Fireburst

by Don Pendleton

  Appearing behind the armored vehicle, Bolan killed a guard while Kirkland whipped out a thermite grenade and gently lobbed it onto the top of the tanks. “Move it or lose it!” he snarled. But Bolan was already in motion, firing the XM-250.

  Lurching into action, Montenegro sprinted past the men, and they turned to join her escape only seconds before there came a powerful exhalation followed by a searing wave of heat that forced away the swirling green mist.

  The 30 mm cannon fired again at nothing in particular as the surging thermite grenade reached operational levels, and rivulets of glowing red steel began to trickle down the armored sides of the vehicle.

  Muttering curses, the men inside tried to open the softening rear doors, but they were already misshapen and refused to budge. As the roof turned white-hot, it began to sag, then the gunner’s hatch buckled, and the ammunition belt for the machine gun ignited. The linked 7.62 mm rounds cooked off like a string of firecrackers inside the armored cupola. The cursing turned to screams as the exploding ammunition and internal ricochets escalated into a nightmarish rattle.

  With a hard clatter, the diesel engine stopped, then so did the screaming.

  Moving away from the conflagration, Bolan and the others were headed directly to the opening in the tunnel wall, when the fuel tank erupted and the Desert Eagle vanished inside a writhing fireball of its own creation.

  Assuming the lead, Bolan charged into the next tunnel, with Kirkland and Montenegro tight on his flanks. On either side of the entrance was a pair of Remington .50-caliber heavy machine guns situated behind sandbag walls. However, the gunners were staggering out in the green mist, hacking and coughing. Clutching his stomach, one of them doubled over to be sick while another popped the tab on a can of soda and poured the contents onto his head in an effort to wash away the debilitating chemicals.

  Kirkland smacked the first terrorist in the head with the stock of the Black Arrow, while Montenegro slapped the next man with the barrel of the Neostead. Both men dropped to the floor, feebly twitching.

  Snarling something in Arabic, the last terrorist drew a 9 mm Tariq pistol and began shooting blindly. He hit the floor, the roof, several sandbags, and killed one of his unconscious comrades before Bolan managed to take him out with a blow to the back of the head with the XM-25 grenade launcher.

  If at all possible, the Executioner wanted some of these people alive for debriefing, just in case their commander escaped, and he had to continue the hunt for Major Armanjani somewhere else in the world.

  “You okay, Heather?” Kirkland asked, turning the woman around to inspect her clothing. There were a lot of holes in the ballistic cloth, but no sign of blood.

  “Doing better than these poor bastards,” Montenegro replied, twitching a little while reloading her shotgun.

  Just then, somebody wearing a gas-proof hazard suit stepped around a corner firing an AK-47 assault rifle.

  Shooting from the hip, Bolan and Kirkland blew the terrorist into screaming hamburger, the grisly residue smacking into the brick walls to dribble onto the smooth floor.

  “Bill, check for a radio!” Bolan commanded, the XM-25 poised and ready while he watched the clouds of bug spray for any suspicious movements.

  “Roger that, Matt!” Using a knife to pull apart the tattered sections of the destroyed suit, Kirkland briefly inspected the corpse.

  “Clean!” he reported, standing. “No radio.”

  “Then keep moving,” Bolan directed, using the butt of the grenade launcher to disable first one, then the other machine gun.

  Staying close to the walls where their presence would be less noticeable, the three people heard strange noises echoing in the emerald fog: mechanical clanks, muffled voices and doors slamming. Major Armanjani and his people were regrouping faster than expected.

  Turning a corner, Bolan almost fired at the sight of a man in a hazard suit, but stopped at the last moment when he saw both arms were raised in surrender.

  “Don’t move, and drop your weapons,” Bolan called in a graveyard voice.

  “I am Agamemnon, seeking enlightenment,” the stranger said.

  Even though he recognized the Interpol code for an undercover agent, Bolan didn’t relax his stance. “Shall we divide and conquer?”

  “Not in the light of knowledge.”

  “Good enough for me,” Kirkland said, lowering his sniper rifle. “We’re CIA.”

  “Rock,” the stranger replied, lowering his arms.

  Impressed, Bolan shouldered the grenade launcher and stepped forward to shake the other man’s hand. In spite of his detailed knowledge of the underworld, there hadn’t been the slightest hint that the Sons of the Rock had an agent inside Ophiuchus.

  As with most of the major religions, the vast majority of Muslims were peaceful people, just ordinary folks trying to make a living and raise a family, nothing more. But with the advent of international terrorism, much of it done under the dubious cloaks of religious zealots. Muslims were coming under harsh scrutiny, and their beloved religion was being cast as a harbinger of evil. In order to clean their name, the Sons of the Rock had been created, the name being a poetic allusion to the prophet Mohammed.

  Composed of soldiers from a dozen different nations in the Middle East, including Israel, the Sons of the Rock was an antiterrorist organization created by and wholly staffed by Muslims. They were devout believers in the peaceful teachings of the Koran, and were sworn to stop terrorism at any cost, even of their own lives.

  “Where’s Armanjani?” Bolan demanded.

  “Control room, one level down, two over,” the Rock agent said swiftly. “But be warned! Our people almost got him a few days ago on a cargo ship at sea, but apparently he—”

  Oddly jerking forward, the Rock agent threw his arms wide as if trying to embrace the world, then silently crumpled to the misty floor with a huge gaping hole in the middle of his back.

  “Traitor!” another man screamed from the murky shadows.

  Instinctively, Bolan and the others dropped.

  A split second later, the tunnel strobed to the muzzle-flashes of a dozen AK-47 assault rifles firing in an orchestrated attack pattern.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ruthlessly gunning down a coughing group of Ophiuchus terrorists fighting over a hazard suit, Bolan assumed the lead once more, with Kirkland and Montenegro flanking him. After a couple of hundred yards, they reached a T-intersection and went to the right. But that soon reached a dead end, and they had to race back.

  Unfortunately, the left branch soon formed a Y-intersection, followed by countless side tunnels. Most of those didn’t have brick walls for additional support, so Bolan made a battlefield decision to ignore those unless absolutely necessary.

  “This place is a freaking maze,” Kirkland said into his throat mike, as they stopped to change the filters in their gas masks. “How deep could these old mines go, anyway?”

  “A mine from last century?” Montenegro asked, shooting out a video camera attached to the ceiling. “Probably no more than a mile.”

  “How deep?” Kirkland asked.

  “Maybe two miles, but certainly no more than three tops,” Bolan added. “How much liquid bug spray was in the tanker?”

  “Nine thousand gallons.”

  Taking a fast sip of water from a hip flask, Bolan did some math in his head. Assuming a standard dispersal ratio of one part to a thousand, plus the internal volume of the tunnels, minus leakage, plus men and machiner
y yielded, there weren’t enough fumes to effectively cover two miles of the underground complex, much less three.

  “We’re short,” Kirkland stated, firing the Black Arrow from the hip. A dagger of flame extended almost a foot from the barrel of the sniper rifle, and a hundred yards down the tunnel, a man in a Russian gas mask cried out and flipped sideways, his AK-47 chattering briefly toward the ceiling.

  “We have to move faster, guys,” Montenegro growled, hefting the Neostead. “Double-time, march!”

  The short rest over, the team broke into a full sprint, ruthlessly blowing away anybody encountered who was armed. Which was everybody so far. Terrorists were everywhere, some of them trying to get out of the foggy base. Each was met with swift and absolute justice.

  A ramp took the three down a level, and the fumes were thicker here. Checking a side tunnel, Bolan saw a section of the brick wall swing aside on disguised hinges, and out walked a large, dark-skinned man wearing military fatigues and armed with an oversize Tariq pistol.

  “Major Armanjani!” Bolan yelled, triggering the XM-25 grenade launcher.

  Instantly dodging out of the way, the major returned fire with the Tariq as the 25 mm shell streaked past to explode farther down the tunnel.

  Shooting again, Bolan heard the round hum by dangerously close as a boiling wall of green fog came rushing back up the tunnel. Temporarily blinded in the chemical wind, Bolan lost track of the major and, as the air cleared, there was no sign of Armanjani.

  Starting into the tunnel, Bolan felt the floorboards shift and threw himself backward just in time to avoid being crushed as the brick walls moved inward, crushing the boards into kindling until forcefully ramming together in a stentorian crash.

  Getting back to his feet, Bolan scowled at the shifting pile of broken debris completely blocking the tunnel. This mine was more than just a firebase, it was a deathtrap. One wrong move and they would never see the outside world again.

  “Surrender, Major!” Bolan shouted, reloading. “The SAS is on the way, and they’ll hang you from a tree like a chicken thief! That’s no way for a soldier to die!”

  The Executioner heard a muffled laugh. “You lie, Yankee!” Armanjani said, his words fading into the distance. “If they were coming, you would be stalling for time, not attempting to blow off my head.”

  Unfortunately, the man was right.

  Charging into the tunnel, Kirkland and Montenegro scowled at the destruction.

  “What happened?” Kirkland demanded.

  “Secret passage,” Bolan replied.

  “The major?”

  “He escaped,” Bolan admitted, then added resolutely. “But not for long!”

  Expecting prompt retaliation, the three Americans weren’t overly surprised when at the next branch, several soldiers in hazard suits were waiting for them, and opened fire with a 7.62 mm RPK machine guns. Most of the incoming lead missed completely or bounced off their body armor. Then Bolan and the others returned fire, the high-explosive 25 mm shells, .50-caliber rounds and swarms of stainless-steel fléchettes taking the terrorists out of play.

  “Kind of hard to aim when you can’t see the target,” Kirkland said to a corpse as reloaded the Black Arrow.

  “That was the idea,” Bolan commented wryly, advancing into the billowing mists.

  As he did, a bloody hand clawed for a holstered weapon. Instantly, Bolan turned and fired the Beretta just as the soldier on the floor cut loose with his 9 mm Tariq. The two weapons roared in unison. Then Bolan moved on, and the terrorist didn’t, groaning into death.

  Encountering a wide set of double doors set into a brick wall, Bolan took left, Montenegro right and Kirkland took the slot, charging up the middle at a full run.

  Bursting through the doors, Kirkland dove to the side and came up with the Black Arrow ready, but he proved to be alone in the spacious garage. There were several more Atkinson trucks parked against the far wall, along with numerous motorcycles and several forklifts. At the far end was a machine shop, in one corner was a stash of pressurized oxygen tanks and in the exact middle of the garage was an industrial air cleaner, all of the indicator lights flashing a silent warning.

  “Clear,” Kirkland announced, inspecting the shadowy recesses of a grease pit.

  “Same here,” Montenegro reported, checking for lurkers behind the lathe and drill press.

  “Then let’s call for room service,” Bolan said, walking to a wall phone.

  First checking for traps, he removed the receiver and pawed at the buttons. Just for a moment, he thought nothing would happen, then there came a fast series of clicks, and a woman barked a question in Arabic. Moaning in pain, Bolan dropped the receiver and let it dangle, twisting and turning on the end of the cord. Almost immediately, the voice stopped talking.

  “Okay, they’re on the way,” Bolan said, going into the grease pit and resting the XM-25 on the floor.

  “Think the major will fall for that obvious trick?” Kirkland asked, replacing the nearly empty magazine in the Black Arrow with a full one. He was almost out of spares.

  “Not a chance,” Montenegro stated with conviction. “So, what’s the plan, Matt?”

  “Kill the bastards,” Bolan said, heading for the fuel pumps.

  “Good plan!”

  Moments later, the three Americans raced out of the garage riding motorcycles. As they drove into the cloud of bug spray the grenades rigged to the fuel pumps detonated. An inferno of burning gasoline flooded the garage, quickly setting the other vehicles ablaze, rupturing the tanks of pressurized air and finally setting off the stores of ammunition.

  Explosion after explosion shook the tunnels, dust raining down from the dimly seen ceiling, and wild bullets zinged everywhere, endlessly ricocheting off the walls, ceiling and floors until making it out of the garage and into the misty tunnel.

  “Sounds like World War III back there,” Kirkland said with a snort, revving the motorcycle engine. The Twin-V 88 answered with a classic burst of power, and the bike surged forward to pop a wheelie before he could get it back under control again.

  “The louder, the better,” Bolan said, hunching over the handlebars. Trick, trap or diversion, the major would have no choice but to send people to check the garage and determine if the invaders were dead. That would divide his attention and weaken his defenses. It wasn’t much, but every point in their favor would help now. Secret passages hadn’t been considered in the original invasion plans, and this was the only way Bolan had of canceling out their effect.

  Almost immediately, the bikes’ windshields began to speckle with droplets of condensed mist, and the headlights dimmed. Next, the engines began to cough, sputter, then promptly died.

  Coasting to a stop, Bolan kicked down the stand and climbed off. “We got a lot farther than I expected,” he said, priming a grenade and tucking it under the seat.

  Stashing the bikes in an empty side tunnel, the three waited as a group of terrorists marched by, obviously heading for the garage. Once they were past, Bolan and the others stepped out of hiding and mowed them down from behind. Grenades and spare ammunition were taken, then they continued on, killing everybody they encountered until they found the next downward ramp.

  The fumes billowed like winter fog along the tunnels, coating the overhead lights until they glowed faintly green, as if the entire complex was radioactive. Twitching bodies of armed soldiers lay everywhere. None of them were wearing hazard suits, only gas masks, and many were sp
rawled in puddles of their own stomach contents.

  “Must be cheap gas masks,” Kirkland said, sneering just as two of the supposed corpses rolled over firing AK-47 assault rifles.

  Hammered backward from the stream of 7.62 mm rounds, Kirkland hit the wall hard and fired the Black Arrow, but missed. Then Bolan and Montenegro opened fire with their weapons, ending the matter forever.

  Nasser and Hassan appeared out of the thick cloud. Caught in the act of reloading, Bolan and Montenegro dove to the sides as the terrorists cut loose and thundering hell filled the tunnel. Bolan was hit a dozen times by fléchettes from the roaring Atchisson, and the rock wall behind Montenegro exploded, rock shards tearing gouges in both of her arms and ripping off her gas mask.

  Clamping her mouth shut, the woman rolled over, trying to find the mask, when Kirkland kicked it closer, then triggered the Black Arrow.

  Nasser grabbed her throat in both hands, trying to staunch the blood flow.

  As Kirkland swung the weapon toward the sergeant, Hassan raised the Atchisson—and Bolan fired from the floor. The triburst of 9 mm rounds from the Beretta drilled into Hassan, the Atchisson flying away from his spasming fingers.

  Gurgling horribly, Nasser attempted to pull a grenade from her pocket, and Kirkland put a .50-caliber round directly into her temple. With half of her head gone, the lieutenant dropped to the floor, twitching once before going motionless forever.

  Montenegro stood weakly just as another section of the brick wall swung open. With no time to grab the Atchisson on the floor, Montenegro drew both of her Glocks as three more terrorists rushed out with RPK machine guns blazing.

  Firing both weapons, Montenegro almost lost control of the Glock 18 as it emptied the entire clip in two seconds flat, the hellish barrage killing two of the terrorists outright, but only wounding the third.