Grimaldi glanced up at Bolan and pointed his eleven-and-a-half-inch chattergun at a trail.
"There were two of them sneaking up on you. The other one went up that trail. He was a little guy."
Bolan gave his buddy a nod of thanks. Then they ran into the brush, moving through the dark growth and watching the trail while making sure of each other's position. It took them ten minutes to work through the denser growth on the higher part of the small island.
They paused just below a slope that climbed fifty feet in twenty yards. The trees were taller here.
Only Bolan's keen observation for movement helped him spot the danger in time. There was no warning, only a quick three steps and then a killing lunge for the throat.
The steel-capped toe on Bolan's right boot had been aimed quickly at the leaping dog's head. But the canine's spring had more power and distance than the Executioner had estimated and his kick caught the dog in the chest just over his heart.
Bolan fell backward, and when he hit the ground he swung up the Beretta. But the dog was lying on its side, pawing the ground spasmodically. The German shepherd was at least 130 pounds. He was down and dazed but not injured. From a slit pocket, Bolan pulled some tape, and bound the animal's front legs together.
Grimaldi and Bolan worked up the hill again and, after five minutes of delicate maneuvering, looked through a screen of brush and small trees at a small tent. The Executioner crawled behind a thick log and stared over it.
He motioned Grimaldi down, then cupped his hands and shouted.
"You in the tent. You're surrounded. Come out with your hands up and you won't be killed."
For a moment there was no response. Bolan blasted three rounds from the assault rifle over the top of the tent.
Five seconds later the tent flap moved, then flipped back. A boy, about ten, draped with three automatic rifles, combat webbing, a dozen grenades and two pistols stepped from the tent. He held his hands high over his head. Nearly too late, Bolan saw the grenade hidden in one hand. The boy tossed the bomb at Bolan, and he heard the spoon spang away as it flipped off, arming the flesh-shredder.
Bolan dropped behind the log he was kneeling beside as the grenade went off harmlessly on the far side. The boy had fallen to the ground to protect himself. Grimaldi lifted from behind the log and grabbed the boy, who stood, glared at his captors and held on tightly to his weapons.
Bolan checked inside the tent.
"It's a'damned arsenal in there," the Executioner said. "Probably fifty weapons and ammo all over the place."
Bolan taped the boy's hands behind his back. "Keep an eye on this warrior here while I clear the rest of the island," he said to Grimaldi.
It was a short look. Twenty feet behind the tent the land dropped off in a cliff to small breakers below. He was out of island.
Bolan marched the young boy back to the clearing. They put him in the first building, taped his feet as well and told him someone would come along soon to help him.
"Americans, go to hell!" the boy spat at them. Those were the first words he had spoken. His English had a French accent.
"With the likes of you around, little warrior, we're already there," Bolan said.
He went to check the big lead-lined-coffins in the dead chopper once more. There was no apparent major damage. The lead inside would stop any bullets, and the steel bands were firmly in place.
That took care of the stolen enriched uranium. Now, where the hell was Lutfi?
19
Jack Grimaldi eased the chopper away from the Island. Bolan had instructed the French navy to send in two helicopters and ten men to secure the island until daylight. They would take care of the boy and the dog.
The assault force that Bolan had authorized to land in choppers on the flat bow of the Contessa had battled it out with the remaining terrorists. A 120-man force had been ready for ten hours, and it took off within two minutes after receiving Bolan's radio message.
Lutfi? Lutfi could not have hidden on that island, and he had not been found among the dead. No, Lutfi would play the odds. He knew the chopper would be tracked, followed by radar and captured. Lutfi was still on the tanker, waiting for his chance, trying to work his magic again, turn a disaster into a partial success.
And he still had the radio-activated detonator.
The French troops had secured the bow and the forward half of the tanker by the time Grimaldi brought his bird in for touchdown. The troops radioed that half the big ship was firmly in French hands and that they were moving toward the stern, clearing away any resistance as they found it. None of the troops had seen Lutfi.
When the Executioner stepped on the ship's deck, he knew her screws were turning. She was under way. They had come in upwind, and now Bolan could see the fire burning in what seemed to be half the whole sea behind the tanker. A crazy, useless fire, set by Lutfi in frustration and rage. Perhaps, at least, it would consume some of the oil before it despoiled the coast.
The Executioner took an English-speaking French paratrooper with him, and they trotted up to the advancing squads. The troops were meeting little resistance. Six terrorists had given up and were huddled together on deck with their hands tied behind their backs.
Captain Running staggered out of the darkness and was caught by a trooper. The French medics went to work on him quickly and stretcher-bearers raced up. Bolan knelt beside Captain Running.
"We're going to save this old tub of yours, Captain."
Running grimaced. "Lutfi. What about that damned radio-activated detonator?"
"I'm looking for him. So are a hundred twenty French troopers. Any idea where he'd go?"
"Below, I'm sure he's below somewhere. Tried to dump the rest of the crude when the last chopper left without him. My men stopped him, but he wounded two of them. We forced him out of the pump room and stopped the spill. I'm sure he's below."
From his study of the layout of the Contessa, Bolan knew, there were only a few areas where a person could go below; the engine room, storage areas, pumping rooms, generators, maybe the settling tanks, turbine rooms. . .
Bolan ran for the elevator. He was ahead of the paratroopers now, and he warned them not to blast him thinking he was a terrorist.
The Executioner was just past the burned-out chopper on the pad when a handgun barked. Bolan felt fire stab through his left shoulder. He dived to the deck and rolled behind the chopper's hulk. He tried to lift his arm.
Pain ripped through the wounded area.
But at least he could still move it. The slug had missed bone. He picked up the AK-47 rifle and found that his arm still functioned. He would ignore the bullet hole and the pain. He had to.
Something moved in the semidarkness ahead of him. He stared around the burned, twisted metal at a shadow. A 3-round burst from his Beretta brought a grunt of pain, then shuffling steps as the shadow moved quickly, retreating out of sight.
Lutfi. The man who shot him could be Lutfi. Bolan moved cautiously, listening to the slow progress of the other man. Then a sudden noise directly in front of him surged into his consciousness, but before it could register, a bellowing animal of a man burst out of the passageway, firing a weapon, knocking the Executioner to one side as he stormed past. Bolan did not even have time to raise his weapon. Lutfi again, doing the unexpected.
Bolan swore at himself. He was not hit. He came up running, tracking the man through a maze of pipes, steps, ladders and off-loading equipment.
A barrage of small-weapons fire sounded behind them, then all was quiet. Bolan could see the man's goal: he was working his way toward the elevator near the forward side of the superstructure. There was no chance for a clean shot at the guy. He moved from one shadow to another, darting across open spaces, melting into blackness. Three times Bolan drilled 5-round bursts from the AK-47 at him, but none found flesh.
At the elevator, Bolan worked around to the front in time to see its lighted interior sinking below the deck line. He studied it a moment, then saw a steel e
mergency ladder extending downward into the dark hole. He slung the rifle, grabbed the rungs and began stepping down. He could see the top of the elevator still descending.
The elevator moved slowly, and Bolan got to the bottom of the shaft a few seconds after it landed. He stepped past the cables to a catwalk and locked out cautiously before he eased into the lighted passageway. It was part of a large white room.
The sound of running steps resounded down the corridor to his right. Bolan followed the sound quietly. The passageway made an abrupt turn and came to a double blast-proof door. The twelve-inch-thick barrier stood open two feet. Bolan bent, peered around it knee high, and saw a man down the passageway. The terrorist fired but Bolan had already jerked his head back and sent three rounds toward the guy.
More footsteps. This time the terrorist disappeared around a second corner. Cautiously Bolan followed. There was no one in the next area, but he spotted an access door slightly ajar. He kicked it open and :limped back.
Two slugs blasted through the open panel and dug into the opposite wall. A laugh echoed from inside.
Bolan looked into the open door from one side and found only blackness. He kept low and squeezed through the hatchlike door. He was on some kind of a metal walkway.
When his eyes adjusted he saw it was a metal catwalk, with a single pipe railing on each side three-feet high. He could not see what was below or to the side. He wanted to use his pencil flash, but knew it would make an ideal target. Slow footsteps seemed to be sounding directly ahead. Bolan triggered a burst from the 93-R Beretta. There was no reaction. Bolan heard more footsteps, moving away from him.
The Executioner grabbed the railing, slung the AK-47, let the Beretta hang by its cord, and began walking across the metal bridge. He had no idea where the walk led. There was no light except that behind him at the door. There was no acrid smell of crude oil, either, which meant they were not walking across the top of one of the huge holds filled with oil. So where the hell were they?
This was not part of the atomic-engine area, or the reactor or the cooling apparatus. Bolan knew the general layout of such facilities and this did not match. He was in a black void.
Bolan stopped moving and held his breath. It was totally quiet. Then ahead he heard a scraping of metal on metal. It started and stopped. It sounded as if one section of the metal walk were being removed.
Could Lutfi do that?
Remove part of the walk and invite Bolan to take a long step downward into death?
20
The sounds that had been coming from ahead of Mack Bolan through the blackness stopped. He eased forward, testing each step, making sure there was solid steel beneath his foot before he put his weight on it.
The routine slowed him.
Gradually he relaxed and became more sure of his position, knowing that Lutfi could not set up an elaborate trap for him in only seconds.
On the next step his foot brushed something. Bolan heard the sprang, that unique sound when a hand grenade spoon pops off, arming the device, granting the listener only 4.4 seconds of life.
Four and four-tenths seconds!
Bolan dropped on the bomb, finding it by the sound. He propelled it forward along the metal walkway with a scooping, shoveling throw, then he dived back so his boots faced the blast site.
The grenade went off with a jolting, mind-numbing roar, amplified a hundred times in the confined space.
Bolan shook his head, felt his boot soles and found only one small shard of shrapnel, otherwise he was untouched. He listened, but could hear nothing. His ears were numbed. The explosion had not been tightly contained and therefore lethally directed, but instead had diffused itself throughout the open spaces of the darkness here. Bolan's maneuver, dropping supine with feet facing the explosion, had saved many a combatman who found a grenade at too close quarters yet still had time to toss it horizontally into the open while lying back to let the shock waves and shrapnel fly over and around him.
He stood and moved forward, still testing each step, finding the metal welded and solid. Ahead there was nothing. It was black on black again. He moved, waited, moved, waited, but his ears still told him nothing.
Twice more he walked what he judged to be fifty feet and stopped. This time he could hear a clinking sound.
A second later, light flooded in as a door opened. Before Bolan could lift the Beretta, a shadow passed in front of the door and was gone. The Executioner rushed at the white light, sure that his prey's eyesight would be as shocked as his. The door was an oval hatch similar to those he had seen on the submarine. He ducked out and looked, then pulled back in. He had not seen anything. The glare, the unbearable brightness after total black still blinded him.
He tried it again and his vision had improved slightly. He glanced in both directions along a corridor. No Lutfi. At last his pupils had adjusted. Bolan held his breath, ears straining. Faint sounds came from the left. The guy was going back the way they had come. Something else caught Bolan's attention. On the white tile were drops of bright red blood.
Wounded . . .
Bolan put a fresh magazine in the Beretta, a 20-rounder, and pushed a 30-round magazine in the AK-47, then followed the bloody trail.
He moved quickly along the corridor and paused at the corner to look around. Someone was closing a door ahead. It was the only door in the dead-end hall. Bolan ran to it, and standing close to the wall, reached out and tried the knob. It turned but the door did not open. Two rounds from his Beretta smashed the lock. Bolan stood to one side.
Five seconds later, three rounds from inside splintered out the door panel, chest high, in a neat pattern.
The Executioner faked a groan and stomped one foot as if he had fallen.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
Bolan twisted the handle, then jammed the door open. It swung wide inside and stayed there. At knee level he looked around the doorjamb.
It was some kind of control room, ten-feet square, filled with gleaming panels, gauges, dials and readouts. On the floor the Executioner saw three drops of blood. The last one was near the far door.
At that door, Bolan hesitated. Finally he turned the knob and pushed hard. The door swung away, and bounced back. Cautiously Bolan looked through a crack between the door and its jamb into another control room.
He saw a man in a white coat lying on the floor, a large pool of blood in a puddle around his head. A bloody footprint pointed toward the end of the room where a stainless-steel ladder led up one flight to a balcony that extended to the left and out of sight.
A voice stabbed through the distance.
"American! Why do you chase me? You know I can blow up this tanker any time I choose."
"You can, but you won't, Lutfi. You're not ready to commit suicide. Besides, you know one chopper got away with those fuel rods. You want to get to your meet so you can make your atomic bombs."
"That is true, American. And believe me, we will make them, and we will win. You capitalist whore, we will beat you in the last battle."
"Don't count on it, Lutfi. Your luck has changed, and you're leaking blood."
"I'm just getting started, American. You don't even know where I am. All I have to do is go through one of the six doors up here and you'll never see me again. This is a huge ship, American."
Bolan had been moving as the man talked. Already he was across the room and up the ladder to the lip of the balcony and had zeroed in on the voice.
He reached up and his Beretta coughed out a silenced trio of flesh rippers at the spot where the voice had been. Then three more.
There was no weapons response, only a soft laugh and the sound of a door closing.
Bolan vaulted over the edge of the balcony, the Beretta in front of him.
It was a trick. Lutfi stood twenty feet away, a pistol in his hand firing as fast as he could pull the trigger.
Bolan's Beretta chattered twice as he lunged to one side, hit a railing and dropped to the floor behind a ledge
to get out of the line of fire. One of the small-caliber slugs from Lutfi had creased the Executioner's left leg. By the time he got to his feet, the vermin had selected one of the six doors, slammed it shut behind him and rushed away.
Bolan knew he had been lucky. He never took any of his enemies lightly, but this one needed extra caution, special care and handling. Bolan knew he had come close to making that one fatal mistake that could forever end his war against terrorism. Mack Bolan knew he was human, fragile, expendable. He understood fully that one small quirk of fate one inch more this way or that with a smoking hot bullet, a thrown knife, a grenade fused too short, even a charge of plastique with a misfiring detonator, to say nothing of the countless persons who kept trying to kill him, and he would be listed simply as KIA. He had come to that realization many campaigns ago, it was always good to remember, to know it was there without dwelling on it.
Bolan stared at the six doors. Identical. All were marked with plates: Fuel, Storage, Air Vents, Hot Side Cooling, Cold Side Cooling, Maintenance, in three languages.
He began at the end and opened each door, looking for telltale signs of blood. He found drops of red stain in three of them, but none farther along the corridors. Back at the balcony he checked the others.
Twenty feet along one hallway were more blood spots. It was his best indicator. This door had been marked Maintenance.
Bolan continued down the corridor to a series of downward steps, then to a vertical steel ladder. The ladder dropped into the depths of the ship. He figured he had come down fifty steps when he saw the landing and a room below.
The small room was marked with signs in three languages. The English one read:
Warning. This area for inspectors and qualified scuba personnel only. Breathing gear must be worn at all times when inspecting empty holds.
Executioner 059 - Crude Kill Page 11