Fatal Combat. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ an old blue Chevy Caprice full of guys down here,” Davis said. “They’ve circled the block twice now, but I can’t read the plate from where I’m watching. They’re a little out of place in this neighborhood, and I don’t recognize them. I was kind of hoping you were going to say you had called in reinforcements.”

      “No such luck,” Bolan said. “Watch yourself down there, Davis. Keep me informed if anything changes.”

      “Will do.”

      Bolan picked up his pace. He traversed the next stairwells with less caution; he could feel the numbers working against him and Davis. When he reached the third floor, he found apartment C and stepped well to the side of the doorway. He flattened himself against the wall, reached out and rapped on the edge of the hollow-core door.

      It took several tries before he got a response from within. Finally, a woman’s voice answered, “What do you want?”

      “Kendall Brown?” Bolan asked, as he came to the front of the door.

      The door opened to the length of its chain revealing a middle-aged black woman wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants and bracing a toddler on her hip with one thick arm. The little girl, who was chewing on a pacifier, looked up at Bolan with wide eyes.

      The woman nodded slowly. “What do you want?” she said again.

      “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he said, smiling briefly at the child. She continued to regard Bolan with amazement. “I need to talk to you about Mikyl Brown, your son.”

      The woman wanted to shut the door; Bolan could see her knuckles turn white. To her credit, she held her ground.

      “Cooper,” Davis said over their wireless connection. “I think that car I saw is parked behind the building. I saw it nose out and then reverse.”

      “Mikyl is dead,” Brown said. “Murdered. Police already been here. Can’t say they much cared about him, if you ask me. But they were here. They asked their questions. They left. Mikyl is still dead. What the hell you think you’re gonna do now?”

      “I understand,” Bolan said. “I really do, Ms. Brown. I’m hoping that if I can better understand the circumstances of Mikyl’s death, I can bring his killer to justice. I’m part of a special task force.”

      “Cooper,” Davis’s voice sounded in Bolan’s ear again. “Cooper, I think you’d better hurry.”

      Kendall Brown closed the door, removed the chain and opened it again, after putting the child on the ground and giving the girl a gentle pat to send her toddling in the opposite direction. She lowered her voice. “I don’t know who you are, mister,” she said, “but it’s damned cruel what you’re doing. Mikyl was murdered in a gang fight. Stabbed to death. The boy who done it, not even a year older than my son, is in prison. Probably get out sooner than he should, too. Just how things go.”

      Bolan’s eyes narrowed. “Mikyl’s murderer was convicted?”

      “Cooper.” Davis’s voice was growing more urgent.

      “Who the hell are you, mister?” Brown said. “I don’t need you coming up in here and reminding me of my boy.” She slammed the door in his face with considerable force. Bolan looked up and down the corridor; nothing moved.

      “I’m coming out,” Bolan said. “Something’s not right, here. Keep the front covered.”

      “Understood,” Davis answered.

      Bolan paused at the stairwell. Beneath the noise of the apartments, both in and outside the building, he could hear something else.

      Shuffling. There were men in the stairwell.

      Bolan reached into the canvas war bag. He removed a flashbang grenade, popped the pin and watched the spoon spring free.

      Below him, someone moved in response to the noise.

      The soldier leaned over the stairwell railing and let the grenade fall.

      He turned away, shielding his ears with his palms, squeezing his eyes shut. The actinic flash of the grenade was bright enough that he could see it through his eyelids. The thunder-clap of the less-lethal bomb made his teeth vibrate. He heard a scream.

      No sooner had the flash faded than Bolan hoisted himself up over the railing. He dropped, colliding heavily on the landing below, absorbing the impact with his legs. Rising from his crouch, he drew the double-edged combat-survival dagger in his waistband. The trio of men in whose midst he had landed, either held or were reaching for automatic weapons. They were dressed in what Bolan recognized as expensive suits, probably tailored to hide their shoulder holsters and submachine-gun harnesses. All three continued rubbing at their eyes or holding their ears.

      The nearest of the gunmen managed to fix Bolan with bloodshot eyes, fighting the involuntary tears streaming down his face. His gun came up, but Bolan stabbed him in the neck and ripped the knife forward and away. The dying man spun, spraying the wall crimson.

      Bolan kicked out the knee of the second man, dropping him to the floor. The third was on his hands and knees, trying to find the micro-Uzi he had dropped. The Executioner fired a kick to his ribs and was rewarded with an audible crack as the gunman rolled over. He threw his knife arm backward, sensing the second man surging back to his feet, and rammed the double-edged blade into the hollow of the gunner’s throat. Yanking the knife out in a circular motion as he wrenched the man’s head around, the soldier levered him down to die on the stairs.

      Bolan checked left, right, and then up and down the stairwell, very quickly. Then he threw himself to the floor, landing with his knee in the back of the man he had rib-kicked. Air gasped from the gunman’s lungs and he lost his grip on the Uzi again. Bolan kicked the gun away and moved to secure the man; he had plastic zip-tie cuffs in his pocket. He rolled his prisoner over so the man’s back was on the floor.

      The would-be killer wasn’t down for the count. His hand snaked into his jacket and came out with a backup pistol, a tiny chromed .25ACP. He fired a single round. Bolan swatted the gun aside and plunged the blade of his knife into the most quickly lethal target. The blade penetrated the gunner’s eye and turned him off as if a switch had been thrown.

      Bolan drew a breath.

      He followed the path of the bullet, but it had lodged in the railing of the stairwell, taking chips from the paint. The small-caliber slug would not have been much of a threat, but the whole point of Bolan’s maneuver had been to neutralize these attackers before they started firing at close quarters. Most pistol and machine-gun rounds would pass right through an interior wall of a dwelling. They would penetrate most exterior walls, for that matter. In slums like these, gunfire would scythe through the residents as if the walls weren’t there. Bolan could not permit that to happen, which meant he had to keep moving, and quickly, to get clear of the tenement.

      “Davis,” Bolan said quietly, wiping his knife clean on one of the dead men’s jackets. He sheathed the blade. “I have engaged multiple hostiles. Well dressed and heavily armed.” He began methodically stripping the gunmen’s weapons, separating slides and bolts from receivers and tossing the results in opposite directions. “See if you can get some uniforms in here, including the medical examiner. Tell them to sweep the building,” he suggested. “I don’t want to leave a lot of firearms in component parts for the neighborhood kids to play with.” He took a moment to snap pictures СКАЧАТЬ