Carter snapped it up.
"Otherwise what!"
Bolan jerked the line, securing his hook.
"Well... careless is one thing. Disloyal is something else."
Carter's jaw dropped, the color drained out of his face. It took a moment for his voice to surface.
"Am I accused of something?"
Bolan shrugged.
''That depends on you."
"I see."
But he plainly didn't, which was fine with Bolan. He let the guy sweat as he crossed to a bar in the corner of the room and poured himself a drink. Carter moved toward a chair, thought better of it, and remained standing in the middle of the room.
"The problem... is it Minh?"
Bolan kept the answer vague, his voice impassive.
"Be careful of adventurism, comrade," he said. "Asians are... notoriously unreliable."
Carter's frown deepened.
"I believe Minh's committed to the project," he said.
"Granted. But on whose behalf?" The Executioner continued patiently, "Goals change. A survivor learns to read the signs."
He pinned Carter with his eyes and watched him squirm.
"Are you a survivor, Mihailovich?"
The lawyer found his backbone and met Bolan's eyes, unflinching.
"I'm listening," he said.
Bolan gave the fish some line.
"You've got friends," he said. "They don't want to see you damaged."
Carter gave a jerky nod.
"I appreciate that."
Bolan smiled without warmth.
"They feel you need a helping hand."
Carter saw what was coming now, and he stiffened.
"I organized this project," he said. "Who knows more about it?"
Bolan raised an eyebrow, kept his voice distant.
"The Party knows."
Carter sounded peeved.
"I should have been consulted."
"You've been told," Bolan snapped at him. "If you have some objection..."
That did it, and the guy's response was hasty.
"No, uh, no." Carter shook his head. "You have to understand..."
Bolan cut him off.
"There isn't any time to waste," he said. "Frankly, I'm surprised to find you here."
The counselor looked confused.
"Where should I be?" he asked.
"Watching your back, Karpetyan."
"The name's Carter."
Bolan spread his hands.
"Will it matter on a headstone?"
"Now, listen..."
"You're marked," Bolan told him.
"What?"
Carter couldn't seem to grasp his meaning.
"Someone's decided they can do without you. Permanently."
The lawyer's face was working toward a compromise of shock and disbelief.
"Minh?" he asked.
"You're an obstacle," Bolan said. "He doesn't have time to go around you."
Carter's slow response was interrupted by a flash of headlights across the front windows. Bolan was already moving when he heard the car outside.
"Expecting company?" he asked.
"Nobody."
Carter joined him at the window. A black crew wagon was idling in the driveway, disgorging hard-eyed occupants. Bolan tracked two of them toward the porch, and one was circling around the back.
"Friends of yours?"
Carter shook his head.
"They belong to Minh."
Bolan read the counselor's expression, and he gave the Universe a silent vote of thanks. This time, the odds were running his way, the cards of coincidence giving him an unexpected edge.
But not the victory — not yet.
That was up to Bolan.
He would have to play those cards the way they fell, and any false move, any mistake, could make it a dead man's hand.
7
The doorbell rang and Carter jumped as if he'd brushed a live electric wire.
"Time for choices," Bolan said. "You're all out of numbers."
Carter swallowed hard, eyes darting nervously from Bolan to the front door and back.
"Minh wouldn't do this," he blurted.
Bolan shrugged.
"Your decision," he said. "Go along for the ride. What have you got to lose?"
The lawyer's face showed he was already counting the losses.
"All right, dammit!" he snapped. "What should I do?"
"I'd answer the door," Bolan said.
Carter didn't seem to trust his ears any more.
"What? But you said..."
"Get them inside," Bolan told him. "And then stay out of the way."
The Beretta Belle was in his fist now, and Carter's eyes were bulging at the sight of it. Outside, anxious fingers punched the doorbell again, jarring the counselor out of his momentary shock.
"They're waiting," Bolan said.
Carter moved, crossing the room with jerky strides, disappearing into the foyer. Bolan shifted to a better vantage point and listened as the door was opened.
Muttered voices in the entry hall — Carter's tight, nervous, the others low-keyed, insistent. Bolan wondered if the guy could pull it off.
The voices were returning, Carter in the lead. He was bitching, demanding answers and getting nowhere. The hardmen were saying next to nothing.
Carter reached the living room, missing Bolan on his first hasty look around. The nonstop carping missed a beat, but he recovered quickly and spotted Bolan standing off to one side of the doorway, his weapon up and ready.
Behind the counselor, two men filled the doorway. Bolan sized up the opposition as they entered.
They were bookends, carbon copies of a thousand other savages the Executioner had known. Different faces, sure, but you couldn't hide the pedigree. They carried all the signs: a stench of death and suffering nothing could ever wash away.
"I wish you'd tell me what this... this..."
Carter couldn't tear his eyes away from Bolan. The hardmen were following his lead, turning to check it out.
What they saw was not a welcome.
It was death.
All things considered, they reacted professionally, peeling off in opposite directions, giving Bolan two targets. Each was groping after hidden hardware, competing in the most important contest of their lives.
Neither had a chance.
Bolan took the nearest gunner first, his Beretta chugging out a pencil line of flame. The 9mm parabellum sizzled in on target, punching through a tanned cheek under the right eye, expanding and reaming on, exiting with a spray of murky crimson. The impact spun him like a top and dumped him facedown on the carpet.
His partner had an autoloader out and tracking Bolan when Belle coughed a second time. The gunner lurched backward as a parabellum mangier pierced his throat, releasing a bloody torrent from his ruptured jugular. For an instant he was frozen, gagging on his own vital juices; his lips worked silently, emitting scarlet bubbles.
Bolan again stroked the trigger and again silent death closed the gap between them, exploding in the gunner's face. A keyhole opened in his forehead and the lock was turned, explosively releasing all the contents of that dark Pandora's box. Bits and pieces of the guy were outward bound before his body got the message, rebounding off the sofa on its way to touchdown.
Mitchell Carter was going through some changes of his own as he surveyed the carnage. His living room had suddenly become a dying room, and his white shag carpeting would never be the same.
"Jesus. Sweet Jesus."
Yeah.
The years of grim indoctrination couldn't dam a plea to a long-forgotten God. Not with bloody fragments of reality clinging to his walls and furniture.