Death Gamble Read online

  “That’s no good. Once that plane leaves the ground, they’re going to unleash the big boom. We’re all screwed then.”

  “Right. Tell the disposal team to get ready to move. We need them on the ground ASAP.”

  “Roger that.”

  Coming around from behind his protective shield, Bolan bracketed one of the invaders in the M-16’s sights and tapped out a quick burst that pulverized the man’s head and pitched him to the side. Other shooters turned in Bolan’s direction and began firing upon him, pinning him down.

  He picked off another hardman before the gunfire intensified, forcing him under cover. A quick glance told him he’d bought the embattled Sentinel workers enough time to disappear from harm’s way. Bullets pounded through the car, showering Bolan with bits of window glass. Gunfire from above pierced the car’s steel skin.

  The distant beat of helicopter blades registered in his mind. Friend or foe? He’d know in a minute.

  Cracking a frag round into the grenade launcher, Bolan fired the weapon. Landing in the middle of the knot of shooters, the weapon exploded, hurling streams of unforgiving shrapnel and plunging the gunners into a microsecond of hellish terror and pain before granting them death’s sweet relief.

  The thrumming of helicopter blades grew closer. A thunderclap followed by a brilliant burst of daylight rent the air east of Bolan. The warrior heard a massive object strike against the ground accompanied by smaller bits of debris showering the area just out of his line of sight. A piece of propeller whizzed about three feet overhead and crashed through a nearby window. For a moment, it seemed, Bolan’s heart stopped beating and leaped into his throat.

  “Jack! Jack! Report.”

  Grimaldi’s voice was calm. “Right, Striker. I’m okay. I caught the other bird swooping in on your position. You’ll get a visual of me in a few more seconds.”

  More gunfire erupted from above, reminding Bolan of his own predicament.

  “Jack…”

  The whirring of helicopter blades almost drowned out Grimaldi’s reply as he moved in. A gale force wind rushed through the area as Grimaldi came into view.

  “Already on it, Striker.”

  Grimaldi’s chopper hovered and he loosed the machine guns, raining death upon the rooftop shooters. Muzzle-flashes illuminated the scene in fits and starts and Bolan caught glimpses of several hardmen being jerked around under the withering hail of lead.

  “Nice job, Jack. Now get that thing out of here before someone shoots a rocket-propelled grenade up your tailpipe.”

  “Roger that, Striker. I’ll land and escort the disposal team into the area.”

  Bolan hauled himself to his feet, reloaded the grenade launcher with another frag round and moved in a run. Disappearing into the shadows, he scanned the streets for his next opponent. Rounding a corner, Bolan found three of Kursk’s gunners standing over a tangle of corpses. He could tell from their uniforms that the dead had been members of Sentinel’s staff. Firing from the hip, the Executioner swept his weapon over the group and caught the first two men with a blast of autofire.

  The third guy had better reflexes and an admirable hunger for survival. Hurling himself forward, the intruder rolled and came up in a prone position with a stutter gun clasped in both hands. The shooter tried to lock the muzzle on Bolan, but the warrior stopped him cold with a burst from the M-16.

  Bolan spun and caught a pair of gunners about ten feet apart from each other approaching from behind. Even as he turned, a round ripped through his leather jacket and plowed into his Kevlar vest. The force knocked him off balance, and he suddenly found himself gasping for air.

  As his body tried to process the trauma, the warrior fired the grenade launcher and planted a frag round into the ground about five feet in front of the men. The weapon detonated, taking out both gunners. Grimacing as he hauled himself to his feet, Bolan gingerly touched the point of impact. He’d have a hell of a bruise on his ribs, he knew, but it beat the alternative.

  With most of Kursk’s soldiers dead, Bolan covered the remaining distance to the hangar without incident. When he arrived, he caught a man in what looked like a black flight suit moving through a windowless, steel door that had been left ajar. Bolan waited fifteen seconds and followed the man inside.

  The M-16 clutched at hip level, he came upon a set of stairs that he descended in a sidestepping motion. Eyes and ears probed the dust- and smoke-choked surroundings for signs of life.

  “Ace to Striker.”

  “Go,” he whispered.

  “I’ve brought in the disposal team. We’re on the ground and breaching the main building. We’ve got a lock on our errant bomb.”

  Finally some good news. “Roger that.”

  “You get our plane yet?”

  “Negative. Working on it.”

  “Roger that, Striker. Ace out.”

  Stepping onto the next landing, Bolan knelt and, using the preceding staircase for cover, looked into the dimly lit corridor that yawned open one flight below him. A bulky, square shadow—presumably a locker or cabinet—suddenly sprouted a head and arm before morphing back into its previous shape. Something shifted in the darkness, and Bolan heard the rattle of something metallic.

  Snatching a flash-stun grenade from his gear, Bolan activated the device and heaved it into the target area. A whump and a white glare filled the corridor below. He surged down the final flight of stairs, the M-16’s barrel fanning the area in front of him as he tried to acquire a target.

  One of Kursk’s troopers—dressed in a black flightsuit—stumbled across Bolan’s line of sight. The man had covered his eyes with a forearm and was indiscriminately firing his SMG ahead of him. Parabellum rounds flew high and to Bolan’s left, chewing into concrete or clanging off steel.

  Robbed of his senses, the man’s aim was bad. But in such a confined space, even a marginal improvement could have lethal results for the Executioner.

  Bolan didn’t give his opponent room for improvement. Instead he hosed down the hallway with sweeping swaths of auofire. Lead cleaved into the man’s head and throat, and twisted him in a violent pirouette. With the same blast, Bolan burned down a second gunner who strayed from cover.

  A blur farther down the corridor caught Bolan’s attention. Another fighter bolted from cover, his SMG cracking out a deadly challenge. The Executioner threw himself into a prone position and caressed the assault rifle’s trigger. The resulting burst of tumblers ripped into the running man’s left shoulder at an upward angle before exploding out his lower back near the kidneys.

  Ninety seconds later, Bolan had moved deeper into the facility and found himself faced with another steel door. Running through a mental image of the building’s layout, he realized he was just outside a chamber that sat below the Nightwind’s hangar. He tried swiping the access card the woman had given him, but a small red light on the reader never blinked.

  “Access denied,” a programmed voice said.

  “Striker to Ace.”

  “Go Striker.”

  “Any word from Vegas?”

  “Yeah. Team pulled it off. You get to Haley, you can tell him his family is safe.”

  “Rytova?”

  A pause. “She got hit, Striker. She’ll live, but at least one of her kidneys took a nasty wound. Sorry.”

  Though he was alone, Bolan nodded at Grimaldi’s words. “Has Bear been able to patch into the computer systems here?”

  “Right. Wasn’t easy. Some asshole initiated a system shutdown. Bear had to jump-start the damn thing from Virginia.”

  “He download my biometric information into the security system?”

  “Retinal. No fingerprints, just like you requested. You have an all-points clearance with just an eye scan. He’ll purge your information from the system when you give the word.”

  “Roger that. Maintain radio silence until I say otherwise. Striker out.”

  “Ace out.”

  Slinging the M-16, Bolan fisted the Desert Eagle. He stepped to the
retinal scanner, pressed his forehead against the contoured face piece and waited. For a heart-stopping second the warrior wondered whether he’d get inside in time. He didn’t have the minutes necessary to find an alternate entrance, if such a thing existed.

  This was his best shot.

  “Identity confirmed,” the voice said. The portal slid open and Bolan scrambled inside, the Desert Eagle in a two-handed grip as he glanced around the room for the next threat.

  Empty.

  The thick columns of the aircraft lift were fully extended, indicating the plane had been moved into the main hangar. Apparently someone had heard the gunshots outside and accelerated their timetable.

  Bolan saw a steel ladder bolted into a wall in the room’s northeast corner. Moving to the ladder, he stared up its length and saw that it led to a portal that measured about three feet in diameter. Ascending the ladder, he reached the top and found the steel portal sealed shut. He again used a retinal scanner and the door hissed open.

  Pushing himself up through the hole, the warrior found himself inside a hangar that measured the length of four football fields laid end to end and stretched another hundred yards across. Four unmanned fighter jets stood by. The Nightwind sat between them, two fighters on each flank. A bay door yawned open at the end of the structure.

  Bolan saw Jon Haley, whom he recognized from a photograph, climbing a portable ladder that led into the aircraft while a pasty-faced giant and another man aimed their weapons at him.

  Stepping out of the hole and coming to his full height, Bolan raised the Desert Eagle and caught the two gunners in his sights. The older man’s hand shot up, and he tried to sight in on Bolan with his handgun. The Desert Eagle roared once and sent a. 44-caliber crashing into the man’s sternum. His handgun slipped from his grip and skittered across the floor.

  Bolan shifted and locked the Desert Eagle’s muzzle on the second man. He assumed from his briefing the man was William Armstrong. The features had changed since the man’s days in Afghanistan but not his skin pallor or his enormous size.

  Armstrong trained his Uzi on Haley and stared at Bolan.

  “You’d better let us go, hero. My boy and I have an appointment to make. If I don’t make it, his family dies. You don’t want that on your head do you? Not a big hero like you.”

  Bolan’s gaze stayed locked on Armstrong. But from his peripheral vision he saw Haley, his features contorted with concern, also staring at him. Confused and scared for his family, Bolan knew Haley was the wild card in this play.

  Keeping his gun hand steady, Bolan shook his head.

  “No go, Armstrong. We’ve got his family. They’re all safe. You’re done.”

  Doubt flickered briefly in Armstrong’s eyes but was quickly replaced with steel. “You’re full of shit, hero. You’re trying to screw with my head.”

  “It’s the truth,” Bolan said. “And a good friend of mine took a bullet in the op. That makes things between you and me personal.”

  A small grin played on Armstrong’s lips.

  Haley had grabbed some distance, but still was too close for Bolan’s comfort. A stray shot could result in the young man going home in a body bag.

  Almost against his will, Bolan’s thoughts shifted to Grimaldi and company, wondering whether they’d taken the suitcase nuke out of commission.

  “It doesn’t have to go bad, Armstrong,” Bolan said. “You fought for your country. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I got a better offer. Obviously you didn’t,” he said, laughing.

  Haley erupted in a sudden flurry of movement. He drove his booted right foot into Armstrong’s ribs, knocking the big man off balance. Before Armstrong could react, Haley heaved himself backward, hitting the floor hard but falling out of Armstrong’s immediate reach.

  Armstrong’s Uzi chugged out an upward line of fire that ripped through empty space. But the big guy was a pro, and within a moment was already regaining his balance. He swung the Uzi around and tried to bring Bolan into his sights.

  The Executioner dropped into a crouch and squeezed off two shots from the Desert Eagle. The bullets thudded into Armstrong’s chest, smashing through bone and flesh as the force tossed the big man around. The Uzi clattered to the floor, well out of the reach of Armstrong’s dead fingers.

  His face twisted with rage, Haley rose, closed in on the body and repeatedly drove his foot into the bigger man’s bloodied torso.

  “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.”

  Bolan knew the anger and frustration of several hours of terror were flooding out of the man. He figured he had a release coming. Besides, Bolan had more important things to worry about.

  “Jack, give me a status report.”

  “We disarmed it. Just finished. It was touch and go for a little bit though.”

  “It’s still touch and go,” the Executioner said. “I have a final score to settle.”

  14

  “They’re here, sir,” the young woman said.

  Seated at the edge of the exercise bench, Nikolai Kursk turned his bull neck around and regarded the servant standing in the doorway of his personal gymnasium. She was a slender woman clad in a simple white dress, and her thick, black hair was tied back in a ponytail. She cast dark eyes to the ground as Kursk ran his gaze over her. She shifted from foot to foot, waiting for his reply. From the moment he’d arrived, the Russian had taken an instant interest in the woman, and his attention seemed to make her squirm.

  He liked that.

  “Make them comfortable,” Kursk said. “Get them drinks. Tell them I’ll meet them in fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.” She turned and left.

  Standing, he toweled the sweat from his forehead, shoulders and biceps. Power coursed through his blood-charged muscles, and he reveled in the feeling. He smiled, knowing things were getting back on track.

  He’d lost the battle, but not the war. Matt Cooper and Natasha Rytova had cost him dearly both in money and pride. They’d hobbled his organization, made him look like a fool, left him on the run with only a handful of men.

  But he knew that they’d also made a fatal mistake. They’d let him escape, let him live. Their failed attempt to capture him would prove their undoing. Before the week was out, he’d dispatch death squads to hunt down and kill them both. Then he’d move on to his next venture.

  But first he needed some money.

  Kursk dropped the soiled towel on the floor, left it for one of the servants to pick up. Moving to the locker room, he shaved, showered and changed into khakis, a white polo shirt and loafers. He slipped the holstered Tokarev into the small of his back, clipping it onto the waistband of his pants, and exited the locker room.

  After a quick trip to his study to grab a small leather case, he made his way through the house and arrived for his meeting thirty seconds earlier than promised. Satisfied with himself, he stepped out of his home and into the afternoon sun.

  Spurred by habit and prudence, Kursk scrutinized his security arrangements. A pair of Uzi-toting guards walked the perimeter, staring at the lush mountains caps that surrounded the villa and seemed to extend forever. Another pair of hardmen stood closer to the patio.

  After all that had occurred, Kursk was glad to be in Colombia. He’d done business with drug lords and rebels for years and they left him alone, as did the government officials whose loyalty he commanded either through intimidation or bribery. He felt safe here.

  A dark man sat at the table, drinking spring water from a plastic bottle. When he saw Kursk, he stood.

  “Azid,” Kursk thundered. “So good to see you.”

  Kursk offered his hand and Azid Khordadian, a high-ranking Iranian intelligence official, took it.

  Khordadian responded to Kursk’s enthusiasm with a reserved look of his own and said, “It also is good to see you my friend.”

  Kursk sensed something amiss almost immediately. He gestured toward the chairs. “Please, have a seat.”

  Khordadian settled his round
body into a wrought-iron chair. Kursk also sat. Clasping his hands together, the Iranian rested them in his lap and leaned forward. A pair of Khordadian’s security men sat within easy reach of their boss.

  “We must dispense with the pleasantries, my friend,” the Iranian said. “I do not have long and we must talk of the plans.”

  “Of course,” Kursk said. He snapped his fingers and a nearby servant brought him a cup of coffee, black. “I do have them. I had a copy burned to compact disk shortly after I met with the scientist. It’s a good thing, too. All things considered.”

  Khordadian nodded. “Yes, all things considered. Actually I need to talk to you about that. I have bad news. The plans, my country cannot take them. Your actions have created an uproar in the intelligence and diplomatic communities. You are perhaps the most sought after man in the world right now. Not publicly, of course. But you now are notorious in important circles.”

  Kursk’s features creased with concern. “We cannot negotiate this?”

  “I’m afraid not. My superiors have asked me to sever all relations with you. I am afraid I must do precisely that.”

  “How unfortunate. I hope the North Koreans and the Chinese have more spine than your superiors. I am slated to meet with them later this week. Their money spends as well as yours,” Kursk said.

  Khordadian stiffened visibly, and his eyes narrowed. “You insult me and my country. No one will buy the plans right now. You should wait.”

  “I need capital, Azid, not advice.”

  The Iranian shot up from his chair, his eyes fiery. “Then I will leave. My superiors didn’t even want me to come here. I journeyed here out of loyalty for an old friend. This is how you repay me? It’s an insult.”

  Kursk shrugged. “Azid,” he said, “I have no friends.”

  Before Khordadian or his guards could react, Kursk’s gunners unloaded their Uzis into the visitors. A moment later, the three Iranians lay on the patio in a twisted heap of flesh and spilled blood.

  “Clean this up,” Kursk said. He noticed a couple of his men looked pale, shaky. That struck him as odd; these were professional killers not given to squeamishness. Two others had fallen ill earlier in the day.