Don Pendleton: Savage Rule

Then the Executioner’s knives came out.

The longer blade almost leaped into his right hand, the coarse weave of the handle wrap firm in his grip as if welded there. He drew the shorter blade, its textured handle stippled for traction, and spun the knife on his palm into a reverse grip, the edge oriented toward his own body. Moving silently, Bolan used the flickering shadows, the dancing flames and flashes of gunfire to his advantage, entering his enemies’ midst, his blades flashing, stabbing and carving.

The first few soldiers went down silently, dead before they knew it. Bolan, implacable as he moved surgically forward, took no emotion from the act. There was no feeling of triumph; there was no sense of victory. He was simply performing a necessary function, grim purpose his only guide. The faces of the enemy invaders who fell before him were flash-burned onto his memory, joining the ranks of the countless others whose lives had ended as invisible notches on the grips of the Executioner’s weapons. He remembered them all; he wasn’t some unfeeling, unthinking mass murderer. The Executioner was a force for righteous redress, and as the agent of Justice, he would never shrink from acknowledging his lethal acts in that blindfolded figure’s name.

The silent knifings did more damage than Bolan’s clever shooting could have. As men began screaming, and then dying quietly, choking and gurgling in pain, a wave of renewed panic spread through the ranks of the already disorganized, terrified fighting men. Bolan narrowly avoided being shot by several Honduran soldiers who began firing at one another, screaming curses in Spanish. Rolling aside as one line of men advanced on the second, Bolan brought his large blade singing through the backs of their boots. The heavy knife chopped through the nylon and leather, slicing the left leg of the first man, both legs of the second and the right leg of a third, severing the Achilles tendons. The three folded, collapsing on limbs that could no longer bear their weight, and Bolan’s knives were the last things the shooters felt in life.

From the perspective of the opposing gunners, it was as if a line of men simply disappeared into the flickering shadows and chaos, falling away in unison. They sprayed out their magazines, firing in all directions. Bolan flattened himself to the ground as bullets buzzed above him.

Crawling out of the immediate zone of crazed fire, he paused. Before him, in a small clearing where two dozen troops were arrayed, was a giant of a man. The sleeves of his fatigues had been ripped off and the muscles of his arms bulged impossibly, the result of what could only be steroid abuse. The big Honduran, who wore an officer’s rank, was crushing the throat of one of his fellow soldiers in the thick fingers of one ham-size hand.

The men surrounding him were trying futilely to remove their comrade from the hulking officer’s grip. Each time any of them moved in, shouting, the big man shoved them back. There was a sickening crack as the officer brought up his free hand, in which he clenched a wooden-handled entrenching tool. He wielded the shovel like a battle-ax, swinging the blade through the jaw of the closest soldier.

As Bolan watched, sheltered in the lee of one of the burning trucks, the massive Honduran made short work of his own soldiers. Like a wounded animal lashing out in pain and rage—Bolan saw blood trickling down the man’s forehead, the crease in the side of his head an obvious bullet graze—he smashed them with his bloody, swollen fist, hacked at them with the shovel and stomped them under the heels of his heavy leather boots, which weren’t the lightweight jungle footwear the rest of the troops wore. Bolan raised an eyebrow, amazed at the man’s ferocity. The giant smashed the last two soldiers together and tossed them aside like broken dolls before fixing one bloodshot eye on the Executioner himself.

Something like recognition, perhaps realization, flitted across the bigger man’s face. Bolan could see the wheels move in the big soldier’s mind, even as the chaos of the miniature civil war Bolan had incited continued to swirl and rage around this temporary pocket of abrupt stillness. The officer was putting it together: Bolan wasn’t one of his men, wasn’t wearing a Honduran military uniform and wasn’t supposed to be where he clearly was, a knife in either hand. The madness that had enveloped the raiding party had suddenly become, for the big man, the result of enemy action rather than bad luck or coincidence. His expression lost its mad, frenzied, berserker cast and hardened into something else. Bolan had seen the expression before and knew it only too well.

It was murderous determination.

Whatever firearms the officer had carried weren’t with him. A flap holster on his belt was open and empty; he had lost his rifle, if he ever had one. If he hadn’t simply lost it in the melee, he had probably fired it empty and discarded it. Bolan saw the behemoth of a man grope left-handed for the weapon, which would have looked like a toy in his fist if he’d had it. He stopped, remembering that the gun was gone, and instead clenched the wooden handle of the shovel.

Bolan could have dropped his knives and gone for one of his weapons, such as the assault rifle on its sling, but that would have defeated the purpose of his creep-and-shoot, crawl-and-stick campaign. He wanted these troops so terrified of their own shadows that they continued to fire at one another, doing his work for him. No one man could take on this many soldiers alone, not directly; to succeed, Bolan had to make them fight one another. He flexed his fingers around the grips of his knives, crouched low and, nodding once, waited for the big man to attack.

The giant Honduran took the nod as the challenge he was meant to see. He bellowed and charged, raising the entrenching tool above him for a killing blow. There was no way Bolan could meet that mad dash head-on; the man was a freight train of muscle powered by berserker rage. Bolan let him come.

At the last moment, just before the Honduran came within range with his shovel, Bolan feinted with his long blade. The soldier made as if to slip past the blade, barely altering his stride. Bolan, rather than completing the slash, fell onto his back in the blood-soaked loam.

Bolan’s combat boots came up, and he shoved out with both legs. The waffle soles of his boots pressed some of the air out of the giant’s stomach on contact, but not nearly enough. Feeling the muscles in his legs straining, Bolan continued to push, carrying the giant over his body. The big Honduran landed on his head in the dirt beyond. The Executioner thought he could feel the earth vibrating, ever so slightly, as the large man crashed to the ground.

The American swiveled and surged to his feet, closing the distance between him and his opponent. The big Japanese-style blade flashed downward—

The Honduran’s hand snaked out and grabbed Bolan’s wrist.

The shock hit Bolan like an electrical charge. Pain shot up his forearm as the big Honduran crushed it in his meaty palm, as if trying to grind the bones within his grasp.

Bolan brought the shorter knife over and down for a killing blow, but the giant blocked with the shovel. Metal struck metal with a sound like a cymbal’s crash.

The noise was drawing attention.

The Honduran dropped his shovel and managed to get a grip on both of his adversary’s forearms, squeezing for all he was worth. The pain was stunning in its sudden intensity. Some men might have passed out from that alone; Bolan could see spots swimming in his vision. Even as his mind raced to find a way out of this situation, he realized that the soldiers nearest them were falling back to brace the giant—and gasping in shock as they realized that the man held in the big man’s grip was not one of their number, after all.