Don Pendleton - Meltdown

Bolan fired.

The deadly rain of .45 caliber slugs chewed into the guy from the neck up. The man's skull shattered, and he struck the floor. As they reached the still spastic figure on the concrete, Bolan tugged the dead man's Kalashnikov free and slung it over his shoulder. The ruptured skull oozed blood and brain tissue. The man's face was gone, as if it had never been there at all. One eye lolled over a shattered cheekbone, like a cherry on its stem.

The three warriors covered the remaining distance to the first door without opposition. While Stevens worked on the lock, Bolan peered through the large window into the control room. Glinkov was absorbed at the control console. He was intently watching the array of gauges and dials. The inner guard was seated casually before the secondary control room. Its door was closed. Neither man seemed to have heard anything. If luck were with them, Cohen and his team would be working on their doors by now. The eerie silence was broken by a sudden burst of gunfire from the opposite side of the control room.

"That's at the other door!" Stevens shouted.

Bolan knew Eli was in trouble. And Rachel was with him.

"Matt, keep at it. I'll be back as soon as I can. If you get it open, go in. And watch yourself." He sprinted across the floor, heading for the corridor leading to the other doorway.

The gunfire continued. It sounded like a small war. Cohen must still be alive, or the shooting would have stopped. At the mouth of the passage, Bolan paused. A security mirror high on the wall showed him the full length of the corridor. Adam lay in a pool of blood, sprawled in front of the unopened security door.

Three of Glinkov's men were at the other end of the passage. Cohen peered from the scant cover of an open office door farther down the hall. As Bolan watched, Eli sprayed hellfire along the corridor without aiming. He was holding the Ingram in his left hand, extending it just enough to hold off the attackers with blind fire.

Rachel was nowhere in sight.

Checking his own SMG, Bolan put in a fresh clip and waited. There was a time to plant, and a time to reap. The Executioner was going to plant some lead.

The Grim Reaper would bring in the crop.

The passage intersected another at right angles. Bolan could fire down the hall and cross to the opposite side while the gunners dived for cover. With a little luck, he might nail one of them. Watching the mirror closely, he waited. Eli pulled his weapon back to reload. The three men charged. Bolan made his move.

With the Ingram held at waist level, he began firing as he stepped into the intersection. The lead man was chewed up; the deadly spray from Bolan's SMG had punched through his chest wall. Wild return fire ricocheted off the concrete walls as the remaining two men dived for the floor. Eli rejoined the firefight with a short burst, and Bolan was across the hall.

If he remembered his quick lesson in the layout, he could work his way around behind. He fired another quick burst and sprinted for the next intersection. The gun battle continued behind him, its echoes resounding along the maze of concrete passages.

He skidded to a halt at the next passageway, checked it for opposition and rushed on. The noise died abruptly. Bolan increased his pace. The next passage was just ahead. As he ran, he changed clips in the Ingram, slipping the half-empty one back into his coat. At the corner he stopped. There was another mirror, and he scanned it quickly. He knew they could see him as well as he could see them in it. But the hallway was empty except for Adam's body and that of the man he had nailed in crossing the hall.

All right.

He changed back to the half-empty clip, wasted the mirror, then reloaded. He'd rather fight blind than give them the advantage of the glass. He tossed the empty magazine into the corridor. It bounced once, twice, then disappeared in a hail of bullets and concrete chips. So they were still there.

But where was Eli? And Rachel?

The architecture of the damn building was an obstacle. All right angles, there was no way to get from A to B without exposing oneself. It hadn't been planned as a hell zone.

And while he waited, the clock ticked. If Stevens managed to get the door open, he'd need all the help he could get. Things had to be wrapped up on this end. Now.

What the hell, he told himself. Sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns. Steeling himself, Bolan charged into the open corridor. He watched both walls, looking for the first sign of movement.

He sprayed a burst the length of the hall. No one returned fire. Charging ahead, he reached the body of the dead man. His weapon was gone. Ahead on the left, a door yawned open.

Inside, he answered one of his questions. The other two lay dead. Somebody had nailed them already. From behind. Bolan pushed on to the next office. Three empty clips lay just inside the door. But the room was vacant. No Eli. And no Rachel.

Adam's security card, what was left of it, dangled from the mangled lock. It was useless. And Bolan doubted the outside mechanism would function. He rushed back to the main control access. Stevens was nowhere to be seen. Another of Stevens's men, Donny Grissom, lay dead on the floor. Approaching cautiously, he peered through the master window, just in time to see Glinkov vanish through the opposite door. A klaxon somewhere deep in the plant began a mournful uproar.

Stevens was just inside the first door. He had been wounded. Blood soaked his right sleeve. He was still struggling with the second lock.

"What happened, Matt?" Bolan demanded.

"I don't know. Somebody besides us. They killed Donny, but he was between them and me. I got the door open just in time."

"Did you see Eli?"

"No. Why?"

"He's missing. So is Rachel."

"Adam? Is he okay?"

Bolan said nothing.

Stevens collapsed to the floor. "Those bastards."

"We'll get them, Matt."

Stevens grabbed the bloody sleeve of the anticontamination suit and ripped it loose at the shoulder. "Help me wrap this."

Bolan bound the ugly wound in Stevens's upper arm. The security chief turned back to the lock.

He punched in the combination code, pressed the release and the door hummed open. Inside, the sound of the klaxon was insistent.

There was no one in the control room. Bolan ran to the backup control room door. The lock was destroyed. He stepped back and planted a sharp kick just above the damaged lock. The door swung back with a crash. The room was empty except for two dead men lying against one wall. Bolan looked at the security man. "Do you know anything about this reactor? Can you work the controls?"

"Nothing. No, nothing."

Two more flashing lights joined the carnival array high on the board. They felt the rumble before they heard it. It grew slowly and sounded as if it would never stop.

The deserted control room echoed with the sound of alarms. Blinking lights were everywhere. Bolan stared at the flickering monitors. The images were randomly selected. As he watched, a group of shadows zipped past on one screen. As he moved in closer, the image changed.

"Matt, is there any way to select the cameras for these things?"

"Sure. What do you want to see?"

"I don't know. I thought I saw Rachel and Eli. But there were three figures. They were gone before I could get a fix on it."

"Okay, I'll run through the cameras one at a time. Keep an eye on the top left-hand screen. If you see something, holler."

Stevens sat at the security console. One by one, he scrolled through the cameras. Bolan watched intently. He was beginning to doubt that he had seen anything. Image after image of the gloomy depths of the plant flew by corridors, storage rooms, work areas dominated by huge conduits and rumbling machinery.