Sanders’s eyes were livid points of hate as he looked Bolan up and down.
“Buddy, I’m going to have the Senate Intelligence Committee so far up your ass that you—”
Bolan lifted his Glock. “It’s not that kind of operation,” he said. “I’m so far off the books I’m illiterate. You understand what I’m telling you?”
Sanders sat stiff, face flushed. He breathed in hard snorts, nostrils flaring with the effort and his mouth set in a hard, thin line. He kept his eyes on the floor, refusing to look up at Bolan. Beside him Sable sat very still. She was unafraid and the look she gave him was calculating.
Sanders shot a protective glance toward Sable, but the woman was watching Bolan with cool inscrutability. The soldier met her gaze. He didn’t break it as he reached around and unlimbered his sat phone. He manipulated the instrument and put it to his ear.
“Bring it home, Jack,” Bolan said.
He cut the connection.
“Congratulations,” Bolan said to Sable. “The United States government is prepared to accept your offer.”
“What!” Sanders made to jump to his feet in sudden outrage.
Bolan reached over and smacked the heel of his palm into the agent’s forehead, shoving him back down onto the couch.
“You sit down. You aren’t Russian, Sanders. You aren’t negotiating anything, understand? You are nothing but a failure. You didn’t spin her, Sanders, she spun you. You’ve got a lot to answer to your country for. Don’t cross me.”
“You’re accepting my offer?” Sable sounded incredulous.
“Yep.” Bolan nodded.
“Then why all of this?” The beautiful Russian spy master waved her arms around.
Bolan met her eye and locked into her gaze tightly.
“Because,” he said, “we have accepted your offer. You will accept the terms of our agreement. There will be no counternegotiations, there will be no backing out, no thinking about it, no shopping around for a better deal. A helicopter is coming now. You will be getting on that helicopter.”
“I see,” she said.
“This is outrageous!” Sanders was screaming. “This is extortion, kidnapping!” Sanders grew increasingly frantic. “She has the right to negotiations—”
Bolan plucked his Taser off his belt and turned it on again. “Are you going to keep talking?” he asked.
Sanders choked off his words. His face was flaming red with his indignation. Bolan looked at him, disgusted with what he saw. A man given responsibility by his nation and who had thrown that duty away over an infatuation with a woman.
“Why does Kubrick want you dead?” Bolan asked Sable.
“Because he does what Lich tells him to do.”
“You spun Lich.” It wasn’t a question, not anymore.
Sable fixed him with a level stare. “Years ago. Lich was mercenary before the Wall came down. I protected him from the Kremlin intelligence purges. He was mine. Together we worked the CDI.”
“Yeah, I have photos of you working Tan,” Bolan countered dryly.
Sable shrugged. “Kubrick, under Lich’s orders, counterspun Tan so that she thought she was working for Moscow.”
“You had Vesler?”
“From the beginning. However I gave my blackmail information to Lich, who exploited him through other channels.”
“Why kill you now if not then?”
“I moved from KGB to SVR to certain influential syndicates—”
“Russian Mafia,” Bolan said. “So Lich kept getting paid, I get that. But what happened?”
“She’s coming over to our side!” Sanders injected, desperate not to be relegated to irrelevance in front of the beautiful Sable.
Bolan ignored the man.
“What happened?”
“I have been compromised,” she admitted simply. “When Vesler moved the Gustav prototype to Garabend through his criminal contacts instead of me, he leaked information that left my position vulnerable. A Federal Witness Protection Program is the only security I have of growing old anymore.”
Bolan had no idea what a “Gustav prototype” was. It hadn’t been in the intelligence he had received from Brognola before the Garabend takedown. He didn’t have time to follow up on this secondary thread.
“So you flipped Ranger Joe here to save your bacon,” Bolan surmised, bluffing. “The sale of the Gustav would have made you rich enough to disappear. Vesler screwed that up.”
Sanders was scarlet. The veins at his temples were vivid, and the cords of his neck stood out. His mouth worked futilely as his fists clenched and unclenched in his lap. Bolan had no doubt the man wanted to rip him limb from limb. He was unconcerned.
“I made contact with Sanders to circumvent Lich when I needed to come over. Somehow Lich compromised those communications. When we went to The Berliner casino there were operatives waiting. I attempted to use Tan to run interference, only to discover that Kubrick had her equipped with a task force of her own in case I made contact. Sanders was in danger as well—Lich would have us both killed. We had to go underground.”
“Sanders is a big boy,” Bolan said. “He should have kept trying to contact supervision, not play nursemaid to you.”
“Your government will be happy with the terms of our trade,” Sable answered.
“But not Lich.”
“But not Lich,” she agreed. “When I’m interviewed, Lich will be a dead man walking.”
Bolan grunted. It felt somehow anticlimactic. He had chased this pair from one end of the corrupt, violence filled miasma of Grozny to the other. He had killed, perpetrated violence, followed clues and scraps of clues, risking his life and that of others to get to them. Now he had them and the run was almost over. Had there been a time when he hadn’t been worried about Sanders? What he had thought of as a fellow operative in need had turned into a love struck cretin.
The whole thing left Bolan disgusted. Sable was still of tremendous value, but his righteous indignation at Sanders’s fate had been a waste of emotion. He shook his head.
“Tell me about the Gustav,” Bolan said.
“I sent an emissary to Garabend,” Sable replied. “It turned out the son of a bitch had sold me out to Lich. My man tried to get the prototype but failed. Lich has the Gustav and always did—not me.”
Before Bolan could say anything his sat phone chirped. He plucked it off his harness and answered it. He cocked his head to the side and regarded the two operatives on the couch while he listened to the voice on the phone.
“Come in from a south, southeast approach,” Bolan instructed. “The lawn to the back of the house is open enough for you to land inside the walls, easily. There are three of us, the bird will have no problem. It’s an in-and-out extraction.”
Sanders and Sable couldn’t hear the reply, but Bolan lowered his pistol and grunted his acquiescence into the phone unit before flipping it shut and securing it.
“You ready?” he asked Sable.
“Always.”
“Good. I’ve got a Black Hawk coming into your backyard right now. If you want a clean pair of underwear or a photo of Mom, get it now. This would be a lot better if I could trust your boyfriend to cover you for his country, but since I can’t, we’ll all go.”
“I’ve had just—” Sanders began.
From outside the group heard three muted pops like the sound of fireworks going off. The security monitor began to blare. Bolan turned toward the alarm, his eyes searching for the display screen from the CCTV feed. On the screen, like an episode of some television police drama, Bolan saw Sable’s gates hanging, blown off their moorings and black SUVs speeding through the breech.
“Kubrick,” Sable and Bolan said together.
“Weapons?” Bolan demanded.
“I’ve been ready for rivals for a while,” Sable replied as she rose off the couch.
Sanders popped up like a dutiful jack-in-the-box, prepared to fight fiercely for the woman he felt himself charged with protecting. Bolan restrained
himself from shooting the man out of pure irritation.
“Follow me, quickly,” Sable said. “I’ll show you where my weapons are.”
19
“I have an AKS in the trunk of the Land Rover in the garage,” Sable instructed. “I have a Bizon-19 under the bar and a couple of handguns around the house.”
Bolan looked back at the security camera and then at his watch, rapidly calculating. He looked at Sable and then over to Sanders. He nodded once, curtly, to Sable before turning to Sanders.
“You know the house, I don’t. Cut through to the garage and get the AKS. Meet Sable down in the game room. The Black Hawk is coming down in the backyard. My pilot can put it down between you and the hitters, using the minigun. Arm yourself with the pistols, go to the back lawn and hold off Kubrick’s team until the helicopter comes.”
“What will you do?” Sable asked.
“I’ll use the Bizon to keep them back from the house, slow their advance.”
“You’re willing to protect me?” Sable asked.
The Executioner looked at her. “You are a means to an end, an advantage for my country, a means to defeat people who would kill innocents in my country. That’s something I’ll fight for. Don’t confuse my sense of duty with anything else.”
Sable regarded the big man. She met his flat gaze boldly, then nodded. She turned from him and looked at the security monitor set into the wall beside her front entrance.
“They’re on the front drive,” she said.
“Give me the Bizon,” Bolan replied.
Sable raced to the bar and went behind it. She reached under the countertop and slid open a compartment. Her eyes were locked with Bolan’s as he stood watching her, his pistol up. They held each other’s eyes momentarily, then Sable looked down. The female mercenary pulled her Russian submachine gun from its cubbyhole and jerked back the bolt receiver, chambering a round.
She looked over at Bolan who still watched her, apparently at ease. Kubrick’s team had approached close enough that the sound of squealing tires and slamming doors could be heard from the drive before the main doors to the dacha.
Sable thrust her arms out and threw the submachine gun in an easy lob to Bolan. He caught the weapon with one hand, never taking his eyes off the dangerous woman. He holstered his pistol, checked the feed on the submachine gun. He looked back up. Sable placed a spare magazine on the bar.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll hold them back.”
He turned his back to her and walked toward the elaborate sitting area where he had used his pistol to pin Sanders and Sable to the couch only minutes earlier. He flicked the light switch as he moved into the room to avoid silhouetting himself. He lifted the Bizon-19 and sprayed the big picture windows facing the front of Sable’s property.
There was a chorus of answering shouts and a volley of gun fire erupted outside, initiating a storm of lead that tore into the room. More glass from the windows shattered. The heavy drapes jerked and danced like puppets as they were shredded. After his initial burst Bolan dropped to the floor, directing his momentum over a shoulder and rolling clear of the room, keeping below the hail of gunfire.
The Executioner slid around the column between sitting room and the entranceway. He looked up at the monitor and saw the three SUVs had been parked to keep the heavy engine blocks between the hit squad and gunfire from the house. Operatives fired at the house from around every protective angle offered by the vehicles.
Bolan spotted Kubrick. The rogue agent was armed with a black machine pistol. The arm that Bolan had savaged during their fight was in a sling and wrapped to his torso. Kubrick held his weapon and gestured wildly, shouting orders at his death squad. From the rear of one of the SUVs a man ran forward, Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his shoulder and across his back.
The man went to one knee and leveled an RPG-7 at the front of the dacha. Rising, Bolan turned and sprinted. The 2.3 kg 84 mm warhead could penetrate twelve inches of steel armor and would blow through even a reinforced door with ease. Bolan scrambled across the floor and leaped into the air.
Bolan struck the top of the bar and slid across as a fireball blew the front doors off their hinges and rolled into the room like a freight train. He knocked the spare magazine to the ground under him.
Shrapnel and jagged chunks of wood lanced through the air. The mirror and crystal ware on the counters behind Bolan shattered and glass rained down on him like hail. Liquor bottles exploded like bombs, and alcohol poured in torrents from the shelf.
Bolan scooted up to the edge of the bar that provided him with an angle on the front door. He slid the extra Bizon magazine into a cargo pocket. He took the Russian submachine gun in both hands and lined up the open sights toward the burning entranceway. His ears still rang from the explosive concussion and his face bled from a dozen minor lacerations, but his hand was steady on the trigger as gunmen rushed through the front door.
Bolan aimed for the head as they charged, knowing it likely that neither Kubrick nor Lich would have lacked the resources to provide their teams with proper armor as well as weapons. Mercy was a concept of leisure. As the assassins came on, Bolan met lethal violence with lethal violence.
The first shooter breached the door, assault rifle up and at the ready. Bolan put him down with a triple-hammer burst of 9 mm rounds from his submachine gun. The combatant hit the burning floor. The man running in behind him looked down at the point man. He looked back up, searching for a target, and Bolan blew off the left side of the man’s face.
The third man in the line tripped up with the second man’s falling corpse. Bolan used a burst to scythe the man to the ground and then put a single shot into the top of his skull. Through the swirling smoke and angry screams Bolan saw a round, black metal canister arch into the room.
The soldier rose to his hands and knees as the grenade hit the floor inside the house and bounced toward him. Leaving the Bizon were it lay, he dived forward, scooping up the bouncing hand grenade. His hands wrapped around the black cylinder.
Bolan hit the floor hard from his short hop, absorbing the impact with his elbows. He rolled over and thrust his arm out, sending the grenade shooting away from him. It cleared the corpses in the entranceway and bounced out the front doors. Bolan heard a sudden outburst of curses in Russian as he buried his head in his arms. The grenade went off.
A cloud of smoke billowed in through the doorway on the heels of the concussive force. The Executioner got to his feet, scooping up the Bizon submachine gun. He shuffled backward and crouched behind the bar, heading for the door to the staircase down to the game room. Bolan caught a flash of movement and spun toward the blown-out windows of the sitting room off Sable’s main entrance.
He saw two men in khaki jackets rush up to the shattered windows, holding assault rifles. Bolan beat the men to the trigger and his submachine gun spit flame. It recoiled in his hands and shell casings spilled across the floor.
Bolan put two rounds into the face of the first man, bloody holes the size of dimes appeared, slapping the man’s head back. Blood sprayed in a mist behind his head and he slumped to the ground, his weapon clattering at his feet.
The soldier shifted to the second gunman. They fired simultaneously. The muzzle-flash of the attacker’s weapon burst into a flaming star pattern. The sound of the heavier caliber assault rifle firing was thunderous compared to the more subdued sound of Bolan’s 9 mm subgun.
The 7.62 mm rounds tore into the molding of the wall to Bolan’s right. Fist-sized chunks from the wall and door frame flew, spilling white plumes of chalky plaster dust into the air.
Bolan’s burst hit the man in a tight pattern. The 9 mm bullets drilled into the receiver of the rifle, tearing it from the stunned gunner’s hands. Two more rounds punched into his chest three inches above the first. Bolan triggered two rounds into the gunman and took him down, blowing the back of his neck out.
The Executioner danced to the side and grabbed the knob and swung the stair door open.
He swept his submachine gun in a wide loose arc, spraying bullets at the gunman firing through the shattered picture windows. One of the men’s weapons suddenly swung toward the ceiling, and Bolan caught a glimpse of him staggering into the darkness.
Bolan lay on the stairs, only his arms and shoulders emerging from the door to the stairwell. He rotated up onto his right shoulder to get an angle of fire on the entranceway. One of the Russian gunmen raced forward and he shot at the man’s ankles, bringing him to the floor. Bolan fired another burst into the prone man, finishing him off, only to have his bolt lock open as his magazine ran dry.
Bolan let the Bizon dangle across his chest as another hitter leaped over the body off the first and charged forward. The skeletal, folding stock of his AKS-74U was pressed tight into his shoulder, and he fired the weapon as he bounded toward Bolan.
The Excutioner put his hands against the floor and snapped up, clearing the edge of the doorway. Bullets tore into the floor where his head had just been. He twisted on the stair and jumped down.
A burst of gunfire echoed in the stairwell and 5.45 mm rounds tore into the floor where Bolan had landed. The big American went up against the wall at his back and pulled the 9 mm Glock 17 from its holster. He heard boots thundering on the stairwell and he bent, swiveled and thrust his gun arm around the corner. He triggered four shots without exposing himself.
A gunman pitched forward and bounced down the stairs. He spilled out at the bottom, sprawling in front of Bolan and his weapon skidded out from his hands. Bolan snatched the fallen weapon.
He holstered his pistol and quickly ducked his head into the stairwell before thrusting the carbine around the corner to trigger a burst. Using the covering fire to keep the enemy back, Bolan dragged the dead man at the bottom of the stairs to him by his belt.
Rebel Force Page 13