“Laith, any more coming in?” Tera asked.
“Just the two I saw coming in the front. I can’t vouch for any other entrances, though, so be careful,” Laith answered.
Geren chuckled. “Careful is my middle name.”
“Really? Mine’s Cornelius. But if you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”
“Cut the chatter,” Bolan’s voice intruded. “Find some other way to cool your nerves.”
Geren nodded, looking back, expecting to see the big soldier, but he had disappeared. She walked swiftly, keeping herself tight to one wall or the other, always sweeping her eyes in an arc, looking for trouble. Her ears strained for any stray sounds betraying the approach of an enemy.
A nurse stepped out of a room and saw the Israeli terrorist hunter. The nurse seemed almost comedic, dark-faced over a white, old-fashioned outfit, like something out of a cartoon. She paused, her round face wide with surprise. Geren raised her finger to her lips and shook her head. “Get into the patient’s room and stay there.”
The nurse nodded and disappeared into a room. Geren took three long strides and reached an intersection. An elevator was coming up, its indicator showing the car’s progress. The redheaded fireball pressed herself against the desk, crouching low, thankful she was short and already a small target.
The doors hissed open and a single man came out. She tensed but kept her finger off the trigger. The man was a clean shaved Arab, but he didn’t look like a local. His dress was too western, and he looked, for all the world, Palestinian.
He could have been a member of Abraham’s Dagger. The Dagger was made up of agents chosen specifically for their ability to blend in with Palestinians and Israeli-born Arabs in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and other similar territories. But something seemed wrong. He had a weapon, its ugly shape creating an equally ugly bulge under his jacket, but he became more worried as he looked around.
He’d taken a sidestep toward her when she made her presence known.
“Keep your hands where I can see them!” she snapped.
The man froze, and she got a good look at his face.
It was Marid Haytham, and he looked like a deer caught in the headlights. He put his hands out. “There’s eight members of Abraham’s Dagger’s goon squad right on my heels, Geren,” he said.
“You know me?” the Israeli agent asked.
“It pays to know my enemies, and the enemies of my enemy. I’ve been watching you for days.”
The woman pondered Marid Haytham’s reputation. He was known as a straight shooter, and someone who fought only those who could fight back. In a war where his brethren struck at the unarmed and the helpless as a means of showing the Israeli government their willingness to fight, Haytham limited himself to those whose job it was to get in harm’s way. It didn’t make him a saint by any stretch, if by some chance she should actually start acknowledging saints, but it did give her pause.
“Get under cover, Haytham,” Geren said. “And the first time you turn that gun on me—”
“I know,” Haytham growled. He was too smart to get any closer to her. The Palestinian turned and went down the hall, taking cover in an alcove.
“Tera?” Bolan’s voice came over the radio. “Who were you talking to?”
“An old friend,” Geren answered. “He says we’ve got eight.”
“That much I figured. I’ve got two in my sights now.”
A stairwell door slammed.
“And I have a couple of my own,” she answered back, crossing from the desk to the corner of the intersection, watching the two men, weapons held low, enter the hall. They looked both ways but were scanning at chest height, which meant that Geren was below their line of sight.
She lined up a laser on the knees of one of the gunmen and milked the trigger of the Uzi pistol. The Taliban mercenary was sent howling to the floor, his knees and shins blasted to bits, his body hitting tile hard. The weapon in his hands skidded out of his reach just as a second weapon opened up in the hall. The other Dagger dupe was hit by two streams of automatic fire, one from Geren, and one from Haytham.
Ripped apart by twin salvos of lead, the second hit man didn’t stand a chance as he struck a wall, spilling over a dirty linen hamper left in the hall.
Geren glanced back at Haytham, who kept his weapon trained on the dying gunman, pointed away from her.
She didn’t love the situation she was in, but she could live with it.
Elsewhere, thunder echoed through the halls.
BOLAN DIDN’T LIKE the sudden cryptic attitude Tera Geren had developed after her hasty conversation with a newcomer. But that wasn’t his immediate worry as the two gunmen he saw were joined by another pair of Taliban locals.
Three of them looked like Taliban.
One didn’t.
To a less familiar eye, he would have passed for Palestinian on a good night. But the Executioner had faced far too many enemies over the years. One of the things that kept him alive was his sharp senses and his ability to identify people almost instantly.
The fourth man was a member of Abraham’s Dagger, and he was in charge of the operation. Bolan took a sidestep, bringing up his Uzi pistol to deal with the team leader. The sudden flash of movement, however, had to have been enough to activate the paranoia-wired reflexes of the Dagger hit man. He lurched suddenly, stepping so that a Taliban gunman was between him and Bolan’s line of fire.
Since it wasn’t an innocent hostage, Bolan fired anyway, sending four 9 mm slugs peppering into the Arab thug’s chest. The man gave a grunt, then steadied himself, swinging up his rifle and crying out in rage and shock. The Executioner didn’t waste time concerning himself as to why four Parabellum bullets weren’t enough to knock the terrorist off his feet. He simply took a long sidestep, hit a crouch, aimed for the man’s face and blew it apart with another salvo of manstoppers.
Even as he died, the bulletproof killer triggered his AK with a heart-stopping display of thunder and lightning. Bolan saw him strike the ground, and saw the telltale blue nylon shell of body armor poking out under his robe rags. That mystery was solved, but the soldier had other things on his mind as he scrambled for the protection of a heavy fiberglass waste disposal cart. Bullets chewed into it as he dived for cover.
Bolan’s mind spread out as his body compressed behind the cart. There weren’t many options for him in terms of cover, unless he wanted to race across ten feet of hall and receive a torso-full of enemy autofire. Even with his own body armor, the combined fire of three rifles would probably cut through his protection, and a stray shot could always strike him in the head. The cover he was seeking was away from the three remaining gunmen, and Bolan wanted to get closer to the killers.
He glanced at the wheels of the cart, then hurled his shoulder against the contraption. Suddenly, he had a tank to hide behind. It was only made of fiberglass, and filled with garbage and medical waste, but it had stopped most of the bullets aimed his way. Guiding the cart with one hand, he swept up the Uzi, spotting one gunner angling around the side of the hurtling garbage container. Bolan aimed low, firing just below the guy’s waist and riddling him with a half-dozen Parabellum shockers.
Folding over as if he was stabbed in the groin with a hot poker, the terrorist let out a scream, his weapon shifting from laying down fire on the Executioner to blasting out divots of tile and concrete from the floor. With a second burst, Bolan ended his suffering with a blast of slugs that smashed through the top of the shooter’s skull, tumbling the would-be killer backward.
Suddenly the garbage cart came to a stop and Bolan’s foot skidded out from under him. He came down hard on his knee, grunting at the reflex jolt against his joint. The rolling fiberglass container surged against him now, trying to grind him under. Someone was on the other end, putting a stop to Bolan’s improvised tank, taking advantage of leverage and muscle power.
The Executioner pushed himself out of the way of his former mobile barrier, pulling his Desert Eagle in one fluid fast
draw. The thug shoving the garbage cart was off balance, with nothing stopping him from tumbling forward.
Bolan helped him with a .44 Magnum coffin nail through his throat.
That left the Abraham’s Dagger gunman, and he was nowhere to be seen.
The Executioner braced himself for an even tougher fight.
CRANE SOZE WAS impressed with how fast the mystery man took down the three hired hands. Soze ducked into a room as the inverted tug of war with the garbage cart was going on.
Passing a sleeping patient, Soze threw open the window and clambered out onto the ledge. He’d need to get behind the big soldier, and that meant taking a wall-crawler express. Not the safest or sanest way to travel, he noted as winds whipped at him, but Crane Soze was an expert at trailing suspects from rooftops in dense-packed third world cities where ledges were wide and ornate and buildings scrunched tightly together. He scurried along the ledge three rooms down, snaked through a window and drew his handgun.
“Soze, get out of there,” he heard Steiner whisper over his earphone. “We’re not going to lose any more people against Geren and her team.”
Soze remained quiet, pressing his cheek to the door. He hooked his finger into the wire of the earpiece and popped it free so he could devote his full attention to what was going on in the hallway beyond. Fingers squeezed tightly around the grip frame of the Heckler & Koch USP in his fist.
Steiner gave one more tinny cry over the earpiece, then went quiet.
Soze was glad the soft-spoken, sad-eyed assassin wasn’t a whiner over the radio. He had an opportunity to take out Geren and her allies, and he was going to take it.
The Abraham’s Dagger fighter stuffed the handgun back into its holster and gripped his AKM assault rifle, keeping the muzzle pointed at the floor. He cracked the door cracked open and he watched the big, dark shape of the soldier pass around a corner. Soze slipped into the hall, feet moving softly on rubber soles. He’d crossed half the distance to where he was sure the mysterious American had disappeared when a sharp hiss sounded behind him.
“Stone? Stone, you read me?”
Soze whirled and dropped into a crouch, taking cover behind a medication cart, taking quick mental inventory of his surroundings. It was a woman’s whisper. Tera Geren was behind him, and on the other side was the man in black. Not a good place to be, he realized, but at least he knew where one enemy was, which was more than what they knew.
There was no whispered answer, but Soze wasn’t expecting the other to give away his position. He gripped the AKM tighter, scanning over his shoulder. His tendons were taut like mousetrap triggers, muscles ready to snap at the first sight of prey. Heartbeats thundered in a spot just behind his ears, neck throbbing with each pulse of blood that roared through his arteries like jets on takeoff. He was in fight or flight mode, as physiologists and psychologists called it. Knuckles cracked as he gripped the hardwood of his rifle, and he clenched his eyes shut for a moment, hoping no one heard the ever so subtle sound of his joints snapping and loosening up.
Death was close, and it was going to explode on this hospital floor.
Gunfire suddenly chattered.
“Shit!” he heard Geren curse. Bullets blasted from her position, and Soze was on the move, slipping around the corner, rifle leading the way. He glanced back in time to spot a man in black. Cold blue eyes bored down on him, the face a craggy mask of controlled fury, long, lean limbs propelling him forward.
Soze whirled, trying to raise his rifle to saw the big, grim bastard in two. A burst of rifle fire peppered the walls, but stopped cold as a big hand smeared in ebony greasepaint clamped over the barrel and halt the swing of the weapon. The Israeli wasn’t a small man himself. However, the Abraham’s Dagger fighter didn’t see the sense in wrestling for the control of a rifle.
He brought up his forearm, blocking a punch from the big mystery man, releasing his shooting grip with his other hand. Soze rocketed a knee that caught the big man just above the hip. The American grunted with the impact but didn’t release the rifle, instead bringing the frame of the solid weapon up hard into the head of the outlaw Israeli.
Head swimming from the cuff of the rifle, Soze stumbled backward, out of the tall wraith’s grasp, making it seem as if the blow had taken more out of him than it really had. Dropping against a counter, he coughed and wasn’t surprised when his own blood dribbled from his lips onto the mottled gray surface. Blinking away stars, he waited for a burst of gunfire to cut him down, but his gamble that the enemy wanted him alive for questioning was paying off with each tick of the clock.
He let his feet slip out from under him, going down to his knees.
“Nice try,” the American growled, digging his fingers into Soze’s collar.
The Israeli acted immediately, arm snaking around the tall man’s leg, and with a surge of strength, he stood up hard, knocking the man off his feet, spinning with lightning speed to bring his boot down in a murderous stab to the American’s vulnerable throat.
8
Mack Bolan was no Superman, and he never claimed to be flawless. Instead, like a certain contemporary of the fictional comic book hero, he preferred to be prepared when the worst hit. That meant having a harness full of utility pockets and pouches full of equipment, weapons and ammunition to cover dozens of treacherous contingencies.
It also meant that he knew how to react when the bottom fell out and his enemies were pressing their attack. As soon as Bolan felt his balance going, he allowed his muscles to loosen, going from spring hard to soft and relaxed, his only muscle contraction, jamming his chin to his chest so that as his shoulders smashed into the floor, his skull didn’t bounce off unyielding, merciless tile. As it was, the impact knocked the breath from him, and his head rolled back, hitting the ground much more slowly than it would have had he not tucked in tight. In the same heartbeat as the Executioner went down, Soze rose to his feet, knee hiking against his chest to cock a kick aimed toward the floored soldier.
The Executioner slapped the floor and surged against the ankle of his attacker, his body rolling over the sole point of balance the man maintained while his other foot clipped Bolan’s biceps. Hot warmth flushed under his sleeve as the savage kick split tape and skin, popping stitches in one brutal broadside. Bolan wrapped his arms around Soze’s knee and got to his own knees, shoulder rising and jamming against the Israeli’s crotch.
The renegade commando wasn’t standing still for it, and Bolan felt explosions go off in his skull as fists impacted on his head. Punches rolled off the heavy, curved bone protecting his brain, but sooner or later, those impacts were going to cause him some serious trauma. Bolan snapped himself erect, driving Soze up and over the counter at a nurse’s station. He didn’t let go, listening to the man grunt as his spine barked against the edge of the countertop. Soze twisted viciously, fingers snapping out and clawing toward Bolan’s face.
A finger raked Bolan’s cheek, raising a welt. He backed away, releasing his foe’s leg. The Israeli was off balance on the counter, giving the Executioner an opening. A swift one-two punch hit Soze in the sternum and jaw, sending him tumbling, almost comically, backward.
Bolan reached for his Desert Eagle, drawing it before finding himself in the path of a sailing chair. He sidestepped most of the hurtling missile, but a padded fiberglass arm still struck him in the shoulder, jolting him. Staggered, the Executioner tried raising his Desert Eagle again, getting off one shot at a lunging blur.
Soze grunted as a 240-grain hollowpoint rolled off his Kevlar body armor and one broken rib. His hot breath poured over Bolan’s face like rancid water. The two men crashed across the hall, a tangle of arms and legs. Bolan’s wrist was being held at bay, the muzzle of the .44 Magnum pistol bobbing up and down. The perverse struggle surged on as first the American, then his Israeli foe, rolled on the tiled floor.
Bolan let go of the Desert Eagle, twisting his hand around to claw at Soze’s forehead. The close-shaved scalp didn’t give any hair for the Executioner
to use as leverage, but his fingers scraped down his opponent’s forehead, one finger managing to gouge into his eye. There was a flinch, a natural reaction to optical invasion, and with that brief weakening, Bolan had his advantage again, grabbing a chunk of collar as he burst from Soze’s grip. With a twist, he yanked the stocky renegade’s head from the floor, then rammed his other forearm under his jaw and bounced the Israeli’s head off the tile.
Soze’s whole body jerked as his head rebounded into Bolan’s plunging fist, dropping back to the floor with an ugly dull thud. The ex-Mossad commando hooked his fingers into the armhole of Bolan’s combat vest, then twisted, driving his knee up into the soldier’s stomach. With the double leverage, Bolan found himself flying headfirst into the wall. Only by twisting with every ounce of agility he had did he avoid concussion or a neck injury. His already blood-soaked arm and shoulder left a dark, glistening smear on the pale paint.
The Executioner rose to his feet, arm surging with a twinge of pain from ripped skin and bruised muscle. He grabbed the wounded limb and looked back at the brushstroke of his lifeblood left on the wall. Soze glanced at the dark streak and smiled.
“You’re going to have to be pretty good if you think you’re gonna beat me single handed,” Soze said and chuckled. He started with a lunging side kick that Bolan took on his left forearm, grunting under the impact.
Soze dropped to the balls of both feet, dancing in tight, fists launching like lightning. The Executioner backpedaled along the hallway, slapping and deflecting the Israeli’s punches with both hands, keeping his bloody bicep out of reach, but using his forearms to soften and disrupt his enemy’s salvo of blows.
The Executioner’s heel struck an overturned cart, and he stopped, forearms pumping to block more and more punches as Soze let go with another flurry of strikes.
“Nowhere to go?” the Israeli asked.
Bolan snapped his left shoulder forward, hard, taking a solid punch and feeling the bruise already forming. It hurt like hell, but the Executioner snaked his ankle around the renegade assassin’s foot. His right fist swung around, catching Soze just above the kidney. Bolan’s second strike was with his left hand. Fingers curled into hooks of steel-hard flesh tore through the eyebrow and cheek of the other man’s face. Blood sprayed freely.
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