Alexandronin’s claim of spraying the hit man’s kidney across the bar floor didn’t quite come true as the 9 mm round missed the organ completely. The deadly slug, however, still tore through Alexandronin’s opponent, slashing a stretch of aorta apart.
“Vitaly!” Bolan called.
“Their round went through my thigh,” Alexandronin said, limping to cover.
Bolan began snatching items from the dead man’s pockets, spare magazines and a radio specifically. He let the body tumble lifelessly to the ground as he rushed to scoop up his ally. Together they ducked between a couple of buildings. The leg injury was a shallow furrow along the outside of Alexandronin’s thigh. The bullet had struck far from the femur or the femoral artery, meaning that the man could still walk, though his leg was drenched. Bolan recognized the smell of the rotten vodka they had been drinking. A bone injury would have been crippling, but had the blood vessel been nicked, Alexandronin’s life would be measured in seconds. Bolan looked his friend in the eye. “Bad news. You lost the vodka.”
Alexandronin grinned. “A tragedy, Mikhail. I can still walk.”
Bolan dumped the spent magazine from his Uzi, feeding it a full one he’d plucked from its former owner. The savvy warrior also took a moment to secure the earpiece and the body of his hostage’s radio to his harness. Being able to listen in on the conversation of his enemies would be a force multiplier.
The bar front opened and Bolan caught a glimpse of four men bursting through the doors, scrambling to cover. Bolan fired off a short burst that sent the dark-clad assassins deeper behind their cover.
“Get to a safer position,” Bolan ordered Alexandronin. “I’ll cover you.”
The Russian shook his head. “This is my fight, too, Mikhail.”
“You’re hurt and slowed down,” Bolan argued.
“I can turret,” Alexandronin replied. “You can still move quickly. Together we can surround them.”
Bolan didn’t have time to argue about tactics, especially since Alexandronin was right. He handed his friend the Uzi and the remaining spare magazine. “Don’t die.”
The Russian smiled. “I have men to kill before I rest, Mikhail.”
“Remember that,” the soldier said, drawing his Beretta.
The Executioner raced across the street, covered by a spray of rapid shots from Alexandronin.
Once more, London was a host to Bolan’s cleansing flame.
CHAPTER TWO
Alexandronin’s first burst of Uzi fire kept the assassins’ heads down as the Executioner charged around their flank, Beretta Storm leading the way. Bolan held his fire, his Russian ally leaning on the trigger to keep the enemy focused away from him.
“Which of those two idiots lost control of his Uzi?” one killer snarled in Russian.
“Probably both,” another answered his comrade. “They were both human shields, remember?”
“Longbow to Tomahawk, be alert! One operator moved around to your side of the street,” another, presumably a sniper, informed the hit crew. Bolan was glad that he’d taken the time to relieve his former prisoner of his comm link. Aware that the enemy was on to him, Bolan sidestepped into the open and fired four quick shots at the squad in front of the bar. Two of his shots struck one gunman center mass, but the impacts had no affect on the would-be murderer.
Bolan snaked back behind cover as the Russians’ Uzis crackled, ripping the air he’d stood in moments before. The assassins were wearing body armor, good stuff, too, as Bolan had Dutch-loaded his Beretta with high-velocity hollowpoints and full-power NATO ball ammunition. The high-pressure ball rounds were effective against a good deal of ballistic vests, meaning that the killers had expected heavy opposition. The corner that Bolan had ducked behind was chewed up as a trio of submachine guns tracked to keep the big American pinned.
Bolan ran a mental countdown to the moment when a “Flying Squad”—Scotland Yard’s version of SWAT—showed up to the scene of a raging gun battle on the bank of the Thames. The Executioner knew that he had minutes, but with the skill and professionalism of the assassination cadre, he’d need every second of that Doomsday countdown to put the killers away. Now, Bolan not only had Alexandronin’s life to worry about, but also the British policemen who would be caught in the cross fire.
Three weapons in the front meant that the rest of the team was swinging around the back to strike at the Executioner from behind. Bolan charged to the back alley, Beretta leading the way. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the whispered announcement of “in position” from a new speaker on the communications hookup.
Bolan whipped around the corner, his Beretta’s muzzle jammed into an assassin’s face, breaking his nose. The soldier’s off hand slapped the gunner’s Uzi against the wall and though the hitter triggered his subgun, the rounds spit through empty air. Bolan triggered his Storm, the solitary 9 mm round blowing off the back of the killer’s skull, disgorging a cone of spongy brain matter and blood into the face of the second man with them. The remains of the dead man’s skull contents turned the assassin’s shooting glasses into a blood-sprayed mess he couldn’t see through.
The Executioner tossed the corpse of the point man aside and pivoted the gun in his hand to strike the surviving killer in the head. The Slavic gunman stepped back, tearing his glasses off, the motion helping him to avoid the weight of the handgun as Bolan’s swing jammed it up against the wall. Now able to see, the Russian killer lunged forward, forearm trapping Bolan’s gun hand against the wall.
The close-quarters gunfight suddenly turned into a brawl as the assassin chopped at Bolan’s neck, but the soldier deflected most of the lethal precision with his shoulder. The neck-breaking blow degraded to a clumsy slap that cuffed Bolan’s head above his ear. The gunman tried to bring his Uzi to bear, but the Executioner had trapped the subgun between his hip and the wall. The frustrated hitter tried to nail his opponent between the eyes with a backhand stroke, but Bolan took the blow on the crown of his head. The curved surface of his skull denied the murderer a solid hit, sparing Bolan anything worse than scalp abrasions.
The soldier snaked his foot behind his enemy’s ankle and with a surge of strength, barreled the gunman backward and off balance. The assassin stumbled onto his buttocks, the Uzi wrenched out of his grasp. No longer restrained, Bolan had both arms free to tackle the killer prisoner. He dropped on the gunman, knees slamming into the hardman’s shoulders with jarring force, pinning the man to the ground under his 200-plus-pound frame. Bolan fired off a hard punch to the prone assassin’s jaw, a knockout blow that jammed the mandible into a heavy juncture of nerves at the side of his neck. The Slav wasn’t rendered unconscious, but neural overload left his eyes glazed over, staring glassily into the murky, starless night sky.
“Kroz! Report!” a voice over Bolan’s radio demanded. The stunned Russian groaned incoherently as if to answer the broadcast order. Bolan took a moment to pull his Combat PDA, activating its 8 megapixel digital camera to record the gunman’s face, just in case this particular prisoner had as short a shelf life as his last one. Bolan punched the assassin once more, and the stunned, glassy eyes closed with unconsciousness.
Bolan brought the microphone to his lips. “Kroz can’t come to the phone right now. However if you leave a message at the beep…”
“Shit!
