ahead of him. He raised the pistol, sighted quickly down the barrel and squeezed the trigger.
Bolan saw the old man coming for him, and he waited, knowing he could end it, here and now, with only minor mopping-up left over for Sam Reese and Homicide. He counted down the numbers, letting Bernstein find his weapon, lift it, get the feel of iron that could not save him now. His first shot was a good foot off, the second closer, but not much. Mack Bolan sighed into the squeeze and rode the Magnum's recoil, keeping both eyes open to assess the shot, make sure there would be no need for a second.
Downrange, old Abe Bernstein took 240 grains of sudden revelation in the chest and vaulted backward, stretching out across the jumbled bodies of the aging cowboy and the shaken mercenaries. Some of them were stirring now, recovering from their spill. Bolan put them back to sleep forever, emptying the autoloader into anything and everything that moved around the escalator. Everything except the woman. She was cringing down to one side of the carnage, eyes closed, hands pressed tight across her ears, and Bolan's fire was never closer to her than a yard away. She did not see the old man die, or watch the others twitching, writhing with the impact of his Magnum rounds. No part of her was watching when the others cut and run, the few live stragglers making for the exits now, their guns and grudge forgotten as they tried to beat the clock and win a race with Death itself.
Mack Bolan let them go, no longer interested in the privates now that generals had been dealt with. They might regroup or simply scatter to the winds, but either way, the ones who left the Gold Rush running had been taught a lesson. They had seen death and knew that it could cut both ways.
Lucy flinched when Bolan touched her shoulder, lurched away from him a moment prior to making recognition. When she saw his bloodstained face, the tears came, and she rushed to meet him, arms locked tight around his neck, her body molded tight against his own in something very much like desperation.
'Take me out of here,' she whispered fiercely. 'Please take me out of here.'
He took her out of there, back along the darkened alley to his waiting rental car, the rising song of sirens now replacing ghostly echoes of the gunfire in his ears. Captain Reese, right, bringing in the cavalry to save the day.
A trifle late, but then again the day might be worth saving, after all.
