torture, barely had his pistol cleared from his belt holster. Bolan bent his knees and moved sideways at the same instant Lyalin triggered a round that slammed into the door frame where Bolan had been a moment before. The Executioner triggered another silenced blast and the KGB officer hurtled backward into hell.
Uttkin, eyes still glazed, tugged his pistol up.
Lansdale sensed the Executioner whirling to respond, but the shackled CIA man could not stay uninvolved a moment longer. He gave the table beneath him a powerful heave to the right, riding the leverage with all his weight, and the table toppled over sideways into Uttkin, knocking the GRU man down with it. The Russian colonel's pistol flew out of his fingers to land a few feet from the naked corpse of the man Uttkin had tortured. Uttkin cursed in Russian and pushed off the weight of the man-laden table, got free and tried to get to his pistol but only made it halfway before Bolan opened fire.
The GRU officer skidded onto his face as if tripped, the back of his head blown in by the burst from the Ingram. The Executioner crossed rapidly to crouch beside the overturned table. He untied the straps that bound Lansdale to the rack. "Thanks, buddy," Bolan grunted as he released the last clasp. Lansdale scrambled to his feet, rubbing his wrists.
"No, my thanks to you, big dude. Sounds like we've got company." The doorway filled with three raydoviki tumbling into the room in response to Boris Lyalin's pistol shot.
Bolan swung the Ingram to take them out, but Lansdale had maneuvered himself into the line of fire so Bolan stepped aside while the Company man erupted into a series of rapid-fire martial arts punches and kicks, taking out two of the soldiers, breaking necks with a couple of stiff-handed blows.
The CIA agent spun with a leg stiffened out in a backward blow, the heel caving in the other soldier's forehead, adding another dead man to the "interrogation room." Bolan tossed his M-16 across the short distance to Lansdale. "Here, this'll be easier." Lansdale caught the rifle.
"Maybe, but not half as much fun. You got any particular plan in mind, pard?"
Bolan hustled them out of the doorway.
"A truck upstairs." They hit the basement hallway and the bottom of the stairway leading up, and they ran into four more Soviet regulars racing toward them. The Executioner took out the two on the right, the Ingram stuttering its silenced dirge, killing men who tumbled to the corridor, posed in death like some weird sculpture.
Lansdale tugged off a burst from the M-16 and a soldier on the left caught the hail of hammering projectiles that twisted and staggered him, life forces bursting red everywhere until the dancing dead tripped and toppled down the steps.
The MAC-10 in Bolan's hands issued an angry message of death that pulverized the last trooper, the leaden stream chopping off limbs making bloody modern art designs across bullet-riddled walls. Bolan and Lansdale rushed up the stairs to the ground-floor level.
"Things never got this noisy back in the panhandle," Lansdale grunted as they made the top.
Bolan frowned. This was the same guy he had worked with in Libya, no doubt of it.
"Last time we met you had a Boston accent."
"So I get around," the Texan replied in a goodnatured drawl. "A guy's got to have some fun in life."
They left the stairs and raced toward the main entrance, heading for the supply carrier Bolan had left idling.
A Maxon raped the silent night, alerting soldiers all around the HQ building.
Two heads poked out of an office doorway halfway down the hall, soldiers scoping the action.
Bolan blew their heads off before they got any ideas. The Executioner and his CIA sidekick dashed from the building, Bolan to the driver's side of the truck, Lansdale tugging off a stutter from the M-16 that sent three sleepy-eyed troopers back to eternal slumber in the doorway of the nearest barracks. Then Lansdale hopped up into the cab and kept low as more soldiers,
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