“Buck, take care of the hostages! Nobody else goes after Dark except me!” Bolan ordered.
“Don’t get cowboy on me, Striker,” Greene growled.
“I’m going to contain this conflict. You need to get the hostages to safety. Which is more important to you?”
“Dammit,” Greene muttered.
“Make sure all the accesses to these tunnels are covered,” Bolan shouted. “Anyone spots Dark making a break for it, blow the hole and don’t worry about me getting caught in the backlash. He gets stopped here!”
THE EXECUTIONER EXPLODED full speed down the tunnel, only slowing to plant his hand on the top of the concrete divider and launch himself over the yellow-and-black banded top, sailing six feet past the blockage before his boots crashed to the ground. He picked up speed again and accelerated.
Dark’s men were bleeding and dead behind him, cast to their universal judgment, whatever it would be. Only one man escaped, Dark himself, disappearing with the speed and slickness of a snake. If Bolan hadn’t caught the flash of his trench coat slithering over the top of the divider that lead into the train tunnels during the firefight, the murderer would have been gone for good. As it was, the mercenary in black still had a head start, and Bolan heard the sound of boot soles scraping the sides of a ladder up ahead.
He raced to the hole, skidded to a stop just in front of it and plucked a flash-bang grenade from his harness. He dropped the stun bomb down the entrance to the access tunnel. Bolan barely pulled his hand back in time to avoid having it shot off by a spray of fire from a 9 mm Calico submachine gun. There was a muffled curse and the sound of stomping feet.
Bolan stepped forward and let himself drop, grabbing the ladder and skidding down the same way Dark had. As soon as he was about ten feet from the bottom of the ladder, he let go, twisting his body in middrop and coming down on one knee. The Olympic Arms chattergun was up and tracking down the tunnel where he saw a flash of Dark’s trench coat, like a fleeing demon’s wings. He triggered the OA-93, sending a short burst after his enemy, rounds sparking on concrete and pipe. A hand snaked out around the corner.
Bolan threw himself flat as the muzzle-flash of the Calico slashed the half shadows ahead. The burst of 9 mm hollowpoints rang out as they struck the tubed steel of the ladder, and he hissed as a single ricochet sliced along his calf.
The Executioner drove himself to his feet, ignoring the nick and holding down the trigger to send out a volley of six rounds, driving Dark farther behind cover. He charged the corner, free hand reaching into his war bag to pull another grenade. He spotted something skid around the corner, rebounding off a pipe. The bounce was exactly right to angle it toward the speeding soldier, and Bolan recognized the hockey puck, at least in principle.
The warrior ground to a halt, sweeping the ground in front of it with a volley of 5.56 mm NATO rounds. One round smacked into the black shell of the mini-bomb, kicking it back along the hallway. Bolan whirled and threw himself as far as he could, landing in a curled ball just before the detonation of the plastic explosive went off in a blast that shook him to the core.
After the blast faded, he saw the space beneath the pipes running along the left side of the tunnel and instinctively rolled for them. He had barely wedged underneath when a second volley of 9 mm autofire chased hungrily out around the corner, gouts of concrete dust puffing into the air as Dark held down the trigger. Bolan couldn’t maneuver even the short OA-93 out from under the pipes, so he grabbed his Desert Eagle from its hip holster and took aim.
Three trigger pulls and a trio of 240-grain hollowpoints screamed out of the barrel of the mighty Magnum pistol, ripping across the distance between the muzzle and Dark, and punching quarter-size holes in the wall of the T intersection the murderer had ducked into. The man spun out of the way and disappeared down the turnoff. Bolan yanked himself out from under the pipes and was on his feet in moments, the big Israeli Magnum autoloader still in his fist. Still tightly clenched in his other hand was the Olympic Arms subgun. He swung around the corner, bringing up both weapons.
Both guns were triggered as he entered the mouth of the new tunnel, .44 Magnum and 5.56 mm NATO slugs screaming in a maddened swarm toward any and all living flesh in the tunnel, but Dark was gone. The soldier bit off a curse and continued on, steam hissing from the damage he had caused to some minor pipes with his fusillade. Running at full throttle, he hit the corner and felt the impact of several pounds of steel and polymer bouncing hard off his chest.
The Desert Eagle flew from his fingers, the Olympic Arms bouncing on its sling around his neck as Dark’s double pistol-whip with his Calico 950 SMGs struck Bolan in his ribs. He felt his feet slipping out from under him, body going into an out of control slide when he reached out, grabbed the heavy fabric of his enemy’s trench coat and pulled hard.
He gained a small measure of his balance and snapped his head forward into Dark’s breastbone, the impact causing him to see stars as he struck his enemy’s trauma plate. The black-clad mercenary clawed down hard at the Executioner’s face and only succeeded in getting one hand trapped by his iron-hard grip. Bolan shoved the Calico-filled fist back toward the pipes as Dark twisted the gun and fired.
Though no bullets came anywhere near the Executioner’s head, the bottom-ejecting machine pistol sent a stream of hot 9 mm brass bouncing right off of the soldier’s face, shocking him into letting go and finally dropping to the floor. Dark brought his guns back around, swinging them both to empty them into Bolan at point-blank range, but the soldier thrust his fist hard between his enemy’s thighs, putting every ounce of force he could behind the punch. Dark let out a strangled gurgle, his body bouncing off the wall.
The long-maned killer spun away, gasping for breath as Bolan clawed to get into a seated position, leveling his weapon at his adversary’s exposed back. With a sudden intake of breath, Dark recovered and whipped one leg up and around, smashing the OA-93 between boot heel and wall. The Executioner let go of the gun at the last moment, saving his hand from being crushed between concrete and the frame of his own weapon.
Dark took off again, dropping a pair of canisters behind him that spit out torrents of heavy fog. Bolan pulled his Beretta 93-R and launched a salvo of 9 mm bursts through the accumulating clouds. He recognized the quick work of a pair of M-18 smoke grenades. There was a muffled curse from beyond the smoke screen and the Executioner lurched back to his feet. He spun away and inspected the Olympic Arms subgun, feeling a massive dent in the magazine well. The gun was completely useless now, unless Bolan was going to feed single rounds through the exposed breech, a combat strategy even the desperate soldier considered nothing but pure folly at this point. He pulled the sling over his head, let the weapon clatter to the ground and looked around for the .44 Desert Eagle. The big pistol was on the ground not far from his foot and he scooped it up, holstering it after a quick check to see that the heavy frame and slide were undamaged.
Bolan cut through the smoke, Beretta leading the way.
JACK GRIMALDI SAW the detonation off in the distance and felt his stomach twist queasily as he heard Rochenoire’s report of Rutherford’s death. Dragon Slayer, though, was ordered by Bolan to continue a sweep for an invisible-to-radar helicopter that was stalking O’Hare, and the distance across the facility was too great, not to mention that crossing the paths of several runways would have caused accidents and harmed countless more innocents.
It still didn’t make the sacrifice of a single brave man any better.
Grimaldi’s jaw clenched tight and he continued looking. A short glance over to Charlie Mott told the Stony Man top gun that he wasn’t the only one left seething over the loss of the brave blacksuit.
These bastards were going to pay.
Out of the corner of his eye, Grimaldi spotted two flashes and he swung around to see another helicopter rising from behind an overpass on the highway. The twin missiles soared, looping up and over the road and beelining toward the radar tower.
There wasn�
�t even time for Grimaldi to shout, “Hold on!” He pushed the throttle for all it was worth, cranking Dragon Slayer around in a body-wrenching spin. His targeting optics tracked the first of the sizzling pair, and he let go of a burst with the GECAL. Instead of taking out the missile, he only ended up shattering a hole in the tarmac skirting one of the terminals.
Mott slammed a button on the console, hissing a curse as he did so. “Evasive!”
Grimaldi glanced at Mott, wondering if his partner had gone mad, then he noticed the console was lit up, the ground-effect radar screen glowing with the images of the two missiles. The deadly darts swerved off their course, turning in as tight a circle as they could. Dragon Slayer yanked into a power dive, the sleek craft knifing between the roaring weapons before they came out of their turn, but still long after they committed to charging after the Stony Man war machine.
Mott turned off the radar and checked the rear-looking camera. “The missiles are changing course.”
“Picking up on O’Hare’s radar again,” Grimaldi cursed. “Buck! Barb! Anyone! Can we get that thing turned off?”
“Working on it,” Price answered over the tac net. “But we have to get the airplanes up and into an orbit around the airport.”
“Just get it done,” Grimaldi hissed. He was flashing back to the 737 smashing into the ground at Dulles, the helpless moments when he was fighting an imaginary stick to keep the aircraft from crashing. “What about the data being piped in from San Fran?”
“That’s shut down,” Price answered.
“It’d take too long to program new routines into the ground control software they hacked,” Grimaldi growled.
“That, and Gadgets and company are ripping the hell out of a militia base as we speak,” Price responded. “I just wish you guys had a magic laser—”
“You have better than that,” Professor Sable Burton interrupted. “You have a quantum electronics physicist. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I think I can take out the missiles.”
Another pair of MARS rockets took flight and Mott activated the ground-effect radar again, sweeping the duo that had just launched. They snapped around, facing down Dragon Slayer head-on. Grimaldi, not having to aim ahead of the racing missiles, locked his GECAL onto one then the other, ripping out short taps of .50-caliber devastation that blew the deadly pair of missiles out of the sky.
“O’Hare’s main radar down!” Mott called.
Something detonated on a rooftop on one of the terminal buildings, and Grimaldi’s knuckles tightened on the stick.
“The MARS found a secondary target,” Burton explained. “Weather radar!”
“That means we have aircraft in danger because they have their own radar systems!” Mott noted. “We’re not the only things up here with radio signals pouring off them.”
“It takes a few moments for the MARS to weasel in on a frequency, though,” Burton answered. “And I’m working on something back here. You won’t need these radios, right?”
Grimaldi looked back over his shoulder to see Burton fiddling with some tape and the AN/PRC-68 radios that were stored in a cabinet under the back seat. “What are you doing?”
“Radar is a radio transmission. The missiles lock on to that signal, be it from a weather radar or a communications center,” the woman said, taping down the transmit button on the first radio after setting it to a certain frequency. “The MARS system was found in testing to be attracted also to communications signals as well as active radar.”
Grimaldi watched as another missile flashed, locking on to Dragon Slayer and curving toward her flight path. He checked the console, but Mott hadn’t activated the radar again.
“Get us over some clear ground!” Burton ordered.
Grimaldi swung Dragon Slayer over a grassy strip between runways and Burton pitched her radio out the window. The Stony Man pilot watched the distance between the missile and the helicopter shrink before it finally dipped and swung into a dive. Ground detonated, sending divots of earth vomiting into the sky.
“Barb! Was anyone hurt when that missile hit?”
“The National Guard and O’Hare security have been working on evacuations, so the top floors were empty. There’s a hell of a hole in that roof, though!” Price answered.
“Another missile! It’s homing in on us!” Mott shouted.
“Shit! Sorry, Barb!” Grimaldi killed the radio and swung the helicopter around. Instead the MARS speared skyward, seeking out a new concentration of radio signals.
A collection of squad cars that left their dispatch radios turned on.
“No!” Grimaldi shouted.
A couple of officers who had stayed back at the cars looked up, seeing doom sizzling in on them, and the Stony Man pilot had no clear shot.
“Light ’em up!” Grimaldi told Mott, who was already hammering the ground-effect radar controls. A pulse of invisible energy swept out of Dragon Slayer and washed over the MARS rocket. It suddenly rose, engines straining, swinging up and around to go after the Stony Man sky warriors.
“Get that next PRC working!” Grimaldi called back.
“Already doing it!” Burton answered.
“You know, this is a hell of a bug for a weapons system,” Mott said over his shoulder.
Burton tore free the strip of electrical tape and launched the radio out the window. “Yeah, well we were deciding whether to fix it to a certain range, or just tell the military that they could target communications centers with it.”
The tarmac exploded erupting chunks of concrete and asphalt as the MARS met the signal-spitting PRC to punctuate Burton’s point.
Grimaldi laughed. “And you know, they’d probably pay you double for that bug.”
HARPY SIGHED as the last of her missiles took out nothing more important than a stretch of clean tarmac. At least she’d made a couple of impressive potholes with the MARS weapons system that they’d spent so much time and energy to steal. Chicago’s O’Hare airport was at least shut down, and airliners were circling high above, running low on fuel, passengers gripped in terror at the aerial fight going on below.
When it came down to it, Harpy didn’t give a damn about high-tech weapons, and she shot the Bell JetRanger forward. Built on the same technology as the military-spec Kiowa OH-58 Warrior, the JetRanger was easily retrofitted by Fixx, the RING’s mechanical genius and weapons engineer, to carry all the power, technology and firepower of its armed forces’ counterpart. She had even managed to turn the 4-shot Hellfire modular pod designed for the Kiowa craft into a 6-shot MARS launcher. On the other side of the craft, an M-2 Browning .50-caliber heavy machine gun rode on its own.
The only thing missing on the JetRanger from the Kiowa was the mast-mounted sight containing a cluster of thermal imaging, television, laser targeting and boresight systems. Harpy didn’t mind. That big gourd-shaped protrusion from the top of the helicopter’s rotorstalk only made the ship slower and less agile. Harpy swung the JetRanger out and swooped toward the terminal concourse, activating the firing control on the M-2 hanging off her right side. It wouldn’t provide the same kind of explosive force as the MARS missiles, but the .50-caliber machine gun was a destruction machine.
Her first burst targeted a fuel truck, sending a column of fire and smoke spitting up from the ground, not far from her enemy’s gunship. The war machine whipped away from the sudden updraft of blazing flame, the turret underneath stuttering in response.
Harpy had watched the GECAL machine gun at work before, and knew that it was probably optically guided. She had just barely dipped the JetRanger behind the top level of a terminal building before an explosive line of impacts signaled the GECAL’s assault on the roof of the building. Twisting her own craft around, she popped out at the far end and triggered her M-2, the machine gun releasing a spray of sparks across the side of the aircraft.
Dragon Slayer flinched under the multiple impacts, and a second burst from the GECAL missed Harpy’s killer bird by several feet.
As soon as the GECA
L started, it stopped, and Harpy felt a grin cross her hard face. The enemy pilots were afraid to use too much of their terrible and much more effective machine gun for fear of having their bursts hit homes miles away or penetrate into areas where civilians were huddling in fear.
“Fun at your expense,” Harpy quipped as she kept her craft swinging low by the terminal buildings, sweeping her fire toward the big helicopter, which dodged, jinking straight up, forcing her almost to go climbing after the chopper. But she caught herself as the enemy pilot flipped his ship around, taking aim.
“C’mon, shoot me,” Harpy said out loud, knowing her enemy couldn’t hear her, but enjoying throwing the taunt anyway. She had control of the situation, and fired off a couple more bursts from the M-2, wanting to take down the defending helicopter, but also keeping enough in reserve to cut loose with a barrage of slaughter on the airport.
Tears were going to be shed by the gallon today, if she had her way.
“THAT BITCH, Harpy, is living up to her name,” Burton commented as she looked out the window. Dragon Slayer was a mess inside. The pounding by the enemy machine gun had hammered across the insides of the helicopter. The cockpit windshields were cracked and starred, and all but impossible to see through, Grimaldi having to use the television cameras installed on the high-tech craft to steer by. Charlie Mott was squirming into the back of the cabin with her.
“Name or not, we can’t use our big guns on her,” Mott replied. “Not when we’ve got her using the civilians behind her.”
Burton watched as he snapped down one of the XM-134 Gatling guns on its mount.
“That’s not a heavy weapon?” Sable asked.
“It’s 7.62 mm NATO. At this range, it won’t punch through ordinary building materials,” Mott answered, “even at 3000 rpm.”
“Three thousand rounds per minute?” Burton asked. She watched him set up the gun, then reached up and brought the one on her side of the cabin down.
Season of Slaughter Page 27