Don Pendleton - Day of Mourning

The fuel tank could go at any moment.

Bolan reached the bubble front and found Grimaldi slumped forward against his shoulder-strap harness. The pilot wore a nasty bruise on his temple.

Bolan unhooked the man who had saved the Executioner's hide on so many missions. Jack was breathing.

Bolan kept Big Thunder in his right fist, fanning the night as he hefted the Stony flyboy over his shoulder and jogged away from the fiery wreck.

He went twenty paces when the Nitefinders caught a figure to his left. It was the bastard who'd brought down the chopper. The guy was swinging an Uzi around in Bolan's direction, not particularly careful to stand behind cover because he didn't know Bolan could see him.

Bolan did not slacken his pace as he brought up Big Thunder and triggered a .44 Magnum round that ruptured the guy's head into a reddish mist in the infrared goggles.

Behind them, the Hughes exploded as the fire touched the fuel. A hot invisible wall lifted Bolan and his human cargo off the ground then slammed them back down.

April Rose emerged from the "farmhouse" command post in time to catch Katz and McCarter. She relayed to them Bolan's report of the number and position of infiltrators moving in from the southwestern corner of the Farm.

"Wade's chaps need backup," McCarter grunted, snicking his M-16 into its automatic mode.

"Let's give it to them," growled Katzenelenbogen.

The two Phoenix members hustled off into the night.

April gripped her pistol. She had no intention of returning to the safety of the Stony Man communications room. The farmhouse was adequately guarded.

She turned and jogged back to the grounds on the other side of the house where Phoenix Force member Rafael Encizo was covering Aaron Kurtzman and his men in their final repairs of the sabotaged satellite unit.

The rattle of gunfire and an exploding HE broke the darkness.

She advanced on the tight circle of men and equipment several meters behind the farm building.

April sensed movement to her right.

Crouching, she whirled and fired the Magnum in a two-handed grip. She clearly saw the figure of a commando and heard the sound of a bullet slapping open flesh and bone, and a grunt of expelled breath and the rustle of deadweight tripping backward to the ground.

They were getting close. This one must have circled around from the eastern squads engaged by Bolan and Grimaldi!

April Rose continued cautiously toward Kurtzman, Encizo and the others to see what she could do.

McCarter and Katzenelenbogen came upon heavy fire when they were about one thousand meters from the house.

They found three of Captain Wade's security personnel pinned down and exchanging fire with the enemy across a clearing of dogwood. One security man was sprawled in a lifeless clump where he fell, a dark pool of blood around his head.

"Colonel Phoenix got one of them, sir," a lieutenant reported to Katz. "I think two of them split off to circle around us or the house. That leaves three across that meadow, and we're too damn pinned down to budge or do anything but hold them up."

Katz plucked a grenade from his utility belt.

"The pot needs stirring," he told the soldier who was not outfitted with grenades.

"Give it to 'em, mate," growled McCarter.

The Briton had pitched himself onto his belly alongside the soldiers and was returning fire at the two blasting commandos across the clearing.

Katz pulled out the pin with his teeth. He flung the explosive with his prosthetic right hand. The grenade sailed true. The Phoenix team members and soldiers ducked, covering their eyes.

Ten seconds after the pin was pulled, the HE ruptured the night in a dazzling flash of fire, smoke and roar that flung the shredded remains of two commandos high into the air like the remnants of rag dolls chewed up and discarded by a playful pup.

One commando emerged from behind a rise in the terrain and opened fire with his Uzi. Two of the Stony Man soldiers grunted and were flung back, the tops of their heads blown away.

McCarter, Katz and the lieutenant opened fire simultaneously.

The commando burst apart under the sheet of automatic M-16 fire as if drawn and quartered.

Bolan set down Grimaldi's unconscious form at the base of a towering oak. Jack was still out of it, but he was wearing a .45 bolstered cross-draw at his left hip. He would be okay once he came to. Until then, this appeared to be a safe spot for the stricken pilot.

As Grimaldi had been setting down the Hughes, the rattle of gunfire in the night seemed to Bolan to have closed in toward the main house of the installation.

Guided by his infrared eye shield, Bolan started off through the night in the direction of the farmhouse, across another rolling and dipping ten acres.

He had to find Miller.

Alive.

Who had ordered this attack?

Bolan intended to find out from the commando merc boss.

One way or another.

The Executioner traveled soundlessly for about twenty meters when his peripheral infrared vision caught sight of an Uzi-toting commando who thought he had enough cover behind a tree.

Bolan fired. The .44 headbuster tore through skull-bone and brains and snuffed another existence. The dead commando was kicked back from behind his tree by the impact of the slug. He slammed into another tree behind him. Then he pitched forward to the earth and did not move. The Executioner moved on.

Al Miller could tell his men were being blasted apart by the way the gunfire in the distance, punctuated by a grenade blast now and then, died off to nothing. The farmhouse and the crew around the outbuilding where the satellite repairs were taking place had not yet been attacked. That meant trouble.

The commando leader and Kagor crouched on a knoll northwest of the farmhouse and the cluster of people.

Miller observed the repair crew — a big bear of a man, a Latin American and some soldiers standing guard — and debated the best way for him and Kagor to hit them. Then they could pull out to the west and would have a good shot at getting away even if the hit teams were in tatters.

After the helicopter had been downed — at least Miller now had a good idea where John Phoenix was! — Miller and Kagor had circled around to the north, cutting over short of the Stony Man airstrip and carefully moving west until they reached the knoll.

Miller cursed his bad luck. But he had been in hot-spots such as this one and walked away.

Well, maybe not this hot, he thought. Not if Phoenix was still prowling around out there in the night.

Had Phoenix been killed when the chopper crashed?

Miller had a hunch the big man was damn near indestructible!

Kagor, crouched next to Miller, motioned with the snout of his Uzi at the men around the outbuilding.

"What the hell are we waiting for?" he demanded in a whisper. "Looks like we're alone on this one, Top."

"We could still have some backup. Some of the boys could've slipped through. Okay, let's hit this bunch. Be careful, K. Careful for that goddamn Phoenix."

"Phoenix?" snickered Kagor. "He was kil — "

Kagor was interrupted by a stutter of Uzi fire across the clearing from where Miller and he lay watching.

Miller swung his infrared binoculars to see one of his own commandos rattling off the steady stream of hot lead at the circle of people around the sabotaged satellite unit. Miller saw one Stony Man trooper fly back until he fell, as if tripped. The others scattered, except for one Hispanic down there with an M-16.

Miller placed the man from the intel his contact inside the Farm had furnished: Rafael Encizo, member of Bolan's Phoenix Force.

The commando started to dodge back for cover when Encizo swung around his M-16.