Executioner 055 - Paradine's Gauntlet

by Pendleton, Don

  Paradine lowered the smoking rifle. Phoenix had fallen. Paradine had killed the warrior who stalked his dreams, the man who had put him through hell in Turkey.

  Revenge.

  Paradine pulled out his knife from its sheath—he wanted a souvenir. He wanted Phoenix's head.

  MACK BOLAN LAY ON HIS BACK, immobile, registering pain and trying to arrive at a damage estimate. He felt the sticky warmth of blood against his side, below the arm, where a slug had burrowed in above the holstered Beretta. His chest and ribs were throbbing painfully, as if he had been struck repeatedly with leaded bats. It hurt to breathe.

  His rifle had taken the brunt of it, stock and action shattered by a single round. He had taken the rest of it, his body pummeled by the rifle with an impact no less punishing than a projectile. He had to struggle for breath.

  He took a rapid inventory, tensing one leg, then the other, moving on to arms and shoulders, waiting for the brittle pain of shattered bones.

  Everything was working.

  Slowly, cautiously, the Executioner began to move. The right arm only, inching inward toward his side, the motion scarcely perceptible until his finger grazed the Uzi in its leather rigging at his hip. He felt the pistol grip and safety switch, the break-away release—and froze with his palm pressed flat against the holster.

  Footsteps approached. Bolan's face was turned away. The gunner was closing on his blind side. There was no safe way to get a look at him.

  The footsteps were a dozen paces out. Bolan gauged distance, estimated angles, tensed every muscle in his aching body. He would have to get it right the first time, for there would be no second chance. Mentally, he started counting down the numbers.

  Like a lightning bolt, Bolan ripped the Uzi out of side leather, rolling over and sitting upand aiming in a single fluid motion. He was on the mark and squeezing off before he registered the face of his enemy, before he recognized the cruel mouth twisted in a silent snarl.

  He held the Uzi's trigger down. Twenty Glasers rattled out in less than three seconds, dead on target. Paradine, thirty feet away, appeared to shiver, blur. He was dissolving where he stood. Emitting a noise made in hell, Paradine tumbled backward in death.

  It was a grisly unbecoming that was over in an instant, and the mangled hulk of what had almost been a human being lay dead in the darkness.

  Bolan slowly made it to his feet and fed the mini-gun another magazine. He flexed hisshoulders and grimaced at the pain. Hewalked past the ravaged body of his enemy, refusing to look at the corpse. Anything remaining of the mercenary known as Paradine was harmless now, his menace grounded, drained away like so much static electricity.

  Alone on the battlefield, Bolan felt the weight of ages on his shoulders. It threatenedto pull him down. But war was the life that he had chosen, War Eternal, and it was too damned late to start having second thoughts about the course.

  Resignedly, he shrugged off the weariness, the bruises, the ache of costly victory, and took himself away from the hellgrounds, going through the motions of a routine mop-up. There were hostages to gather in, the diamonds to return, and then, when he was finished, the soldier had a final stop to make.

  EPILOGUE

  “ONLY FOR A MINUTE, NOW. She needs her test." The Air Force surgeon looked Bolan over with a more than casual interest and added, "You could stand some rest yourself."

  "I'm getting there," the soldier told him.

  Mack Bolan had never liked the antiseptic smell of hospitals. It reminded him of slow death, sluggish and cruel. Bolan put the morbid thought away and moved along the corridor in search of life.

  Brognola waited for him outside Post-op, putting on a weary smile at the Executioner's approach. Bolan took his hand and wrung it warmly.

  "The medics put her under, but they tell me that she's out of danger," Hal explained.

  "I want to see her," Bolan said.

  It was dark inside the private room, a dim light emanating from the door of the adjacent washroom. April occupied center stage, almost lost in the giant bed with its railings andassorted therapeutic hardware. An IV rig was fastened onto one side.

  Bolan stood beside her in the semidarkness, captivated by the whisper of her breathing, the gentle rise and fall of the sheet across her breasts. There was something in his throat about to choke him.

  The soldier reached out and lightly stroked her auburn hair. April shifted, murmured; something underneath her breath. Her eyelids fluttered, finally opened.

  "I knew you'd come," she said, her voice far off. "I've been waiting for you."

  Bolan could say nothing. He looked at her, his jaw firm, his eyes warm.

  "Can we go back home now?" she whispered.

  "Soon," he told her. "Try to get some rest."

  "You won't go without me?" She was fading fast, the sedative reasserting its authority.

  "I'll be right here."

  "I love you." She never heard his answer, but he told her anyway, bending down to brush her lips with his.

  He found a chair against the wall, brought it over to her bedside and settled into it.

  For the moment, he was done with war and killing. It was respite, rather than reprieve. He knew there would be other battles, other enemies ahead. And the soldier and his lady would face them.

  Together.