She stopped herself.
Not justice.
Justice would have seen her children safely out of there, alive, unharmed. If there was any justice in the world, Eileen and Jeff would never have been taken hostage in the first place.
No justice, then... but there was retribution. And revenge could be the next best thing, especially if it was the only course of action still available.
The footsteps paused outside their door, no more than eighteen inches from her now, and Helen realized that she was trembling. She bit her lip and clutched the makeshift spear against her chest, prepared to strike the moment the gunman showed himself. As planned, Eileen was standing to the left, her weapon clutched behind her back, and Jeff was seated on the bed, the staff concealed beneath the bed frame at his feet. It would require precision timing if they hoped to pull it off, but...
Helen stopped herself before the thought could form. They didn't have a hope in hell of pulling anything off, and she knew it. At best they were engaged in a delaying action that was certain to spell their end. Any victory would lie in taking one of their abductors with them.
But if they could take him fast enough, if she could seize his gun, then what? Then kill the others, dammit. Or at least attempt to kill them. Anything was better than waiting to be snuffed out like some pesky insect.
She heard the doorknob turn, and braced herself. The bedroom door swung inward, and she felt her enemy as he surveyed the room, a heartbeat's hesitation on the threshold.
"It's time to go," he growled. "Where's Momma?"
"In the bathroom," Eileen told him meekly.
"Get her off the pot, sweet thing. We got a schedule here."
Just one more step.
He cleared the doorway, visible to Helen now, and she was moving, pushing off from her position in the corner, knowing he would hear her, feel her coming at him from behind, not caring anymore. She held the makeshift lance in both hands, leveled from the waist, her target area the roll of flesh above his belt, right side.
There was a kidney there, the stomach, liver, small intestines. Could she skewer him? Or would the homemade spear glance off, producing no more than a bruise?
The gunman sensed his danger and swiveled to meet her as she charged, his movement altering the target area an instant short of impact. He was bringing up his submachine gun, but she did not flinch. Peripherally, she saw her children closing for the kill as she made contact below the rib cage. She felt her metal shaft punch through the fabric, flesh, and then it kept on going, in and in.
His scream was punctuated by the rapid-fire explosions in her face. The muzzle-flash of Gino's weapon seared her cheek, and Helen caught a whiff of burning hair before the weapon's recoil drove it up and backward, riddling the ceiling. Traveling on sheer momentum, she collided with the gunman, knocking him off balance. She recoiled and went down on one knee. He kept falling and spastic fingers released the submachine gun as he hit the floor.
She heard something whistle past her face, and Helen saw the wooden closet rod strike home against the gunner's nose, flattening on impact, bright blood jetting from his nostrils. And again, across the eyes, with enough force that something fractured audibly — the pole? his skull? From nowhere, Eileen fell upon him, slashing at his face and throat with jagged steel until her hands and shirt were slick with blood.
Helen realized she had no time to watch him die. She scrambled for the submachine gun, metal warm and deadly in her hands, wondering if it would respond. There must be more to it than simply pulling on the trigger. But she had no opportunity for study now. Already there were pounding footsteps in the corridor outside and startled voices clamoring for Gino.
She rose to meet them, tasting death and knowing that no matter what should happen next, she had already left a mark upon her enemies.
From his position in the darkened kitchen, Bolan watched the gunner amble past in the direction of the bedrooms. The Executioner began to move, prepared to take his target from behind when further movement from the living room delayed him. The other guns were stirring, and he still had no idea of their numbers or their capabilities.
Two voices, he figured, by the sound of it, though there might be others who refrained from speaking. If the crew was small enough, the risks were lessened, but it only took a single bullet to drop a woman or a child. One lucky round could stop a hellfire warrior in his tracks and bring his everlasting war to an immediate conclusion if he took foolhardy chances.
They wouldn't kill the hostages inside. Too messy in a safe house they had obviously used before and would want to use again. Discretion would compel them to remove the prisoners to another site where blood and noise would cause no inconvenience. Someplace where the bodies could be made to disappear forever.
He was in the doorway when he heard the ragged scream, a man's voice, tattered on the razor's edge of unexpected pain. A burst of automatic fire eclipsed the scream and was itself immediately silenced. Sounds of struggle came to him through the open doorway, and he glimpsed a slender woman kneeling on the gunner's chest, her hands descending, wrapped around a makeshift dagger, stabbing at his throat, his eyes.
The door swung wide, and Bolan recognized Brognola's wife from photographs that he had seen years before. She was moving toward him, cradling an Ingram she had captured from the fallen hardman, locking eyes with Bolan for a startled instant. There was nothing close to recognition in her face, and as he heard the enemy approaching on his blind side, the soldier knew that he could run or stand and die.
He spun in the direction of the open kitchen doorway, hit a flying shoulder roll as Helen fired. The parabellums buzzsawed into plaster, woodwork, gnawed a twisting track along the wall where Bolan had been standing seconds earlier. A second stutter gun responded from the living room, and Helen kept on firing, fighting to control the unfamiliar weapon as the magazine ran dry. The enemy was answering with short, precision bursts that drove her back and under cover.
"Goddammit, Gino, answer up!"
But Gino's comrades weren't expecting an answer from him now. They were already sealing off the corridor, preparing to attack, aware that Helen or whoever must be running low on ammunition now, perhaps already out. If they could just be sure...
"Get in there, Carmine."
"Fuck you!"
"I said get in there!"
Lying prone in darkness, pressed against the bullet-punctured wall, the Executioner could imagine Carmine staring at the muzzle of an automatic weapon, ticking off his options in the fractured second that remained. No options, really, when you thought about it that way.
"Shit."
Bolan heard him coming, braced the AutoMag in both hands, sighting down the slide at empty space before the crouching figure showed itself. He was no more than fifteen feet away when Bolan stroked the trigger, sent 240 grains of screaming death across the intervening space at 1,500 feet per second.
Impact lifted Carmine off his feet and slammed him against the wall. He hung there for an instant, crucified, then gravity tugged at him, leaving traces of himself behind as he began the dead-end slide.
"Carmine!"
Number three was all alone in there; the soldier would have bet his life on that. In fact, he had already bet his life, for now he had to cross the narrow no-man's-land of empty corridor, past Carmine's body, in the face of pinpoint automatic fire, to tag his final enemy. As long as number three remained in place, alive and capable of fighting back, the soldier's only other move was a withdrawal from the kitchen, leaving Helen and the kids pinned down, alone.