Death Gamble Read online

  Dmitri never would have been taken this way.

  But he also wasn’t here which was, after all, the whole point.

  She stroked the Uzi’s trigger, and the weapon coughed out a short burst that tunneled through the man’s face, pulverizing his head and knocking him backward, as though an invisible rug had been pulled from under his feet. His gun hand flew up, and in a final reflexive move he triggered his weapon. A brief flurry of bullets stabbed skyward before the weapon fell silent and dropped to the ground. A fresh fusillade burned the air around Rytova, slugs tearing their way through the foliage and buzzing around her like a swarm of angry bees.

  She threw herself headlong to the ground and landed next to the dead gunner. Bullets smacked into the corpse’s chest, which was sheathed in a Kevlar vest, causing it to jerk around under the impact.

  The indiscriminate pattern of fire told Rytova these men weren’t a legitimate security force. Fingers working gingerly as bullets flew overhead, Rytova unhooked the man’s portable radio and headset, and slipped them on.

  Someone was calling, “Lynch? Lynch?” When no one answered, she assumed Lynch was the fallen man next to her. She rolled away, putting precious distance between herself and the fire zone. The voice on the radio continued. “Cole, if we keep firing in there, Lynch is sure to get hit in the cross fire. He might be injured or unconscious.”

  Another voice. “I don’t give a shit. Guy should have been watching his back instead of leaving it for us to do. If he gets killed, I eliminate two problems at once.”

  “You’re a cold son of a bitch, Cole.” The speaker sounded angry.

  “That’s what Nikki pays me for. You remember that. The Russian doesn’t like turncoats. Neither do I.”

  Rytova had heard all she needed to. She triggered the Uzi, laid down a heavy barrage into a patch of muzzle-flashes and then moved again. A groan of pain and surprise sounded in her headset, telling her that at least one of her shots had hit home.

  A voice erupted in the headset. She recognized it as that of the man named Cole. “Wells. Wells. What the hell, man? You hit?”

  Dead silence was the only reply.

  Autofire pounded Rytova’s former position and moved in a horizontal swath until she found herself again hugging the moist ground, gritting her teeth as bullets burned the air overhead. Plant stalks, leaf fragments and wood splinters showered her as she waited out the onslaught. The odors of gunsmoke and rotting vegetation fouled the air.

  As quickly as it began, the shooting stopped and Rytova guessed the man was reloading. A grenade launcher sounded from somewhere, and a cold torrent of fear washed over her. The fired object arced overhead and crashed to earth more than two dozen yards west of her. Boiling orange flame spilled over from the blast site, and razor wire tore through trees and plants. Heat and shock waves hammered Rytova and her surroundings, and she stayed still as the tempest wrenched the jungle.

  Pulling herself to her feet, Rytova bolted and closed in on the edge of the surrounding jungle. Autofire resumed and rent the air around her. As bullets whittled away at her cover, she squeezed off short bursts from the Uzi and furiously sought a better position. The nearest and sturdiest barrier—a pile of stones about the size of a car—lay ten yards to her left.

  To get there, she’d need to cross open land and expose herself as she sprinted. Under fire that heavy it might as well be two hundred yards.

  Hurtling from the underbrush, the Uzi stammering out a thunderous cacophony of death, Rytova crossed the broad expanse of rich, red earth and closed in on safety. Another explosion—this one closer to Talisman’s home—sounded in the distance.

  Autofire burned the air around her legs and torso and tore into the ground in front of her. Slugs passed inches from her right hip. She cut left, fear constricting her breath. Raising the Uzi, she opened up with the weapon. The chances of hitting her hidden attacker, while trying to dodge gunfire and run, were nearly nonexistent. But if she could get close enough to make the shooter dive for cover, it might buy her the seconds she needed to get behind the pile of stones.

  The weapon went silent in her hands.

  Empty.

  She cursed herself for making another amateur mistake. Adrenaline coursing through her, heart slamming against her rib cage, she surged ahead.

  Cover lay just a few feet ahead. She knew it’d take too damn long to reload the Uzi. Switching the machine pistol to her left hand, she began clawing for her side arm with her right hand. Only five feet to go.

  The first bullet hit her square in the kidneys, spun her and knocked the breath from her lungs.

  She tried to unleather her pistol and figure out why her back suddenly felt as though someone had crashed a truck into it. Two more shots pummeled her abdomen, her chest. She gasped for breath. Pain seemed to sear every cell of her body.

  The beautiful Russian staggered forward, surrendering her overloaded body to sweet nothingness.

  THRUSTING FORWARD with powerful leg muscles, Bolan vaulted for the door and set himself on a collision course with the guard blocking it. As he sliced through the air, the MP-5 churned through the contents of its magazine. Parabellum rounds pounded into the guard’s abdomen like punches from a prize fighter, hurling him back into the building.

  Bolan passed through the doorway and hit the floor hard. Breath whooshed from his lungs as he skidded across the rotted wood planks. Splinters lanced into his forearms, shredding his sleeves, opening a dozen trails of wet crimson that dribbled down his skin.

  Even as Bolan struck the floor, the grenade outside the house exploded. The warrior pulled himself into a ball, shielded his face with his bloodied forearms and rode out the blast. A mass of flame, debris and smoke forced its way through the door, and thunder threatened to split Bolan’s eardrums. Bits of mortar blew from between the concrete blocks making up the building. Outside, dirt and debris rained on the corrugated metal roof. When his breath returned to him, Bolan took in deep pulls of air and found it choked with grit. He hacked a few times, trying to clear the filth from his lungs.

  The soldier had dropped the MP-5 during his tumble. As the explosion’s reverberations died and his senses returned, Bolan fisted the Desert Eagle and came to his feet. Staring down the pistol’s snout, he saw two doors to the right and one to the left. The end of the hallway opened into what appeared to be a large kitchen.

  Glass shards from broken beer bottles, spent shell casings and smears of mud and dried blood littered the floor. A gas-powered generator rumbled somewhere in the distance, and the air reeked of stale beer and vomit.

  Bolan processed the sounds like a human computer, his mind catching and identifying bits of information, looking for the one that might mean the difference between life and death.

  Then it hit.

  A grunt of exertion. The whisper of steel slicing through air.

  Bolan folded at the knees, plummeting as though a trapdoor had opened beneath him. Metal sparked against concrete as an ax cut through the airspace above Bolan and then collided with a wall.

  The Executioner spun and brought up the Desert Eagle. The big-bore pistol unleashed twin peals of thunder and a pair of .44 manglers tunneled at an upward angle into Bolan’s opponent, boring through his torso before exploding from his back in a bloody spray. The ax slid from the man’s grasp as he crumpled in a heap at Bolan’s feet.

  Footsteps sounded behind him. Grabbing the ax as he hauled himself to his feet, the warrior turned and spotted a pair of gunners bearing down on him. Cocking his left arm, he thrust the ax forward in an overhead toss. Spiraling end over end as it flew through air, the weapon buried itself into the chest of one of the gunners. A blast from the Desert Eagle finished off the second attacker.

  Retrieving the MP-5, Bolan slung the subgun and kept the Desert Eagle locked in his grip. He cleared the room to his left, found it filled with ragged furniture, plates of half-eaten rice and chicken, pornographic magazines and a few stray rounds of ammunition.

  No Trev
or Dade.

  No Talisman.

  He continued toward the kitchen, again encountering no resistance. Clearing another room, he began to wonder whether he’d been duped. As he returned to the hallway, a big shadow crossed his path and drove the butt of an AK-47 against his temple. Bolan jerked his head to the side, rolled with the impact and let the force push him back into the room he’d just exited. A vague impression of Talisman’s enraged face registered in Bolan’s mind as he found himself out of harm’s way.

  A direct hit from the rifle butt would have been deadly, but even the glancing blow had caused his head and neck to hurt like hell. He felt as though his brain had been disconnected from his body, and he’d lost all sense of time and place. Gathering his senses, Bolan checked to make sure his assailant had retreated and took a moment to collect himself.

  Multiple footsteps sounded in the hallway. With the Desert Eagle leading the way, Bolan moved into the main corridor, starting for the front door. A gunner stepped into the doorway as Bolan beat a path to it. The Desert Eagle exploded, hurling a pair of .44 slugs into the man. The soldier ejected the mostly spent clip and cracked a fresh one home as he ran.

  Bolan crossed the killing field outside the house. Weaving his way through the mangled human remains littering the yard, he heard an engine roar to life and found himself bathed in the white glare of headlights. Engine growling, tires chewing through dirt and rocks, the vehicle bore straight down on Bolan.

  The Desert Eagle cracked twice as the Executioner snapped off rounds at the charging vehicle’s front end. As he’d suspected during his initial recon, the vehicle—a Mercedes sedan—was armored and the shots ricocheted off the hood.

  With lightning-fast reflexes, the soldier threw himself from the vehicle’s path, rolling and coming back up in a crouch. Staccato bursts of machine-gun fire flared from the passing vehicle’s gun ports as it raced past. Bolan watched ruby taillights shrink and eventually fade completely in the darkness.

  Looking around, Bolan weighed his options. If Talisman had fled, he likely would have taken Dade with him. Dade was the only bargaining chip that the Sierra Leone tough guy had—if he had Dade at all. Bolan sensed there had been more than one person in the corridor when he’d been struck. But whether the scientist was among them remained to be seen.

  Bolan took a quick inventory of the vehicles around him. He tried the doors on two of them and found them locked. On the third try, he hit a red Jeep Cherokee with the driver’s door unlocked and a key hanging in the ignition. Climbing in, he turned over the engine, slammed the vehicle into reverse and maneuvered it out from between its neighbors. Cutting the wheel left, he gunned the engine and the Jeep lurched forward.

  Flipping on the headlights as he went, Bolan saw a silhouette stumble into view. The slender shadow stopped in the middle of the dirt path leading from the compound and shouted, “Stop.”

  Walled in by trees and buildings, Bolan had two choices: comply or mow them down.

  He had a moment to decide.

  If it was one of Talisman’s men and he struck them, so be it. Such were the fortunes of war.

  But if it was an innocent person…

  The decision clear, the Executioner did the only thing he could.

  Paris, France

  ONE DAY EARLIER Mack Bolan had sat in the den of a Justice Department safehouse in Paris. Hal Brognola had paced the floor and ground an unlit cigar between his teeth with the vigor of a German shepherd gnawing on a rawhide bone.

  Worry creased the older man’s features and weighed on his shoulders, causing them to slope, as he stayed silent, apparently gathering his thoughts. He rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt and ran his fingers through his hair.

  Bolan sipped tepid coffee that was sweet and fragrant. He grimaced. “Chocolate raspberry coffee? You going soft on me?”

  Brognola jerked his head toward Bolan and gave him a confused look that slowly morphed into a smile.

  “Hey, I don’t do the shopping,” Brognola said. “I just pay the bills.”

  Bolan smiled. “Are you going sit and tell me why you called me here? Or just let me die a slow death from drinking this swill?”

  Brognola crossed the room and seated himself at the table with Bolan. The Executioner was just winding up a two-day mission, cutting the heart from an extremist group that had planned to dispatch suicide bombers in major cities throughout the European Union for a synchronized terror campaign. The mission had been short and bloody, but Bolan had walked away unhurt.

  Brognola, who’d been traveling in Europe on unrelated business, had asked his old friend to hang tight at the safehouse for an impromptu meeting to discuss an urgent problem. That had left Bolan with enough time for a shower, a meal and a few hours’ sleep. Brognola had declined to discuss the urgent matter via secure satellite telephone, insisting instead on a face-to-face meeting. The big Fed wasn’t given to panic, but his tension had touched Bolan like a tangible force. The Executioner had agreed to the meet, no questions asked.

  Brognola pulled the unlit cigar from his mouth and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Striker, what do you know about airborne laser fighters?”

  Bolan shrugged. “We’ve got a handful of 747s fitted with lasers capable of shooting down enemy missiles. They fire at the fuel tank, weaken the metal until the pressure causes an outward explosion and downs the missile. It’s hardly a Death Star, but it seems like a step in the right direction.”

  Brognola nodded. “The ABL program is a good one. Hell, I thought it was state-of-the-art. Turns out I was wrong.”

  A dark look crossed Bolan’s hawkish features. “Explain,” he said.

  “The ABL is already old technology,” Brognola replied. “We’re telling the world it’s the best we’ve got. But we’ve moved well beyond that and we have Trevor Dade to thank for it.”

  “Trevor who?” Bolan asked.

  “Trevor Dade. He’s a scientist. He’s missing.”

  “Disappeared? You know I don’t do missing persons cases, Hal. Hire a detective.”

  “Not disappeared, kidnapped and possibly murdered. And his loss could do irreparable damage to our national security.”

  Bolan took another sip of the coffee. Brognola had his full attention. “Sorry. I’m listening.”

  “You ever heard of the Nightwind program?”

  Bolan shook his head.

  “I hadn’t either until about twelve hours ago, shortly after Dade went missing.”

  Bolan was growing impatient. “You’re being too mysterious, Hal. Get to the point.”

  “Sorry, Striker. I’m still trying to digest this myself. The Nightwind is about the size and shape of a B-2 bomber, but it’s fitted with a solid-state laser system and some of the most advanced optics ever developed. No big vats of chemicals, no refraction from clouds and atmospheric disturbances. The lasers are more portable and more concentrated than anyone in the world—including our own allies—thinks that we have.”

  “And Trevor Dade developed the technology,” Bolan concluded.

  Brognola nodded. “The laser system, anyway. The whole project began during the cold war. We were so worried about the Soviets raining nuclear hell on us that the Pentagon and the White House decided it was best to create the ultimate missile killer, the Nightwind.”

  “And they succeeded?”

  “Pretty damn close,” Brognola said. “To the best of our knowledge, it’s the strongest, fastest thing we’ve got. They developed it in Nevada at a small base called the Haven. It’s kind of like Area 51 in its mystique.”

  Bolan grinned. “But without the Martians.”

  “It’s all very earthy stuff, I assure you,” Brognola said, smiling. “The whole place is geared toward the creation and testing of the Nightwind. It’s a top-tier R&D facility, but you won’t find any little green men getting autopsies.”

  “So what do we know about Dade’s disappearance?” Bolan asked.

  Brognola took a deep breath and exhale
d. “He works for Sentinel Industries, one of the nation’s biggest defense contractors. Guy’s a genius when it comes to turning lasers into weapons, but he was a security disaster waiting to happen. The Man briefed me earlier today, and what he said wasn’t encouraging. Dade snorts coke by the ton and buys hookers by the baker’s dozen. In his free time, he gambles like hell.”

  Bolan’s brow furrowed. “He got any big debts from it?”

  Brognola shook his head. “Dade comes from one of the richest oil families in Texas. He doesn’t care about money. It’s all in the thrill. We’re still running the traps on him, but we’re starting to hear some murmurs of possible ties to organized crime.”

  Bolan felt anger burn hot under his skin. Instinct and experience told him this situation should never have escalated to this level. “His handlers knew all this, but he kept his security clearance. That’s bull, Hal.”

  Bolan knew by Brognola’s scowl that the big Fed agreed. “Like I said, Striker, the guy comes from a lot of money. He gets into trouble, he gets bailed out. The people at Sentinel have tried to fire him twice. He has two uncles who are senators, one chairs the intelligence committee, the other the defense appropriations committee. Any time the company leans on Dade, he calls his uncles and they drop the hammer on the company. At least that was the pattern. Recently Dade screwed up so bad that not even his high-powered uncles had enough chits to save him.”

  “What happened?”

  “He makes weekly pilgrimages to Las Vegas. While he’s there, he stays in a top-notch hotel and parties. A preliminary audit of the company’s books shows he did at least some of it with Sentinel’s money. Money out of the Nightwind program funds.”

  “Which means he did it with taxpayer cash,” Bolan said.

  Brognola shrugged and shot Bolan a cynical smile. “We’ve used the money in worse ways. Anyway, about two months ago, he’s there for another wild weekend and bam!” Brognola slammed the table with his open palm for emphasis. “One of the hookers overdoses on cocaine and dies. Dade panics, refuses to let the guards call the police. When he finally relents, he gets busted for obstruction, possession and involuntary manslaughter. Within weeks, a grand jury indicts him and the press is off to the races with the story.”