Don Pendleton - Dead Reckoning

In his idle hours, few as they might be, Bolan sometimes philosophized about a world without atrocities, devoid of greed and cruelty, hatred, discrimination and suspicion. He would never live to see it—no one would, in fact—because the human animal was deeply and irrevocably flawed.

Men craved what they could not afford, what they had no right to possess. When frustrated in their pursuit of more , they turned on those presumably obstructing them. Some humans learned to channel greed and hatred into lucrative careers in various fields. Others sated their greed through commerce, raping the environment with utter disregard for future generations. Altruists, when they appeared, were such a novelty that they were usually murdered, canonized as saints or both.

The bottom line: there were no angels, and no demons. Every man and woman on the planet was an individual, resisting or surrendering to baser instincts as they passed through life, taking it one day at a time. Some gave free rein to their desires, and in the process jeopardized communities, whole nations, or the world at large.

When those predators stood beyond the reach of ordinary law, they had to be curbed by extraordinary force.

Enter the Executioner, commissioned to continue with a job he’d started on his own, without official sanction, to repay a private debt of blood. He kept on fighting now because he could, because somebody had to if “polite” society was going to survive.

That meant confronting human monsters where they lived and preyed on others weaker than themselves. It meant destroying them, scorching the earth to stall—where he could not prevent—another monster rising in their place.

The war, he realized, could not be won. It was a holding action, not some grand crusade.

Bolan would occupy the firing line as long as he was able. After that...

He hoped that someone would rise to grab the torch.

CHAPTER THREE

Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Bolan had reached the fourth floor and still had not seen any of the God’s Hammer fugitives among the men he and Grimaldi had put down so far. This was the last floor left to check, and he’d begun to worry that they might have slipped the net—or, at the very least, gone shopping, out to get a meal, whatever, and eluded him by sheer coincidence.

Not good.

Before they rushed the final set of apartments, Bolan huddled with Grimaldi on the stairwell. Just above and to their left, he heard the last defenders talking excitedly and priming their weapons, maybe trying to decide if they should rush the stairs or dig in for a last-ditch fight.

“It’s getting dicey now,” he told Grimaldi, almost whispering. “The guys we’re after could be here, but if they’re not—”

The Stony Man pilot saw where he was going and finished for him. “Then we need to bag somebody who can tell us when they left and where they went.”

“Right,” Bolan said. “I’d like to take one down but leave him breathing so we can question him, but don’t take any chances. Still take care of Number One.”

Grimaldi flashed a grin. “Which one of us is Number One?”

“Ready?” Bolan asked him.

“Set.”

Bolan eased up and pitched the frag grenade that he’d been holding while they talked, a blind toss down the narrow hallway. Four-point-something seconds later it exploded, filling the corridor with smoke and dust.

One guy was down and out, sprawled in the middle of the hallway, leaking from at least a dozen shrapnel wounds. A couple others staggered through the battle mist, approaching Bolan in a daze, but neither of their faces rang a bell from Brognola’s portfolio of God’s Hammer fugitives. The Executioner dropped both of them with one round each and moved on, searching.

First door on his left, ajar. He ducked and nudged it open, ready for a burst of autofire, but it was vacant, no one hiding underneath the bed or in the tiny bathroom. Doubling back, he heard Grimaldi’s muffled SMG responding to a challenge from the Hezbollah gunners and went to join him on the firing line.

Grimaldi had already cleared the rooms directly opposite, then run into a roadblock from the second flat in line, off to the right. At least one terroriat was battened down in there, firing short bursts from a Kalashnikov without putting much effort into aiming. So far, he had strafed the ceiling and the walls to either side, while Grimaldi lay prone out in the hallway, waiting for a shot.

Bolan got there ahead of him, his different perspective granting him an early crack at the defender. Three rounds from the Steyr chewed his adversary’s face off—not a face he recognized—and dumped him back across the threshold of the last room he would ever occupy.

Grimaldi bolted to his feet and cleared the apartment, while Bolan took the next one on his left. He saw no further movement in the hallway, no signs of continuing resistance, but they’d have to go the whole route, checking every room and closet, just in case.

Unless...

There was no one in the apartment, but on a whim, he checked the window, the first one he’d seen standing open yet, despite the building’s air-conditioning. A fire escape was bolted to the wall outside, and down below, three men were running toward the far end of an alley lined with garbage bins. One of them paused long enough to glance back at the room he’d lately vacated, and Bolan made his face.

Salman Farsoun, one of the three he’d come to find in Ciudad del Este.

“Jack!” he shouted, through the empty rooms. “Outside! They’re bailing!”

The Stony Man pilot was in the doorway, following, when Bolan clambered through the window and began his steep rush down the fire escape.

* * *

ABDULLAH RAJHID WAS SLOWING, almost at the alley’s mouth with cars and foot traffic beyond, when Salman Farsoun overtook him, blurting out, “I’ve seen them!”

“Seen who?” Rajhid asked him without stopping, without looking backward.

“The Crusaders! One of them, at least.”

“Then he’s seen you,” Rajhid replied. “Come on!”

Walid Khamis was already ahead of them, shoving his Micro Uzi underneath his baggy shirt. Rajhid did likewise with his MAC-10, hoping Farsoun could do something with the larger MP-5 K submachine gun he carried. The sounds of battle from the building they’d abandoned were already drawing notice. Rajhid did not fancy jogging down the boulevard with military weapons on display, alerting passersby to summon the police.

“He was a white man,” Farsoun said, still going on about the fellow he’d seen or had imagined. “An American, perhaps.”

Rahjid would never fully understand these Palestinians. Although himself a Saudi, he was well aware of how the Arab residents of Palestine had suffered since the state of Israel was created by outsiders from the West. Indeed, that had been the spark that lit the fuse on Rahjid’s own jihad, but there was still something peculiar about soldiers such as Khamis and Farsoun. They suffered from excitability, erratic moods, and Rajhid found them easily distracted at important moments of an operation.

Now, for instance, when his mind was focused on escape, Farsoun wanted to talk about some man he’d seen—but why? To what result?

“Come on!” Rajhid repeated. “We can talk about it later.”

“But—”

“Enough! Now hide that gun or leave it here!”

Farsoun lifted his shirt and shoved the MP-5 K underneath one armpit, lowering his arm to keep the weapon clamped against his side. Rajhid hoped he could keep it there, but had no plans to stay behind and help Farsoun if he got careless, drawing notice to himself.

The sidewalk they emerged on to was crowded, some people already slowing, peering down the alley toward the sounds of battle echoing along its length. Rajhid pushed through and past them. He might have warned Khamis to slow his pace a bit, attempted to act more normal, but he didn’t want the strangers passing by to put the two of them together.