Miami Massacre

Toro? Bolan shook his head. That would not make sense. He had been at Toro's mercy and had walked out of it with love and kisses. So. How about cops? A double set. Mafiosi inside, cops outside?

Bolan merged with and then melted into the night and found himself a point-blank surveillance drop, directly across from the stake-out vehicle. Huh-uh, he decided, not cops. So Mack Bolan was getting a persecution complex. The brothers had simply decided that Jean Kirkpatrick possessed important information, and they had sent for her. The full set would be typical of those under Talifero orders. No one in the Talifero clan made two goofs. He wouldn't be around for that second one. So, went the legend, Taliferos took great pains to avoid that first one.

Every instinct at Bolan's command screamed at him to get away from there, to break off, retreat, and to let the brothers have their way. He could not do so. The image of a frightened girl and the quiet declaration, 'I guess I've been dead a long time already,' presented an insistent rebuttal to his instincts. She had asked how much deader could she get, and Bolan had not replied. The Taliferos would reply, and it could be a long drawn out and hideously uncomfortable statement of final truth. Possibly, argued his weaker side, the brothers merely wanted to question her about the Sandbank shooting . . . an eyewitness account. Possibly, added that argument, they would find her harmless and blameless and would not harm her in any way.

Bolan firmly squelched the argument and stealthily returned to the Kirkpatrick house. The two talkers had been in the front bedroom. Where was 'Willie?' In one of the cars? In another room of the house? Bolan could not risk exposing his presence until he knew exactly where lay the enemy.

This time he climbed the fence near the rear of the house and sprang lightly to the roof of a low back porch, then slid quietly over the stucco parapet and onto the flat roof of the house proper. He went to the front and crouched in the shadows of the parapet, alert to every sound and movement in the neighborhood, straining even into an extrasensory 'feel' of the atmospheric vibrations. He thought he heard a rustling movement in the rear yard and, moments later, something again moving quietly through the alley. As he debated whether or not to check it out, a car swept around the corner to Bolan's left and proceeded swiftly along the street.

The car slowed and slightly overshot the Kirkpatrick house, then went into reverse and backed to the curb slightly downrange from Bolan. A rustle of sound came from the house below, heavy feet moving rapidly. Bolan exposed himself momentarily to examine the car at the curb, and then his heart fell into his stomach. A police car!

The door on the passenger side had opened and Jean Kirkpatrick was stepping onto the sidewalk. Bolan swore beneath his breath as the young cop he had spotted earlier that day at the Sandbank climbed out of the other side and walked around to join the woman.

Bolan could feel the agonized reaction within the house. If that cop tried to walk through that door with Jean Kirkpatrick, there was going to be a shootout — and it would be a dead drop.

They were slowly walking across the lawn and the woman was saying something in a bantering tone to the cop. His voice drifted up, in reply, 'I'd take a cup of coffee, though.'

Bolan made his decision. He vaulted over the parapet, Luger in hand, yelling, 'Ambush! Scatter!'— and impacted directly between the two, sending both sprawling to the ground. Bolan was rolling across the lawn and trying to orient himself; from the corner of an eye, he saw the cop coming to one knee and digging for hardware. Streaks of flame lanced out of the front windows with roaring accompaniment, angry hornets zipped past Bolan from several directions, and his Luger was spontaneously answering back before his thinking mind was aware of it.

Firing on the roll, he saw the cop topple backwards — even so, the long-barreled police .38 was up and voicing its parts in the firefight. A body crashed through onto the porch, and the other sounds were being added to the uproar. A man was swearing loudly and painfully from somewhere inside the house; a door banged and running feet thudded closeby. The Luger swung and spit and the thudding feet became a falling body.

The cop was saying, 'Dammit, dammit,' and trying to lift himself up. Jean Kirkpatrick was a kneeling statue in the shrubs beside the house. Another crack of glass from the house and another volley of lancing flames and Bolan felt the projectiles breezing him. He rapid-fired into the flashes and they ceased, replaced by a moan and the clatter of a heavy gun meeting wooden floor.

Bare seconds had passed. From both sides now new sounds joined the thunder of the night as automobile engines came alive. Bolan yelled, 'From the street! Down flat!— as he fought a new clip into his Luger. He jettisoned the silencer and ran to the police car, wrenched the door open, leaned across, and turned on the headlamps, then ejected himself in a backward leap. The uprange vehicle was coming forward, running without lights, but caught now in the glare from the police car.

Bolan's Luger came up and he was sighting down at full extension when his heart again took a dive into his stomach. A small figure in tight-fitting fatigues was caught also in the glare of the headlamps as she ran from between two houses uprange, dropped to one knee, and began banging away with the heavy .45 at pointblank range into the approaching vehicle. The windshield shattered and the Mafia vehicle arced into the curb and halted with a squeal of rubber and a volley of returning fire.

Bolan was running forward and rapid-firing in an agonized attempt to draw the fire away from Margarita, but he was too far away and too late. He saw her spin and go down on her face, and then the threat from the other flank was bearing down upon him and he realized that he was exposed in his own light.

He saw the flame leaping from the yard in front of Kirkpatrick's and heard the roar of the .38, the returning volley from the speeding car, and he thought there's a cop with guts as he realized that the .38 was drawing fire originally intended for Bolan. He leapt into the street and let the Luger have its head. It bucked and thundered its repeated defiance of the charging vehicle until it faltered and swerved and plowed into the police car with a grinding, shearing impact, trying to climb the rear deck, and then falling to its side and going to ground like a downed rhino. A streak of fire whooshed the length of the vehicle and it exploded into a white fireball, the police car following immediately almost like a reinforced echo. Bolan poised midway between two urgent callings, Margarita at one flank, Kirkpatrick and the cop at the other. The cop he knew to be alive and in imminent danger of roasting, and the cop won the toss of Bolan's mind.

He ran into the yard, grabbed the fallen officer by the armpits, and dragged him well clear of the inferno and into an adjoining yard. Wilson was staring at him with glazed eyes, the .38 still tightly clenched in a balled fist. He had a hole in his shoulder and one in the leg, and bleeding like hell from both. Bolan whipped the combat kit from his belt and peeled off two compresses, quickly applying them to the wounds. He took the .38 from the cop's fist and guided both hands to the compresses, commanding, 'Keep a pressure!'

Jean Kirkpatrick staggered into the scene, breathing raggedly and on the edge of hysteria. Bolan grabbed her and pulled her to her knees beside the officer. 'Watch him!' he ordered. 'Stop that bleeding!'

She nodded her head in understanding. Before he dashed away, Bolan squeezed her shoulder and barked, 'That boat! Give me the name again!'

'What?'

'The boat, the floating palace! What's the name?'

'Merry Drew,' the stunned girl mumbled.

Bolan ran around the inferno, recklessly charging the other flank — but there was nothing there to challenge him. The other vehicle was gone. He loped on down to the spot where he had seen Margarita fall, looked about with a growing desperation, then stooped to pick up a once-jaunty and now blood-smeared field hat. Impressions in the soft earth of the lawn showed clearly where a heavy vehicle had swung in a savage, wheel- spinning turn. He followed the marks over the curbing, and ran into the street, his eyes straining into the distance. House lights were coming on clear into the next block, but nothing was moving through his vision field. He thought he heard the sound of a laboring engine, rapidly receding, but he could not be sure of even that. All he was sure of was that they were gone . . . and that they had taken Margarita with them!

A curious crowd was gathering at the scene of the fire. A man in pajamas came hurrying out of the house where Bolan stood. He glared at Bolan and snapped, 'What the hell is this? What is this?' But Bolan was already moving and gone himself, racing off between the houses and to the next street. He found his car and screamed off in a hopeless search for a bloodstained vehicle with shattered glass. Though the entire fire fight had consumed barely one minute, he knew that he was too late. But the soldada was in that shattered