137 Battle Lines by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Stambolijski's hands emerged from the dark, supported his weight and lowered him gently to the floor. The window was in fact set between five and six feet high in the wall, and anyone tumbling straight through would have made enough noise to alarm even the sleepiest night-watchman.

As they had been told, they were in a men's washroom. Easing open the door, they traversed what seemed to be a small mess hall, avoiding the plastic-topped tables and chairs with small stabs of light from Bolan's flashlight, whose lens was now covered with a mask that only allowed a tiny beam to escape.

The door of the mess hall sighed shut behind them against its hydraulic stop. They were in a long windowless passage. Halfway along, a broad flight of stairs curled down to the lower floors. And at the far end a barred steel gate blocked the way.

"That will be it," the burglar muttered. "The computer should be beyond that. And then the suite protected by the volumetric alarm."

Treading warily, they approached the grille. Bolan lanced the flashlight beam Through the bars. Beyond them the corridor continued for a further forty feet and then opened into an empty hallway. The black metal box housing the computer that controlled the alarm system was cemented into the wall beside a heavy oak door. A red pilot glowed above a small switchboard. Below it, attached directly to the wall, was the circular boss that housed the ivory-colored control button.

Bolan unleathered his Beretta. "I have to tell you," Stambolijski breathed, "that the button has to be hit dead-center, smack on the nose—hit it partly on the button, partly on the surround, and you trigger the alarm."

"Now he tells me!" muttered the warrior.

He had been well briefed on the exploit, but it was going to test his skill to the utmost.

The button—the target—was perhaps the size of a man's fingerprint, not a large one. The shot must be one hundred percent accurate, dead center; if the bullet that drove the button home and destroyed it also fouled the side of the casing, it would be a fatal error. And there, would be no second chance.

Bolan smiled sourly. He was a professional, an expert, but he remembered reading some wiseguy's statement about people being experts only at dying: we only do it once, and we get it right the first time.

Well, this was the other side of the coin: he had to get it right first time—but the reward was living!

Hitting a half-inch button with a 9 mm handgun at forty feet is no big deal for a marksman. But in such circumstances, in the dubious illumination of a flashlight beam, with so much depending on it ... Bolan was sweating despite the chill night air and the clammy clasp of his black-suit.

He had spent an hour in his hotel room modifying the one round he could afford to fire: he reduced the charge, and altered the bullet's profile. It would of course flatten, but the smaller the

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