“You’re lucky we need a stool pigeon,” Bolan said with a scowl as he yanked the guy to his feet.
If Tahnk understood Bolan, he didn’t let it show. He continued to glare at the Executioner as he wobbled in place, fighting to keep his balance.
“Sons of bitches!” someone shouted in the distance.
Bolan stared past Tahnk and saw Scanlon crouching over one of his fallen comrades. The Bureau agent continued to swear as he rose to his feet and strode back toward the gully. Even in the pale moonlight Bolan could see the rage in the man’s eyes as he glared at Tahnk Woo-Ki.
“You nearly sliced his goddamn head off!” Scanlon railed, stiff-arming the Korean.
Unable to keep his balance, much less defend himself, Tahnk toppled to the ground like a fallen tenpin. Before Bolan could intervene, Scanlon raised his Colt pistol and pumped two shots into the assailant’s head, killing him instantly.
Bolan rushed forward and grabbed Scanlon by the wrist, then twisted his arm behind his back.
“What’s the idea?” he shouted at the agent.
“Let go of me!”
Scanlon tried to break free, but Bolan yanked tighter on his arm until the agent dropped his Colt. The soldier kicked the weapon to one side, then pushed Scanlon away. The field leader staggered backward but managed to stay on his feet.
“We needed him for questioning!” Bolan told Scanlon.
“Screw that!” Scanlon countered. “Nobody takes my men out like that and just walks away!”
Bolan glanced downhill and saw more agents heading uphill from the housing complex. The last thing he needed was for them to misread his confrontation with Scanlon and start firing. Warily, he picked up the agent’s Colt and handed it back to him.
“What’s done is done,” Bolan told him.
“A-freaking-men to that.” Scanlon eyed the man he’d just shot, then glanced back at Bolan. The rage was gone from his eyes, replaced by the subdued look of someone regretting a decision made in haste.
“All right, look,” he told Bolan, “I lost my head for a minute there, okay? Maybe I shouldn’t have off and whacked him like that.”
Bolan stared at Scanlon, feeling a flicker of empathy despite himself. After all, there’d been times in the heat of battle when he, too, had let an urge for vengeance get the better of him.
“Like I said, it’s done.”
“I know,” Scanlon said. “It’s just…I’ve been written up already a couple times for stuff like this. I can’t afford to go on review again.”
Bolan deliberated a moment, then crouched and quickly unfastened the makeshift binds he’d tied around Tahnk’s wrists and ankles. As he stood, he kicked the Korean’s fallen assault rifle closer to the body, then eyed Scanlon.
“He was armed and wouldn’t surrender,” Bolan said. “You did what you had to.”
Scanlon nodded, a look of relief and gratitude washing across his face.
“I owe you,” he told Bolan. “Big time.”
“Let’s finish up here,” Bolan said, strapping the ammo belt back around his waist.
Scanlon was holstering his Colt when Bahn wandered over, gun in hand. She eyed the slain Korean, then looked at Bolan and Scanlon questioningly. Bolan met her gaze and held it. If the woman suspected something was amiss, she didn’t let it show.
“There’s more bodies over there,” she finally said, gesturing up the hillside. “One of theirs, one of ours.”
Scanlon traded a glance with Bolan, then told the woman, “Yeah, I saw them, too.”
“Did you happen to notice that their guy was shot in the chest?”
“Yeah,” Scanlon said. “I figure Fred nailed him, then got his throat slit before the other guy died.”
“One problem with that,” Bahn said. “Fred’s gun is missing, so I’m not sure he was the one doing the nailing.”
Scanlon frowned and unclipped a flashlight from his belt. He shone the light on the Korean’s body, then inspected the gully where the Korean had been hiding.
“It’s not here,” he announced. He glanced around at the surrounding hills. “Must be one of them’s still on the loose. Let’s keep looking.”
Scanlon withdrew his gun again and moved off. Bahn stayed behind Bolan a moment, then whispered to him.
“Look, I saw what he did.”
“Shit happens,” Bolan told her. “Let it go.”
Bahn stared past Bolan a moment, watching Scanlon scramble up the hillside.
“Done,” she said. “Like the man said, let’s keep looking…”
HONG SUNG-NAM’S lungs burned as he sprinted across the pitched terrain of the foothills. He was moving in the opposite direction from where he’d parked the getaway car, but he was afraid the vehicle had already been pegged and might be under surveillance. He would have to find another way out. So far he’d managed to outdistance the chopper, but he could hear the drone of the rotors behind him and any second he expected the aircraft to come into view and nail him with its searchlight. Once that happened, it would be all over. And so he pushed onward, lengthening his stride in hopes of gaining more ground.