LITMIR.BIZ

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      Bolan did not plan a sustained attack, his first time out, but he had four spare cartridges lined up beside him on the rooftop for a quick reload if time allowed. The shooting would be loud, and there’d be no mistaking it for anything mundane, such as a vehicle’s backfire in the street. Once he began, there’d be no stopping until Bolan disengaged and fled the scene, hopefully well ahead of any armed pursuit.

      He scoped the two hardmen on the entrance first, decided not to kill them yet, and let the Leupold scope take him inside The Hungry Wolf. He felt like one himself, at times, when it was time to thin the herd of savages who preyed on so-called civilized society. He wasn’t bloodthirsty and hadn’t killed out of anger since the first strike that avenged his family, many years ago, but there was no denying that eliminating vicious predators lifted a weight from Bolan’s soul, if only temporarily.

      So many goons, so little time.

      He chose a laughing face at random, framed it with the Leupold’s reticle, inhaled and let half of the breath escape as he began the trigger squeeze.

      * * *

      AT FIRST, DIMO LEVYTSKY thought some stupid tweaker high on meth had lost his mind and tossed a rock or something through the broad front window of The Hungry Wolf. It took another second for his brain to wrap around the fact that Trofim Kulik’s bald head had exploded, spraying blood and brains in all directions as he toppled forward, headless, into his eggplant mezhivo.

      Even as the others at his table were recoiling, reaching for their sidearms, Levytsky saw a second bullet crack the window, this one bringing down a goodly portion of the clean plate glass. Round two drilled Marko Shestov’s pudgy neck and almost took his head off, severing the arteries and loosing crimson jets that might have made Levytsky laugh in other circumstances, thinking of a whacked-out Rain Bird sprinkler.

      But Levytsky wasn’t laughing as he hit the carpet, reaching up to push over his table, which gave him at least some flimsy cover, while his free hand fumbled for the Colt .380 Mustang XSP pistol he carried tucked beneath his belt, around in back. It wasn’t easy, going for a quick draw with his right arm underneath him, as he was scared to rise and make a target of himself.

      The rifle’s third shot—it could only be a sniper, the Ukrainian had concluded—made a wet sound slapping into flesh, as more voices raised in snarls and curses from the restaurant around him. He could hear somebody puking, hoped it was a waiter or the maître d’ and not one of his soldiers publicly embarrassing himself.

      Levytsky had no idea where the sniper was firing from, but since his lookouts on the street weren’t firing back, he took for granted that it had to be someplace high up and out of pistol range. Or maybe his two spotters, skinny Sasha and fat Illia, had already split, fleeing to save themselves. It was a damned pain in the ass finding decent help these days.

      Levytsky gave up on the Colt, useless for any kind of long-range work, and fished out his cell phone instead. Job one was to inform his boss of what was happening, in case the rifleman was part of something bigger, threatening the brotherhood. He hit speed dial and waited while a fourth shot took out half the second street-side window, drilling someone who began to howl in agony, as if a real-life hungry wolf was gnawing on his leg.

      It rang once at the other end, then twice, three times, and someone picked up midway through the fourth ring, growling, “Yeah?” Levytsky knew he should have recognized the voice but couldn’t place it with the world collapsing all around him.

      “Put the boss on!” he commanded.

      “Who is this?”

      “Dimo, you dumb shit! Go get him! Now!”

      “Okay.”

      Levytsky thought the shooting might have stopped—maybe the sniper figured out he ought to cut and run—but then a fifth shot came, just as a deep, familiar voice came on the line, asking him, “Dimo? What the hell?”

      “They’re killing us down here!” he said. “You hear this?”

      Levytsky raised his cell phone aloft, above the capsized table, actually praying for a sixth shot now, so that Stepan Melnyk wouldn’t mistake him for a drunken ass. The shot came, answering his silent prayer, but not as he had expected.

      When the phone exploded in his hand, it sent a hard jolt all the way to the Ukrainian’s shoulder, as if some big ape had struck his forearm with a baseball bat. He yelped and yanked his arm back, half expecting that his wrist would be a bloody stump, but all five fingers wiggled at him when he tried them. Nothing broken, no blood on his hand or sleeve.

      It was a freaking miracle—or damned good shooting on the sniper’s part.

      Huddled on the floor behind his fragile barricade, Levytsky asked himself, who was this guy?

      * * *

      BOLAN LEFT HIS brass behind when he departed from the rooftop, one shell anchoring a slip of paper to prevent a breeze from snatching it away before somebody found the sniper’s nest. That done, the Remington tucked more or less beneath the knee-length raincoat he wore, the Executioner cleared the rooftop access door and hurried down the service stairs to reach the back entrance to the ground floor.

      Two minutes later, he was back inside the Mazda CX-5, left waiting for him in the alley behind the office block, and rolling out of there. Bolan turned away from Sixth Street without passing by The Hungry Wolf to judge the impact of his rifle fire. He’d killed five men and used one round to spook Levytsky when he’d raised a cell phone from behind his upturned table, either snapping photos on the fly or letting someone on the line hear Bolan’s shots to make a point. The raised sleeve of the underboss’s sky blue jacket had been unmistakable.

      One target down, a stone tossed into Stepan Melnyk’s pond, and Bolan knew the ripples would be spreading even now. His next mark, chosen at the same time he had picked The Hungry Wolf, was the Flame, a nightclub that advertised Ukrainian cuisine, a wide range of flavored vodkas and a waitstaff dressed in traditional peasant garb. The Flame’s backroom casino was not advertised in any guidebook, telephone directory or tourist flyer, but the players tracked it down by word of mouth. It was, of course, illegal in Manhattan, but it stayed in operation somehow, almost certainly because police were greased to look the other way.

      Bolan did a quick recon on the place and found its two back doors: one for deliveries of various supplies, the other for a hasty exit from the gaming room, in case a miracle occurred and law-enforcement agents came to raid the joint. Both doors were locked from the inside, of course, but that was no impediment.

      For this job, Bolan switched out Remingtons, taking the 12-gauge with its 7-round magazine and an eighth round in the chamber, three deer slugs to start with, and the other five double-aught buck. It was a guaranteed door-buster and man-stopper. He had the Glock for backup, in a shoulder rig, and three spare magazines.

      He wore a baseball cap and kept his head down for the camera out back, as there was no point in giving anything away this early in the game. Bolan took out the raid door’s hinges first, two one-ounce chunks of rifled lead shearing through masonry and metal. By the time he blew the dead bolt out, the door was ready to collapse, and all he had to do was stand aside.

      The shotgun blasts had sparked a panic in the Flame’s casino, setting off a stampede toward the main saloon and dining room. That suited Bolan perfectly. He didn’t want civilians in the line of fire, if there were Melnyk soldiers on the premises.

      He crossed the threshold in a rush, through gun smoke, following the shotgun’s lead. A handful of the nightspot’s well-dressed gamblers were jammed together at the normal exit, those who had preceded them causing a hubbub in the main part of the club as they ran through, men babbling, women squealing out of fright. Behind them, shepherding the stragglers, stood two thugs with pistols in their hands.

      Security.

      The man on Bolan’s left noticed him first and raised his shiny automatic pistol, hoping he’d have time to aim. The Remington was faster, perforating the goon with buckshot from a range of forty feet. The guy was airborne in a millisecond,

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