Season of Slaughter

by Don Pendleton

  Sparks danced along the side of the Black Hawk and Dark ducked, Adonis only moments behind. Bullets sliced into the cabin of the speeding helicopter. Harpy unleashed a new round of cursing and men behind him screamed in agony as they were riddled with bullets. Dark looked back, seeing one man trying to hold his eyeball into his face, shrieking for someone to help him stop the pain.

  Dark ended the pain with a point-blank bullet to the forehead, then dumped the corpse out the side of the chopper. The mission was a first-class goat screw anyhow, and one more corpse wouldn’t make any difference. He looked back to see a figure standing at the tree line, nestled against the trunk of a sturdy cedar, the muzzle of a rifle blazing as bullets filled the air.

  Another wave of sparks rang along the tail boom, but Harpy was already out of the path.

  “We have these things called machine guns!” she called back. “Machine gun that asshole to death!”

  “I love it when she talks dirty,” Dark quipped, poking his Calicos out and opening fire with both machine pistols. Adonis, at his back, merely grunted and lunged to the grips of the door-mounted M-60. They originally weren’t going to use the M-60 on the SmarTruck itself, only on anyone too stupid to try to get between them and it. The crowd, to Dark’s disappointment, had stayed out of the way.

  But now, it was time to watch the big guy go to work with the monstrous cannon. Thick fingers curled around the twin D-shaped handles and the M-60D erupted and roared with a thunderstorm of flying lead. Blazing tracers mixed with the regular load flashed in the air like laser beams, hitting the ground and bouncing while the heavier slugs chewed into dirt and wood.

  Bolan beat a retreat from the tree line, but Adonis’s stream of relentless autofire was still whipping through the forest, chopping through slender saplings and tearing chunks out of older, thicker barks. Brass tumbled from the side of the snarling machine gun and the blond giant kept up the heat, his long hair whipping in the wind.

  To Dark, it was like watching the Thunder God raining that old time religion down on the primitive screw-heads. Lit by the lightning of the flickering muzzle-flash, Adonis milked the paddle trigger for another long burst, his arms bulging and rippling. Veins rose on his forearms as his muscles flexed and fought to control the relentless recoil of 800 rounds per minute of unbridled fury. The Norse gods hadn’t disappeared with the rise of Christianity, they’d merely gone to sleep until one of them woke up in the form of this titan Dark was watching today.

  But Adonis’s chiseled, clean-shaved, perfect features broke into an angry rictus, teeth bared in fury.

  “He’s gone! I missed him!” he roared.

  The M-60 ripped out more bursts, sweeping the forest.

  “How can you miss?” Dark asked.

  “He disappeared. He’s gone!” Adonis repeated. He shook the M-60 on its mounting, trying to squeeze even more death and destruction from its barrel, empty bullet casings flying everywhere with the savage throttling. “Dammit!”

  When the belt ran dry, Adonis finally lost it, and with one heart-stopping roar, twisted the weapon off its mount. Metal screamed and tore. Wild-eyed, the Nordic titan glared at Dark.

  “Well, it’s empty,” Dark said, trying to diffuse his old friend’s rage.

  A snarl rose to a screech and Adonis hefted the M-60 in one hand and sent it flying.

  MACK BOLAN HAD TO ADMIT that whoever the M-60 gunner was up there, he was skilled and determined. If he hadn’t been running in a serpentine pattern, using every single bit of cover between himself and the squat, black helicopter above, he’d have been sliced into so much sandwich meat by hungry bullets. Instead he was making his way back toward the SmarTruck and the Accord, hopping over downed saplings as he looped back to where he’d started his run, expecting the aerial gunner not to hose down an area he’d targeted before.

  That’s when the M-60 slammed into the ground, barrel first, like a spear from heaven. Metal warped under the collision with the ground, but the barrel kept the thing sticking straight up. It landed only ten feet away from him, and in a rare moment of shock, he wondered if the thrown machine gun had actually been aimed at him. Keeping to the canopy of a tree, he looked up, and the Black Hawk passed by, sweeping the edge of the forest.

  In the air, another ugly buglike craft was zipping along, this one far more spindly and dragonfly-shaped. It only took a moment for Bolan to recognize the workhorse Sikorsky C-64 Skycrane. The helicopter had been in operation, constantly evolving over the past forty years, performing amazing feats of cargo transportation, rescue and firefighting. Only the UH-1 “Huey” utility helicopter had proved more enduring and versatile over the decades.

  Its presence here meant that the RING’s lapdogs were on a schedule. He couldn’t imagine that the Black Hawks believed that they were anywhere close to being able to snatch the truck. Not yet.

  Bolan turned and continued his dash back to the Accord and the SmarTruck. Sable Burton and Joey Lambert had finished planting the cakes of C-4 against the trunks of the trees around the truck.

  “I didn’t sign on to wreck this baby on one of its first trips out,” Lambert said. Ache in his face showed a real affection for the amazing set of wheels.

  “This won’t damage it too much, and it can be recovered later,” Bolan told him. “But they’re here with the hardware to take this baby.”

  Lambert only had to listen carefully for a moment to hear the second set of rotors. “Skycrane?”

  “Good ears.”

  “Nah. I just figured that’s the only thing that could lift this heap,” Lambert answered.

  “Even better brain. Into the Accord. We’re going to cut through the woods as much as we can until we reach the road,” Bolan answered.

  “We’re running?” Burton asked.

  “I’m pulling you two out of the way of a war. If it was just me, I’d do my best to wear these guys by attrition. I don’t have the freedom to do that with two civilians in tow. In now!” Bolan ordered.

  Lambert took the wheel almost on autopilot. He started up the Accord, Bolan piling himself into the back seat and Burton taking shotgun position. The Executioner took the stock of his M-4 and smashed out the rear window, cubes of plastic-sheet-covered safety glass dropping with the first two impacts like diamonds raining from the sky. The third impact from the steel stock lifted the whole thing in one pliant, spiderwebbed mass, and Bolan swept it off the trunk.

  “Go!” Bolan ordered as he flipped open the safety cover on his radio detonator. His thumb pushed the switch and the shock wave of a half dozen cakes of C-4 going off at once swept through the forest in a concentric circle.

  Burton looked back, eyes wide in surprise. “There goes my Sierra Club membership.”

  Bolan looked back at her. “Human lives or trees, Sable?”

  “That’s if those trees crashing slowed them down,” she answered.

  Bolan looked back; he hoped so, too.

  “Stop the car. Joey, get this thing out of here,” Bolan ordered. “Don’t stop until you get back to Terintec.”

  He grabbed the straps of the war bag and bailed out of the rental.

  “I’m not going to leave you—” Lambert began.

  “It’s an order. This isn’t up for vote,” Bolan growled. He slung the duffel’s straps over his shoulders, fisted the rifle in both hands and disappeared into the forest.

  He wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Bolan traversed the woods, stalking closer to the perimeter of blasted trees. Lambert and Burton did well, planting the explosives on trunks just right so that the detonations would snap trees in two, dropping them atop the SmarTruck or against the fenders, branches like claws keeping the vehicle entangled. He crouched and undid his war bag, pulling the holsters for his Beretta 93-R and his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, strapping them on and loading the handguns and spare magazines into place. The little Beretta 9000 still rode in his pocket, and in his shoulder and belt harness he had two kniv
es, garrotes and a knuckle-duster to supplement his war load.

  He shrugged the straps back over his shoulders and took care not to trap the Beretta machine pistol in its holster. Having to rely on the pistol for a fast draw and getting it snagged on the nylon handles of the duffel would be the surest way for the Executioner to end his career. He peered through the small GC scope atop his M-4, trying to get a better view of the forest through the trees.

  Figures were around the SmarTruck, two last hardmen fast-roping down from the Black Hawk. An angry voice was calling out orders, and Bolan swept, looking for the source, keeping as low and out of sight as he could while still allowing himself a view of the scene. The shouldered M-4 would put him on equal footing if someone spotted him, even though the scope on the rifle had its lenses well shaded to prevent a reflective flash giving away his presence.

  He saw the boss on the scene—tall, lean but powerful, with a mane of flowing black hair that ran over the collar of his BDUs, twin Calico submachine guns hanging crisscrossed across his chest.

  Dark.

  The sight of the man who nearly beat Carl Lyons to death set every nerve in the Executioner’s body on edge. One tap of the trigger and the murderer would be flushed off the planet in spectacular fashion. He looked around and spotted his partner, Adonis, even more huge and impressive than he’d appeared on the security footage from Dulles International Airport and David Kowalski’s descriptions. He was dressed in identical black BDUs, except for the sleeves being cut off to reveal a set of arms that made a professional wrestler look emaciated.

  Bolan tensed, knowing that he could end their careers in murder, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. They were the first link to the high command of the RING, his best chance to work his way up the ladder to take out the shadow organization. He took his finger off the trigger, letting his breath out. Watch and wait, for now, he told himself. The time for cleansing flame would come later.

  He distracted himself, thinking of the angles. His cell phone was in his pocket, but he’d have to wait until the enemy got some distance away before he could use it. He didn’t want to risk their picking up on his signal. The moment they started to move, he’d call Jack Grimaldi and have Stony Man Farm try to track the Black Hawks through local radar. If he did get a lock on them, and Grimaldi did manage to pick him up in time for a pursuit, the margin would be by the skin of his teeth.

  He looked at the cell phone again and made a decision. The civilians were out of the area, there was no need to worry about Sable Burton and Joey Lambert. If the enemy detected him, then he was the only one at risk, and he was decked out in one-man army mode. If they came for him, it would make life that much easier.

  Life always got simple when the Bolan blitz was on.

  He flipped open the phone and dialed furiously. “This is Striker. I have bad news,” he said after the connection cycled through several cutout numbers.

  Barbara Price’s voice was on the line instantly. “We picked up a hint of it when the local 911 dispatch suddenly got hit with forty calls.”

  “Three helicopters, now two, are making a grab for Terintec’s update on the SmarTruck,” Bolan explained. “I dropped a couple trees on it to make it hard for them. I’d like Jack on the scene with something big, fast and preferably heavily armed.”

  “I’m getting him on the hot link right now. We can’t get an armed chopper up in anything less than an hour. He has an Air National Guard Kiowa, but there’s only a locker full of supplies for you on it.”

  “All right. Striker out.”

  He flipped the tiny cell phone closed and stuffed it back into his pocket. There was no indication from above that the Black Hawk had picked up anything on its electronics. The men on the ground were cursing and wrestling with trees instead of looking for a mysterious phone caller.

  All the better.

  Except the Honda Accord was pulling into the field, and Dark and Adonis were going to meet it.

  Bolan cursed under his breath and started for the clearing.

  SABLE BURTON LOOKED OUT the back window as Joey Lambert wove the Honda Accord through the trees. The fender bashed against a bark here and there, but the Terintec driver didn’t go slower than twenty-five miles per hour, and he wasn’t being stopped by any trunks. Within minutes, they reached the blacktop. She looked to the right, anticipating the turn, when suddenly the Honda veered to the left.

  “Where are you going?” Burton asked. “We’re supposed to…”

  She stopped, then looked down at the ugly, black little handgun in Lambert’s right hand. Burton took a deep breath and looked out the window. “How many of you got jobs at Terintec?”

  Lambert smirked. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you, Professor Burton.”

  The woman frowned, biting off her response. She wasn’t going to provoke the man with a gun aimed at her belly. She’d sit and bide her time.

  Lambert deftly handled the car with one hand on the wheel and one aiming the pistol at her, steering them back toward the proving ground. “I was supposed to deliver the truck to them. But I figure you’d be a nice bonus.”

  Burton kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t going to let Lambert give the enemy anything more to manipulate her with.

  “Then there’s the fact that your friend Stone is running around with a bag full of guns and a hard-on to go it some more against these guys. That’d be worth even more brownie points, don’t you think, four-eyes?”

  For emphasis, he tapped the muzzle of the gun against her glasses, knocking them askew. Burton wrestled down the temptation to grab his arm to try to chew off his hand. Instead she resettled the glasses on her nose, tucked them tighter behind her ears and kept looking ahead.

  “You’re a nice, cold little bitch, aren’t you?” Lambert asked as he stopped the car. “Too bad I won’t have the time to warm you up some. I bet—”

  A fist pounded on the window, interrupting the traitorous driver. Lambert rolled down the window.

  “What’s this, Lambert?” Dark asked him.

  “This is one of the chief technicians involved with the project. Figured maybe you could get something out of her,” Lambert replied.

  “And what was the deal with not putting a bullet into that madman you were hanging out with?” Dark asked. Lambert tensed up, as if the man’s very words were a death sentence.

  “He was behind the wheel. I shoot him, the truck would have gone out of control.”

  Dark shrugged. “And this lady…Oh, yeah. Professor Sable Burton. Physicist. Applied Laser Dynamics.”

  Lambert seemed to relax. “Pretty good catch? And you have the SmarTruck, too.”

  Dark smiled at Lambert. “Yup. No thanks to you.”

  Lambert’s relief evaporated and he tried to swing the little pistol around. Burton didn’t see anything more than a bright flash of yellow before her glasses were smeared with blood and gore, sticky, salty fluid stinging into her eyes.

  The gunshot in the enclosed space left her head throbbing, ears ringing, and it felt as if she’d lost control of her hands for a moment. She didn’t know what to do, and all she could really hear was a high-pitched squeal emanating from nowhere. It took a heartbeat to realize that she was the one emitting the squeal, and some part of her consciousness wasn’t blaming the rest of her. One moment she’d felt as though she was controlling the situation, the next, she was wearing the brains of the man who just kidnapped her.

  “Could you please stop that noise?” Dark’s voice cut through the haze.

  Burton swallowed hard, breaking the cry, and she fought with her glasses, trying to wipe the dripping blood from her eyes. A sixteen-ton weight parked on her chest, and blocked her breathing, but other than that, she realized she was all right.

  Just in the hands of a man who casually blew the brains out of another human being.

  “Thank you. That could have gotten annoying,” Dark told her. His eyes flashed a brilliant blue. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m annoyed.”

&n
bsp; “I don’t think so,” Burton agreed, keeping her voice low. She finally cleared her eyes, but her glasses were caked with gore. All she saw was the blurry features of Dark.

  “Need help with your glasses, ma’am?”

  Burton was stunned by the question. “Yes.”

  She turned and looked at the mass that produced the sound. It filled the entire window. Her eyes focused as well as they could, and at nose-to-nose range, she was looking at the chiseled, beautiful features of a man with flowing golden hair.

  “My name’s Adonis,” he said. He reached in and plucked the glasses from her fingers.

  Burton lowered her head, then touched her hair. Her ponytail had come loose in her earlier struggle to open the trunk. Now her hair was wet and sticking to her neck. She reached up and ran her fingers through it, but she touched chunks of bone and squishy flesh. She shivered all the way down her spine and squeezed her eyes even tighter.

  “Maybe it’s better I don’t see, right now,” she said.

  “Too late, miss,” Adonis told her.

  “All right, you big Boy Scout,” Dark called. “We better get moving.”

  Burton was pulled from the car, the big hand rough on her forearm, but gentle as she could feel muscles strong enough to yank her arm from its socket tugged her to her feet. A hand went over her eyes and she flinched for a moment, then her vision cleared somewhat, her smeared glasses back on her face. Streaks still made her vision blurry in spots, but at least she had the ability to see farther than a foot in front of her nose.

  “Not going to say anything?” Adonis asked.

  “Thank you,” she answered.

  Dark appeared as sudden as a heart attack and twice as jolting. “No righteous struggle? No indignation?”

  Burton shook her head. “I’m not going to provoke you.”

  “So you’ll tell us everything we need to know?” Adonis pressed.