Don Pendleton - Killing Game

Men fought men.

It didn’t matter a bit that the two terrorists held the latest technology in small-arms warfare after the Executioner had ended both of their lives with a pair of old-fashioned 12-gauge shotgun shells.

The Mossberg JIC either had one round left in it or none. But either way, the Executioner decided it could no longer serve as his primary weapon. Letting the short-barreled shotgun fall to the floor, he drew the Desert Eagle with his right hand, the Beretta 93-R with his left. Pushing the big .44’s safety lever forward with his thumb, he moved the smaller 93-R’s selector switch to 3-round-burst mode.

Bolan moved cautiously toward the staircase that led to the top level of the house. Below him, on the first floor at the rear of the house, he heard more pistol fire—what sounded like 9 mm and .45s. His guess was that Platinov had now abandoned the huge 500 S&W Magnum gun and circled the house, coming in some back entrance with her top-of-the-line .45-caliber Colt Gold Cups. Whoever she was shooting it out with down there had to be welding the 9 mms.

When he reached the corner, the Executioner inched an eye around the barrier, the Beretta in his left hand hanging at the end of his arm in front of him, ready to rise and fire if he saw any sign of the enemy. He didn’t, and another step around the corner found him slowly, and cautiously climbing the final flight of stairs.

A thin, well-worn carpet ran down the middle of the stairs, leaving a foot or so of exposed wood on either side of each step. Bolan stayed on the carpet, both pistols in front of him, ready to send a .44 Magnum RBCD total-fragmentation round or a 3-round burst of the same “exploding” bullets in 9 mm, up the stairwell. The carpet muffled the sounds of his hiking shoes. But the ancient wood still creaked with every step.

Bolan knew there were more CLODO terrorists upstairs, and they knew he was on the way.

Just before he reached the top step, the Executioner stopped and dropped to his knees, leaning forward to peer around yet another corner. He could see roughly half of the room, and it looked like it had been set up as a young boy’s bedroom by the previous owners. Posters of rock bands and rap groups covered the walls, European, American and Japanese. He could also see two half doors against the far wall that reached from the floor to the point where the ceiling sloped downward.

Closets, the Executioner realized, with latch locks to keep the doors closed.

But although the doors were both closed, the latches hung straight down, unlocked. It didn’t take a genius to assume that if there were terrorists on this floor of the house, they’d be inside the closets.

The Executioner straightened and took the last step to the landing just outside the top bedroom. He peered around the last corner, surveying the other half of the room. It appeared devoid of human beings, but the front wall of the room contained one more of the odd, slanting closets

Bolan stepped into the room. The floor was bare wood, and he took advantage of the soft rubber soles of his hiking shoes to make the least amount of noise possible as he moved to the closet to his right. A large window looked out over the backyard next to the unlatched door, and he glanced that way for a second.

The light had been on in the upstairs bedroom when he’d arrived, adding to his suspicions that the room was occupied. That meant that his vision out of the window into the backyard was limited, while anyone behind the house could see him clearly.

But no one fired at him, which told the Executioner that Platinov had taken out any of the terrorists who might have been in the backyard.

Holstering the Desert Eagle, Bolan transferred the Beretta 93-R to his right hand and stepped just to the side of the closet door. The way the roof angled downward, he was forced to stoop slightly and bend his knees. From this uncomfortable, semibalanced position, he reached out with his left hand, grasped the door latch and swung the door open.

A second after that, a hailstorm of gunfire blew out of the opening just to his side. Bolan waited for the blasts to die down. Then, during the lightning-fast millisecond when the shooters wondered why they saw no dead body in front of them, he curved his arm around the corner into the short closet, blindly spraying four 3-round bursts up, down and to both sides.

With only four rounds left in the Beretta, Bolan dropped the magazine and inserted a fresh 15-round box. Inside the closet, he could hear a soft moaning and the deep intakes of breath. He kept the Beretta close to his shoulder as, still stooped, he leaned around the doorway and angled the pistol inside the tiny room.

Lying on the floor were four CLODO terrorists. Three wore the tan shirts and brown trousers that the group used for identification purposes. The fourth was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt that bore the likeness of the American comedian Jerry Lewis.

Two of the men, both wearing these unofficial CLODO uniforms, lay on the floor, obviously dead. They were as still as rocks, having taken the frangible 9 mm rounds in their heads. The third man in brown and tan lay across them. It was he who was doing the moaning as he clutched his lower abdomen with both hands.

A 3-round burst into the man mercifully ended his moaning.

Shotguns, pistols and rifles were scattered across the floor and on top of the bodies.

Bolan knew that the men in the other two closets had to have heard the gunfire. So as he backed out of the room, trading the Beretta in his right hand for the Desert Eagle. This time, he moved in front of the door of the second closet but fired an entire magazine of Magnum rounds through the splintery wood before reloading and holstering the big .44, all the while keeping the door covered by the Beretta.

The wood of the door was now splintered and warped, so rather than open it, the Executioner lifted a foot and kicked. Sharp pieces of wood flew into the closet ahead of him as the door disintegrated. Forced to bend his knees and stoop again, Bolan stepped forward and surveyed the contents of the closet. Only two of the terrorists had chosen this tiny room in which to take refuge, and both lay dead on the ground.

There was no reason to waste any more time, or ammo, here.

The Executioner turned toward the third closet, which was set into the wall facing the front of the house. He still hadn’t checked under the bed but now he saw an arm reach out from beneath the bedspread holding a 9 mm SiG-Sauer.

Bolan aimed at the weapon and shot it out of the hand holding it. The gunner beneath the bed screamed in pain and jerked his arm back beneath the bed. The soldier dropped to the floor, facing the bed. Beneath the box spring, he could see the man with the bloody hand as well as two more of the CLODO terrorists. He wasn’t surprised.

But having their attacker drop down into firing range shocked the men under the bed, which caused them to hesitate.

And hesitation cost them their lives.

Bolan peppered the underside of the bed with 3-round bursts as the men tried to bring their weapons into target acquisition. It was a losing battle for them, and a second later they, too, lay dead in an ever-spreading pool of mixed blood.

The only place left that could have hidden a CLODO man was the final closet. The Executioner bounded back to his feet and squinted at the door. Its latch was down, too.

The roof in the front wall of the house was higher, so this door and closet were not as slanted as the other two had been. The Executioner moved swiftly now, speed having taken precedence over stealth.

This time, he didn’t have to open the door himself. It flew forward on its own, and a terrorist stepped out, aiming a 12-gauge Remington autoloading shotgun at the Executioner.