back to Bolan’s feet.
The Executioner heard footsteps pounding in the hall and sirens wailing outside as more police cars raced into the alley below the kitchen window. In the hall men were shouting, identifying themselves as police officers. Bolan caught a flash of motion out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Hiba Bakr scrambling to escape the kitchen.
Bolan let the man go, hoping he would slow the plainclothes police officers outside as he made good his own escape. Two hardcore killers had been put down and two intelligence coups left for the authorities to question. Bolan’s code of ethics wouldn’t let him fire on the police, even in self-defense, and he had an aversion to killing holy men.
He heard Hadayet moan at his feet, and he twisted to fire a burst across the room, shattering the glass. Beyond the window he saw the spiral reflections of flashing red emergency lights. In the hallway officers ordered Bakr to “Get down! Get down now!”
Bolan used the distraction to bend and secure the loose cell phone dropped by Hadayet. He rose and sprang toward the window across the kitchen. An RCMP officer, rushed the door with his pistol up, a mini flashlight attached below the barrel of the handgun. As Bolan passed the kitchen table, he turned and flipped it up so that it flew back and landed in the doorway.
The officer ducked back around the corner of the kitchen door to avoid the flying furniture. Bolan dropped the MP-5 and let it dangle from its sling as he scrambled up onto the counter. The leather sleeve of his jacket protected his arm as he knocked splinters of glass away from the window frame.
He stuck a leg through the window and prepared to duck out onto the fire escape. He looked back toward the kitchen door as he slid out and saw the officer he had distracted swing back around the corner, his service pistol held in both hands.
Bolan threw himself to the side as the man fired his weapon. A 10 mm slug cracked into the wall just to the soldier’s right, creating a pockmark, and the roar of the pistol was deafening in the acoustic chamber of a tiny room.
There was a frenzy of activity beneath him. Two separate police cruisers had entered the alley behind the mosque from either direction, and more sirens heralded the arrival of backup. Men shouted up at the fire escape from below, excited by the pistol shot.
“I have sights on. I have sights on,” Manning said over the com-link. “You want me to put their heads down?”
Bolan kept rolling as he fell, turning over his shoulder. He reached out with his hands and pulled himself upright by grasping the cold iron bars of the fire escape ladder. He hauled himself up and gathered his feet under him. Set, he scrambled upward, running hard up the rungs.
“Negative, negative,” Bolan snarled. “I’m still good.”
Below him the Canadian cop thrust his body out of the window and shouted for Bolan to stop, raising his weapon. Bolan ignored him, his lungs burning as he scrambled upward. Sparks flew off the metal rung in his grasp, and the fire escape rang as a bullet ricocheted away. An almost indiscernible second later he heard the pistol bark.
“Your call, Striker. Copy,” Manning said.
At the fourth floor Bolan spun and raced up the last length of fire escape. Bullets peppered the walls around and below him as police officers on the ground began to fire. The sharp barks of the pistols echoed up between the narrow walls of the alley.
Diving over the edge of the roof, he hit the tar-papered platform and rolled across his back, coming up quickly. He crossed the roof and looked down onto the main thoroughfare. Three more police cars had pulled up in front of the mosque, their occupants running forward to the storefront.
Bolan turned away from the edge. He knew the police would be hard on his heels, and he felt a certain admiration for their tenacity and courage. He crossed the rooftop at a dead sprint, heading for the next building, a long, two-story, used-furniture store.
The soldier hit the waist-high wall circumventing the roof like a rampart. He lowered himself and slid his chest across the cinder-block divider, swinging his feet over until he dangled off the wall, holding on by only his grip. Bolan looked down to make sure his landing area was clear and then let go.
He fell straight down, struck the lower roof and rolled over hard onto his back. The maneuver, left over from his paratrooper training, absorbed much of the force of his fall but he still struck hard enough to nearly drive the air from his lungs.
Bolan gasped in the frigid air and forced himself to his feet. He rose, setting his sights on the tenement building rising up on the other side of the used-furniture store’s roof. Windows faced out from the apartments onto the roof, and lights were snapping on in response to the gunfire and police sirens.
“I’m heading for the tenement,” Bolan barked into the phone.
“Roger. Jack says he’s over the rally point. You want me to come get you?”
Bolan began to run toward the tenement building, starting to skirt a large skylight set in the middle of the rooftop. From behind him he heard the voice of the policeman who had dogged his every footstep since the hallway. A white pool of light from the officer’s mini-flashlight cut through the night. The officer shouted his warning.
Bolan refused the cop’s third warning and the officer began to fire.
“Negative. I’m going to try for my vehicle for now, stay in overwatch,” Bolan answered.
“Okay, but you got a street full of good guys.”
Bolan didn’t have time to answer.
Bullets struck the roof as the Executioner ran, and he knew he’d never make it. Already the bullets were falling closer, and if the RMCP officer settled down, he had a very good chance of striking the fleeing Bolan.
The soldier pushed back the edge of his jacket and swept up the MP-5. His heart was pounding as he leveled the submachine-gun. He heard the crack of the officer’s pistol behind him as Bolan squeezed his trigger. The H&K submachine-gun cycled through a burst, and the skylight just ahead of him shattered.
Bolan felt a tug at the hair on his head as he ran, followed by the pistol report and he knew how close he’d come. He hunched down and dug his legs into the sprint. The lip of the broken skylight rushed toward him and Bolan leaped into the air.
Bolan hurtled across the open space. The black hole of the broken skylight appeared under him as he jumped, and he brought his legs together. At the zenith of his leap he plunged through the broken window.
Glass shattered under his feet, and he could feel sharp glass spikes tear at his leather jacket as he smashed through the smaller opening he’d initiated with his gunfire.
The bottom of his jacket fluttered up behind him as he dropped into the darkness, and he felt a jolt of apprehension as he fell, completely unaware of where he would land or on what. Splinters of glass scattered and fell around him like shards of ice, and the buildup of icy slush on the window cascaded down in an avalanche.
Bolan tried to prepare himself for the impact, knew it could be considerable enough to snap his legs or even kill him if he landed wrong, but it was impossible because of the tomblike darkness of the store interior to know for sure.
The soldier grunted with the impact as he struck a countertop and it was unfeasible to roll. His legs simply folded under him and his buttocks hit the hard wood with enough force to snap
