was a split second too late.
Waving his arms wildly in the throes of death, the would-be gunman released the SIG. It flew out over the passengers and fell somewhere behind Bolan.
The black attaché case dropped to the deck of the plane, open. Two shirts and a pair of slacks flew out from between the sides. But no bomb.
The terrorist in the beige suit fell to the floor on top of the mess.
Bolan leaped over the still-convulsing body and continued down the aisle, jerking the tightly wrapped magazine from inside his jacket as he ran. By now, the second man—wearing a light blue suit and darker blue necktie—had pulled a Glock from his attaché case. His hand shook nervously as he tried to steady his aim on the Executioner.
Bolan ducked low, praying that like most nervous men, the would-be hijacker would shoot high. Not just high enough to miss him, but high enough to miss all of the seated passengers as well.
His prayer was answered.
The Glock exploded with an almost deafening roar in the tight confines of the cabin. More screams threatened to burst the Executioner’s eardrums. But Bolan could tell by the angle of the barrel that the shot had gone to the ceiling and exited the plane. The hole it made was far too small to affect the cabin pressure. But too many of the passengers had seen movies where such tiny openings sucked everyone out into the sky, and more panicky screams added to the chaos around Bolan.
Bolan didn’t give the man with the Glock a second chance. With a sudden leap, he reached the terrorist and swung the rolled magazine like a short billy club. The hardened pages caught the man in the Adam’s apple and crushed his larynx. Bolan followed through with a left hook, connecting with the man’s temple with the force of a jackhammer.
The Glock fell to the seat behind the terrorist. The man’s lifeless body began to fall backward on top of it.
Bolan reached out, grabbing the second terrorist by the shoulders and throwing him to the other side of the aisle, out of the way. But when he looked down to the seat for the Glock, it was gone.
But the Executioner had no time to waste. Rather than go searching for the Glock, the Executioner continued down the aisle until the final terrorist in coach class shouted in heavily accented English, “Halt! Stop now, or I will blow up the plane!”
Still a good twenty feet from the man, Bolan could see the arrogant smile on his face. He wore a black suit with light pin-stripes. He had opened his attaché case and turned it to face the Executioner.
Bolan stared into the open case. This man had no pistol for him to worry about.
What he did have, however, was a bomb.
The Executioner stood motionless as the terrorist had ordered. “What is it you want?”
“First,” the man with the bomb said sarcastically, “is for all of these swine to…shut up!” He shouted the last two words at the top of his lungs. And they had the desired effect. The last of the screaming, moaning and crying turned to an eerie silence as the passengers quieted, frozen in fear.
“All right,” Bolan said, standing upright in the center of the aisle. “You got your first wish. Now what?” He stared into the open attaché case, trying to make out the details of the bomb under the shadows created by the lid. He couldn’t be sure but it looked as if the case contained a substantial amount of plastic explosive—probably Semtex. The shiny, polished steel of what had to be a detonator flashed at him. The item most easy to see and recognize was a common digital kitchen timer.
There didn’t look to be anything high-tech about the explosive device. It was simple. Very simple.
But still lethal.
Satisfied that Bolan had seen what was in the case, the terrorist in the black suit now closed it partway but kept his left hand inside.
The Executioner gauged the distance between him and the terrorist. If he had judged the design of the bomb correctly during the second or so he’d been allowed to view it, it should be easy enough to defuse. If he could get to it before the man in the black suit set it off.
But that wasn’t likely. The same simplicity that made it easy to neutralize also made it easy and fast to detonate. The timer was electronic, and made no ticking sound. So it was impossible to determine if it had been set or not. But that made little difference, either. All it would take to override the timing device would be to touch two wires together, and Bolan could see by the way the terrorist’s hand was positioned that he held one of those wires inside the half-closed case even now.
The man with the bomb had not replied to Bolan’s question, so the Executioner repeated it. “What do you want now?” he said in a louder voice.
“I want you to sit down,” said the dark-featured man.
“This has got to be a give-and-take negotiation,” Bolan said, speaking for all of the passengers. “What do we get in return?” Bolan asked, playing for time.
He continued to stare the terrorist in the eye. If he was to have any chance at all of reaching the attaché case before the bomb went off, he needed the terrorist in the black suit to be distracted in as many ways as possible.
He was about to speak again—simply to buy more time—when he felt a light tapping on his left hip. Slowly glancing down to his side, the Executioner saw a little girl who could have been no more than eight years old. She wore a frilly pink-and-white dress, white anklets rolled down and black buckled shoes. Her sandy-blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail.
On the little girl’s face, Bolan saw terror. In her left hand was a Barbie doll with hair that matched her own.
But in her right hand was the barrel of the Glock.
Whoever had come into possession of the pistol after it had been thrown over the seats had determined that Bolan was on their side. The gun had been passed clandestinely to the passenger nearest Bolan, and that had been the little blond girl.
Bolan felt the hard plastic Glock in his fist as the little girl released the barrel.
“You saw what happened to the other men back here in coach,” the Executioner said to the terrorist. “But don’t you wonder about the man you had in first class?”
Bolan wondered, too. But it appeared that Paxton had taken care of the terrorist who had first given himself away to the Executioner. At least there had been no shots fired from the front of the craft. And no explosions.
As soon as the words had left the Executioner’s mouth, the man with the bomb glanced past him toward first class.
Bolan knew it was the best distraction he could pull off.
He brought the Glock out from behind the seat and snapped it up, pointing the barrel as if it were his finger and depressing the trigger at the same time. He saw the red hole appear in the forehead of the terrorist. At almost the same time the back of the man’s head blew out.
The screams, cries and moans returned as Bolan sprinted forward. The attaché case had fallen to the middle of the aisle, and now he dropped to one knee to look inside. His heart fell to his stomach when he saw that what had looked like a simple device from a distance was actually somewhat more complex.
At
