roll down the steep grade.
“Over the railing!” Salim called, vaulting the horizontal beam. Latek and a handful of the other commandos had already cleared the rail and were clinging to the uprights on the other side, sending loose rock tumbling down into the ravine as they tried to secure a footing on the sheer face of the cliff. It was more than a hundred feet straight down to the river.
Bolan hesitated astride the guardrail, leaning away from the bus as it began to drift past him. Up ahead, he saw the Bio-Tain truck closing the gap between the two vehicles. The commandos who’d exited on the mountain side of the bus had taken up positions along the road’s shoulder and were firing at snipers above them as well as at the oncoming truck. Even if they managed to take out its driver, Bolan feared the vehicle would continue on its collision course with the bus.
While his instincts told him to follow Salim over the railing, Bolan couldn’t bring himself to abandon the man still inside the bus. As the front end of the vehicle rolled past, he cast aside his rifle and sprang forward, landing on the stairwell that led into the bus. The door was closed. Bolan stabbed his gloved fingers through a gap in the rubberized insulation and tugged hard until the door folded in on itself, giving himself enough room to squeeze through.
The exertion took its toll, however. As Salim had forewarned him, Bolan’s labored breathing inside the gas mask left him feeling suddenly light-headed. Sagging against the handrail, he clawed at the mask, yanking it off. His face was layered with sweat, and his dark hair was plastered flat against his head. He doubled over and drew in a deep breath. The move saved his life, as yet another burst of gunfire took out the rest of the windshield, showering him with glass.
Bolan stood back up and peered out at the other truck, which had begun to slow. He suspected the plan to ram the bus had been aborted once the ambushers realized that most of their intended victims had abandoned the vehicle. It was a stroke of good fortune, but there was little time for rejoicing. Turning to the driver beside him, Bolan saw that the man had taken another round, this one to the neck. One look and Bolan knew he was dead.
Unmanned, the bus listed slightly to one side. There was a loud scraping sound as it began to brush against the guardrail. Bolan climbed up out of the stairwell and anchored himself as best he could alongside the fallen driver, reaching past him for the steering wheel. There was little play in the wheel, and the soldier knew he’d need better leverage to ease the bus away from the guardrail. He was concerned that the railing would soon give way under the strain and send the bus hurtling to the bottom of the ravine with him still on board.
Desperate, Bolan quickly pulled the slain driver from the seat and took his place. The steering wheel was slick with blood, but he gripped it as tightly as he could and turned it to the left. The wheel resisted at first, but finally he got enough response to guide the bus away from the railing.
Bolan shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The rear doors were still open, and he could see the roadway behind him. He was running out of straightaway, and there was no way he’d be able to maneuver the bus around the coming bend. It was unlikely the bus would even make it that far. Each time it struck another pothole or crease in the road, its course changed slightly, and no matter how hard he worked the steering wheel, Bolan suspected it was only a matter of time before the bus slammed into the mountain or took out the guardrail. Either way, the bus was a deathtrap.
Bolan lunged from the driver’s seat and sidestepped the slain driver, staggering back down into the stairwell. The door was still folded open. He braced himself in the doorway and stared down at the ground rushing past him. There was only a few feet of clearance between the bus and guardrail. It would have to do.
Pushing away from the stairwell, Bolan leaped to the ground. He landed hard and unevenly, turning his right ankle. A stabbing pain shot up his right leg as he teetered off balance, smashing into the guardrail. He tried to right himself, but his momentum worked against him.
The next thing Bolan knew, he was tumbling over the waist-high railing, beyond which lay the vast, deep maw of the ravine.
CHAPTER THREE
In Bolan’s predicament, ninety-nine men out of hundred would have crashed over the railing, locked in a deadly freefall before they so much as realized what had happened to them. By then, of course, their fate would have been sealed. Bolan, however, had a warrior’s reflexes, honed by experience on a thousand battlefields, and even as he was going over the railing, he was acting on his instinct for survival. He flung out his right arm and the moment his gloved hand came in contact with the upper edge of the rail, he curled his fingers and grabbed hold, breaking his fall. Just as quickly, he swung his other hand to the railing and clawed for purchase. The thickness of the gloves made his grip tenuous, and his feet dangled unsupported below him, but, at least for the moment, Bolan had once again cheated death.
Through the pounding of blood in his ears, the soldier could hear the crackle of gunfire and the squeal of the Bio-Tain truck’s brakes. The bus, meanwhile, drifted off the road into the side of the mountain. Bolan couldn’t see the vehicle, but it sounded as if the bus had only glanced off the rocks, which meant it was likely still on the roll and out of control. If it veered back across the road and struck the railing, Bolan knew he’d be in trouble.
Focusing his full strength on his hands and arms, the Executioner tightened his grip on the rail and began to pull himself upward. He wanted to reach a point where he could swing at least one leg back up onto the roadway. He strained hard against the pull of gravity, slowly rising up to a point where he could see the bus. As he’d feared, it was headed for the guardrail less than twenty yards to his left. He braced himself as it crashed into the barrier. The weathered uprights snapped under the impact, and a thirty-foot section of the railing gave way. The bus went airborne and began to plunge toward the base of the ravine.
Bolan was safe for the moment, but the railing he clung to had loosened and begun to sag under his weight. Freeing one hand, he reached up and hooked his left arm over the upper edge of the barrier. He tried again to swing his right leg up to the edge of the roadway, but it remained beyond reach. As he held on tightly to the railing, there was a loud crash far below him. The bus had slammed into the rocks rising up from the river, and moments later an explosion ripped through the vehicle and echoed across the valley. Bolan glanced over his shoulder and saw a black column of smoke rise from the fiery heap of twisted metal. The farmers on the other side of the river were pointing at the wreckage and shouting to one another as they began to flee their fields.
Bolan’s left arm was starting to go numb. When he tried to shift his position, the railing groaned and there was a dull crack as one of the weakened uprights began to splinter. One way or another, he needed to get off the railing fast. There was no way to get back up to the roadway, so he looked down over his shoulder, surveying the cliff face below him. Just off to his right he saw a few small trees growing out of the side of the precipice. Bolan wasn’t sure if any of them were strong enough to support him, but they were his only hope.
When yet another of the guardrail supports snapped under his weight, Bolan let go of the railing and kicked at the cliff face with his boots, directing his fall toward the trees. The first two snapped under his weight, but a third remained intact long enough for him to close his fingers around its trunk. He swung precariously to one side, extending his right foot until it came to rest on another of the trees directly below him. It felt as if the tree would support him, so Bolan took a chance and eased his grip on the overhead limb, freeing one hand. With considerable difficulty, he wriggled his hand free of his HAZMAT glove, then switched arms and did the same with the other. The tree’s bark bit sharply into his bare palms, but his grip was now more secure than it had been with the gloves.
Spread-eagled against the face of the cliff, Bolan glanced to his right. Major Salim,
