Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

A soldier watched his buddy's back, and that was it. No need to ask for help or offer thanks to any of the living when the smoke had cleared. Tomorrow it could be someone else's world in jeopardy, and yesterday's potential victim would be riding with the cavalry again.

Inside the trunk he heard Brognola kill the engine. He felt Hal shifting in the driver's seat, imagined him as he went through the ritual of double-checking weapons, getting ready to go EVA against an unknown enemy. His door slammed, sent a tremor through the car and Leo felt himself begin to sweat.

Hal drummed his knuckles on the trunk, the sound reverberating hollowly, and Leo grimaced, feeling like a mouse inside a kettle drum. He heard Brognola's footsteps gradually receding on the pavement, finally lost, and Turrin wrapped one hand around the tight rubber bands that held down the trunk lid.

He had been told to wait for contact while Brognola scouted the territory, waiting for the enemy to show himself. If Hal and Bolan were mistaken, if the hostiles were sincere about exchanging Helen and the kids for information, it would go no farther; Hal had lists of phony names and numbers that would have the bastards chasing their tails for a month. But if the others were correct in their assumption of an ambush, if the gunners opened up on Hal from who knows where, it would be Leo's job to spring the trap and cover Hal's retreat, while Bolan flanked the enemy and hit them where they lived.

It had all sounded fine on paper in Brognola's living room. But it was dark outside, and there were God knew how many hiding places in the cemetery, any shadow adequate for lurking snipers who could drop Hal in his tracks. Snipers who could riddle Leo as he tried to scramble from the trunk, all knees and elbows in the crucial instant when surprise evaporated.

Leo was a goddamned sitting duck and didn't like the feeling, but at least he wasn't out there in the open with the cross-hairs planted on his face already. He found the Uzi's safety catch and eased it off, prepared to come out firing and to make the most of his advantage while it lasted.

If they didn't kill him first.

If someone didn't stitch the car with armor-piercing rounds and leave him leaking like a bag of mangled groceries in the trunk, or light him up with tracers in a flash of detonating fuel.

Too many ifs.

And it was too damned late, in any case. He was committed now whichever way it played. There was time to think of Bolan, wonder if the soldier was all right, if he had run afoul of roving sentries in the darkness. Then the sound of voices drifted to him from the outer darkness.

He could recognize Brognola's voice, but could not make out any of the words. The other voice was unfamiliar, and he didn't have a prayer of understanding anything the stranger said. He was about to ease the trunk lid open wider when the voices were eclipsed by sudden gunfire, the staccato yapping of an automatic pistol, answered by the booming echo of Brognola's Bulldog .44.

He ripped the taut elastic free and kicked the lid back, rolling clear before the enemy could swing around and bring him under fire. Already homing on the sound of gunshots, moving in a combat crouch, he held the Uzi primed and ready, eager for a target to present itself.

The shit was in the fan, and there was no safe way around it now that battle had been joined. As other weapons chimed in from the darkness, muzzle-flashes winking from the shadows, Turrin drew small consolation from the fact that they were fighting in a graveyard. If they lost it here, at least he would not have to travel far. With any luck, there might be room for one more soldier in the hallowed ground of Arlington.

Brognola had been waiting for the voice, but when it came to him from out of the gloom he was startled all the same. He lurched around, embarrassed, hoping that the darkness had concealed his momentary fear. He concentrated on the voice and willed his hands to cease their trembling.

"You're alone?"

"As ordered."

Hardmen liked that tone of deference. He kept his fingers crossed that it might lead the contact to relax his guard.

"I ought to check the car."

"Feel free."

The shadow had a human shape now, drifting nearer, pausing less than fifty feet away. His contact hesitated, thinking on it, and Brognola flexed the fingers of his gun hand. Waiting.

The shadow had made up its mind.

"Forget it. Hell, we trust each other, right?"

Brognola did not answer. He was working on the voice, trying to remember where and when he might have heard it in the past. It was familiar and yet...

"You brought the list?"

Brognola slipped his left hand in the pocket of his trench coat, and the shadow tensed, prepared for treachery. He tried to gauge the man's reaction time, encumbered by a greatcoat as he was, his hands apparently encased in gloves. If he was a professional the extra layers of clothing might not count for anything, but then again...

He had the empty sheets of paper in his hand and now he held them up, allowed the shadow just a glimpse before his arm fell back against his side.

"All right. I told them you were good for it. Some of them had their doubts, but I was on your side."

"I'm touched."

"Hey, don't go bitter on me, friend. We're in this thing together."

"Not quite."

"Well, damn, I'm sorry you feel that way."

The shadow was advancing slowly, one hand edging toward his open coat, a movement so relaxed, so casual that Hal might easily have missed it if he had not been on edge, expecting the betrayal to begin at any moment. He saw the cross-hand draw before his enemy was even close, his own reaction taking him away and low, outside the first instinctive line of fire. The Bulldog .44 was in his hand before his belly hit the pavement, teeth clenched tight to keep the precious air from being driven from his lungs on impact.

And it was the shadow's turn to jump this time. The guy was dragging out an automatic from beneath his arm, sidestepping in a last-ditch bid to save himself. But he was far too late. Brognola braced the Bulldog in both hands, squeezing off in double-action as his human target tried to bring the automatic into rough alignment with his face. A blind man could have made the shot at something under forty feet, and in the instant that he fired, Brognola's night eyes were performing perfectly.

Round one punched through the target's primly buttoned vest and rocked him on his heels, the automatic booming in reflexive fire. He was already going over backward when Brognola's second round ripped through his armpit, flattening to mutilate one lung before it came to rest behind a shoulder blade.

Hal was scrambling to his feet when the surrounding darkness exploded in his face. Converging streams of automatic fire erupted from the shadows, tracking, searching for him, driving him to the ground again. Aware that Bolan had been right, deriving little in the way of consolation from that knowledge now, he scuttled crablike on his belly for the cover of the Unknown Soldier's monument. Around him bullets screamed and whined on impact with the pavement, snapping overhead as hidden gunners tried to find the range and elevation.

An enemy round traced liquid fire across his buttocks and another whispered past his head. Scrambling for his life, Brognola felt like some enormous lizard struggling to cross the highway, caught by traffic in the middle of the noonday rush. Another moment and the whispering death would overtake him.

But he had taken one of them, and he wasn't finished yet. He was alive and fighting.

The monument was looming over him, and Hal was braced to make a final rush for cover when the gunner showed himself, a slender shape detaching from the deeper shadow of the Unknown Soldier's tomb, an errant shaft of moonlight glinting off the silenced Ingram in his fist. Brognola fired instinctively, the Bulldog rising as he cranked off three in rapid-fire, the big rounds ripping in from groin to solar plexus, their explosive impact devastating at a range of less than fifteen feet.