alternate frequency plan might have worked, had not Bolan captured not one but two different radios. Bolan checked Kroz’s unit for indications of the secondary communications frequency and found that Kroz had scratched his dial to mark the next channel. The soldier plugged his earphone into Kroz’s unit and clicked over to the frequency.
“…fucking guy?” one of the conversants complained in Russian.
“Maintain radio discipline,” the leader of the death squad ordered.
Sowing panic among his enemies was a good weapon for evening the odds against superior numbers and firepower. As it was, the assassination team was down four shooters in the space of a few minutes. With two sharpshooters and three gunmen on hand, that was nearly half of the Russian force.
“Central says to abort!” another voice cut in. “The mission has been compromised.”
So, the assassins have a coordination and operations center, Bolan thought. If they’re going to cut and run, there’s a chance that they could give me a better look at who ran this op.
Bolan scurried back to the front of the bar, listening to the Russians as he did so.
“Principal target still breathing. Cannot disengage anyhow,” the hit team’s commander returned.
“Scorch the earth,” the coordinator snapped. “Principal is no longer an issue. Avoiding his partner is!”
“Confirm command scorch,” the leader said.
“Burn it all down!” the commander bellowed.
Bolan snapped open the stock of his Uzi. He wasn’t certain of the extent of the firepower the death force had on hand, but the people in the dive were at risk. He used the Uzi’s butt to punch out a window into the bar.
Inside, patrons huddled close to the floor, terrified of the rattle of full-auto weaponry ripping and roaring outside. Though there was a likelihood of the presence of murderers and other scum being among this crowd, Bolan had little proof of their collective guilt, let alone knowledge of actions warranting death by high explosives. He fired a burst into the ceiling and the crowd rose as one, a human tide breaking for the back door, shoving out into the alley. No one wanted to go out the front, which would take them right into the middle of the current firefight. It was better than giving away that Bolan was listening in on the Russians’ party line by shouting a warning to the bar bums.
The first thunderbolt impact blew the doors off the dive, tearing them off of their hinges. Splinters and shrapnel forced the Executioner to duck out the window to avoid being sliced by the rocketing wave of debris. He popped back up and saw that the panicked patrons had managed to evacuate long before the interior of the bar was turned into a blast crater. The force of the explosion informed Bolan that the enemy had resorted to RPGs, rocket-propelled grenades that could be reloaded quickly and were devastating to a range of 300 yards.
Bolan snaked through the broken window with whiplash speed, dropping to the shattered floor as the next 77 mm warhead impacted at the corner he had been hiding behind earlier. The concussive fury of the thermobaric warhead was so violent, Bolan could feel it through the brick wall. Had he delayed in leaving the causeway beside the bar, he would have been pulverized by the fuel-air explosive’s radius of ignited atmosphere. As it was, Bolan had to shake the cobwebs from his head.
He hoped that Alexandronin had retreated to more solid cover when the death squad broke out their heavy weapons. Bolan rushed across the explosion-ravaged bar and vaulted over the counter. He look around swiftly to see what kind of crowd-calming firepower the bartender had. Crouching behind the bar, he was at eye level with the shelves beneath the counter and saw a bolt-action Enfield sitting on a shelf. A box of .303 stripper clips sat next to it. It was an unusual combination for bar-room defense, but the SMLE had been sawn down to a fourteen-inch barrel for faster handling in the bartender’s area. The sawed-off Smelly was a better option than a cut-down shotgun, and even at fourteen inches, the .303 rounds would cut through body armor and put a man down like a sledgehammer. It would also be more than sufficient to counter the enhanced reach of the Russians’ snipers.
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.
