Killing Game

The smell of spent gunpowder burned the Executioner’s nostrils as he mounted the steps of the CLODO house, grasping the grip and fore end of the Mossberg JIC. He kept the barrel aimed slightly upward, roughly at waist level, ready to raise or lower his aim with lightning speed should an enemy face or body appear in the doorway or the window next to it. By the time he was a quarter of the way up the steps to the house’s second level, he could see half of the next set of stairs that led to the third, and top, tier of the dwelling.

The rooms on the second landing were all to his right. At the top step the Executioner dropped to one knee and inched an eye around the corner. The layout was simple. A bedroom stood just to his right. Another, next to it, faced him. And across the hall, he could see a bathroom.

The doors to all three rooms were wide open, which didn’t necessarily mean they were empty.

The Executioner knew there were plenty of hiding places. He would have to search them all, and any hidden enemies would see him long before he saw them. They might even get off a round or two before he pinpointed their location.

Switching the shotgun’s pistol grip to his left hand, Bolan rose to his feet and stepped around the corner. Slowly, and as silently as the aged wood allowed, he pressed his back along the hallway wall and moved to the first bedroom. When he reached the open door, he halted, waiting, listening, trying to hear anything that might give away the presence of anyone inside the bedroom.

For a moment, the Executioner’s thoughts drifted to Plat. Where was she? It had been several minutes since he’d last heard the roar of the 500 S&W Magnum, which meant she’d had plenty of time to scramble down off the roof and join him inside the house. Yet he had seen no trace of her. And there was another possibility.

There might have been one or more hidden outside sentries whom they both had missed. If that was the case, Platinov would have been mere child’s play to locate when she fired the gargantuan S&W. One or more of the terrorists could easily have slipped up onto the roof behind her and taken her out while her attention was on the house across the street.

As far as he could tell, there had been no small-caliber shots fired from across the street—just the Magnum booms of the .50-caliber revolver. But there could be many explanations for his not hearing more gunfire, and the Executioner forced those thoughts, too, away from his mind. Platinov was either alive or dead. But either way, there was nothing he could do to assist her at this point, and worrying about her would do nothing but distract him from what he had to do himself.

Still holding the Mossberg left-handed, Bolan suddenly stepped into the doorway. A brief glance into the bedroom revealed a man wearing a blue beret. The terrorist made no attempt whatsoever to hide. He sat confidently, his lips almost smiling, with his back against the head of the bed.

Bolan pivoted away from the threshold, recognized the weapon propped between the man’s legs, and aimed at the doorway. The Browning .50-caliber machinegun was identifiable by the spade handle grips, plain-sided receiver, canvas cartridge feed belt and the open top of the ammunition box on the tripod upon which the giant rifle rested.

He also IDed the rifle by the deafening roar it made as the .50-caliber rounds—longer, and even more penetrative than the 500 S&W Platinov had been using—shot through the open door and then moved to the wall as he hit the wooden floor on his belly.

White dust and chunks of plaster rained on the Executioner’s head as the big .50-caliber slugs tore the wall to shreds above him. The gunner inside the bedroom kept up a steady stream of fire, shooting blindly, obviously counting on the probability that at least one of his stray rounds would find the Executioner.

What he didn’t consider was that the giant holes he was making in the wall could work both ways.

Bolan rolled onto his side, placing the JIC on the floor next to him and jerking the Desert Eagle from his hip holster. So far, the machine gunner had fired all his rounds at waist level or above. But the Executioner knew it would be a matter of seconds before he began shooting lower—assuming that if the man he’d seen in the hallway was still alive, he would have taken to the ground.

Bolan wasn’t wrong.

A few seconds later, the giant chunks of plaster began to blow out holes closer to the floor. Bolan waited, breathing in through his nose, then out through his mouth, in order to remain calm and collected for the task he knew he had to perform.

Finally, a giant, ragged hole appeared in the wall three inches above the Executioner’s line of sight. Exhaling another deep breath, he peered through the new opening.

In an instant, Bolan saw that while the hole was large enough to see through, or shoot through, it wasn’t big enough to do both. The big frame of the Desert Eagle would block any view he tried to take as soon as he stuck the barrel through the opening. So, frowning as his brain took a mental “photograph” of the exact angle of trajectory from the hole to the chest of the man on the bed, Bolan dropped low again, raised the .44 Magnum pistol above his head and stuck the barrel through the opening. The angle was awkward, and required him to twist his wrist and put his thumb on the trigger instead of his index finger. But the Executioner was used to improvising, and as the random .50-caliber blasts to the wall continued, he used the picture he had taken in his head to angle the .44 at the man on the bed.

A second later, the Executioner pulled the trigger with his thumb.

And a second after that, the machine-gun blasts from inside the bedroom halted.

Bolan withdrew the Desert Eagle, holstered it and picked up the short-barreled shotgun once more. Rising to look into the same hole through which he’d just shot, he saw that his blind aim had been slightly high.

The .44 Magnum round had taken the terrorist in the throat rather than the chest.

Not that it mattered. The man had already bled out and was staring lifelessly at the wall he had all but demolished.

The roar in his ears had barely died down when the Executioner heard the creak of wood behind him. During the duel with the Browning, he had been forced to concentrate his efforts there and turn his back to the rest of the second level of the split-level safe house. But now, he rolled over so he could view both the other bedroom and bathroom.

And he did so none too soon.

Obviously assuming that their comrade would end the threat with his Browning, two men in the second, smaller bedroom had stayed out of sight. But they were not amateurs, and had been well-trained in one of the many terrorist “boot camps” operating throughout the world. Now that the firing had ceased, and the last roar they’d heard had come from a pistol, they could tell that the fight had not gone their way. And now they both stepped into view through the doorway, holding Barrett M-468 assault rifles.

Looking somewhat like the standard M-16 series, the M-468s were chambered for the newer, more powerful, .270-caliber cartridge. But as Bolan had already proved several times during this encounter, calibers didn’t fight calibers.

Men fought men.

It didn’t matter a bit that the two terrorists held the latest technology in small-arms warfare after the Executioner had ended both of their lives with a pair of old-fashioned 12-gauge shotgun shells.

The Mossberg JIC either had one round left in it or none. But either way, the Executioner decided it could no longer serve as his primary weapon. Letting the short-barreled shotgun fall to the floor, he drew the Desert Eagle with his right hand, the Beretta 93-R with his left. Pushing the big .44’s safety lever forward with his thumb, he moved the smaller 93-R’s selector switch to 3-round-burst mode.

Bolan moved cautiously toward the staircase that led to the top level of the house. Below him, on the first floor at the rear of the house, he heard more pistol fire—what sounded like 9 mm and .45s. His guess was that Platinov had now abandoned the huge 500 S&W Magnum gun and circled the house, coming in some back entrance with her top-of-the-line .45-caliber Colt Gold Cups. Whoever she was shooting it out with down there had to be welding the 9 mms.

When he reached the corner, the Executioner inched an eye around the barrier, the Beretta in his left hand hanging at the end of his arm in front of him, ready to rise and fire if he saw any sign of the enemy. He didn’t, and another step around the corner found him slowly, and cautiously climbing the final flight of stairs.

A thin, well-worn carpet ran down the middle of the stairs, leaving a foot or so of exposed wood on either side of each step. Bolan stayed on the carpet, both pistols in front of him, ready to send a .44 Magnum RBCD total-fragmentation round or a 3-round burst of the same “exploding” bullets in 9 mm, up the stairwell. The carpet muffled the sounds of his hiking shoes. But the ancient wood still creaked with every step.

Bolan knew there were more CLODO terrorists upstairs, and they knew he was on the way.

Just before he reached the top step, the Executioner stopped and dropped to his knees, leaning forward to peer around yet another corner. He could see roughly half of the room, and it looked like it had been set up as a young boy’s bedroom by the previous owners. Posters of rock bands and rap groups covered the walls, European, American and Japanese. He could also see two half doors against the far wall that reached from the floor to the point where the ceiling sloped downward.

Closets, the Executioner realized, with latch locks to keep the doors closed.

But although the doors were both closed, the latches hung straight down, unlocked. It didn’t take a genius to assume that if there were terrorists on this floor of the house, they’d be inside the closets.

The Executioner straightened and took the last step to the landing just outside the top bedroom. He peered around the last corner, surveying the other half of the room. It appeared devoid of human beings, but the front wall of the room contained one more of the odd, slanting closets

Bolan stepped into the room. The floor was bare wood, and he took advantage of the soft rubber soles of his hiking shoes to make the least amount of noise possible as he moved to the closet to his right. A large window looked out over the backyard next to the unlatched door, and he glanced that way for a second.

The light had been on in the upstairs bedroom when he’d arrived, adding to his suspicions that the room was occupied. That meant that his vision out of the window into the backyard was limited, while anyone behind the house could see him clearly.

But no one fired at him, which told the Executioner that Platinov had taken out any of the terrorists who might have been in the backyard.

Holstering the Desert Eagle, Bolan transferred the Beretta 93-R to his right hand and stepped just to the side of the closet door. The way the roof angled downward, he was forced to stoop slightly and bend his knees. From this uncomfortable, semibalanced position, he reached out with his left hand, grasped the door latch and swung the door open.

A second after that, a hailstorm of gunfire blew out of the opening just to his side. Bolan waited for the blasts to die down. Then, during the lightning-fast millisecond when the shooters wondered why they saw no dead body in front of them, he curved his arm around the corner into the short closet, blindly spraying four 3-round bursts up, down and to both sides.

With only four rounds left in the Beretta, Bolan dropped the magazine and inserted a fresh 15-round box. Inside the closet, he could hear a soft moaning and the deep intakes of breath. He kept the Beretta close to his shoulder as, still stooped, he leaned around the doorway and angled the pistol inside the tiny room.

Lying on the floor were four CLODO terrorists. Three wore the tan shirts and brown trousers that the group used for identification purposes. The fourth was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt that bore the likeness of the American comedian Jerry Lewis.

Two of the men, both wearing these unofficial CLODO uniforms, lay on the floor, obviously dead. They were as still as rocks, having taken the frangible 9 mm rounds in their heads. The third man in brown and tan lay across them. It was he who was doing the moaning as he clutched his lower abdomen with both hands.

A 3-round burst into the man mercifully ended his moaning.

Shotguns, pistols and rifles were scattered across the floor and on top of the bodies.

Bolan knew that the men in the other two closets had to have heard the gunfire. So as he backed out of the room, trading the Beretta in his right hand for the Desert Eagle. This time, he moved in front of the door of the second closet but fired an entire magazine of Magnum rounds through the splintery wood before reloading and holstering the big .44, all the while keeping the door covered by the Beretta.

The wood of the door was now splintered and warped, so rather than open it, the Executioner lifted a foot and kicked. Sharp pieces of wood flew into the closet ahead of him as the door disintegrated. Forced to bend his knees and stoop again, Bolan stepped forward and surveyed the contents of the closet. Only two of the terrorists had chosen this tiny room in which to take refuge, and both lay dead on the ground.