Don Pendleton: Final Assault

The guard jerked as a pistol snarled. Shooting blind was the other possibility. Bolan held the dying man upright and reached across his chest to grab the pistol holstered beneath the guard’s cheap jacket. Without pulling the gun from its holster, he twisted it up and got a grip on the butt. Then he charged forward, holding up the sagging weight of the dead man like a shield. The smoke billowed and swirled, parted by the abrupt motion. He saw the second guard, eyes wide, mouth agape, the black-barrelled automatic in his hand bobbing up to fire again. Bolan fired first. The rounds punched through its previous owner’s coat and perforated the skull of the guard who’d killed him. He fell back against the door to the stairs, a red halo marking the wall behind his head.

Bolan let his human shield drop and he spun, raising the UMP. He fired off a burst, chewing the frame of the door that led to Claricuzio’s rooms. The door, which had been in the process of opening, slammed shut. Bolan didn’t hesitate. He padded forward quickly, aware that the other two guards could show up at any time. He fired two quick bursts with the UMP, once where the lock would be and then where the hinges would be screwed into the frame. Then he hit the door with his shoulder and rode it down. His teeth rattled in his head as he landed but it was better than having them shot out of his head by the guard he knew was inside the room.

The latter let off a panicked shot that sliced the air above Bolan’s head, then fell screaming as the soldier cut his legs out from under him with a burst from the UMP. Bolan pushed himself to his feet and stepped fully into the room, pausing only to deliver the coup de grace to the wounded man.

Domingo Claricuzio sat in his chair, his eyes on the television in front of him. He looked like an elderly hawk, and any excess flesh he might have once possessed had sloughed off with the passage of years. Claricuzio was a dangerous man, quick with a blade or a garrotte even into his sixties. “I like this show,” Claricuzio said, apropos of nothing. He pulled his feet back as the blood from his guard soaked into the carpet. His gaze flicked to the dead man. He clucked his tongue. “His mother will be disappointed.”

His eyes tilted, taking in Bolan and the smoking weapon he cradled. “I expected you sooner.” It was said calmly. There was no fear or anger or hate in the old man’s eyes, just...nothing. It was like looking into the eyes of a shark.

Bolan stared at the old man silently. This was not what he’d expected. He had come intending to cut the head off a snake, but taking the mobster into custody would be just as effective.

“Get up,” he said. “You have a gun?”

Claricuzio made a face. “Do I have a gun? What do I look like?” he said.

A shout from behind propelled Bolan into motion, and with instinct born from painful experience he hurled himself to the side. The soldier crashed into the wall and used the momentum to spin himself around as a flurry of bullets cracked through the air where he’d been standing.

Claricuzio gave a shout and flung himself out of his chair. Bolan couldn’t take the time to track him. His trigger finger twitched, and he emptied the UMP’s clip into the first of the gunmen who’d entered the room behind him.

The second, whether through desperation or simple instinct, lunged past his compatriot’s falling body and crashed into Bolan. The Executioner let the UMP drop and grabbed his opponent’s wrist, twisting the black shape of the automatic up and away from his face. The gunman cursed him in Italian and hammered a punch into his side. Bolan barely felt it, thanks to his body armor. He smashed his forearm into the guard’s face as he squeezed the man’s wrist, forcing him to release his pistol. As the gun clattered to the floor, he jerked the man’s arm up and drove his fist into the fleshy point where arm met shoulder. The guard’s arm dislocated with an audible pop and he stumbled back, his face white with pain. Bolan didn’t let him get far.

He grabbed the guard’s shirt, whirled him about and snaked his arms around the man’s neck, snapping it. Bolan let the body topple forward and released a sharp breath.

Something dug into Bolan’s side. It didn’t penetrate his body armor, but it took the wind out of him. If Bolan hadn’t been wearing the armor, he would have been dead. The soldier twisted about, clawing for his knife as Claricuzio came at him again. “You asked if I had a gun. I don’t, but I got a knife, and I know just where to put it,” he said as he slashed at Bolan with a thin, medieval-looking stiletto. “You think you can just show up and take me down?”

“That was the plan,” Bolan said, backing away, one hand extended to block Claricuzio’s next blow. As he spoke, he drew his KA-BAR combat knife and held it low.

“Who sent you, hey? Anthony? Salvatore?” Claricuzio licked his lips. “Little Sasha?”

“None of the above,” Bolan said.

Claricuzio shook his head irritably. “You’ll tell me,” he said. He lunged, moving with the grace of a man half his age, almost quicker than Bolan’s eye could follow. The tip of the stiletto scratched a red line across Bolan’s chin as he ducked his head to protect his throat. The soldier drove his own knife into Claricuzio’s side, angling the blade toward the heart. The old mafioso stumbled against him with a strangled wheeze. Bolan extricated himself and the other man slid off his knife and tumbled to the floor.

He sank to his haunches beside Claricuzio but didn’t bother to check for a pulse. The old man was dead. Bolan’s knife had torn through his heart, and his blood was soaking into the floorboards, where it mingled with that of his guards. Bolan examined the withered features for a moment, then looked away. Claricuzio had deserved death, and he’d gotten it. The Executioner pushed himself to his feet and snatched up the UMP. It was time to go. The police likely wouldn’t arrive for some time, but there was no reason to tempt fate.

Bolan’s sat phone rang.

His mind considered and discarded possibilities in the millisecond between the second ring and the moment he accepted the call and raised the phone to his ear. “All finished, Striker?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” There was a brief hesitation. “Claricuzio—I don’t have to ask, I suppose.”

Something in Hal Brognola’s tone caused Bolan to snap alert. “What is it?”

“The usual,” Brognola said grimly.

Bolan looked at the bodies at his feet and said, “Talk.”

3

The Gulf of Aden

“There he is,” Yacoub said softly. He made a surreptitious gesture toward the sky and the black shape moving through its wide, blue expanse.

Garrand glanced up and then back at his watch. He, Yacoub and three of his men stood on the Demeter ’s upper deck, between the control room and what Garrand thought of as the cabana—a sheltered wet bar and outdoor swimming pool.

“Right on time,” he said. Ten hours had passed since they’d stormed the ship. The plan had gone off without a hitch, as he’d known it would. Though there were a few bodies to be disposed of, once they had time. He tapped his watch. “I’ll say this for him—he’s prompt.”

“He better be. I’m getting tired of standing out here in the sun so the remoras can film us,” Yacoub said, jerking the barrel of his weapon toward the gaggle of hostages corralled in the cabana. They were mostly press, with a few others mixed in—whose names and faces Garrand found vaguely familiar. Celebrities with nothing better to do than ride around on a retrofitted cargo ship, including three reality show finalists, an advice columnist and one style blogger, none of whom seemed to really understand their predicament. Or if they did, they were hiding it well.