She looked up at the blond titan, her lips pressed tight. She glanced back at the Accord, Lambert’s cored skull visible through the open window.
“Maybe I’ll be provoking you a little.”
Dark gave her a gentle tap on her cheek. “That’s my girl.”
“I’m not your girl.”
Burton felt her chin and cheeks squeezed between strong, merciless fingers. “You are now. And you will be for the rest of your life. But that won’t be too long, darling.”
And then, the air detonated around her.
MACK BOLAN SAW Lambert drive right up to Dark and Adonis, and after a brief exchange, the driver was dead and Sable Burton was in the hands of the two murderers. They were too close to her for him to be able to do anything with the M-4. Not when he had another group at his side.
He took a precious moment, doomsday numbers tumbling, fingers working in the side pocket of his duffel. By touch, he recognized the stun-shock grenade and pulled it free of its anchor straps. Bolan didn’t even bring his hands together to yank the pin, his thumb finding the pull-ring and snapping it out with one hard yank. The grenade continued on, a perfect side-arm pitch right toward the rental car where Dark, Adonis and Burton were standing.
The blast was deafening and all three went to the ground. The Executioner didn’t miss a beat, long legs snapping straight, propelling him along in vast, ground-eating strides. Cries of anger sounded to his right around the SmarTruck, but Bolan was a wraith, slicing through the forest too fast for them to see.
M-4 out front, he rushed toward the Accord. The car would be his way out of here, with Burton in tow.
A gunshot sounded behind him, dirt kicking up over his heels.
Bolan reached down and grabbed up Burton by her arm when something sliced around, ramming into the back of one of his knees. The Executioner stumbled, M-4 knocked from his grasp. He’d concentrated too much on making sure that she got to safety that he hadn’t taken the chance to immobilize Adonis or Dark. Bolan stumbled against the side of the Honda, grabbing the roof for balance.
“I hate those things!” Dark groaned. His eyes were unfocused, and he had one hand over his ear, but he was still getting up. Adonis lurched, and in a heartbeat, he was standing straight, but disoriented still by the concussion grenade.
Bolan swung Burton out of the way and lashed out with his combat boot, striking Adonis right below the navel and folding him up. A hard elbow-strike against Adonis’s head punctuated that exchange, the big man tumbling to the ground dazed. The soldier’s elbow was screaming in pain from having been forced to hammer something harder than a bowling ball.
He didn’t have time for that and turned back to Dark. It was too late to get in a preemptive strike on the man in black, as the murderer grabbed Bolan by the straps on his shoulders and swung him over in a hip toss. Landing on the crush-proof compartments for his arsenal, Bolan grunted. Fresh bruises and pain swam across his back, driving the wind from his lungs. He couldn’t stop, though, bringing up his leg hard into Dark’s midsection. The knee lifted the black-haired killer and a pistoning fist caught him in the face while he was still off balance.
Bolan rolled out from under Dark, who was coughing and trying to gather his wits. Two big hands suddenly lunged out, grabbing for his arms, pinning them down before he could go for either of his handguns. Adonis’s crushing grip stopped the Executioner cold. He was being lifted off the ground by the golden-haired giant, and all Bolan could do was lash out with his legs.
The soldier took a quick glance at what he could aim for, and saw the side of the car. He stomped hard on the roof with both feet and pushed hard, going up and over behind Adonis. The backward flip brought him to the ground, deep in a crouch. The big man was half-turned, already reacting to the Executioner’s maneuver, when Bolan snapped his legs straight, rocketing himself hard into Adonis’s waist and lifting him off the ground. Hundreds of pounds of struggling human flesh rebounded off the side of the rental, and Bolan swung a flurry of punches into the mass murderer’s back, kidney and stomach. It was like punching a statue, Adonis’s muscles were packed as hard as marble.
Still, Bolan’s earlier assessment was right. He was big, he was strong, but he was no man of steel. He felt pain like any other man, and could succumb to injury just as quick.
Adonis roared and pushed Bolan away, fist coming down but only glancing off his shoulder. The Executioner hooked his foot behind the titan’s ankle and punched hard, directly into his enemy’s solar plexus. Breath exploded from parted lips, froth breaking from Adonis’s nose, before he completed his backward tumble, head bouncing off the fender of the Honda, leaving a dent in it.
Dark was up again, dazed, blood trickling over his chin. A Calico machine pistol was leveled right at Bolan’s gut.
“You’re good, but not that good,” Dark taunted.
The whistle of metal slashing first air, then cloth and flesh, broke the gunman’s speech, his muzzle rising as his body twisted away from a sudden burst of agony. Burton, her nose bleeding from her encounter with the concussion grenade and rough handling, her clothes caked with the contents of Joey Lambert’s skull, stood sneering, holding the broken antenna of the rental car. She held it in one hand, like a fencer’s foil, and she lunged again, slicing the wicked length of metal across Dark’s forearm.
Bolan took the opportunity to swing up his boot and kick Dark hard across the gut. The man went down from the combined assault and the Executioner’s hand went for the Desert Eagle in its holster.
The only link to the RING be damned. He would find another way to get the heart of the organization.
The .44 Magnum leveled at Dark’s head when gunfire crackled from the tree line. The Black Hawk was swinging around overhead.
“We have to get out of here!” Burton yelled.
Bolan returned fire on the gunners in the distance, engaging the worst threat first. “Get the body out of the car! Hurry!”
As the Executioner laid down cover fire with the .44 Magnum pistol, Burton opened the car door and dumped the half-decapitated turncoat out of the driver’s seat. Her initial panic over his death had gone, as had the queasiness over being coated with skull, blood and brains. Now her survival instincts were kicking in, and Bolan noticed she was made of some strong stuff.
The Accord started. Bolan lowered the empty Desert Eagle and was firing his Beretta 93-R from his off hand. With a single bound, he was across the hood of the Honda and in the shotgun seat. Burton was slamming the car in reverse before Bolan’s feet even left the ground. Bullets dinged and clanged against the fender and grille from the distance, but the Executioner’s main worry was the helicopter overhead and the quickly recovering Dark and Adonis.
The two men were firing at the car from a closer range, and only Burton’s instinct to keep low prevented her from getting cored through the head by a .50 caliber handgun round. Bolan swept the pair with his Beretta, 3-round bursts chasing after them, but the killers were quicker than Bolan could aim, and across the test-field the Accord was bouncing too much for anything resembling precision marksmanship. He pulled back into the car and stuffed the barrels of both guns between his thighs.
Fresh magazines were ripped from their positions on his belt and shoulder harness, replacing the empties with the speed that came with experience and training. Another blast of gunfire riddled the windshield, but Burton cranked on the emergency brake, spinning the Honda into a 180 degree turn. Bolan felt himself crush against the door of the car, but held on to his guns, watching the world spin around him. The engine ground noisily. The spunky little engineer got the car in drive, cut the emergency brake and tore off toward the road.
But as long as the enemy had the Black Hawk, there was no escape for the two of them.
THE CUTS ON HIS BACK and arm stung deeply, but they were nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a few sutures and a good hearty meal to replace the blood loss. Still, they were annoying, reminders that a little female scientist could take him by surp
rise and prevent him from getting his kill. Dark shielded his face from the winds whipped up by the helicopter’s whirling rotors as it descended. “Pardon me, driver, but does this helicopter go to the Loop?”
“Get in! They’re getting away!” Harpy snapped with a scowl. “You two are supposed to be the hardest badasses on the planet!”
“We are when we’re not getting over being hit with a concussion grenade!” Adonis shouted back.
The Black Hawk rose, and Dark hung on to the back of Harpy’s seat, looking out the windshield. He couldn’t believe it, then, when he saw them turning away from the road.
“What are you doing?” Dark demanded.
“He’s running for cover. Skyline just told me that half the police in three counties are on their way here. He also told me a military chopper just took off like a bat out of hell from O’Hare, and guess which direction it’s headed?” Harpy mentioned.
Dark hit the wall of the cabin, grimacing as metal overcame flesh. “Damnation.”
“The crew got the SmarTruck hooked up to the Skycrane anyway,” Harpy explained. “We don’t have to hang around this hole.”
“Not with a whole bunch of guys with rifles on their way here,” Dark snarled.
“I liked Kharisma,” Harpy hissed, looking over at the still-burning wreckage of the other Black Hawk. “She was a good pilot.”
Adonis frowned. “We’ll avenge her. That Stone guy isn’t going to live out the end of this week.”
Harpy settled the Black Hawk near the tree line. Of the men they’d brought with them, only four were able to walk their way to the chopper as it waited for them.
“This is a total blow-off,” Adonis said with a frown. “Less than a fifth of the force we started out with.”
Dark glared at the walking wounded. He could see fresh bodies fallen beside trees where they had been burned down. “You know, it really doesn’t matter to me. They’re a bunch of worthless bigots. Cannon fodder, really.”
They looked to Harpy.
“What the hell. DeeDee said that they were all expendable,” Harpy conceded.
Adonis pulled his second Desert Eagle, reloaded his first one and nodded to Dark.
Dark only grinned as he leveled the black, unstaring eyes of his twin Calicos at the unsuspecting militiamen.
SABLE BURTON PULLED OFF the road as the fleet of wailing and flashing sheriff’s and police vehicles ripped up the road. She was shaking, head pounding. Dizziness threatened her sense of balance and it felt as if she were going to flip over, even though she was buckled in and clenching the wheel as if it were her lifeline to reality.
A hand rested on her shoulder. The contact made her jerk, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, through blood-smeared glasses, she saw the face of Colonel Brandon Stone watching her, concern replacing the hardness that had been in those ice-blue eyes only moments earlier. She folded her lip under her teeth, biting hard, trying to use the pain to clear her mind, but it wasn’t working. The only thing that came out was the stinging flush of her tears in her eyes.
“Oh, my God. What the hell was that?” she asked.
“It’s something I try to protect people from with every waking breath. I’m sorry you got caught in it. I tried to—”
“I couldn’t leave you behind.”
“You helped me more than you could know,” Bolan stated.
“But they got the truck, they killed Joey and they almost killed me. They would have killed you all because they caught me and—”
“It’s okay,” Bolan told her, knowing the torrent of words was the result of adrenaline and survivor’s guilt.
“They still have the truck.”
She was shaking, but the aftershocks of terror were fading now.
“That was some good fencing,” he commented.
“No. It was sloppy, and it was with a worthless piece of metal.”
“It stopped Dark, and it saved my life. And then there was that 180 you pulled. Where’d you learn that?”
“A misspent childhood. Before I went to the Illinois Institute of Technology, I earned a little cash on the midnight circuit, drag racing and stuff.”
“That didn’t show up in your file.”
“Because I didn’t get caught. I didn’t even shoot the missile that was aimed at you.”
“What?”
She felt her face reddening. “For a moment, when I opened fire with the rifle, the helicopter was passing by. Then I saw the MARS drone smash the ground.”
“I don’t know. I was too busy trying to get out of the way to see if you actually hit it. Stranger things have happened in combat,” Bolan told her.
“You’re just saying that.”
Bolan rubbed some dried, flaking blood off her cheek, his intense blue eyes meeting hers. “I guess it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Burton managed a chuckle through her tears. “Gina’s the rocket scientist. I’m the laser specialist.”
Bolan’s phone vibrated, and he dug for it. “Stone.”
“Striker, are you okay?” Barbara Price’s voice was on the other end.
“I’ll live. Just a few bruises. Nothing major,” he answered. “Professor Burton is okay, too, just shaken up.”
“Who is that?” Burton asked.
“You know how James Bond has M?” Bolan asked.
“That’s your M?”
Price chuckled on the phone in his ear. “More like your Moneypenny.”
“I’m going to need some background info on a Joey Lambert, driver for Terintec,” Bolan said into the mouthpiece.
“Any reason you suspect him?” Price asked.
“If she’s asking why,” Burton rumbled, “tell her it’s because I’m wearing Joey’s brains. Dark blew them out after he didn’t do the exact right job for him.”
“She sounds angry,” Price noted to Bolan.
“You want me to put you two on the phone together?” the Executioner asked.
“No, thanks,” Price said.
“Jack’s on his way to you. We’re triangulating your position.”
“What about the Black Hawk and the Skycrane?” Bolan asked.
“They’ve been operating under radar. We lost them,” she told him. “Sorry.”
“I’ll find those two again,” Bolan told her.
“Those two…Dark and Adonis?”
“And maybe Harpy.”
Price stepped away from the phone for a moment. Bolan held on.
“The police are reporting that there are ten dead bodies left all over the testing field,” she said as soon as she came back. “They must have cut their losses, because everyone looked shot to hell.”
Bolan frowned. “I hate to sound like it was a schoolyard brawl, but they started it.”
“No one’s blaming you for starting this, Striker.”
Bolan sighed. “No, but you know who to blame if this doesn’t get finished.”
The frustrated Executioner hung up the phone, just in time for Grimaldi’s Kiowa to come thundering into view.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The door crashing open caught David Kowalski by surprise. He sized up the three burly men who rushed in, deciding that if they had been let through this far, then it was time for him to play along with the game Able Team had planned after Rosario Blancanales dropped him off at his hotel room. Had the three intruders been openly armed, Blancanales let him know that those men wouldn’t have lasted three steps. So instead of trying to kill him, they were here to take him captive, or to at least bully him into a position where he could be convinced to join their cause. In that case, Blancanales and Schwarz agreed that it was best for him to follow along and learn what he could.
The trio paused as they saw him, clad in a soaking towel, hair damp and matted to his head. Kowalski wasn’t going to let their intrusion continue without a reaction. He was a Marine, and a born warrior, and being attacked was met with a swift, uncompromising return strike. A growl erupted into a bellow as he lunged at the
m, snapping one fist hard like a battering ram, hitting the lead guy in his breastbone. The impact sounded like a drum being struck, and he went back hard, feet leaving the ground. The other two were knocked off balance and Kowalski decided that if they wanted to take him, they might as well get a look at all the goods.
He grabbed his towel and with a twist of his wrist, whipped it hard at the face of the man on his left, wet cloth cracking on flesh. A scream burbled from the AHC kidnapper’s lips as his hands went up to the wicked welt. Kowalski spun and brought both fists together across the jaw of the third man, launching him backward across an easy chair by the window. He didn’t stop atop the tumbling divan, instead continuing on, headfirst through the coffee table next to it.
Splintering wood echoed through the room as Kowalski grabbed the towel-whipped fool and drove him face-first into the wall. The knobby, jagged stucco turned from cream to crimson as skin and muscle tore on the guy’s face. Kowalski wasn’t done with him, as he followed up with a pistoning knee that blew into the AHC man’s belly. With a savage roar, he sent the would-be kidnapper sailing across the room, landing atop his friend in the pile of shattered furniture.
The first guy came up swinging, but by now Kowalski was in the state of mind neuropsychologists called tache psyche. It was where his perceptions were bumped up so that the world seemed to move in slow motion, but his peripheral vision disappeared in a black tunnel of focus. Brain racing faster than a supercomputer, he ducked the first two wild fists, then responded with two direct right jabs to the chest. The big man was caught off guard by the sudden strikes, and tried to curl up, his arms going to protect his ribs when Kowalski came around with his strong left hook. The guy tumbled and crashed to the floor, neck taking the full brunt of his hit.
Kowalski looked at the unconscious tangle of men around him. He had turned and was reaching for his clothes when a shadow fell across the door.
“Just your pants,” a voice ordered sharply.
Kowalski froze.
“Put your pants on. Do you think I want to see that ass all day?” the speaker demanded.
He glanced back to see a gunman. He was lighter in build than his three friends, and the way he conducted himself hinted to Kowalski that this was the brains of the operation.
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