“Nice to see you, G-Force.”
“Nice to be seen, Sarge,” Jack Grimaldi replied. “It looks like you’ve got a little bit of a problem.”
“I’ve got a lot of a problem.”
“Then say no more,” the Stony Man pilot replied. “I’m about to mop it up for you.” The Loach climbed. Some of the Russians were now aiming Kalashnikovs at it, trying to bring it down with small-arms fire.
“It’s getting hot down there,” Grimaldi stated. “Don’t mind me. Going to go cool off a bit.” The Loach took off at an angle so sharp that Bolan almost didn’t think it was possible. There was no more experienced pilot than Jack Grimaldi, though. If it had wings or rotors, he could fly it.
“What is he doing?” Hazan asked. “Where is he going?”
“Building up speed,” Bolan said. “For a run.”
“A run on what?”
“Them.”
The Loach came screaming back down in a steep dive. Again, Bolan didn’t know how Grimaldi was managing it. The punishing dive must be threatening to knock him unconscious, but the pilot never wavered. He picked up speed, making him that much harder to hit with Kalashnikovs or the guns on the MRAPs.
The Loach pulled up at the last possible second. Grimaldi triggered the rocket pods, firing into the MRAPs. The munitions Grimaldi carried were more than a match for vehicles up-armored to be mine-resistant. They came apart like tin cans being split with an ax.
The ace pilot from Stony Man Farm wasn’t finished. He brought the chopper around and opened up with the 7.62 mm machine guns. Men raced away screaming, fleeing the burning MRAPs and trying to find cover among the wreckage of the vehicles in front of the abandoned mill.
Grimaldi pursued and harried them without mercy, firing controlled bursts that drove them forward. He began herding them into a kill-box, grouping them together and then spraying them down when they were foolish enough to stay clustered. The guns did their deadly work, filling the air with smoke and covering the ground in blood. The light, maneuverable helicopter was all the weapon Grimaldi needed.
One of the MRAPs, the only one still mobile, tried to break formation. It plowed past one smoking hulk as the driver tried to make for the highway beyond the mill. Grimaldi was having none of that. He used the helicopter to corral the wayward vehicle like a border collie barking at a herd of sheep. Every move the MRAP driver made, the pilot countered, firing with his guns. Finally, when the driver tried to cut past the chopper and make a break for it, Grimaldi fired his remaining missiles on the vehicle and blew it to hell.
Bolan watched dispassionately. He took no pleasure in the deaths of these men, but they were armed hostiles committing, and planning to commit, murder on American ground. Bolan would fight his way to hell and back to stop people like that from hurting his country.
Grimaldi made a few more sweeps. When he was satisfied that he’d hit everything, he began to circle. “Can I help you find anyone, Sarge?” he asked.
“No, I think we’re good here,” Bolan said.
“Not sure I copied that, Sarge.”
“Thanks, G-Force.”
“Roger and out.”
Being careful to watch for the Iranian assassin, Bolan and Hazan retrieved the car, brought it out to the killing ground in front of the steel mill and waited for the Loach to land. Grimaldi helped load the Israeli and Octavios into the helicopter, said his goodbyes to the soldier and took off.
Now it was just Mack Bolan standing in the middle of an abandoned steel plant, surrounded by dead men. The numbers were counting down, had been for a while. While the Farm would run interference and keep the authorities at bay, curious citizens were most likely flocking to the area.
The Malibu wasn’t safe to drive. It had taken a stray bullet to the gas tank and was leaking fuel badly. Bolan left it parked in front of the mill and walked out across the killing ground, just watching and listening. It was eerie, being surrounded by this much wreckage, these many corpses, knowing that it was your own handiwork. Or it would have been eerie if he were anyone but the Executioner.
Bolan reached into his pocket and took out the tactical OTF automatic knife he carried, holding the weapon in his palm.
There. The sound of gravel on the sole of a shoe. Bolan turned slowly to see Sheila Hargrave stumble out of nearby wreckage. Her face was bloody. In her hand was the kerambit he’d seen her wield before.
“You’re a monster,” she said.
“I’m Special Agent Matthew Cooper of the United States Justice Department,” he said. “You’re under arrest, Ms. Hargrave.”
She took a step closer. “How does a man like you live with himself? How do you wake up and breathe air and look yourself in the mirror, knowing how much blood is on your hands?”
“You appear to have some blood on your hands yourself.”
Sheila grunted, a noise that was pure pain and rage. Then she lunged at him, swinging the kerambit in a reverse grip, slashing and clawing at the air. She rotated the knife by the finger ring several times—a flourish that did nothing—and then came at him again, slashing and cutting at the air. It was clear she wanted to tear him apart.
“Fascists like you,” she said, slashing, “who serve the powerful. Who do as you’re told. You’re what’s wrong with the world.”
“I think what’s wrong with the world,” Bolan stated, dodging her slash, “is that people like you think it’s okay to steal and murder. It’s the job of people like me to stop you.”
“Who are you to judge me?” she demanded. “Who are you to interfere with the truth?”
“You steal dirty laundry from online networks and think you’re fighting for the truth.” Bolan snapped out his own blade and countered her slash by cutting her across the inside of her wrist. She cried out and backed off, but did not stop fighting.
“I’m going to gut you after I kill you,” she said. “And then I’m going to get Javier back and—”
“Your friend is dying,” Bolan said.
She stopped in her tracks, the kerambit still held in front of her. “What are you talking about?”
“Pulmonary disease. Javier Octavios is dying. He could be dead in days, in minutes. Any long-term fantasies you have about being with him... I don’t think they’re going to work out.”
“I hate you!” she shouted. She raised the kerambit high over her head for a killing blow.
Bolan dropped his blade and drew his Beretta 93-R all in one fluid movement. He shot her in the chest.
Hargrave collapsed. The kerambit landed with a clatter in the parking lot.
“Why...” she murmured. “Why...did you not shoot me when you saw me?”
“To see if any of your friends were still alive. I had to give them time to intervene.”
“You son of a—”
Bolan waited. She never finished her sentence. Her eyes were open and staring at nothing; her breathing had stopped.
The Executioner turned away.
“Not so fast, American,” Farhad Dabiri said.
Chapter Eighteen
Dabiri had approached while Bolan was occupied with Hargrave. He was pointing a tiny Beretta pocket pistol at the soldier’s chest.
“If you shoot me with that, I’m going to be very upset.”
“Please,” Dabiri said. “I need something from you, American.”
“Can’t help you.” Bolan readied himself to strike.
“I need your time,” Dabiri told him. “I am the greatest assassin in the world. I have killed hundreds of men for money. I am very well known, in certain circles, for what I do. But there is room in the market for only one best assassin. Only one best killer. Only one best sniper. That is why I need your time.”
“I’m not an assassin.”
“But you are a killer. And you are a resourceful man who is quite capable of waging a one-man w
ar against a fully equipped and trained opposing force. You have created a problem for me, you see. By the way, what is your name?”
“Cooper. US Justice Department.”
“That will do. Cooper, you have created a problem by thwarting my mission. Octavios is gone. He will live or he will die. But he is quite beyond my reach now, and I accept that. Because I have failed, I risk my life if I return to Tehran. Now, I am an international assassin. I am capable of making a living without the support and sanction of my government, much as it grieves me to do so. But this merely underscores the fact that I am now on the market, competing, full-time. I am a commodity. And your existence lowers my value.”
“Come again?” Bolan said.
“Simply put, I cannot bill myself as the world’s foremost assassin if you exist.”
“The world doesn’t know I exist. It hasn’t for a while.”
“I would know,” Dabiri said. “And that is enough.”
“Then what do you propose?”
“That we settle the matter right now, as men would. We fight. To the death. And the winner leaves this corpse-strewed, fire-blackened battlefield knowing that he is truly the foremost killer in the world.”
Bolan narrowed his gaze. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You are going to fight me,” the Iranian told him. “The only question is whether I am taking your life or you are taking mine. If you choose to put up no resistance, I accept this. Retrieve your knife.”
Bolan didn’t have to be told twice to arm himself. He knelt and picked up his OTF knife, dusted it off.
“Now, then...the rules of engagement,” Dabiri said. “There are none.” As if by magic, a small skinning-profile blade with a deep belly and a sharp point appeared in his hand. The Iranian slashed at Bolan’s face, specifically at his eyes, in an attempt to drive his opponent’s head back and put him off balance. The Executioner had seen that move before. His knife snapped open in one fluid move.
“Very good,” Dabiri said. “This is the sort of thing I expect from a killer such as you. Perhaps when I defeat you, you will tell me your history, so that I may more thoroughly do justice to your memory.”
“You’re not going to be doing anything like that,” Bolan growled. “And you’re annoying.”
Dabiri executed a series of showy, flashy figure-eight moves. He was cutting the air, describing elaborate patterns between him and his opponent.
Bolan grew tired of Dabiri’s preening. He threw his knife.
The move caught the Iranian by surprise. He recoiled, stumbling back as the knife blade flew past him. Bolan drew his Beretta 93-R and fired a series of bursts at Dabiri’s feet, raising chips of gravel all around him.
“Okay,” the Executioner told him. “We’re done here. Lie down on the ground. I’m going to cuff you and then you’re going to a very nice black-site prison for the rest of your life, where you can answer for all the assassinations you say you’ve done.”
To his surprise, Dabiri didn’t resist when Bolan put a knee on his back and took a pair of zip-tie cuffs out of his war bag. It was only when he felt Dabiri stiffen beneath him that he realized what the Iranian intended.
“Don’t—”
Dabiri didn’t listen. He rolled, unseating Bolan, trying to fight for position. The man still had a gun on him, somewhere. Bolan was very much aware of that as they wrestled. Dabiri had learned textbook Brazilian Jiu Jitsu somewhere in his training. Bolan’s own fight experience was quite a bit more eclectic. While he preferred expedient field combatives, he was also familiar with many, many fighting styles used by friends and foes alike.
They fought each other on the ground, Dabiri trying various wrist and leg locks that didn’t work. When Bolan got the upper hand, he slammed Dabiri’s head into the ground a few times before bringing his leg up and around to kick the man in the chin as he struggled to get to his feet.
Dabiri, dazed, wobbled around once he was standing again. Bolan stood. “All right,” he said. “You want to do this for real? Fine. We’ll do it for real.” He punched Dabiri in the jaw. While the man reeled from the blow, Bolan steadied him and then punched him in the gut so hard the Iranian had to stop and retch. Once done, Bolan knocked the leg out from under him and dumped him in the dirt.
“Stay down,” Bolan ordered. “I’m arresting you.”
“I’m fighting you to the death!” the assassin shouted.
Bolan kicked the man in the chest with the toe of his combat boot. Something snapped. It might have been a rib.
Dabiri drew in breath like a man grasping the business end of a hot poker. Bolan reached down, grabbed his adversary by the collar and dragged him to his feet. He hauled him across the killing grounds in front of the steel mill to one of the wrecked Land Cruisers that was now a scorched and blackened shell. From his war bag, Bolan produced a pair of steel handcuffs.
“You are not taking me prisoner!” Dabiri insisted. He drew his pistol and aimed it at Bolan’s face.
The Executioner snatched the weapon out of his hand. He popped the little pocket Beretta’s magazine, opened the tip-up barrel and plucked out the chambered round. Then he shoved the pistol and its magazine into his war bag.
“This isn’t a game,” the Executioner growled. “It’s not a contest. And you and me? We don’t do the same thing at all. You take lives. You’re a murderer. I’d snap your neck right now, except that I don’t kill in cold blood. That’s what you do. That’s how you operate. We’re nothing alike...and we were never competitors.”
The soldier threw a right hook that drove Dabiri to the ground, bloodying his adversary’s lips and teeth. He cried out in pain.
The assassin wasn’t out of tricks, however. Turning away, he jerked his right arm. A hidden pistol, which he’d kept strapped to his forearm, was suddenly in his hand. It was a tiny .22-caliber Derringer, a double-barreled pistol that was almost no larger than the cartridges it fired. He used the distraction of the gun’s appearance to surge to his feet again.
Bolan reacted on instinct, hammering his Beretta into the Iranian’s gun hand. Dabiri grabbed for the 93-R. The two of them were now locked at the wrists as they struggled for control of both weapons. Dabiri wasn’t as big as Bolan, but adrenaline was surging through him. The assassin fought like a man possessed—or like a cornered rat.
“I’ve killed women and children,” he grated. “I’ve killed old people asleep in their beds. I killed a man in a wheelchair who begged me to let him live. There’s nothing and nobody I won’t take out. Put me in prison. I’ll just get out again. No place can hold Farhad Dabiri. And for the rest of your life, you will know that you could not stop me. You will know that everyone I kill, every life I take, is blood on your hands. How that must pain—”
Bolan raised his leg and stomped the Iranian’s knee. The assassin yelped like a whipped dog. His leg folded and he went down... But with a viselike grip, no doubt born of desperation, he managed to strip Bolan’s 93-R from the soldier’s hand. He landed on his back and smashed the back of his head on the broken pavement, but it wasn’t enough to knock him unconscious.
“I win,” Dabiri taunted from the ground. Grinning through bloody teeth, he aimed Bolan’s own 93-R at the soldier’s face and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
“Safety’s on,” said Bolan, who had flicked the safety switch when he’d felt the gun being wrested from his hand. Dabiri, however, wasn’t the only one with a strong grip.
Bolan was holding Dabiri’s tiny Derringer.
The Iranian screamed and flicked off the safety switch of the machine pistol—
The Executioner shot him in the forehead.
A single .22 bullet was all it took. The 93-R fired, but it was already falling from Dabiri’s dead hand. The shot went well wide of Bolan. He waited for a moment, aiming the tiny pistol, making sure the threat had been neutralized.
/> When Dabiri moved no more, Bolan put the Derringer in his war bag next to the assassin’s other pistol. Bending, he took the Beretta 93-R from the dead man’s hand, checked it and put it back in its holster.
So. That was it. Another murderer dead, by Bolan’s hand, sure, but Dabiri’s actions had sealed his fate. Rather than submit, rather than be taken prisoner, Dabiri had opted to fight. But he’d fought in vain, for he’d fought not for others but for his own greed and hate.
Bolan considered the body for a moment. He took his encrypted smartphone from his pocket and snapped a picture of the dead man. Brognola would want to confirm with State that this international threat had been eliminated. He wondered what the Iranian government would say. He supposed that it didn’t matter.
The Executioner turned and walked away without looking back.
Epilogue
Philadelphia Black Site
Hal Brognola entered the conference room, sighed and sat gratefully. Bolan, across the table, was sipping coffee from a disposable cup and scrolling through after-action reports on his smartphone. The big Fed reached out and shook Bolan’s hand.
“You look like you’re enjoying yourself,” Brognola said.
“Just decompressing. I’m going to swing back to the Farm, take some downtime.”
“Barb will appreciate that,” Brognola commented.
“So will I. Is there any word from the doctor?”
“They think they can help Octavios, actually. He wasn’t as far gone as he thought he was. It’s not good, no, but he’s actually got a few problems that were contributing to his overall symptoms. Anemia, among many others. He’s going to live. For the near future, anyway.”
“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
“I’ve extended our thanks to our friends at Mossad for their assist,” the big Fed stated. “As well as chiding them for not being a little more forthcoming with their operations on our soil. They say they’ll take that under advisement.”
“A very polite way to tell you to go to hell.”
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