Don Pendleton - Day of Mourning

The Dragon had to be taken out. The action was authorized by Stony Man.

Able Team must penetrate the castle, but they had to confirm that the enemy had fled. If they had pulled out, Able Team would scramble damn fast to pick up any trail The Dragon might have left.

Each team member was armed with a shoulder-holstered MAC-10 submachine gun and had an M-16 strapped across his back. They were each equipped with climbing picks, ropes and accessories that they unpacked.

"Wonder why you couldn't reach the contact in New Delhi on that radio," Lyons whispered with a nod to the shortwave set Schwarz was carrying.

"Something is going down," said Gadgets. "Our contact has the jitters.''

"He'd answer if Stony Man had any messages for us," said Blancanales.

"What an optimist," grunted Lyons. "All right, men. Let's do it and do it right."

Mack Bolan's Able Team broke off all conversation.

They commenced climbing the face of the gorge.

Not knowing what they would find.

Grimaldi brought the Hughes chopper through the low cloud cover. The clouds would mute sounds of the helicopter's approach.

Bolan and Grimaldi had donned infrared Nite-finder eye shields.

In a night action, the Executioner always tried to think like the enemy.

What was the only conceivably vulnerable point on the Farm, near the perimeter?

"Come in low over the airfield from the north," Bolan instructed the pilot.

Grimaldi tugged the stick to bring the copter in at a low banking approach.

The night suddenly boomed.

The sky lit up briefly as a blast erupted below.

As Grimaldi sailed in, Bolan heard the crackle of automatic-weapons fire and claps from two more HEs.

The chopper emerged from the clouds. Grimaldi piloted them in low enough for the Nitefinders to reveal that the assault had just begun.

The airfield shimmered in an eerie golden glow from the flaming pile of junk that had moments earlier been a helicopter on the runway.

The firelight inadvertently cast flickering illumination on two squads of commandos Bolan could see advancing on the hangars in a wedgelike formation. Two of the commandos were in the process of reloading portable grenade launchers. The six infiltrators charged across the clearing separating the tree line from the hangars.

The illumination was enough for a dozen security troops, waiting behind the hangars, to more clearly see the infiltrators and open up with M-16s.

Bolan made out two members of Phoenix Force, Keio Ohara and Gary Manning, flanking off to either side of the Farm security forces, opening fire with their automatic weapons to catch the commando infiltrators from two new angles of fire.

The commando squads hastily fanned away from each other as the barrage cut down the two point-men.

One of the invaders triggered his grenade launcher.

The side of one hangar disintegrated into a sheet of flame as bodies of soldiers rained to the ground.

Ohara and Manning directed fierce streams of automatic fire at the source of the HE. Another commando spun every which way at once as his head and guts exploded.

The three surviving infiltrators fell back to regroup.

The Hughes chopper zipped overhead with Bolan bracing himself in the open door of the bubble front.

The Executioner unleashed a rain of death from the M-16 Grimaldi always kept in the chopper.

Two of the darting commandos kept on moving, even after the stream of 5.56mm fire decapitated them, sending chunks of their skulls and brains splashing into the air ahead of them.

The third commando had time to turn and look up at the Hughes zooming by, twenty feet above his head. He had time to start tracking the Uzi upward.

But he had time to do nothing else. The downdraft from the rotors made standing unsteady.

Bolan fired another burst from the M-16, and the guy was poleaxed backward off his feet with a shocked expression and no chest.

The troops around the hangars held their fire as the Hughes climbed and pulled away.

"Swing us around the southwest perimeter and back along the eastern side," Bolan instructed the ace pilot.

Grimaldi did that. It took all of thirty seconds for the sweep, for Bolan to analyze Al Miller's strategy.

The infiltrators on the ground simply froze in place amid the shadowy shapes of trees, shrubs and changes in the terrain as the Hughes skimmed by overhead. They had no way of knowing the chopper's occupants were using infrared equipment and could clearly spot every one of them.

The strategy was clear. Miller was operating with three teams on this assault. One team hit the airfield. The other two waited until the airfield alert drew additional security troops. Then Miller's other teams would move in.

Bolan saw sporadic exchanges of fire between commandos and security patrols who attempted to intercept them. But it was too damn dark down there. Bolan saw one terrorist go down. He saw two Farm troopers spin away to the ground under hails of enemy fire.

When the chopper had made a complete circle, Bolan got Stony on the shortwave.

"Striker to Stony Man."

April's voice. "Stony Man. Go ahead, Striker."

"I'm coming in from the outside," said Bolan. "Five infiltrators moving in on the main building from the southwest. They're meeting some resistance. Get them reinforced."

"I'll send Katz and McCarter. Anything else?"

"Eight more moving in from the east. Have Wade send down anyone he can spare from the front gate. I'm moving in on the eight. Over and out."

Bolan felt good hearing April's voice. What a woman.

Grimaldi did not need telling. He swung the chopper in low behind the eight figures advancing from the east.

The commandos were a thousand meters from the main house when they were engaged in a firefight with security troops.

The predawn night of Stony Man Farm crackled with sounds of armed combat, men grunting terse exchanges, the cacophony of battle echoing back from the low cloud ceiling heavy with a rain that would not come.

Shadows darted between shadows.

Flashes of gunfire lanced the thick black air.

As Grimaldi zoomed in, Bolan saw one of the commandos nailed to a tree by a blast of M-16 automatic fire from one of the Stony Man security men.

There was no sign of Wade.

Bolan was back in the doorway of the chopper when the Hughes raced over two wedge-shape squads of commandos and two other men lagging somewhat behind.

The straggling pair would be Miller and his second-in-command.

Miller was the next link in the chain. He had to be taken alive.

Bolan opened fire with his M-16 at the two forward squads. He saw four of the men caught in a withering hail of fire. The other two, and Miller and his man, scattered. Bolan lost sight of Miller behind a clump of trees as the chopper started to climb away.

One of the surviving commandos swung around his grenade launcher, aimed at the receding chopper and triggered.

The chopper rocked and spun as the night erupted for Bolan in a thunderclap of brilliance and spinning sensation.

The chopper was hit!

Grimaldi had been cruising low enough so that Bolan's fall to the meadow would jolt every bone in his body, but not enough to kill him.

Bolan came out of a tumbling roll in time to see the chopper skid to a stop in the clearing several feet away. Grimaldi was able to land the damaged aircraft, but he did not emerge from the disabled Hughes.

Bolan had lost the M-16 somewhere during his fall.

Though he still wore the Nitefinder goggles he did not take time to look for the rifle.

He unleathered his .44 AutoMag and raced toward the chopper while keeping a constant lookout for any movement coming at him. There was none. The Hughes had sustained a hit to its rear end, which was now in flames.