Don Pendleton: Cold War Reprise

Bolan stuffed the stripper clips into his pocket, then chambered the first round on the rifle. He couldn’t expect razor-fine precision with an untested set of iron sights, and an unregulated load of ammunition, but the soldier’s years of marksmanship gave him enough experience to be able to hit a man-size target at three hundred yards with bone-smashing authority.

The Enfield’s stock took out a window behind the bar, and Bolan slithered out into the next causeway. The handy little bolt action was short enough for the soldier to maneuver through the narrow passage and he poked around the corner. He was barely visible at the range the enemy rocketeers were firing from. The smoky trails of the RPG-7 shells cut across the dock front, pinpointing the enemy’s position about two hundred yards downrange.

Bolan could see Alexandronin’s former hiding spot had been hit by a rocket grenade, but there was no sign of his Russian ally. The soldier hoped that his friend’s leg injury hadn’t slowed him so much that he hadn’t reached safety before the 77 mm warhead impacted. Suddenly an Uzi crackled close to the Russians’ position. Bolan saw the stocky outline of Alexandronin leap back behind cover. While Bolan had engaged the other team of gunmen, Alexandronin had to have scrambled to flank the death squad.

Bolan shouldered his Enfield and fired, his first .303 shot missing the head of an Uzi-wielding gunman by inches. However, the powerful rifle round tore into the upper chest of a Russian holding one of the rocket launchers. The sharp-nosed slug excavated a gory tunnel through muscle, organs and bone, dropping the rocketeer in a messy pile of dead, twisted limbs.

That caught the attention of the death squad survivors. The shooters turned their Uzis and remaining sniper rifle toward him and fired where Bolan’s last muzzle flash had flared. A hail of bullets tore into his old position, but the Executioner had gone back into the bar via the broken window and crouched in the smoky wreckage of the building’s rocket-shattered doors. Focusing on the distant muzzle flashes and adjusting his hold for his last known miss, Bolan fired, working the bolt with lightning quickness. The Enfield had more than enough power to kill a man at two hundred yards, and over the radio set, he heard two agonized grunts, one of which dissolved into a death rattle.

Bolan stuffed the stripper clip into the top of the Enfield and shoved its ten trapped rounds into the deep reservoirs of the rifle’s magazine.

“Get that RPG on the bar again!” the field leader growled.

“Arkady’s dead! The fucker killed Arkady!” another hitter snapped.

“Shut up and stay focused!” the commander ordered, frustration in his voice.

Alexandronin’s Uzi snarled again in the distance, and Bolan’s ally had to have hit the man who’d picked up the RPG. The 77 mm shell speared up into the night sky on top of a column of rocket exhaust. It peaked at three hundred meters before gravity overpowered the exhausted, sputtering rocket engine. The grenade spiraled as it descended, smoke spilling out of its tail and etching the warhead’s course back to ground level. The heavy explosive load detonated on impact with a bright flash. The fireball’s brilliance flashed into a smoky cloud that obscured Bolan’s view of the enemy kill force. Since visibility was a two-way street, the Executioner charged toward the opposition’s last known position, trading his Enfield back to the fully charged Uzi.

“Report! Report!” the field commander bellowed.

“I’ve got movement on the walkway!” one Russian answered. “Gregori’s down!”

“Stop the gunman!” the commander urged. “Fire!”

There was a grunt over the radio, the sound of a fist striking flesh. Somewhere in the foggy haze, Alexandronin had hurled himself into hand-to-hand combat with the last of the enemy assassin’s hit men.

T HE RPG BLAST LANDED so close to Vitaly Alexandronin that it shocked the Russian expatriate to the core. Shrapnel had opened several lacerations on his head, arm and torso. Pain burned through his stocky body, but it was only a background ache, adrenaline numbing him to his body’s protestations. His fist throbbed from where he had punched the reporting gunman in the ear, carpal bones cracking against hard skull. It was a clumsy attack, but the hard-liner thug had been knocked off his feet. Blood poured from the hit man’s ear where the ruptured eardrum drained out.

The man’s head hadn’t flexed like a jaw would have, and the result was broken knuckles and fractured hand bones. Alexandronin dismissed the self-diagnosis. Catherine, the love of his life, had been shattered far worse by scum such as the one he had struck.

Alexandronin speared his fist under the sternum of his stunned opponent, driving the breath out of the assassin’s lungs. As the gunman folded up in pain, he dropped his Uzi. Alexandronin chopped down hard on his downed foe’s throat. The killer’s trachea collapsed, accompanied by the sickening crunch of his larynx. Blood poured over the dead man’s lips, his eyes bulged out by the force of the blow.

“Two bastards I give in your memory, my love,” Alexandronin rasped. As he spoke, he tasted blood in his mouth. A cough pushed up a mouthful of sticky crimson. He was so high on adrenaline, he had ignored the pain of a piece of shrapnel that had cut between his ribs and penetrated deep into one lung.

It was bad, he knew, if he could fill his mouth with blood on one weak cough. But Alexandronin was not dead yet. The man he knew as Belasko would need a prisoner or two to continue closing down the foul conspiracy that had taken Catherine away from him.

The team commander’s attention had been drawn by Bolan, the two men maneuvering around each other, Uzis snarling and cracking in a leaden debate of point and counterpoint. It was a ballet of bullets and dodges between the two men.

Alexandronin scooped up the partially spent Uzi of the man whose throat he had crushed and reversed it into a club. The assassination team’s field commander didn’t notice his primary target’s sudden charge until the eight-pound mass of the submachine gun hammered between his shoulder blades with stunning force.

The commander folded to the ground, insensate as Bolan held his fire.

“You’re hit,” Bolan noted, ignoring the unconscious prisoner that Alexandronin had just taken.

The Russian smiled, putting his best face on the lie. “It is far from my heart, Mikhail.”

The buckle of the expatriate’s knees betrayed the truth, however. Bolan reached out and caught his ally before he collapsed to the ground. The soldier lowered Alexandronin to a reclining position. He looked for the injury that had caused him so much weakness. Bolan ripped open his friend’s shirt and saw the ugly, puckered gash over Alexandronin’s ribs.

“Lung hit,” Alexandronin explained. “Not near heart…probably pleural artery…Can’t control that kind of bleeding in the field…”

“Quiet. Save your breath,” Bolan ordered.

“Adrenaline…pumped oxygen through blood…” Alexandronin continued. “No breath left to save. I’ll be gone in…minutes. You have…last gift.”

“Vitaly, damn it!”

Alexandronin cupped Bolan’s cheek, smiling at the big American. “Don’t mourn for me, Mikhail. My comrade, my brother, I had already died the day Catherine did.”

Bolan pressed a button on his PDA. “I’ve already transmitted a call for an ambulance. Hang on and the paramedics can stabilize you.”

“It would just be surviving, my friend,” Alexandronin told him. “Not living.”

He coughed, blood foaming on his lips. Bolan stroked the dying man’s forehead, frowning. “Give Catherine my love when you see her again, Vitaly.”