he got to the BR troops and their hostages, the more danger there was that he could tip off all of them to his presence. To succeed, he had to retain the element of surprise, but each guard, each terrorist he eliminated along the way, increased the odds of his detection.
Attaching the sound-suppressor to the Beretta 93-R, he made a cursory, hurried sweep of the ground floor, moving quietly heel-and-toe with the weapon held in both hands before him.
There was, according to the plans, another ground-floor entrance ahead and to the right, at the side of the building. Bolan made his way to the middle of the hallway, his civilian hiking boots quiet enough on the polished marble floor. Some part of his brain took note of the extensively carved moldings and ceiling art that decorated the interior of the school. No expense had been spared. The elaborately worked and padded benches that occasionally dotted the walls, outside of the administration offices, appeared to be very expensive, too, though Bolan was no expert on furniture.
He found the access hallway to the side entrance, opposite the metal doors of an elevator that he ignored. Approaching the access hallway, he risked a glance around the corner. There was a fatigue-clad man standing there with his back to Bolan. The Executioner thought it odd that the noise of his conversation with the guards at the front entrance had not brought this one to investigate. Then he heard the tinny sound of music, coming faintly from the guard’s head.
The man was wearing a portable music player. An AK-47 was slung over his shoulder. While he did seem intent on the view through the windows set on either side of the doorway, as if expecting a police raid at any moment, he certainly wasn’t listening for trouble.
Wondering if this really was amateur night after all, Bolan raised his Beretta and pointed the sound-suppressor at the back of the sentry’s head.
“Hey,” he said softly, as he nudged the man with the barrel.
The sentry’s head whipped around. He gasped, sucked in a breath to scream and grabbed for his rifle.
Bolan put a single round quietly through the man’s face. The terrorist folded in on himself and was still.
That was another hole in the perimeter security. Bolan could hear the ticking of the clock deep in his mind, constantly aware of the mission’s time constraints.
He kept going, finishing his sweep, quickly checking for stragglers or hidden shooters among the offices. As he neared the door at the far end of the corridor, which led to the stairwell, he caught a glimpse of movement through the small reinforced glass window set within the fire door.
He crouched low and pressed himself against the wall next to the door. The heavy door prevented him from hearing whomever was on the other side, but it could only be a sentry. Transferring the machine pistol to his left hand, he used the knuckles of his right to rap on the metal door. He knocked quietly but insistently.
The dark-skinned man who pushed the door open was wearing camouflage fatigues and aiming a Makarov pistol. Bolan fired, putting a single 9-mm round through the man’s head. He dropped like a stone.
The Executioner scooped up the Makarov and tucked it into his belt behind his left hip. He had to move; there was no time to worry about the sentry’s body. He had to keep up his pace in order to take the second, then the third floors.
Things had already gotten bloody. They were, he knew, about to get much, much worse.
4
Bolan crept up to the second floor and cautiously opened the fire door leading to the corridor beyond. There was no one waiting. The hallway was as impressive as the ground floor in its furnishings and decoration, but there were subtle differences. Bulletin boards lined the walls, and artwork obviously made by the students was on display. Brognola’s files had said the school catered to children aged roughly seven to twelve; Fahzal’s boy Jawan was twelve years old. The art on the walls was the usual fare produced by children in that age range the world over. Seeing it there, and knowing that BR was threatening those children with death, brought a hard gleam to the Executioner’s eyes. He’d seen far too many innocents caught in the cross fire of power plays like these.
He began working his way down the hall. The layout was simple: there were half a dozen classrooms on each side, spaced exactly opposite each other, with more of the benches he had seen downstairs to break up the monotony. At the center of the hallway was an elevator on one side and a pair of doors leading to the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms opposite that.
He checked each classroom in turn. Each was empty. Satisfied that the second floor was all but deserted, he went back to the stairwell.
On the third floor, there were two guards waiting in the hallway. They were Indian Malaysians, from the look of them, and they wore the same camouflage uniforms Bolan had seen on the BR terrorists to this point. Both men had assault rifles. They were engaged in a heated conversation that Bolan could just barely hear from his side of the fire door. It sounded like Manglish, the curious version of English that the locals spoke.
One of the men turned and apparently caught a glimpse of Bolan peering out through the small reinforced window of the fire door.
Bolan didn’t hesitate. As their weapons came up, he was already throwing open the door. The two were close enough that the heavy metal door slammed into the first of the pair, knocking him into his partner and sending them both sprawling. Bolan stomped, hard, pinning one of them to the floor with a heel to his groin. The man doubled over, still clutching his rifle.
The other sentry was recovering and the muzzle of his weapon was tracking up to Bolan as if in slow motion.
The Executioner was faster. The sound-suppressed Beretta clapped once, punching a single slug through the center of the man’s forehead. He fell back and was still. Bolan turned his weapon on the other sentry, who was looking up at him in wild-eyed terror mixed with pain.
Bolan put his finger to his lips, gesturing for quiet.
A snarl of defiance was the sentry’s response. He jerked his rifle, ready to fire from his back.
Bolan’s Beretta silenced him forever.
He left the bodies. He repeated the sweep pattern he used on the floor below, checking each room in turn, expecting at any moment to find a huddled group of students surrounded by armed BR thugs.
He found nothing.
Once again he checked each room directly, looking for anyone who might be hidden. There was no one. That meant that, in defiance of any logical, rational tactical analysis, the students would be on the fourth floor, almost certainly in the auditorium that dominated that floor. But why? It made no sense.
Bolan reentered the stairwell, careful to check for trip wires or other booby traps. Something wasn’t right.
He emerged from the stairs to the fourth floor. The corridor there was wide and included an outlet for the elevator. Ahead of him, the doors to the auditorium waited. They were stained wood, very tall, with the most elaborate carvings he’d yet seen in this ornate building.
There were no guards. Bolan moved quietly to the doorway, performing a tactical magazine change in the Beretta, dropping the partial in an outer pocket of his messenger bag and inserting a fresh one. There was a very slight gap between the two doors. Mindful that he would be visible from the other side as a sudden shadow if he were at all back-lit, he peered through the gap with one eye, the Beretta held low against his body.
What
