He twisted, raised the slim stiletto, pressed its needle point against the juncture of the sentry's skull and spine. He found the opening that Chinese call "the wind gate," penetrated, stirring briskly as he reached the brain. The sentry stiffened, loafers drumming briefly on the turf, and then became a lifeless weight in Bolan's arms.
He eased the dead man to a prone position, riffled through his pockets briefly, but found them empty. It was the identifying mark of a professional, discarding any traces of ID before a stand. He knew that if he searched the body further, he would find the clothing free of labels. The fingerprints might even have been surgically removed.
No matter. Bolan's interest in the sentry was distinctly limited, and he was satisfied with having cut the hostile odds a fraction, evening the score. There would be other gunmen waiting in the darkness, more professionals prepared to kill on order, and it would be Bolan's task to find as many of them as he could before Brognola sprang the trap.
Two minutes left.
Already he could hear Hal's car approaching in the middle distance, closing on the designated meeting place. Already he could see the Unknown Soldier's tomb, illuminated in the darkness like a guiding beacon.
Two minutes, and the sentry's death had taught him something else about their enemies. The gunner was not Gianelli's, and he had not been recruited off the streets with promises of easy cash for half an hour's wet work. He was had been a trained professional, a killer, and he had not drawn his paycheck from the Mob. That left a single, grim alternative, and Bolan bore it with him as he left the recent dead behind, moved out in search of other targets.
He was hunting now, alert to any sign or sound of human prey, aware that every gunner taken out before the battle increased the odds in favor of survival. For the Executioner. For Hal Brognola and his family and for Leo.
They needed every edge available, for Bolan had miscalculated in his reckoning of the potential force arrayed against them. Now he realized their enemy was anything but short on triggermen and hardware. He could field an army on a moment's notice, with no questions asked, no explanations offered. He could murder with impunity or at the very least, with little cause for apprehension that he would be brought to book.
The risks were greater than he had anticipated, most especially for Hal Brognola, who had everything to lose. It might be physically impossible to bag a prisoner as Brognola had desired.
Indeed, they might be lucky if they got out of Arlington alive.
The smell of oil and rubber in the trunk assailed Leo Turrin's nostrils, but he didn't mind. The spare had been removed to give him room, and with the blanket that Brognola had provided as a sort of mattress, he was scarcely bruised at all. The Uzi reeked of cosmoline, but he drew comfort from the old familiar smell.
If Hal and Bolan were correct in their prediction of an ambush, Leo was a sitting duck inside the trunk. A single burst of automatic fire could turn his hiding place into a coffin; any spark produced by ricochets might set the fuel tank off beneath him, broiling him alive before he had a chance to pop the lid and make his break. It was a risk that had been weighed and analyzed before he had agreed to ride shotgun for Brognola not that there had ever been the slightest doubt that he would come along. His closest friends were wagering their lives tonight, and he could no more take a sideline seat than he could voluntarily stop breathing.
Leo owed it to them both, for all the times Bolan or Brognola had been there to pull his fat out of the fire. But if his life had never been at risk, if he had never walked the razor's edge with only these two friends to steady him and keep him on track, he would have volunteered in any case. For friendship's sake.
And when you got right down to basics, there was nothing else.
The bond of fellow warriors in an endless, losing battle, holding out against the overwhelming enemy until their luck and life at last ran out. They struck against the savages wherever and whenever possible. In the meantime they looked out for one another, for the families that waited, never really safe, behind the lines.
Because the goddamned battle lines were everywhere these days, and it could just as easily be Angelina out there in the darkness had been Angelina, back in Pittsfield and Leo knew that he could count on Hal or Bolan, if the world rolled over on him one day soon. They wouldn't let the wife and kids go hungry, wouldn't let them want for anything or fall into the hands of enemies.
A soldier watched his buddy's back, and that was it. No need to ask for help or offer thanks to any of the living when the smoke had cleared. Tomorrow it could be someone else's world in jeopardy, and yesterday's potential victim would be riding with the cavalry again.
Inside the trunk he heard Brognola kill the engine. He felt Hal shifting in the driver's seat, imagined him as he went through the ritual of double-checking weapons, getting ready to go EVA against an unknown enemy. His door slammed, sent a tremor through the car and Leo felt himself begin to sweat.
Hal drummed his knuckles on the trunk, the sound reverberating hollowly, and Leo grimaced, feeling like a mouse inside a kettle drum. He heard Brognola's footsteps gradually receding on the pavement, finally lost, and Turrin wrapped one hand around the tight rubber bands that held down the trunk lid.
He had been told to wait for contact while Brognola scouted the territory, waiting for the enemy to show himself. If Hal and Bolan were mistaken, if the hostiles were sincere about exchanging Helen and the kids for information, it would go no farther; Hal had lists of phony names and numbers that would have the bastards chasing their tails for a month. But if the others were correct in their assumption of an ambush, if the gunners opened up on Hal from who knows where, it would be Leo's job to spring the trap and cover Hal's retreat, while Bolan flanked the enemy and hit them where they lived.
It had all sounded fine on paper in Brognola's living room. But it was dark outside, and there were God knew how many hiding places in the cemetery, any shadow adequate for lurking snipers who could drop Hal in his tracks. Snipers who could riddle Leo as he tried to scramble from the trunk, all knees and elbows in the crucial instant when surprise evaporated.
Leo was a goddamned sitting duck and didn't like the feeling, but at least he wasn't out there in the open with the cross-hairs planted on his face already. He found the Uzi's safety catch and eased it off, prepared to come out firing and to make the most of his advantage while it lasted.
If they didn't kill him first.
If someone didn't stitch the car with armor-piercing rounds and leave him leaking like a bag of mangled groceries in the trunk, or light him up with tracers in a flash of detonating fuel.
Too many ifs.
And it was too damned late, in any case. He was committed now whichever way it played. There was time to think of Bolan, wonder if the soldier was all right, if he had run afoul of roving sentries in the darkness. Then the sound of voices drifted to him from the outer darkness.
He could recognize Brognola's voice, but could not make out any of the words. The other voice was unfamiliar, and he didn't have a prayer of understanding anything the stranger said. He was about to ease the trunk lid open wider when the voices were eclipsed by sudden gunfire, the staccato yapping of an automatic pistol, answered by the booming echo of Brognola's Bulldog .44.
He ripped the taut elastic free and kicked the lid back, rolling clear before the enemy could swing around and bring him under fire. Already homing on the sound of gunshots, moving in a combat crouch, he held the Uzi primed and ready, eager for a target to present itself.
The shit was in the fan, and there was no safe way around it now that battle had been joined. As other weapons chimed in from the darkness, muzzle-flashes winking from the shadows, Turrin drew small consolation from the fact that they were fighting in a graveyard. If they lost it here, at least he would not have to travel far. With any luck, there might be room for one more soldier in the hallowed ground of Arlington.