LITMIR.BIZ

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rounds tore through the vehicle with merciless efficiency, pulping the gunners who were struggling to bring their automatic weapons to bear.

      Bolan advanced. As he neared the taxi, now a tomb, he heard Rosli shout.

      “Cooper! Down!”

      He hit the ground without hesitation. A burst of automatic fire burned the air where he had been standing. The second taxi was coming around for another pass, the shooters inside spraying and praying as their driver cut across traffic with reckless abandon.

      The Executioner was only too aware of the civilian traffic filling the busy city street. This was no place for a firefight. They were near an alley, the space between two large colonial-style buildings. He ran and reached into the open passenger door, grabbed Rosli—who was still behind the steering wheel crouched as low as he could get—and dragged him by his shirt through the opening, to the street.

      “Back! Back!” Bolan shouted. Rosli got the idea fast enough and, with his revolver in his fist, traded fire with the drive-by gunners while Bolan dragged him into the alley.

      “It will not take them long to—”

      “No, it won’t,” Bolan said, cutting the man off. He was already holstering the Desert Eagle and drawing his Beretta 93-R machine pistol. He slapped the 20-round magazine to be sure of its fit and extended the weapon’s small forward grip, flicking the selector switch to three-round burst.

      Bolan brought the Beretta up. The gunners weren’t terribly smart. Their unsuccessful vehicular assault had told him that much. The enemy cars had outnumbered Rosli’s taxi and were of at least equal power and weight. It should have been a lot harder to defeat them than it had been. The shooters inside the car had been too slow on the mark, as well, or he’d never have been able to stop them all before they could effectively return or preempt his fire. He didn’t know who the enemy was, though Brognola’s warning about the Padan Muka kept rolling around in his brain. If these were the best Prime Minister Fahzal could field for brownshirts, the Executioner wasn’t very impressed so far.

      He raised his mental estimation of them a moment later when the first of the gunners entered the alley, one high, one low, already shooting. He realized they were armed with mini-Uzis. The deadly automatic weapons spat tongues of flame in the relative shadow of the alley. The sound of the brass spilling onto the pavement was lost in the roar of the guns.

      Pressing himself against the wall of the alley, Bolan gave Rosli a helpful shove to push the man against the opposite wall. Rosli was smart enough to crouch low and take careful aim with his revolver. He picked off one of the shooters as Bolan extended his right arm, back against the wall, and took aim at another of them, feeling the automatic gunfire whistle past his face mere inches from his flesh.

      The Executioner triggered a tri-burst that stitched the second man center-of-mass. The gunner fell without a sound, dead before he hit the ground. Bolan began to back up, sliding along the wall, aware that his movement would give him away and that he would have to be ready for that.

      Two more gunners ducked into the alley, first firing blindly around the corner with their Uzis, then following the guns and rounding the corner. Rosli fired but missed. Bolan caught one man in the face with a three-round burst, then tracked and shot the next man. A grenade pinged off the far wall, thrown from the alley mouth, and bounced down the narrow space toward them.

      Rosli was closer. He saw the grenade and, without hesitating, stepped forward and planted a firm toe-kick with impeccable accuracy. The grenade whipped back the way it came.

      “Down!” Bolan ordered.

      The grenade exploded in the alley mouth. Bolan counted to three, his ears ringing from the blast, and popped up with the Beretta 93-R in both hands.

      He was concerned about shrapnel, about any civilians nearby who might have caught that grenade blast. He couldn’t fault Rosli for his fast action; the man had saved their lives. Had Bolan been closer he would have tried to direct the grenade farther up the alley rather than toward the open street, but he would not criticize the CIA operative; there was no point in second-guessing life-or-death combat decisions made in the heat of battle, done and over.

      He advanced on the alley mouth. The bodies of the shooters he and Rosli had already killed were splayed in gruesome wreckage, torn by the explosion. Bolan had seen enough carnage in his lengthy personal war that the sight did not unnerve him, but he would never truly be used to it. The Executioner simply did what he had to do, and took in measured stride the dead men he left in his wake—men who had tried to take his life, or the lives of good men, women and even children.

      He saw the third car before its occupants saw him. The four men within carried more submachine guns, Uzis all. Bolan braced himself against one wall of the alley, leveling the Beretta and letting his eyes flick left, then right, to check the immediate area for civilians. The streets of Kuala Lumpur were densely traveled and much traffic still sped by, but he saw no pedestrians nearby. There were only the shooters, still unidentified.

      Bolan figured they were agents of Fahzal’s unfriendly government, determined to prevent an outside interest from interfering in the nation’s affairs.

      He tracked the first man, pressed the Beretta’s trigger and rode out the muzzle rise as the three-round burst knocked the man to the pavement. The other three shooters scattered, spraying bullets in his direction. The soldier backed off, letting the mouth of the alley shield him. Slugs chipped the concrete and sprayed him with a fine, abrasive dust. He squinted against the grit, leaned and returned fire.

      He knew the Beretta’s 20-round magazine was starting to run low. He pulled in his elbow to cant the weapon, ripped the magazine free and slapped home a loaded spare from his messenger bag. The deadly snout of the weapon pushed forward once more as he extended his arms, ready for all comers.

      The shooters repeated the suicidal charge the men before them had made, plunging into the alley with their guns blazing. They were firing wild, without a real idea of just where their target was, and that was the difference between them and the Executioner. Bolan didn’t fire blindly. Crouching on one knee, he aimed carefully and put a three-round burst into the center of the leading shooter.

      The Beretta jammed open.

      Bolan did not hesitate. He simply let gravity take the now-useless machine pistol as he dropped the gun and went for the Desert Eagle, drawing the big .44 Magnum hand-cannon in one smooth, fluid motion. The triangular muzzle of the big gun bucked as he triggered a pair of heavy slugs, taking one man in the throat and the other in the chest.

      The second man kept coming.

      Bolan fired again, aiming for the head. At the same moment, the wounded shooter, a giant of a man, lowered his head and charged. The slug furrowed the would-be killer’s scalp—and then he and Bolan collided.

      Bolan pulled the Desert Eagle in against his side, prepared to fire from retention, to shoot the big man off of him, as they hit the pavement and the breath was squeezed from his lungs. He triggered one blast, to no visible effect, and as he did so, he felt his attacker’s arms encircle his chest. The seemingly implacable foe began to crush the life from him.

      Bolan tried to shoot again, but something had jammed the Desert Eagle’s action, most likely his clothing with the gun pressed against his body. He was able to get his gun arm free and started beating the man in the head with the .44 Magnum pistol, clubbing him in the skull with all his strength.

      There were shots. Though the growing gray haze encroached on his vision, Bolan registered the sound of shots. He began to feel himself losing consciousness, and some part of him understood that he was still hitting his foe in the head with his jammed weapon.

      The pressure was suddenly gone. The attacker’s arms went slack, and Bolan drew in a deep, haggard breath. Then the body on top of him was rolled off and Rosli’s face appeared in the center of his field of vision. He blinked past the floating spots of light.

      “There are none left,” Rosli said, offering a hand. “We must go, and go quickly. They will be here very soon.”

      “Who?”

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