to the others.
They split up.
One remained with the vehicle. Another advanced along the road toward the cabin. The other two went to opposite sides and disappeared into the brush.
They were closing on the house.
Bolan would have preferred to take them while they were bunched up. If the guys turned out to be some of Lavagni's scouts, there could be hell to pay now. A guy on the short end of the odds could not afford to allow such a situation to get out of his direct control.
Bolan had done so.
But there was that nagging question of identification… another of the built-in handicaps to the Executioner's war effort.
He moved on deeper and circled back for an approach from the rear, then he stepped onto the road and came in with the fiery red sun setting directly behind him.
The guy was leaning against the car, his attention focused in the direction of the house, when the quiet jungle cat moved in behind him and the heavy steel muzzle of the Thompson dug into his spine.
He stiffened, and froze there, and Bolan could almost feel the tumbling energies of that suddenly electrified mind.
'Okay, okay,' the guy said, in a voice with all the moisture suddenly gone out of it. 'Don't, for God's sake.'
It was a matter of blind reaction versus conditioned instincts, and Bolan had his identification. The guy was no American federal cop; he was no kind of cop.
Without wasting another precious second of time, Bolan whipped the stock of the heavy gun up and against the back of the soldier's skull in a lashing slap. The guy crumbled without a sound and sprawled face down in the dust. Bolan turned him over and gave him another vicious jab to the throat, then he stepped over the lifeless remains and hurried on along the road toward the cabin.
Big Eve was alone up there and definitely not about to fall into good hands.
The one with the shotgun was moving into the yard as Bolan rounded the bend, another was stepping out of the bushes to the right.
The front door to the cabin was standing open, and he saw a flash of motion across that open doorway.
'Hold it!' Bolan yelled, more for Evita's benefit than for anything else.
The guy in front whirled, bringing the shotgun around with him, and the Thompson's opening argument caught him in mid-turn and laid him down in a convulsive sideways sprawl. The shotgun boomed, sending its double-oughts spraying harmlessly into the air.
And then Evita was standing there in that doorway, clad only in a bra and a half-slip, and a Thompson was in her arms.
She screamed, 'Mack!' as her chopper erupted, the fire going toward a point on Bolan's blind left side.
The weapon was too much for her and she was fighting to keep that bucking muzzle down, but to no avail. Her fire-track was a chaotic sweep skyward — but it was evidently soarey enough to send her target diving for cover after one wild shot at Bolan. Meanwhile the guy on the right had gone for Evita. He was running across the yard and firing from the hip, the heavy slugs from the revolver chewing up the doorjamb behind her.
Living large, a lot of life could be packed into a single second.
And a lot of death.
All of the foregoing had been playing upon the background of Bolan's consciousness, reeling out in frozen sequences of peripheral awareness; perhaps, he reflected later, it was the awareness of that submerged human side of man-in-combat.
From the moment of first blood, however, back at the vehicle, Bolan's single overriding consideration was for the safety of Evita Aguilar, Big Eve. The combat order was as single-minded, and the panoramic action outside that cabin was telescoped into a single moment in time and as a continuous movement in attack-mode.
His first burst caught the front man and sent him beyond the lens of that mental telescope. The second burst unfalteringly found its track onto the gunner at the right, and the guy's last couple of rounds toward Evita were probably no more than the dying reflex of his trigger-finger. He was stopped in mid-stride and punched back for several yards loss before touching down — and already Bolan was swinging into the threat from the left.
The guy over there was diving away from that harmless confrontation with Evita's Thompson, and Bolan's next burst added measurably to that movement, sending the guy into a somersaulting roll into the bushes.
A snap-glance toward the cabin assured Bolan that the girl was okay. He went quickly from body to body, verifying the results, then he slung the heated Thompson across his back and went to the woman.
Her eyes were wild but exhilarated as she let the heavy weapon droop and then fall to the steps. She crumbled into his arms and he pulled her in close.
'You okay?' he asked anxiously.
'Yes, yes, okay,' she panted.
'You were great,' he told her.
'Great, no. Out of mind, yes. Why would anyone build a
Bolan strangled off a chuckle as his fingers encountered the unmistakable sticky warmth of blood. 'You're hit,' he announced calmly, and spun her about for inspection.
'It was wee a sting of the bee,' she said raggedly. 'It is nothing?'
He grunted and replied, 'Well, almost nothing. But you'll have a souvenir to show your grandchildren.'
A .38 slug had plowed a shallow furrow along the soft underside of her left arm, just below the armpit. Another inch toward center and it would have been a fatal wound. By such insignificant dimensions of mass were the measurements of life and death.
He pulled her into the cabin and quickly washed the wound with soap and water, then he applied a disinfectant from the kitchen cupboard and bound the arm with gauze.
'We have to hurry,' he said rightly.
'I am all right,' she assured him.
'Okay, get your clothes on. Those guys are part of a coordinated sweep.'
Evita nodded her understanding and finished dressing, wrinkling her nose at the torn blouse. 'I put back on the stink of Glass Bay,' she commented lightly.
Bolan did also, hastily donning the slacks and shirt he had worn, there. Then he told the woman, 'Go through this place with a fine comb. Make sure there's nothing left behind to show I've been here.'
He started for the door but she reached out and stopped him, laying her cheek against his chest and encircling him with her arms.
Bolan said gruffly, 'It'll be okay.'
'Mack, I… all this death. It does not bother you?'
Of course it bothered him. He told her, 'How much choice is there, Evita?'
She shivered and lifted the troubled face to peer into his eyes. 'I am just now realize… this terror, this bloody struggle… it is all of your life. It is never ending, is it? I can give you a choice, Mack. Surrender to me. Go with me to San Juan. I promise you, there is feeling for you in this commonwealth. I have friends, high friends. I will fight to keep you in Puerto Rico.'
Bolan sighed and told her, 'You're not thinking straight, Evita. First item, you told me yourself that the law wants me dead in Puerto Rico. I'd never see the inside of a police station. Second...'
'I will guarantee you differently!' she cried. 'I swear!'
'All right, even if you could guarantee something like that — I've never heard of a jail or a prison that was secure against the reach of the mob. They'd love nothing better than to have me boxed in and defenseless, and they
'There could be designed a suitable protection,' she replied stubbornly.
Bolan shook his head. 'Not a chance. As for keeping me in Puerto Rico, I am wanted for capital crimes in a dozen states and two foreign countries, not to mention that I'm an army deserter and also top man on the FBI's
