'Okay, Charlie, let's move.'
The guy started the engine before inquiring, 'Where to?'
'Onto the wharf, down to the warehouse.'
The two men up front exchanged glances, then Ontario Charlie shrugged and set the car into motion. 'Lights on or off?' he asked.
'Off, till I say different. And keep it slow.'
'Wait a minute,' Danny Trinity protested. 'You know how many people there are waiting for you down there? There's my four boys plus four locals. None of 'em are what I'd call peaceful citizens. They all get their kicks from the big boom sound and they don't fuck around with formalities when that time comes around. You can't just — '
Bolan interrupted the tirade with, 'You worried about my hide, Danny?'
'Hell no, I'm worried about mine. I don't wanta be in no crossfire between you people.'
'Then you play it just like I tell you,' Bolan suggested. 'Down the wharf, Charlie, slow and easy. Move it.'
The wheelman moved it. They rolled onto the wharf and began a slow progression toward those muffled lights at the far end. Danny Trinity slumped into the seat, staring tensely and stonily forward through the enshrouding mists. 'Some guys are suckers for suicide,' he growled, fear resurfacing and rippling the voice. 'I thought higher of you, Bolan.'
So did Bolan. He had no belly whatever for suicide. But he told his captives, 'Everyone dies sometime, boys. I guess it's going to be up to you whether this time is our time. Play it cool and maybe it's just
'I'm not a crazy bastard,' the wheelman said with a shiver.
'Show me,' Bolan suggested. 'You too, Danny. Show me how sane you can be.'
But Bolan was not betting a nickel on the sanity of those two. He was betting entirely on himself.
4
Death touch
The AutoMag was a most impressive weapon. Developed by a West Coast gunsmith in the late sixties after years of frustrating trial and error, the autoloading .44 magnum was a triumph of weapon technology. The huge handgun measured eleven and a half inches from tip to tip, weighed three and a half pounds unloaded, and was constructed mostly of stainless steel. It was strictly a man's weapon — preferably a big man. It took a rather large hand and a well-developed grip to comfortably handle the piece. Designed primarily as a hunter's handgun, the big silver pistol would do most anything that a big-game rifle would do, except in extremely long-range situations.
The heavy loads in .44 magnum hollow-nose had hi-shock and instant knockdown capability at more than a hundred yards — which is the length of a football field. Bolan made his own ammo of cutdown .308 brass, using a powder charge of twenty grains behind a bullet of 240 grains, which produced a muzzle velocity of about 1400 fps. With such loads, the performance of the slickly-engineered weapon was truly outstanding and remarkably uniform. At twenty-five yards in combat stance, Bolan could rip a one-inch bull out of a target in rapid-fire. At a hundred yards, using a two-hand stance and firing deliberately, he could consistently group a full clip of the big bullets into an area the size of a man's head.
And that was some shooting.
Bolan had, of course, been a remarkable marksman since early in his army career. During those earlier years, however, his chief interest lay in the weapons themselves — the technical end. He was an armorer, with an almost instinctive understanding of weaponry from the very beginning. Any weapon is of course only as good as its performance, and Bolan's growing interest in that consideration led him inevitably onto the firing ranges and then into competitive matches where his phenomenal eye and cool self-possession won him championships in various weapons categories.
For more than a year he had toured the country for the recruiting service, staging marksmanship demonstrations and — toward the end of that period — trick-shot shows, using rifles and handguns.
The traditional combat stance for shooting competitions is a sort of head-on crouch, knees slightly bent, weapon extended straight out from the chest in one hand, with emphasis on rapidity of fire and reload. Bolan had usually performed these demonstrations with a standard army version of the .45 Colt autoloader, and his speed was dazzling — ejecting spent clips and reloading in less than one second. As a variation of this routine, the youthful Bolan developed some interesting choreography for his audiences, changing stance with lightning speed — from combat to prone and rolling prone — while reloading and continuing to fire with incredible accuracy. He performed similar routines using a thirty caliber carbine and a light auto.
Then came Vietnam, and Sergeant Bolan's expertise was diverted into more serious applications of soldiering.
Now here he was on the Seattle waterfront, the formidable .44 at the ready — trick-shot time again with all his expertise invested in the outcome.
It was not a situation he would normally choose for himself. He much preferred to be in full command of a battle situation, from the planning stages outward. If anything at all developed here, it would be more in the nature of a firefight — a play-it-by-ear sudden confrontation with all the odds riding on the side that played it the quickest and the trickiest.
There were, of course, one or two items which he could partially control. And he did have the advantage of surprise to partially offset the superiority of numbers on the other side.
The jokers in the deck were, of course, Flora and Trinity — his nervous companions of the moment. There was no way of knowing what they would do once he cut them loose on their own. Bolan could only try to influence that open question.
Okay, stop right here,' he commanded the wheelman. They had reached the point where Bolan had earlier encountered the lookout. The guy was nowhere in sight now.
Ontario Charlie brought the big car to a smooth halt.
'Turn on your parking lights!'
The wheelman did so.
Trinity was glaring tensely ahead. 'They're still loading down there,' he observed glumly.
'How many boys you say?'
'Eight, dammit. Eight damned mean boys. This is crazy.'
'Only as crazy as you make it,' Bolan reminded. 'I'm getting out here, but I'll be no more than ten paces to the rear. At that range, Danny, I can shoot the eyes off a fly. You boys cruise right on down there, same speed we've been going. First bad move you make, I'll punch you. Soon as you start moving again, bring the headlamps up — high beam. Keep them there. Stop at the truck and just sit tight'
'Sit tight till when?' Flora croaked.
'Until the shooting starts. Then I suggest you dig a hole quick.'
Danny Trinity laughed nervously. 'It's still crazy. You can't take on eight mean boys alone.'
'Watch me,' Bolan told him, and stepped out onto the wharf. 'Move it!' he commanded, and closed the door.
The limousine crept forward. The lights came up and choked on the heavy atmosphere, reflecting back to create a weird halo of light to the front.
Bolan fell to the rear and moved along the wall of the warehouse.
Halfway to target, two guys ran out onto the wharf beside the parked truck. The Mafia vehicle surged forward suddenly, horn blaring, picking up speed quickly in a heavy-footed acceleration.
Some guys just never knew when they were well off.
Bolan smiled grimly and punched them as he'd promised, four big rolling booms in rapid-fire sealing the fate of that plunging vehicle as the AutoMag leapt in full-throated response to the situation as an extension of the man himself. The rounds crashed in at shoulder level through the rear window in a deliberate search pattern.
