Flyright’s family, his wife and children, had been tracked by their cell phones. The kids were at a boarding school. The wife was in Pensacola, Florida, attending a gala function with a “respectable” country music songstress.
There were indications that Mrs. Flyright was highly dissatisfied with her husband, and all men in general, but Flyright kept her as his arm candy, a trophy in the purest sense. The embarrassment of his wife cheating on him with another woman must have been a big part of Flyright’s ever-fraying nerves and delusions. Such inadequacy had manifested in a god complex, according to Carmen Delahunt, one of Stony Man’s hackers and an FBI veteran who had more than a fair share of profiling experience. Evidence of the psychotic break and a belief in his above-the-law status reached back years, maybe even before his father’s passing.
Insanity didn’t excuse Flyright’s sins, nor did it mitigate the need to put him down. Bolan was glad that his family was scattered far and away from the mansion. He was also concerned about the mansion’s nonparamilitary staff. They had been located via the Farm’s monitoring of cell phones and they’d been kicked out of the grounds by the armed security.
The only ones who would face danger besides the Executioner and his enemy were crewmen of the Ajax. Luckily, they were former navy personnel and they had weapons training. Out of all of the rifles the mercenaries had brought, Pierce and his men opted for the AR-15.
“You need any more help, we’re here,” Riley told Bolan.
He shook the young man’s hand. “Just keep yourselves safe. The minute you drop me off, pull back from shore.”
“You’re outnumbered,” Riley protested.
Bolan glanced pointedly at the blood-slicked deck.
“Yeah. You cleared those bastards out, but you took a lot of hits,” Riley told him.
Bolan tapped his chest. “My body armor took most of it. Plus, I thinned the herd.”
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” Riley asked. “Stupid question. Of course you have.”
“A couple of times,” Bolan answered noncommittally. “And I don’t intend to make this a fair fight.”
Four hundred yards from shore, he scanned the landing area. There was movement behind hedges and low walls. It wasn’t quite a platoon-strength fighting force spread out on the grounds, but more than a dozen guns were there, ready to greet him.
Two hundred yards from shore, Bolan shouldered the grenade launcher. He picked a spot where he’d seen plenty of activity and popped a high-explosive antipersonnel shell. The 40 mm missile arced into the hedge and detonated with a thunderclap. Limbs spiraled in the air in the wake of the detonation, then dropped to the grass. In an instant, other rifles and grenade launchers opened up.
“Get belowdecks, now!” Bolan ordered.
Riley ducked beneath the railing and scooted for cover.
The bow’s sheet steel was enough to stop AR-15 and AK rounds at this distance. A quarter inch of steel dented under some of the heavier rounds, but bullets disintegrated against the hull. Grenades crashed into the waves around the bow. Sea spray gushed and soaked the Executioner’s exposed head and hair. His blacksuit kept the rest of him dry, and shrapnel from the detonating grenades did little better in terms of penetrating the hull.
Bolan and the crew were safe, as long as they kept their heads low and behind something solid. Ducking, however, did nothing to counter the enemy. The Executioner popped up and loosed another 40 mm grenade into a section of concrete planters adorned with flowers. Smoke and petals formed a thick cloud, but the group of muzzle-flashes behind the giant stone pots went dark. Even if the shrapnel from the grenade hadn’t touched them, being within the immediate radius of the enormous pressure wave would crimp the fighting ability of the gunmen he’d aimed at. Eardrums would burst, at minimum, and brains would concuss inside of skulls at most. Either way, his enemy was greatly hindered.
Bolan switched to the M-27, flicked the rifle to full automatic and sighted through its ACOG scope to find fresh targets. He caught the flare of a muzzle-flash between some bushes, and he stroked the trigger. Five shots zipped on target and shredded the gunman in the shrubbery. More mercenary riflemen cut loose, and Bolan was driven beneath the railing again.
He leaned back, did the quick math on the parabolic arc of his grenade launcher and slipped another high-explosive shell into the breech. He took into account the speed at which the Ajax approached the shore, and fired. The grenade boomed in the distance on impact, and once more, enemy guns were silenced. As it was indirect fire, Bolan was certain that he’d literally dropped the HE round on top of the group of gunners.
Bolan heaved up to the rail, scanned for activity and burned off three more bursts into the grounds. He dumped the emptied magazine and fed a fresh box of thirty rounds into the automatic rifle. The mercenaries on hand were given the entirety of the next load in the weapon. The sun slid lower in the sky behind the mansion, and the Ajax decelerated as it neared the dock. The Executioner braced himself and searched for targets.
Every silhouette that retained a long weapon in its hands took bullets, no matter if they faced the dock or if they were in full retreat. The time for mercy was long past. The Executioner listened in on their radio network and knew that the mercenaries covered each other as they retreated. They hopscotched back to the main house to regroup and reorganize. Each one who made it to cover behind the mansion walls would be a tick burrowed into flesh, impossible to get out without blood, steel and fire.
Bolan already had plenty of steel and fire, and intended it to be only enemy blood that would provide the third part of that equation. Gunfire crackled through mansion windows and forced Bolan down.
Pierce stopped the boat. “We can’t moor!” the captain called.
“Don’t need to! Reverse and get out!” Bolan answered. Even as he felt the motors lurch to life, he found a section of railing on the starboard side that was out of the line of fire from the mansion and hurled himself into the water. The Executioner’s gear pulled him down into the sand of the beach, but he’d been prepared for that. The weight helped him get traction to walk out of the surf. He held his breath and climbed onto the island, feet dug into the sand.
He reloaded underwater, letting the ocean drain from the barrels of his weapons as he broke the surface, and pulled the trigger on the grenade launcher. He aimed at a bank of windows where riflemen had taken cover. The shell spiraled through a glass pane, its impact fuse jarred into detonation. Smoke, glass and gore sprayed through the emptied panes, the 40 mm bomb’s shrapnel slashing bodies apart five yards in any direction from ground zero of the blast.
“Why can’t any of you fuckwits shoot your grenades as well as he can?” It was Flyright. He had to have found another radio.
“Because grenades aren’t pinpoint precision! They’re not the one with your name on it. They’re addressed to the whole neighborhood!” came an answer.
That brought a grim smile to Bolan’s lips. Grenade launchers on automatic rifles were force multipliers. Shell blasts produced areas of deadly devastation for a ten-yard circle, and shrapnel accounted for injuries farther out than that. The smart-ass on the radio was correct; you didn’t have to be accurate with a launcher. The same went for a high-cyclic-rate weapon, though trained troops could dart between cover to avoid a “low firepower” weapon like the M-27. Bolan erred on the side of mobility rather than sustained suppressive fire. An M-249 SAW would have laid out a shredding scythe of bullets the enemy would cower from.
Mobility wasn’t the only thing on the Executioner’s mind in choosing the automatic rifle. The gun was more accurate than the SAW. Bolan fired for effect. He was there to end the careers of violent gunmen, as well as a megalomaniacal evangelist. Bolan hosed another window full of shooters, and while the 5.56 mm rounds of the M-27 couldn’t break through the mansion walls, they could hammer the glass out of its windows.
Mor
e enemy rifles fell silent. Bolan pressed onward, keeping to cover.
A larger, static enemy force presented bigger and better targets, while a single, mobile target was more difficult. Even so, it took audacity and well-directed firepower to make the most of that disparity. Too often a lone fighter, outnumbered and surrounded, was overwhelmed.
Attacking from the Ajax, utilizing the superior reach of his Barrett and later the man-portable artillery in the form of his grenade launcher, Bolan had cut down the odds against him. The trouble was that the more he evened the odds, the more lone, mobile gunmen he’d have to deal with on their own terms. On the Ajax, Bolan had been able to unleash one kill per one step because the opposing hardmen were in one another’s path. He had a wealth of targets while the enemy had only one.
It was similar inside the mansion. No longer would a 40 mm grenade eliminate a handful of opposition soldiers, just one particularly well-positioned man. The firepower per target, the less enemy odds against him, meant that he had to hunt for his prey in a house they were familiar with and had already laid the foundations of an ambush within.
Bolan switched to the buckshot rounds for his grenade launcher. If he were to finish off Flyright’s army, he needed to be overwhelming. Years ago, when his targets were organized crime and his opposition were merely packing pistols and shotguns, an AR-15 and a 40 mm grenade launcher were a battlefield dominating arsenal in the urban landscape. Against mercenaries with the same rifles and equipment as he had, the Executioner had to rely on his battle smarts, his unconventional tactics and his reflexes to carry the day.
He pushed aside the ache in his bones and made it to the rear entrance of the mansion, keeping to cover and concealment. His weapons silent, he settled into stalking mode.
Fifty gunmen had been assembled under this roof, a few on top, as well, all in response to the Executioner’s harassment of Flyright, kicking him into a spiral of panic as his efforts to terrorize a community and profit from its dismantling were opposed.
Bolan noticed movement through a pair of French doors. He checked with his combat tablet, mounted on one thigh, ensuring that this wasn’t somehow a kid, or a maid, who’d wandered into the middle of the battle. Cell phone pings put noncombatants cowering off-site or busy at schools and other events.
The Executioner saw the muzzle of a rifle push aside a curtain, and fired the buckshot round in the grenade launcher. The French doors disappeared in splinters of wood and glass. Light, gauzy curtains slapped against a lone figure and dyed immediately crimson as .25-caliber pellets ripped through kit and clothing. The man closest to the doors, now a blood-drenched mummy, tumbled back into the mansion. Another shadowy figure whirled as spreading projectiles not stopped by the first gunman reduced limbs to shredded flesh.
Pistols and rifles cracked from deeper within the mansion, and Bolan turned away from the defensive onslaught. He moved laterally, avoiding the grenade-shattered entrance, and sought a side door or window. Now the game of cat-and-mouse started, only this was a game where there was a solitary wildcat and a force of big, sharp-toothed bloodthirsty rats.
“He’s listening in on us,” Flyright said. “And we’ve changed channels twice.”
“It’s because he’s got some good surveillance equipment helping him out,” a mercenary replied. “He’s breaking encryption and picking up voice traffic. Everyone, radio silence and spread out.”
“How will I direct you without radios?” Flyright asked.
The lack of a response heartened Bolan. The mercenaries no longer felt like dealing with their paymaster, not when they had been decimated by the Executioner’s onslaught. If they didn’t want to talk to him, that meant their loyalty was gone.
“They don’t want your direction,” Bolan said over the radio. “So much for the voice of God.”
“You insufferable bastard!” Flyright snapped.
Bolan saw motion through a window and cut loose with a burst of automatic gunfire. The glass took multiple impacts before it finally shattered, but the M-27’s rounds sliced deep into the silhouette of a gunman’s head. The shadow collapsed, and Bolan climbed up onto the sill. He heard footsteps on carpet, running to the sound of battle. The weapon hung on his back as he scaled his way into the house, so the rifle and its accompanying launcher were both useless right now.
The Stony Man warrior drew his Desert Eagle quickly, hanging in the window frame with one hand for only an instant before he dropped inside. He had been backlit against the outside, and even as he cleared the window, bullets flew, seeking his flesh.
The Executioner aimed at a muzzle-flash and fired, taking out the enemy gunner. He’d had enough of opponents in body armor, and luckily one of the dozens of gunmen on the Ajax had armor-piercing .44 Magnum rounds. Bolan literally broke his target’s heart in two and dumped his corpse to the floor. Other figures in the darkness saw the fireball released by the Executioner’s mighty Desert Eagle and cut loose. Bolan, however, was used to fighting indoors, in low lighting conditions. He knew that the .44’s muzzle-flash would make him a target, and shifted positions with every pull of the hand cannon’s trigger.
He tracked one of the enemy muzzle-flashes and fired twice in rapid succession. Twin .44 slugs slashed through body armor, flesh and bone. There was movement at a different door, not the main corridor, and Bolan whipped around just in time to avoid a .45-caliber slug to the face. He slapped the barrel aside, his hand a shield against the hot gases that erupted from a handgun as it fired. He swung the Desert Eagle up, but his ambusher’s weight knocked Bolan’s weapon aside. The two men crashed through a glass-and-wood table, hit the carpet and wrestled.
Bolan sized up his opponent, and was disappointed that it was a mercenary in full battle kit. Rather than struggle with entangled limbs and trade punches, he rolled the both of them toward the shattered remains of the table they’d destroyed. The Executioner had a handful of collar and levered the hired gunman’s face into the splinters of wood and glass, grinding his head against the carpet. The wrestling match ended as soon as lacerations tore open cheek and nose, the mercenary’s hands at his ruined face rather than around his adversary’s neck. Bolan reached up and speared his thumb into his foe’s eyeball, forcing the orb out of its socket. The eye ruptured, milky fluid pouring across the man’s face.
That kept him on the ground and out of the fight. The Executioner rose to his feet, pulled the M-27 up on its sling and fired into the wounded and mutilated mercenary, taking him permanently out of play.
Gunfire chattered in the hallway, but as Bolan hadn’t been in that doorway for a few moments, he wondered what the sudden torrent of bullets was about. He used his pocket mirror to check it out.
Flyright stood in the hallway, Glock .45 aimed at two dead men he’d shot in the back.
“You will obey me!” Flyright bellowed. “I am your master!”
The Executioner looked at the burning fire in the egomaniac’s eyes. Dignity had taken flight long ago. Flakes of dried blood from another murder wafted off his features. His gray suit was drenched blood-black on its lapels, painted by an arterial spray, and his salt-and-pepper hair had blackened streaks throughout.
Bolan withdrew the pocket mirror, slid it back into his vest and weighed his options. At this range, the grenade launcher and its buckshot shell would scour Flyright’s identity in a cloud of gore and vaporized blood. The Desert Eagle would leave the evangelist recognizable, a horrifying example to any religious fanatic who wished to follow in his footsteps.
Bolan tossed the M-27 and its launcher into the doorway. Flyright reacted instantly, .45-caliber slugs flying at the carpet and into the frame of the rifle. The Executioner lurched into the open as Flyright’s attention was elsewhere. A .44 slug from the Desert Eagle shattered the crooked reverend’s forearm and blew out his elbow. Flyright flinched and roared in agony, spinning under the force of the impact that had destroyed his limb.
; He hit the carpet, the damaged arm taking the brunt of the fall, causing him even more pain.
Bolan strode toward the fallen evangelist as he rolled off his bloody wreck of a forearm.
“I thought you only hit the gun when shooting them out of someone’s hand,” Flyright mused, hand clamped to the gory mess that used to be an operable limb.
“Too much chance of you pulling the trigger. Destroy the muscles and the bones, your finger doesn’t have enough strength,” Bolan told him.
“You...you have blue eyes,” Flyright said.
“That matters?” Bolan asked.
“I thought maybe a superior white man would not dare to raise his hand against me,” Flyright responded.
“I do what needs to be done,” Bolan answered.
“Are you an atheist?” Flyright asked.
“I believe the Universe has a way of sorting itself out,” Bolan said. “If it’s one flavor of God or another, or just blind chance, I’ve yet to nail it down.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Where did I go wrong?” Flyright asked.
Bolan hauled the man up to his feet. “You went wrong by killing the innocent and destroying their homes. You went wrong sending a madman into a health clinic that you told people was an abattoir where fetuses were dumped by the binful. You went wrong hiring racist maniacs and religious extremists who didn’t care about the safety of anyone who disagreed or didn’t match their skin color.”
Flyright attempted to rest his hand against Bolan’s cheek, but the Executioner slapped it away. The evangelist’s eyes pleaded for mercy. “I had a calling.”
“You had an ambition, and I followed your footprints. You tracked innocent blood and brought me to your door.”
Flyright saw death in Bolan’s graveyard eyes. “You will not end me! You cannot dare to stop what I have put into motion. I have plans for Mobile, for the country, for overseas, and who are you to bring it all crashing down!” With that last pronouncement, he launched himself at Bolan.
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