'Nothing doing,' Pena objected, happily patting his jacket pocket. 'Deej gets first look at this little jewel.' He smiled archly and added, 'After all, it's my passport back to the livin', Willie. Let's not be throwing it around the car, huh?'
'You're not forgetting,' Walker pouted, 'that us guys put our necks right up there with yours.'
'I'm not forgetting,' Pena assured him. 'Don't you ever get to thinking that way, Willie. And Deej won't hold nothing against you when I explain this was all in the plan. He might be a little sore but he'll get over that quick enough. When he sees this picture, eh? Hell. Didn't he tell me not to come back without Bolan's head? Well, I got it,' He tapped the pocket again. 'I got Bolan's head.'
'Hell it ain't even a picture,' Tommy Edsel remarked. 'It's just a drawin', ain't it?'
'Yeah but what a drawin',' Pena said. 'A drawin' for a face job ain't just no drawin', you know. Hell, it's a blueprint.'
'That back there made me sick at my stomach,' Capistrano complained. 'I never saw a guy turned into a turkey like that before.'
'Yeah but don't you forget, Mario, a singing turkey,' Pena said. 'Hell, I don't enjoy that kind of stuff any more than anyone else. His own damn fault, you gotta say that.'
'You did that to his fingers after,' Capistrano grumbled.
'That was for the lesson,' Pena patiently explained. 'Those guys gotta know they can't get away with it. Don't worry me with no blues now, Mario. Today's my day and I'm gonna enjoy it. You wanta walk back to the Springs, just say it.'
'I wonder what about Franky Lucky,' Bonelli fretted, perhaps only to change the subject.
'What is this Franky Lucky?' Pena snorted. 'Some kinda goddam greaser golden boy?'
'Watch it,' Willie Walker suggested in a low voice, his eyes shifting meaningfully to Harold the Greaser.
Pena laughed. 'Aw hell, Willie, Harold ain't sensitive about being foreign born. Are you, Harold?'
Harold muttered something unintelligible and laughed. Pena laughed with him, although obviously he did not understand the comment. 'Everybody's happy today,' Pena observed.
'Except maybe Franky Lucky,' Walker said. 'Now Lou . . . this guy is as cold as a fish. And you were about right, he's a golden boy, at least as far as Deej is concerned. And he's got his contract. And Deej says we'll just have to avoid him the best we can until he calls in or comes in. And the way Deej talked, this boy ain't going to be listening to anything we might have to say. He's going to shoot first and save the polite conversation for after.'
'Didn't you say he's handling the hit personally. Pena asked thoughtfully.
'This guy's a loner, Lou,' Bonelli piped up. 'They tell me he never takes no one along.'
'Well hell, there's six of us, ain't there?' Pena said. 'Anyway, he's not gonna be gunning for us between here'n home. Is he? What the hell are you worried about?'
The wheelman glanced over his shoulder and said, 'Don't Franky Lucky wheel a blue sleek Mercedes?'
'Yeah, Some kind of hot wheels,' Walker replied. 'Why?'
Tommy Edsel's head was now wagging to and fro as his eyes moved rapidly from his own route to a winding road descending from the hills to their right. 'I bet that's him,' he said ominously.
All eyes turned to the mountain road, about a quarter-mile distant. 'You sure got better eyes than me, Tommy, Pena said, squinting with his forehead pressed against the window.
'Just keep looking,' Tommy Edsel replied, his head still wagging rhythmically. 'He's in and out. Look for a flash of blue. There! Did you see? Shit, man, that's him, that's Franky Lucky! And is he wheeling!'
As alarmed sounds rose up around him, Pena braked, 'Awright awright, settle down. If it's him, and it probably ain't, just remember there's one of him and six of us. He ain't likely to try nothing. He'll trail along and wait for a chance. He ain't gonna highway duel us, that's for damn sure.'
'With Franky Lucky,' Walker said worriedly, 'nothing's for damn sure.'
'Where do these roads come together?' Pena asked. He wet his lips nervously, affected by his companions' alarm.
'Just around this next curve,' Tommy Edsel reported, 'where the highway turns back toward the hills.'
'Well dammit, you gotta beat him there!' Pena exclaimed.
'Dammit don't think I'm not trying,' the wheelman replied, grunting with exitement. 'But this boltpile sure as hell ain't no Mercedes!'
Pena and Walker were lowering their windows and the others were squirming about in the tight space trying to get their weapons ready.
'Just watch where you're shooting!' Pena yelled. 'You guys onna other side be careful!'
Bolan had recognized the big Mafia vehicle at almost the same instant he had been spotted by Tommy Edsel. His visibility from the mountainside was unrestricted and gave him a panoramic sweep of the flatlands from the south horizon to the north. No other vehicles were in view; indeed there was nothing but desolation for as far as the eye could see. He ran a quick mental triangulation on the speeding vehicles and smiled grimly at the incredibly perfect timing of his gamble. He would beat them to the junction by perhaps ten seconds; it would be ten seconds enough. The precision driving required to traverse the winding mountain road at such speeds had taken the full use of all his faculties, both mental and physical. There had been little left of Mack Bolan to mull over the unspeakable atrocity he had left behind at Palm Village . . . and just as well. Beneath his peaking consciousness lurked a consuming rage such as this normally unemotional man had never experienced. His executions of the past had always been performed with a cool detachment, his combat-trained instincts dominating and guiding the actions of the mission. Never before had Bolan stepped forward with rage governing his performance, not even while avenging the deaths of his own father, mother, and sister. But that rage was there now, just below the surface. It was about to eruptm . . . and, with it, the full potency and ferocity of the Executioner.
Chapter Twenty
Between horizons
The Mercedes slid to a halt at the intersection with screaming rubber. Bolan was outside and standing alongside almost before the forward motion was halted. He tossed his pistols to the shoulder of the road and quickly leaned back into the vehicle, depressing the clutch with one hand and shifting into low gear with the other. Then he ripped the rubber accelerator peddle away and forced the rod to full depression, wedging it into the hold of the floorboard. The big engine was screaming in full idle, reminding Bolan of a jet engine run-up. He dropped to his knees on the roadway, shifted his right hand over to the clutch pedal, and held the door with his left. He knew that he had to depend entirely upon visibility; he would not be able to hear the approach of the other vehicle through the whine of his own engine. His visibility extended for about three carlengths beyond the intersection; both reflexes and timing would have to be perfect.
Then came the flash of motion at the edge of vision, and he was lunging clear of the Mercedes, allowing his own bodily motion to jerk his hand free of the clutch pedal. The powerful vehicle leapt forward like an arrow from a bow, the slamming door missing Bolan's shoulder by a hair, and Bolan completed his roll with both pistols in his fists.
'We've beat him!' Pena yelled triumphantly.
'We better had?' Tommy Edsel cried. 'At a hunnert'n ten I ain't stoppin' nowhere soon!'
And then they were flashing into the intersection and catching first glimpse of the blue sports car nestled just outside the junction on the intersecting road. For a startled instant Pena wondered what the guy was doing on his knees beside the car; another microsecond and his finger was tightening on the trigger of his gun even as wheelman Tommy Edsel's reflexes began deciding to brake and turn.
The blue lightning bolt proved faster than Tommy Edsel's reflexes, however, and his foot was still heavy on the accelerator when the other car leapt into the intersection with a powering screech.
Willie Walker screamed, 'Look out . . . !' just the Mercedes crunched against the right front fender in a grinding impact of protesting metal and showering glass. The velocity of the heavier car swung the Mercedes into a
