Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

Shooters three and four were stationed twenty feet apart, prepared to close the hallway with a lethal cross fire from their automatic weapons at a moment's notice. It was a professional defensive stance that fairly guaranteed survival for at least one member of the team; if any unexpected enemy appeared, he would be forced to choose one target or the other while the odd man out was free to cut him down.

The soldier read their purpose at a glance, together with the heartbeat's indecision in their faces as he cleared the doorway in a crouch. They had been waiting for an answer from their silent partners, still not understanding, when the Executioner unloaded on them with his captured weapons, raking left and right together in a blazing double arc of death.

The Uzi ran its remaining rounds in rapid-fire and swept the starboard gunner off his feet as parabellum slugs ripped his chest to shreds. The impact blew him backward, through the shattered sliding windows, shrouded in the bloody curtains as they ripped free of their moorings and followed him outside.

On Bolan's left, the MAC-11 cut a lethal figure eight between the final gunner's throat and knees, .380 stingers slamming home with enough force to knock him backward in a sloppy somersault.

Bolan dropped the Uzi, tossed the Ingram after it and was turning toward the nearest corpse when furtive movement behind the sofa captured his attention. Bolan hit a combat crouch, the Beretta filling his fist and searching for a target. His finger tightened around the trigger, hesitating only when the numbers failed to jibe.

Four gunners, all of them accounted for. The ventilated body at his feet would be DeVries, already silenced for eternity. He should have been alone among the dead.

"One chance," he snapped. "Throw out your weapon. Let me see those hands."

A woman's voice came back at him from somewhere in the suburbs of hysteria.

"I haven't got a weapon, dammit!"

"Stand," he ordered her, prepared for anything. "And make it easy."

Recognition hit Mack Bolan first, but Susan Landry wasn't far behind. Her mouth hung open for a moment, wide eyes rising from the muzzle of his weapon to the face that she had seen most recently in Texas.

He holstered the Beretta, one swift glance assuring him that she was still intact before he crouched beside DeVries. He didn't need to take the nonexistent pulse, but Bolan did it anyway, and cursed the circumstances that had robbed him of the opportunity to question Hal's accuser.

Susan was beside him now, recovered well enough from her initial shock to make her mind and mouth coordinate.

"You came here looking for DeVries?"

He let the question pass. "I see you found him first."

"Somebody found him." She surveyed the carnage, paling as her eyes glanced off the other riddled bodies. "What the hell is all of this?"

"It's overkill," he answered, holding Susan with his eyes. "Somebody must've thought DeVries was granting interviews."

"You're here for Hal," she countered, sudden understanding in her voice. "I should have known."

"What brings you here?"

"Could be the same. I haven't had a chance to make up my mind yet." She nodded toward the body of DeVries. "We never got that far."

Outside, a rising babble had resolved itself into the sound of cautious voices. Bolan didn't have to understand the words to realize that neighbors would be edging closer, gaining confidence as silence swallowed up the echoes of the firefight. Someone was certain to have called police, several calls would be more likely, and the squad cars would be on their way by now. A glance told Bolan that the lady was already putting two and two together, and she beat him to the punch.

"I move we finish off this conversation in a cooler atmosphere," she said, "before somebody else drops in to interrupt."

The soldier didn't argue with her. He was stepping through the shattered sliding windows, past the shrouded corpse of one assailant, when he noticed Susan hanging back, intent on gathering some photographs and papers that were scattered near the couch. She caught up with Bolan on the flagstone patio, in lockstep with him as they put the house of death behind them.

As Bolan led her back circuitously toward the parking lot, avoiding contact with the neighbors who were popping out of condos on every side, his mind was on the papers in her hand. He hadn't noticed them in the excitement of the firefight, the surprise of seeing Susan Landry rise from cover. But if the lady cared enough to bring them with her, shaving precious seconds off their getaway, they might be worth a closer look.

Whatever they contained, they were his only hope of getting information from DeVries now that the man himself had been irrevocably silenced. Scattered papers, glossy photographs... and Susan Landry. It made some sense.

Susan had been with DeVries before the raiders struck. There was a chance that he had spilled some measure of the manufactured case against Brognola, speaking carelessly, perhaps, or out of cold deliberation, playing to his audience. Most frames looked better in the media than in court, Bolan knew, and he was betting that DeVries had planned a series of strategic leaks to stain Brognola's reputation. Someone else had vetoed the idea with bullets, and the Executioner could only hope that something might be salvaged from the ruins before it was too late.

Except, he told himself, it might already be too late.

Conditioned toward ignoring hopeless odds, he pushed the defeatist train of thought away. It wouldn't matter what the scattered papers said or who might be depicted in the photographs, if the two of them were swept up by police responding to the shooting call. Before he could protect his friends, the soldier knew it would be necessary to protect himself, to put some ground between himself and five fresh corpses that would have to be explained.

He had no explanation for the carnage yet, but it was coming. He could feel it in his gut. If only he could recognize the answer, seize the truth before it throttled him.

She watched him as he finished with the printouts of Brognola's phone calls, passed them back and started riffling through the photographs a second time. Was that a frown of recognition? Of concern? The silence stretched between them like a taut piano wire, and Susan Landry clenched both hands together in her lap to keep from gnawing at her nails.

He looked the same... or did he? Finely chiseled features, so unlike the face that she had known in Cleveland, but she recognized him well enough from their encounter on the eve of his defection from the Phoenix Program, from another meeting in a Texas cell block.

She wondered if those eyes had seen so much of blood and fire that they could never smile again. She stopped herself before the maudlin train of thought could take her any farther. She was on a story, dammit, and the man beside her was a part of it. If there had been no solid handle on the thing before, she had it now. One federal officer accused of bribery and worse, a second murdered in his home by contract killers — and the Executioner in Washington. Again.

Despite herself, she felt a certain awe in Bolan's presence and she realized that it could rob her of her objectivity if she permitted it to go too far. The man had saved her life on two occasions — no, three; she couldn't just forget about tonight — and in return she studied him as if he were some kind of laboratory specimen, examining his actions, scrutinizing motive and effect. It was her job, and yet she owed him so much more.

The man's arrival was coincidence, his brisk elimination of the four assassins done before he even knew that she was in the room. It scarcely counted if you put things in perspective properly.