TEARING HER ATTENTION from the injured Laith Khan, Tera Geren heard the sounds of renewed battle within the hospital. She looked through the clear-plastic magazine of her P-90 and was satisfied that she had thirty shots left to deal with a combat situation. Especially if Striker and Marid Haytham were still in the fight.
She looked back at Laith.
“Go! I’ll be okay,” Laith responded to her unspoken question.
Geren turned the corner and came face-to-face with the stocky, grim assassin she recognized instantly as Greb Steiner. She brought up her P-90, but the quarters were too close, and his big hand slapped up and under hers, pointing the weapon’s muzzle into the ceiling as she triggered her first burst. Dust rained from shattered tiles, forcing them both to back off, partially blinded by the cloud that rushed down between them.
Trying to blink grit out of her eyes, she opened up with the P-90 again in blind rage. The stream of bullets was ineffective, and suddenly she folded over the biggest fist she ever felt, the air exploding from her lungs.
A wild swing brushed across her hair. Geren had taken her shots, now Greb Steiner was taking his own. Screams from behind warned her that she had to hold the line against the Abraham’s Dagger marauder.
She reached out with a jab, striking heavy muscle, then felt something hard slam into her clavicle. Lights flashed in her head as once again the breath was knocked out of her.
The line she held was fraying with every heartbeat.
THE EXECUTIONER STALKED the hallway, Desert Eagle leading the way. While the prefab building was meant to provide as much space as possible for injured people to be wheeled into rooms, Bolan’s long arms made it hard for him to turn a corner and keep his distance.
He didn’t want to get into another wrestling match. His muscles ached, his bones creaked, and the blood seeping from the wound on his right arm made the blacksuit stick to his skin and crackle. His legs felt wobbly beneath him, and he knew that another life and death struggle would not be one in his favor, especially against someone fresh and ready for combat.
As he rounded a corner, he lurched to one side. Rhodin waited for him and opened fire the moment he caught sight of Bolan. He hit the floor, Desert Eagle spitting lead, but the Israeli moved like greased lightning.
Rhodin disappeared into an examination room. The doorjamb exploded under the jackhammer impacts of Bolan’s .44 Magnum barrage. The Abraham’s Dagger assassin leaned out and returned fire, the Colt Commando sending off shock waves of overpressure from its enormous muzzle-flash.
Bolan blinked away the glowing orange afterimage of the Colt Commando’s fireball and saw that even Rhodin himself was staggered by the power of his own weapon. Bolan fired off two rounds. One smashed into the rifle’s frame and ripped it from the Israeli’s grasp. The second round clipped the man’s side. Then the mighty pistol locked empty.
The Executioner wasn’t going to make the mistake of charging. He held his ground, reaching for a spare magazine and reloading the big handcannon. He had the corner for cover, and he kept it. His arm ached, protesting spikes of pain driving up and down from his tortured muscle. He shifted the big Desert Eagle to his left hand and took a couple of deep breaths.
A blaze of autofire went off elsewhere in the building. The Executioner felt an urgent tug, his instincts demanding he take out Rhodin and help Geren with the other man, but Bolan’s reason fought against it. It would have proved easy to pluck a grenade from his harness and lob it toward the examination room, but there was no guarantee that the exploding bomb would do anything more than harm a patient who might have been left behind.
Bolan’s hand wrapped around the round shape of the smooth-skinned fragmentation grenade, thoughts suddenly whirling to the surface. A plan of action erupted in his brain.
The Executioner unhooked the little hellbomb and threw it, sailing it through the doorway where Rhodin had disappeared.
The pin still remained, leaving the weapon inert.
“Fuck!” Rhodin shouted and he dived out into the hallway, pistol up and flashing.
Bolan fired off two shots from his Desert Eagle, feeling the recoil shake up his arm, instants before he felt the thundering impact of a .44 Magnum slug against his own body armor. The wind seared from his lungs, burning in his throat. The Executioner’s body armor was good, though. It stopped the slug from tearing through him. As it was, he still felt like he’d been smacked with a hammer.
Rhodin was on the floor, struggling to get to his feet, his own Desert Eagle in his fist. Bolan had forgotten that they had retrieved their pistols from the same storage cache. He swung his weapon to bear on the Israeli before he could reach his feet.
Instead of continuing to rise, the Abraham’s Dagger assassin dropped to the floor, cutting loose with his .44 Magnum pistol. It was everything the Executioner could do to dive across the hall, coming to a halt behind the counter. He was sporting two new bruises under his Kevlar. The Israeli gunman was good on the trigger.
Bolan lunged, flipping himself over the counter, boots kicking out hard. Rhodin, who had stalked around the nursing station counter, was caught right in the middle. The two men crashed to the floor, the Executioner riding the man down.
Rhodin tried to bring up his gun hand, but Bolan smashed down hard with the barrel of the heavy .44 Magnum pistol, catching the Israeli across the face. Cheekbone collapsed under the impact of the three pound handgun. The lack of sharp corners at the muzzle didn’t hamper the tearing of flesh as Bolan ground the front sight into Rhodin’s right eye and tore the gun free from the pulpy mush that was the assassin’s face.
The Abraham’s Dagger commando howled in horror and clawed at the Executioner, trying to get him off his chest. Instead, Bolan twisted the Desert Eagle and hammered the butt of the big gun into Rhodin’s forehead. Skin split under the heavy strike.
The Executioner followed up with a punch from his injured, weakened right arm, but it might as well have been a swat from a kitten’s paw. The assassin squirmed and struggled under Bolan, his hand reaching for a knife in his vest.
Bolan pressed his right hand into Rhodin’s knife wrist, pinning him down, but the commando wasn’t giving up. The Executioner stuffed the barrel of the Desert Eagle up and under Rhodin’s chin.
The assassin got his knife free, the point slicing across the Executioner’s thigh, but it was only a scratch. It was the last thing the murderer did before Bolan triggered the Desert Eagle.
The warrior collapsed off Rhodin’s chest, drained of almost every ounce of strength. He could have shut down and slept for weeks if given the chance, but there was still one more Israeli hit man out there. He grabbed a section of desk and pulled himself up, arms shuddering under his weight. He picked up the Desert Eagle, then fished through Rhodin’s belt to get two more magazines for the handgun.
Twenty-four rounds in three magazines—enough for all but the most pitched of battles.
One foot ahead of the other, Bolan staggered out into the hall. His sense of direction led him toward the triage area where the physicians had dragged Laith Khan. He hoped he would find Geren there.
A gunshot went off, and he heard the sound of a woman grunting in pain.
Suddenly, Bolan’s footsteps became running strides; the weight of the Desert Eagle in his fist seemed light as a feather. He charged around the corner and saw Greb Steiner with a small handgun, a Beretta to Bolan’s tired eyes, still aimed at Tera Geren’s bloodied forehead. The Israeli hit man saw Bolan arrive and brought up his pistol, firing a single shot that plunked into the Executioner’s Kevlar body armor.
The big American barely felt the little .22-caliber round strike his chest, but he skidded to a halt out of survival reflex.
Steiner’s stocky form bent low, one powerful arm scooped up the tiny form of Geren. She twisted, one arm rising reflexively to clutch at the Israeli assassin’s muscular limb as it closed against her throat. Steel slid into Steiner’s other beefy paw, a combat dagger similar to the one that had slit a
shallow cut across Bolan’s thigh.
The Executioner lowered his Desert Eagle, not trusting his wobbly limbs or his reflexes to get an accurate shot into Steiner’s skull before he managed to sever several arteries in Tera’s neck.
Steiner, holding the stunned Tera, looked at Bolan.
“Disarm, and we’ll settle this like men,” the Israeli assassin growled.
Bolan looked at Tera. The bullet had pierced her forehead, and she looked in dire straights.
“Drop your pistol, and we’ll face each other like true warriors,” Steiner said. The light glinted off the shimmering steel at Tera’s throat. Her glazed eyes rolled to meet Bolan’s.
“Shoot…this fucker,” she gritted. Her hands tried to clench into fists. One side of her mouth didn’t move properly. She knew she was dying.
Bolan unclipped his belt, the Desert Eagle in its hip holster, and the thigh pouch for his rifle magazines fell away. His cold blue eyes never leaving the sad-looking gaze of the Abraham’s Dagger killer. His eyes lit from within, joy reaching them finally. Bolan knew the type, always lamenting the lack of a proper enemy.
Steiner threw the knife aside and let Tera drop to the ground like a rag doll, a smirk crossing his face. “You’d fight for someone with Nazi blood running through her veins?”
“I’d fight for someone who’s given her all for me,” Bolan answered. “You made one little mistake, though.”
Steiner shifted his stance, hands up in a guarding position. “What’s that?”
“You’re not worth the blood on my knuckles,” the Executioner said, pulling out his tiny Beretta Tomcat. The gun fired instantly, .32 caliber slugs flying as fast as he could pull the small pistol’s trigger. Steiner jerked under multiple impacts.
The Tomcat locked back empty, and Steiner dropped to his knees, coughing blood.
Steiner looked up as Bolan slowly walked forward, feeding a fresh magazine into the tiny Beretta, cold, deadly eyes staring down.
“You were supposed to—” Steiner began, but the Executioner punched two more shots that struck him dead center of his forehead. One lodged in bone, but the other shattered through, tearing into brain matter, killing him instantly.
The assassin slumped at Bolan’s feet.
“Maybe that’s your problem,” he told the dead man, his voice weighing sadly, remembering the dead people this man’s machinations had been responsible for. “You expected me to play by the rules.”
Outside, he heard the thunder of helicopter rotors, and through the glass, he saw choppers soaring in, probably laden with Army Rangers or Marines. They would help secure Makaki against any further marauders.
He tossed the pistol and picked up the lifeless form of Tera Geren. He turned back to help the physicians with Laith Khan. For now, he’d had enough of killing.
It was time to nurture life.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-7407-8
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Doug Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.
SUICIDE HIGHWAY
Copyright © 2005 by Worldwide Library.
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