Death Gamble

Two of the gunners concentrated on the job at hand, scanning the immediate perimeter for intruders.

The hardsite consisted of a large single-story building constructed of concrete blocks and roofed with rust-tinged corrugated metal. Several smaller buildings ringed the main structure. Fences topped with razor wire held the verdant jungle at bay on three sides of the rectangular property. In the distance, Bolan could see Lumley Beach and the white lights of boats traversing the ocean.

Peeling paint, rusting roofs, sagging walls and roaming livestock contrasted sharply with the signs of prosperity littering the property.

A half-dozen Toyotas, Mercedes and BMWs, caked in dirt, but otherwise brand-new, were parked around the compound. A satellite dish was perched on the roof of the compound’s largest building.

Moreover, the weapons carried by Talisman’s gunners nagged at Bolan. He had expected to face down AK-47 copies, the Saturday-night Special of developing nations. But of the men carried new Beretta 92-F pistols, M-4 assault rifles with grenade launchers and Remington shotguns. Several of the men, including Talisman, wore headsets for communication.

Talisman had either bought the toys with blood money from the diamonds he sold, or someone was bankrolling him. This begged the question whom? But Bolan dismissed it from his mind as quickly as it had entered. If there was more to this than met the eye—and he was sure there was—he’d unearth it after he grabbed the scientist and returned the man to safety.

If he could get the scientist. A sinking feeling told him the mission had been compromised from the start, that he might be walking straight into a death trap.

Over his protests and those of Hal Brognola, head of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group, a team from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Services had been drafted to participate in the raid. Bolan preferred to work alone. Failing that, he wanted the warriors of Phoenix Force or Able Team covering his back. Unfortunately, both teams had been on missions elsewhere. The President had insisted that Bolan have someone waiting in the wings as a contingency plan, in case he took a bullet and couldn’t pull off the rescue.

The State Department team had gone MIA, and so had Bolan’s confidence in the mission. But the clock was ticking, and he couldn’t wait for a better time to make his play.

Bolan inventoried his weapons. The Beretta 93-R with its attached custom sound suppressor was holstered in his left armpit. A .44 Magnum Desert Eagle rode on his right hip. He cradled a sound-suppressed Heckler & Koch MP-5 SO-3, the lead weapon on this assault. A .357 Colt Python with a 2.5-inch barrel was snug in the small of his back, standing by as a last-chance weapon if everything else went to hell. He carried ammunition for the various weapons, a Ka-Bar fighting knife and an assortment of grenades on his combat harness and in the various pockets of his black combat suit. He unloaded his rifle, pocketed the cartridges and left the empty weapon on the roof. The rifle was great for distance, but its size and mule’s kick recoil made it impractical for the up close and personal war he was about to wage.

Descending from his vantage point like a silent wraith, Bolan hit the ground and moved toward the compound, crouching in the shadows of a small shed, twenty-five yards from the knot of hardmen. He watched as Talisman laughed and cuffed one of his men on the temple. The man spun away while the others howled in delight. Talisman turned and disappeared inside the sagging house.

There were two guards outside.

Or so Bolan hoped.

Like a sleek jungle cat, the warrior bore down on his prey with deadly efficiency, using shadows and car bodies to shroud his approach.

Bolan crept up on his target, a man smoking a cigarette and scanning the surrounding vegetation with infrared binoculars. As he closed the gap between himself and the hardman, he heard the guy’s headset crackle to life.

Spotters.

In a single fluid motion, the man wheeled toward Bolan and raised his weapon. The M-4’s barrel was ablaze as the stubby assault rifle churned out 5.56 mm rounds that flew high and wide to Bolan’s right. Without a doubt, the guy was fast; but Bolan was faster and he had the drop.

Bolan loosed a burst that hammered the man’s center mass, knocking him off his feet as though he’d just been struck by a thirty-foot tidal wave.

Suddenly gunfire flared toward Bolan from the surrounding jungle, chewing into the ground and kicking up geysers of dirt around his feet. He dropped into a crouch and darted left. He stroked the MP-5’s trigger on the run and sprayed the jungle with a torrent of 9 mm rippers. The hail of gunfire bought him a couple of seconds and he started for the house.

Another guard stepped across his path, a Beretta 92-F extended in a two-handed grip, the muzzle locked on Bolan’s head. The man hesitated for a moment, giving the big American a chance to squeeze off another burst from his weapon. The slugs slammed into his target, striking the hip and continuing diagonally across the man’s abdomen, chest and shoulder. The guard crashed to the ground in a dead heap.

Cracking a fresh clip into the H&K, Bolan continued toward the house. He’d hoped to take out the men with knives and silenced weapons. But that idea was shot to hell, thanks to the army of unseen spotters tracking his movements.

Where the hell had they come from? Bolan wondered. He had scoured the area for backup troops and had found nothing. He’d even made a second sweep when the State Department men had failed to show. Had he missed something?

He didn’t have time to second-guess himself.

Several men spilled from the doorway of Talisman’s stronghold, firing assault rifles and automatic pistols in Bolan’s direction. The warrior plucked a fragmentation grenade from his web gear. Pulling the pin, he lobbed the bomb toward his attackers and threw himself behind a nearby Mercedes. The weapon exploded, causing thunder, orange yellow flames and screams to pierce the compound.

Bolan peered around the Mercedes’ front end and surveyed the damage wrought by the grenade. Some hardmen were dead; others, soaked in their own blood, fire chewing through garments and flesh as they screamed, shook or gasped for breath. Bolan plowed through the dead and dying, plugging an occasional mercy round into the wounded as he closed in on the house.

More gunfire streamed out of the jungle, whipping around Bolan, passing just inches from his body. He wheeled and spotted a pair of men simultaneously sprinting from the brush and converging on him from opposite directions. Caressing the H&K’s trigger, Bolan laid down a sustained burst and hosed the men down.

A dull thud sounded behind him. Anyone else would have missed the sound amid the sounds of battle, but not Bolan. He had senses, combat instincts, honed to a keen edge from countless battles. Turning, he saw a grenade in the dirt just a few yards from where he stood. If lucky, he had three seconds or so before the numbers dropped to zero and he found himself in the heart of a deadly firestorm.

A door, Bolan’s only hope of refuge, yawned open before him. A gunner with blood in his eyes folded himself around the doorframe and drew down on Bolan with an assault rifle.

Caught in a no-win situation, Bolan did the only thing he could.

Legs pumping, heart slamming into overdrive, he closed in on the house and hurled himself forward into what seemed a certain death.

RYTOVA WATCHED the big soldier fighting it out with Talisman’s men while also taking fire from behind, and decided she’d seen enough.

Cradling an Uzi tricked out with a sound suppressor, she pushed her way through the tangles of trees and vegetation surrounding Talisman’s compound and closed in on the fence surrounding the property. Autofire crackled ahead of her, a din occasionally interrupted by screams or a pistol’s lone bark.

Rytova stepped into a morass of mud, a leftover from the rainy season, and felt her foot sink up to the ankle. She grimaced and cursed under her breath. If indeed there was a hell on Earth, this African sinkhole qualified. Pulling her leg free, she continued on. Perspiration slicked her palms, and she worried it might cause the Uzi to slip from her hands at a critical moment. Moisture-laden air and sweat-soaked clothing clung to her trim form like a second skin, at times seemingly suffocating her. Her ash-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and hidden under a black baseball cap, but loose wet strands clung to the back of her neck. What the hell was she doing here?

She pushed the grousing from her mind and instead focused on the job at hand. She’d come to Africa looking for the man—the monster—who’d decimated her entire life.

Nikolai Kursk.

The very thought of his name stoked a fiery rage within that scorched her heart and soul and seemed her only companion. The bastard had robbed her of everything—killed the two men who’d meant the most two her, her husband and her father. Normally, Kursk barely would remember either one. However, during the past several months, Rytova had taken steps to insure he’d never forget them.

God knew she wouldn’t.

Her friends in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service—the small number of men and women willing to stand up to the Russian Mafia’s murder machine—had said Kursk was in Africa, but didn’t know exactly where. To get that information, she needed to talk to someone on the inside of Kursk’s organization, specifically his African operations. Talisman, who ran guns and diamonds for the butcher she sought, filled the bill perfectly.

She’d expected to find Talisman and his gunners lounging, drunk or stoned out of their minds, easy pickings. Instead she found them engaged in a full-fledged firefight with a stranger. The hell of it was, the stranger seemed to be winning.

She watched as he wheeled, fired on a pair of gunners who burst from the surrounding brush and unloaded weapons in his direction. Both died in a hail of gunfire as the man fanned a sound-suppressed submachine gun in their direction. The weapon seemed an extension of the man, an appendage wielded with deadly efficiency,

The powerful man dressed in black reminded Rytova of Dmitri, strong and confident in battle. But—and it felt a form of sacrilege to think this—the stranger was even more so; he was like a human cyclone, ripping through his opponents with an ease that seemed almost impossible.

Still, he was outnumbered. And no single person could survive against those odds.

Staying in a crouch, she tunneled through the heavy jungle foliage surrounding the killing field and closed in on the compound. Tracing the muzzle-flashes emanating from within the jungle, she pinpointed at least two of the gunners. One was positioned fifty yards northeast of her; a second was closer, about twenty yards straight north. She moved in that direction.

Rytova had brought a pair of night-vision goggles with her, but had decided against using them. Outdoor halogen spotlights powered by an unseen generator illuminated Talisman’s stronghold, and accidental exposure to intense light while wearing the goggles could have left her temporarily blind.

As it was, the lights threw off enough glare to make trudging through the jungle manageable. And, under the circumstances, manageable was about the best she could hope for.

She wasn’t sure if the man tearing up the compound was a law-enforcement officer or a military operative. Perhaps Talisman had run afoul of his handler and Kursk had ordered him hit. She dismissed that thought outright. Odds were the man wasn’t carrying out a hit at Kursk’s behest—he’d send in an army, not a single man, even someone with this man’s fighting prowess.

Subtlety wasn’t Kursk’s style. She’d learned that painful lesson months ago.

Anger again burned through her body and a coppery taste filled her mouth. She swallowed hard and gripped her Uzi tighter. Let the mystery fighter try his head-on assault. She’d rely on stealth.

She came in behind one of the gunners. He shouldered an assault rifle and stared through a scope, apparently trying to catch the black-suited stranger in the weapon’s crosshairs.

She drew down on him with the Uzi, hesitated. She’d killed before, but always in head-on attacks. Could she shoot a man from behind?

Her quarry suddenly stiffened and turned, swiveling at the waist as he sought her out with his rifle muzzle. She hadn’t made a sound, so how did he know she was closing in? Was it instinct or had someone warned him of her approach via his headset communicator? Sloppy, she was so blasted sloppy. She was thinking like an intelligence analyst again, ignoring her paramilitary training.

Dmitri never would have been taken this way.

But he also wasn’t here which was, after all, the whole point.

She stroked the Uzi’s trigger, and the weapon coughed out a short burst that tunneled through the man’s face, pulverizing his head and knocking him backward, as though an invisible rug had been pulled from under his feet. His gun hand flew up, and in a final reflexive move he triggered his weapon. A brief flurry of bullets stabbed skyward before the weapon fell silent and dropped to the ground. A fresh fusillade burned the air around Rytova, slugs tearing their way through the foliage and buzzing around her like a swarm of angry bees.

She threw herself headlong to the ground and landed next to the dead gunner. Bullets smacked into the corpse’s chest, which was sheathed in a Kevlar vest, causing it to jerk around under the impact.

The indiscriminate pattern of fire told Rytova these men weren’t a legitimate security force. Fingers working gingerly as bullets flew overhead, Rytova unhooked the man’s portable radio and headset, and slipped them on.

Someone was calling, “Lynch? Lynch?” When no one answered, she assumed Lynch was the fallen man next to her. She rolled away, putting precious distance between herself and the fire zone. The voice on the radio continued. “Cole, if we keep firing in there, Lynch is sure to get hit in the cross fire. He might be injured or unconscious.”

Another voice. “I don’t give a shit. Guy should have been watching his back instead of leaving it for us to do. If he gets killed, I eliminate two problems at once.”

“You’re a cold son of a bitch, Cole.” The speaker sounded angry.

“That’s what Nikki pays me for. You remember that. The Russian doesn’t like turncoats. Neither do I.”

Rytova had heard all she needed to. She triggered the Uzi, laid down a heavy barrage into a patch of muzzle-flashes and then moved again. A groan of pain and surprise sounded in her headset, telling her that at least one of her shots had hit home.

A voice erupted in the headset. She recognized it as that of the man named Cole. “Wells. Wells. What the hell, man? You hit?”

Dead silence was the only reply.

Autofire pounded Rytova’s former position and moved in a horizontal swath until she found herself again hugging the moist ground, gritting her teeth as bullets burned the air overhead. Plant stalks, leaf fragments and wood splinters showered her as she waited out the onslaught. The odors of gunsmoke and rotting vegetation fouled the air.

As quickly as it began, the shooting stopped and Rytova guessed the man was reloading. A grenade launcher sounded from somewhere, and a cold torrent of fear washed over her. The fired object arced overhead and crashed to earth more than two dozen yards west of her. Boiling orange flame spilled over from the blast site, and razor wire tore through trees and plants. Heat and shock waves hammered Rytova and her surroundings, and she stayed still as the tempest wrenched the jungle.

Pulling herself to her feet, Rytova bolted and closed in on the edge of the surrounding jungle. Autofire resumed and rent the air around her. As bullets whittled away at her cover, she squeezed off short bursts from the Uzi and furiously sought a better position. The nearest and sturdiest barrier—a pile of stones about the size of a car—lay ten yards to her left.

To get there, she’d need to cross open land and expose herself as she sprinted. Under fire that heavy it might as well be two hundred yards.

Hurtling from the underbrush, the Uzi stammering out a thunderous cacophony of death, Rytova crossed the broad expanse of rich, red earth and closed in on safety. Another explosion—this one closer to Talisman’s home—sounded in the distance.

Autofire burned the air around her legs and torso and tore into the ground in front of her. Slugs passed inches from her right hip. She cut left, fear constricting her breath. Raising the Uzi, she opened up with the weapon. The chances of hitting her hidden attacker, while trying to dodge gunfire and run, were nearly nonexistent. But if she could get close enough to make the shooter dive for cover, it might buy her the seconds she needed to get behind the pile of stones.

The weapon went silent in her hands.

Empty.

She cursed herself for making another amateur mistake. Adrenaline coursing through her, heart slamming against her rib cage, she surged ahead.

Cover lay just a few feet ahead. She knew it’d take too damn long to reload the Uzi. Switching the machine pistol to her left hand, she began clawing for her side arm with her right hand. Only five feet to go.

The first bullet hit her square in the kidneys, spun her and knocked the breath from her lungs.

She tried to unleather her pistol and figure out why her back suddenly felt as though someone had crashed a truck into it. Two more shots pummeled her abdomen, her chest. She gasped for breath. Pain seemed to sear every cell of her body.

The beautiful Russian staggered forward, surrendering her overloaded body to sweet nothingness.

THRUSTING FORWARD with powerful leg muscles, Bolan vaulted for the door and set himself on a collision course with the guard blocking it. As he sliced through the air, the MP-5 churned through the contents of its magazine. Parabellum rounds pounded into the guard’s abdomen like punches from a prize fighter, hurling him back into the building.

Bolan passed through the doorway and hit the floor hard. Breath whooshed from his lungs as he skidded across the rotted wood planks. Splinters lanced into his forearms, shredding his sleeves, opening a dozen trails of wet crimson that dribbled down his skin.

Even as Bolan struck the floor, the grenade outside the house exploded. The warrior pulled himself into a ball, shielded his face with his bloodied forearms and rode out the blast. A mass of flame, debris and smoke forced its way through the door, and thunder threatened to split Bolan’s eardrums. Bits of mortar blew from between the concrete blocks making up the building. Outside, dirt and debris rained on the corrugated metal roof. When his breath returned to him, Bolan took in deep pulls of air and found it choked with grit. He hacked a few times, trying to clear the filth from his lungs.

The soldier had dropped the MP-5 during his tumble. As the explosion’s reverberations died and his senses returned, Bolan fisted the Desert Eagle and came to his feet. Staring down the pistol’s snout, he saw two doors to the right and one to the left. The end of the hallway opened into what appeared to be a large kitchen.

Glass shards from broken beer bottles, spent shell casings and smears of mud and dried blood littered the floor. A gas-powered generator rumbled somewhere in the distance, and the air reeked of stale beer and vomit.

Bolan processed the sounds like a human computer, his mind catching and identifying bits of information, looking for the one that might mean the difference between life and death.

Then it hit.

A grunt of exertion. The whisper of steel slicing through air.

Bolan folded at the knees, plummeting as though a trapdoor had opened beneath him. Metal sparked against concrete as an ax cut through the airspace above Bolan and then collided with a wall.

The Executioner spun and brought up the Desert Eagle. The big-bore pistol unleashed twin peals of thunder and a pair of .44 manglers tunneled at an upward angle into Bolan’s opponent, boring through his torso before exploding from his back in a bloody spray. The ax slid from the man’s grasp as he crumpled in a heap at Bolan’s feet.

Footsteps sounded behind him. Grabbing the ax as he hauled himself to his feet, the warrior turned and spotted a pair of gunners bearing down on him. Cocking his left arm, he thrust the ax forward in an overhead toss. Spiraling end over end as it flew through air, the weapon buried itself into the chest of one of the gunners. A blast from the Desert Eagle finished off the second attacker.

Retrieving the MP-5, Bolan slung the subgun and kept the Desert Eagle locked in his grip. He cleared the room to his left, found it filled with ragged furniture, plates of half-eaten rice and chicken, pornographic magazines and a few stray rounds of ammunition.

No Trevor Dade.

No Talisman.

He continued toward the kitchen, again encountering no resistance. Clearing another room, he began to wonder whether he’d been duped. As he returned to the hallway, a big shadow crossed his path and drove the butt of an AK-47 against his temple. Bolan jerked his head to the side, rolled with the impact and let the force push him back into the room he’d just exited. A vague impression of Talisman’s enraged face registered in Bolan’s mind as he found himself out of harm’s way.

A direct hit from the rifle butt would have been deadly, but even the glancing blow had caused his head and neck to hurt like hell. He felt as though his brain had been disconnected from his body, and he’d lost all sense of time and place. Gathering his senses, Bolan checked to make sure his assailant had retreated and took a moment to collect himself.

Multiple footsteps sounded in the hallway. With the Desert Eagle leading the way, Bolan moved into the main corridor, starting for the front door. A gunner stepped into the doorway as Bolan beat a path to it. The Desert Eagle exploded, hurling a pair of .44 slugs into the man. The soldier ejected the mostly spent clip and cracked a fresh one home as he ran.

Bolan crossed the killing field outside the house. Weaving his way through the mangled human remains littering the yard, he heard an engine roar to life and found himself bathed in the white glare of headlights. Engine growling, tires chewing through dirt and rocks, the vehicle bore straight down on Bolan.

The Desert Eagle cracked twice as the Executioner snapped off rounds at the charging vehicle’s front end. As he’d suspected during his initial recon, the vehicle—a Mercedes sedan—was armored and the shots ricocheted off the hood.

With lightning-fast reflexes, the soldier threw himself from the vehicle’s path, rolling and coming back up in a crouch. Staccato bursts of machine-gun fire flared from the passing vehicle’s gun ports as it raced past. Bolan watched ruby taillights shrink and eventually fade completely in the darkness.

Looking around, Bolan weighed his options. If Talisman had fled, he likely would have taken Dade with him. Dade was the only bargaining chip that the Sierra Leone tough guy had—if he had Dade at all. Bolan sensed there had been more than one person in the corridor when he’d been struck. But whether the scientist was among them remained to be seen.

Bolan took a quick inventory of the vehicles around him. He tried the doors on two of them and found them locked. On the third try, he hit a red Jeep Cherokee with the driver’s door unlocked and a key hanging in the ignition. Climbing in, he turned over the engine, slammed the vehicle into reverse and maneuvered it out from between its neighbors. Cutting the wheel left, he gunned the engine and the Jeep lurched forward.

Flipping on the headlights as he went, Bolan saw a silhouette stumble into view. The slender shadow stopped in the middle of the dirt path leading from the compound and shouted, “Stop.”

Walled in by trees and buildings, Bolan had two choices: comply or mow them down.