Chief Smith crawled out the rear door. Bolan helped him, then urged him toward the Chevrolet.
“There are men in that burning car!”
“Not men — Mafia scum,” Mack Bolan said. “And there probably is a backup car. We’ve got to get out of here fast!”
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Is your driver dead?”
“Yes.”
By then they were at the Chevy. Half a block behind them a car spun away from the curb.
“Here they come!” Bolan shouted. He leaped in the passenger side and slid over as the chief jumped in beside him. Then Bolan had the sedan moving. He ground around the first corner he came to, tires screaming. When the Executioner looked behind him, the black Caddy crew wagon was gaining.
“What’s the quickest way out of town?” Bolan asked.
The chief looked behind, then at the grim expression on his rescuer’s face.
The chief told him the turns to make, scowled as Bolan ran two red lights and two stop signs. When they were away from the heavily populated suburbs and on a country road with only a few houses scattered along it, Bolan said, “Look in that suitcase in the back seat. Get out that Uzi submachine gun. You have your service revolver?”
“Yes,” the chief said. He got on his knees in the seat and reached into the back. “Hey! Everything in this suitcase is illegal!”
“Be glad of it, Chief Smith. If we’re lucky and you can use some of those weapons, we might be able to get out of this alive. Can you use that Uzi?”
“I’ve fired them before. In Korea we didn’t have anything quite this fancy.”
Bolan flashed him a grin. “You’ll do.”
The Caddy had been at a disadvantage on the quick turns in town, but on the straight road the big engine made the difference as it came closer and closer. Bolan speeded up, found the spot he wanted on the sparsely traveled country road, then yelled.
“Brace yourself, I’m doing a slide stop. We’ll be sideways in the road, and we both go out your door. Stay low, take the Uzi and some extra magazines and be ready to defend yourself. These Mafia hit men don’t care how they kill you.”
Chief Smith nodded. He grabbed the Uzi, three extra magazines and two frag grenades.
The Chevy screamed into the braking slide and stopped, almost fully blocking the narrow road. The Caddy could pass if it slowed and took it easy on the shoulder, but Bolan did not think the Mafia driver would try.
They left the car by the passenger door. Bolan opened the rear door and pulled the suitcase to the edge of the back seat for easy access.
“Here they come,” Bolan said. “Let’s give them a welcome.”
“They have to shoot first,” the chief said.
“They just killed your driver!”
“That was a different car, different men.”
The Caddy slid to a stop thirty yards away. Four pistol shots ripped into the morning air. Two of them caught body metal, two more went through the front windshield.
Bolan lifted the French army rifle and shattered the crew wagon’s side windows with six rounds.
Bolan’s next burst went between the Caddy’s wheels. When the firing stopped he heard a scream of rage.
“Get behind the front wheel and stay low,” Bolan said.
An answering burst of fire came under the Chevy. He heard one automatic weapon. It had to be an Uzi.
A man sprinted from the Cadillac, angling toward a row of trees and brush at the side of the road.
The chief lifted the Uzi and sent three rounds at him. He missed. He corrected and the next five rounds put the runner down.
Bolan watched as the Mafia soldiers tried to lay down a protective hail of fire. The windows in the Chevy broke into thousands of granules of glass. Bolan scattered two more bursts from the rifle, then reached in the suitcase for a fragger.
“You’ve used these?” he shouted to the chief over the sporadic pistol fire.
The chief nodded.
“Good. Let’s do it. You put one at the front of the car, and I’ll get one to the rear.” They both pulled the safety pins and looked at each other. Bolan bobbed his head. The chief threw first. His grenade hit short and rolled within three feet of the Caddy before it exploded. Before the noise died down Bolan threw his small bomb slightly behind the rig so it would roll just beyond it. The explosion came first, then the screams of pain as jagged steel met flesh.
An Uzi opened up on full-auto, screaming twenty 9 mm parabellums into and under the Chevy. Bolan threw one more grenade and rolled it under the Caddy, hoping it would explode just on the far side.
When it went off there was silence on the country road for a moment. A car came up behind them, and the chief waved it back, flashing his badge at the surprised driver. The car turned and raced away.
The silence continued from the Mafia machine.
“I’ll go check it out,” the chief said.
“No, Chief. You didn’t even make the SWAT squad. I do this kind of work all the time. You keep that Uzi handy.”
Without a wasted motion, Bolan jumped into the six-foot ditch at the side of the road. He had taken no enemy fire. He bent over and ran along the ditch, two fraggers swinging on his black combat harness. Big Thunder jolted where it was tied down at his hip. He carried the French army rifle like a toy.
When he was beyond the Cadillac, he rose and looked over the lip of the ditch through some tall grass.
He saw only one man standing, and he was bleeding from the head and chest. The man turned and sent a dozen rounds from the Uzi in the ditch twenty feet away from Bolan, then dropped the weapon, let out a soft cry and collapsed.
Bolan fired two shots into the air, but without reaction from the Mafia soldiers. Slowly he moved toward the battered crew wagon. Four dead men lay on the tarmac. One other moved, wounded with shrapnel. Bolan kept the French rifle on full-auto as he ran into the scene. He checked the bodies, then looked at the man who had moved. He stared up, at Bolan with angry eyes.
“Man, they didn’t tell us it was gonna be a goddamned war! You must be that Executioner guy.”
Bolan nodded.
“Damn!” the hoodlum said, then died.
It was over. Bolan called to the chief. The cop ran around the Cadillac and stared at the massacre.
“It looks like that hill in Korea where we lost so many guys.”
“They attacked us — remember that.”
“I don’t even have a radio.”
“Let’s see if the Chevy will drive. They forgot to shoot out the tires at least. We might be able to start it.”
They got in and Bolan ground the engine three times, then it started. They headed toward the nearest telephone.
Bolan told the chief about the Mafia’s attempted takeover.
“They knew they couldn’t turn you, so you had to be killed. That’s what happened to Lieutenant Paulson yesterday. We’re almost certain that Capt. Harley Davis killed him.” Bolan continued laying it all out, about the try for Assistant Chief Jansen the day before and that two of his assistant chiefs already had been blackmailed.
“That’s the story, Chief. I’d suggest that you lie low for a day or two. Let them think they nailed you.”
Chief Smith shook his head. “It’s so much to accept at one time. Captain Davis! One of my best men. He’s taking two thousand a week.”
“Men do strange things for money, Chief.”
“But not you. You must be this Executioner we’ve been hearing about. Big story about you in the paper this
