Conflict Zone

They would do their best, but was it good enough?

He had rushed out of the camp with nothing but his pistol, and its magazine was empty. Swallowing embarrassment, he shot an elbow toward the man beside him, ordering, “Reload my gun!”

“What, sir?”

“My pistol. Put in a fresh magazine!”

The soldier nearly blanched at that, but did as he was told, reaching across the space between them, past Bankole’s elbow and the gearshift, to remove his pistol from its holster. He extracted the spent magazine, then found himself with both hands full until he slipped the empty into his breast pocket.

“Sir?”

“Yes? What?” Bankole snapped, eyes on the narrow road.

“The other magazine, sir?”

“On my belt, for God’s sake!”

“Yes, sir.”

Fairly trembling, the soldier leaned closer, snaking an arm beneath Bankole’s, reaching for the ammo pouches on the left front of his pistol belt. The way he cringed and grimaced, he could have been mistaken for a creeping pervert in a porno theater, risking his life for an illicit hand-job.

“Hurry up, damn you!” Bankole gritted.

“Yes, sir!”

At last the job was done, the gun reloaded, safely holstered, while the nervous soldier wiped his sweaty face with a discolored handkerchief. Bankole almost had to laugh at that, but there was no room in his world for levity this night.

More gunshots echoed down the road, stinging his ears as he sped through the rippling sound waves, but the fugitives were still in motion, still retreating at top speed.

Could no one stop them now?

Enraged, he shouted at the troops who could not hear him. “Aim, you bastards! Make those bullets count!”

A BLOWOUT ALWAYS came as a surprise. On city streets, at thirty miles per hour, it was nerve-racking. At sixty-something on a freeway, it could kill you. Same thing in an unfamiliar forest, when you were being chased by twenty thugs with guns.

The blowout didn’t kill Bolan or Mandy Ross, but when a bullet ripped through the Jeep’s left rear tire, Bolan knew they were in for bad trouble.

“Hang on!” he warned, fighting the wheel to keep the vehicle upright and moving for at least a little while longer. They couldn’t travel far, dragging the Jeep’s tail in the mud and cutting furrows with a rusty rim, but just a few more yards…

“When I stop,” he said, “bail out my side into the woods.”

“You’re stopping?”

“Either that, or slow to a crawl and let them kill us where we sit.”

“So stop already. Jeez!”

Bolan slammed on his brakes and cranked the steering wheel hard-left, nosing the Jeep into a gap between two looming trees. Another second saw him out and seeking cover, slipping the Steyr AUG off its taut shoulder sling. Mandy Ross followed Bolan, then passed him and knelt by a tree of her own, gun in hand.

There was no time to talk about strategy, optimal targets or anything else. Headlights blazed in his eyes, wobbling this way and that as the bikers reacted and tried to avoid the ambush, framed in light from the Jeeps at their back.

They were just shy of good enough. One guy laid down his bike, rolling clear in the dirt, while the other veered off to his right—Bolan’s left—and plowed into a tree.

The Executioner fired at the closer one first, semiauto, one round through the chest as he lurched to his feet and then tumbled back down in a sprawl. If he wasn’t dead, he was well on the way.

Number two had been dazed when his bike rammed the tree, but he came up with pistol in hand and got off two quick rounds in the heartbeat of life he had left. Bolan’s second shot punched the guy’s left eye through the back of his head. The soldier was dead on his feet, reeling through one more short step before he collapsed, leaving Bolan three Jeeps and all hands aboard to contend with.

High beams washed over the scene, bleaching tree trunks and ferns, forcing Bolan to squint. He lost sight of Mandy for a moment, then her pistol was banging away at the enemy. Two, three, four shots in a row, echoing through the woods.

And had she scored?

The lead Jeep swerved from Mandy’s barking gun and ran over the second biker Bolan had put down, pinning his corpse beneath one of its tires. The occupants sprang clear, using their vehicle for cover as the others arrived. If any of them had been hit by Mandy’s fire, it didn’t show.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN a standoff, then, but Bolan didn’t plan to hang around to trade shots with the MEND gunners until sunrise. He’d already beamed a silent signal from a small transmitter on his combat harness to a satellite miles overhead, from which it would rebound to a receiver Jack Grimaldi carried with him.

The scrambled signal came down to a single word.

Ready.

Meaning that Bolan had succeeded in retrieving Mandy Ross, and they were on their way to rendezvous with the Stony Man pilot, to be airlifted from a selected hilltop to the K-Tech Petroleum complex in Warri.

There’d been no way to explain that they were being chased by gunmen bent on killing them, that it might slow them or that Grimaldi might wind up waiting in vain for passengers who never showed.

“Ready” meant Grimaldi would be airborne by now and on his way. Another loop over the Gulf of Guinea, then the run toward shore beneath radar. To find…what?

The ace pilot could wait a little while, but not forever. If they meant to catch that ride, they had to move.

Bolan palmed a frag grenade, yanked the pin and pitched the bomb overhand, across the road and into the trees where his enemies clustered. He hadn’t warned Mandy, and the blast brought a little squeal from her lips, but she recovered and had her piece ready when two of the MEND gunners lurched from cover.

Bolan took the taller of them with a head shot, and was swinging toward the second when he heard Mandy’s pistol popping again, four shots in rapid fire. At least one found its target, spinning him and punching him back toward the trees with an odd little hop before falling facedown.

Bolan left him to Mandy, in case the guy got up again, but she’d already shifted to fire at the other guerrillas concealed in the tree line. Two more shots, and Bolan saw her pistol’s slide lock open on an empty chamber.

That would leave her with one magazine of fifteen rounds, assuming it was fully loaded when he’d pulled it from the dead man’s ammo pouch. He couldn’t help her if she burned through that too quickly, but with any kind of luck, their problem might’ve been resolved by then.

To which end, Bolan lobbed another frag grenade a few yards to the left of where his first had landed, waiting for the smoky flash and cries of pain. Before the echoes faded, he was up and moving, charging across the road on a diagonal tack, falling upon his enemies while they were still dazed and disoriented.

Hoping Mandy wouldn’t shoot him by mistake.

A couple of the gunmen saw him coming, but they couldn’t manage a response in time to save themselves. He stitched them both with 3-round bursts of 5.56 mm manglers, sweeping on to spray the other four still on their feet. Then he switched to semiauto, dealing mercy rounds to those who had been gutted by the shrapnel from his two grenades.

And silence, finally, along the forest road.

Until Mandy called, “Cooper? Are you all right?”

“We’re clear,” he told her, easing from the shadows, back into her line of sight. “Nobody left on this side.”

“Jesus.” She had a vaguely dazed expression on her face as she emerged from the tree line, pistol dangling, asking him, “Are they all dead?”