down at the top of the embankment, just over the lip of the ridge. She was laid out flat against the incline, her feet dug into the snow to keep her from sliding down. At the rate her was spitting whizzers at the van, she'd be out of bullets before too long. Bolan swung around behind her and slipped up the embankment, flopping into the snow next to her.
'What the hell are you doing here?' he demanded. She fired another burst toward the van before answering.
'I made them let me out about a half mile down the road. A quick jog and here I am.'
'I told you to stay together and keep going.' A line of bullets from Thomas's gun thudded into the ground a foot in front of them, kicking a powder of snow into their faces.
'I do what is right, not what I'm told.'
Bolan liked this woman. Now he studied the situation with a quiet detachment. Hermann was standing behind the van, peeking out occasionally to fire at them.
Thomas was squatting behind the passenger's seat, popping up to fire through the open window, using the open door as a shield. 'Okay, this time do exactly as I tell you. And I mean exactly, do you understand?' Bolan smiled.
'Yes,' she answered.
'I want you to keep firing at them, but only in three-round bursts, and only at ten-second intervals.' Now he was as serious as death.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Whatever it takes,' he said, and slid back down the embankment.
He had to hurry. He had to kill them. There had been enough of them and it was over now. He gave a good one-eighth of a mile berth before rising up the embankment again, far behind the van. He crept closer, waiting for the good shot. Hermann stopped moving, long enough to change clips, and Bolan dropped to one knee and brought him into his crosshairs. Hermann fumbled with the new clip becajuse of his bandaged hand. Less than a second later he was dead, his face resculpted where three bullets had chiseled away his jaw and cheek.
'Hermann!' Thomas screamed from inside as Bolan covered the rest of the distance between him and the van. Thomas kept firing from the van, increasing the tempo now, his gun blazing blindly in Babette's direction. Nisely she did not panic, stuck to the three round, ten-second firing pattern. Behind the van, Bolan was stripping the shirt from Hermann's back, shredding it into long strips and shoving them down into the gas tank. He allowed just enough hanging out to give him a running headstart. When he heard Babette's next three-round blast, he ignited the cloth and high-stepped it away. Then Bolan gripped the H and K in both hands and fired a burst into the side of the van. Thomas swung around to face this new onslaught, his eyes wide with terror and despair. He lifted his Uzi to take aim at Bolan when a sound from hell ripped through his ears.
The van's gas tank exploded, shooting a tidal wave of roaring fire from one end of the van to the other.
Thomas's flaming body was hurtled through the windshield, where it snagged on the sharp glass, trapping his burning flesh in the flames.
'Babette!' Bolan called, and she pulled herself to her feet and ran to him, a sickened expression on her face.
'Oh, God. Oh, my God,' she moaned as she watched Thomas's impaled and writhing body sizzle into something unrecognizable.
'Never mind him,' Bolan snapped. 'It's better than he deserved.'
Bolan retrieved his holstered Beretta from the smoking corpse, then pulled Babette to her feet and led her down the road at a slow jog. Yeah, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at the flaming van and scattered bodies, at Tanya's limp and lifeless shape, sometimes the debts do get paid. In full. 'And his enemies shall lick the dust,' said Bolan to himself, quoting Psalm 72, the Psalm for Solomon. That is certainly true, he thought, turning to face the open road, in the drizzle just starting, the foul weather of Europe so full of the feeling of history, as he went on with his fate mile. Mission complete in full. Now back to Jack. And to America, thank God. A thick conspiracy had been unraveled in the space of a few heartbeats. That is all it took. Months of planning, and terror, and humiliation had preceded Mack Bolan's arrival, had unawares-awaited the tumbling of the numbers. For when the Executioner hit, he hit fast. The complications were reduced to threads of traumatized tissue in seconds. Hit and git.
The American way. Forget those goddamned complications.
The Mack Bolan Legend
Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.
But this soldier also wore another name — Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.
Mack Bolan's second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.
He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society's every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior — to no avail.
So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies — Able Team and Phoenix Force — waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.
But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.
Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an 'arm's-length' alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.
