Renegade. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ and rolled back to his feet. The storm of bullets followed him and another round struck the tail of his coat, whipping it around into his face. Temporarily blinded, he lifted both the Beretta and Desert Eagle and cut loose.

      By the time he had reached the door, his coattail had fallen back away from his face. But the men inside the house had seen where he was headed and now round after round poured through the hollow-core door. The Executioner stepped to the side, letting the onslaught pass by. As he waited, movement above caught his attention and he spotted a man with a pistol leaning out of a second-story window.

      The man had long unkempt hair and a black beard beginning to turn gray. Bolan’s right hand shot up over his head. The terrorist was a split second late in his attempt to aim his weapon, and a massive 240-grain hollowpoint from the Desert Eagle blew the top of his head from his body.

      The pistol fell from the overhead window, landing on the concrete next to the Executioner and bouncing. A moment later a shower of bone fragments, blood and brain fluid followed. The man—what was left of him—slumped over the windowsill. He looked like something out of a carnival spook house as he came to rest half in, half out, of the opening.

      As the assault through the door continued, Bolan leaned as close to the splintering plywood as he dared, then screamed as if in pain. Then, certain that the men inside the house had to have heard him even amid the explosions, he crouched and moved stealthily toward a window directly below the half-headed terrorist above him. Dropping beneath the windowsill, he kept one eye on the door, the other on the second story windows as he waited for the rounds still coming through the door to die down.

      A few seconds later, the rifle cracks and pistol pops disappeared. Bolan heard tentative footsteps approach the front of the house from inside. From where he squatted, he could see the gaping holes in the door and knew what was about to happen. One of the men inside the house had been sent to check out the scream. He would look through the holes in the door first. But then, seeing no dead or injured body on the ground, he would conclude that the Executioner had to have fallen to one side.

      Which would force him to open the door to make sure.

      Five feet from the doorway, Bolan waited, his ears finely tuned. He heard the footsteps halt just behind the door and the sound of heavy breathing replace them. A moment later, a faint but familiar odor came wafting through the holes in the hollow-core door. It was a scent the Executioner had smelled all of his adult life and he recognized it immediately.

      It was the smell of fear.

      A second later the creak of a doorknob turning sounded softly above the heavy breathing. The Executioner duck-walked closer to the doorway. Then the shattered door began to swing back on rusty hinges and at last a bearded face peered tentatively out of the opening and turned toward him.

      Bolan pressed the Beretta’s sound suppressor into the Hezbollah hardman’s forehead. During the split second it took the terrorist to realize what had happened, the Executioner pulled the trigger. A 9 mm hollowpoint round whispered, through the sound suppressor and drilled through the man’s brain.

      The Executioner wasted no time, rising to his feet and elbowing the man away from the door and out of his way. Crouching once more, he rounded the corner of the doorway and stepped into what appeared to be a living room. A cheap chandelier hung from the ceiling but expensive Persian carpets covered the wooden floor. An ornately carved couch, a table and several overstuffed chairs made up the furniture.

      None of which mattered to Bolan at the moment. What did matter were the three Hezbollah men aiming two rifles and one submachine gun his way.

      Bolan’s sudden appearance after they’d suspected him dead caused a moment of shock in the three men. The Executioner took advantage of it, diving forward. He rolled behind a puffy white reclining chair, leveled the Desert Eagle over the headrest and dropped the front sight on the forehead of a man wearing a white turban. A massive .44 Magnum round spit from the Desert Eagle’s beak and the terrorist’s face disintegrated. The AK-47s fell from his hands, and the gunner toppled forward on top of it.

      A Hezbollah hardman holding an Uzi had stood next to the falling terrorist, and now he raised his subgun toward the Executioner. But blood from his partner’s fragmenting face had flown into his eyes, temporarily blinding him. He cut loose with a wild stream of 9 mm rounds that sailed high over Bolan’s head.

      The Eagle screamed again, sending another Magnum round into the fanatic’s chest. He fell on top of his friend.

      The third man in the living room was dressed in Western wear. Clean shaved, and wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots and a hat, the Executioner wondered exactly what dastardly role he was about to play—or had already played—in the outfit. But he had no time to find out.

      The “cowboy” came out of shock and turned the barrel of his rifle toward the reclining chair as an expression worthy of Satan himself twisted his features.

      Bolan double-tapped the big .44. One round drilled through a white-pearl snap-closure in the middle of the bright orange cowboy shirt the man wore. A dark stain had already begun to spread across his chest as the Executioner’s second round caught him in the throat. A fire-hose spray of crimson shot forth as the terrorist dropped his rifle. He fell to the floor in death, the scowl on his face in place for all eternity.

      Suddenly the house was as quiet as the tomb it had become.

      The Executioner stayed where he was, both guns resting over the arm of the reclining chair as he took in the situation. He had taken out five of the terrorists—the man in the garden, the three here in front of him and the one in the upstairs window. But none of them had been Anton Sobor. And unless he missed his guess, the gunfire that had showered him while he was still in the garden had come from far more than three AK-47s and one Uzi. In the bedlam surrounding him, it had been difficult to pick out the distinctive sounds of specific weapons, but in addition to the rifles and submachine gun he was almost certain he had heard at least one pistol.

      There were more Hezbollah gunmen in the house. Bolan didn’t just think so, he knew it; he could sense it.

      Slowly, the Executioner rose from behind the chair. Somewhere in the two-story house, more men waited to murder him. One of them was Anton Sobor. The trap had been set. But if he wanted Sobor, he had no alternative but to step directly into it.

      With the Desert Eagle and Beretta 93-R leading the way, the Executioner moved silently across the blood-stained Persian carpets toward an archway leading into a deserted dining room. A long dining table with matching chairs—each as elaborately carved as the couch in the living room—stood in the center of the room. An equally intricate china closet and buffet had been placed along one wall. A silver service set shone brightly atop the buffet.

      Perhaps, like all terrorists claimed, these men hiding Anton Sobor were fighting for God and the “common man.” But while they did, they were living like kings and had brought as much Paradise as they could right here to Earth.

      Moving cautiously, the Executioner stepped under the archway into the dining room and saw two doors leading into different parts of the house. The Beretta rose almost of its own accord to cover the door to his left. The Desert Eagle did the same on his right. Which way first? One path had to lead to a staircase that, in turn, would lead to the second story. And the second story was where he suspected Sobor, and whatever men still remained, had taken refuge.

      But the floor plan was unknown to him, and from where he stood there was no indication as to where the steps might be found.

      So which way first?

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