cord down to the radio unit and pried it out of the pocket in the man’s vest. He tucked the piece in.
“We’re getting slaughtered out here! We need more men at the dock!”
Something loud exploded on the other end of the radio and Flyright flinched.
He stumbled past the wreckage of the mortar nest in the hallway and returned to his office. Through the window, he could see the distant outline of a boat on the horizon.
Flyright looked around, found a pair of binoculars and tried to focus on the bobbing point that had grown a little in size. He couldn’t make out anything.
The guards at the dock ran for their lives, toward the wall surrounding the mansion’s gardens. One of them jerked violently. A cavity the size of a grapefruit showed sunlight through his torso, and he flew to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
“What in the name of—”
Another of the fleeing dock guards lost his head, his body continuing on two steps before it collapsed to the ground.
The phone on Flyright’s desk rang. He looked at it, eyes wide in horror. It continued to warble for seven rings before the radio in his ear hissed with static.
“If you’re not going to answer the phone, let’s see if you’re listening to your tactical radio network,” a familiar voice growled over the radio.
“Who are you?” Flyright asked.
“Your judgment,” Mack Bolan answered. “You ordered your guards to shoot into a crowd of innocent people earlier. A girl is fighting for her life in an ICU because of you.”
“Who the fuck cares?” Flyright challenged.
A chunk of wall exploded, cinder-block crumbs peppering the evangelist.
“I care. And I have a .50-caliber sniper rifle that reaches farther than the guns of your men can reach,” Bolan answered. “You’ve caused death and destruction. You’ve burned down churches and communities that don’t fall into lockstep with your insane ambitions. Now, I’m here.”
A hole the size of a human fist had been smashed through the wall. Flyright wanted to do something, but he spoke to a phantom who hurled thunderbolts from the edge of perception.
“You called together your people to stop me, and by my count, you’ve lost a half dozen on shore, and everyone on this boat,” Bolan said. “I’m one man against your surviving forces, but know this—they don’t stand a chance, and there’s nowhere you can hide on this island. Your reign of terror is over, and I’m here to make you pay.”
Flyright dropped the radio and ran into the hall.
Chapter Fourteen
Mack Bolan heard Flyright disconnect from the radio call. The Ajax was a mile from shore, and Pierce held the vessel on a steady course toward the dock. One of the mercenaries had brought along a .50-caliber Barrett M-107. Though in most hands, the rifle had a reach of 2000 meters, or nearly one and a quarter miles, a trained sniper could use the weapon in an indirect fire mode. Bolan took in the curvature of the earth, and trusted the light breezes to have a minimal effect on the one-ounce bullets the rifle fired. He proved able to arc his shots so that they landed on top of his targets.
Against human beings, the massive projectiles were absolutely deadly. No amount of b
ody armor worn by a soldier had proved capable of defeating their massive momentum. These rifles were intended to destroy vehicles and enemy ammunition. Bolan, through the high-magnification scope atop the Barrett, had spotted the crates of mortar ammunition that sat next to the light artillery atop the mansion. The mortar crew tried to blast the Ajax, but Captain Pierce had the throttle on full, and the 81 mm shells that could have killed everyone on board splashed harmlessly in the ship’s wake.
Now, they were less than a thousand yards from the dock.
“How hard do you want me to push this barge?” Pierce called up to the roof of the wheelhouse.
“Slow down. You can tie up there.”
“Didn’t you say there were about fifty mercenaries on the island?” Pierce asked.
“That number has been greatly reduced,” Bolan replied.
“You are a scary bastard. You know that, right?” Pierce called.
Bolan didn’t feel particularly scary. His chest hurt despite his body armor, and the intensity of the past forty-eight hours seeped into his bones. He stretched out his tensed muscles and scanned the shore. Anyone who had been on the roof of the mansion or the dock was long gone. He’d scattered corpses along the dock and on the beach. The Barrett had reach, and Bolan had plenty of time to hammer the enemy. The rooftop explosion destroyed bodies, so he didn’t know how many he’d taken out up there.
He got down from the wheelhouse and picked up his rifle/grenade launcher combination. He’d hooked magazine pouches from dead men onto his battered load-bearing vest, and figured he’d had around five hundred rounds of ammunition for the M-27, and a dozen 40 mm grenades for the launcher. The weight of all of that firepower was thankfully distributed along his tall frame and off his broad shoulders.
Eight hundred yards and closing. Still out of range for his weaponry. Nobody from the island fired. Anyone with a .30 cal, which had the reach, was either hiding or dead. Bolan’s .50-caliber barrage struck fear into the mercenaries’ hearts. He knelt on the bow and scanned the shore with his binoculars.
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