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  “Most definitely,” Bolan replied. “Stay here. Watch my back.”

  “I am watching.”

  He threw open the door and stepped inside.

  The next room was completely dark. He unlimbered his combat flashlight, clipped it beneath the barrel of his rifle and tapped its momentary-on switch with the edge of his support hand. Then he scanned the room.

  The chamber was roughly octagonal. Wooden doors, not metal security barriers, led from five facets of the octagon. The one on the far wall was probably an exit, given its position. The others could lead to anything. Fafniyal could be hiding behind any one of them.

  It was a good old-fashioned room clearing, then.

  Bolan kicked in the first door. In the split second it took to swing inward, he processed the presence of two soldiers wearing black armbands. There was no time for anything fancy. They were already bringing up their guns. He stroked the trigger repeatedly, walking the M16 from left to right, blowing them apart with 5.56-mm bursts.

  The second door was thrown open from within. Bolan shoved his back to the nearest wall, held the M16/M203 at waist level and triggered the shotgun round. The soldier who walked into that storm of ball bearings simply disappeared under the blast, his face and some of his chest erased by the buzzing metal spheres.

  The third and fourth doors were opposite each other. Bolan slammed his knuckles against one, dived and rapped the butt of the M16 on the other. The men inside each room reacted by trying to shoot him through the panels, resulting in screams from the unseen shooters on both sides. Blood began to well from under both doors.

  That was life and death on the wrong side of justice.

  Fafniyal was not here. He had exited through the fifth door. Bolan eased this open and looked carefully past it, expecting a bullet at any moment.

  He was not disappointed. The knot of Kalashnikov-wielding thugs in the narrow hallway had lined themselves up two deep. A pair of men knelt side by side, while another two stood and aimed their rifles from that height.

  Bolan dropped back. The four gunmen fired, burning the air where he’d just been. The Executioner performed a rear break fall, tucking his head down onto his chest, shifting to his side slightly, letting his flank take the brunt of the collision with the floor. He rolled through it, bending forward, careful not to rock up too fast and into the line of fire. At the same time, he let the M16 fall against his chest, across his body, and he emptied the magazine as the weapon lay there. Shooting between his own legs, Bolan zipped all four of the gunners who’d been lying in wait.

  There was a howl of some kind from the other end of that corridor. Bolan recognized it as a rallying cry. Multiple men, their black scarves tied across their faces, came surging up, climbing over the four corpses, almost rabid to get at him. They carried AKs, but weren’t firing them. After a moment he realized why. They’d affixed bayonets to their rifles and were rushing forward to stab him.

  Fafniyal’s troops had run out of ammo. They were now doing the only thing they could: charge him with their combat knives fixed to their rifles. Bolan scrambled to get up on one knee and press himself against the doorway. He dropped his mag, reloaded and emptied the next in a long string of rapid-fire bursts. Still the enemy kept coming. Bolan loaded a fresh magazine. He fired again. He was building a small mountain of corpses, but the Wolf’s fanatical troops were climbing over the dead. What they lacked in discipline they made up for in dedication. This kind of bloodthirsty resolve in the face of oncoming gunfire was rare.

  How many of them were there? It had to be Fafniyal’s entire reserve force. This could mean only one thing: Bolan was close to his goal. The enemy was going for broke.

  He fired out his assault rifle’s magazine. He reloaded and emptied it again. He did this once more. Finally, there were no more magazines. A trooper tried to leap up onto him bodily, after climbing the pile of corpses, but Bolan caught him with a shotgun blast from the M203. The load was so powerful it shredded the man in midair.

  Discarding the M16, Bolan drew his Desert Eagle and his Beretta. With a gun in each hand, he fired again and again. The Wolf’s men came for him with their bayonets, screaming bloody murder, and he made his stand in that blood-soaked corridor because it was the only option left. The Beretta belched flame in 3-round bursts. The Desert Eagle chucked flying ashtrays with thunderous explosions. Bolan fired his guns empty, juggled each under his arms to reload, burning himself as the barrels grew hot.

  He shot. He pistol-whipped. He clubbed men down left and right with both guns, shooting them, smashing them, breaking them. Blood began to soak through his boots as the dead men piled up before him. It was like a painting of hell. It was the worst that war could offer, a suicidal charge among desperate men who feared their leader more than they feared oblivion. Bolan fired his guns until he thought his ears might bleed from the roar of the .44 Magnum.

  Two more men were on him, holding knives in their fists, and Bolan’s weapons were empty. He wrenched his combat knife from its sheath and slashed and stabbed at his assailants. One man he slashed across the throat. The killer went down gurgling. Bolan buried his combat knife in the other fighter’s eye. It stayed wedged in the skull as the corpse hit the floor.

  And then it was done.

  Bolan stood in a corridor half-clotted with a stack of dead bodies. At the far end of the hall lay the door through which Fafniyal had escaped. Back the way Bolan had come, Yenni would be waiting. The soldier, breathing heavily, reached down to retrieve his pistols and reload them.

  There were no more magazines.

  His war bag was almost empty, too. It bore a single Semtex charge. Holstering his guns, he bent to take the flashlight from the M16, tucking it in his pocket and leaving the rifle behind.

  Yenni was sitting on the bloody marble in the alcove-studded anteroom. He walked over to her. “Did you get tired?” he asked. “You’re the one with all the energy.”

  She made no answer.

  Bolan frowned. He crouched next to her and turned her to face him. Her eyes fluttered open. The soldier realized that the blood on this part of the floor was not from Fafniyal’s dead troops. Yenni’s side was soaked in it. She felt cold to the touch.

  “I made a mistake, Cooper, when I charged. I should have…listened to you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Just a scratch,” she said. “It is nothing. I can still fight. But I will need more ammo.”

  “You’re done fighting for now,” he said. “You’re going to rest.”

  “I do not need to rest. I can fight.”

  Sitting next to her, Bolan pulled her close. He held her, cradling her shoulders, as she grew colder. “You are a good man,” she said. “You are a warrior. There are so few warriors these days.”

  “I’m looking at one,” Bolan said.

  “I want you to…take my knife.” She drew the Jordanian jambiya and handed it to him, hilt first. “It is a good knife. It should be with someone who will use it well.”

  “I will.”

  “Cooper,” she said. “I was wrong. I thought I would die alone. But I am not dying alone. You are here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay with you.”

  “It is I who will leave,” Yenni said. “I can feel it coming. And…Cooper. I do not mind. I have lost so much. Fought so much. I think I…would like…to rest.”

  “You’ve earned it,” Bolan said. “Sleep now. You’re going to be fine.”

  “No,” Yenni said. “I am not. But as you say…it does not matter. I am glad that…here at the end…I may spend it with you. After this there will be nothing. No child. No one to remember me.”

  “That’s not true. I’ll remember you. Always. I will carry your name and what you’ve done with me for the rest of my life. In my head, I remember all the names of all the warriors with whom I’ve fought. You aren’t alone, Yenni. And you won’t be forgotten.” Bolan closed his eyes. Her face, too, would join the others in the rolls of hi
s memory.

  “Cooper?” she said. Her voice was very quiet.

  “Yeah?”

  “You will tell me your story now, yes?”

  Bolan nodded and thought about where to start. “My real name,” he said finally, “is Mack Samuel Bolan.”

  But she was already dead.

  19

  Bolan stepped past the mountain of the dead. His combat boots left bloody prints on the floor behind him. In his hand, he held Yenni’s knife. The door at the far end of the corridor opened at his touch. The next room was a circular chamber, its walls mirrored. He could not divine its purpose. He didn’t care.

  Sudhra Fafniyal stood in the center of the room. He, too, held only a knife, an AK-47 bayonet. He smiled when he saw Bolan, for he was not alone. The Wolf was accompanied by a squad of men, all holding rattan sticks. These two-foot-long weapons were used for training in Filipino martial arts, among other things. Bolan stared at the assembled killers.

  “Come in,” Fafniyal said.

  Bolan stepped inside.

  “I applaud you, American. That is who you are, yes? The American agent sent to find the missing weapons. Perhaps a member of the Central Intelligence Agency? Or maybe the National Security Agency?”

  Bolan did not feel like bantering with the Wolf. His fingers curled around the grip of Yenni’s dagger.

  “This is a training room,” Fafniyal said. “My men and I practice combat here. It is an arena, American. How fitting, then, that we meet here. That we finish it here.”

  Still, Bolan said nothing.

  “I am astonished there is only one of you. There were two before, but I was expecting an entire team of commandos. You cannot have done all this damage alone, American. It takes more than even two people to accomplish the destruction you have wrought today.”

  Finally, Bolan spoke. “I had help,” he said. “Good people. One person especially, who died along the way. And because of her you’re not going to leave this room alive.”

  “You can’t possibly hold this against me,” Fafniyal said. “You would do the same thing, in my position, to help your country. So I went behind Hahmir’s back. So I made him think he was a hero. It was all my doing, a ploy to get my hands on American weapons systems. Hahmir played his part, the dupe, without ever knowing it was not genuine. He truly does believe he is an ally to your leaders, but Syria deserves better than him. Syria deserves me.”

  “You deserve to die,” Bolan said. He held the Jordanian knife low, at his side. Its wickedly shaped blade glinted in the light.

  “So I tricked you,” Fafniyal said. “It was a carefully laid trap, tailor-made to stroke your President’s ego. All men in power want to believe they can ensure legacies for future generations. What American leader would not want to secure amity with a nation that has traditionally been hostile? I knew the plan would work. You blundered into my tripwire and never even saw it. It was the perfect plan.”

  “It was,” Bolan said, “a very bad plan. And I’m here to put an end to all of it.”

  “One of us will live through this day,” the Wolf said.

  “One of us will.”

  “Kill him.”

  The men with the fighting sticks ran for him. Bolan, with his knife held low, waited for them to attack. He slipped the first strike, wrapped up the man’s arm and snapped it, delivering as vicious a break as he was capable of performing. Then he snaked the stick free of the man’s hand and, with Yenni’s knife in one fist and the stick in the other, stopped to gesture with both weapons at the circle of fighters who now surrounded him.

  “Come and get it,” Bolan said.

  They charged. Bolan dodged and hit, dodged and hit, blocking strike after strike. The rattan would leave bloody welts if it struck his limbs, but a solid blow to the head or neck could put him down. He was content to play the game. He was content to fight them on their own terms, with the addition of Yenni’s knife.

  This would not turn out as they expected.

  He knew this type of training. Fafniyal’s men practiced full contact with the sticks. They were used to being bloodied, bruised, even concussed. They were used to suffering in their training, to enduring pain. But they did not train with live blades. They trained with sticks.

  The soldiers came at him. Bolan danced among them, taking painful blows to his shoulders, his arms, his flanks. But with each strike he took, he gave one harder, and whenever he was in range, he slashed or stabbed with the keen blade of Yenni’s knife.

  He cut a man’s throat. He stabbed another one in the eye. He slashed yet another across the inside of the wrist, nearly severing the hand, leaving him to bleed out.

  Fafniyal’s men attacked at extreme close quarters, trying to overwhelm him, but they were only doing precisely what Bolan needed them to. He began moving his knife at incredible speeds, cutting and digging and turning, slashing their faces and their eyes and their necks. Here, he cut open a femoral artery. There, he slashed a carotid. Now, he plunged the knife deep into another man’s eye socket, penetrating the brain, yanking the knife free as the corpse tumbled. The sticks fell to the floor in pairs. Two dropped. Then another two. Then two more. It didn’t stop. Bolan wouldn’t permit his enemies to recover, would not give them a chance to regain the initiative. He poured on the fury, cutting and stabbing and slashing and clubbing.

  The faces came back to him. He saw the ranks of the fallen. He saw Yenni.

  Bolan fought harder than he’d ever fought in his life. He became a whirling death machine, wielding his stick and his knife and the lethal force that either could bring to those they touched. He laid open one fighter’s face. He cracked another in the skull with the “crusher” pommel of Yenni’s knife. He plunged the blade through the neck of a man he’d smashed in the bridge of the nose, pulling the knife out and spraying blood all over the training hall.

  Bolan stopped. He was breathing hard. His sleeves were covered in blood, his pants soaked through from the knees down.

  He was surrounded by dead men.

  “Stay away from me,” Fafniyal said. The Wolf gestured with his bayonet.

  “So that’s what it comes to,” the Executioner said, stalking forward with his knife in a reverse grip. “The Wolf is a coward. The man who can deal out death to so many is afraid to meet that death when it comes for him. You’re so typical of the predators of this world, Fafniyal. You’re so transparent. I’ve met you a thousand times. I’ve killed you a thousand times. And now I’m going to kill you again.”

  Fafniyal tried to run. But there was nowhere for him to go. He glanced toward the exit at the far end of the room, but didn’t take it. That would be where Bolan would find Hahmir. Fafniyal was playing the role of the Spartans at the pass, trying to stop the Executioner from getting through to Hahmir. To go the other way, Fafniyal would need to get through Bolan, and that was what he was afraid to do. He saw his death in Bolan’s eyes. He saw the utter finality of it. He saw the sincerity of it.

  Bolan took a step forward.

  Fafniyal backed up against the round wall of the training hall. There were no corners for him to stop in. He held his knife out in front of him.

  He’s shamming, Bolan thought. He wants me to think he’s afraid. Okay. Let’s work with that.

  The soldier came for him, slowly, inexorably. “I’m not going to torture you, Fafniyal,” Bolan said. “I’m not going to cut you into little pieces. I’m not going to make you suffer under my blade. I’m just going to remove you from the planet. I’m going to dispense the justice you deserve.”

  “Who are you to judge me?” Fafniyal screamed. He lunged then, using his anger to drive him forward, plunging the knife through the air at Bolan’s face. They circled each other for a few moments, Fafniyal thrusting for his face each time, Bolan slipping and dodging the maneuvers. The Wolf had some knife training; that was clear. A man who hunted the face like that knew how disconcerting such strikes were to an opponent. But Fafniyal was a one-trick pony. Beyond basic aggressiveness and t
he fact that he was armed, he showed little depth of experience. Men who made their living shooting helpless innocents invariably grew complacent. Fafniyal was a coward and a user. He was a predator. And Bolan thought it was finally time to put that predator out of his misery.

  Yenni’s knife plunged deep into Fafniyal’s subclavian artery. Bolan had slammed it down in an overhand strike that aimed for this hard to hit but most vital of targets. He gave Fafniyal a moment to think about what had happened, then jerked the knife back and forth. When he wrenched the blade free, Fafniyal’s wound jetted blood. He paled and staggered, dropping to the floor on his back.

  “Well…done…American,” he gasped. “You…do not… disappoint.” He tried to laugh and instead coughed up blood. “I am going to my reward.”

  “No. You’re going to hell, if there’s anywhere to go at all. When you get there, tell them I sent you.”

  “I do not…understand…” Fafniyal said.

  “This was personal,” Bolan told him. “Her name was Sabeen Yenni. She was a good person. She fought her whole life against scum like you. And she’s dead now, because of you.”

  “I…I…”

  Bolan brought up his knife and slashed Fafniyal across the throat.

  20

  Bolan wiped the jambiya on Fafniyal’s clothing. There wasn’t much farther to go now, only one last door. He tucked the jambiya behind his belt, went to the door and carefully swung it open.

  Hahmir sat behind his desk. He held a very expensive-looking revolver in his hand.

  “That is far enough,” he said in English. “American, you have invaded the presidential palace on the sovereign soil of Syria. I demand that you leave.”

  “You can demand all you want,” Bolan said. “I don’t care.”

  “You must let me explain,” Hahmir said. “I have been duped. Fafniyal tricked me. He made me believe I was a hero. I had never met his brother. I did not even know he had a brother. He did everything without my involvement. I am a good friend to the United States. I would not betray your President.”