Don Pendleton - Agent Of Peril

Destroying tanks with a .30-caliber rifle wasn’t something he planned for, but he did have eighteen stripper clips of .303 ammunition for the SMLE and he was mentally setting up the long shots to cause mayhem and destruction. Armor-piercing rounds were filling the magazines.

Bolan brought the scope to bear on a stacked crate of 67 mm artillery rockets. He reckoned the distance as around 400 meters, and brought the rifle’s point of aim up enough to compensate, then pulled the trigger. The SMLE shoved against the Executioner’s shoulder. Thick cedar burst apart like flimsy plywood as the 124-grain tungsten-cored slug slammed into the contents of the wooden crate. What happened next shook the ground, but the Executioner was already looking for new targets, throwing the bolt back to feed a fresh .303 into the breach.

With both eyes open, he saw the bowl of smoke rising, a blast zone easily forty yards across. Screams of panic rang out as the terrorists ran for cover. Spotting a fresh target, Bolan pumped a second round through the fuel tank of a motorcycle. Fuel sprayed wildly from the burst bladder, and the gunman atop the bike slipped, tumbling to the ground. Bolan dropped his aim and sent off a second round almost immediately after the first, skipping the third .303 round off the fuel-soaked tarmac. The bullet hit with a flaring spark, and gasoline flashed in a fireball, washing over the guard.

Panicked bodyguards whipped out weaponry from wherever they had it stored and more than a few began blasting at each other. Bolan swept along, burning off the rest of his first magazine, taking shots that nicked or sparked close to already hyper alert gunners.

A few bullets here and there got the maddened gunfight going. Bolan threw back the bolt one last time, then stuffed down ten fresh rounds and closed the rifle, swinging for more new targets. One of the weapons auctioneers was screaming, pointing frantically toward him. The Executioner might have ignored him except for the RPG-7 rocket launcher being aimed in his direction.

With a single stroke of the trigger a bullet slammed into the rocketeer’s groin, tearing through his pelvis with sledgehammer force. In the same instant, the severely injured gunner squeezed the trigger on his weapon, bending halfway over. He skipped the 77 mm warhead off the ground, firing too soon to slam it point first into the earth. The teardrop-shaped warhead deflected and went skidding along the tarmac, giving the detonator time to arm.

In an instant, the point of the rocket struck the treads of the Abrams tank. On impact, the shell went off. The explosion wasn’t the earthshaker that the Executioner started the show with, but Bolan saw one of the Hezbollah moneymen go skidding away, his feet turned to greasy streaks in their wake. He cried out, pistol in hand, clawing toward a suitcase full of money and firing aimlessly in rage.

The Hezbollah group had been chopped in two. Bolan had seen the fifteen-man force brought down to nine by the warhead’s explosion. If he was going to get any answers on the tanks, he needed to start taking the moneymen alive.

One was firing off the contents of his weapon into the wounded RPG gunner, stitching him with 9 mm pistol rounds. Bolan tagged him in the shoulder, blowing the back out of the joint with a .303 round and knocking him down. He swiveled and punched a second round into the face of a gunman who noticed the moneyman go down. Gunfire sizzled back and forth as the Executioner turned his weapon and aimed at the crates that the RPG gunner drew his shells from. The .303 round sailed and hit wood, but nothing happened. Bolan cycled the action and shifted his aim slightly.

This time RPG shells shattered the earth and sky in a chain reaction, one hammering explosion after another, sending shrapnel, flame and splinters flying in an ever growing cloud of devastation. Bolan rose, slinging his war bag. He ran hard toward the caldron of chaos and confusion and cut the distance between himself, and the destruction by half.

After reloading Bolan dropped to one knee. He snapped the rifle to his shoulder and burned off ten shots as fast as he could. The first rounds went into the tires of a jeep whose driver was trying to get himself, some customers and their goods, either bought or to be sold, the hell out of Dodge. The vehicle swerved hard and flipped.

The unlucky driver’s passengers went flying from their seats, and crushed crates vomited out rifles that were ground and shattered between the overturned jeep and unyielding asphalt. A desperate buyer froze in the headlights as the vehicle went skidding out of control at him, and found himself pinned as it slammed into him and crushed him under the tail boom of a Dauphin helicopter.

As Bolan was reloading, he spotted the drumlike extension on the wing stub of the Dauphin, reminiscent of the artillery rocket launchers of the old Vietnam helicopter gunships. On a hunch, the Executioner swung and aimed at the drum and pumped four .303 rounds into the launcher. The fourth shot gave the Executioner results as the helicopter disappeared in a massive shock wave.

The sales ground was sprayed with even more shrapnel and fire. Panicked buyers and sellers raced about, security men and bodyguards firing brutal bursts into one another.

A little panic goes a long way, the Executioner thought, scrambling closer to the battleground after feeding the Enfield some fresh rounds. A spray of bullets smashed into a rock off to the soldier’s right and he went to the ground, feeling pebbles stab into his ribs and knees, elbows barking on stone.

Bolan shouldered the Enfield and spotted a half dozen men working their way toward him. A second spray of autofire was a massive sheet sweeping through the air, pounding and deflecting like copper-jacketed rain on the barren hillside. In a heartbeat, the front sight of the Enfield was on the lead gunner, a .303 round punching through his chest and bursting out his spine in a single gore blast at a range of seventy-five feet.

Bolan threw the bolt and turned on another gunman. Slugs from the security man’s Uzi sliced the air, kicking up chips of slate and granite as they bounced off the ground short of Bolan’s position. The soldier took care of that situation with a single decapitating .303 Enfield round that hit the killer’s throat. Bolan rose and was moving hard to the left, bullets chasing him.

The Enfield dropped on its sling around the Executioner’s neck as he swept up the Skorpion from where it hung and held down the trigger. The 9 mm rounds spit at the enemy hardforce, four men scrambling for their own cover as they sent lead his way.

Unfortunately, the Skorpion rattled apart in a savage, recoil-induced field stripping that left the Executioner’s right hand numb with shock. He should have known the knockoff would prove useless. None of his rounds hit anything, though they did drive the enemy to cover.

Curling his right hand to his belly for protection, Bolan snaked his left hand around, freed one Taurus and straight-armed the 9 mm pistol at one of the Pakistanis who was rising again. A chopped-off AK-47 in the gunman’s hands swung toward Bolan’s midsection as he saw the tall, powerful terrorist charging him.

The Executioner’s sole saving grace was to get within bad-breath distance of the enemy fighter. He tripped the trigger on the Taurus twice, bullets slamming hard into the hollow of the terrorist’s throat and his chin. Jaw shorn away, the guy whirled, his AK tumbling from lifeless fingers. By the time the others were adjusting their aim against Bolan, he went to the ground again right in the middle of the three remaining men. Bullets swept the air from one overanxious machine gunner, autofire ripping like a steel storm through his two comrades as he tried to track his executioner.