it and the panel will open.”
“I hope this one moves faster,” he said, remembering how slowly the panel above had opened.
“I’m afraid not,” Brognola grunted. “They were set up to satisfy the building code and for use in case of fire. No one had armed men and bombs on their minds when the place was built. I’m afraid it’ll be just as slow.”
“Okay,” Bolan said simply. “Sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got. One more thing, though. You still have your informants on the other line? The priest and former Hezbollah man?”
“I do.”
“Ask them about the bomb itself,” Bolan said. He stepped down onto a small landing, then turned to take the last set of steps. “I need to know for sure if there’s a remote detonator, and especially if it has a dead man’s switch. And ask our informant if there are any identifying features about the guy in charge of the bomb.”
Bolan heard another click in his ear as Brognola put him on hold once more. He wondered briefly how long it would take for the men on the ground floor to realize what was going on once the panel began to swing open.
A few seconds later, the Stony Man director was back. “I’m afraid that’s affirmative on both counts, big guy,” he said. “Remote detonator and dead man’s switch. The only good thing I can tell you is that there’s a three-second delay between the time the bomber lets up on the button and when the explosives—it is Semtex, by the way—detonates. If you can get to it within that time frame and press the button again you’ll be okay.”
“How about the description of the bomber?” Bolan asked.
“Our new man here says he always wears a red-and-white-checkered scarf tied around his neck.”
“Well, that’s something at least,” Bolan said. He had reached the bottom of the stairs and saw the red button glowing in the semidarkness. If he was lucky, the men he was about to face would be so intent on firing their weapons out the back that they wouldn’t notice him immediately. He’d have to scan them as quickly as he could, find the one in the red-and-white scarf and kill the others before taking out the one with the dead man’s switch.
Not to mention getting to the remote within three seconds.
“Okay, Hal,” the Executioner said. “I’m ending this call now.”
“Good luck,” Brognola said. “Not that you’ve ever depended on luck.”
Bolan didn’t bother answering. He switched off the sat phone, stuck it back in his blacksuit, then reached up and pressed the red, glowing button with his index and middle fingers.
* * *
SURVIVAL OFTEN HINGED on decisions made at lightning speed and at the last possible second. Some men credited training for honing such decision-making. Others argued that nothing but real live experience—and luck in staying alive until that experience was obtained—was the key to success in life-and-death situations.
But a warrior such as the Executioner knew that neither school of thought was completely right or completely wrong. And while it would be unlike Bolan to ever put such an idea into words, in his mind he knew that he fought out of instinct.
Vincent Van Gogh had been born a painter. Charles Dickens had been born a writer.
And in his very soul, Samuel Mack Bolan knew God had put him on this earth to be a fighter. His inborn talent was in taking up the slack when strong but vicious men of the world attempted to take advantage of their good but weaker brethren.
The wall creaked slightly, then began to move as Bolan made one of those last-minute decisions. This next step in saving Saint Michael’s Chapel and the police officers surrounding it called for stealth. So before the panel had opened even an inch, he had set the M-16 down and drawn the sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R. Forgoing the use of the folding front grip on the machine pistol—Bolan knew his other hand had a far more important task to fulfill—he thumbed the selector switch from safety to semiautomatic.
The escape door had swung out another two inches when Bolan saw the first of the Hezbollah at the rear of the chapel, and snaked the Beretta through the opening to aim it at him. The man was wearing the same OD green BDUs as the terrorists he’d seen on the roof and at the front of the chapel. On his head was a dirty white turban that jerked slightly with each shot the man fired from his AK-47. There was no red-and-white scarf around his neck.
The panel had opened roughly four inches when Bolan depressed the Beretta’s trigger and sent a subsonic 9 mm hollowpoint bullet from the barrel. The ignition made a soft, hissing sound, with the clank of the slide moving back and forth across the frame actually louder than the explosion itself. A thousandth of a second later, in addition to the BDUs and turban, the Hezbollah man wore something new.
A 9 mm hole in the back of his head.
The hidden staircase’s panel continued to swing wider and Bolan thrust his arm through the opening. The man next to the one he had just killed wore a scarf around his neck, but instead of red-and-white it was solid black.
Had there been a mix-up in communication? Had the alleged Hezbollah-terrorist-turned-Christian gotten the color wrong? Bolan knew it was often little mistakes like this that determined the success or failure of a mission. But when he turned his focus to the man’s hands, he saw they were wrapped around the pistol grip and fore end of another AK-47. And that sight caused him to pull the trigger once again, downing the man in the same fashion he had the first.
By this point, the door to the chapel was half open, and Bolan thrust his head around the still-moving panel. With a 180-degree view of the rear of the chapel, he spotted another terrorist to his far right—who did have on a red-and-white scarf. The man had noticed when his two comrades fell.
Bolan noted that in one hand, the terrorist held an old Soviet Makarov 9 mm pistol. But in the other was a device that looked little different than the remote control box for a television or a DVD player.
The Executioner had identified the bomber.
But there was a problem. There were still two Hezbollah firing out the broken windows at the other end of the room. And as quiet as the Beretta 93-R might be, they, too, had seen their brothers fall. The one nearest Bolan had begun to turn his way.
Bolan knew that as soon as he shot the man in the red-and-white scarf, he would have to dive forward to get to the dead man’s switch. Such a task would leave him in no position to return fire. But if he shot the others first, the man with the Makarov would have more than enough time to sight him in and kill him with the Soviet pistol.
Either way, Bolan would be unable to get to the detonator. He’d likely be dead even before the bomb went off, killing everyone else inside the chapel, as well as many of the cops surrounding the structure.
His decision was made faster than he could measure. Bolan had two gunners about to shoot at him from the far windows, and only one—the man with the Makarov and detonator—at the other. Two men with assault rifles had a better chance of killing him than one with a pistol, so he turned the Beretta to his left. As he fired another quiet round from the 93-R, Bolan heard the Makarov explode, and felt a 9 mm round sear past his ear. With the nerves of steel for which he was famous, he stuck with his plan as that first round from the Beretta sent a hollowpoint slug through the temple of the man he’d aimed at.
The
