selected before the firefight broke out, the tone became solid. In the moonlight, Bolan could see the dim outline that had the correct dimensions for a shallow grave. When he stood over it, the earpiece told him he had found his mark.
He pulled the foot-long combat knife from its sheath and plunged it into the soft earth. Just as the hilt touched ground, the tip of the blade made contact. In the distance, Bolan could hear a new sound—the steady drone of a vehicle that sounded big. He didn’t know for sure how distant it was, but the way sound traveled over the moors, he thought he had at least five minutes before it would reach him. He began to claw at the grave, moving the loose soil to both sides. In less than a minute, he reached the body. Holding the penlight with his teeth, he saw that luck was with him—the end he had chosen to clear exposed Oxford’s head, the upper portion above the agent’s eyebrows mangled and singed around the edges by the point-blank shot that had taken his life. The bottom half of his face was smeared with dirt and, after three days in the grave, swollen beyond recognition.
Leaning forward, Bolan grabbed the corpse’s head and brushed the dirt away from its mouth. Placing the point of his combat knife at a spot directly beneath Oxford’s earlobe, he opened the agent’s cheek with a quick forward slice, revealing teeth that shone like pearls in the penlight’s beam. In the back of the dead man’s throat, insects scurried to escape the sudden illumination.
Bolan pushed the flap of bloodless skin away so he could insert the tip of his blade under the last molar. In the back of his mind, he was aware that the vehicle was drawing closer, coming slowly due to the winding roads, but approaching, nevertheless, at a steady pace. As he twisted the knife’s handle and the dead agent’s tooth popped free, Bolan wondered what had prompted its approach. Whether it was responding to the sound of gunfire traveling a great distance through the clear still night, or a missed call-in from the men waiting in ambush, the result was the same—there was no time to retrieve Oxford’s remains. But Bolan had the most important thing he had come for and he could mark the body’s location for a future pickup by placing his earpiece with the corpse.
He dropped the extracted molar into the same pocket containing the chains he had taken from his would-be ambushers, shoved his earpiece down the front of Oxford’s blood-enrusted sweater and hurriedly pushed the dirt back over the body. Just as he was finishing, he caught the glimpse of approaching headlights winding their way down the side of the shallow bowl-shaped valley less than a quarter of a mile away.
After smoothing the earth back over the shallow grave, he ran at full speed for a stand of trees and thick bushes about a hundred yards away. He had progressed less than ten feet into the woods when an SUV burst out of the adjacent hillside pasture onto the flat land of the moors, and the night was suddenly filled with the eardrum-splitting sounds of AK-47s chattering in full-automatic mode.
The air surrounding Bolan became a deadly beehive of activity as bullets whizzed by with the distinctive snaps of 7.62 mm bullets. He dived to the ground, scrambling for cover.
2
The furious fusillade ended abruptly, and Bolan heard the distinctive metallic rattling of empty magazines being ejected, followed by the slide and click of new ones being rammed home. In the sudden silence, rendered more profound by its extreme contrast to the deafening uproar from the AK-47s that still echoed in his brain, a wide beam of blinding light painted the trees and thick bushes with broad strokes, sweeping back and forth through the stretch of woods like a prison spotlight.
From his prone position in a tiny depression behind a stout hickory, Bolan flexed his legs in preparation for his departure. He peered through the lush foliage, inches above ground level, to where the SUV stood like an alien being, its modern technology seeming anachronistic against the barren landscape.
Accompanied by the racing sound of its powerful engine, the vehicle spun in a cloud of dust, casting its lights onto the ambush site littered with three bodies. As Bolan moved in a crouch through the woods to put distance between himself and the new arrivals, he heard the opening of a door followed by loud cursing in a thick brogue. A quick burst of automatic fire sliced through the trees at least fifty yards to his left. It was an obvious gesture of anger and frustration, and it reinforced Bolan’s earlier opinion that his opponents were deficient in both their training and discipline. This lack of professionalism would be a factor he’d leverage to his advantage when they finally clashed again, which was bound to happen sooner or later.
The SUV wasn’t able to follow him through the trees, but Bolan knew that the stand would eventually end and he’d find himself at the edge of a sheep pasture somewhere with no available cover. If the men in the vehicle were locals, they’d know the place where the woods ended, and that’s where they’d be waiting.
Crouching behind a thick tree, Bolan checked his watch for the time: 2:30 a.m. The summer equinox had occurred a scant two weeks earlier, which meant that, at this time of year, sunrise came quickly to the regions up around the fifty-fifth parallel. The area was at about the same latitude as Glasgow, where dawn would break around four-thirty. Bolan didn’t know how long it would take him to reach the tracks where he’d heard the trains rumbling, but he thought it would be to his advantage to get there before daybreak.
As he made his way through the woods, Bolan recalled the information contained in the second communiqué that had been delivered to the local CIA office and forwarded to the President. The Apprentices, a rogue splinter group claiming to be sponsored by the Orange Order, was demanding immediate disarmament of the IRA, and international recognition for the legitimacy of home rule in Belfast. Once and for all, they wanted the world—and especially the United States—to endorse the existence of two nations in Ireland and to formally declare that there was no chance the two would ever be united. Once and for all, they wanted to end the Irish conflict, and they were prepared to use terrorism to force the result.
They further said they were about to release a list of prominent Catholics, whose assassinations were being scheduled to occur until the process of IRA disarmament was complete. And, finally, they were threatening the United States with a domestic terrorist attack if their demands were not met by the end of July. That gave the CIA less than a month to find and destroy the people behind the plot.
It was an insane scenario, made viable by the global terrorism that had spread like a runaway cancer since the fateful assault on New York’s World Trade Center.
As Bolan pushed forward toward the sounds of distant trains, one thing was clear in his mind—any mission that prevented another terrorist attack on the United States was worth his involvement.
The Executioner had been deployed, and he was prepared to give as good as he got.
BOLAN ARRIVED AT THE TRAIN tracks as the first suggestions of predawn light were touching the eastern sky. He estimated he was eight or nine miles away from where he had left his car, but, luckily, the tracks were configured north to south. As long as he jumped a train going the right way, it would bring him closer to his transportation.
He paused at the edge of the woods and, while remaining concealed by the mulberry bushes that populated a narrow gully extending from the trees to the tracks, he reached into the pouch containing his night-vision goggles. With the coming dawn, ambient light was greatly increased and, with it, came maximum visibility.
The SUV that had attacked him at the ambush site was nowhere to be seen and a quick glance around the area explained why. This section of track was as inaccessible to wheeled vehicles as the woods had been. A rushing mountain stream cut through the hilly area to the north and rough outcroppings littered the terrain on the other side of the tracks for as far as Bolan could see.
He heard the sound of a slow freight train coming his way, the steady clack of wheels on the rails indicating a speed that could probably be jumped. Placing the goggles back into their pouch, he headed down the gully to a concealed spot close to the tracks.
The train came around a curve and into sight, going faster than Bolan had originally judged. He remained motionless as the double locomotives reached his position and sailed past at about thirty miles per hour—a little too quick for him to attempt a clean jump.