a chain-link fence and dropped down, removing wire cutters from his combat harness. Using deft, practiced movements, Bolan snipped an opening and bent back one edge.
Bolan slid through headfirst and popped up on the other side. Traveling in a wide crescent, designed to take him as far as possible from the Mercedes, Bolan approached the maintenance entrance. He scanned the triple row of windows set above the building’s ground floor for any sign of movement. As he neared the building, Bolan pulled a Glock 17 from his shoulder rig.
Bolan crept up the short flight of stairs leading to the door, clicking the selector switch on his pistol off safety as he moved. Reaching the door, Bolan pulled a lock pick gun from a cargo pocket and slid it expertly home. He pulled the trigger on the locksmith device and heard the bolt securing the door snap back. Replacing the lock pick gun, Bolan put a hand on the door handle, holding his 9 mm pistol up and ready.
He thought about the intelligence intercept that had come through at the last moment. Because of strained relations with the Russian government over the Iraq war and the status of Iran’s nuclear program, the Oval Office had decided to keep America’s ally out of the loop. Enzik Garabend, an Armenian middleman responsible for financial networks and communications between disparate terror cells, was on his way to the Chechen capital. A meet had been planned with Kamir Abdhula Zanibar, head of a violent, Whabbism influenced, splinter militia of the main Chechen separatist movement.
In order to make use of the real-time information, Brognola had been forced to rush Bolan into place. Garabend was known never to be without his laptop. Encrypted inside of its software was believed to be a blueprint to the worldwide financial networks of the global jihad, linking Abu Sayef in Southeast Asia, with Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda in the Middle East, all the way to EU splinter groups and Chechen field commanders. It was a brass ring worth killing for.
Before he moved he took a final scan of his surroundings. The industrial wasteland was eerily still. Taking a breath, the Executioner turned the handle and pulled the door open. He stepped through the black mouth of the open door and into the darkened interior of the building. He shuffled smoothly to one side, sank into a tight crouch, pistol up, and let the door swing shut behind him.
Bolan quickly took in the hall in both directions. It was empty. Rising, he began moving down the corridor toward the rear of the building.
The building was oppressively still and quiet around him. The perimeter hallway ran the length of the structure, with doors leading to the building’s interior spaced at intervals along the inside wall. At the far end Bolan could make out the heavy steel of a fire door that would open to stairs.
The intelligence on the building layout had been spotty. The factory had served many functions over the years and had played little part in the Chechen insurrection or in Russian oil concerns. All Bolan knew was that Garabend, with his bodyguards, would be in an office suite on the second floor for seven hours before departing Grozny for Damascus.
Bolan entered the stairwell. He craned his neck, looking upward. Nothing moved on the stairs or crouched in the gloomy landings. He tracked his scanning vision with the poised muzzle of the Glock 17. The hair on the back of Bolan’s neck stood raised like the hackles of a dog.
The stale smell of dust and disuse was hanging heavy in the air. Faintly beneath that was the slight odor of machine oil coming up from the factory floor. Bolan’s straining ears detected nothing. He placed the reinforced soles of his boots carefully on the first metal rung of the building’s skeletal framed staircase and began to climb.
He edged around the curve of the stair. The raised grip of the pistol’s butt snuggled tightly into his palms. He kept his Weaver stance tight, keyed-up to react to the slightest motion. Garabend was an established veteran of life as a hunted man. Security so apparently lax was unexplainable in such a man.
Reaching the second-floor landing, Bolan snuggled up tight against the fire door. He pressed his back against the wall beside the door handle. The seal of the landing door was too tight for him to use a fiber optics surveillance cable borescope. The heavy steel door effectively muted any potential sound coming from the second-floor hallway.
Gritting his teeth, Bolan pulled the door open and darted his head around the edge. He was met with silence and darkness. The hallway ran for several yards, office doors on one side, dark windows facing the parking lot on the other. The hall turned in a L-break at the far end toward the front of the building.
Bolan moved down the center of the hallway, ready to drop prone or respond with deadly fire at the slightest threat. He moved as silently as his considerable skills allowed, but to his own adrenaline-enhanced hearing, his footfalls echoed loudly. Reaching the bend in the hallway, Bolan took a rapid look around the corner. Along this stretch, doorways marked both sides of the hall at intermittent lengths.
Halfway down he picked out a crumpled form. From the green smear under the still shape, Bolan could tell the figure had lost a lot of blood, and recently, as the signature still held a good amount of heat. Instinctively Bolan snapped his line of sight up, scanning the corridor for any sign of movement. Seeing none, Bolan slid around the corner and into the passage.
The heat register meant the downed figure was either still alive, or had been struck down just minutes before. Keeping low, Bolan moved forward. His nostrils flared under the saddle of the night-vision goggles. The reek of cordite was heavy on the stale air of the abandoned factory.
Going up to the body, Bolan looked it over quickly. The figure remained still. Reaching his free hand out, Bolan felt for a pulse on the figure’s neck, found none. He peered down, straining to make out facial features in the ambivalent light of the NVGs. The figure was male. A thick beard fell across a broad swell of chest. He was dressed in a Russian army pattern camouflage parka. There was a folding stock, paratrooper model AKS-74 under the man’s body.
Bolan touched the barrel. The metal was cool. The weapon had not been fired. Scanning the hallway, Bolan used his fingers to probe the corpse, trying to ascertain the source of his injuries. The face was intact, the torso clear of wounds. Frowning, Bolan felt the back of the man’s head.
His fingers came away wet.
The location on the back of the head where the spinal cord merged with the back of skull was the medulla oblongata, Latin for “stem of the rose.” Bolan knew it was the collective location for all of the nerves of the central nervous system. The hypothalamus hung there like a grape cluster, regulating breath and the beating of the heart. In the special operations community, a shot to the medulla oblongata was known as “popping the grape” and was a preferred method of neutralizing subjects from behind.
This hadn’t been a sloppy assassination. The dead man—Chechen, Bolan guessed, given the beard and Russian army jacket—had been coolly dispatched from up close and personal by someone with the nerves of a professional killer.
Bolan rose and stepped over the corpse. The man had been killed directly in front of a door on the outer side of the hallway. His intelligence information hadn’t been specific as to where on the second floor Garabend was supposed to be having his meeting.
“This mission is going to be very ad hoc, Striker,” Brognola had warned.
Bolan knew ad hoc was government speak for “half-assed.”
Bolan also knew that, in his War Everlasting, “half-assed” got you killed. But he felt, just as Brognola did, that the information on Garabend’s laptop was worth the risk. Worth his life even, if every drop of his blood was counted against the blood of innocents. Innocents Bolan had sworn his life to defend and avenge.
Bolan put his hand
