Pivot, strut. Cohen didn't want to shoot him in the back. He wasn't a grandstander, but he wasn't a backshooter, either. If he didn't have to be.
The guard turned again, his AK-47 slung carelessly over his shoulder. The man stopped to light a new cigarette from the stub of his last one. He dropped the butt to the floor and ground it under his heel, then kicked it into the pile. Cohen made his move.
"That's littering, pal." He stepped into view, his Ingram held waist high. "You should be more careful."
The moron didn't know any better. He reached for his Kalashnikov, and Cohen squeezed the trigger. The Ingram belched one short burst. It caught the guy just above the belt line, nearly cutting him in two and slamming him backward.
Blood gushed over his belt, cascading down over his pants. He had been so surprised, he hadn't said a word.
Quickly Adam and Eli dragged the lifeless body against the wall, dropping it over the heap of cigarettes. The SMG's suppressor was a good one. Eli doubted Glinkov even heard them.
Cohen looked through the small glass panel in the door, but he couldn't see anyone in the control room. Rachel walked back to the intersection to keep watch. Adam slipped his card into the first security lock and began punching in the code number to release the lock. None of them heard the approaching footsteps.
* * *
The every five minutes were up.
Mack Bolan stepped around the corner and made for the guard. Facing away from him, the man didn't notice Bolan's approach. Bolan's Ingram was ready to spit fire. Bolan narrowed the gap.
He could hear Stevens and the other plant guard right behind him. Their footsteps sounded like thunder in Bolan's ears, and still the guard didn't turn. With twenty yards still to go, at last the guard looked at them. His face, behind a bright red beard, froze.
Bolan fired.
The deadly rain of .45 caliber slugs chewed into the guy from the neck up. The man's skull shattered, and he struck the floor. As they reached the still spastic figure on the concrete, Bolan tugged the dead man's Kalashnikov free and slung it over his shoulder. The ruptured skull oozed blood and brain tissue. The man's face was gone, as if it had never been there at all. One eye lolled over a shattered cheekbone, like a cherry on its stem.
The three warriors covered the remaining distance to the first door without opposition. While Stevens worked on the lock, Bolan peered through the large window into the control room. Glinkov was absorbed at the control console. He was intently watching the array of gauges and dials. The inner guard was seated casually before the secondary control room. Its door was closed. Neither man seemed to have heard anything. If luck were with them, Cohen and his team would be working on their doors by now. The eerie silence was broken by a sudden burst of gunfire from the opposite side of the control room.
"That's at the other door!" Stevens shouted.
Bolan knew Eli was in trouble. And Rachel was with him.
"Matt, keep at it. I'll be back as soon as I can. If you get it open, go in. And watch yourself." He sprinted across the floor, heading for the corridor leading to the other doorway.
The gunfire continued. It sounded like a small war. Cohen must still be alive, or the shooting would have stopped. At the mouth of the passage, Bolan paused. A security mirror high on the wall showed him the full length of the corridor. Adam lay in a pool of blood, sprawled in front of the unopened security door.
Three of Glinkov's men were at the other end of the passage. Cohen peered from the scant cover of an open office door farther down the hall. As Bolan watched, Eli sprayed hellfire along the corridor without aiming. He was holding the Ingram in his left hand, extending it just enough to hold off the attackers with blind fire.
Rachel was nowhere in sight.
Checking his own SMG, Bolan put in a fresh clip and waited. There was a time to plant, and a time to reap. The Executioner was going to plant some lead.
The Grim Reaper would bring in the crop.
The passage intersected another at right angles. Bolan could fire down the hall and cross to the opposite side while the gunners dived for cover. With a little luck, he might nail one of them. Watching the mirror closely, he waited. Eli pulled his weapon back to reload. The three men charged. Bolan made his move.
With the Ingram held at waist level, he began firing as he stepped into the intersection. The lead man was chewed up; the deadly spray from Bolan's SMG had punched through his chest wall. Wild return fire ricocheted off the concrete walls as the remaining two men dived for the floor. Eli rejoined the firefight with a short burst, and Bolan was across the hall.
If he remembered his quick lesson in the layout, he could work his way around behind. He fired another quick burst and sprinted for the next intersection. The gun battle continued behind him, its echoes resounding along the maze of concrete passages.
He skidded to a halt at the next passageway, checked it for opposition and rushed on. The noise died abruptly. Bolan increased his pace. The next passage was just ahead. As he ran, he changed clips in the Ingram, slipping the half-empty one back into his coat. At the corner he stopped. There was another mirror, and he scanned it quickly. He knew they could see him as well as he could see them in it. But the hallway was empty except for Adam's body and that of the man he had nailed in crossing the hall.
All right.
He changed back to the half-empty clip, wasted the mirror, then reloaded. He'd rather fight blind than give them the advantage of the glass. He tossed the empty magazine into the corridor. It bounced once, twice, then disappeared in a hail of bullets and concrete chips. So they were still there.
But where was Eli? And Rachel?
The architecture of the damn building was an obstacle. All right angles, there was no way to get from A to B without exposing oneself. It hadn't been planned as a hell zone.
And while he waited, the clock ticked. If Stevens managed to get the door open, he'd need all the help he could get. Things had to be wrapped up on this end. Now.
What the hell, he told himself. Sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns. Steeling himself, Bolan charged into the open corridor. He watched both walls, looking for the first sign of movement.
He sprayed a burst the length of the hall. No one returned fire. Charging ahead, he reached the body of the dead man. His weapon was gone. Ahead on the left, a door yawned open.
Inside, he answered one of his questions. The other two lay dead. Somebody had nailed them already. From behind. Bolan pushed on to the next office. Three empty clips lay just inside the door. But the room was vacant. No Eli. And no Rachel.
Adam's security card, what was left of it, dangled from the mangled lock. It was useless. And Bolan doubted the outside mechanism would function. He rushed back to the main control access. Stevens was nowhere to be seen. Another of Stevens's men, Donny Grissom, lay dead on the floor. Approaching cautiously, he peered through the master window, just in time to see Glinkov vanish through the opposite door. A klaxon somewhere deep in the plant began a mournful uproar.
Stevens was just inside the first door. He had been wounded. Blood soaked his right sleeve. He was still struggling with the second lock.
"What happened, Matt?" Bolan demanded.
"I don't know. Somebody besides us. They killed Donny, but he was between them and me. I got the door open just in time."
"Did you see Eli?"
"No. Why?"
"He's missing. So is Rachel."
"Adam? Is he okay?"
Bolan said nothing.
Stevens collapsed to the floor. "Those bastards."
"We'll get them, Matt."
Stevens grabbed the bloody sleeve of the anticontamination suit and ripped it loose at the shoulder. "Help me wrap this."
Bolan bound the ugly wound in Stevens's upper arm. The security chief turned back to the lock.
He punched in the combination code, pressed the release and the door hummed open. Inside, the sound of the klaxon was insistent.
There was
no one in the control room. Bolan ran to the backup control room door. The lock was destroyed. He stepped back and planted a sharp kick just above the damaged lock. The door swung back with a crash. The room was empty except for two dead men lying against one wall. Bolan looked at the security man. "Do you know anything about this reactor? Can you work the controls?"
"Nothing. No, nothing."
Two more flashing lights joined the carnival array high on the board. They felt the rumble before they heard it. It grew slowly and sounded as if it would never stop.
The deserted control room echoed with the sound of alarms. Blinking lights were everywhere. Bolan stared at the flickering monitors. The images were randomly selected. As he watched, a group of shadows zipped past on one screen. As he moved in closer, the image changed.
"Matt, is there any way to select the cameras for these things?"
"Sure. What do you want to see?"
"I don't know. I thought I saw Rachel and Eli. But there were three figures. They were gone before I could get a fix on it."
"Okay, I'll run through the cameras one at a time. Keep an eye on the top left-hand screen. If you see something, holler."
Stevens sat at the security console. One by one, he scrolled through the cameras. Bolan watched intently. He was beginning to doubt that he had seen anything. Image after image of the gloomy depths of the plant flew by corridors, storage rooms, work areas dominated by huge conduits and rumbling machinery.
"Hold a minute. Go back." Bolan shouted in his excitement. "No, one more. There."
The three figures he had seen were back. It was too dimly lit to be sure who they were, but despite their suits, he knew one of them was a woman. Their backs were to the camera, and they were stooped over, moving cautiously.
"Can you move in closer, Matt?"
"Hang on." Stevens looked for the right button. When he found it, the image on the screen grew larger. The figures were still dark, but there was no question. He had found Eli and Rachel. But who was the third person?
He had to know.
"What's that location?"
"It's on Level 4. The southwest quadrant."
"Matt, you stay here. Don't let anyone you don't know in here."
"Where the hell are you going?" But Bolan was already gone.
28
The elevator was interminably slow. When it finally arrived, Bolan rushed in. He hit the button and waited for the doors to close. The ride down took forever. It seemed as if he had done nothing but ride up and down the damned elevator.
On the lowest level of the plant once again, he rushed through the elevator doors before they had fully opened. The corridor was even darker than it had been. He paused to get his bearings, then ran to the corner of the hall. The long concrete passage stretched dimly ahead. He heard and saw nothing.
Wherever Eli and Rachel had been going, they were in a hurry. That could mean only one thing. They knew where the hostages had been moved. Bolan was running at top speed. The concrete echoed with his heavy steps. The corridor seemed endless. Suddenly he was in the open. The right-hand wall ended, and he found himself in a wilderness of throbbing machinery. Huge conduits ran in seemingly endless banks overhead.
It was a steel jungle. The hum of the machines was off-key somehow. He knew the reactor was overheating. Something was getting ready to blow.
Unwilling to run into opposition at full tilt, he had to slow his pace. Listening for anything that didn't belong, he worked his way among the towering structures.
A huge generator loomed just ahead. He was at the heart of the plant. Beyond was another jungle, a mirror image of the one he had just passed through. He paused again. The area looked familiar. He was certain it was the area through which he had seen Rachel and Eli pass. Bolan dropped to the floor, peering into the murk, trying to see under the tangled pipes and bunched cables. Visibility was limited.
He saw nothing.
Getting to his feet, he moved around the generator. He had to be getting close. But where the hell was everybody? Bolan fingered the trigger on his SMG. The wilderness stretched ahead of him, vanishing in the dark. The generator was behind him now, groaning like a wounded beast. If he didn't find them soon, he might have to continue in total darkness.
There must be an emergency system. He wished he had thought to tell Matt Stevens to kick it in.
Too late now.
Bolan thought he was approaching the bottom of the containment building. There was a double-locked access.
If Glinkov planned to herd the hostages into it, it would have to be done from nearby.
The first burst of fire caught him by surprise.
He hit the deck, straining to place the point of origin. A second burst was louder. The thunder seemed to echo through the bowels of the plant as if it, too, wanted to get out. This time he got a fix on it. Regaining his feet, he bent low and moved toward the sound. He couldn't tell whether the fire had been returned. It might have been somebody on edge.
Nerves were bound to give way in the eerie half-light. Behind him Bolan heard the sound of the generator. It was rising and falling. Then it died altogether. It was pitch-dark. Bolan froze in his tracks. For a long moment he heard nothing, then shouts were followed by more automatic weapon fire. It was close. He couldn't afford to use a flashlight. Any moving light would be an easy target.
Another burst of gunfire cast ghostly shadows that vanished immediately. He moved closer. Like dawn breaking, a dim light began to appear. Stevens must have kicked in the emergency generator. The light wasn't bright, but it was better than nothing.
Just ahead, he saw a figure crouched behind a huge, dead machine. The outline was too vague for him to tell who it was. He circled around behind the machine, keeping his eye on the hiding figure. As he got closer, the figure left its cover and moved forward. There were two others off to its left.
They too were crouched and moving forward. The last figure moved again, passing just beneath one of the emergency lamps. It was Rachel.
Bolan sprinted to her side.
She turned to him. "It's about time you showed up."
"What's going on?"
"They moved the hostages. They're locked in a storeroom up ahead."
"How many of the goons are there?"
"Eli thinks ten, maybe twelve."
"You know what they're planning to do, don't you?"
She nodded. "I know."
Cohen was crouched behind a stack of metal drums, ahead and to the left. Bolan whistled, and Cohen turned. He broke into a grin.
"Who's your buddy?" Bolan asked, indicating the third figure, kneeling in the shadows beyond Cohen.
"Parsons," Rachel said.
"What?"
"He says he didn't know what Glinkov was planning until tonight. Glinkov was going to have him shot, but he greased the guy who was going to do it. With a gun that Glinkov had given him. How's that for poetic justice?"
"It's not bad for a fairy tale. I don't buy it."
"I didn't either, at first."
"You do now?"
She nodded. "I do. He saved our lives. We were jumped while we were working on the door to the control room. They killed Adam."
"I know."
"Parsons hit them from behind. If he hadn't, we'd have been blown away."
"Do you trust him, Rachel?"
"Do we have a choice?"
"I guess not. I'll be back. I want to talk to Eli."
Bolan crossed the dim expanse between Rachel and Cohen.
"Where are they holed up?"
"Most of them are straight ahead, up near the wall. I hope they're all there. If they get around our flank, we're in big trouble."
"Maybe we shouldn't give them the chance," Bolan said.
"Lead on, Mack."
Bolan hefted his Ingram and moved to the right.
"When I give you the sign, we'll move," he whispered. "Let's stay spread out, so they can't gang up on us."
"You got it. Tell Parsons."
&n
bsp; Bolan looked at Cohen without saying anything.
"I mean it, Mack. Tell him. Listen, we need all the help we can get."
Bolan slipped through the shadows, taking a position just behind the older man.
"Did you hear that?" Bolan asked the antinuke leader.
Parsons nodded. "Mr. Glinkov has been anxiously awaiting your arrival. If we're going to have a chance here, you'll have to live up to your reputation, Mr. Bolan."
"Don't worry about it," Bolan snapped. "We don't have much time, so here's what we're going to do. In two minutes, the three of us will hit them head-on. Rachel will cover our rear."
Bolan turned to leave. Parsons grabbed his arm. "Listen, Mr. Bolan. I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. But I swear to you, I had no idea this was going to happen. All I wanted was to close the plant down. I never meant for anyone to get hurt."
"It's a little late for that, isn't it?"
Parsons said nothing. After a moment of awkward silence, Bolan slipped away to rejoin Rachel.
"You're going to have to watch our backs," he whispered.
"Mack, be careful. And look out for Eli. He can be a little reckless."
"He'll be fine. Caution is a luxury we can't afford." Bolan cocked his Ingram and gestured to Cohen and Parsons. At the sign, the three men pressed forward, sliding in and out of the shadows. It was fifty yards to the blank wall. It was the longest fifty yards Mack Bolan had ever walked. He checked his watch. There was less than an hour left now. Parsons was on the right wing. The old guy moved well for an inexperienced man. Eli Cohen was on the left wing.
Mack Bolan took the point.
Parsons slipped through a notch between two columns of piping. Gunfire chased him back into the shadows. The dim light and the banshee wail of the ricocheting slugs chilled Bolan to the core.
In the shadows ahead, several men shifted positions nervously. They had the edge in numbers, and they had the advantage of defending from cover.
Bolan's group had no choice but to expose itself from time to time as it moved in.
Parsons was using a Kalashnikov. He sprayed fire randomly, and Bolan jumped ahead.
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