The
Brognola said, 'This is really hot stuff, and I can't-' He stepped against the other man suddenly and shoved him into a darkened doorway as an automobile wheeled suddenly into the alley, lights out and cruising slowly. They stood there, hardly breathing, as the car eased past them, an alert and grimfaced man behind the wheel.
Brognola gasped, 'God's sake! Wasn't that Bolan?'
The other man shook his head, frowning. 'Can't say for sure, Hal. I've never seen him in his new face.'
The automobile was powering in a sudden acceleration into the next street, heading west, away from the beachfront. Brognola said, 'Dammit, that was
The two men ran to the corner, paused, then hastened up the street after the disappearing vehicle.
His heart was thudding against his ribs in the certain knowledge that he was probably too late, although a quick reconnoiter of the hotel area had produced no sign of the prey. Possibly, he was thinking, he had misread the signs entirely . . . maybe they weren't even headed for the hotels . . . maybe they were hotting it for the boat, and Bolan had not the faintest idea where that boat lay or even the approach to it.
He would try one more quick pattern through the back streets . . . maybe they had ditched the car and were footing it. He eased through an alleyway just above the Hacienda determined to give it one last desperate shake.
A barricade lay partly across the street, two intersections up from the beach. Apparently a demolition job had just been completed there. One lane of traffic had been closed down and a wooden wall, still partially standing, extended halfway to the centerline to fence off a rubble-filled vacant lot. He was about to go around when another vehicle swerved in from the street above, running with one headlamp and rumbling along on a flattened tire.
Bolan's heart leaped, and his car along with it. He powered on into the partially-blocked street and swung his vehicle broadside across the open lane, and he was out and running up the street with Luger at the ready when the other car halted, doors flew open, and bodies began ejecting themselves.
One man stood behind the cover of an open door and leaned across it, pistol in hand, firing deliberately at the advancing figure in the black suit. Bolan fired once, on the run, the big Luger thundering across the distance. A nine-millimeter missile punctured the glass of the car door and the
Three other men were racing for the demolition site. Bolan let them go, and they scurried through a break in the fencing and disappeared.
Bolan's chief interest lay inside that shattered vehicle. And he found her there, rolled into a little ball and stuffed to the floor of the back seat. She had bled profusely from a nicked vein at the side of the once-lovely neck . . . and they had allowed her life to bleed away with no apparent effort to stop it. More . . . they had done more. The fatigue jacket had been jerked away and down over the arms, imprisoning them at her side. The bra had been torn away, and they had taken a torch — probably a butane lighter, Bolan decided — to what Bolan remembered as rose-petal breasts. One nipple was charred and virtually incinerated; the entire chest area was a horribly seared and blotched abomination of once-beautiful womanhood.
In the name of god, Bolan wanted to know, what had they wanted her to tell them? What could any man
Bolan stretched her out on the back seat and carefully arranged the jacket over the mutilated chest. His shoulders quivered and his head fell to his chest, and he was remembering the last words the little soldier had whispered to him. '
An arm appeared around the opening in the fence and one of the
The end of the fence exploded in flame and shredded wood and an anonymous scream from somewhere just beyond. Bolan went on, stepped around the shattered fence, and into the demolition site. A high building barricaded the west side of the lot; the high wooden fence completed the seal. He took in the scene with a single glance and knew that he had them. The only way out was past Bolan, and no one seemed inclined, at that moment, to try that perilous route. A man lay at Bolan's feet, his clothing still smoking from an almost direct hit of the HE round. He could hear the other two running along the fence.
Bolan calmly selected a flare round, thumbed it into the breech, and put a brilliant parachute in flight above the site. The running men halted in confusion, looking wildly about them, then made a break for a wooden shack near the center of the lot. Bolan watched them fight with the door, then scramble inside. He continued the deliberate advance, marching stiffly erect. A window shattered and a pistol roared. The bullet zinged harmlessly into the ground several yards ahead. Bolan's path was taking him in a slow circle of the shack as he inspected the physical dimensions. This was obviously a tool shed or something similar, no more than ten feet square, with a low flat room. Beside it and resting on a tubular steel structure about six feet above the ground was a large tank with a hose and a nozzle, obviously a gasoline storage.
Bolan halted then, loaded an HE round into the M-79, sighted onto the tank, and let fly. He was already thumbing in another flare round when the gasoline erupted in a towering explosion. Flaming liquid spilled immediately onto the shack — and then Bolan was sighting again, and the white hot flare went to join the party.
The shack was engulfed immediately in roaring flames. Bolan stood and dispassionately watched as two human torches erupted through the doorway and flopped convulsively about the rubble. When the flopping ceased, he turned his back on them and walked stiffly away, back to their vehicle.
Bolan placed his weapon on the roof and leaned into the car for a final farewell to a too-brief friendship, and when he came back out of the car he was looking into the bore of a very large and ugly .45 automatic.
He looked beyond, then smiled faintly and said, 'Hi, Leo. We meet again.'
Leo Turrin, lately elevated to an underboss role in the former Sergio Frenchi family, showed a strained smile and quietly said, 'Watch the gun now, Bolan, and note that I'm putting it away.'
'I guess it doesn't matter,' Bolan replied in a strangely flat voice. 'I'm sick of this war, Leo. I am sick to death of it.'
Another man, also an Italian type, stepped into view then and commented, 'If what I just saw is an example of your sickness, Bolan, I hope you never get well.'
'Who is this guy?' Bolan asked, not really caring.
'We're telephone friends, remember?' the man replied. 'I'm Harold Brognola.'
Bolan said, 'Great. What do we do now, shake hands?'
Brognola stuck his hand out. 'Yes, I'd like to shake your hand, Bolan,' he said soberly.
Bolan unsmilingly accepted the hand. 'Thanks for the assist at L.A.,' he murmured. The sound of distant sirens were beginning to break the night stillness. Bolan said, 'I guess I'd better be getting along.' He glanced at Turrin and added, 'How's it been, Leo?'
'Hairy, as usual,' Turrin replied, smiling.
Brognola agitatedly declared, 'Dammit, Bolan, I have to talk to you!'
Bolan simply smiled, shouldered his weapon and began trudging wearily to his vehicle. The other men hastened after him. Brognola said, 'Bolan, dammit, will you listen to me?'
'Will those cops listen to you?' Bolan asked, inclining his head toward the advancing sirens.
'Talk to him,' Turrin advised. 'What have you got to lose? Just talk to him.'
'What about?' Bolan asked. 'That same portfolio?'
Brognola snapped, 'Yes, that same portfolio. Look, you said you were tired of the war. I'm offering you a possible way out of it.'
Bolan threw him an interested glance. 'Yeah?'
'Hey, those Miami cops are getting with it,' Turrin warned. 'Better make this quick.'
