New fire came from another sand dune to the left, covering the first man's retreat. Bolan ignored it and sent a ten-shot burst toward the limping man.
Six of the rounds caught Joseph Vishnevetsky. Three slashed through his chest, pulping vital arteries and ripping into his lungs. The other three traced a pattern up his head, one of them boring in just past his Adam's apple and missing his spinal cord by a millimeter. Another slug broke out three front teeth, shattered and tore up half of his upper palate. The last round ripped through his forehead, flattened as it entered his cranial cavity and took a four-inch square of brain tissue and scalp off his head as it exited.
Bolan had seen a figure charge forward as he fired at the wounded man. Now the Executioner concentrated on the second man. He had bolted forward another fifty feet until he was little more than thirty yards from Bolan's cover. The man dived behind a six-foot-high pile of igneous rocks.
"Give it up, American, your cause is lost. You have no transport."
The Executioner listened to the Russian-accented English, and shouted back.
"I can blow up your chopper anytime."
Bolan triggered a burst of death messengers toward the rocks. Some of them plowed into the sand, some whined off into the desert.
The Executioner slipped another grenade in the launcher tube attached to the M-16 and fired at the chopper. He might get some spray shrapnel hits. The round landed short. At once the blades began spinning faster and the bird slowly rose from the ground.
Bolan moved his hand back to the M-16's trigger and aimed at the bird, but he had to duck for cover again as a dozen rounds from the Russian's automatic rifle peppered the heavy skin of the crashed craft.
When Bolan looked up, the enemy chopper was skimming the desert, rapidly moving out of range.
"Now it is just you and me, American."
"Not quite. My partner is coming up behind you."
Strakhov laughed. "Not a chance, American. The man is Dr. Ludlow, and he is so brainwashed that he can hardly think for himself, let alone respond to orders from someone else."
As Strakhov spoke, Bolan loaded another grenade and fired at the pile of rocks. Bolan was hoping the impact would send a shower of shrapnel behind the rocks if he found the right range.
A hot silence followed the blast. Bluffing, Bolan decided. He saw slight movement of desert grass near one of the stones, and Bolan sent six 5.56mm lead hornets into the spot.
Again, silence.
Bolan fired another HE round into the same spot as before.
Nothing.
He checked the barracks bag and discovered only four rifle grenades left. He slung the Childers onto his shoulder and reached for one of the remaining white phosphorous explosives. What little wind there was in the blistering desert terrain was blowing slightly away from him, toward the Russian. He shoved the phosphorous round into the cylinder and triggered the launcher at the rock pile. As the smoke billowed out and covered the stones, Bolan was up, dashing forward, the M-16 hybrid on full automatic.
Quickly he crossed the distance to the rock heap, but found no one hidden there.
"Damn," Bolan muttered.
The Russian had used the rocks as cover and moved in a direct line away from Bolan. Fifty yards ahead there was a small dry watercourse that had carved a depression in the desert after some long forgotten rainstorm.
Where the hell was the Russian?
And where was Dr. Ludlow? Without any water the scientist could get lost and die out here on the desert after as little as two hours.
The Executioner wiped sweat from his forehead as he squinted up into the unforgiving sun. He guessed the temperature to be above 100 degrees.
He looked over the protective rocks again, then swept the land on each side in a 180-degree arc. Was the enemy trying to work back to the downed chopper and its treasure? The watercourse meandered ahead, and he could see how it soon deepened and curved to the left. Maybe he could cut the Russian off by charging straight across toward the bend of the gully. Bolan nodded. Worth a try. He gripped the Childers on its sling and emerged from the rocks on a run, angling at a forty-five-degree line to where he guessed the Russian had headed.
Bolan jogged for a hundred yards, and could see the side of the six-foot-deep arroyo. He heard a chopper coming in but at first did not worry about it. He expected it to be the Navy craft flown by Lieutenant Johnson. At the last moment he looked up and saw the blue and white bird. He dived to the sand and rolled to the left just as he heard the rifle fire from above.
The rounds missed and he turned on his back and sent a dozen bullets at the bird from his M-16. Some of the slugs scored and the chopper veered off to the left. Sweat glistened on his forehead.
For the moment he was safe — but now the Russian in the gully knew where he was. Bolan worked ahead to the edge of the ravine and looked up and down it. He could see fifty yards downstream, but only about twenty to a curve the other way. There was no one there. He stood for a moment, then dropped to the sand.
The Russian grabbed at the bait. Three angry whizzers whined inches over Bolan's head and he rolled away from the lip. The shots came from upstream, past the bend in the gully. He had a direction.
Bolan crouched low and ran upstream twenty feet back from the edge of the drop-off. At the bend in the ravine, the desert runoff had exposed a cavernlike jumble of rocks forming a perfect fortress. He worked his way cautiously to the edge of the arroyo, coming up behind a thick healthy sage brush.
The rocks were strewed along the bottom of the watercourse, and many had tumbled down from the sides as the water undercut them. But to the left side Bolan glimpsed what appeared to be a tunnel or a small cave.
It struck Bolan that the enemy chopper could work back and get the Skysweeper plans while the Executioner was chasing the Russian.
He considered this as he waited. The man down there must make a move sooner or later.
Bolan dismissed the thought as his gaze swept to the downed aircraft. The blue and white chopper would not come in after the papers. The crash site was still well within M-16 range.
Bolan leaned out and sent six rounds into the dark hole among the rocks, then rolled back from the lip.
When the sound of the shots echoed away downstream, the Executioner heard a laugh.
"Missed, American, but a good try. You remind me of a man who bothered us for a long time: John Phoenix. But we disgraced him, broke him."
Bolan's throat felt so tight he did not think he could speak. He swallowed a dozen times, then moved closer to the rim. He could see no corpse among the rocks.
Was it possible? He closed his eyes, remembering the unseeing gaze of April Rose. He gripped — the rifle. It was possible. This was a KGB operation, and the local man would have contact with some higher-up. But would the head of the KGB's Thirteenth Section come all the way to America for this kind of mission?
"Strakhov?" Bolan shouted.
There was a silence, then another grating laugh.
"There is no way you could know that unless you are John Phoenix. Yes, I am Strakhov. I was the one who designed and engineered the attack on Stony Man Farm, and then again in Russia. You killed my son in Afghanistan. And today you are going to die for it."
Bolan had brought the Childers around and slanted it down over the lip. He fired six shots at the cave entrance.
When the sound of the shots died away, he heard a groan and a sharp intake of breath.
After a pause the voice came again. "Do not be excited, American. It is only a scratch. And by now my pilot will have retrieved the plans from the crash site and be flying away."
"Wrong, Strakhov. I put six rounds into his engine. He won't last long. You're alone, you're almost out of ammunition and you're in the middle of the Mojave desert. You don't stand a chance."
"You lie, John Phoenix. I know your style. I have studied you for three years. If my pilot had any problems he would tell me by radio, and I have lots of ammunition. Today you shall
return to the ashes and there is no better place than this desert hell."
17
The Executioner's mind was busy computing the odds, working on strategy. He had to find a way to flush the Russian out into the open.
Bolan shook his head to clear the sweat that was now coursing down his forehead into his eyes. Strakhov had eluded him before, but this time the KGB boss would not escape. The Executioner unslung the Childers and fired into the maze of rocks and the black hole. He was moving even before the sound of the second shot stopped echoing along the gulley.
Bolan stopped and checked his surroundings. There was considerable growth of hardy desert grass and a few smoke trees. Ground cover sage clung to the sides of the ravine, interspersed with a scattering of chaparral and greasewood. Bolan noticed that the grass, now dead, dry and fallen down, grew almost to the top of the ravine wall.
He squirmed back from the edge until he was out of sight, then scurried downstream ten yards to the grassy spot. He wormed back up to the lip of the gully and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
Carefully he reached over the drop-off and touched the flame to the grass. The tinder-dry vegetation caught fire as if it had been doused with gasoline. The flames exploded in the scrub and greasewood and whipped downwind, pushed by the breeze. There was nothing to stop it until it had passed the rock cavern and the jumble of boulders where Strakhov surely must be hiding. Then it would burn out.
The fire leaped, spread outward. A small flaming branch of sage blew ahead and started a spot fire a dozen yards forward of the main fire, which now had surged across the twenty-yard-wide gully.
Bolan pulled back from the edge and ran along the arroyo until he was just beyond the boulders, then crept up to the top of the drop-off and peered over the bank again. He put the M-16 on the ground and wiped sweat off his forehead. Then he thumbed wetness from both eyes and blinked. The smoke blew past the rocks, surging faster than the flames. He could see the wall of fire working toward the boulders.
Any time now there should be a rat running for his life. Bolan brought up the Childers. He was less than forty yards from the boulders. Strakhov would be ten to fifteen yards from him as he ran through the ravine. There was no way Bolan could miss with the shotgun.
Seconds ticked by and the Executioner waited. He thought he sensed some kind of movement to his left, but he could not risk pulling his eyes from the boulders to check. He would kill Strakhov now, the moment he ran out of the boulders, whether he was on fire or not. Strakhov would get all twelve rounds left in the Childers, and if the double ought buck did not do it, Bolan would use the M-16.
Movement near the rocks!
A shadow edged nearer the sunshine, then a figure burst out of the smoke, coughing and spluttering. Bolan started to lift the Childers when he heard a sound to his left. It was a sound that can reduce a strong man to a quivering mass of fear.
The chattering buzzing rattle of the snake's tail came again, harder, faster, more insistent this time. Bolan froze. He turned his eyes to the left without moving his head. He knew the creature was close. He saw it two feet from his left shoulder. A deadly Pacific rattlesnake had coiled on top of the warm black metal of the M-16, its tail a blur as it rattled its warning.
The serpent's liquid black eyes stared into Bolan's. Its tongue darted out, sensing the heat of the man, and catching the scent of smoke and heat coming toward it.
The Executioner knew he could not move. Nothing was faster than a coiled rattlesnake at two feet. His eyes pivoted back to the canyon. General Strakhov had raced from his lair out of the fire, looking behind him. He surged again, and now was opposite Bolan. He carried a Russian AK-47 with a thirty-round magazine. The Executioner felt fury and frustration drive through him as he saw his quarry slipping away.
He considered everything. His finger was still on the trigger of the Childers. The muzzle was pointing toward the gully, but not downward. Neither was it pointing at the snake. The creature continued to rattle, but the intensity was now reduced. Did that mean it was less frightened, that the warning had worked and now the snake was more at ease, less on its guard?
Bolan moved his eyes back so he could see the triangular head of the poisonous snake. The deadly fangs still wove a gentle pattern in front of the coiled power of its four-foot-long body. The rattler was as dangerous now as when Bolan first saw it.
The Executioner considered every possibility. Was he faster than the snake? Could he bring around his weapon rapidly enough to blast the reptile? Frustration gripped him as he thought of Strakhov escaping even as he pondered his plight. He felt he had no choice. He had to go for the rattler.
Lightning fast, the Executioner made his move. The Childers roared even before the muzzle acquired target. Five rounds of double ought buck ripped into the reptile, disintegrating the deadly head.
The snake's tail beat out a tattoo of rattling anger. Bolan sat up and looked at the creature. The headless body now lay uncoiled a few feet away from the M-16. Bolan grabbed the weapon.
The Executioner looked down the gully. Strakhov was nowhere in sight along the watercourse. Bolan ran down from the edge, checking the ravine every twenty feet. No Strakhov.
Bolan ran twenty yards farther, then moved slowly back up toward the drop-off to check. A rifle shot seared across his left thigh and he dived for cover in the ravine.
Strakhov! Bolan crawled slowly toward the gully lip. He scanned the terrain to his right where the shot had come from. Nothing. Movement in the shadow under an overhang? No. Strakhov must have gone farther.
Bolan realized he had to keep in range of the crashed chopper. He might have to give up on Strakhov if the blue and white helicopter headed for the plans to Operation Skysweeper. He slid down from the slope and ran upstream again. The depth of the watercourse lessened sharply, and soon it was only three feet deep. The Executioner found a spot behind a small sand dune and watched the gully.
After five minutes he saw movement, but Strakhov was almost a hundred yards away. Bolan sent a half dozen rounds after the Russian, then leaped up and ran for cover down from the edge of the arroyo.
He had gone only twenty yards when two rifle slugs slapped the sand near him and he dived behind another dune.
Bolan scowled. The gully was getting shallower here, giving neither of them much protection. He looked back at the crashed chopper. It was in sight, in range and safe. For a moment Bolan wondered if he would have a real shot at Strakhov. The Russian moved like a seasoned infantry soldier. Only if he made some big mistake would the Executioner have a chance for a kill.
Bolan followed as the Russian moved across the arid ground. Strakhov was working an arc around the downed chopper. Each time he tried to move toward it, Bolan drove him back with a shot or two. The M-16 still had one 40mm grenade, but Strakhov was well out of its effective range.
The sweat came freely, bathing the Executioner's shirt, dripping off his nose. The sun burned into his skin. Nearly a half hour after they had begun playing cat and mouse in the furnace of a desert, Bolan heard a rotor throb, then saw the blue and white chopper approaching. The enemy bird circled once and then landed twenty yards from the KGB chief, but over a quarter of a mile away from Bolan and protected by a sand dune.
Bolan emptied a magazine at the piece of the bird he could see, then concentrated on Strakhov as he zigzagged toward the craft. The bullets plowed harmlessly into the sand. The Executioner sent another half a magazine of lead chargers after the helicopter as it took off.
Bolan took a long breath and watched in anger and frustration as the man he hated with all his being flew away free toward the south.
18
Bolan stood in the middle of the trackless Mojave desert watching the helicopter become a speck in the blue sky. Strakhov, the one man in the world Bolan wanted to kill more than any other, was escaping. He would trade one shot at Strakhov for a hundred other KGB agents! Bolan wished he had a radio so he could call in the Navy chopper.
Then he heard
it, and turned to see the green Navy helicopter swinging in toward him. It settled down twenty yards away, sending up a sand and dust storm that Bolan fought his way through.
He jumped in the open passenger's side, strapped his seat belt and pointed upward.
When they were away from the dust, Bolan wiped the sweat and sand out of his eyes.
"You read minds too, Johnson?"
"You bet, sir. But I'm best at shadowing the other team's chopper. I guess you want me to keep on following that bird up there heading south?"?
"Damn right! On board is one of the top men in the KGB. Don't know how the hell he got into this country."
Ten minutes later, it became obvious that they were gaining on the other craft as it headed almost due south.
"We can catch them, but it'll take most of an hour."
"We've got to force them down! Can't we get any more speed out of this thing?''
"We're on the red line now, Mr. Scott."
Bolan stared at the blue and white craft. It swept around the end of the Sierra Nevadas, heading southwest.
"Where the hell is he going?'' Bolan asked.
"My guess is a freighter or submarine outside the twelve-mile limit. No way we can even challenge them out there."
"Get on the horn and demand some Navy fighters to intercept that bird, force it down before it gets over the water.''
"We can nail them before they get twelve miles out. I just figured it on my magic board here. We overtake them in thirty-six minutes.''
"How far are we from the coast?''
"On this heading we're one hundred forty miles due southeast. We've been heading south to get around the hills. This new course puts us over the Pacific at Point Conception."
Something had been bothering Bolan. The plans, designs and secrets of Operation Skysweeper would be safe enough back in the desert in the middle of the huge Navy range. There was something else.
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