The women stood and began gathering their things, but Rytova stopped them and ordered them to get moving immediately. As they padded across the grounds, Rytova switched her attention to the house.
Pulling back a sliding glass door, she entered a kitchen. She cleared that room and two other small spaces before passing into a dining room and a massive sitting room. Impossibly big crystal chandeliers were suspended overhead, and dark wood paneling seemed to suck the light from the room’s interior, which was filled with leather-covered couches and chairs, and heavy oak tables.
Rytova felt an even deeper disgust for Kursk as she saw how well he’d been rewarded by his blood trade. While his “clients” slaughtered thousands—mostly the world’s poor and downtrodden—Kursk lived in obscene luxury.
A circular staircase led to the second and third floors. Rytova had cleared most of the ground floor without incident. Uzi pointing the way, she started up the stairs.
As she stepped onto the second floor, a door ten feet to her left swung open and one of Kursk’s soldiers emerged, a 40 mm Glock clutched in his right hand. Catching the movement in her peripheral vision, Rytova whipped toward the man and was locking the Uzi’s muzzle on him as he came into view.
The man spotted Rytova, spun toward her and brought up his own weapon. Before he could squeeze off a shot, Rytova’s sound-suppressed Uzi coughed out a burst that killed him almost instantly. She stepped over the body and continued deeper into the house.
Two wooden doors to her right were shut, and their handles didn’t budge when she tried to open them. A sliding steel door at the end of the corridor opened, and a burly guard carrying an AK-47 stepped through the portal. Seeing Rytova, he squeezed off a hasty round in her general direction as he backpedaled for cover.
Rytova was already in action, unleashing a quick burst from her Uzi. The shots slammed into the man, digging into his body armor and causing him to stagger backward.
Even as that man reeled back, a second gunner armed with an Ithaca 37 bulled past his comrade and snap-aimed at Rytova. As he triggered the riot gun, his comrade fell against him and threw off his aim. Thunder echoed throughout the enclosed space as the shotgun blast tore through wood paneling and caused plaster to rain down from the ceiling.
The man who’d taken the hits to his chest clawed at his side arm as he dropped into a crouch in front of Rytova. She triggered the Uzi and planted another burst in the man’s face.
The woman swung her weapon toward the gunner, caressed the trigger and came up with nothing. The gun was empty.
The gunner worked the shotgun’s slide again, brought it to bear on her. As he did, Rytova wheeled and hurled herself through an open doorway. An instant later, the shotgun roared. The blast ripped through the wall, showering her with wood shavings and plaster dust.
Fear and adrenaline overtook Rytova, causing her to feel light-headed, her hands shaking as she tried to reload her weapon. Cracking the clip into the SMG’s pistol grip, she heard the intimidating snap of a fresh round slamming into the shotgun’s chamber. The shooter appeared in the hole in the wall, his eyes ablaze with anger. A shadow passed from behind as the gunner raised his weapon at Rytova.
“Fire,” the shadow said. “Kill that stupid bitch.”
Rytova’s blood froze.
The voice belonged to Nikolai Kursk.
Rage replaced fear, and she brought herself up and began pounding her attacker with autofire. The man on the other side grunted as 9 mm Parabellum rounds thumped against his body armor, lanced through his head and hurled him away from Rytova.
Her submachine gun leading the way, she moved through the door. She heard Kursk’s shoes clicking on the tiled floors below as he fled. Outside the house, she could hear the thrumming of an engine, the whipping of helicopter blades as somebody started up the gunship. If Kursk made it out of the house, she’d lose him for sure.
As she headed for the stairs, she heard groaning coming from within the room behind the steel door. A corpse lay on the sliding door’s track preventing it from drawing shut. She dismissed the noises, figuring they came from one of Kursk’s dying soldiers.
Then another thought seized her: it might be the American scientist. She had not yet seen him and he was supposed to be here.
Forget it, she told herself. The hookers said he was working with Kursk. That made him just as bad as Kursk, didn’t it? But what if they’d lied to her? What if he was a hostage?
She wanted Kursk so bad she could taste it. He’d cut out her heart when he’d killed her family. Getting even had been the only thing that had kept her alive since her husband and father died violently. Now the bastard was within her grasp, and she wasn’t sure what to do.
She made up her mind. She had to do the humane thing, while she still had some humanity left in her. Turning on her heel, she started toward the noise but held the Uzi at the ready. As she moved, she heard the chopper begin its ascent and she clenched her jaw to hold back the tears of frustration welling up inside her. She’d made the right decision, she told herself. It was really the only decision. This was all bigger than her and her vendetta. It had to be.
A cold pit of fear opened up in her stomach as she realized the chopper was hovering, rather than getting the hell away from the island. Driven by instinct and intuition, she burst into a run, vaulted over the dead man blocking the steel doorway and landed inside the cavernous room. She found herself on a mezzanine, surrounded by shattered machines and more corpses.
She saw an emaciated man laying on the floor, struggling for breath and gripping his abdomen, which was stained with blood. She started to say something to him, but the chatter of machine guns cut her off. A withering fusillade rained down from the helicopter, punching through the front of the house and chopping through furniture, walls and corpses like the blade of a buzz saw. Autofire blazed through the door and pounded into the mezzanine, tearing a path toward Rytova. Then as suddenly as it began, the shooting stopped and the sounds of the engines grew increasingly distant.
JACK COLE STEPPED carefully through the debris and made his way to the shattered front of the house. Bolan had double-timed it to catch up with him and watched as Cole slipped into the house, his Colt assault rifle leading the way.
Bits of glass, plasterboard and other debris lay in heaps around the ragged building, which only moments before had been lashed with a storm of hellfire. The concentrated assault had ripped doors from hinges and chewed large holes in the structure’s facade. Two of Kursk’s soldiers bobbed facedown in the pool, apparently sacrificed by the chopper as it escaped. The water around them was turning dark with their life fluids.
Rounding the corner, Bolan advanced in a crouch toward one of the gashes in the wall and peered inside. The assault by the gunship’s chain guns had ripped large holes in the interior walls, allowing him to see large portions of the first floor from a single vantage point.
He saw Cole sneaking through the house, looking from side-to-side for potential threats. Bolan watched as something gripped the former CIA man’s attention and he froze next to the circular stairwell. Holding the Colt in both hands, Cole launched himself up the stairs.
The Executioner stepped through the frame of a shattered sliding glass door and found himself inside a kitchen. The floor was a field of broken bottles, jars, plates and bowls, smeared sauces and spices and bullet-scarred woodwork. Bolan stepped on a curved shard of glass, heard and felt it pop under his foot. Even the small noise in the otherwise dead quiet house set his teeth on edge. He moved quickly through the rooms and made his way to the stairwell.
From above, Bolan heard a male voice shouting and assumed it was Cole.
“Son of a bitch got what he deserved,” the man was saying. “If he’d just played ball, he’d be fine right now. Hell, we’d all be fine. Now we’re just fucked. I was going to walk away with millions, and now I got nothing. I’m going to at least get the satisfaction of shooting this son of a bitch. And, honey, you’re next.”
&nb
sp; Rytova’s voice replied. “Stop and think. I’m armed, too.”
“I guess I’ll just have to shoot you first, then.”
Bolan bounded up the stairs, two steps at a time. The rubber-soled scuba boots made only a slight scuffling noise against the oak steps. The noise didn’t seem to register with Cole in his agitated state.
Bolan cleared the steps and saw Cole’s frame standing in a doorway, back toward him. The warrior lined up his shot and said, “Freeze, Cole.”
The other man stiffened. “Cooper. You going to shoot me in the back, Fed? Just what I’d expect from one of you Justice Department jerks.”
“I’ll show you the same kind of mercy you showed those State Department agents,” Bolan said.
He was fishing and Cole took the bait.
“That was pretty sweet work, wasn’t it? Nikki didn’t think I’d do it. He thought I’d get all teary eyed about killing some Feds. But I popped those bastards right in the back of the head.”
The Executioner had to stifle an urge to core a bullet through Cole’s head. He needed to get Rytova out of harm’s way.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Cole. You hurt that woman, and I kill you. You back off, and we’ll take you into custody.”
“So I can be charged with treason and killed with a lethal injection? Thanks, Cooper. You’re all heart. But just go screw yourself, huh? You want to saddle someone with treason? Talk to this rich boy scientist here. He’s the one who sold the Nightwind plans to Kursk. Just wait until you see what that Russian bastard has planned for the United States. Makes me glad I’m out in the middle of the Atlantic on this shitty little island.”
“It’s your call,” Bolan said in a graveyard voice.
Cole had to have sensed the change in the warrior’s speech. Whirling, he tracked for Bolan with the muzzle of his assault rifle. Bolan’s own weapon cracked once. The slug ripped into the former spook’s right ear, burrowing through his skull before exiting from the other side in a spray of gore. Cole crashed to the ground. His weapon came free from his grip and skittered across the floor.
Stepping over the body, Bolan entered the room and found Rytova kneeling on the floor. A slender man, sweating profusely, eyes screwed shut in pain, lay next to her. She had stripped the man of his shirt, wadded up the clothing and pressed it to an abdominal wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. She looked relieved when she saw Bolan fill the doorway.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. It looks like two bullets entered at nearly the same point and ripped through his insides. I was going to call for help, when Cole showed up,” she said.
Bolan knelt beside the stricken man. The floor was slick with the scientist’s blood, and his face was pale. Rytova lifted the makeshift compress and let Bolan scan the wound. A glance told him the man was hovering close to death.
Dade locked eyes with Bolan, tried to stare him down. The soldier’s steel-blue eyes registered no emotion.
“About time you people showed up,” Dade said.
Bolan put some ice into his voice. “What did Cole mean? You gave Kursk the plans for the Nightwind?”
“Cole’s full of shit,” Dade rasped. The effort cost him and he winced in pain. He took a moment to collect himself. When he spoke again his voice had gone hoarse. “Why don’t you just get me out of here? I’m the victim.”
“Sure you are,” Bolan said. “Why did Kursk shoot you?”
“I tried to escape.”
“Bull. He’d have just put you back in your room if that was the case. He needed you to interpret the plans. You pissed him off, didn’t you? What happened? You talk and I’ll call for help.”
“I’ll have your job,” Dade said.
“What happened?” Bolan said coldly.
Dade looked at Bolan. His pallor was almost grotesque in its intensity, but he was still clinging to the fantasy of surviving. “He screwed me,” Dade said. “We were going to work together. But he made a deal with someone else, changed the plans. He made me look foolish.”
“Who’d he make the deal with?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“It’s true.”
“What’s his angle?”
“Find out for yourself.” Dade stared at the ceiling and gasped for air.
Bolan scanned the blood-splattered room for a satellite phone or other communication device. Finding one on a nearby table, he called for help. Fifteen minutes later as a team of helicopters descended on the island, he heard a rattle escape Dade’s lips. The scientist shuddered one final time and slipped into death.
9
Nevada
Jon Haley settled into the soft living room couch and listened as the grandfather clock chimed out the hour. Tipping his head back and squeezing his eyes shut, Haley let the sounds carry him away for a moment. He’d inherited the clock from his mother when she died three years ago. But the sound always took him back to his boyhood home in Arkansas when his parents paid the bills while he played football and chased girls.
Now he and Monica shouldered the responsibilities. And sometimes they seemed overwhelming, even with his pay as a test pilot. Monica, a certified teacher, schooled the children at home while he worked for Sentinel Industries. It had been a mutual decision, and Haley considered his family a true blessing. But just as often he felt as though he were running to stay in the same place.
This was one of those days. The washing machine broke and the transmission went in Monica’s 1992 Chevy, both problems clamoring for immediate attention—and money. This just after they had paid for a new roof.
So he did what he always did: settle into the couch and crack open a beer and listen to the chimes sound. Monica had volunteered to put the children to bed and had promised to return as soon as possible. She’d already come downstairs and was bustling around the kitchen. As her image filled his mind, he thought of the swell of her hips and the way her skin had darkened to a honey gold under the Nevada sun, highlighting her coral lips and chestnut brown eyes. A swelling in his groin pressed against the fabric of his jeans and he wondered—
“Honey?” Monica called. “Come in here, please?”
Haley’s eyes popped open. Her voice sounded taut, perhaps even close to panic. Had something happened to one of the children?
Grunting, he raised himself from the couch. He walked from the living room through the dining room, both of which were dark, and into the well-lit kitchen. He stepped into a nightmare.
A thug wearing a brown leather bomber jacket clutched Monica. She gripped at the man’s forearm with her small hands, trying in vain to ease the pressure against her throat. Her eyes were wide, her face pale and tears streamed down her cheeks. Another man pointed a gun at her head and stared at Haley, grinning.
Haley’s fear quickly turned to anger. “What the hell’s going on here?” he said.
A third intruder stepped in from the side and cracked Haley in the jaw, catching him by surprise. Haley’s head swam, and the taste of blood registered with him as he reeled from the sucker punch.
If it had been an old-fashioned street fight, he would have jumped in with both feet. But this involved his family’s safety, guns and an unknown enemy. Haley’s training kicked in. Assess the threat and choose the best response, he told himself.
He touched the inside of his lower lip with his fingertips. They came back covered in blood. “I repeat,” he said, “what the hell is going on here?”
A hulking guy with a vampire’s complexion and receding white hair stepped into the room. His forehead was a mass of even whiter scar tissue. Snakeskin cowboy boots thudded against the floor as the man moved around the room, sweeping it with vacant black eyes. He gripped an Uzi submachine gun in his left hand.
“We’re here to recruit you, Mr. Haley.”
He gave what Haley assumed was a smile, but the man’s mouth was a slender red gash populated by small white teeth.
“What are you talking about?”
“We need you
to fly something,” the man explained. “You’ll only be gone a couple of days.”
Haley felt his anger brimming over again. “A couple of days? What the hell are you talking about? What about my family? What happens to them, you bastard?”
The man reached out and let his index finger graze down the curve of Monica’s cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the madness suddenly erupting around her.
The man continued. “Trust me. Your family will be much better off if you go with us. A couple of days’ work, and then I’ll bring you all back together. But if you disagree, bad things are bound to happen.”
Haley said nothing. Instead, he thought of Monica and his three children.
The man pointed the Uzi’s snout straight up. His gaze followed the weapon’s muzzle. “If I remember the floor plans right, your baby girl’s room is just above here. I wonder what a blast of Uzi fire could do from this distance? Do you think the floor would shield her from the bullets?” He locked his gaze on Haley. “I don’t.”
Haley felt nausea seize his stomach. His wife sobbed.
“Don’t you even think it,” Haley said, realizing there was little he could do to stop the man. A tense moment passed and the man lowered his weapon, trained it on Haley’s chest.
“Who are you people?” Haley asked.
“We’re the ones who decide whether your family lives or dies. Do you need to know any more than that?”
Haley decided that—for the moment, anyway—he didn’t.
“Tell me what you need me to do,” he said.
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
THE PHONE on Hal Brognola’s desk trilled, waking him from his first sleep in nearly two days. The big Fed leaned forward in his leather swivel chair. He smoothed back his hair with one hand, grabbed the phone’s receiver with the other.
“Brognola.”
“He’s dead, Hal.”
Brognola recognized Mack Bolan’s voice right away.
“Jesus, Striker, let a guy get his eyes open before you smack him between them. You mean Trevor Dade?”
“None other. Nikolai Kursk shot him twice in the abdomen, left him for dead. Kursk escaped.”
Death Gamble Page 14