Chicago Wipe-Out

Jimi found herself responding subconsciously, unlocking the car and sliding in behind the wheel, praying for heavenly direction in the technique of starting this strange vehicle — then the powerful engine was somehow roaring in a half-throttle idle and she was flinging herself into the adjacent seat as Bolan leapt in beside her and they lurched across the snowdrift.

He commanded, 'On the floor, Foxy' — and she was already there and the Ferrari was spinning forward into the suffocating night, without lights, perhaps without hope, but with absolute blazing determination at the wheel.

Angrily sizzling things were penetrating the car, striking with jarring thumps and tearing through its metallic skin, shattering its glass, shredding its upholstery. Jimi cringed against the floorboards and listened to the Beretta, now unsilenced, blasting defiantly into the entrapment. She heard her man grunt with some unidentified pain and, an instant later, his warning shout: 'Get braced, hang on!'

And then he was lying across the seat just behind her, one arm looped powerfully about her curled body. In a flash of understanding, she knew that they were about to crash into something, and the last sound Jimi heard before the rending impact was the growling chatter of a machine gun and a new onslaught of furious projectiles punching into the Ferrari.

'On and on and on,' she had complained earlier. 'Isn't there any end to it?'

And he had replied, 'Sure, there's an end— but I'm in no hurry to get there.'

They had, it seemed, gotten there, and together, and it was probably all her fault. Even through the red fog that was enveloping her, though, Jimi knew that she was definitely en rapportwith the inner man that was Mack Bolan. There were no regrets in that bond, no condemnation. And if she had to die this night, then at least she would die knowing love. No, there were no regrets.

* * *

Bolan had not been operating entirely on instinct. With a foresight engendered by a constant battle for survival, he had routinely staked out his retreat route from that motel room, posting in his mind the various details and mentally rehearsing a withdrawal under combat conditions. The trip from the door of his room to the parked Ferrari had become translated into so many steps north, so many west, so many north again — and he had an equivalent picture of the route out of that parking lot, but oriented to elapsed time in a moving vehicle. Long before the storm descended, he had burned into his mind every detail of his physical surroundings.

Superimposed upon this mental map was Bolan's intimate familiarity with the enemy and their standard operating procedures. The final result — his success in breaking out of the trap — could be regarded as a sort of 'battlefield intuition,' built of conditioned instincts and a subliminal response to a rehearsed situation. This is the goal of all military training — in such a typical crisis situation, in which the individual's life or the success of a mission is hanging in the balance, the thinking mind moves aside for the crisis-response of trained reflexes — and this is what carried Bolan and the Ferrari and its passenger to that grinding moment at the exit from the motel parking lot.

Thus, what appeared to Jimi James to be phenomenal perceptions in a bunding storm was actually a high exercise of military preparedness and training. One deviation from his prescribed path would have rendered Bolan as blind and ineffective as the other parties to that chaos; it was foresight, not ESP, that guided this warrior unerringly to his vehicle. And it was this same quality of the military mind, but now translated into an acute sense of timing and the burnt-in memory of a traffic pattern, that guided his vehicle out of its resting place and along the route of retreat.

This method did not, of course, account for incidental misplaced vehicles blocking the path, banks of drifted snow, a war party of enemy infantry firing wildly into the night, and various other nuisances that could crop up. The Ferrari, as it came charging blindly out of its nest, sent a pair of gun-toting pedestrians hurtling off into diverging flights, sideswiped a larger vehicle which had been idling in the traffic lane, punched down a metal post marking the turn toward the exit, and struck another soldier who had been running blindly into the sounds of battle. And all along this course, the vehicle was taking repeated hits from a determined handgun fusillade; Bolan was required to pilot the car, attempt an effective return-fire, and maintain cognizance of his time-track — all with the same mind and at the same time.

* * *

Incredible as this may seem, Bolan might have succeeded in making a clean breakaway had it not been for the final enemy factor — the foresight of another trained warrior, Larry Turk, and the 'plug car' just outside the motel exit.

Turk had left this 'safety plug' in the capable hands of Willie Thompson, while he descended wrathfully upon the early sounds of confusion emanating from the parking area. It had been his angry voice demanding the cessation of horn signals from Lavallo's vehicle; Beraie Tosca had not yet had time to get his crew positioned into the trap stations, and Turk was reading Lavallo's interference as the highest form of treason.

Meanwhile, Willie Thompson had exercised a prerogative of his own and ordered the plug vehicle onto station directly blocking the exit from the motel. Both he and the wheelman had then taken cover behind the street side of the car and awaited developments.

It seems likely that anyvehicle attempting to leave the motel area would have been accorded the same reception which Bolan received. Willie was targeting entirely on audibles, and when the Thompson opened fire, it was purely a reflexive attack upon a moving vehicle which no one could actually see.

* * *

Bolan could, however, see the blazing eruptions from the chopper's muzzle and the shadowy bulk of vehicle from behind which they were emerging, and his reflexes sent him accelerating into the blockade as the only possible hope for neutralizing this latest challenge. He was lying across the front seat with one arm protectively clasping his floored passenger when the Ferrari sheared into the heavier Mafia car, and he had the passenger-door open and was snaking to the ground even while the sports car was quivering into the rebound.

The chopper had fallen silent and someone nearby was groaning with pain. Bolan was collecting himself, silently calling roll on his various parts and finding them all present and functioning, though his ears were ringing and there was a numbness in the area of his left shoulder. He carefully extricated Jimi from the wreckage and slung the unconscious girl onto his good shoulder.

The sounds of chaos were drifting over from the parking lot and an anxious voice very closeby called, 'Willie? Are you okay?'

'I think my arms are broke,' came a groaning response. 'Don't worry about me, check out that Bolan. Make sure he's dead.'

'You got 'im, I know you got 'im.'

'Bullshit, you check 'im out. Don't take nothin' for granted.'

The hood over the Ferrari's engine compartment was crumpled and askew. Bolan slipped the Beretta's muzzle into the opening and squeezed off three quick rounds in a searching pattern, then quickly backstepped as flames whooshed out. He collided with a fast-moving figure who was hurrying around the tail of the Mafia vehicle as the groaning man cried, 'Gene! Get me outta here, we're on fire!'

But Gene had problems of his own, in the form of a hot muzzle at his throat and a coldly insistent voice in his ear, demanding, 'Let's find some wheels, Gene.'

In a choked voice, Turk's wheelman suggested, 'There oughta be a couple cars right up the street.'

'Okay, let's go,' Bolan commanded.

As they trudged away, a snarling voice from somewhere inside the din of the motel parking lot was shouting, 'Goddammit, hold your fire, what the hell you think you're shooting at? Bernie, where the hell are you?'

'Over here, Turk — I think the bastard got past us.'

'Are you crazy? Can't you hear anything? He's out there dueling with Willie! Get your boys out there!'

'Christ, boss, I can't even see where I'm at.'

'Fuckwhere you're at! You get it out there where he'sat!'

Where Bolan was 'at,' however, was now beyond the immediate reach of the headhunting crew. An expert wheelman was transporting him and his unconscious companion in an appropriated crew wagon, away from the