Don Pendleton - Blood Sport

Bolan stepped forward and grabbed the bow. "Hey, I used to hunt a little with a bow. These arrows don't look long enough."

"Don't be an idiot, Sergeant," Thomas said angrily. "You can see for yourself they'll do just fine."

Clifford tried to pull the weapon free from Bolan's iron grip. "Leave me alone," he growled in a low whisper.

"I don't know," Bolan said loudly. "Arrows have to be measured according to each man's pull. These look a little short."

"Would you please shut up," Tanya said. "Mr. Barnes-Fenwick doesn't seem to mind. Rudi, take the bow and escort out guests back to their room. We want them to get plenty of rest before this afternoon."

Rudi elbowed Bolan aside and jerked the bow out of the Welshman's hand. Bolan smiled grimly with relief, but Clifford scowled at him in frustrated rage.

"What about the skier?" Thomas asked. "Shouldn't we run him through one more time?"

"I think not. He's done it perfectly every day, so there's no need to wear him out so soon before the real thing. He knows the route and he can make the jump off the mini-ramp that we have already constructed." She addressed Udo. "You can drop the knapsack in the truck as it passes under you?"

"Yes," Udo said nervously. "I have not missed once so far."

"Fine. Then once you've dropped it, you can keep skiing to freedom."

"With the army chasing after him instead of you," Bolan added.

She smiled smugly. "Yes, but it's still a chance for him to live. Now, you help Rudi lock our little Olympians back in their room. The cabin, not the garage. We want them ready. We have only hours to go."

Rudi pounded his club against the ground. "Let's go," he roared, and the four athletes began to shuffle away in a loose line.

They had not gone ten yards before Babette tripped and pitched face first into the snow. Bolan reached over, grabbing her elbow to help her up, but as she rose she whirled around and pushed him away.

"Don't touch me, you pig!" she yelled, pushing him away. But as she struggled against him, their faces only inches away, she looked up at him, and with the briefest of movements, winked at him. Then he knew for sure that she would be ready for the break, whenever it came. The slaps had been part of her act, an act so convincing he hadn't been sure himself.

"Get away!" she hollered, brushing the snow from her jacket and marching on.

Bolan looked over his shoulder at the terrorist twins. Thomas merely looked annoyed.

But Tanya, obviously pleased, was smiling her thin, evil smile.

"How much longer?" Bolan asked from the back of the van.

"Twenty more minutes, Sergeant," Tanya answered.

Once again Bolan found himself in the lead van with Tanya driving and Rudi riding shotgun, cradling the same 12-gauge Stevens shotgun he had used the night before on the Black Sunday raid. Bolan had the same H and K G-II balanced across his knees, and Tanva still had the remaining clips. The big difference was that instead of being filled with terrorists like it had been last night, the van was filled with four ex-Olympic champions; on their way to the hellgrounds of horrific death, the doomland of chemical fire.

The grotesque Rudi kept his shotgun leveled on them from the front of the bus, and another faceless hardguy kept his Uzi pointed at them from the back of the van.

Through the rear window, Bolan could see Thomas behind the wheel of the trailing van and Hermann sitting next to him. And crowded behind them in the back of their van were ten hardened killers stroking Uzis, sweating and dreaming and praying it would be their buddy and not them that gets killed.

Whatever was going to go wrong had to go wrong soon.

They were less than twenty minutes from the hardsite and Bolan could not wait until they arrived there.

First, he wanted these animals nowhere near striking range of that "yellow rain." Second, with all the excitement, he wanted to avoid soldiers firing innocently on the hostages. And third, he wanted to prevent Clifford from having to fire arrows into any unsuspecting guards... although he had an idea that the Welshman had no intention at all of killing anyone, at least anyone outside the Zwilling Horde. Bolan tried to catch Mako's eye, but the slim Oriental stared straight ahead as if in a self induced trance.

"That was quite a stunt you pulled back there at the camp," Bolan told him.

Mako glanced at the big American and nodded.

"Child's play."

"Perhaps you just need a more challenging situation." Bolan let his stare penetrate Mako's eyes.

Mako shifted on his seat, seemed to understand the message beneath the words. "Perhaps."

"Shut up!" spat Rudi, waving his shotgun between Bolan and Mako. Bolan could not be sure that Mako had understood him, had caught the movement of the eyes that assigned the guy with the Uzi to him. But there was no more time to decide. If they were ever going to make their move it would be now.

And so it was.

Bolan lunged forward, using his left forearm to drive the barrel of the shotgun toward the floor, using the butt of the H and K to club Rudi's skull. Even as he was still grabbing at the shotgun he saw Mako leap across the van at the terrorist with the Uzi. The van wobbled from the shifting of weight, but it wobbled even more when the butt of Bolan's gun cracked Rudi's skull, causing the giant to emit a curdled cry as he impulsively pulled the trigger of his shotgun. The blast tore a hole in the floor. Tanya swerved the van, struggling to maintain control with one hand, reaching for her 9mm Firebird with the other.

Bolan was still grappling with Rudi when he saw Mako and Babette rush forward. Mako grabbed Tanya's wrist between his thumb and forefinger and applied enough pressure to snap the wrist. There was no mistaking that cracking sound coupled with her scream of pain. He yanked her out of the driver's seat while Babette deftly slid in behind the wheel, flooring the gas pedal. Rudi still clung to the shotgun, trying to wrench it out of Bolan's grip. His huge yellow horse teeth flashed in a grimace of pain and concentration, but he was already too weak from the blows to the head. With a sudden twisting movement, Bolan pulled the shotgun free and swung it around to face Rudi.

"I am unarmed," Rudi pleaded. "You would not shoot an unarmed man."

"You've been watching the wrong movies, guy," Bolan said, and fired into the giant's face a 12-gauge boxcar with death as the freight. Ragged chunks of flesh bloodied the inside of the windshield. Fringe pellets shattered the window of the passenger's door.

"God!" Babette shouted and the van swerved before she got it under control.

Bolan swung around to face the back of the van.

Mako hovered over Tanya, the 9mm Firebird pointed at her chest.

The terrorist toughguy lay sprawled on the floor, his eyes wide open, his neck floppily distorted from being broken by an expert.

Clifford Barnes-Fenwick gripped the dead man's Uzi with a stranglehold as if uncertain who to turn it on.

Udo Ganz remained seated where he'd been, staring blankly through the hole in the floor as the road rushed like rapids beneath the speeding van.

"All right, listen to me," Bolan said. "I'm going to tell you what to do and you're going to do it without question or argument. In about thirty seconds, Babette will stop the van. That will force the van behind us to stop too. I'll stall them long enough for you to tear the hell out of here. They will not be able to follow you."

"You against twelve of them?" Babette protested.

"I'll have her," he replied, nodding at Tanya.

"You fool," Tanya snarled. "We could have made you wealthy. A wealthy idiot."

"The only thing you were going to make me is deceased."

"Why can't we just shoot it out,", the Welshm an boomed. "We could shoot out their tires and keep going. We have guns too."