Agent of Peril Read online

  Bolan spun and saw that the shotgun rider for the truck they only barely clipped was still struggling to get out of the cab and aim his AK one-handed. Bracing his own weapon with both hands, the Executioner taught the gunman a lesson in proper weapon handling. Unfortunately, the lesson in marksmanship was wasted as the Hezbollah murderer was slammed messily into the door of the cab, his torso blown to chunks by Bolan’s stream of 7.62 mm ComBloc rounds. He glanced back to Geren, who was cursing as she clutched her side.

  Bolan moved to her, hooking her arm and carrying her through the loading dock door just as the diesel fire flared hotter. “Where are you hit?”

  “It’s a nick,” she muttered. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Bolan swept the interior of the warehouse, spotting no motion, and then took a closer look at the gunshot. She was right, the bullet only creased the skin along her rib cage. The rut of flesh was only a fingertip deep and ran a couple inches, but it bled a lot. “Can you breathe okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Geren replied.

  Bolan stuffed a couple of Uzi magazines into the woman’s hands and nodded to her. “I’ll apply a quick field dressing. You reload and keep an eye out.”

  “You don’t mess…” she stopped, wincing as Bolan ripped her damaged BDU blouse wider to apply the dressing. “You don’t mess around.”

  The soldier took a pad of sterile gauze and attached it to the underside of two parallel strips of duct tape, pressing it gently, but firmly to her skin. “That’ll control the bleeding for now, but you might need some stitches,” he said.

  “We’ll live that long?” she asked.

  Bolan switched his AK for the VEPR, handing the heavier weapon to Geren. “I’ve been in worse spots.”

  Before she could answer, the flare of a flash fire glowed hotly through the open loading dock gate. The soldier instinctively shielded the woman from the glare, and then gave her a gentle shove deeper into the warehouse.

  “They’re not going to get though that inferno. They also probably won’t want to try any of the doors on that side of the building, in case the fire spreads,” Bolan explained.

  As if on cue, the door kicked in on an emergency exit at the other end of the warehouse. Three men charged in at full speed, but Bolan brought up his VEPR, punching out two bursts into the closest gunners. Geren’s AK was up and tracking, ripping a chain saw of rounds across the belly of the third. The trio tumbled, weapons dropping.

  “Look, they gave us fresh ammo,” Geren said with a mock grin.

  “Let’s not let it go to waste.” Bolan crossed the distance to the downed gunners in a few easy, loping strides and dropped to one knee, pulling guns from lifeless hands and handing Geren spare AK magazines for her recent acquisition.

  “I like you, Brandon. We might live long enough to exchange phone numbers,” she said, keeping the chatter going. Bolan had seen the defense mechanism before.

  Bolan caught her smile before he continued scanning the warehouse, especially the entrance the terrorists came through. More would be coming, but they might be spreading out, trying some of the other entrances. He looked up and spotted catwalks. A good place for them to command the scene, but there’d be damned little means of escape up there.

  Unless…

  Bolan followed one catwalk visually, spotting a path to a bank of windows. “Come on,” he said.

  More doors burst open, and Bolan let Geren go ahead, spinning the VEPR’s muzzle and laying down the remainder of his first magazine into the gunners who came through the closest door. Bodies crashed and tumbled, some dead, some in retreat, seeking cover. At the far door, intermittent fire crackled, but nobody seemed interested in making themselves targets by moving into position to actually hit the Executioner. Geren, on the stairway, tapped off a couple short bursts to keep heads down while Bolan reloaded.

  The Executioner wasn’t expecting to take out all their pursuers, but every head ducked was a trigger finger not spitting steel-cored rounds. He returned a series of short, but withering bursts at the gunners crouched behind crates and barrels.

  “Where now?” Geren asked.

  Bolan pointed to the window. “Take out the glass.”

  “Lend me your .45. I’m not wasting rifle ammo on that job,” she said.

  Bolan unleathered the big German pistol. Despite the small size of the woman, her hands managed to wrap around the grip. She still needed both hands to properly grip the pistol as she was just a shade over five feet, but she handled the thundering recoil of the SOCOM as she blasted off the entire magazine, smashing glass to shards and splinters. The gunners inside the warehouse screamed as debris rained on them. One man, distracted by being cut in the rain of glass, stepped out into the open.

  Bolan blew his skull apart with a precision burst.

  Terrorists were frantic after seeing their friend decapitated. One opened fire and burned off the ammo in his weapon, screaming to high heaven. Two more gunners crouched down tighter and out of sight, avoiding the mad moments of their buddy’s panic fire. As the panicked gunner ran out of ammo, Bolan sighted on him and gave him a short burst that ripped him open, breastbone to throat, dropping him backward.

  Bolan could make out shouting below and heard the Arabic words for “Get out!”

  Geren glanced back at him. “They’re getting ready to try something.”

  “I figured that,” Bolan said. He pulled his knife and took back his Uzi, slashing the sling on the weapon in two long strips of nylon. “Take this.”

  “What are…You’re kidding.”

  “No. I don’t kid,” Bolan said. He charged along the catwalk, and Geren was right on his heels. The Hezbollah gunmen were already in retreat as casks of flaming gasoline were thrown through the doors of the warehouse.

  The bottles burst, spilling burning fuel in cones and waves of flashing flame, wood taking to light instantly. There wouldn’t be much time for the Executioner and his new ally to get to safety. They were high in the rafters, where deadly smoke would immediately begin accumulating. On the floor of the warehouse, they would have stood a better chance, but only until the fire reached them, or they ran right into the blazing guns of the terrorists.

  Reaching the window, Bolan crouched, keeping to shadow. Geren lit beside him, looking out.

  Nobody was looking up at the window that had been blown out. He scanned around and looked to see if there were any power lines attached. He’d spotted some kind of lines and cords on other buildings. Bolan saw one, coming down from the corner, but first they’d have to get onto the roof to get to it.

  “How are you at heights?” Bolan asked softly.

  She looked down. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to boost you to the roof, so you can get to the power line.”

  “We’ll be exposed for all the time it takes to climb up there.”

  “I’ll cover you, if you think you can make the climb,” Bolan said.

  Geren looked back into the swirling clouds of toxic, choking smoke. “I’ll flap my arms if I have to. Gimme the boost.”

  With the grace of a gymnast, she bounded off Bolan’s clasped hands and leaped up, grabbing the corner of the roof. She pulled herself, Bolan continuing to push up and give her some assistance. The short woman had little difficulty getting up on top of the warehouse with something to push her feet against. The Executioner’s mind raced as he figured out what he could do to achieve the same.

  Suddenly Geren’s arm and tiny hand reached down over the edge. He heard her issue a terse “C’mon!”

  Bolan reached up and grabbed her hand, using his other hand to grab hold of the top of the window frame. He glanced back down, and thankfully, nobody could see them. He could barely see through the black smoke pouring past him. He didn’t know how exposed he was, and maybe the enemy could see his feet dangling out of the cloud of smoke, but he doubted it. They certainly would have opened fire if they had noticed him.

  He cast aside his doubts and dug his boot into the window frame
long enough to pull hard on Geren’s arm and shove himself up with the power of his right leg to grab at the corner of the building. He released Geren’s hand and threw his other arm up higher, feeling his own weight crushing his armpit. He winced in pain as the Beretta was trapped between unyielding aluminum and his ribs. Geren grabbed Bolan by his shoulders and pulled, his foot giving one last kick against the side of the building, getting him rolling flat onto the roof, out of breath, covered in a new layer of bruises and pulled-muscle pain.

  “That’s the path of least resistance,” Geren remarked, pointing to the guy wire going to ground level. “It’s a steel cable with utility wires leading to the top. There’s an access stairwell to the roof too, but we’d be sitting ducks.”

  Bolan sat up, his breath regained. “Give me a moment to arrange my distraction, get to the cable.”

  Geren moved over, and the Executioner removed a quartet of munitions from his battle harness, thumbing the cotter pins on the grenades straight. With the first two, he popped the pins with a sharp thumb jerk, then threw the grenades over the far edge of the roof. Even as they went sailing, Bolan’s thumbs again snapped out the pins on the second two grenades in quick succession, and then he was up and moving for the corner of the roof. The first explosion flashed on the other side, and he unfurled his length of Uzi sling.

  Geren wrapped her strap around the cable and pushed off, shooting down the diagonal as quickly as possible, sailing to ground level and the fence as if she were rocket powered. Bolan leaped and snagged the cable with his own piece of sling, burning along as well. He took a glance up and saw that his weight on the nylon band was shredding it against the tearing surface of the steel cable. He looked down and saw he had a twelve-foot drop to go, right behind a pair of Hezbollah gunmen who were backing away from the burning warehouse.

  Bolan released his strap and dropped, knees bending to cushion his fall. The impact of his fall alerted the two gunmen, and they began to turn, weapons slowly tracking around to see what was behind them. The Executioner fired off a crushing kidney punch that caught the man on the left in a web of paralyzing agony. The second terrorist started to cry out in anger and warning, but Bolan swung a right-handed hammer blow that slammed the gunman right in his solar plexus. The breath paralyzed in his chest, the second gunner tried to squeak out a warning to his fellow fighters, but Bolan got out his knife and finished off the breathless killer with a wicked slash across his throat. The first man was still squirming in muted agony, and Bolan brought down the knife into his heart, cracking the gunner’s breastbone and killing him instantly.

  The Executioner pulled his knife free and wiped the blade on the uniform of the dead man, then looked around.

  Geren was missing, and the Executioner wondered what had happened to the woman until he saw a Nissan pickup truck drive toward him, its headlights out.

  The truck rolled to a halt, and a pretty, full-lipped face poked out from the shadows of the cab. “Hey, Brandon. Is a Nissan okay with you, or should I find a more macho truck?”

  Bolan gave her a pat on the arm and clambered into the cargo bed of the pickup. “Get moving.”

  Geren chuckled and gunned the engine, headlights suddenly blazing to life as she tore off at high speed. “I spotted this thing while we were on the roof.”

  Bolan looked up and saw the chain-link fence was close. Hezbollah gunmen were opening fire with their rifles, trying to cut off the Nissan. But the gunmen hadn’t counted on return fire from the dashboard of the Nissan, where Geren was jamming her rifle through a hole in the safety glass and triggering long bursts.

  Gunfire dinged against the tailgate of the pickup, and more trucks were rolling toward them. The Executioner reloaded his VEPR, shouldered it and put a long burst across the windshield of the nearest truck as it and its crew of gunmen got within thirty feet. The windshield disappeared in a spray of blood-spattered glass. The driver himself was slumped over, dead. Bolan felt the Nissan’s right fender peel away as Geren deflected slightly off the gate of the compound, more bullets whizzing overhead in a hornet storm.

  “You okay up there?” Bolan asked.

  “I’ll live!” Geren shouted.

  The driverless pickup slammed through chain link, toppling over onto one of the gate guards who had survived Geren’s initial hell sweep. Pulped gunmen were strewed around the gate, and a second pickup truck was just moments too late on the brake to stop from smashing the first vehicle and its hapless crew even further.

  The Executioner and the woman tore off into the night, pursuit long behind them.

  6

  When the battered and smashed Nissan pickup pulled up to the safehouse, Alex Kalid was waiting at the door, weapon at his side. He didn’t recognize the vehicle, but he knew the earmarks of the man who would be driving it up here. Sure enough, it was Striker, the big man covered in sweat, dirt and more than a little blood.

  With him was a petite, if determined, woman behind the wheel. Her green eyes flashed vibrantly in the spill of light from the safehouse’s back door, doubly so when she made out his features.

  “He’s with me,” Bolan said to her. “Alex Johnson, meet Tera Geren.”

  Kalid managed a smile. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

  “Johnson. That’s not an Egyptian name,” she spoke up, stepping out of the truck’s cab. She walked past him, and Kalid felt the chill.

  “That’s because I’m American born. And from your accent, so are you.”

  Geren was taken aback by his comment, and Kalid smirked. “You have an almost accent. Urban U.S., but just a bit of imperceptible twang, like you come from a western state.”

  “Like that bit of Hispanic lilt in your voice?” she prodded.

  “You’re good. I thought I dropped that long ago.”

  Bolan interrupted. “Is Russel all right?”

  “He’s doing better,” Kalid answered. “You get anything?”

  “Her,” Bolan mentioned with a nod of his head toward Geren.

  “Yeah, but can we pound information out of her like we could a Hezbollah member?” Kalid replied. “Unless…”

  “Try it, buster,” Geren answered. She was over a foot shorter than he was, but she seemed to get bigger as she glared at him. Then she grinned, knowing it was a joke.

  Bolan clapped Kalid on the shoulder. “We could try being nice.”

  “Okay, but I’ll keep the whips and chains handy,” Kalid quipped.

  The trio made its way into the safehouse to find Rust, a cold pack resting on the table at his elbow, looking at a sheaf of notes in his hand. He barely glanced up at the entrance of the group.

  “Looks like you’re burning the midnight oil,” Bolan told Rust.

  The CIA man looked up and grimaced. “Smells like you’ve been swimming in it.”

  “The bad guys tried to cook us like rats,” Bolan answered. “What have you got?”

  “I’ve got about eighty pages of notes over the past six months just on Hezbollah hobnobbing with arms dealers,” Rust replied. “They’ve been trying to buy some stuff, as usual, but for the first time, they seemed to have something to sell.”

  “Sell. As in U.S.-built tanks leased to Egypt?” the Executioner prodded.

  “U.S.-built tanks?” Kalid asked, feeling his blood run cold.

  “First generation M1 Abrams,” Bolan pointed out. “The same kind that hit Nitzala and killed hundreds of people.”

  Kalid winced, and then recovered his composure. He looked at Geren’s face, but it was a poker mask. She wasn’t going to reveal anything. “So now we know what we’re up against,” he said.

  “No, we don’t. The Hezbollah is just acting as a middleman. They received a shipment of something, and they’re selling off a fraction to make a profit,” Bolan explained. “Pure profit.”

  “That’s a pretty long jump to make that conclusion, big man,” Geren spoke up. “How do you know?”

  “Because I don’t see the Hezbollah dropping three hundred million dollars on tan
ks, and only using seventy-five million worth to smash a small town to pieces unless it was a gift from someone else,” Bolan growled. “You didn’t happen to see Faswad at the compound, did you?”

  It took a moment for the woman to respond to Bolan’s pointed inquiry. “I was blindfolded.”

  “Before they blindfolded you. I’m sure you didn’t just go in with a can of liquid nitrogen and no binoculars. Or better yet, a digital camera.”

  She looked at Bolan, then down as the Executioner held out his hand, palm up. “It’s probably on a flash memory card.”

  Geren inhaled deeply and reached into her waistband. She came up with a pair of blue-and-white plastic cards.

  “I palmed them and replaced one with a blank. How did you know?” she asked.

  “You had the mind-set to take out one of your guards while blindfolded. Slipping the memory on your digital camera and replacing it with a blank card would be nothing for someone who thinks like you,” Bolan answered.

  Geren shrugged.

  “We did change the terrain, the wide loads did drive away and Faswad wasn’t at the compound for more than a minute,” Geren said.

  Kalid could feel a rush of frustration radiate off Bolan. “Just missed him again?”

  “It’s only the first time I went after him,” Bolan said. “And I’m still on the prowl. Any more intel, Tera?”

  “I don’t even know who you are,” she replied, “except for the fact that this guy is a freakish mix of Cuban and Egyptian, that guy’s a wool-dyed CIA spook, and you…”

  Their eyes locked hard.

  “I’m someone not used to playing politics and stroking egos,” Bolan stated.

  Geren blinked but didn’t flinch. “No. You’re not. And that’s why you happen to have three-hour-old data in your hand.”

  “Welcome to the team,” Bolan said, holding out his hand.

  Kalid sighed with relief when she took it.

  IMAL FASWAD FELT A CHILL run through him as he heard the radio reports of death and devastation at the compound.