But Bolan's nameless enemy had not been swift or alert enough to save himself, and now the Executioner was closing on the sounds of battle, one fist wrapped around the silver AutoMag. He offered up a silent supplication to the universe, aware that he might be too late already. Hal and Leo might be dead or dying, riddled where they stood by snipers Bolan hadn't had the time to neutralize.
Bolan shrugged the morbid thought away before it had a chance to claim his full attention. Someone still was firing beyond a gentle rise in front of him. He recognized the booming voice of Hal's off-duty Bulldog, followed shortly by the chatter of Leo's Uzi, answering the muffled weapons of the enemy.
He topped the rise and melted into shadow, sweeping down upon the hostiles from their flank. He counted half a dozen muzzle-flashes, automatic weapons all, and he was closing on the nearest of them when the line began to break from cover, closing in on Hal and Leo in a pincer movement.
It took a moment, but he spotted Turrin lying behind a gravestone, waiting for a target to present itself before he wasted any more ammunition. Hal was harder to detect, and Bolan was about to let it go when a precision burst erupted from the shadow of the Unknown Soldier's monument, the nearest hostile gunner dead before his face impacted on the pavement.
Everyone was firing now, the hostiles rushing helter-skelter over thirty yards of open no-man's-land with automatic weapons blazing. Two of them immediately pinned Brognola down with probing fire. The other pair was veering off toward Leo, splitting up to flank him in a pincer of their own, assuring that there would be one survivor left to pin him down no matter what transpired.
But they had not included Bolan in their reckoning.
The soldier dropped to one knee, sighting down the barrel of the AutoMag and making target acquisition on the farthest mark first. He sucked a deep breath in, released a portion of it, held the rest to steady up his aim, already tightening his finger on the trigger, bracing for the heavy recoil.
Boom!
And downrange, closing on the Unknown soldier's monument, a gunner stumbled, sprawled, a fist-sized portion of his skull evaporating as 240 grains of screaming death punched in behind one ear, exploding through the ruins of his face to find the night again. His body wriggled briefly on the pavement as it undulated toward the curb and finally came to rest within a dozen strides of Hal Brognola's hiding place.
The second gunner had been taken by surprise, his own momentum broken by the disintegration of his comrade, and the momentary stall was all Brognola needed. Rising from the shadows of his sanctuary, tracking with his captured stutter gun, he cut the shooter's legs from under him and nailed him to the pavement with a fiery figure eight.
Big Thunder swept along the battle line and chose another target as the two surviving hitters tried to close the net on Leo Turrin. Bolan rode the recoil out and saw his target stagger, gutted by the heavy Magnum round before he had a chance to open up on Leo's blind side. Sagging to his knees, he swiveled toward the lethal darkness, bringing up his weapon, dying for a chance to take his killer with him.
Bolan let him see Big Thunder's muzzle-flash, the second round impacting on his scalp as the hollow man collapsed backward.
Turrin had already taken out the final gunner, stitching him across the chest point-blank and following him down, the Uzi emptying its magazine before he let the trigger go. The guy was as dead as hell, and as the silence settled in around them, ringing in the soldier's ears, he knew that they had failed.
They had no prisoners.
A nagging dread enveloped Bolan as he started down the grassy slope. Survival had been paramount, he told himself; the moment had not granted any leeway for selective fire. When all the chips were down the instinct for self-preservation took control. As he had killed to save his friends, so Hal and Leo killed to save themselves.
He knew the arguments by heart and recognized their truth, but there was precious little consolation in the fact that they were still alive. By their survival, they had sentenced Helen and Brognola's children to an almost certain death. By slaughtering the opposition gunners, they had wasted any chance of learning where the hostages were kept.
There would have been provisions for a callback to let the hit team know Brognola had been taken down. They would be waiting for instructions, where to take the wife and kiddies, how to handle the disposal... and there would be backup plans in case of an emergency. If everything went sour and no one called, they would have made provisions for a scrub, elimination of the witnesses and evidence, a way to cut their losses while they had a chance. He might have coaxed the necessary information from a prisoner, persuaded him to talk as if his life depended on it, but they had already blown their one and only chance.
Before he reached the pavement, Bolan saw Brognola moving down the line of bodies, pausing over each in turn and reaching down to check for vital signs. It was a futile effort, but the soldier left him to it, seeking Leo.
And finding him where he had fallen, propped up with his back against a tombstone, grinning through the rictus of his pain. Both hands were pressed against the inside of his thigh, and Bolan spied the pant leg, slick with blood from knee to ankle.
"He clipped me," Leo grated through his pain. "The bastard shot me after he was dead."
"You're lucky." Bolan crouched beside his friend and stripped off Leo's belt to make a tourniquet. "He might have really nailed you if he was alive."
"That's funny," Leo told him, but he didn't laugh. "So, how'd we do?"
"We got them all."
And Turrin recognized their failure instantly. "Well, shit."
"You need a doctor."
"Doctor, hell, I need a frigging keeper. If I could've winged that bird..."
"He would have blown your head off," Bolan finished for him. "Let it go."
"That's easily said."
"We didn't walk in here to make a human sacrifice. If that was it, you could have shot yourself before we left the house."
"Don't rub it in."
"Can you stand up on that?"
"I'd damn well better."
Bolan had the wounded warrior halfway to his feet when Hal Brognola's voice arrested both of them.
"Goddammit! Here! I know this guy!"
The others were beside him in a moment, Bolan serving as a crutch for Leo, who favored his belted, bloodied leg. Brognola grimaced at the sight.
"Are you okay?"
Leo's smile was forced. "I'm canceling my polka lesson for tonight. You make this dude?"
The question brought him back to the immediate priority.
"It's been a year or so," he told them both. "The name was Smith or Jones or some such throwaway. He worked for Milo Grymdyke."
"Ah."
The sound escaped from Turrin almost as a whisper, and Brognola couldn't tell if it had been inspired by pain or recognition.
"So, who's Grymdyke?" Bolan asked.
Brognola fielded it. "He's CIA. Clandestine Ops. I don't know what he's doing now, but he was handling the foreign wet work back when Farnsworth was around."
"I'd say he's gone domestic," Bolan offered, tight-lipped.
"Yeah."
"Where do I find him?"
"This one's mine," Brognola snapped. "I'll handle Grymdyke."
"Leo needs a doctor. Now."
"All right. I'll drop you at your car and you can run him by emergency receiving."
"Put it on the other foot. If Grymdyke gives his sponsors up, there won't be any time to waste."
"Time's all I've got," Brognola answered bitterly. "We blew it."