LITMIR.BIZ

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the third floor, there were two guards waiting in the hallway. They were Indian Malaysians, from the look of them, and they wore the same camouflage uniforms Bolan had seen on the BR terrorists to this point. Both men had assault rifles. They were engaged in a heated conversation that Bolan could just barely hear from his side of the fire door. It sounded like Manglish, the curious version of English that the locals spoke.

      One of the men turned and apparently caught a glimpse of Bolan peering out through the small reinforced window of the fire door.

      Bolan didn’t hesitate. As their weapons came up, he was already throwing open the door. The two were close enough that the heavy metal door slammed into the first of the pair, knocking him into his partner and sending them both sprawling. Bolan stomped, hard, pinning one of them to the floor with a heel to his groin. The man doubled over, still clutching his rifle.

      The other sentry was recovering and the muzzle of his weapon was tracking up to Bolan as if in slow motion.

      The Executioner was faster. The sound-suppressed Beretta clapped once, punching a single slug through the center of the man’s forehead. He fell back and was still. Bolan turned his weapon on the other sentry, who was looking up at him in wild-eyed terror mixed with pain.

      Bolan put his finger to his lips, gesturing for quiet.

      A snarl of defiance was the sentry’s response. He jerked his rifle, ready to fire from his back.

      Bolan’s Beretta silenced him forever.

      He left the bodies. He repeated the sweep pattern he used on the floor below, checking each room in turn, expecting at any moment to find a huddled group of students surrounded by armed BR thugs.

      He found nothing.

      Once again he checked each room directly, looking for anyone who might be hidden. There was no one. That meant that, in defiance of any logical, rational tactical analysis, the students would be on the fourth floor, almost certainly in the auditorium that dominated that floor. But why? It made no sense.

      Bolan reentered the stairwell, careful to check for trip wires or other booby traps. Something wasn’t right.

      He emerged from the stairs to the fourth floor. The corridor there was wide and included an outlet for the elevator. Ahead of him, the doors to the auditorium waited. They were stained wood, very tall, with the most elaborate carvings he’d yet seen in this ornate building.

      There were no guards. Bolan moved quietly to the doorway, performing a tactical magazine change in the Beretta, dropping the partial in an outer pocket of his messenger bag and inserting a fresh one. There was a very slight gap between the two doors. Mindful that he would be visible from the other side as a sudden shadow if he were at all back-lit, he peered through the gap with one eye, the Beretta held low against his body.

      What he saw explained a great deal, and made the situation that much more complicated.

      The BR terrorists were indeed gathered in the auditorium. He couldn’t see the skylights from his vantage point, but he now understood why Fahzal’s men weren’t using snipers to shoot the killers inside.

      What looked like a dozen adults—probably the school’s faculty and support staff, anyone who was caught in the building when the BR took control—were grouped in a section of the auditorium seating at the center of the room. On the stage, maybe forty students representing every age range of the school’s student body were seated cross-legged on the polished wooden platform. There were plenty of students and teachers not accounted for, because the BR had—again, according to Brognola’s files—hit the school early in the morning, before everyone was scheduled to arrive. It made good tactical sense; they had plenty of hostages and had nabbed Jawan, their primary target, but didn’t have scores of extraneous students and teachers getting in their way.

      The BR terrorists moved up and down the aisles, walking off nervous energy, or they loitered about in what were probably assigned sections of the auditorium. Bolan counted at least ten of them, though he knew there might be more he couldn’t see from where he stood.

      Several of the BR terrorists wore devices strapped to their chests.

      Too small to be suicide bombs, the packages on each man’s chest were just large enough to be transmitters. Bolan eased his secure satellite phone out of his pocket, positioned the lens of the camera built into the phone and snapped a silent photograph of one of the men. He transmitted the image to Stony Man Farm with a single line of text: Urgent, ID.

      What concerned Bolan more than anything, and what made the devices on the terrorists’ chests so important, was that several of the huddled faculty members wore what looked like explosive belts.

      He did not have to wait long. His phone began to vibrate quietly and he hit the answer button, placing the phone to his ear.

      “Striker, this is Price,” Barbara Price said without waiting for him to speak. Stony Man Farm’s honey-blonde, model-beautiful mission controller would be fully aware of just what Bolan was doing, and she would know he was not necessarily free to speak aloud. “I’m transferring you to Akira now.” The voice of Akira Tokaido, the Farm’s resident electronics and computer genius, came on the line.

      “Striker, Akira,” he said. He, too, knew not to waste time, or expect an answer verbally. “I enhanced the image you sent us and I believe I have an identification. Those are Iranian-made dead-man’s switches. They’re designed to monitor heartbeat. It is very likely that if one of those men is killed, his transmitter will activate. Effective range is not far, perhaps fifty yards. Are there explosives nearby? If so, they are very likely to be rigged to those transmitters. One other thing—that particular model is very primitive. It is not fail-safe. It can be jammed easily enough, and if it is damaged, it does not transmit. In its normal state it is off, unlike some suicide switches that transmit until the wearer dies or the mechanism is damaged, with the signal loss being the trigger.”

      Price came back on the line. “That’s all there is, Striker. We stand ready to assist you.”

      Bolan mashed the keys and sent a quick string of text gibberish by way of acknowledgment; Price and the team at the Farm would know what he meant. He closed the connection and put his phone away.

      Well, that was that, then. Obviously the terrorists had informed Fahzal’s government of just what would happen if any of their people in the auditorium died. No doubt the transmitters were connected to the explosive belts on the teachers. It was a particularly cowardly act, using innocent men and women as human shields, threatening to blow them apart if the BR came under attack.

      Tokaido had obviously known what Bolan would have in mind, to have mentioned the vulnerability of the transmitters. He was hindered only by logistics. He was one man, facing many, and he would have to be very, very precise. Fortunately for those trapped within, there were very few men more skilled with a firearm than Mack Bolan.

      This would not be the first time he had done something of this type, testing his marksmanship against multiple targets that required exact placement of his shots. There were far more targets this time, though. Those targets might be in motion and shooting back at him the entire time, and some might be hidden. He would need to identify the transmitter-wearing terrorists while in the heat of battle, and he would have to be very careful to miss none of them.

      What he was about to do would require all of his skill and all of his concentration. He would have to rely on years of experience assessing threats, identifying and differentiating targets. He would need every ounce of ability he possessed in terms of his reflexes, his speed, his resolve.

      He was ready.

      Bolan removed the suppressor from the 93-R. He did not need the added factor of firing through the device, which could cause shots to angle in unpredictable ways. As it was, he knew this particular Beretta fired high low and left; he could compensate for that. Flicking the weapon’s selector to single shot, he drew the Desert Eagle and made sure it was cocked, safety off.

      He placed his fingers against the door and tested it. It gave slightly; it wasn’t locked. He backed

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