The soldier hit a fighting crouch and held his launcher ready, tightening into the squeeze. There was a crack of smoky thunder as his HE round impacted on the chopper's tail behind the passenger compartment. Smoke and flames were rolling out of the bird. Severed tail rotors sliced through the darkness.
Losing altitude, dropping quickly, the chopper swung around to face him, both doors flapping open, disgorging bodies, loose equipment, anything that was not bolted down. Before the smoke obscured his vision, the Executioner saw the pilot glaring at him through the bubble windscreen. Bolan's launcher belched again, the final round before it emptied out. A cluster of fleshettes exploded in the pilot's face, a storm of shattered glass and tempered steel pinned him to his seat, reducing him to something less than human.
There was no time for reloading. Bolan dropped the empty XM-18 and swung the little Uzi down. Beyond the rolling screen of smoke, he caught a fleeting glimpse of human figures seeking cover.
One of them had to be the Corsican. Another, the woman. To be safe, the Executioner would take them all.
Bolan moved out, submachine gun at the ready. Hunting.
* * *
There were a hundred yards of open ground between the guesthouse and the manor. Smiley Dublin had covered half the distance safely, confident that Bolan's strike was drawing off the opposition, when a pair of sentries had spotted her and veered to intercept.
Probing Kalashnikov rounds were whistling past. Smiley had hit a prone position, swung her short Beretta submachine gun toward the sprinting figures and squeezed the trigger.
Half a dozen parabellums had struck the gunner on her right and punched him over backward. The guy's companion had made another dozen yards before she swiveled into target acquisition. A rifle bullet had burned along her flank, another clipped a lock of hair beside her face.
Smiley held the trigger down and tracked her moving target, leading him into the stream of parabellum manglers. The impact lifted him off his feet, sending him into an awkward cartwheel, bullets ripping through him, churning flesh and bone into a lifeless pulp.
The Beretta's bolt locked open on an empty chamber. She dropped the useless magazine and was snugging its replacement into the receiver as she stood up.
She had a single clip — thirty lethal rounds-left. She would have to make them count.
Another fifty yards took her to the manor house. From the house she saw a clutch of running figures clearing the sliding doors to the left, striking off across the wide veranda toward the helipad and waiting chopper. Smiley caught a glimpse of a familiar face — a face that evoked a tremor inside her.
Smoky fog rolled in, and she lost sight of the countess. Smiley still had the helicopter spotted by its running lights. She could meet her quarry there.
The Fed forgot about the house and everyone inside. Bolan was in there, serving up an order of hellfire, and she left him to it. Smiley had her hands full trying to close the back door. She knew she might already be too late.
Around the helicopter, people were dodging, weaving, scrambling for the loading bays. The rotors were in motion, twirling lazily at first, then rapidly accelerating. Flankers armed with automatic weapons ducked beneath the spinning blades.
At forty yards, Smiley dropped to one knee and snapped her weapon up and onto target. She fired, leaning into the recoil and saw the nearest sentry stagger, stumble, sprawl.
The helicopter shifted, rising gingerly, and Smiley had the bubble windscreen in her sights when the tail section broke away and erupted into fire. Smoke was rolling out across the lawn as the chopper slewed around, and Smiley saw a slender figure tumble out the open hatch.
The countess.
As the smoke closed in, Smiley swiftly calculated a collision course with the escaping woman. Despite the cool night air, she was perspiring, and the taste of bile was in her mouth. Loathing drove her on to intercept the German, cutting off her only avenue of safe retreat.
Smiley was waiting when a pair of running figures cleared the smoke screen, closing rapidly on her position. She did not recognize the man, but he was armed.
She rattled off three rounds in rapid fire, the echoes merging into one report. Her target staggered and was plowed over. The gunner's shoulders hit the turf before his heels touched down. A final tremor, and the guy was gone.
The slender German countess froze in her tracks, then turned toward the sound of gunfire. Her fighting crouch was feral, an instinctive movement, both hands coming up in front of her, fingers curved into claws. Recognition flickered, locked in place as her eyes fastened on Smiley. "So. Die Amerikanerin."
There was menace in the tone, and Smiley felt a chill along her spine, the short hairs rising on her neck. The countess was sadistic hate personified, the venom channeled through her voice. "You have done well to come so far," she said, her tone taking on a mocking quality. "I felt your strength myself."
Smiley felt her stomach turning over, and she swallowed hard to keep the contents down. "It's over," she informed the countess.
Apprehension was quickly lost within the calculating gaze. "Not yet, liebchen," she retorted.
"Not just yet."
The movement, though anticipated, was so swift and fluid it almost took Smiley by surprise. She saw the German's right hand dipping down and out jf sight, returning with a boot knife.
Smiley saw the cold stiletto as it left the enemy's hands, and she could hear its death whisper in the darkness. She was turning, sidestepping, when the knife connected, grazing a breast and burrowing deep into her biceps.
Beneath the shock and sudden pain, abiding fury gripped her soul. Firing one-handed, Smiley held the squat Beretta chopper steady, her anger and disgust erupting from the muzzle in a stream of parabellum manglers. At a range of less than twenty feet, there was no way to miss her target.
Ilse Brunow shrieked and tried to ward off the bullets with outstretched palms. Sizzling steel-jackets drilled through her hands, destroying the screaming face and everything behind it. Twisting, spinning, driven by the force of impact, the countess evaporated where she stood.
The stuttergun was empty, and Smiley let it drop. There was no need to view her handiwork, to verify the kill. Her aim was true, the range point-blank. And it was over.
No.
Not yet.
The sounds of battle close at hand informed her that the strike was still in progress. It was Bolan, up against the odds as always.
Smiley, clutching her wounded arm, moved around the riddled corpse of Ilse Brunow, taking off in search of Bolan and the battle.
* * *
The smell of burning flesh and helicopter fuel enveloped Bolan as he stalked the killing ground, searching for his target. In his hands, the Uzi was a grim extension of himself, still hungry.
Footsteps closed on his flank, and Bolan turned and saw a figure looming in the smoke. A pistol cracked, and he threw himself to one side, diving as the bullet snapped above him. The Executioner answered with his submachine gun, ripping off a burst before he came to rest, another as he found the prone position. Ten yards away, the human target stumbled through an awkward pirouette and fell.
Bolan waited for twenty seconds, and when the hostile fire was not repeated he stood up and advanced with caution. Sudden stillness cloaked the battlefield, as if surviving soldiers felt the chill of death and sought to hide from its embrace.
Bolan found Armand the Corsican laid out on blood-stained grass, one leg doubled back beneath him, arms outstretched. Blood was leaking from the wounds where parabellum rounds had stitched across his abdomen.
But he was still alive.
The chest was rising, falling, with the effort of his ragged respiration. Glassy eyes shifted toward the Executioner as he approached. The right hand quivered, fingers flexing weakly, but the autoloader was beyond his reach forever.
Armand could see death. His lips moved, struggling to form coherent sound. Bolan studied him closely and then knelt beside him, leaning close to catch the
whispered words.
"Nothing changes," he was gasping. "Everything goes on the same."
"You're wrong," the Executioner told him. "For you, it ends right here."
The Corsican was trembling, sudden fury blazing in his eyes. He might have lunged at Bolan, but the ravaged body was not taking any further messages.
The man was dying, and he knew it. Nothing in the world could save him, and the guy was choking on the bitter gall of failure, fading fast. "You haven't won," he grated, but the words were hollow, filled with bitterness.
Bolan pushed the Uzi's muzzle in between the Corsican's lips and silenced further comment.
The Executioner rose, turned and took himself away from there. The viper's head was severed, crushed. The mission was complete — except for Smiley and the hostages.
They would be close at hand, he knew, if they were still alive.
There had been no sign of Smiley in the manor. He would check out the guesthouse.
He was passing the burned-out helicopter when a movement on his left alerted him to danger. Pivoting, he drew the AutoMag and sighted down the vented barrel, making target acquisition at a range of thirty yards. But there was something in the figure's walk, the posture, that made him hold his fire.
Recognition struck him like a fist above the heart, and Bolan sheathed the silver cannon, moving out to meet the wounded lady Fed. They fell together, held each other close.
And for the moment, it was over in Algiers. Amid the stench of death and burning, Bolan smelled a trace of victory.
* * *
"You haven't won..."
The Corsican was right, of course, and Bolan knew it. There was no such thing as final victory in a war that lasts forever. Savage Man knew nothing of surrender, precious little of retreat.
But Bolan had the will to turn him back. A single warrior, ably supported by dedicated allies, he was equally committed to the battle of attrition. Tonight, Bolan had a victory of sorts to celebrate. The flesh markets of Algiers were empty. Tonight, the savages were beaten, driven back into their caves and tunnels, momentarily leaderless. But the Executioner did not deceive himself into thinking he had won a lasting triumph.
The war was everywhere, the foe widespread. For every cannibal dispatched, a dozen seemed to surface. There would be other savages and other struggles, possibly in old Algiers itself.
But not tonight.
Mack Bolan led Smiley Dublin from the field, leaving the battleground to stray survivors. Distant sirens marked the approach of officers and medics.
For now it was over. For now he was free.
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