Assassin's Code

Bolan slung a bandolier of grenades and spare mags over his shoulder. “You’re being jammed across all frequencies.”

Yoshida was appalled. “When was the last time the Taliban could jam U.S. military com links?”

Bolan loaded a fragmentation round into his grenade launcher. “Puzzler, isn’t it?”

Yoshida’s face set in a ferocious scowl. “I’m going outside. I have to find my men. Anyone coming with me?”

“Whoever took them in this storm did it point-blank,” Bolan cautioned. “They’re right outside.”

“Plowman’s on the roof. You can’t see from rooftop to rooftop, he’s—”

“They’re on the roof, too.”

“Shit,” Keller observed.

“Crap,” Farkas agreed.

Ous smiled the smile of a warrior who had given himself over to violence and intended to enjoy it. “Shit-crap!”

Bolan took three steps and kicked the front door open.

Shit-crap was right.

The MRAP was roaring straight toward the door. The gears ground as someone unused to driving an MRAP built a full head of steam. Luckily whoever was in charge seemed to have no idea how to use the remote-weapon station and bring the .50-caliber weapon to bear. Bolan vainly wished he’d loaded an antiarmor round, but he sent the frag grenade flying into the armor-glass windshield and lunged back. “Get back! Get back!”

The MRAP hit the house in a forty-mile-per-hour, fourteen-ton car wreck. The door, the jamb and a significant chunk of the wall came down in an eruption of shattering clay. A chunk of wall hit Yoshida in his armored chest and knocked him into the next room. Keller screamed as a section of roof fell in, Plowman’s body falling on top of her. Two screaming, flailing terrorists followed as the ceiling dropped in a cascade. Bolan’s Beowulf thunder-clapped twice as he gave each killer a .500-caliber sledgehammer to the chest.

Ous’s M-4 made a distinctive clack as he pushed the usually deactivated selector switch to full-auto. The glass on an MRAP was rated to stop shell splinters, the blast effect of roadside improvised explosive devices and hits from .30-caliber rifle rounds. Ous’s weapon was .30 caliber, but the range was point-blank and he emptied his 20-round mag on full-auto. Armor glass geysered and cracked beneath the onslaught.

Bolan batted cleanup as he sent his eight remaining rounds through the driver’s window and shattered it. Arterial spray followed the glass shrapnel. The engine died at the same time as the driver, and the vehicle stood stalled in wreckage. Armored doors clanged open and the cry of “Allahu Akbar!” howled above the storm as killers boiled out the back door and made for the breach on either side of the vehicle. Others came over the top.

Bolan racked open his grenade launcher and slid another frag grenade into the smoking breech. Keller rose from the rubble and human wreckage. Her submachine gun bripped as she put bursts into the portside invaders. Farkas’s shotgun boomed aft in rapid semiautomatic. Bolan raised his weapon as gears ground in the MRAP as someone tried to get the vehicle moving while crouching beneath the level of the shattered windshield.

“Fire in the hole!” The team crouched as a unit as Bolan fired his grenade through the MRAP’s window and turned the insides of the vehicle into a slaughter box of buzz-sawing shrapnel. Engine activity in the MRAP ceased and desisted.

Bolan roared as he moved back and reloaded. “Move back! Farkas! Check the captain!”

Farkas pulled a fade as Bolan, Keller and Ous knelt and shot. The killers came on crying out God’s name and with their AK-74s spraying as they stumbled over the rubble. Their faith made them fearless, but it didn’t make them accurate or bulletproof. They fell going forward, but they fell. Bolan slammed in a fresh mag and counted a dozen dead. “Cease fire!”

The only noise was the storm beyond the shattered walls and the mechanical noise of weapons being reloaded. They had loaded the MRAP to the gills with holy warriors, but Bolan knew there had to be more in the surrounding houses and alleys. “Farkas! Sitrep!”

“Captain Yoshida’s okay!” Farkas called back. “But we’ve got enemy gunners coming up the alley behind us! I make it a baker’s dozen!”

Keller wiped blood and dust from her face and glared out into the dust storm. “Christ, there must be a platoon of them!”

“We’re out of here!” Bolan shouted.

Keller looked around in confusion. “Where’re we gonna go?”

Bolan clambered over the rubble on the MRAP. “The bus is leaving!”

Farkas shuffled forward, giving Yoshida a shoulder to lean on. Bolan flung open the driver’s door. The interior was painted black with smoke, glinting with shrapnel gouges and swathed in blood spray. He pulled the nearly headless driver from behind the wheel. The man who had tried to replace him was torn up pretty badly from the grenade, but he was still alive. Bolan shoved him out of the way as the rest of the team began to climb in. “Can anyone drive this?”

Yoshida gave a defiant wheeze. “I’ll fucking drive it out of here!”

“Do it!” Bolan moved back into the cabin. “Farkas! Stabilize the prisoner if you can! Keller! Close that back door!”

Bolan slid into the remote-weapon operator’s seat. Ugly scratches scored the monitor and everything was covered with smoke and blast residue, but the screen came to life as he clicked keys. The unmanned turret and the .50-caliber machine gun it carried whirred above him as he traversed rearward. Someone outside with ill intentions noticed the move, and Keller slammed the back door shut just as bullets began whining off the hull.

Yoshida rammed the MRAP into Reverse. Clay and timbers shifted as the armored vehicle backed out of the rubble. Bullets began whining off the hull in bee swarms. Bolan tracked the remote .50-caliber gun through the gloom, silencing the enemy fire shooter by shooter. The soldier’s skin crawled in anticipation of the RPG hit that would turn the cabin into a blast furnace of superheated gas and molten metal. The MRAP lurched forward as Yoshida put the hammer down. Ous leaped from armored window to armored window. “Seven o’clock! Seven o’clock high!”

The remote weapon whirled under Bolan’s command, the big .50-caliber weapon tearing the three men on the rooftop into rags.

BOLAN CAUGHT THE FLASH of fire and smoke as the rocket roared past his gun camera. The rocket impacted a wall in a flash, and then the explosion and smoke was swallowed in the dust storm. Keller shook her head in mounting panic as she scanned out the portside windows. “Christ, they’re everywhere!”

Yoshida roared in pain. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“The captain’s hit!” Farkas shouted.

Bolan flicked a glance over to see the Marine captain sag, swearing, out of the driver’s seat. “Shit…”

The Executioner was nearly thrown from his position as the MRAP swerved into a wall and stalled.

“Bismillah!” Ous shouted. “Rocket! Rocket!”

Bolan tracked the turret around just in time to see the rocket-propelled grenade fly straight into his crosshairs. “Everybody down!” Keller screamed. The interior lights went black as something seemed to slap the MRAP along its chassis. The turret overhead screamed as metal tore. Sparks flew from the wiring, and everything that wasn’t bolted down went flying. Ous tumbled into Bolan’s position and bounced off him. The Executioner’s ears rang, but battle instincts took over. The vehicle was still upright. The fire-suppression system hadn’t been activated, so they weren’t on fire, and the hull hadn’t been breached.

The remote-weapon system was gone. Bullets continued slamming into the hull. Bolan scrambled over Yoshida and Farkas. One glance told him Yoshida was in bad shape. The driver’s position was a viscous swamp of blood from every man who had driven the vehicle this day.

Bolan pulled down his goggles and slid into the death seat.

The wind blasted dust through the shattered window. The soldier hit the starter button, and the engine grunted then stalled.

“They come!” Ous yelled as he looked out the rear windows.

The Executioner hit the starter again, and the Caterpillar diesel engine thundered back to life. He shoved the MRAP into Reverse and floored it. The howls of bloodlust turned to screams. Bolan was rewarded by the sound of bodies bouncing off armor.

Ous went flying as the MRAP clipped the side of a house. Gears ground as the vehicle was cranked back into drive, then stalled. Thumps echoed hollowly from the roof as someone leaped from the rooftop and onto the MRAP. Bolan snarled as a hand appeared in the shattered driver’s window and dropped a grenade in his lap. The soldier snatched the grenade and shoved it back out the window.

“Down!” Bolan flung himself below the level of the window as the frag grenade detonated on the hood and sent jagged bits of metal spitting in all directions. He rose to find someone trying to shove the muzzle of an AK through the window, and grabbed the barrel, yanking it aside. The weapon went hot in his hand as the owner fired a long burst into Bolan’s armrest. Drawing his Beretta, the Executioner put a 3-round burst into the attacker’s gun hand. Fingers flew apart and Bolan yanked the weapon away. He hit the starter button and the besieged MRAP coughed into life once again, but the engine didn’t sound good.

People were still on the roof.

Bolan floored it once more. The MRAP roared as it accelerated. When the speedometer hit twenty, the soldier stood on the brakes. Three men went flying into the street ahead as if they had wings. Bolan stomped on the accelerator and ground the killers beneath the vehicle’s massive all-terrain tires. He shoved the Beretta out the window and fired bursts at two men appearing out of an alleyway with AKs. One fell to Bolan’s fire, but the other leaped back. Bullets still struck the MRAP, but they all struck the rear rather than the front, sides and roof.

Bolan burned out of the village and slowed as the storm engulfed them. “Farkas, how’s Yoshida?”

“Bad.”