full payment. But what an inexperienced person might not understand was a terrorist’s willingness to torture and steal rather than part with money that could be better spent on recruitment, weapons and training. They’d kill everyone involved simply to cover their tracks and eliminate all traces of their transactions. Bolan had witnessed the scenario too many times to count. In a transaction pitting rookies against professionals, the pros always won.
As he watched the approaching snowmobile headlights, he pondered the group’s return. Sherry had tried to make a call on her cell phone, not realizing that out here in the wilderness, the probability of being in range of a communications tower was slim. What she had actually done was send out an electronic ping that announced her presence while it searched for a connection. The killers had to have picked up the transmission on a scanner and realized that the third person they suspected could have been with Davey and Wes was, in fact, in the cabin. They were coming back to finish the job.
They were about to get more than they bargained for, the Executioner thought.
From his position at the base of a thick maple, Bolan reached into the pouch on his web belt containing his night-vision goggles. He focused the goggles, bringing the six pinpoints of light into sharp relief. Magnified hundreds of times as they passed through the internal photocathode tube, the photons from the approaching headlights shone with the intensity of search beacons. Each snowmobile carried a single rider, and it appeared that one vehicle was pulling a sled holding something that resembled a miniature howitzer. From its profile, Bolan was sure the item was a weapon of some type. Its pertinent characteristics, he knew, would soon become known. He drew his Beretta 93-R from its shoulder holster, reached into the pouch holding the handgun’s suppressor and screwed the extension onto the end of the pistol’s barrel. He knew there was going to be gunfire, and figured he should delay announcing his location until absolutely necessary.
The snowmobiles maintained a steady speed, splitting up when they came close. The vehicle pulling the sled with the unknown weapon halted approximately twenty yards from the cabin, while two veered off toward Bolan and the other three set out to circle the structure and cruise along the adjacent tree line from the opposite direction. The precision of their maneuver reinforced Bolan’s earlier consideration that they might be skilled combatants. He remained silent as the pair coming his way passed in front of his position, taking note of their weapons as they passed.
The men were armed with Uzi submachine guns slung across their chests on canvas slings. The fixed wooden stocks were characteristic of the very early versions of the famous weapon, but Bolan knew enough not to assume that the vintage models were anything less than lethal.
Through his night-vision goggles, Bolan studied the man with the sled weapon as he began preparing the contraption. At first glance it appeared to be a stubby cylinder mounted onto a rectangular metal box, but as Bolan continued to observe, he noted that the tube was not hollow, and thick cables ran the entire length of the protrusion. There was a sighting mechanism close to one end, and dual handles similar to those found on antiaircraft guns. The operator fiddled with what had to have been dials or switches on his side of the box before grasping the dual handles and maneuvering the tube. The comparison to an antiaircraft gun was further reinforced with the cylinder being mounted on a free-floating ball pedestal affording the gunner complete three-axis rotation.
The two men who had passed Bolan continued on their slow route circling the cabin. They were halfway between Bolan and Sherry’s hiding place when she abruptly burst from under the pine, hysterically begging them not to kill her. As they hastily grabbed to pull their Uzis into firing position, Bolan’s silenced 93-R coughed twice in such rapid succession the rounds sounded as if they shared a single retort.
The first 9 mm Parabellum round struck the driver of the snowmobile on Bolan’s right, entering the base of his neck on an upward trajectory. The hot lead tore through his skull, exiting from the center of his forehead and splattering most of his frontal lobes onto the machine’s dashboard controls. The tissue immediately froze upon contact with cold metal that had been exposed to frigid air for hours. The man’s throttle hand froze in a death grip, causing his snowmobile to surge forward, accelerating him directly into the side of the building where the machine crashed and revved angrily while the spinning tread underneath chewed and spit out a thin stream of snow for a few seconds before stalling.
His partner fared no better. Bolan’s second bullet slammed a millisecond after the first into the middle of his back, piercing his heart and shattering his sternum on its way out. The gaping chest wound left in the slug’s wake was immediately filled with a scarlet fountain rushing forth in a torrent of steaming blood that painted a thick swath across the ground. He slumped forward, bounced off the steering wheel and fell sideways into the snow. His vehicle came to an abrupt stop a few feet from the lifeless body.
The mind-numbing chatter of automatic fire filled the air as the three who had circled the cabin from the other direction opened fire on Sherry. The 9 mm steel-jacketed rounds sliced diagonally from her left knee to her right shoulder, causing the young woman to jerk and dance wildly. A burst into her upper torso lifted her off her feet and hammered her backward into the woods, where she landed faceup, unseeing eyes staring into the star-studded sky.
Realizing they were under attack, the gunmen immediately shifted their fire away from the dead woman and began hosing the woods with a steady stream of lethal lead. Not being sure of Bolan’s position, they swept their weapons in wide overlapping arcs, reducing branches and saplings to a blizzard of matchsticks that rained down onto their intended victim’s head.
With their wild response telling him that his enemies had not yet zeroed in on his position, Bolan remained prone while pulling the Desert Eagle off his hip.
An electronic humming, so low it sounded almost like an earthquake’s rumbling, emanated from the sled weapon. The operator shouted out a warning to his companions seconds before the hum increased in both intensity and pitch. The entire cabin began to vibrate. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from the weathered siding like surface fog rolling across a body of water, then the cabin abruptly burst into flame. An instant later, the propane tank exploded in a fireball reaching two hundred feet into the sky.
Microwave, Bolan thought, immediately elevating the weapon’s operator to the top of his hit list. Unaware that his cohorts on the other side of the cabin were under attack, the gunner leaned forward over a control panel to make an adjustment, exposing the upper half of his body. With the noise from the crackling fire racing through the wooden structure masking his Desert Eagle’s authoritative discharge, Bolan squeezed off a single round while remaining concealed behind the base of the thick maple. The pistol’s hefty .44-caliber slug caught the microwave gunner square in his chest, tossing him airborne for a few seconds. He bounced once upon hitting the frozen ground, landing on his back with arms extended to the sides.
The Executioner directed his fire toward one of the remaining three who was visible beyond the burning cabin. Pulling the trigger as rapidly as he could, he released a stream of bullets, forcing the gunman within his line of sight to dive off his snowmobile and take cover behind the vehicle. Bolan’s rounds sparked and whined as they impacted the snowmobile’s metal fuselage, adding to the visual and auditory chaos of combat.
Displaying a telling level of advanced training, the gunmen fanned out in an attempt to separate sufficiently to establish a triangular focus on Bolan’s position, which was now fully exposed by the Desert Eagle’s prolonged volley. While the two who were still mounted on snowmobiles moved away, the man on the ground covered their progress with his Uzi on full-auto, filling the air around Bolan with deadly shot.
The warrior had seen the maneuver countless times. If he stayed put, his enemies would flank his position and kill him in a cross fire. He remained low while edging away from the tree trunk, waiting for a break when the gunman would be changing magazines. As if his enemy was enacting his mental script, there was a momentary
