Throw Down

And then, when the man finally did take his time and line up the sights, he had run the Makarov dry.

Again, Bolan had to wonder if there wasn’t something more than so-called luck at work here within the chapel.

Bolan cleared his mind. The time for action was at hand; there would be opportunity for philosophical reflection later. No more stealth now; a hundred percent full-court press was needed to eliminate the Hezbollah terrorists at the front of the chapel. And Bolan could not allow himself to be killed or disabled while doing so. The bomb would go off just as surely as if he had dropped the detonator after taking out the man in the red-and-white scarf.

Drawing the mammoth .44 Magnum Desert Eagle from his hip holster, Bolan kept the remote button depressed with his middle finger, and used his index finger and thumb to pull the slide back just far enough to make sure a copper jacket was chambered in the barrel. Then he flipped the safety off with his thumb.

And with the Desert Eagle in his right hand, the remote “dead man” detonator in his left, he started toward the front of the chapel.

* * *

CoMPARED TO WHAT HE ’ D already been through, the rest of the battle seemed like a cakewalk.

When Bolan emerged from the side of the staircase, he saw that the police out front had found their mark on yet another of the Hezbollah men shooting back at them. A terrorist with long black hair, partially covered by a green baseball cap, lay facing away from the windows. The corpse’s hands were still wrapped around his throat in what had proved to be a vain attempt to curb the blood flow brought on by the round that had sliced through his carotid artery. His BDU blouse was soaked with blood, and what had undoubtedly been a gusher not unlike a freshly tapped oil well had subsided into a mere trickle of red running down his neck.

The man’s caramel-colored skin had turned white in death.

Bolan dragged his eyes away from the body. Two of the six terrorists were down. That meant four more needed killing.

Taking his time, Bolan raised the Desert Eagle and aimed it at the back of the head of the man on the far left of the row of windows, then tapped the trigger. The Desert Eagle exploded, far louder than the 7.62 mm rifle rounds going the other way. And as it hit its mark, it drew the attention of the Hezbollah men still engaged in the gun battle.

All three turned as one.

Bolan swung the Magnum right, firing a round into the face of a man wearing a checkered kaffiyeh. The blast made the tail of the headdress blow back as if caught in the wind, and the features of his face disintegrated into a mass of blood, muscle and bone.

Bolan’s attack was little different from a bowling pin pistol match, in which competitors kept swinging to the right in order to knock over the wooden pins. Bolan did so again, and the shot he aimed at the next terrorist caught the man in the throat as he attempted to rise from where he’d been firing out of the window.

The round went between the carotid artery and the jugular vein and took out his larynx. He coughed and sputtered spasmodically as his chest jerked in and out. He would die from the wound, Bolan knew. But he might not die fast enough to keep him from returning fire if Bolan moved on. So, as AK-47 fire from the last terrorist began to whiz past him, Bolan put another round between the choking man’s eyes.

That .44 Magnum ended the choking and coughing. For eternity.

Bolan swung the Desert Eagle toward the last man, who had, like the bomber with the Makarov, suddenly run his weapon dry. But you could tell the terrorist was a practiced warrior in the smooth way he dropped the empty mag and reached for a full one in the sash tied around his waist. He was fast.

But the Executioner was faster.

Bolan sent a double-tap of .44 Magnum rounds into the man’s chest, and the magazine fell from his left hand, the rifle from his right. He collapsed onto the floor, which had become a mass of OD green BDU uniforms soaked black, and several ever-growing pools of bright red blood.

Rounds were still exploding from the police outside the chapel. But they began to slow as no more return fire flew back at them from within Saint Michael’s.

Bolan pulled out his satellite phone and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm. “Let them know it’s all over in here, Hal,” he said into the instrument. “Tell them I’ve got the detonator and it needs to be turned over to the bomb squad.”

“Great work as always,” Brognola said. “Anything else I should tell them?”

“Yeah,” Bolan said drily. “Tell them not to shoot the big guy in the stretchy blacksuit.”

The Executioner ended the call. Two minutes later, SWAT teams and explosive experts had entered the chapel. Bolan carefully turned the detonator over to the captain in charge of the bomb squad as other members of his team removed the bomb itself and gingerly carried it out to their van.

2

The hotel room on the third floor of Detroit’s downtown Hilton looked no different from thousands of others across the globe. It contained two double beds separated by a nightstand and lamp, with a Gideon Bible tucked in a drawer. At the foot of the beds, centered along the wall, was a wooden desk and chair. The bedspreads were generic, as were the pictures hanging on the cream-colored walls.

The room looked much like all the others weary travelers occupied the world over.

What was different were the occupants.

Bolan had changed out of his combat blacksuit while still at Saint Michael’s, using a downstairs closet for privacy. He now wore khaki slacks, a navy blue blazer, a white shirt open at the collar, and black-and-oxblood saddle shoes. For all the world to see, he appeared to be just another businessman who had taken the liberty of removing his necktie and folding it into a pocket of the blazer.

What could not be seen, however, were the weapons beneath that sport coat. The sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R was once again fully loaded, with the first round already chambered and the selector switch thumbed to safe. Opposite it in the leather-and-nylon shoulder rig hung an extra pair of 15-round 9 mm magazines, with subsonic loads that also helped keep the weapon down to a whisper when he pulled the trigger.

Almost in direct contrast to the Beretta was the bigger pistol he wore on his right hip. The Desert Eagle sounded like a nuclear bomb when it went off inside a building, and not much quieter outside. The .44 Magnum was loaded with 240-grain semijacketed hollowpoint rounds, and extra box mags for it were secured behind Bolan’s left hip.

In addition to the big firearms, he carried a North American Arms .22 Magnum, rimfire, single-action minirevolver in the right pocket of his blazer. The tiny firearm could be hidden in the palm of Bolan’s big fist or secreted in any number of other places around his body, as the situation called for. At the moment, it was doing double duty as a “last ditch” backup, and also as a weight that allowed the tail of his jacket to be swept back from his side, for a lightning-fast draw of the Desert Eagle.

Bolan’s final weapon was the newly manufactured Spyderco Navaja. With the ancient Spanish navajas—sometimes known as “caracas” due to their ratcheting sound when opened—as its prototype, the Spyderco was an updated, four-inch-blade version built with the latest innovations in steel and technology.

Bolan had found the Spyderco folder with its one-handed opening hole to be an indispensable tool, and sometimes weapon.

He sat on the edge of the bed closest to the door, facing a man who was just as unique, in his own way, in the cookie-cutter motel room. Father Patrick O’Melton wore a black suit and cap-toed black dress shoes. But above the equally dark tunic, his white Catholic priest’s collar stood out in bold relief. His sandy-red, wavy hair had been combed straight back, barely covering the tips of his ears at the sides. The priest’s nose appeared to have been broken more than once, and a long scar, almost as white as his collar, extended from his left ear down the side of his face to his chin, parting the short, stubby beard that covered the rest of his jaw.

The two men had just entered the room and sat silently for the few seconds it took to check each other out. Bolan, never known to beat around the bush, broke the silence. “My people tell me you were a U.S. Army Ranger.”

O’Melton nodded slowly and his lips curled into a small smile. “That’s right,” he said pleasantly. “First Gulf war. I got to sneak around Baghdad dressed like an Iraqi, and help guide our missiles and bombers onto target.”

Bolan tapped his throat, then gestured to the priest’s collar. “This was a pretty dramatic career change, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, it was dramatic,” O’Melton agreed, his head still bobbing. “But not as strange as it might seem at first.”

When Bolan didn’t respond, the priest went on. “It was toward the end of the war,” he said. “When Saddam Hussein was pulling his troops back to Iraq and setting fire to all the oil wells he could on the way. The deciding moment wasn’t all that colorful, I’m afraid. I just pretty much thought okay, you’ve killed a lot of bad guys, and that was what you were supposed to do. But now it’s time to do your best to save some.”

Bolan finally nodded in understanding. He leaned forward slightly, clasped his hands together and said, “Tell me about this snitch of yours.”

“He’s a diamond in the rough,” O’Melton said. “Former Hezbollah terrorist. He knows a lot of the ins and outs of the organization—but not everything, of course. Each cell in each terrorist organization—Hezbollah, al Qaeda, or any of the others—operate on a need-to-know basis, just like a lot of our own intelligence agencies. But my man says he’s willing to help.”

“How’d he come to tell you about the attack on Saint Michael’s?” Bolan asked.

“He told me in confession,” the priest said. “And since it was a crime that hadn’t yet occurred, I wasn’t bound to the confidentiality pact. In fact, I was bound by law to report it.” Father O’Melton held a fist to his mouth and coughed slightly.

“He was in confession,” Bolan said. “Are you telling me that he’s given up Islam for Christianity?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Well, his intel was great,” the soldier said. “The attack on the chapel came off just as he told you it was going to. If the Detroit PD hadn’t gotten advance notice, instead of a few dozen bullet holes in the walls, your chapel wouldn’t even be standing now.”

“He was on the money right down to the tiniest detail,” O’Melton agreed.

“And he’s willing to help us go after Hezbollah and other terrorists, as well?”

“That’s what he said.”