to keep his jet-black hair from providing stark contrast, which would have betrayed his position.
As a sniper, Bolan had learned about human perception and how to avoid being noticed in the field. He could observe the commando team with relative impunity. Still, the big American knew that he could find himself in trouble if his own observational skills had failed him.
The leader of the group spoke to his men in Arabic, directing them to store the containers out of sight. Bolan didn’t speak much of the language, and he wasn’t capable of determining the dialect that they spoke, pinning down their nation of origin, but he could make out what was happening with the assistance of the commander’s hand movements and phrases he did recognize. He also heard the word helicopter and knew that there wasn’t going to be much time to spy upon this group. Depending on the tent where the commandos stored their ancient prize, it was also possible that they would discover Metit’s disappearance.
Just to be certain, Bolan readied his Egyptian Beretta to buy a few more moments of time. He screwed a sound suppressor onto the pistol’s threaded barrel. He would rob the hardball ammunition of some of its velocity as the silencer baffles would trap propelling gases as well as their resistance against the bullet. Fortunately, Bolan and Kamau had picked up a supply of military-grade ammunition, loaded to much higher levels than civilian rounds. Again, experience had taught the warrior that 9 mm full-metal-jacket bullets would do the job he needed them to do, if only his accuracy was dead-on.
With Bolan’s lifetime of shooting experience, as well as his training and familiarity with the Beretta 92 platform, he didn’t think the slightly lower velocity and lack of frangibility would hinder him from making swift, decisive kills. He slithered toward the rape tent, his senses reaching out not only for conspirators heading toward the enclosure, but for indications that the enemy had noticed his presence. Luckily, the Executioner’s stealth had kept him in the shadows, just outside their awareness.
He shadowed one of the teams that had been given the task of stowing the containers that the whole group had brought with them. They rolled one toward a tent next to where they had found Metit. It was a small bit of fortune on a mission that already seemed so wrought with troubles. Bolan had only two advantages so far, one of them being Kamau, an assistant who was luckily a man of the same moral caliber as the Executioner, and who had the skills to assist him. Kamau’s knowledge of Arabic dialects as well as African languages was worth the Somali’s weight in gold. The other advantage was that his enemy was unaware that Bolan was pursuing them. It wouldn’t last long, though. His luck couldn’t hold out forever.
Bolan glanced toward the gully and saw that Kamau and Metit were long gone from sight, but he wasn’t willing to risk that the gunmen couldn’t track the pair even on the hard rocky ground. An added problem was that the small gash in the earth was the most blatant route that an escaping woman would take. If the mystery soldiers headed out to capture Metit, they’d know that Bolan and Kamau were present. He turned his attention back to the two men who were retrieving one more of the containers, the last one that was out in the open.
There was some brief conversation as the two men spoke with their commander. They pointed at the storage tent, then over to the one that Metit had been in. The leader nodded and waved them toward the rape tent. Bolan grimaced and circled to the front, the hammer on the Beretta drawn back to give him an effortless pull of the trigger if necessary. From his new angle, he saw only one of the men push the container on its trolley through the flaps of the tent. He left, leaving the trolley just inside the entrance, then turned back to his leader.
It was a moment of laziness, a lapse in judgment that gave Bolan’s allies a reprieve. He allowed himself a brief smile when the clatter of a falling crate sounded just inside the flaps. The trolley had to have been on uneven ground, or worse, it had been shoved against the corpse of Metit’s rapist, an act of happenstance that blew things for Bolan.
The flap had been pushed aside by the dolly’s back. There was a moment of grumbling as the guy bent to pick it up. He stood, his head tilted at a quizzical angle. Bolan rested the Beretta’s front sight on the commando’s goggles. The beginning of a question escaped the soldier’s lips, and Bolan applied just over three pounds of pressure. The Beretta 92 wasn’t a gun that kicked much, and with the suppressor weighing down its muzzle, the recoil impulse was nonexistent. Plexiglas imploded as the 115-grain FMJ round speared through it, driving deep through facial bones. Splinters of shattered skull exploded through the soldier’s brain and his head snapped back violently.
The sudden, violent death of one of their own froze two of the mercenaries in their tracks as they watched their comrade collapse to the dirt in a lifeless pile. Their confusion gave the Executioner a couple more targets while the rest of the group sprang into motion. The commandos’ training and experience was readily apparent as most of them broke for cover at the first sign of violence.
Bolan took one of the stunned gunmen with a second Beretta round to the throat. The sneeze of the 9 mm’s passage was discreet, but he knew that even that gentle sound would betray his position. He didn’t wait to see the effects of his shot on the second of the marauders, sidestepping to the shelter of a slab of sandstone before he rose from the ground, his camouflaging cloak fluttering behind him. The burp of 5.56 mm rifles popped through the air, and Bolan slid around the other side of the flat stone he’d swung behind. In the transition from one side of the rock to the other, Bolan had holstered the sidearm and gripped the AK on its sling. Two of the Arab-speaking gunmen were visible to the Executioner from his new vantage point, firing their bullpup assault rifles in profile to him. He shouldered his AK and triggered his own autoweapon.
The first of the enemy gunners jerked violently, his skull smashed under the hammering force of 7.62 mm steel-cored slugs. A grisly, thick soup of brains and blood slashed from the remains of his head, smearing across the goggles of his compatriot. With a curse, the other rifleman wiped his bloodied lenses and spun. Bolan triggered a second triburst from the AK, this blast of autofire crashing through the man’s shoulder and upper chest. The gunner’s arm flopped limply at his side, but his body armor had prevented serious trauma to his torso. All that mattered was that the second gunman was temporarily out of the fight.
The Executioner scanned for fresh targets as he began a short retreat to a man-size column of stone. It was a calculated move that allowed Bolan to draw the attention of the marauders away from Kamau and Metit. The chatter of gunfire would hopefully give Metit a little more pep in her step, but Bolan was concerned that Kamau might double back and assist him. Bullets smashed clouds of pulverized stone off the column, and the big American knew he had to make certain that this engagement ended quickly. Four men were out of action, but nine trained fighters were still operating, and the torrent of gunfire that they threw at him was consistent. It wasn’t panic fire, it was concentrated autofire that would pin down any lesser man.
Bolan realized that the covering fire would only have been provided by a few of his opponents, alternating their bursts in order to keep up the pace while they reloaded. He reached under his cloak, grabbing a hand grenade hooked onto his harness. He jammed his thumb through the cotter pin’s ring, then flicked the safety out of the minibomb. Once the pin was pulled, the grenade was no longer a friend to anyone on the battlefield. Bolan loosened his fingers on the fragger so that its spoon lever would pop free, beginning the countdown on its fuse. It was a process called cooking the grenade, burning off a fraction of the bomb’s timer to make it less likely that the recipients could throw it away from them. With a powerful lob, Bolan sailed the grenade high over his cover.
Bolan had heard the cry of “Grenade!” in dozens of languages over his years of combat, so he knew that the enemy saw death drop from above. The concentrated autofire that held Bolan in place sputtered and died out. The subsequent detonation of several ounces of military-grade high explosives shook the ground and filled the air with thousands of pieces of notched wire and the grenade’s broken steel shell.
Bolan kicked into the open and charged toward the next position he’d picked to take cover behind. To his right, an assault rifle opened up, chewing at the ground and plucking at the camo-pattern blanket that had given the Executioner his concealment. The flowing cloak no longer provided a stealth function now that the enemy was aware of his presence, but the cloth obscured Bolan’s