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  Over the roar of the cannon, the attackers on the tower stairway heard the HE and incendiary shells smacking into the underside of the gunship's fuselage. Flame engulfed the aircraft. The tail section and the rear rotor dropped off. The AH-1G reared up like a startled horse and slid backward into the lake. The remaining missile exploded as the chopper hit the water. Another fireball seared the sky, raining blazing fragments across the steaming surface.

  The rebel troops had taken the first gate house. Weaving left and right, they were sprinting across the bridge. Three of them were left immobile among the ruins of the demolished building along with eight or nine of the defenders. One of Ononu's soldiers, wounded in the belly, was vomiting among the fallen tiles. Another took to his heels and fled along the lakeshore road. A third had toppled from the bridge and floated faceup on the surface of scarlet-colored water.

  Bolan and his companions passed the fifth floor and then the fourth. They saw no one. They were on the third when the Executioner realized that many of the ornately decorated apartments in the palace were in fact unused.

  He saw stenciled crates stacked among acres of dusty gilt furniture; refrigerators, dishwashers and other electrical household appliances still sheathed in polyurethane reflected in vast eighteenth-century looking glasses. An alcove hung with green silk curtains and expensive tapestry housed a wooden box from Omnipol, the nationalized Czech arms manufacturer. Standing open on a marble occasional table, the box was packed with Skorpion machine pistols in oiled plastic wrappings.

  The warrior and his band were halfway around the next staircase spiral when, with shocking loudness, automatic fire opened up on them from the floor below.

  The rounds pulverized the stonework. One of the soldiers cried out as he was flung backward on the steps. He cursed, clapping a bloodied hand to the shoulder of his combat jacket.

  Azzid, Bolan and the other soldier dropped below the balustrade. Bolan inched forward and down, circling the staircase's central core. Eleven stairs farther on, he could see through the balusters into a long hall floored with mosaic tile. Pillars faced with mirror glass supported the arched ceiling and a small lobby separated the room from the stairway.

  It was from behind an alcove wall dividing this lobby that the gunman had fired. Bolan motioned to Azzid, higher up the stairs, to fire a couple of rounds from his AK-74. The soldier with him followed suit. As soon as the two burps of automatic fire died away, the guy reappeared to take a rapid snap shot at them.

  Bolan caressed the MAC-11's trigger and the gun choked out two asthmatic rounds with no more noise than an apologetic butler's cough. The .45 ACP slugs carried away the top of the gunman's head, leaving a halo, rapidly tarnished, of blood and brain fragments. He fell full-length and his Uzi skittered away across the floor.

  There was movement at the end of the long room. Bolan leaped down the last few stairs to the second-floor landing, panning left and right with the suppressor-extended barrel of the eleven-inch death-bringer.

  He advanced into the lobby.

  Flame blazed from beside a pillar in front of a ten-foot window in the far wall. One of the 9 mm parabellum rounds thunked into the alcove divider inches from his head. Another bullet nicked his webbing belt, shearing away a metal D-ring above the AutoMag holster. The hand grenade attached to the ring fell to the floor.

  Azzid fired at the gunner's muzzle-flash. Glass erupted in a shower of silver rain as the Kalashnikov's killstream smashed across one of the mirrored pillars.

  A shadowy figure flitted past the deep window embrasure. It was almost dark outside now, and it was hard to see clearly in the gloom of the vaulted room. But there was more movement, quickly stilled, on the opposite side of the window.

  Azzid fired again. More glass shattered and fell. The soldier was firing down the stairwell, trying to repulse an attack from below.

  As the colonel's AK spit fire for the third time, lightning flashed vividly across the angry sky, followed almost at once by a prolonged roll of thunder overhead. The livid blue brilliance, reflected a thousand times, in all the colors of the spectrum, from a thousand glass shards scattered over the mosaic floor, gave Bolan an idea.

  He picked up the grenade, primed it and rolled it along the floor toward the window.

  The enemy's exact position was of no importance. The spherical missile, an M-50 plastic shell charged with fifty grams of explosive, hit the wall and burst with earsplitting concussion. The blast, spreading steel beads traveling at eighteen thousand feet per second, scythed through the dusk to shatter the rest of the pillared glass.

  A storm of razor-sharp fragments cut the two killers to ribbons. Once more the lightning flashed — and this time the myriad points of reflected radiance showed red.

  Bolan ran back to the stairway. Outside the tower, rain hissed down into the lake.

  Ogano's men had taken the second guardhouse and invaded the palace courtyard. They were under fire from the long, shuttered windows on three sides of the great graveled rectangle. But there was cover behind and beneath half a dozen cars and military trucks parked there. The crew with the cannon had rushed them over the bridge: from beneath Ononu's personal, customized, ivory-colored Rolls-Royce, the twin guns slammed 40 mm shells at the huge iron-studded doors barring the main entrance to the summer palace.

  One of the doors was burning. Smoke rolled up the double staircase at the far end of the entrance hall and invaded the mezzanine. It penetrated to the floor above and billowed around the tough members of the emperor's personal guard, whose guns were pinning down Bolan and his companions on the stairway inside the octagonal tower.

  There were seven or eight of these Oriwady paratroopers, each of them steel-muscled and over six feet tall. They were deployed behind two Egyptian stone coffins at the entrance to the great reception hall, on the far side of a balustrade circling the central stairway, and in the shelter of seventeenth-century furniture pulled out from the walls.

  Bolan, Azzid and the soldier were safe as long as they remained around the final bend in the spiral staircase. But while the paratroopers were in position they dared not advance. Bolan was unwilling to use a second grenade. He could hear women's voices from the room beyond the coffins, together with a loud bellow that he took to be Ononu issuing orders to his troops. It was possible that the tyrant had placed the hostages at the entrance to his command post, a living stockade to protect his imperial majesty. If that was the case, and the doors to the great hall were open, a bomb explosion could render the positive half of Bolan's personal crusade null and void.

  He touched Azzid on the arm. "Random shots," he whispered. "Just poke the muzzle around the corner and fire, okay?"

  The colonel nodded. Passing the message on to the enlisted man, he risked a single rapid burst with his head and shoulders exposed. There was a thunderous volley of automatic fire in response. Stone chips flew, ricochets screeched off pillars, the acrid odor of cordite overpowered the smoke from below.

  After that, both men contented themselves with single shots fired blind, as the Executioner had suggested.

  The warrior, crouched below the level of the balustrade, was speeding back up the stairs. When he had made almost a complete circuit of the tower, he stopped and peered down into the hallway.

  The black paratroopers were crouched behind their ornate shelters, every sense angled toward the curve of stairs and the two gun muzzles sporadically erupting with potential death. Two of them, hidden by a sideboard, were surreptitiously sliding the piece to one side so they could get a clear field of fire on the stairway.

  Bolan climbed to the top of the balustrade and jumped. An avenging angel, with fire spurting from his arm, he leaped down, spraying silent annihilation left and right.

  The defenders were taken completely by surprise, four of them fell at once before the Executioner's onslaught. Two more, springing upright and whirling to frame the big guy in their fields of fire, were mowed down from behind as Azzid and the soldier, on cue, jumped down from th
e stairway and pumped out a staccato hail of lead.

  A crescendo of shouts, stamping feet, wood splintering and a succession of different caliber shots announced that the men of the besieging force had burst their way into the palace.

  Fanned by a wind whistling through the shattered doors, the fire below burned more brightly; the smoke roiling up to the other floors billowed more densely.

  The remaining paratroopers, bewildered by the presence of enemies on all sides, lost their cool.

  One emptied the whole magazine of his Uzi at Azzid's soldier. Hurled back against the stairs, the man died instantly, his body torn almost in two by the 9 mm fusillade.

  A heartbeat later, the gunner also dropped, victim of a single deafening shot from Bolan's AutoMag.

  Another bodyguard decided to call it quits, flung down his SMG and raised his hands. Foolishly, he then thought better of it and raced for the main stairway — where he was instantly cut down by Ogano's invaders, sweeping up to liaise with their colonel.

  Thirty seconds more fighting and the battle was over. Ononu's personal guard lay among the wrecked furniture, slumped on bloodstained and bullet-riddled upholstery, sightless eyes staring upward. Apart from the two casualties sustained by Bolan's small party, Ogano had lost an officer and three more men rushing the palace, plus another wounded who sat nursing a shattered knee at the top of the stairs.

  Led by Bolan and Azzid, the remainder of the force burst into the great reception hall.

  A confused impression of women screaming, black servants huddled among some cheap wooden chairs in front of what seemed to be a stage, a man in white uniform with gold epaulets pointing a revolver at a small group of white girls. Behind him, bullish in a pale suit with his dark face a mask of rage, Ononu stood unarmed by the marble table.

  "A step farther and one of the girls dies!" General Shagari shouted.

  Azzid and the invaders stumbled to a halt. Ogano, uncertain, moved slightly ahead, then he, too, paused.

  "Move again and two of the bitches go!" Shagari yelled.

  Behind the colonel, half-hidden by his lean figure, Bolan had slid the silenced Beretta from its shoulder rig. Now he laid the barrel on Azzid's own shoulder, sucked in his breath, held it and shot the revolver from the general's hand.

  Shagari jumped back with a cry of rage and pain, shaking blood from his ravaged fingers. Coolly, Bolan placed a second shot through the left side of the man's chest, transforming the multicolored medal ribbons into a uniform scarlet.

  The general jerked backward and collapsed with arms and legs outflung across the marble table, a grotesque parody of the atrocities committed there previously.

  Azzid and his men rushed forward.

  Ononu whisked through a door in back of the huge hall. "The radio room!" Azzid cried. "He mustn't get to the transmitter!"

  "I'll take him," Bolan rasped. "You mop up down here."

  The Ingram's magazine was exhausted. He flung it beside the body on the table and sprinted for the doorway. Beyond it was a long passage leading to service stairs. From overhead, Bolan could hear heavy feet pounding. He unleathered both handguns and took the stairs three at a time.

  A corridor ornamented by statues in niches… doors swinging… twittering cries of fright as servants disappeared… a fleeting view of rooms rich with silk and velvet hangings, piled with cushions in Oriental splendor.

  And the squat back of the tyrant vanishing around a pillar at the far end.

  Bolan accelerated. The pillar was one of four around a stairwell. Below, a checkerboard marble hallway; three floors above, a glassed-in cupola loud with the pelting rain.

  Ononu was halfway up the stairs to the next floor.

  Beyond the cupola, lightning flared, bathing the well with its sickly brilliance. Shadows flickered and danced around the curving walls. The lights dimmed. More lightning flashed, and the shadows danced again.

  Including the shadows of three men, suddenly revealed, posted at the bend before the next landing.

  Bolan dropped, sighted the Beretta, fired. A shape jerked up, toppled over the railing above and fell, screaming, down the well to the checkerboard floor.

  One more pawn out of the game, the Executioner thought with a momentary pang of compassion. The lights brightened. He squeezed out two more rounds, wasted a second man. How many more moves before he could checkmate the king?

  Gunshots flashed and reverberated as he scrambled to his feet, feeling the wind of the slugs stir his hair. The shooter was half-hidden behind an ottoman on the other side of the landing.

  Only half-hidden.

  The Beretta clicked. No more shells. At once Big Thunder roared, splashing the wall with blood. Behind the pillars, running footsteps receded; the others were calling it a day.

  Bolan kicked the Uzi away from the nerveless hands behind the stuffed seat and continued the chase.

  Ononu was barreling up a staircase that circled a turret at the southeast corner of the palace. At the top beneath the roof, Bolan knew, was the dictator's private broadcasting studio. The warrior poured on all the speed he could muster.

  Panting, he burst into the circular room.

  He saw dials, tape spools, rheostat levers. He saw pilot lights winking blue and red. He saw the tyrant's huge black hand wrapped around a transportable microphone.

  Bolan had one shot left in the AutoMag. He turned away from Ononu. The all-important task was to ensure that no word from the soon-to-be deposed emperor was transmitted.

  He fired at the outlet where the mike was plugged in. The plastic backplate shivered; brass terminals, screws, lengths of copper wire and bright scraps of insulation leaped from the wall. A minor lightning flash and the pilot lamps faded and died. Before the echoes of the shot had died away, the tape spools stopped turning.

  Ononu's suppressed rage was terrible. There was foam at the corners of his mouth. His arms, gorilla-long, hung motionless at his sides, the fingers twitching.

  "It would be interesting to know," he said thickly, "what brings a renegade mercenary, a killer wanted even by the lackeys of capitalist decadence, into my country."

  "A private mission," Bolan said. "We call it seek and destroy."

  "Destroy!" Ononu's voice rose suddenly to a screech. "You talk of destruction? An impudent hired bully consorting with convicts in an attempt to overthrow a lawful regime? I think I will not kill you at first. I shall break your back and have you publicly exposed as the criminal you are."

  "You're a little out of date," Bolan said. "You don't have a public anymore. It's finished. Azzid's men broadcast from Bomiko-Kassi a half hour ago, announcing that you were overthrown. You're through and the army's in power now."

  With a yell of rage, Ononu charged at the warrior, like an enraged bull, hamlike fists flailing, in the hope of knocking Bolan aside with the sheer weight of his body and getting out.

  Bolan stood solid as a rock. He drew back his right fist and slammed the African over the heart with all his strength.

  Ononu's stride didn't even falter. The Executioner was astonished at the man's strength. He punched him again, hard, in the solar plexus. The blow, which would have felled most men and left them crying for breath, scarcely made the African blink.

  Bolan rode a haymaker and hit the man, flat-handed, on the side of the neck, temporarily paralyzing a nerve. This time Ononu went down, gasping for air. But he was tough. He came up again, swinging a roundhouse left that caught Bolan on the side of the head and knocked him against one of the tape decks.

  The emperor came in again, clawing for the Executioner's eyes. Bolan pushed himself off the steel chassis and brought his laced hands ferociously down on the back of Ononu's neck.

  He dropped for the second time. As he struggled to rise, Bolan kicked him on the jaw. "That's for the girls you callously used," he said, panting, kicking him again and smashing his nose. "And that's for the lives you took needlessly in order to get your dirty hands on them."

  Ononu spit out a broken tooth. A
curtain of blood linked his nose and chin. "Those little bitches?" he choked. "That white trash? Why, after the first time they loved it; they couldn't get enough…"

  The words were blocked in his throat. Anger lent Mack Bolan an awesome strength. He picked up the ex-dictator bodily and hurled him through the arched window beside the transmitting console.

  Frame and glass exploded outward as the squat form hurtled through. For an instant Ononu was limned in fire as lightning flashed again. Then he dropped with a wild cry down into the darkness and the rain.

  It seemed to Bolan a long time later that he heard the splash as Ononu plunged into the deep water at the foot of the tower.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mack Bolan never knew exactly what it was that made him decide to stay with… with what? It wasn't a mission: nobody was briefing him. It was no longer a crusade: there was no visible enemy to overcome. There didn't even seem to be a specific problem to solve.

  His original aims, moreover, had been achieved: Rinaldi's evil organization was broken, Suzanne Bozuffi and the others would be returned to their fathers, Ononu's dictatorship was finished and his small country would now be ruled by more reasonable men.

  But something still nagged at him. The dossier, which should have been tagged Mission Completed and filed away, obstinately stayed open. Was it simply because everything that had happened so far seemed a little too neat, too pat? Did the Executioner's subconscious mind, ever alert to the nuances of wrongdoing, evaluate the material and find the organization just a little too smart for such banal considerations as kidnapping, blackmail and mineral rights?

  Partly — there could be no doubt about this — his decision was influenced by the newspaperman, Jason Mettner. But there was, too, the evidence of the extra hostage.

  Bolan returned from the tower studio to join Azzid and the others in the reception hall.

  Suzanne Bozuffi, long red hair tumbled about her shoulders, still shuddering after her interrupted ordeal, was naked under a blanket held over her by a tall, willowy blonde. Bolan knew from the photos that this was Joy Helder, daughter of the plastics king. In a corner with two scared-looking black female servants was a voluptuous brunette he took to be Rachel Meyerbeer.