Don Pendleton - Treason Play

He keyed the throat mike.

“Jack?”

“Go, Sarge.”

“There was a phone company van parked outside when I entered the building. How about now?”

“Gone, baby, gone.”

“You see it move?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah. It turned the corner a couple of minutes ago, just after the repair guys disappeared into the building.”

Bolan scowled. “You got it in sight?”

“Affirmative. It’s pulling into the parking garage.”

The soldier stopped and drew the Beretta from beneath his jacket. “Okay, my guess is it’s heading for the sixth floor to pick up the two guys and Gillen.”

“I’ll head that way,” the Stony Man pilot stated.

“Don’t engage unless you have to. They may already know they’ve been identified. Until then, let’s play it cool.”

“Clear. By the way—”

“What?” By now he was on the move again, hugging the walls in the hallway, pressing the Beretta against his thigh to keep it out of sight.

“Couple more guys came in after the chumps in the repair outfits. Maybe two minutes later. Both had been standing on the opposite side of the street, but they converged on the building in unison.”

“Sloppy.”

“Probably,” Grimaldi said. “But they’re probably headed your way.”

Bolan reached the end of the corridor. It branched off in two opposing directions, like the top of a T. Flattening against the wall, he peered around the corner and saw the two repairmen exit the elevator and turn in the direction of Gillen’s apartment. Bolan kept the Beretta low at his side and rounded the corner. He started for the men as they came to a stop in front of Gillen’s apartment.

THE SHARP KNOCK ON THE door startled Tamara Gillen. Who the hell could that be? she wondered. Kellogg? No way. There hadn’t been enough time for him to have traveled from the bureau to her apartment. Uncoiling from the chair, she moved to the door. The .22-caliber pistol was tucked into the waistband of her pants and covered by her shirttails.

“Who is it?” she called before reaching the door.

“Phone company,” a male voice replied.

Reaching the door, she peered through the peephole and saw two men in telephone company uniforms standing outside her door.

“I didn’t call you.”

“Of course you didn’t,” the man said with a laugh, “the phones are down.”

Gillen scowled and walked over to the cordless telephone that stood on a small table in her kitchen that doubled as a desk when she worked from home or paid bills. She returned the phone to its charging base and stared at it for a moment. Her pulse quickened. None of this made sense, she thought. If all the phones were down, why check each apartment? She reached underneath her shirt and drew the small pistol. She began backing away from the door, figuring she should find her bag and leave via the fire escape if these guys became too insistent.

“Hang on,” she said. “I need to put on a robe.”

Something thudded against the door, striking it just above the knob. She took in a sharp breath of air and backed away from the door, then brought the pistol up in a two-handed grip.

A second thud registered with her and the wood around the latch exploded into splinters before the door swung inward. One of the men surged into the apartment. In his hand, he gripped he a pistol and he was moving it around, looking for a target. The second man barreled through the door just a couple of steps behind the first.

So little space separated them that Gillen didn’t bother to yell for the men to stop. Her pistol popped twice and one of the intruders grunted as bullets drilled into him. However, his body continued to hurtle forward, powered by sheer momentum. She sidestepped him as a matador might move from the path of an angry bull, and he stumbled past her.

A dark blur flashed into her vision and something hard struck her wrist. She yelped, and the gun slipped from her fingers and hit the floor. Her attacker moved in close, grabbing a fistful of the fabric of her shirt, then hitting her in the ribs, hard, to knock her off balance. She stumbled back toward the wall. Her attacker grinned and stepped forward.

Then his head exploded in a fine red mist. His suddenly decapitated body lurched forward one more step before collapsing.

A big man stood behind the dead man’s former position, a pistol in his outstretched hand. Smoke curled up from the handgun’s barrel. The weapon coughed once more, sending a bullet into the man she’d shot a moment ago.

She saw the newcomer’s lips move, thought she heard noise, but the words didn’t register with her.

“Ms. Gillen. Tamara, we need to go,” he said.

The sound of her own name jarred her from the shock that had startled to settle over her. His words sank in as he pulled her to her feet. She jerked her arm from his grip. He didn’t resist.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No time.”

She stayed rooted to the spot. “Who are you?” she repeated.

“I’m a U.S. federal agent. I’m here because of Terry Lang.”

“Terry?”

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

When they stepped into the hallway, the man stopped.

She noticed that even while standing still, he radiated an energy as though he were coiled, ready to strike. He wheeled ninety degrees, his gun coming up at the same time. Gillen stared after him and saw the cause of his consternation. A man was stepping into view from an adjoining hallway, an assault rifle clutched in his arms, the barrel tracking in on her and her companion.

BOLAN SENSED THE FIRST attacker before he came into view. He wheeled around, the Beretta’s snout zeroing in on his target, a man toting an AK-47. The Executioner squeezed the trigger and the Beretta spit a triburst of 9 mm manglers. The slugs hammered into the man’s chest and caused him to freeze in midstride before he collapsed to the floor.

A second shooter moved in on Bolan and Gillen. The hardman’s machine pistol spewed fire and lead. Bullets sliced through the air inches above the soldier’s head. A double tap of the Beretta’s trigger and the gun coughed out a flurry of six rounds that didn’t strike flesh, but drilled into the wall just behind his attacker, forcing him to take cover.

Bolan whipped his head toward Gillen.

“Move,” he shouted, gesturing at the mouth of a nearby hallway.

Nodding, she turned and sprinted for the corridor.

The Executioner squeezed off two more bursts from the Beretta. The cover fire put his enemies on the defensive. He ejected the handgun’s magazine and slammed another into the weapon’s grip. In the same instant, another gunner mistook the lull in firing as a chance to catch his opponent by surprise. He came around the corner. The move exposed the shooter’s face and his gun hand. Bolan’s Beretta chugged out a volley of 9 mm rounds. Simultaneously the other man’s own weapon cracked, spitting jagged tongues of flame from its muzzle. A couple of bullets from the AK ripped through the fabric of Bolan’s windbreaker while other rounds slammed into plasterboard or ripped through carpet and wood.

The 9 mm slugs from the Beretta drilled into the gunner’s face. The impact spun him violently. Even as the guy slammed to the floor, Bolan heard metal clicking on metal behind him. He wheeled and saw that Gillen had disappeared from view. Moving through the mouth of the corridor into which she’d just disappeared, he spotted a metal door with an exit sign fixed above it at the end of the hallway. The soldier marched toward the door, hoping he could catch up with the woman before Nawaz Khan and his people found her.

Aleksander Mazorov knew he needed to move fast.

The big Russian raced up the stairs with a stealth that belied his size. In his right hand, he clutched a Browning Hi-Power. He heard a door snap closed from a couple of flights of stairs above. A smile ghosted his lips. He guessed, hoped, that the woman was coming his way, perhaps with the bastard who’d shot his men right at her side. His grip on the Browning tightened, but he kept it flat against his thigh while he continued to climb the steps. He needed to grab the woman and get the hell out of the building as soon as possible, before the local police arrived and he either got scooped up by them or had to shoot his way out of the situation.