He came upon the hit team from behind, and even so he almost lost the advantage of surprise. With twenty feet between them, someone in the living room began returning fire, big .45 rounds gouging plaster from the pastel walls. The shooters scrambled backward, crouching, and the nearest of them caught a glimpse of Bolan from the corner of his eye.
He barked a warning, swiveling to bring his Uzi up, the muzzle winking fire at point-blank range. Excellent timing and the shooter's haste were all that saved Mack Bolan's life, a belly slide on blue shag carpeting removing him from the initial line of fire. He heard the parabellums slicing air above his head, impacting on the walls, and he was angling with the Beretta, making target acquisition as the hit man started to correct his aim.
The first round from the 93-R ripped through the gunner's chest and rocked him backward on his heels. The Uzi's snout drifted upward, bringing down a rain of plaster dust as 750 rounds per minute chewed up the ceiling. Bolan's second round bored in beneath the shooter's chin and snapped his head back, opening a jagged keyhole in his skull.
The second gunner was already ducking as the body fell across his line of fire, and Bolan took advantage of the momentary distraction, rolling clear before the automatic rounds came ripping in, peeling ragged strips of carpet back and pulverizing the concrete beneath. He triggered three quick rounds from the Beretta, saw his target jerk, colliding with the wall, rebounding in an awkward pirouette that ended in a sprawl. He didn't have to check for vital signs to know the guy was as dead as hell.
From the direction of the living room he heard male voices hoarse with tension, calling to the dead.
"Zito! Eddie! What the hell?"
On his feet and closing, Bolan left them guessing as he stepped across the leaking corpses of their comrades. He holstered the hot Beretta, then stooped to retrieve the Uzi from his first kill, picking up an Ingram MAC-11 as he passed the second lifeless body. Both weapons were primed and a quick check told him he had sufficient ammo to meet the challenge. He cleared the doorway, searching for another target.
They were waiting for him in the shambles of the parlor, shattered sliding windows open on the night behind them, curtains stirring with the breeze. He was aware of someone stretched out on the carpet to his right, but there was no time now for sizing up the casualties.
Shooters three and four were stationed twenty feet apart, prepared to close the hallway with a lethal cross fire from their automatic weapons at a moment's notice. It was a professional defensive stance that fairly guaranteed survival for at least one member of the team; if any unexpected enemy appeared, he would be forced to choose one target or the other while the odd man out was free to cut him down.
The soldier read their purpose at a glance, together with the heartbeat's indecision in their faces as he cleared the doorway in a crouch. They had been waiting for an answer from their silent partners, still not understanding, when the Executioner unloaded on them with his captured weapons, raking left and right together in a blazing double arc of death.
The Uzi ran its remaining rounds in rapid-fire and swept the starboard gunner off his feet as parabellum slugs ripped his chest to shreds. The impact blew him backward, through the shattered sliding windows, shrouded in the bloody curtains as they ripped free of their moorings and followed him outside.
On Bolan's left, the MAC-11 cut a lethal figure eight between the final gunner's throat and knees, .380 stingers slamming home with enough force to knock him backward in a sloppy somersault.
Bolan dropped the Uzi, tossed the Ingram after it and was turning toward the nearest corpse when furtive movement behind the sofa captured his attention. Bolan hit a combat crouch, the Beretta filling his fist and searching for a target. His finger tightened around the trigger, hesitating only when the numbers failed to jibe.
Four gunners, all of them accounted for. The ventilated body at his feet would be DeVries, already silenced for eternity. He should have been alone among the dead.
"One chance," he snapped. "Throw out your weapon. Let me see those hands."
A woman's voice came back at him from somewhere in the suburbs of hysteria.
"I haven't got a weapon, dammit!"
"Stand," he ordered her, prepared for anything. "And make it easy."
Recognition hit Mack Bolan first, but Susan Landry wasn't far behind. Her mouth hung open for a moment, wide eyes rising from the muzzle of his weapon to the face that she had seen most recently in Texas.
He holstered the Beretta, one swift glance assuring him that she was still intact before he crouched beside DeVries. He didn't need to take the nonexistent pulse, but Bolan did it anyway, and cursed the circumstances that had robbed him of the opportunity to question Hal's accuser.
Susan was beside him now, recovered well enough from her initial shock to make her mind and mouth coordinate.
"You came here looking for DeVries?"
He let the question pass. "I see you found him first."
"Somebody found him." She surveyed the carnage, paling as her eyes glanced off the other riddled bodies. "What the hell is all of this?"
"It's overkill," he answered, holding Susan with his eyes. "Somebody must've thought DeVries was granting interviews."
"You're here for Hal," she countered, sudden understanding in her voice. "I should have known."
"What brings you here?"
"Could be the same. I haven't had a chance to make up my mind yet." She nodded toward the body of DeVries. "We never got that far."
Outside, a rising babble had resolved itself into the sound of cautious voices. Bolan didn't have to understand the words to realize that neighbors would be edging closer, gaining confidence as silence swallowed up the echoes of the firefight. Someone was certain to have called police, several calls would be more likely, and the squad cars would be on their way by now. A glance told Bolan that the lady was already putting two and two together, and she beat him to the punch.
"I move we finish off this conversation in a cooler atmosphere," she said, "before somebody else drops in to interrupt."
The soldier didn't argue with her. He was stepping through the shattered sliding windows, past the shrouded corpse of one assailant, when he noticed Susan hanging back, intent on gathering some photographs and papers that were scattered near the couch. She caught up with Bolan on the flagstone patio, in lockstep with him as they put the house of death behind them.
As Bolan led her back circuitously toward the parking lot, avoiding contact with the neighbors who were popping out of condos on every side, his mind was on the papers in her hand. He hadn't noticed them in the excitement of the firefight, the surprise of seeing Susan Landry rise from cover. But if the lady cared enough to bring them with her, shaving precious seconds off their getaway, they might be worth a closer look.
Whatever they contained, they were his only hope of getting information from DeVries now that the man himself had been irrevocably silenced. Scattered papers, glossy photographs... and Susan Landry. It made some sense.
Susan had been with DeVries before the raiders struck. There was a chance that he had spilled some measure of the manufactured case against Brognola, speaking carelessly, perhaps, or out of cold deliberation, playing to his audience. Most frames looked better in the media than in court, Bolan knew, and he was betting that DeVries had planned a series of strategic leaks to stain Brognola's reputation. Someone else had vetoed the idea with bullets, and the Executioner could only hope that something might be salvaged from the ruins before it was too late.
Except, he told himself, it might already be too late.
Conditioned toward ignoring hopeless odds, he pushed the defeatist train of thought away. It wouldn't matter what the scattered papers said or who might be depicted in the photographs, if the two of them were swept up by police responding to the shooting call. Before he could protect his friends, the soldier knew it would be necessary to protect himself, to put some ground between himself and five fresh corpses that would have to be explained.
He had no explanation for the carnage yet, but it was coming. He could feel it in his gut. If only he could recognize the answer, seize the truth before it throttled him.
She watched him as he finished with the printouts of Brognola's phone calls, passed them back and started riffling through the photographs a second time. Was that a frown of recognition? Of concern? The silence stretched between them like a taut piano wire, and Susan Landry clenched both hands together in her lap to keep from gnawing at her nails.
He looked the same... or did he? Finely chiseled features, so unlike the face that she had known in Cleveland, but she recognized him well enough from their encounter on the eve of his defection from the Phoenix Program, from another meeting in a Texas cell block.
She wondered if those eyes had seen so much of blood and fire that they could never smile again. She stopped herself before the maudlin train of thought could take her any farther. She was on a story, dammit, and the man beside her was a part of it. If there had been no solid handle on the thing before, she had it now. One federal officer accused of bribery and worse, a second murdered in his home by contract killers — and the Executioner in Washington. Again.
Despite herself, she felt a certain awe in Bolan's presence and she realized that it could rob her of her objectivity if she permitted it to go too far. The man had saved her life on two occasions — no, three; she couldn't just forget about tonight — and in return she studied him as if he were some kind of laboratory specimen, examining his actions, scrutinizing motive and effect. It was her job, and yet she owed him so much more.
The man's arrival was coincidence, his brisk elimination of the four assassins done before he even knew that she was in the room. It scarcely counted if you put things in perspective properly.
But yes, the man had saved her life. Again.
He finished with the photographs but did not pass them back to her at once. When several heartbeats passed in silence, Susan took it on herself to break the ice.
"Familiar faces?"
"What?" It seemed as if her voice had brought him back from somewhere. He shrugged. "A few."
"I guess they're syndicate."
"Does that come from DeVries?"
She nodded, wondering how much she could afford to give away.
"I don't know how much else he had, but he was banking on indictment and conviction."
"Any names?"
"He didn't have the time. I planned to trace the numbers through Ma Bell."
Had she said planned! Why was she talking in the past tense? Nothing she had seen so far tonight had changed her mind.
"I'd like to show these to a friend," he said, so softly that she almost had to strain to catch the words.
"Brognola?"
She had hoped to take him by surprise, but Bolan only frowned, the graveyard eyes unflinching, locked with her own. "I can't go into that."
She felt the sudden anger flaring, made no real attempt to rein it in. "For heaven's sake," she blurted, "I've already spoken to him once. And just in case you missed it, I was almost murdered earlier tonight."
"While working on a story."
"No!" She hesitated, startled by her own response. She had been working on a story, hadn't she? When she spoke again it was as if in answer to herself. "Not just a story."
"Oh?"
"I thought I could help... somehow."
"You didn't help DeVries."
"I didn't kill him, either. But I'll bet my life that someone in those pictures did."
"Don't bet with anything you can't afford to lose."
"You think I'm wrong?"
"I think I'd like to run these past a friend and hear him out before I make up my mind, either way."
"Okay, let's go."
There was a trace of humor in his smile. "I'll drop you at a pay phone. You can take a cab back to your car, but you'd be smart to wait a while and let the bluesuits finish up."
"I'll stick with you."
"It's not an option."
She turned away from him and faced the darkness, concentrating on her own reflection in the windowpane and trying to collect her thoughts.
"You owe me one," she said. "You wouldn't have those pictures if I hadn't gone to interview DeVries."
"I'd say we're even."
"There are ways that I can help you... and your friend."
"If I keep wasting time, you'll have a chance to help me out with an obituary."
"Dammit, I know people in this town! If you need information, I can get it for you."
Susan stopped herself, aware that she was offering to join him, in effect become a part of the mystery and bloodshed that surrounded him. But she had already become a part of it... how long ago? Had she been anything but part of it since Cleveland? Since McLary County?
There was something in his silence that unnerved her. "So?" she asked.
"What do you know about Lee Farnsworth?"
"I know you killed him."
"What about associates?"
"Inside the Company?"
"That's right."
"Well... I could make some calls. I know some people out at Langley. But it's give and take. You've got to let me in."
Hesitation while he thought it over, then, "It isn't my decision."
Susan tasted victory, a flavor so elusive that she swallowed it at once.
"So, make your calls."
"My friends may not be interested," he said.
"I'll take the chance. They turn me down, I'm out. Case closed."
"And out means out?"
"What can I tell you? You've got all my evidence for what it's worth, and there's a little matter of some unsolved homicides."
"They wouldn't hold you overnight."
"They wouldn't give me bupkus for my story, either. Dammit, I need you as much as you need me."
And even as she spoke the words she wondered whether Bolan needed her at all. That line about Lee Farnsworth was intriguing, but...
"I'll make some calls."
She felt like cheering, but she kept it to herself as Bolan put the car in motion, pulling out of the deserted filling station into spotty evening traffic. There was still a chance that she might be rejected by his "friends" — Brognola and whoever else was presently involved — but her acceptance by the soldier was a triumph in itself.
As for Lee Farnsworth, his connections in the Company, there would be ways to tap that well of information — to a point. The CIA was so damned secretive that some directors never knew precisely what was going on within the ranks, but Farnsworth was — had been — a renegade. His lethal games had been a rank embarrassment to veterans in the Agency, inspiring oversight committees that had poked around inside the nooks and crannies. There would be secrets left intact, of course; you couldn't make the Company go public any more than you could make the syndicate go straight. But agents on the right side of the line would be concerned about a repetition of the Farnsworth episode. They might cooperate in weeding out another renegade, if he could be identified.
And where had that thought come from? There was nothing in the circumstances of Brognola's case to indicate an Agency involvement, nothing in the murder of DeVries that smacked of anything but Mafia. If Bolan hadn't mentioned Farnsworth...
But he had, and Susan knew the soldier well enough to realize that he would have his reasons. He had not survived this long by chasing phantoms of his own creation. If he had a lead on some of Farnsworth's cronies, other rotten apples at Langley, and if any of it was connected with the moves against Brognola...
Jesus, it could be the story of the year!
The lady kept her fingers crossed and prayed that Bolan's friends would not reject her offer of assistance, bar her from the game. It was a death game now, and there would be more killing before the final score was toted up and verified. It crossed her mind that she might be among the dead, but she put the prospect out of mind. The risk was part of her profession, and a part of it that Susan Landry secretly enjoyed.
She would enjoy the chance to work with Bolan, and that was no one's secret. Even as she offered up her prayer for personal success, another was already forming in her mind. She prayed for Bolan's safety through this night, at least, and hoped with all her heart that she would not be called upon to watch him die.
Because she needed him a damn sight more than Bolan needed her.
And that was one dark secret she might carry to her grave.