The other gunman sat beside his Uzi and pulled a comic book from a shopping bag.
The two gunners were on the opposite side of the warehouse, near the office entrance. Both were facing the door, although "watching" was too strong a word for the minimal attention they were paying to their job.
Bolan waited another few minutes to be sure that one of the other three wouldn't return for some reason, then began his stalk.
Circling wide to the far end, he eased his way through the dimly lit edges of the warehouse.
Part of his attention was focused on the lazy guards and part was required to make sure that he didn't slip on any of the abundant oil slicks or walk into cast-off bits of garbage.
It would be so easy to just pick off the thugs, seize the weapons and turn them over to an openmouthed Kline. But the agent had been adamant that the big guy keep his hands clean and leave the muscle to the Bureau.
Bolan had to smile as he recalled his brief conversation with Special Agent Kline from a telephone booth at the commuter terminal of San Francisco International.
"Kline? Blanski. I want you to get your team together and be ready to move at my signal. I've got a few things to check out first, and then we should have McIntyre in the bag."
The announcement for the flight to L.A. interrupted him as he was about to sign off, giving the Fed an opening.
"What the hell are you talking about, Blanski? Where are you? I didn't authorize any of this." Bolan could almost feel the receiver heat up in his hand as Kline's anger was transmitted across the connection. "Blanski, I want an explanation and full details."
"You'll get what I give you, and that's all you're getting now."
"Who the hell do you think you are? There are procedures that must be followed, and I'm not about to blow this case on account of some undisciplined renegade, even if you are connected." The sarcastic emphasis on the last word was not lost to Bolan.
Kline clearly had no appreciation of Bolan's take-charge way of doing things. He obviously hadn't learned that procedure was of little value when the top-ranked crime mongers were involved. The criminal elite were rats, clever and wary, and if you gave them even a second's head start, they would take advantage of the delay and scramble back into the gutters and garbage piles where they'd come from.
Still, a little PR wouldn't hurt, but he had better be fast. The last call for Flight 602 to L.A. rang through the busy terminal. Bolan softened his tone slightly. "Don't worry, Kline. I'm just going to recce the situation and relay back. Then you can swoop in for the kill."
The agent seemed slightly mollified; either that or he recognized when he was outmatched.
"Listen up, Blanski, and listen good. I want this reconnaissance of yours clean."
Here it comes, Bolan reflected, the FBI by-the-book lecture. He knew it by heart and had to restrain himself from just dropping the receiver and letting Kline ramble on to himself.
"In other words, look but don't touch. The minute, and I mean the very minute that you have anything, I expect this phone to ring. Make no mistake, if you so much as muss the hair of any of the suspects your ass will be wrapped so tight in interagency paperwork that you'll be lucky if you ever get out from under. And I don't care who you're working for. You got that?"
"I heard you, Kline." Bolan hung up and ran for the plane.
He shoved Kline's warning into his mental file under C, for crap, then coiled for action.
Fifteen feet away from the two guards, Bolan let loose with the Beretta, one silenced round exploding the radio into chips of circuit board and flying plastic.
"Don't even think about it," Bolan growled as the two men spun to face him. The man on the left, the older of the two, settled back with an expression of anger written across his face as he slowly raised his hands above his head. He didn't spare a glance for the holstered pistol three feet in front of him.
The second guard was young, long-haired and muscular. Eyes flickering back and forth between Bolan and the Uzi just beyond arm's reach telegraphed the kid's foolish impulse.
"Get your..." Bolan barked, but the kid made his move anyway, falling to his left. Battle-trained reflexes gave the proper response, and the Beretta spit a 3-round burst as the guy dived for the Uzi.
All three rounds grouped around the gunner's left ear, blowing his brains in a red hail over his bag of superhero comics. Bolan felt no remorse. The kid's own stupidity in making a suicide play had killed him.
That's what happened when comic-book fantasy was confused with real life.
The surviving gunner raised his hands a little higher, eyes bulging as his companion collapsed across the Uzi.
Bolan knotted the other man's hands behind his back and rapped him behind the ear with the Beretta. He collapsed onto the floor, without a sound.
The Executioner looked down at the two bodies. "Sorry, Kline." He then padded into the office and rifled the drawers. The only item of note was a clipboard containing the manifest of the shipment. Bingo!
Bolan rolled back the warehouse doors and drove the deuce-and-a-half into the night, pausing to shut the doors behind him. He gunned the rig toward the gate, fingering the FBI badge in the name of Michael Blanski that he would use if the gatekeeper gave him any trouble. He still had a lot of ground to cover before morning. As the warrior roared away, the office phone began to ring.
Bolan had plenty of time for thought on the lonely drive up the coast. This end of the pipeline was closed or would be when he caught up with McIntyre so the mission was just about wrapped up.
Or was it?
The load he carried convinced Bolan that this was only a part of the mission he had set for himself, a mission that didn't confine itself to borders or briefings or favors for the Justice Department.
If these weapons didn't arrive, it would only be a matter of time before some other greedy vermin passed a cargo of death into the hands of the Shining Path.
Bolan wasn't so naive as to believe that only he could make a difference, or that he could settle a problem that had an entire country teetering on the brink of civil war.
The big man had known of the Shining Path for some time now, and he had despised their fanaticism, a mania that led to murder in the name of freedom. Holding the truths of justice and equality as their banner, the Shining Path had become a twisted path leading to destruction.
The ideals they once stood for had become corrupt in the withered, skeleton hands that reached out to the oppressed peasants, a knife clasped to slit the throats of anyone who didn't want their particular brand of comradeship. Justice and freedom had been forgotten long ago, reduced to meaningless phrases mouthed by crazies whose only reality was a smoking gun.
The names changed, from Red Brigades to Black September to Shining Path. But the hand holding the knife pointed at the heart of innocent pawns of political terror tactics always stayed the same.
Bolan had planned to visit the Shining Path in their mountain retreats one day, but it was a big world, with violence exploding in what seemed like every corner.
It was hard to know where to begin, which was the current priority, since at every turn a hundred targets abounded for the Executioner's fury.
But this mission had tied him to the Shining Path, even if the string was thin and insubstantial. He wasn't about to walk away.
Several hours later, Bolan eased the rig to a stop in the San Francisco dockyard. The arms had come back full circle to where they had departed from a few days ago.
Kline and his men were waiting as Bolan had instructed during a quick call from a truck stop along the route. To say the agent was angry was an understatement. His ego was bruised from losing control of what had been his case, and he was hell-bent on making the big guy pay for the "minor, but necessary casualties" that had been left in the warehouse.