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  Gripping the knob, he twisted slowly, then pulled the door open just far enough to peer out into the hall. He was about to open the door all the way, when he heard footsteps racing toward him. He waved the others back behind the compressor and the turbine housing.

  Leaving the door open a crack, he backed along the wall until he felt the corner, dropped to one knee and rammed the last clip into the Skorpion. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Carlton and Ray Conlan maneuver for a clear shot at the door. If he was right, the men rushing down the hall already knew someone had entered the basement. High on the wall, he saw the three-inch disk that confirmed it — a motion detector. They were probably all over the house.

  The door banged open, and Bolan steeled himself for the charge. Instead of a headlong rush through the door, a single sphere arced through the doorway, bounced once and came to rest against the base of the turbine housing. It had already begun to release gas into the close quarters. The canister was within Randy's reach, but they'd cut him to ribbons before he straightened up.

  The wispy gas coiled up in a thin stream, then vanished as it was sucked up by the whirling turbo fan. In a moment or two the bulk of the tear gas would be spewed, and the fan would be unable to handle the load. Bolan realized he had to do something, and do it fast. He brought the Skorpion around and zeroed in on the edge of the sphere, like a pool shark lining up a difficult shot. The slug just nicked the edge of the gas canister and sent it spinning in toward Carlton. It vanished behind the turbine housing, only to come arcing back a moment later to bounce out into the hall, belching a thick cloud.

  The doorway disappeared in a blue-gray haze, and Bolan crawled along the floor on his stomach. At the doorway he waited a beat, swung around and slid toward the opening. Six or eight men, invisible from the knees up, milled around on the edges of the cloud. One of the men dropped onto his stomach to crawl in under the gas — and froze with his mouth open when he saw Bolan.

  The big guy shoved the machine pistol into the guy's face and squeezed. Bringing the muzzle up and to the left, Bolan swept the Czech weapon in a flat ellipse, then whipped it to the right, his finger still on the trigger. Men in blue-green uniforms, the shirts as bloody as butchers' aprons, fell in a heap.

  Crawling out into the midst of the carnage, he looked to the right at floor level. Several pairs of boots pounded toward him, thick soles slapping the floor. The Skorpion was empty, and Bolan tossed it aside, swinging up the Uzi. He felt a flat palm on his back and turned to see Ray Conlan sliding into the hallway beside him.

  Bolan fired in an oblique upward angle. The charging platoon stopped dead in its tracks, two men falling to the floor dead, others diving out of the line of fire.

  "You take the left, son," Conlan shouted, opening up with his own weapons. He waved the muzzle up and down like a retiree watering a pampered lawn.

  "Let's go." Bolan stood, holding his breath and pausing long enough to help the sheriff up, then burst through the swirling cloud and into the clear air farther down the hall. He heard footsteps behind him and turned just as Carlton and Milt Conlan cleared the tear gas.

  "Randy, you and Milt take that left door," Bolan instructed. "The sheriff and I will take the right."

  "Gotcha."

  Bolan hesitated for a second, then jerked the door open. Like a swarm of angry bees, slugs whined through the narrow gap, ricocheting off the wall and gouging long furrows in the concrete. Several slivers of metal ripped at his cheek and right arm before he let the door swing closed again.

  Ray Conlan grabbed Bolan by the upper arm. "Get on the floor, son. They were aiming high. I'll get the door, and you shoot hell out of them son's you see daylight."

  Bolan nodded. "Be careful, Ray." He dropped to the floor and rammed a full magazine into the Uzi, stuffing the partial into his shirt pocket.

  "You don't get to be an old man like me by not bein' careful, son. If the good Lord didn't want us to rassle a bull, he wouldn't have given 'em horns." He stepped across Bolan's prostrate form and flattened himself against the left wall. "Here goes nothin'."

  Conlan grabbed the doorknob, grunted, "On three," and started counting. When he stopped, Bolan turned to see why, just as the old man fired a burst into the overhead fluorescents. It went dark, and Conlan fumbled for the doorknob again. "One… two… three."

  And the door swung back. Down a long narrow corridor, six or seven men, gathered in a tight knot, some kneeling and some standing, opened fire. Bolan hosed the hallway with lead, emptying an entire magazine. The sound of the return fire was deafening, the bullets screaming off the metal door and whining over his head.

  Conlan opened up with his Uzi, sticking his arm out from behind the door and waving it wildly while Bolan reloaded. The warrior realized the return fire had stopped, and when Conlan* s magazine was empty, the hall was eerily silent. Wisps of smoke drifted lazily, occasionally ripped sideways as they drifted past an air duct.

  Bolan got to his knees and waited. Still nothing. Then in the distance, far behind him and muffled by the other door, a brief firefight flared up and just as quickly died away. He climbed to his feet. The clatter took him by surprise, and he turned to see Conlan, one hand gripping his right shoulder, slide to the floor.

  The old man looked up at Bolan with a tight smile. "You go on, son. I'll be here when you get back. Don't worry about it. Go on now, git!"

  "I'll be right back," he whispered.

  In the narrow hallway Bolan stepped carefully over the sprawled bodies, his slick soles slipping in the pools of blood on the tile. In a crouch, the Uzi held waist-high, he kept to the right-hand wall and inched along the corridor. An open door on his left stopped him, and he shifted across the hall and peeked in. The room was empty.

  He crossed back to the right and resumed his careful progress. The next door was on his side, and it was closed. Bolan reached gingerly for the knob. It wouldn't turn. The door was a solid slab of polished walnut, and its hardware was bolted on from the inside. Stepping into the center of the corridor, he cut loose with a short burst, circling the knob and splintering the dense wood.

  Bolan planted a sharp kick just to the left of the doorknob, and the door started to cave in. A second kick sent it crashing back against the inner wall. A single shot barked from somewhere inside the room, the bullet just missing him and splattering against the wall behind him. The room was dimly lit, and there was no way the warrior could tell how many men were inside.

  He took a cue from Ray Conlan and blasted the hall lights overhead. He waited several seconds for his eyes to adjust. The greenish glow in the room outlined two figures for a second until both men ducked behind furniture. Pressed against the wall, Bolan shouted into the near darkness, "Calderone, it's over."

  There was no answer. The echo of his question bounced off the hard stone across the corridor, then rushed back at him from both ends of the hall. "Give it up."

  "Fuck you, gringo."

  In the silence Bolan heard harsh whispers from deep in the room, then a gunshot. He ducked instinctively, and it took him several seconds to realize the shot hadn't been aimed into the hall.

  "Come on out."

  "Chinga tu madre." The insult was punctuated by a second gunshot. As the echo died away, Bolan held his breath.

  And waited.

  After several minutes, he called again, but this time there was no answer. The door behind him banged open suddenly, and Bolan turned, ready to hit the deck.

  "Mike, you all right? Mike?" Carlton's voice boomed down the corridor.

  "Yeah, I'm okay."

  The younger man sprinted toward him in the gloomy hall, skidding to a stop just behind him.

  "Calderone's in there, and at least one other guy."

  "What are we waiting for? He's the bastard we came for. Let's nail his ass…"

  Bolan agreed. He crouched and duckwalked into the room, ready to dive at the first sound. In the sickly green glow, he could see clearly now that his eyes had fully adjusted. Working
his way past a row of desks, he slipped between two and peered into the wide aisle between them and an elaborate console.

  On the screen above the console a chain of blinking lights flashed in unison, superimposed over a schematic that Bolan knew instinctively was the very building he was in. Just below the console a young man in a white shirt lay on his back on the floor, the perimeter of a dark ragged hole in the center of his forehead glowing silvery green.

  Bolan crawled past the body, still alert for the slightest sound. All he heard was the rasp of his own clothing on his skin, and the sharp crunch of sand under his feet as he ground it into the concrete floor.

  In a small opening between two desks, a dapper man in a white suit lay on his side, his legs curled up toward his chest. As Bolan crawled toward him, a soft green glint winked and sparkled. The glittering revolver was still clutched tightly in his fist, its warm barrel still in his mouth.

  Carlos Calderone was dead.