Don Pendleton - Conflict Zone

The Executioner fired at the closer one first, semiauto, one round through the chest as he lurched to his feet and then tumbled back down in a sprawl. If he wasn’t dead, he was well on the way.

Number two had been dazed when his bike rammed the tree, but he came up with pistol in hand and got off two quick rounds in the heartbeat of life he had left. Bolan’s second shot punched the guy’s left eye through the back of his head. The soldier was dead on his feet, reeling through one more short step before he collapsed, leaving Bolan three Jeeps and all hands aboard to contend with.

High beams washed over the scene, bleaching tree trunks and ferns, forcing Bolan to squint. He lost sight of Mandy for a moment, then her pistol was banging away at the enemy. Two, three, four shots in a row, echoing through the woods.

And had she scored?

The lead Jeep swerved from Mandy’s barking gun and ran over the second biker Bolan had put down, pinning his corpse beneath one of its tires. The occupants sprang clear, using their vehicle for cover as the others arrived. If any of them had been hit by Mandy’s fire, it didn’t show.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN a standoff, then, but Bolan didn’t plan to hang around to trade shots with the MEND gunners until sunrise. He’d already beamed a silent signal from a small transmitter on his combat harness to a satellite miles overhead, from which it would rebound to a receiver Jack Grimaldi carried with him.

The scrambled signal came down to a single word.

Ready.

Meaning that Bolan had succeeded in retrieving Mandy Ross, and they were on their way to rendezvous with the Stony Man pilot, to be airlifted from a selected hilltop to the K-Tech Petroleum complex in Warri.

There’d been no way to explain that they were being chased by gunmen bent on killing them, that it might slow them or that Grimaldi might wind up waiting in vain for passengers who never showed.

“Ready” meant Grimaldi would be airborne by now and on his way. Another loop over the Gulf of Guinea, then the run toward shore beneath radar. To find…what?

The ace pilot could wait a little while, but not forever. If they meant to catch that ride, they had to move.

Bolan palmed a frag grenade, yanked the pin and pitched the bomb overhand, across the road and into the trees where his enemies clustered. He hadn’t warned Mandy, and the blast brought a little squeal from her lips, but she recovered and had her piece ready when two of the MEND gunners lurched from cover.

Bolan took the taller of them with a head shot, and was swinging toward the second when he heard Mandy’s pistol popping again, four shots in rapid fire. At least one found its target, spinning him and punching him back toward the trees with an odd little hop before falling facedown.

Bolan left him to Mandy, in case the guy got up again, but she’d already shifted to fire at the other guerrillas concealed in the tree line. Two more shots, and Bolan saw her pistol’s slide lock open on an empty chamber.

That would leave her with one magazine of fifteen rounds, assuming it was fully loaded when he’d pulled it from the dead man’s ammo pouch. He couldn’t help her if she burned through that too quickly, but with any kind of luck, their problem might’ve been resolved by then.

To which end, Bolan lobbed another frag grenade a few yards to the left of where his first had landed, waiting for the smoky flash and cries of pain. Before the echoes faded, he was up and moving, charging across the road on a diagonal tack, falling upon his enemies while they were still dazed and disoriented.

Hoping Mandy wouldn’t shoot him by mistake.

A couple of the gunmen saw him coming, but they couldn’t manage a response in time to save themselves. He stitched them both with 3-round bursts of 5.56 mm manglers, sweeping on to spray the other four still on their feet. Then he switched to semiauto, dealing mercy rounds to those who had been gutted by the shrapnel from his two grenades.

And silence, finally, along the forest road.

Until Mandy called, “Cooper? Are you all right?”

“We’re clear,” he told her, easing from the shadows, back into her line of sight. “Nobody left on this side.”

“Jesus.” She had a vaguely dazed expression on her face as she emerged from the tree line, pistol dangling, asking him, “Are they all dead?”

“They are,” he told her. “And we’re running late.”

“For what?”

“Our lift back to your father.”

“Daddy? Really?”

“I didn’t go through all of this to tell you lies,” Bolan said.

“The Jeep’s wrecked,” she reminded him.

“We’ve got more wheels to choose from,” he replied. “You feel like two, or four.”

“Whatever’s fastest.”

“Two it is,” he said, slinging his rifle as he moved toward the nearest dirt bike.

GRIMALDI BROUGHT a chopper for his second run into Nigeria. There’d be no room to land a plane, and paperwork had been completed—forged, of course, but still impressive—on the whirlybird.

It was a Bell 206L LongRanger, seating seven, powered by an Allison 250-C20B turboshaft engine. Its 430-mile range was adequate, since he’d be refueling in Warri, and its cruising speed of 139 miles per hour would put him over the LZ in two hours and change, if he met no opposition along the way.

And if he did, well, he was done.

The Bell wasn’t a gunship, and it wouldn’t outrun military aircraft if the Nigerian air force happened to spot him, despite his running underneath their radar. At last count, they had six Mil Mi-24 helicopters on tap, assuming they didn’t send one of their fifteen Chengdu F-7 jet fighters to blast him out of the sky with rockets or twin 30 mm cannons.

Either way, he’d be dead, leaving Bolan and his damsel stranded. Which was simply unacceptable.

Pickups were always worse than drops. This time, he’d actually have to set down on the ground while Bolan and the girl scrambled aboard. If they had company, the best that the ace pilot could do to help was wave the Springfield .45 he carried in a shoulder rig and tell them what he thought about their ancestors.

But leaving without Bolan and his charge wasn’t an option. Never had been, never would be.

Only if Grimaldi reached the arranged LZ and saw them dead, beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, would he return alone the way he’d come. And what would happen then?

A sat-phone message to the Farm, for starters, bearing news that everyone on-site had dreaded from the day they first broke ground.

And after that?

Grimaldi didn’t want to think about what Brognola would do, how he’d react. Whether retaliation would be ordered, or the whole thing would be written off as fubar from the jump.

Who would they even target, in retaliation for eliminating Bolan? Could they pin it on an individual or group of heavies beyond question? Would the scorched-earth treatment help to ease their suffering?

Grimaldi couldn’t answer that, but if it happened, he intended to be part of the first wave.

And then all thoughts of loss and grief were banished as he saw Bolan astride a dirt bike, on the chosen hilltop, with a young blonde just dismounting. Leave it to the big guy to pick up a stylish date.

Smiling, Grimaldi took the chopper down.

Effurun, Delta State

Ekon Afolabi often stroked his sparse, red-tinged goatee when he was in a thoughtful mood. This day, pacing his office like a caged animal, he yanked the wiry hairs as if attempting to uproot them.

“Say it again, Taiwo. How many dead?”

“Fifteen, at least,” Babatunde replied. His voice rumbled out of his massive body as if he were speaking from deep in a pit.

“And then, the woman gone, of course.”