centrifugal tailspin, almost welding it to the side of the Mafia vehicle in another shattering impact. Willie Walker was thrown over Bonelli's head and rag-dolled into the windshield almost directly in front of Tommy Edsel. Harold the Greaser screamed something in Italian as Capistrano and Pena descended on him.
Expert wheelman Tommy Edsel fought the crazily spinning motion of the paired vehicles for another microsecond, and then the Mercedes was falling away, leaving the larger car to plunge on alone. The rear wheels moved out in front, jumped the shoulder, and then they were shuddering into soft sand and the big car was heeling over and going into its first roll.
Bolan had only a momentary glimpse of contorted faces and two protruding gun arms and then the two cars were together and moving away from him in a spinning plunge along the main road. He ran along in pursuit but was far behind even before the Mercedes dropped away and spun off into the scrubby desert. It seemed to be happening in slow motion, with the big vehicle coming around in a gentle swing and leaving the highway several hundred feet beyond. Its rear wheels slid gracefully onto the sand, dug in, and the heavy car began rolling sideways in a wide arc back toward the intersection, disgorging curiously flopping bodies along the way. Bolan counted six rolls before the journey ended in a wheels-up settling of mangled metal.
Tommy Edsel was still clutching the collapsed steering wheel when Bolan reached the wreckage. Blood was oozing from both corners of his mouth as he hung there in the seat belt. The entire front seat had moved forward; Tommy's chest had apparently been crushed by the steering wheel, but he turned his head and gave Bolan a glazed, upside down stare. Bolan shot him once between the eyes and moved around to the other side of the inverted automobile.
Bonelli was twisted into a caved-in section of the roof, partially pulped and obviously dead. Bolan wrestled his head clear, just the same, and shot him between the eyes. Then he began the back track of strewn bodies.
Willie Walker was the nearest. Part of his head was missing and the legs were bent into an impossible configuration under his back; Bolan had to settle for a bullet between where the eyes had been.
Harold the Greaser Schiaperelli was next. He was partially decapitated and one hand was missing. Bolan drilled another hole between the gaping eyes.
Mario Capistrano lay on his side in the sand. He was weeping and contemplating a number of jagged ribs which protruded from his side. Bolan rolled him face up, said, 'Close your eyes,' and promptly gave him a third one which could not be closed.
Lou Pena was on his knees, watching Bolan's advance. His right arm was missing, from the elbow down. The nose was smashed and two teeth protruded through his lower lip. In a strangely quacking Donald Duck voice, he said, 'I got it. I got Bolan's head.'
'Do tell,' Bolan said, and shot him between the eyes. He caught the torn body as it toppled forward and felt through the pockets, finding Brantzen's sketch next to Pena's heart.
Bolan struck a match and held the flame under the sketch, turning it carefully to insure an even burn. Then he scattered the ashes in a fine powder across the sands as he retraced his steps to the roadway. He returned to the Mercedes, looked it over, and wrote it off. He opened the gas tank and encouraged a flow across the parched land until he was a safe distance removed, then he struck another match and touched it to the spillage.
The flames raced quickly along the gasoline trail. Bolan was already trudging toward the Palm Springs and did not even look back when the explosion came. A terrible force was afoot in the land, he was thinking, when a man like Jim Brantzen could be reduced to a mound of mutilated meat by the likes of that back there.
And there were more, like those back there, up there across that horizon. Mack Bolan's new horizon had never been closer, nor more passionately sought. Death on the hoof was moving toward Palm Springs.
Chapter Twenty-One
The squeeze
The sun was approaching the high point in the sky when Bolan staggered into Palm Springs, picked up a taxi, and went on to his hotel. The desk clerk gaped at this appearance and said, 'Did you have an accident, Mr. Lambretta?'
'I lost my car,' Bolan told him. 'Get me another one just like it, will you.'
The clerk's chin dropped another inch. 'Yes sir,' he replied crisply.
'Send up a couple of buckets of ice.'
'Yes sir, and the liquids that go with it?'
'Just the ice,' Bolan said tiredly. 'I'll need the car in an hour.' He swung about and wobbled toward the elevator.
'Uh, Mr. Lambretta, we might have to compromise a bit on the color. The Mercedes, I mean.'
'I said just like it,' Bolan snapped back. He went on up to his room, stripped off the sweat-soaked clothing, and moved immediately to the bath. Shocked by his own dust-streaked image in the mirror, he scowled at the still strange mask of Frank Lambretta, stepped into the shower, and luxuriated there for several minutes, frequently raising his face into the spray to suck the water into the parched membranes of his mouth and throat.
Two small plastic containers of crushed ice were on the dressing table when he returned to the bedroom. The dust— and sweat-encased clothing had been removed; his revolvers lay on the bed beside a layout of fresh underwear.
Bolan got into the underwear and stuffed a small snowball into his mouth, then reached for the telephone and called the unlisted number in DiGeorge's study. Phil Marasco's voice broke into the first ring. 'Yes?' he said softly.
'This is Frank,' Bolan said. 'Tell Deej that order's been filled.'
A short pause, then: 'Okay, Franky, I'll tell him. Where are you?'
'At the hotel. I'm beat. I'll be in pretty soon.'
Bolan could hear DiGeorge's quiet rumble in the background but could not distinguish the words. Marasco said, 'Deej wants to know about the picture.'
'What picture?'
'The subject was supposedly carrying a surgeon's sketch of another interesting subject. Do you have it?'
'Of course not, Bolan snorted. 'I don't go around collecting souvenirs.'
Another background rumble, then: 'He wants to know where you left that contract.'
'Where the mountain meets the desert,' Bolan reported cryptically, 'and where one subject might wait for another.'
'Okay, I got that. Deej says come home as soon as possible.'
'Tell Deej I took a five-mile stroll in the sun. Tell him I'll be home when I can forget that.'
Marasco chuckled. 'Okay, Franky, I'll tell him. Get yourself rested, then come on out. There's things you should know about.'
'I'll be there,' Bolan said. He hung up, stared at the floor for a moment, then opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, lit one, and stretched out across the bed.
'Yes, I'll be there,' he repeated in a dull monotone, speaking to himself. 'With bells.'
Philip Marasco led the search party out the little-travelled desert blacktop which links Palm Springs and Palm Village. Two cars, each carrying five men, made the short trip to the crossroads and found the scene of Franky Lucky's 'hit' with no difficulty whatever.
The ten Mafiosi ran excitedly about the scene of action, poking, pointing, and animatedly reconstructing the details. Marasco searched each body thoroughly, went over the vehicle with precision, then arranged his troops at arm's-length intervals for a wide scrutiny along the entire length of the death car's travel.
Returning to the villa, Marasco dolefully reported to his Capo, 'If Lou had a sketch, he must've ate it. And you should see the mess this Franky Lucky made of those boys. I never saw nothing like it.'
'It don't make sense that he had no sketch,' DiGeorge argued fretfully. 'He had to have something up his sleeve or he wouldn't have been beating it back here. I guess there was nothing left alive, eh?'
'Not hardly,' Marasco replied, shuddering. 'There wasn't hardly anything left even whole. I never saw such a mess. This Franky Lucky is a mean contractor. And let me tell you, Deej, he don't mess around on a hit.
