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  Tucking the skeletal buttstock into his hip, Bolan ensured the safety was disengaged. Once outfitted, he holstered his Glock 17. Safely putting his pistol away freed his hands, and Bolan snapped down the folding stock of the paratrooper carbine to make it more manageable in the enclosed environment. Things were ugly now. The Executioner had been thrown a bloody curve ball, and he was determined to take it in stride.

  There was an infrared penlight built into the goggles. When activated, it was like a flashlight in the lenses of the night-vision device, visible only in the infrared spectrum. Using it, Bolan quickly determined that Garabend was not one of the dead.

  The soldier stood, slowly unfolding from the crouch he had used to navigate the room. The soles of his boots were tacky with blood. Keeping the AKS tight against his torso, he padded toward the door to the inner office.

  Behind the office door came the end of the line. Secrecy and stealth became superfluous the instant he crossed through that final door. Bolan had every reason to suspect that he would find the corpse of Enzik Garabend inside. What he was less certain of, given the freshness of the kills, was whether or not he would find Garabend’s murderer in there as well.

  Standing at an angle by the office door, Bolan surveyed it as carefully as he could through his NVGs. The door was closed. That seemed wrong. Once the target had been taken out, and considering the mess in the outer chamber, why go to the trouble of carefully closing a door behind you as you left?

  The Executioner made his decision. Stepping forward, he raised up high on the ball of one foot and brought his right knee up to his chest where he held the AKS at port arms. Exhaling sharply through his nose, Bolan snapped his curled leg out with explosive power. He thrust through on the breaching kick, his big foot slamming into the door just inside of the handle, even to where the bolt ran in the lock housing.

  The door popped open under the sharp force and swung wildly back. Bolan recoiled to one side in an attempt to avoid any returning fire from inside the room. After a heartbeat he tucked in behind the muzzle of his appropriated AKS and moved rapidly through the entrance. He swept the rifle muzzle around as he entered the room, his feet moving in a shuffling motion. His eyes sought the parameters of the room, seeing the contents of the chamber in terms first of motion, second in broad details of shape. He felt a breeze on his face, smelled the damp pollution stink of the Sunzha River bisecting Grozny.

  A large desk dominated the middle of the room, a dark hulk in his goggles. The top of it glowed with a dripping luminescence. Behind the desk a body cooled as the night breeze blew in through a window blown to shards. Moving carefully, his nerves crackling with the electricity of potential danger, Bolan checked the corpse.

  He reached down and unceremoniously yanked the dangling head up by a shock of greasy hair. In the IR enhancement light, the bland features of Enzik Garabend looked back up at him. The middle-aged man’s eyes bulged sightless from his death-slackened face. Bloody holes the size of coins riddled the man’s chest, ruining an expensive suit under a waterproof parka.

  Bolan was too late.

  Disgusted, he put a boot on the edge of the office chair and kicked it over in frustration. It slid a few inches and then toppled. The heavy, loose form of Garabend’s body slipped onto the floor with all the deftness of a sopping wet bag of cement. Out of professional habit, he quickly looked around on the floor for Garabend’s laptop, or any other effects. Nothing. The place had been stripped clean of all but the ex-terrorist’s corpse.

  Now that he was sure of Garabend’s fate, Bolan knew he had to exit the scene as quickly as possible. The abandoned factory had become red hot. Too hot for a foreigner packing a military arsenal on Russian soil in a time of heightened attacks by a savage, determined insurgency. He had to get out of there, retreat to his safehouse and contact Brognola for extraction.

  Suddenly Bolan froze. Some faint sound, almost inaudible on the periphery of his hearing, came to him. He cocked his head to the side, tense.

  He couldn’t recapture the sound again, now that he was actively listening. In the graveyard silence that surrounded him, Bolan couldn’t be sure he’d heard anything to begin with. It was unsettling. The Executioner didn’t spook. He slowly sank onto one knee by the sprawled corpse of the Armenian terror merchant and ran an expert hand over the man’s body, fishing through his pockets.

  Nothing.

  Bolan turned and stood. It was then that the necessary angle of vision was correct. The battery light from Garabend’s satellite phone burned green, suddenly obvious in the gloomy room. Bolan frowned, head cocked, listening for any sound coming from outside the office. He heard nothing to give him pause and turned his attention back to the sat phone. Garabend’s phone was a good catch, not the same as his laptop, to be sure, but still good. It seemed hard to believe that professional operators capable of a hit of this magnitude could have possibly missed it.

  Still, though the takedown had all the earmarks of top-line training, Bolan figured it couldn’t have been Russian Spesnaz teams. The entire site would have been locked down for the entry team. Intelligence technicians would have been crawling across the site post-action, searching for any evidence. Garabend’s bullet riddled corpse would have been whisked away and paraded on Russian television. After the Belsan school siege, dead terrorists made for great ratings from an angry, vengeance minded Russian nation.

  Whoever had taken out Garabend had been a player; but not official Russian. Bolan picked up the phone. It was sticky with the dead man’s blood. Bolan powered the device off and placed it in a pocket of his nightsuit. The phone provided a clue, in and of itself. The high-tech devices made doing business in the modern age much, much easier, especially from remote or uncivilized areas, but they were a liability as well.

  Worldwide, terrorists had learned a lesson a decade earlier, in the spring of 1996, from the death of Dzokhar Dudayev. The Chechen leader had known he needed to limit the time he spent using the satellite phone given to him by his Islamic allies in Turkey. The survivor of two Russian assassination attempts had been wary of Moscow’s ability to home in on his communication signal and thus his location.

  But on the evening of April 21, Dudayev, baited by Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s offer of peace talks, called an adviser in Moscow to discuss the impending negotiations.

  Dudayev stayed on the phone too long.

  American spy satellites, trained on Iraq and Kuwait, were quickly turned north to the Caucasus Mountains and Chechnya, according to media reports by a former communications specialist with the U.S. National Security Agency—NSA—The satellites pinpointed the Chechen leader’s location to within feet of his satellite phone signal, and the coordinates were sent to a Russian fighter jet.

  Dudayev was killed by two laser-guided air-to-surface missiles while still holding the phone that had pinpointed his location.

  Had Garabend made the same mistake? Only instead of missiles, had a call he made triggered a hit squad or some lone, hyper-skilled, assassin? Whatever the case, Bolan had enough to go on for the moment. Once Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman and his team got hold of the information in the communication device, they would have plenty of clues for further operations.

  Bolan stepped around the desk and moved through the open door into the outer office chamber. The bodies of the dead Armenian’s bodyguards still lay sprawled around in haphazard disarray. After years of experience, Bolan had a critical, almost gifted, eye for crime-scene forensics. He was able to recreate the events of even the most horrific battle by the position of corpses, spent shell casings and blood spatter. In this case, rushed for time, he was unable to conclude whether this butcher’s work had been done by a coordinated team or a single, talented professional.

  Bolan moved carefully through the room. He held his AKS at the ready as he approached the door. His feeling of disquiet had not subsided. He couldn’t place his unease, and that made it all the more bothersome. He stalked forward, pausing at the door leading out into
the hall.

  He stopped, sensed nothing, moved forward.

  All hell broke loose.

  3

  When he stepped through the door and entered the hall, Bolan felt as if he had moved into a field of static electricity. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck lifted straight up as cold squirts of adrenaline surged into his body. The night fighter reacted instantly, without conscious thought. He dropped to one knee and leaned back in the doorway, sweeping the barrel of his AKS up and triggering a blast.

  The unmistakable pneumatic cough of a sound-suppressed weapon firing full-automatic assaulted Bolan’s ears across the short distance. Shell casings clattered onto the linoleum floor, mixing with the sound of a weapon bolt leveraging back and forth rapidly. Bolan felt the angry whine of bullets fill the space where his head and chest had been only a heartbeat before.

  The Executioner targeted diagonally across and down the office hall, firing his Russian assault rifle with practiced, instinctive ease. He let the recoil of the carbine shuttering in his strong grip carry him back through the doorway behind him in a tight roll. From his belly Bolan thrust the muzzle around the doorjamb and arced the weapon back and forth as he laid down quick, suppressive blasts.

  The 5.45 mm rounds were deafening in the confined space and his ears rang painfully from the noise. Bolan reached up and jerked his night-vision goggles down so that they dangled from the rubber strap around his neck. He heard the bullets from his assailant’s answering burst smack into the plasterboard of the outer wall with smacks that rang louder than the muzzle-braked weapon’s own firing cycle.

  From the impacts, Bolan determined the shooter was using a submachine gun and not an assault rifle, though he was hard-pressed to identify caliber with the suppressor in use. Bolan scrambled backward and rested his rifle barrel across the still-warm corpse of a dead bodyguard. If there was more than one assassin out there, and he were determined to get him, the person would either fire and maneuver to breach the room door, or possibly use grenades to clear him out.

  There was silence for a long moment. Bolan’s head raced through strategies and options. If the assassin’s intent had been escape, then why had he bothered to stay behind or try to take Bolan out? If the unknown assailant was armed for a quiet kill, then that would indicate he was probably not carrying ordnance much heavier than the silenced submachine gun being used.

  The main thing, Bolan’s experience told him, was getting momentum back into his possession. He quickly stripped an extra rifle from a dead bodyguard and hooked the sling over his shoulder. Conscious of how vulnerable he was, Bolan crawled back toward the door. He maneuvered the barrel of his AKS through the entrance and triggered an exploratory blast, conducting a recon by fire. Precious seconds ticked away.

  Almost immediately, Bolan’s aggressive burst was answered with a tightly controlled one. Bullets tore into the wooden door frame and broke up the floor in front of his weapon. Bolan ducked back. He had what he needed. He had found a way to exploit his heavier armament.

  The gunman had taken position across and two doors down the hall from the room where Bolan was trapped. From that location the gunmen controlled the fields of fire up and down the hall, preventing Bolan from leaving the office without exposing himself to withering, short-range fire.

  Again, Bolan triggered a long, ragged blast. He tore apart the door of the office directly opposite him, then ran his larger caliber rounds down the hall to pour a flurry of lead through the sniper’s door. Tracer fire lit up the hallway with surrealistic strips of light like laser blasts in some low-budget science-fiction movie. Bolan could smell his own sweat and the hot oil of his AKS-74. The heavy dust hanging in the air, kicked up by the automatic weapon fire, choked him.

  Bolan ducked back around as the gunman triggered an answering burst. Bolan heard the smaller caliber rounds strike the wall outside his door, saw how they failed to penetrate the building materials. It confirmed his suspicions that he was facing no more than a 9 mm caliber in the killer’s weapon.

  Bolan snarled, gathering himself, and thrust his weapon out the office door a final time. He triggered the AKS and the assault rifle bucked in his hands. Bolan sprinted out through the doorway hard behind his covering fire. His rounds fell like sledgehammers around the door to the room of his ambusher. Hot gases warmed his wrists as the bolt of his weapon snapped open and shut, open and shut, as he carried his burst out to improbable length even as he raced forward.

  Two steps from the office door directly opposite Garabend’s death room, Bolan’s magazine ran dry and the bolt locked open. Without hesitation, he flung down the empty weapon and dived forward. The big man’s hard shoulder struck the door. Already riddled with 5.45 mm bullets, the flimsy construction was no match for Bolan’s heavy frame and he burst through it into the room.

  The Executioner went down with his forward momentum, landing on the shoulder he had used as a battering ram and somersaulting over it smoothly. He came up on one knee and swung his second AKS carbine off his shoulder, leveling it at the wall separating his position from the gunman’s. Bolan triggered his weapon from the waist, raking it back and forth in a tight, low Z-pattern. The battlefield rounds chewed through plywood, drywall and insulation with ease, bursting out the other side with terminal velocity.

  Still firing, Bolan smoothly uncoiled out of his combat crouch, keeping the arc of his weapon angled downward to better catch an enemy likely pinned against the floor. His intentions were merciless. Momentum, and an attacker’s aggression, were with Bolan now, on him like a fugue. Coming to his feet, he shifted the AKS pistol grip from his right to his left hand. His magazine came up dry as he shifted his weight back toward the shattered door to the room.

  The handle of Bolan’s Glock 17 filled the palm of his free hand as he fired the last rounds through the looted AKS. He was moving, lethally graceful, back out the door to the room, his feet engaged through a complicated series of steps. Out in the hall, smoke from weapons fire and dust billowed in the already gloomy hall.

  Bolan stepped out long and lunged forward, sinking to one knee as he came to the edge of his ambusher’s door. He made no attempt to slow his momentum but instead let it carry him down to the floor. He breached the edge of the enemy door, letting the barrel of the Glock 17 pistol lead the way. He caught the image of a dark-clad form sprawled out on the floor of the room.

  The 9 mm pistol coughed in a double tap, catching the downed figure in the shoulder and head. Blood splashed up and the figure’s skull mushroomed out, snapping rudely to the side on a slack neck. A chunk of cottage-cheeselike material splattered out and struck a section of bullet riddled wall.

  Bolan popped up, returned to his feet. He moved into the room, weapon poised, ready to react to even the slightest motion or perceived movement. After the frenzied action and brutal cacophony of the gun battle, the sudden return of silence and still felt deafening, almost oppressive. Approaching the dead man, Bolan narrowed his eyes, trying to quickly take in details. Muzzle-flash had ruined his night vision.

  Frustrated, Bolan dragged his NVGs back into position and turned on the infrared penlight. The room returned to view in the familiar monochromatic greenish tint. Bolan looked over at the dead gunman’s weapon. From the unique silhouette he recognized the subgun as a PP-19 Bizon. Built on a shortened AKS-74 receiver, it had the signature cylindrical high-capacity magazine attached under the fore grip and the AKS folding buttstock. The weapon was usually associated with Russian federal police or army troops, but international arms merchants had been turning up with them more and more as the Russian economy went through its series of shortfalls.

  Bolan rolled the man over. Any hopes for identification were gone. The man’s face held all the structural integrity of mush. Bolan could easily see the man’s thick, tangled beard, however. One of Garabend’s bodyguards who had survived the attack?

  Bolan knew he didn’t have a lot of time. In a city locked down under martial law, the sound of the assault rif
le he had been forced to use would draw unwanted attention very quickly. Bolan patted the dead man down. He found a leather wallet filled with Russian bank notes but devoid of identification.

  The soldier pulled a thin, flat-faced digital camera from one of the carriers on his harness. He clicked off the IR light and settled his goggles on his forehead. He turned the camera on and opened the lens protector. Without preamble he grabbed the doughy-fleshed hand of the dead man by his index finger. Cradling the camera securely in his palm, Bolan rolled the man’s finger across the lens facing of the camera as carefully as any police desk sergeant at a big city precinct house.

  Bolan held up the camera, letting the dead killer’s hand drop unceremoniously. It struck the bare floor with a dull clap. Bolan pointed the camera at a blank stretch of wall unmarred by his penetrating gunfire. He closed his eyes against the flash and snapped a picture. Later, he would download the snapshot and send it back to Barbara Price, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, for analysis. If the shooter was a bodyguard, that was fine. If he was something else, then Bolan needed to know.

  He stood and put the camera away. He grabbed his Glock. It was time to go. Past time.

  4

  Bolan’s forward operating station in Grozny was an old CIA operations safehouse left over from the Chechen conflicts. Maintained as part of a Global Deployment Readiness Plan by the Operations Division, the residence was little used but constantly prepped. It provided stripped down, untraceable tools for Western intelligence operatives who found themselves working outside of normal geographical station mandates.

  Working outside of normal geographical station mandates was something Mack Bolan knew all about.

  Upon returning to the house Bolan immediately downloaded the picture of the dead assassin’s fingerprint and e-mailed it through an encrypted, anonymous server along with a brief sitrep, to a Stony Man capable site. Aaron Kurtzman would access all federal and international databanks in an effort to find a match.