Don Pendleton - Whipsaw

At the corner he peered out from behind a pile of ruptured and discarded crates to the next corner, nearly three hundred feet away. A small cubicle, looking absurd and tiny in the cavernous interior of the warehouse, occupied the corner. Frosted glass concealed the interior of the cubicle, but it was as good a destination as any.

He started along the wall and nearly tripped over a man turning the corner, bent at the waist under the weight of a crate of ammunition. The startled man dropped the crate with a dull thud and cursed him. He glanced at Bolan angrily, then realised Bolan didn't belong there and went for the .45 automatic on his hip. Bolan dove at him, driving his injured shoulder into the man's gut and knocking him to the floor.

The smaller man struggled to throw him off, but Bolan slammed a fist into his windpipe, and he gagged. The gun clattered away, skidding across the cement. Bolan slugged him a second time, and the man's head snapped back into the concrete and he lay still.

Bolan got to his feet as someone shouted, "Enrique, where the hell is that ammo?" Bolan started to run as the shouting voice came closer, echoing among the boxes. He looked back just as the shouting man broke into the clear. Bolan dove behind a mound of canvas, but too late.

He'd been spotted, and the pursuer came charging down the aisle, a pistol in his hand.

The man fired once, then two more quick shots. The slugs nipped at the canvas just over Bolan's head, then slammed into the corrugated wall, which boomed hollowly with the impacts. Bolan fired back, and his shot caught his target in the throat.

The man clutched at his neck, and his legs stopped pumping, but the momentum carried him forward into the canvas, where he landed with a thud.

Bolan jumped to his feet and started to climb up the nearest stack of shelves, pulling himself from shelf to shelf and crawling into the center of the fourth tier, where he had just enough room to lie flat.

Several men came running from different parts of the warehouse, and Bolan held his breath. He snicked the safety off the Kalashnikov and waited. The men milled around in the aisle fifteen feet below, but no one seemed able to decide what to do.

One voice, coming from far behind him, cut through the babble. There was no mistaking its authority. "What the fuck is going on here?" No one answered, and the voice barked again, even louder this time. "What's going on? Somebody start talking."

"We don't know, Colonel," someone stuttered, his voice faint and uncertain.

It was Charles Harding. Bolan felt a rising of energy, and a new alertness took hold of him. The quarry was in sight.

"Where's McAllister?" Harding snapped.

"There, sir." Bolan heard shaming feet as the men parted to give Harding an unobstructed view.

"What the hell happened?" Harding demanded. "Who did this?"

"Don't know, sir."

"Anybody see anything?" Perfect silence. Bolan heard Harding's exasperated breathing for a few moments. Then he barked, "Johnson, pick eight men. Spread your asses out and look for the son of a bitch. Now! The rest of you get back to work. I want those trucks out of here in five minutes. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll be in the command post if you need me. And you'd better not."

Bolan listened while Johnson made his selection, then the knot of men broke up and the feet shuffled off in every direction.

"All right, you two, down that end, one on either side. You two, same thing up this end. The rest of you, two teams of two, start there and sweep to the other end of this aisle. Anything moves, you kill it. I don't care if it's a cat. Find the bastard."

Bolan continued to hug the metal shelf, trying hard not to sneeze from the thick dust lying on the dull grey metal. One after another, the tailgates slammed shut. Bolan could hear the teams below him, whispering nervously as they peeked around corners and shoved piles of boxes aside, kicking likely hiding places and poking at empty boxes with their gun barrels.

A sound like thunder suddenly filled the huge building as the trucks fired up. Then, like an undercurrent of deeper, more distant thunder, one of the great doors moved up and out of the way. As the trucks started to roll, the floor of the building trembled, and the shelves picked up the vibrations. Loose bolts rattled like sizzles in a cymbal, and the entire building seemed to throb as if it were a single beast beginning to awaken.

With a grinding of gears, the first truck lumbered toward the door. It creaked under its load, and Bolan could only wonder where it was headed. The others followed, one by one, and he swiveled his body to try to see the door. A small triangle of visibility gave him just a glimpse of the last three freshly painted trucks. Then the door rattled shut again, the whine of its servo petulant, even testy, until it banged closed. The door trembled momentarily, and the sudden silence seemed more ominous than the thunder of the trucks.

"Find anything?" Johnson shouted, his voice partly muffled by distance and the huge columns of material strangely small under the high ceiling.

"Nothing."

"Keep looking!"

Bolan inched toward the edge of the shelf and raised his head just enough to look down into the far end of the aisle.

The single man guarding that end lounged carelessly against a column. A few yards closer, one of the two-man search teams poked casually at some rubbish. Their enthusiasm seemed all but gone, replaced by the indifference of men going through the motions to please someone in authority.

Bolan's watch read 11:35. It was time to act. Muffling the click as best he could, Bolan replaced the partial clip in his Beretta 93-R with a full one. The sound suppressor gave him a slight edge, but the metal on which he lay afforded very little protection. If they saw him, it was all over.

Using a two-handed grip, he took aim on the lounging guard. The search team was almost at the end of the aisle. If they turned to work their way back, they might see him. It was now or never.

Squeezing the hair trigger, he felt the satisfying jolt of the Italian beauty, its deadly spit no louder than an apple falling on soft grass. The guard changed position, but seemed unharmed. Bolan thought for a moment the shot had missed. When the stain began to spread across the front of the guard's shirt, he knew he hadn't. The body stayed upright, propped against the rough metal.

Firing two more quick shots, Bolan took out the search team, catching the man on the left almost dead center, just below the collar line. A broken spine allowed his head to loll, and the man dropped straight down, dead instantly. The second man was no luckier. Struck in the base of the skull, he spattered his dead companion with flecks of bright blood and toppled to the floor, his weapon clattering against an empty metal drum.

"Hey!" The shout sparked like electricity through the aisles, and someone ran toward the fallen men, probably the guard from the opposite end of the aisle. Bolan couldn't see anyone, but took the opportunity to move to the other side of his perch.

Pounding feet raced toward the end of the aisle, and as Bolan peeked out over the edge, he saw three men rushing toward the far end of the warehouse.

Checking both ways as the running men disappeared around a corner, Bolan climbed another shelf higher, then another. One more, and he'd be on top. The men far below seemed confused. He could hear their excited voices, and they appeared to be arguing among themselves what to do. Bolan took the plunge, grabbing the highest shelf and ignoring the stab of pain in his wounded shoulder as he hauled himself up.

"You better get the colonel," someone said, raising his voice to be heard over the hoarsely whispered argument.

"We don't tell him nothing, till we get the son of a bitch did this," Johnson snapped. "He'll have our asses, otherwise."