as he opened the chopper door.
“I always hope so,” Grimaldi replied.
The fall was short compared to a parachute jump, and before he knew it Bolan was reaching the end of the bungee cord and being jerked back up almost to the helicopter again.
The men on the ground floor were at no vantage point to fire at him as he sailed through the air once more, but the snipers atop the building had taken note of the chopper, and finally realized it was not from any news station. They turned their bolt action rifles his way, and a pair of “bees” buzzed past the Executioner as he continued to bounce. But the slow operation of the weapons kept the terrorists’ fire to a minimum.
Twisting to face them on the end of the bungee, Bolan raised the M-16 A-2 in his right hand and cut loose with a 3-round burst of fire. The first round struck the bolt of a sniper rifle, sending up a flash of sparks from the weapon, and a scream from the mouth of the man holding it, as the .223 hollowpoint bullet split and struck his chest and abdomen. The second and third rounds took the sniper perfectly in the heart, and he fell forward onto his face with no further shrieks or cries of pain.
Bolan flipped the quick release snap on his bungee harness as the cord began to stabilize, and fell to the roof on his belly. With the M-16 in the prone position, he pressed the trigger again, and another trio of .223 rounds burst from the weapon, taking off the top half of the second sniper’s head.
The Hezbollah man, wearing olive drab BDUs—battle dress uniform—like the rest of the terrorists Bolan had seen, didn’t make a sound. He just stumbled a few feet backward, then toppled over the short retaining wall that surrounded the roof of the church. The last things Bolan saw of him were his boots as he fell “half-headed” over the side.
As the gunfire below him continued, the Executioner moved swiftly toward an open trapdoor near the center of the roof. Flipping the selector switch in his weapon to semiauto, he stared down into the darkened hole.
Were the two men he’d just killed the only ones who had ascended from the bottom floor? There was no way of knowing. Other terrorists could be hidden within, waiting quietly for an assault from the roof.
There was only one way to find out.
Pulling a small ASP flashlight from another pocket of his blacksuit, the Executioner risked training a two-second beam of light down the steps. He saw and heard nothing. So, with the M-16 at the ready, he began to make his way down the stairs.
It took time for Bolan’s eyes to readjust to the near darkness of the third floor of the chapel. But he waited, not wanting to risk giving away his position with another flash from the ASP. A small amount of light came down from the open trapdoor, so he moved to a corner of what appeared to be a Sunday school classroom. He was ninety-nine percent certain that no one was with him on the top floor of the chapel. But in case that one percent came through, he wanted the darkness to work for him rather than against him.
As soon as he could make out the blurry shapes of tables and chairs in the room, the Executioner glanced around. He saw no light switches or signs of electricity in any form. But on the tables, and built into the walls, were large candles and oil lamps. Moving toward the staircase in the middle of the room, he passed a large crucifix, then a painting of Jesus Christ with his hands folded in prayer. Continuing on toward a hallway and another set of steps, Bolan kept listening to the rifle rounds exploding below him. They had become more muffled since he’d entered the building, but were just as regular.
And, he knew, just as deadly.
When he reached the staircase, Bolan aimed his assault rifle downward and stared at the steps. The second floor of the small building seemed as deserted as the third, and he nodded to himself. The clock was ticking. There was a bomb somewhere inside the chapel. What kind of device, and how it was rigged to go off, had not been included in Brognola’s brief. Bolan had barely had time to find out how Stony Man Farm’s director had come across the intel in the first place.
He needed to talk to the priest and the converted Hezbollah man. This was a golden opportunity—a one-in-a-million chance to learn the ins and outs of what else the terrorist group had planned for the near future. But that was not the primary goal at the moment. Before he interviewed the informant and the priest, he needed to keep Saint Michael’s Chapel from blowing up. And to do that meant both ridding the world of the terrorists on the ground floor and deactivating the bomb without destroying the chapel and the neighborhood surrounding it.
The Executioner’s brain continued to roll near the speed of light. He suspected this was a fairly low-tech operation on Hezbollah’s part. That meant that as soon as the terrorists began to think they were losing the gun battle, they would detonate the bomb by hand.
Slowly and quietly, Bolan began to descend the steps to the second floor. With each creak his boots made he paused, listening, to see if the men below had noticed it. But the gunfire continued, drowning out his quiet sounds on the stairs. Bolan realized the men below weren’t likely aware that he’d taken out their two snipers. That meant he still had surprise on his side.
And he’d need it. He was vastly outnumbered, and surprise was the only advantage he would have in this ongoing firefight.
Reaching the second floor, Bolan saw that it was as deserted as the third, and he realized that the terrorists’ plan for rifle fire had been as elemental as their plan for the bomb. Except for the two snipers he’d taken out on the roof, all of them were on the first floor.
Bolan halted his progress again, rapidly analyzing the situation. He could probably take out the men below by suddenly bounding down the final set of steps and launching a furious barrage of fire from the rear. But if he didn’t get the individual in charge of the bomb, or if the explosives were connected to a dead man’s switch, which would go off as soon as whoever was holding it relaxed his grip, Bolan might as well blow up the chapel himself.
He paused another moment before starting down the steps to the first floor. He had to admit, Hezbollah’s attack might be low-tech, but it included a well-thought-out battle plan. Men who didn’t mind dying, and thought it bought them a first-class ticket to paradise, held an incredible edge over warriors who were trying to kill the enemy and stay alive at the same time.
Bottom line in this situation was that the sooner Bolan wiped out all the terrorists on the first floor, the sooner the bomb would go off and destroy the chapel and probably the police officers surrounding it. Not to mention him.
He was fighting himself on this one.
* * *
THE CHAPEL WAS SMALL in comparison to most churches, and built of irregular stones that formed both the inside and the outside walls. One main room per story, with the staircase near the middle of each.
That meant that from where he stood presently, at the top of the steps, Bolan had a clear view of about half the ground level. The up side to this situation was his superior position. The down side was that many men firing out through the shattered stained glass windows could see him if they turned around.
And there were bound to be more Hezbollah out of sight behind the open staircase.
Luckily, the three men he could see were too engaged in their battle with the police to pay attention to their flanks or rear. So Bolan crept farther down the steps, the M-16 A-2 aimed and ready. He squatted momentarily, resting the rifle across his knees as he again sized up the situation. Blasts from the firearms of more men—unseen but heard—confirmed his suspicion that there were other terrorists at the rear. Exactly how many murderers there were in all was
