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The Executioner expected to die a violent death someday

But the civilians in the lobby had not signed up for battle pay, and if Bolan failed in the action he had to take within the next few seconds, they would surely die.

The bomber had almost reached the CIA man when the Executioner turned around.

As Bolan increased his pace to catch up with the man in the vest, the CIA agent moved smoothly into the bomber’s path and grabbed both of his wrists. Bolan drew his fixed-blade knife from behind his back and raised it high over his head. All other movement in the lobby had stopped.

The bomber screamed something in Arabic as Bolan dived through the air, the blade clenched in a reverse grip. As he collided with the man’s back, he brought the blade down with all his strength, penetrating the man’s skull.

A few gasps came from around the lobby. Then the screams of men and women filled the air. Bolan pried the blade out of the bomber’s skull and wiped it on the back of the man’s vest before turning him over.

“Murderers!” a high-pitched female voice shouted. “Call the police.”

The Executioner unzipped the bomber’s vest and a collective gasp came from the crowd when the people saw a good two-dozen sticks of dynamite strapped to the dead man’s body.

There were no more accusations of homicide.

Final Coup

The Executioner^®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

—Ronald Reagan

1911–2004

All people have a right to live and die freely. Anyone who dares to take that away will face my wrath and suffer inevitable defeat. That’s a promise.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

1

It was hardly the way Mack Bolan had expected the mission to begin.

When the sudden explosion of rifle-fire blew past him on both sides, the man known as the Executioner drew the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle from the Kydex hip holster beneath his navy blue blazer. He automatically crouched into a classic “point shooting” position as his eyes scanned the Yaounde, Cameroon, airport terminal with the speed of lightning, looking for a target to return fire.

At the same time, he wondered what had gone wrong.

As it always did in times of grave danger, the Executioner’s mind geared into overdrive, working at the speed of light, and outdistancing even the most sophisticated computers. His brain took in the information provided by his senses, processed it all in a thousandth of a second and began kicking out potential answers to the assault.

Bolan saw a small movement in a second-story window of the terminal, and at the same time a flash of light. The sun had just bounced off what had to be the lens of a rifle scope.

The target was beyond the distance for point shooting, so Bolan rose into a classic isosceles stance and lined up the Desert Eagle’s sights. He squeezed the trigger, sending his first .44 Magnum jacketed lead round toward the flash of light, while his mind continued to process the information it was receiving.

Who were the shooters? The sniper rifle scope and the rapid autofire didn’t go together. That told him there was at least one more man shooting at them.

But why had the onslaught begun in the first place? Bolan didn’t know. But one thing was certain: they knew what they were doing.

They had waited until all of the men who’d accompanied him had walked down the steps of the jet before opening fire. That, in turn, told the Executioner two more things.

Word of their coming had preceded their arrival.

And the enemy knew exactly how many men were on board.

Somewhere there was a deadly leak in security. But finding it would have to take a backseat to what was happening at the moment. Before he even thought about the mole, the Executioner and the other men had to survive this surprise attack.

Another rifle barrel poked out of a second-floor window of the terminal, roughly a hundred yards away. With both hands gripping the Desert Eagle, Bolan took careful aim once more and gently squeezed the trigger. As all distant and precisely aimed shots should, his second Magnum round came as a slight surprise. He had aimed at the top of the window, but the bullet drop at that distance sent the lethal, fragmenting hollowpoint round into a blurry headlike shape just above the rifle. Almost exactly like the first sniper had done a second earlier, whoever held this weapon fell backward, out of sight. But not before he had dropped his long gun from the window, and sent a shot of residual blood and brain tissue after it.

One down. But how many to go? The soldier had no way of knowing.

Bolan looked quickly around him. Most of the men who had accompanied him were from the U.S. Secret Service, and their hands had found Glocks, SIG-Sauers or Berettas. Dr. John Lareby—an expert in counterterrorism, guerrilla warfare, survival and executive protection—and the only representative of the CIA within the group—held a modest little Walther PPK .380 in his fist.

More shots rang out, and one of them ripped the shoulder out of Bolan’s jacket. Beneath its path, the soldier felt the heat and a slight sting. It had been ability and training, but also a good deal of luck, that he had spotted either of the two shooters. Although he could hear more gunfire and feel other bullets whizzing past to make loud clinks in the body of the plane, it was impossible to determine the exact points of origin.

Bolan knew they had only two choices: they could sprint toward the terminal and try to get below the line of fire, or they could retreat into, or behind, the plane.

It didn’t take long for him to determine which option made more sense. There was still a football field between them and the terminal, and the chances of him, Lareby and the Secret Service agents all running into the fire without getting killed was slim to say the least.

“Get back!” Bolan yelled, and a moment later he and the rest of the Americans had hit the ground and were rolling beneath the plane. By the time they were on the other side, a few shots continued coming at them, hitting the tarmac next to the Concorde and ricocheting past their feet.

The Executioner moved toward the rear of the aircraft. Peering around one of the tail fins he stared toward the terminal. A pause had come in the shooting, and Bolan suspected the gunmen were planning their next strategy. As Lareby and the Secret Service agents crowded around him, the Executioner waited, thinking, taking in received data and combining it with what was happening, his thoughts racing through his brain at the speed of light.

But then the gunfire, which had disappeared for a few minutes, suddenly returned with a vengeance. Bolan, Lareby and the Secret Service agents who had again crowded around him, ducked back away from the tail of the plane and waited. A few random shots skidded beneath the jet, but the majority of fire just punched more holes in the fuselage.

Bolan’s mind flashed to the man who had piloted them to Cameroon. Jack Grimaldi was an old friend, fellow warrior and arguably the best pilot in the world. He was the only man who had not exited the plane, and he would have taken refuge behind the cockpit, where shields of bullet-resistant Kevlar and steel plating had been installed along the walls. The Executioner grinned slightly as he pictured the man in his mind’s eye. At this moment, Grimaldi would have his beloved Smith & Wesson Model 66 out of its holster and gripped in his right hand. In his left would be a pair of .38/357 speedloaders.

Both would be loaded with RBCD total fragmentation .357 rounds.

Should everything else go south, and Bolan, Lareby and the Secret Service agents were killed, Grimaldi would take out as many of the assailants as he could before the jet was rushed and he, too, was shot. Like the captain of a seagoing vessel, Grimaldi would go down with his “ship.”

Grimaldi’s primary contribution to America and the rest of the free world were his aviation skills. He could fly everything from a kite to a space shuttle. But he was as much a warrior at heart as any of the other men accompanying Bolan.

And he’d die like one if he had to.

As the gunfire continued, the Executioner decided to wait them out. Sometimes doing nothing was doing something, and the best course of action. Sooner or later, the shooters were going to run out of ammo. Or perhaps the local police or the military would arrive to send them scattering back to whatever rocks they’d crawled out from under.

For the time being, however, the best plan of action was no plan of action. And that was the hardest thing a true soldier ever had to do.

The Executioner’s mind raced back once more over what had happened during the past few days. The Cameroonian president, Robert Menye, was on the run, having abandoned his position of leadership the same day the International Criminal Court—ICC—issued arrest warrants for his war crimes. An emergency election had been called for under the Cameroon constitution, and the suddenly growing Cameroon People’s Union had continued to combine with a whole new lot of men awakening to nationalism amid the turbulence. In short the Cameroon People’s Union and the Kamerun National Democratic Party had both named candidates.

Cameroon’s prime minister—the only man left with any power during the chaos—had frantically called upon the U.S. President for help. The man in the White House had sent Secret Service agents to spearhead the protection of both candidates. The CIA, for its part, had sent Lareby, who was being billed as a so-called observer.

And Bolan. Who wasn’t on the grid as anything except a Department of Justice agent named Matt Cooper. Not even the Secret Service agents or CIA field operative John Lareby knew any more about him.

Except that he was in charge. And that his orders were not to be questioned.

The pungent odor of jet fuel began to fill the Executioner’s nostrils, and suddenly the new tack the shooters were taking became clear to him. They had shot hundreds of rounds that had dented but bounced off the reinforced sides of the plane. But somewhere along the way the fuel storage walls— despite being reinforced with Kevlar and steel—had been penetrated.

The Executioner was reminded that the proper adjective for items such as Kevlar and steel plates was “bullet-resistant” not “bulletproof.” One or more of the snipers either had a tremendously powerful rifle, or a multitude of lesser calibers had all hit in the same area, eventually wearing down the protective shielding.

As he stared at the ground beneath the wing, the Executioner heard more rounds explode. A small flame started beneath the plane. At almost the same time, Lareby shouted out, “We’ve got to get out of here! This thing’s going up in about half a minute!”

Bolan ignored the warning. But in his peripheral vision he saw several of the Secret Service agents sprinting away from the plane, farther from the snipers in the terminal. Hurrying toward the cabin, the soldier pulled himself up and in through the opened window.

Grimaldi was not in the pilot’s seat, but Bolan hadn’t expected him to be. As he started to enter the still-open doorway into the plane, a pair of strong arms reached up and grabbed him, surprising the Executioner, and tugged him back to the ground.

The soldier turned toward the man who had just pulled him back and saw it was a young blond-haired Secret Service agent. He couldn’t remember the man’s name.

“Forget the pilot!” the young man screamed. “He’s toast!”

Before he even realized what he was doing, Bolan slammed a right cross into the Secret Service man’s chin, which sent him into dreamland on the tarmac. Then he looked at the nearer of the other Secret Service agents. “I may have to carry the pilot out of here,” he shouted above the continuing roar of rifle-fire. “Which means that if I have to knock you out, too, there won’t be anyone left to carry the two of you. Do you get my drift?”

“We get it,” one of the agents said, then stooped to begin trying to lift the unconscious man into his arms.

“Good,” Bolan said. He holstered the Desert Eagle, turned back toward the plane and climbed aboard once more.

Grimaldi was exactly where Bolan knew he’d be. His back rested against the side of the fuselage. Blood was splattered all over the cabin, and dark red stains dripped down behind the pilot. “Whoever said this was bullet-resistant,” the pilot said in dry humor, “might have been stretching the truth a little.”

Bolan hurried toward him. “How bad are you hit, Jack?” he asked.

“Not all that bad, I don’t think. One round in the chest. High above the heart. The other one’s in my leg. Dangerously close to the femoral artery. But like they say, a miss is as good as a mile.” He coughed. “It tore through my pants, barely missing a part of my anatomy that I’d just as soon die as lose.”

“Then let’s get you out of here so you can use it again,” Bolan responded.

Grimaldi shook his head. “Uh-uh, Sarge. I can smell the gas and I know there’s fire. This thing’s going to blow any second. You’ll never make it carrying me. Take off. On your own. There’s no point in both of us dying.”

“Neither one of us is going to die,” Bolan said as he reached down, grabbed Grimaldi’s hand, pulled him up and threw him over his shoulder in a classic fireman’s carry.

“Well, if we both get vaporized in the next two seconds, don’t blame me,” the pilot said.

But Bolan wasn’t listening. He made his way to the doorway, opened it and looked down, surprised to see the Secret Service agents waiting. The man with the blond brush cut was awake again. He had a swollen chin, which had turned red and promised to be black and blue by tomorrow. But he didn’t seem angry.

The soldier dropped down to the tarmac and yelled over the continuing gunfire, “Go! Get out of here. Do it!”

The men turned and took off away from the plane. The Executioner—with Grimaldi still over his shoulder—followed. He was well aware of the fact that the farther they got behind the plane, the better targets they provided for the snipers. But taking the chance of being hit by a bullet at that range was far smarter than awaiting certain death when the fire finally reached the aircraft’s fuel tanks.

They were roughly 150 yards from the aircraft when it finally exploded.

Bolan set Grimaldi on the tarmac and turned back toward the plane. Flames and smoke rose high enough to hide them no matter how skilled, how well-armed the snipers were—or how many of them were out there.

“So much for our low-profile entry into the country,” Lareby said. Bolan watched him as he stared back at the flames jumping from what was quickly beginning to look like a fiery dinosaur skeleton in a museum. The fire had spread to all parts of the plane.

Lareby knelt next to where Grimaldi sat. “Better check you out, sport,” he said. “Hold still. I’m a physician, after all.”

“Then get to work and prove it,” Grimaldi came back. “But I’m okay, seriously.”

“You’re okay for the moment,” Lareby said. “But in about ten minutes the adrenaline is going to wear off, and you’ll feel like someone jammed a hot branding iron through you.”

“I’ve lived through worse than this before,” the pilot said.

Bolan had been too busy to notice Lareby’s black leather bag. But he watched as the man pulled out a stethoscope, a hypodermic needle and a small vial. “What are you giving him?” he asked in a stern voice.

“Morphine,” Lareby said. “He’s right—his wounds aren’t life-threatening. The material in the ballistic siding slowed the bullets, and you couldn’t have asked for cleaner shots. Upper chest, then on out the back. Missed the lung. Worse-case scenario, it may have chipped a shoulder blade.”

“How about the leg wound?” Bolan pressed.

“He won’t be running any marathons for a while,” the CIA man said. “But it’s nothing. The blood’s already starting to coagulate.”

“I said I was all right,” Grimaldi said as the tried to get up off the ground. This time Bolan helped Lareby hold him back down, twisting him onto his back.

Only then did Bolan see how much pain there actually was in his old friend’s eyes. But the eyes were the only place it showed. His face looked more angry than hurt.

“They had to be loaded up with armor-piercing rounds,” Lareby said as he probed further at the pilot below him. “The wound channel is so straight you could stick a pencil through it. Hardly any tissue damage to the sides of the bullet’s path.” The CIA doctor pulled off the cap on the hypodermic needle with his teeth, spit it to the side, then punctured the top of the tiny vial with the needle. Holding it upward, he injected Grimaldi’s arm with the morphine and, one by one, Bolan watched the wrinkles in the Stony Man pilot’s face smooth out as the drug hit his system.

Grimaldi finally grinned. “You know,” he said. “On second thought, I think the adrenaline is wearing off. You wouldn’t by any chance have a six-pack of that stuff you can leave with me?” His tongue suddenly loosened, Grimaldi continued with, “They got any flowers around here?” he asked jokingly. “I’m getting this uncontrollable urge to wear flowers in my hair and go to San Francisco.”

Bolan and Lareby hauled Grimaldi to his feet. “Sorry, Flower Child,” Bolan said. “But Timothy Leary’s dead and the Age of Aquarius is long gone.”

“Maybe for you, Sarge.” Grimaldi laughed. He was standing on his own now, but his feet were still wobbly. “But I’ve got all of Janice Joplin, Blind Faith and Cream on CDs back in my car. It’s to drown out the ‘rap’ I have to endure at stop-lights.” He frowned for a moment, scratching his chin. “Or they might be in my room back at the main house. But I’m gonna look until I find them and—”

Bolan cleared his throat. “Jack?” he said.

“Yeah?” the pilot said.

“No more morphine-speak, okay? Just shut up.”

Grimaldi lost his grin. “Gotcha,” he said.

A moment later, Bolan had taken him by the arm and was moving him backward, farther away from the fiery plane. When he had gotten the pilot out of earshot of the other men, Bolan turned to look at them.

They all stared back. And unless he missed his guess, they were all wondering just what the “main house” was.

Jack Grimaldi had realized his mistake even before Bolan spoke, and he said, “Sorry, Sarge. I guess I could blame it on the morphine, but that’s no excuse.”

Bolan turned his back to the rest of the men in case any of them read lips. “It’s no big deal, Jack,” he said. “But these guys are paid to be suspicious of anybody and everybody. Look at it from their point of view for a moment. We suddenly appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and they get orders directly from the White House that we’re in charge. And while we know all about them, they know nothing about us. We’ve got to be cautious.”

Grimaldi nodded. “Rest assured it won’t happen again, big guy,” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to get checked out by some hospital here. But from now on my only topic of conversation around strangers will be my health.”

The Executioner smiled. “One slipup in…how many years have we been working together?”

“More than I’d like to count,” Grimaldi said.

Bolan chuckled under his breath. “It’s time to regroup and replan.” He took Grimaldi by the arm and guided him back toward the rest of the Americans.

By now, the flames and smoke from the jet were dying down, and they’d soon be visible targets again. With absolutely no cover or concealment on the vast, wide-open runway. The sounds of gunfire from the terminal had all but vanished, but Bolan didn’t kid himself.

The snipers had not fled the area. They, like Bolan himself, were waiting for the smoke to clear before they resumed fire. And as he half-carried Grimaldi farther from the inferno, the fog began to disperse.

And the soldier saw a half-dozen Cameroonian army jeeps racing toward them.

That was the greeting he’d been briefed to expect, but he’d had no advance intel that it would be during a pitched gun battle.

For a brief moment, the Executioner glanced back at the skeletal aircraft. The fire and smoke was close to burning itself out, which meant that he had to get all his men away from what was about to become a disaster zone.

The smoke continued to float apart in the air as they advanced, allowing Bolan a better view of where they were headed. But it was a mixed blessing. The clearing air also allowed the snipers to pick out their targets again, and the blasts from the rifles in the windows of the terminal building came back with a vengeance.

The fog had all but been left behind them when Bolan spotted the corrugated steel shack between the runways. It stood at an angle that would be difficult to shoot at from the terminal and, with the wounded men, it appeared to be their best objective. It would not stop high-powered rifle rounds but if they could get behind its walls, it would at least keep the enemy from locking in on specific targets.

Specific targets meaning human beings.

Them.

Bolan began to run toward the small building as the bullets from the snipers’ scoped rifles spit past him. With Grimaldi still in tow, he utilized a “serpentine” tactic, running an S pattern that changed in speed, shape and size so that it became no true pattern at all. Behind him, he could hear the other men following.

The soldier dropped Grimaldi to the grass as soon as he was behind the shack. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the rifle-fire ceased. Bolan glanced around the corner of the building and saw why.

On both sides, as well as behind the terminal, stood a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. Topped with coil after coil of rolled razor-wire, it was meant to stop or slow anyone trying to transverse it. It would be easy to scale the fence. But passing through the razor-wire without getting shredded to pieces—or at least tangled and providing an easy, stationary target for the sharpshooters in the terminal—would be all but impossible.

But the fence and wire didn’t do a very good job of retarding the tank that was pushing slowly through it to the left of the runway where the jet’s remains still stood. The armored vehicle began snapping the fence and the steel poles between, which it stretched as if they were dry wooden matchsticks.

Bolan stared at the tank for a moment. An older-model Chieftain, it was of British design and had obviously been left behind when Great Britain moved out of Cameroon. Originally meant for use by a legitimate new government, it had, not surprisingly, fallen into the hands of terrorists instead. Bolan knew that the Chieftain had been created as a result of Britain’s World War II warfare experience. It was built to give priority to both firepower and armored protection.

The soldier felt the muscles in his face tighten. Earlier, he had had a brief moment of regret that his team’s rifles, grenades, extra ammo, clothes and other gear had been left on the jet and were now either in ashes or otherwise useless. But watching the tank roll forward undeterred, he realized they had carried nothing that would stop the British Chieftain.

No, Bolan thought, as the jeeps arrived and their occupants began scooting closer to make room for the Americans. Until more firepower could arrive via diplomatic pouches, he and the other men would have only the weapons they had carried on them and anything they could beg, borrow, or steal from the Cameroonians.

Taking a seat next to the dark-skinned sergeant in one of the jeeps, Bolan held on to the top of his door as the man cut a sharp U-turn and picked up speed again. A 60 mm machine gun was mounted in each jeep, but they would be of little more use against the Chieftain than his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. They led the convoy of jeeps to escape the inevitable aim of the tank’s antitank rounds or machine gun— either of which could turn the jeeps into fiery infernos like the jet.

Bolan had learned many truths during his career as a warrior. And one of them was that when you were outgunned and unable to go toe-to-toe with a superior weapon itself, the only plan of action that had any chance of succeeding was to take out the man whose finger was on the trigger.

The soldier’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration as a head suddenly rose through the hatch on top of the tank. All Bolan could see was the man’s hair and eyes.

The men inside would not be expecting any significant return fire from the Americans’ pistols or the AK-47s carried by the Cameroonian regulars in the jeeps. So as soon as their speed had leveled off, Bolan twisted and rested the Desert Eagle on the side of the jeep. Aiming high, he lined up the front and rear sights of the big .44 Magnum pistol just above the head sticking out of the tank’s hatch.

But before he could squeeze the trigger, he heard the boom of the Chieftain’s gun and saw the tank literally thrown backward with the recoil.

What was left of the airplane finally crumbled into an unrecognizable mass of broken steel. Bolan tried to line up the Desert Eagle’s sights again. But before he could shoot at the eyes and scalp he’d seen, the terrorist in the tank had disappeared into the vehicle.

Who were these assailants? Bolan couldn’t help but wonder again. Were they Cameroonian People’s Union or Kamerun Democratic National Party? He didn’t know, but their attack was just as deadly no matter which side of the genocide they were on.

As the jeeps raced on, the rushing wind made conversation difficult. “We still having the meeting with the prime minister here at the airport?” Bolan shouted.

“The meeting is still scheduled,” the sergeant behind the wheel yelled back to him. “But I doubt it will be here.” He pointed toward the terminal and Bolan could see that it was rivaling the jet in the burning category.

Whoever was behind this “Welcome to Cameroon” fiasco was taking out the airport building as well as his plane.

“Who were we fighting?” Bolan finally got a chance to ask.

The sergeant shrugged as he answered. “Either the CPU or the KDNP,” he said. “Take your pick. They wear the same old combination of battle-dress uniforms and civilian clothes, and it’s hard to tell who they are unless you can get them to talk. CPUs usually speak English with a heavy accent. KDNP-ers have the same accent but almost always speak French. Most, however, are bilingual.”

By then the jeeps had slowed as they neared another set of buildings far from the terminal. Bolan guessed this to be the cargo plane landing area, and probably the airstrips used by the Cameroonian military forces. The structure was not nearly as architecturally pleasing or as well kept as the passengers’ terminal had been, but it was in a lot better shape than that building was going to be for a long time after the flames died down.

The Executioner looked over his shoulder at the still-burning airplane, far in the distance now. The old adage “between the devil and the deep blue sea” crossed his mind. But, somehow, that old saying didn’t quite sum up his, or his team’s, current situation.

It seemed far more likely that they were between two different kinds of hell.

The Chieftain was even farther away now than it had been before it finished off the airplane. But it was still following the jeeps across the runways toward the rough commercial buildings. And the same hair and eyes had risen again through the hatch.

Finally on flatter land, the Executioner once again rested the Desert Eagle on the jeep’s rear ledge and lined up the sights, allowing for even more bullet drop this time. Slowly, without allowing the big .44’s barrel to waver in the slightest, he squeezed the trigger.

The “scream of the Eagle” was still in his ears as the head sticking out of the British tank literally exploded like a watermelon. The tank ground to a halt. Three more men inside the old and battered war vehicle panicked and, rather than remain within the relative safety of the tank, pushed the headless man out through the exit hole. Clad in a variety of different patterned camouflage, OD-green BDU pants and blouses, and T-shirts, jeans and khaki work pants, they followed the corpse and dropped to the ground.