The driver stood on the gas as the bulky vehicle lurched forward, accelerating the hell out of there — on a course that would take it right past Bolan's position on the tree-lined street.
Without slacking pace, Bolan reholstered the AutoMag. He used his momentum to jump and grab a low- hanging branch.
He hoisted himself up into the lower branches as the van gunned by beneath him. Bolan dropped onto the vehicle as it sped by, spraddling himself on the roof. He knew that the occupants of the hurtling van would hear the thump of his landing but not have time to react.
He gripped the left bar of the roof rack to steady himself on the slippery surface. With his right hand, Bolan pointed the .44 AutoMag into the cab of the speeding vehicle. He opened fire blindly.
Someone screamed shrilly.
'Agh! My ear! He shot off my fucking ear!'
The van reached the intersection.
The driver yanked to the left in a wide arc that caused the wheels to ride the curb with enough impact to loosen Bolan's grip on the roof rack, pitching him to the ground.
He landed on the springy turf of a well-tended lawn, coming out of the roll in time to see the glow of the red taillights diminishing in the distance as the speeding van rocketed past the hulk of the flaming Mustang.
The sound of squealing tires filled the night air as the fleeing vehicle began a mad swerving pattern.
The wandering van presented an almost impossible target for the ace marksman. But Bolan decided not to risk a shot that could endanger innocent bystanders in this residential area.
He turned on his heel and jogged back along the street to where the CIA agents had parked their Ford near the Interstate offices.
Bolan saw no sign of the wounded CIA man who had started to follow him.
He reached through the driver's-side window of the Agency car and felt along the steering column. The keys were in it. He slapped the big AutoMag back into sideleather on his hip, then climbed into the Ford. The Executioner gunned the car to life and burned rubber in hot pursuit after the escaping van.
Bob Gridell's heart pounded against his rib cage like a jackhammer. The injured CIA man forced himself to walk along on the dark street in pursuit of the big gunman.
He paused for a moment when the chatter of automatic-weapons fire sounded from up ahead. Then he gripped the .38 even tighter in his right hand and pushed on, almost delirious with pain.
The shooting stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
Seconds later a loud explosion blasted the night, almost pitching him to the pavement.
Momentarily distracted by the eruption, Gridell sighted the unmarked Ford. Suddenly the vehicle roared to life and executed a squealing U-turn that left a smoking patch of rubber on the tarmac.
Gridell raised his .38 and assumed a shooting stance as best he could. Pain knifed through him as he triggered three shots after the receding car. The reports from his pistol thundered in his ears as he realized his shots were going wild.
The agent's own car was out of range.
The CIA man held his fire.
All he could do was helplessly watch the taillights of the Ford disappear into the distance.
The echo of gunfire faded from suburbia.
Residents got braver. They clustered along the tree-lined street that had so suddenly become a hell- ground. Curious chatter filled the air.
Gridell lowered his pistol.
He turned, wearily, painfully, forcing himself to limp back to the nearest house.
Six men dead, including a partner; a kid who never had the chance to prove himself.
A stolen unmarked car.
And a wild card.
John Phoenix.
11
Bolan caught up with the van on Rhode Island Avenue. It was heading southwest, back across the state line into D.C., retracing the route that had led the parade of death into Brentwood.
The Executioner held his tracking position as far back as possible.
Traffic along the main artery was even sparser than before, and Bolan realized the men in the van were not trying very hard to evade him, heavy traffic or light. Unless, of course, they were luring him into a trap.
John Phoenix intended to trail these rats back to their hole.
The Executioner would blow hell out of whatever rat hole the van led him to.
The trail was heading back to the sprawling ghetto.
He followed the van off the main avenues, away from the bright lights, to a city block of vacant tenements that loomed like monoliths against the cloudy night sky, a city block of condemned renewal.
Bolan watched the customized vehicle turn into a street flanked by deserted tenements and another block that had already met the demolition crew's iron ball.
It was a desolate scene in the middle of the city. The sounds of midnight D.C. were muffled, distant; it could have been a universe away.
The driver doused his headlights as the van came to a stop in front of an apartment building. Car doors opened. Bolan guided his own vehicle into a turn, out of sight, before the occupants of the van could turn fully around on their way into the nearest tenement.
They disappeared inside.
Bolan unleathered the AutoMag and padded after the two men.
He paused, flattening himself against a wall at the open entranceway to the condemned building. He held up the stainless-steel .44, ready for anything. Ready to kill. He eased into the tomblike shell that had once housed life but now only reeked of dry rot and decay.
He heard faint voices coming from down a dark corridor. The voices were muffled by walls.
Bolan kept his back pressed to the grimy wall of the corridor. He moved slowly, being careful to step only where the floor met the baseboard of the wall, avoiding any loose floorboards that could cause a warning squeak in a building this old.
He followed the sound of the conversation to a room where the door had been taken off the hinges. A rectangle of dull grayish light fell upon the scuffed floor of the corridor.
Bolan made it to that entrance in a half dozen soundless strides.
He stood just out of view of whoever was talking inside.
He listened.
'The bastard shot my fucking ear clean off!' a voice whined in agony.
Another male voice said, 'You bleedin' like a stuck pig, Jimmy Lee.'
'You made your report. Have him patched up, Sam,' said a third voice.
'Uh, what about you and, uh, the lady here?' the second person asked.
'John Phoenix is dead, ain't he?' growled Boss Voice. 'I plan to stay right here and keep on doing what I've been doing. Ain't nothing to worry about.'
Bolan had heard enough. He stepped into the room.
Three black guys.
The driver, and a guy who held his ear and looked like all his blood was draining out of the wound where Bolan had shot him.
They were talking to a lithe black dude who wore a pair of slacks and nothing else. This guy was pacing back and forth between Sam and wounded Jimmy Lee. On a bed in the corner of the room lay a nude blonde.
She was at the precious stage between girl and woman, innocence and sensuality in equal measures.
Bolan guessed her age to be eighteen. Shoulder-length golden hair framed a pretty face with a smattering
