Bolan ignored the sound and raced the engine. He barreled across the track toward the stricken crew wagon. Its driver gunned it away, flopping tire and all, to the cover of the other Caddy.
Bolan kept coming. Franconi kept screaming. The Cadillacs parted as the Chevy rushed toward them, and as soon as it had passed a dozen shots slammed into it. Bolan ducked and spun the wheel, turning and driving forward straight for the hoodlums. One man dived from the car and into a two-handed stance with his weapon. The Executioner cut him down with six rounds from the FA MAS. The second crew wagon turned toward the road. The remaining rounds in the MAS magazine shattered its right rear tire. When the rubber blew, the car stopped.
Bolan slammed a fresh magazine into the FA MAS and fired. As the windows shattered, the Mafia soldiers fell out the far doors. Two tried to run for the highway, but they were brought down.
Three down. How many to go?
The Executioner raced past the closest Caddy, ducked, slammed into reverse and rammed the luxury car, sending forth from its radiator a cloud of steam and a stream of water into the dirt.
A dozen shots from handguns peppered the demolition car. Bolan turned it around and raced toward the crew wagon again. He stopped just in front and, aiming over the metal shield, blasted the remaining windows of the second Cadillac. Two men slid out on the far side and Bolan wished he had some grenades. He circled, firing at anyone who moved.
He aimed the AutoMag at the gas tank. Three heavy rounds pumped into the volatile fluid before it exploded, showering human parts and pieces of metal over the track. One lone Mafia hoodlum staggered away from the pyre. The Executioner slammed a flesh-shredder through him.
Bolan crawled over the immovable door of his Chevy and looked at Franconi, still wired to the front bumper. His eyes were wild, his mouth slobbering drool. He had been screaming as loud as he could, but now his voice had given out and only a croak came through. Bolan slapped his face until the hoodlum’s eyes focused.
“This is for Beth Hanover.”
The Executioner got back in the Chevy, raced the engine and stormed after the last crew wagon.
He saw a white handkerchief flutter.
Bolan killed the Chevy’s screaming engine fifty feet from the dead Cadillac.
“We give up!” a voice shouted.
“You wanted Franconi, you got him!” someone else said.
Bolan fired three rounds from the French army rifle into the windowless Caddy.
“You give up the way you let Beth Hanover give up when you raped and tortured her last night?”
“Franconi did it!” came a third voice.
Three of them. He wanted one to get back to Nazarione and tell the Mafia boss exactly what happened at the little track and how two crews and his best hit man were wasted.
“Okay, you have one chance. The three of you run for it. Get out the far side and run for the road. One of you will make it. That’s better odds than you gave Beth.”
The three jumped from the car and raced for the road. They spread out and ran as hard as they could.
Bolan nailed the first with a 3-round burst. The second took nine shots to put down. He fired over the head of the third, who made good his escape.
When Bolan was satisfied both Mafia goons in the dirt were dead and that only he and Franconi were left alive, he checked the cars.
He backed up the destruction derby Chevy, then raced toward the flaming Cadillac. At the last second Franconi screamed and he wound the wheel to the right, grazing the crew wagon. Four times he flashed past the furiously burning Caddy. Then he stopped and checked on his reluctant passenger.
Franconi had passed out again. Bolan made sure the wires were tight, then slapped Franconi awake. The hit man screamed and groaned.
“It’s all over, Franconi. I just passed sentence. For what you did to Beth, you don’t deserve to live. Nothing elaborate, just a little car crash.” Bolan started the Chevy, and pushed it into first. “Have a nice ride, pal.”
He put a rock on the accelerator pedal, aimed the screaming Chevy at the burning Cadillac fifty feet away, tied down the steering wheel and released the parking brake.
The destruction derby car raced forward, picking up speed. Franconi helplessly traveled more than thirty miles an hour toward the Cadillac. When they hit, the Chevy’s gas tank exploded, gas and gas vapor gushed over the Cadillac and both cars burned with a furious intensity, incinerating everything in sight, even melting some of the metals.
Bolan turned and walked away, the FA MAS on his shoulder, Big Thunder in his hand.
“It isn’t much, Beth,” the Executioner said. “But I hope it settles the score. Maybe now you can rest in peace.”
4
As the Executioner drove away from the racetrack on a country road, a fire truck charged toward him, its siren wailing and red lights flashing. He pulled to one side to let it pass. He figured the fire at the track had attracted them. But he was too far away to be connected with it.
He had about half an hour to get to Herring Run Park, just off Sinclair, where he was to meet Nino Tattaglia.
His forehead wrinkled as he reviewed his mission in Baltimore. He had to find out what deadly, destructive event was about to go down here, and hoped Nino would be able to tell him.
The Executioner was a big man, more than six feet tall and a finely muscled two hundred pounds. Right now his cold blue eyes were trained on the road. He was not moved one way or the other by the dead men he left behind. Eradicating human evil had long been a necessary fact of life for him.
This was an everlasting war, and it had brought him to Baltimore. It was a war he knew no one man could win.
Bolan was a realist. He knew that one day he would move too slowly, or a bullet or grenade would be in exactly the right spot and the warrior would be killed. But until that happened, he was charging ahead, he was digging into every dirty Mafia operation he could find, he was pumping the Mafia full of hot lead. He was also living large and making every second count.
He would make the Mafia fear him for as long as his strength and life remained.
The holy war against the Mafia had become Bolan’s purpose in life.
And so, to fight again.
He swung the rented Chevy into the park, watching for a man on a picnic bench. He saw him and parked.
Nino slid into the car and frowned. “Bad for my image to be seen sitting on a park bench.”
“What’s going down in Baltimore?”
Nino’s eyes widened. “You’ll never believe it. It’s a capo’s dream!”
“Try me.”
“The Nazarione family’s about to take over the whole goddamned police department! The operation has been in place for months and is coming down to the last phase. Already we’ve got two city councilmen pinned down and two of the four assistant chiefs!”
“Blackmail?” Bolan asked, his face turning grim.
“Most likely, or exposure on some corruption. The family has the whole damn department on the hook, not just a hundred officers and some captains! The whole town will become our playground!”
“What two assistant chiefs have been caught?”
“I don’t know. Hell, I was lucky to get this much. But it’s all on a timetable, so much done each week, and we’re near the end of the game.”
“You and I are going to call off the game because of a number of deaths in the Nazarione family, Nino.”
“Maybe. You hear about the cop getting killed this morning?”
Bolan shook his head.
