TEXAS BLAST ’EM

After the murder of a Texas Ranger, Mack Bolan is called in to investigate. Working under the radar with the dead Ranger’s sister, he quickly learns rumors of missing fissile material falling into the wrong hands are true—and the terrorists plotting to use the dirty bomb are die-hard Americans determined to remove Texas from the Union, no matter what the cost.

Following a trail of cold bodies, Bolan finds himself always one step behind the oil tycoon funding the deadly plot and his New Texas Republic army. But as the countdown to D-day begins and millions of Texans are oblivious to the target on their backs, time is running out. The only option is to take the bait of the superpatriots and shut them down from the inside. You don’t mess with Texas. Unless you’re the Executioner.

“Out!” Bolan snapped

Sergeant Granger bailed out on the passenger’s side. Bolan crouched behind his open driver’s door and Granger found cover between two semitrailers.

Any second now…

The chase car roared into view, headlights lancing toward the parked RAV4. They had to see it, but the black car sitting there, stopped dead, would confuse them long enough for Bolan to begin the fight on his own terms. A slim advantage, but he would take what he could get.

Which, at the moment, was a clean shot through the Yukon’s tinted windshield. Bolan didn’t count on hitting anyone with that first round, but it forced the larger SUV to swerve away, tires screeching on the asphalt.

Breaking from his own partial concealment, Bolan sprinted in pursuit of the Yukon. He was the hunter now, whether the Yukon’s occupants knew it or not. The game had turned around on them, but there was no change in the stakes.

Still life or death.

Patriot Strike

Don Pendleton

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of

malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

—Aldous Huxley,

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

and Tomorrow (1956)

We fought one civil war for the Union already. I’m shutting down the second one.

—Mack Bolan

THE

MACK BOLAN

LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a com-mand center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions inhis Everlasting War.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Prologue

Lubbock, Texas

The Golden Sage Motel stood on Highway 82 west of town. Also known as the Marsha Sharp Freeway—named for the former coach of Texas Tech’s Lady Raiders basketball team—the highway is Lubbock’s primary east-west access road, providing greater access to the university and downtown Lubbock.

But no one would ever know it from the Golden Sage.

Built when the freeway was still just plain-old Highway 82, the motel squats beside six lanes of asphalt, blank-eyed windows watching traffic pass. A few cars stop, inevitably, but a glance at fading paint, cracked cinder blocks and spotty neon signage on the fake saguaro cactus out in front quickly reveals that business isn’t thriving.

Jerod Granger didn’t care.

He’d checked in looking for a place to hide, taking a room around in back where passing drivers couldn’t see his six-year-old Toyota Camry XV30 sitting by itself. He’d told the clerk he couldn’t sleep with too much highway noise outside his window and accommodating his desire was easy, since the Golden Sage had only two guests registered when Jerod had arrived.

Three bodies for two dozen rooms. So much for economic stimulus.

He had one night to kill before tomorrow’s meeting, couldn’t push it forward any further. He’d said the deal was urgent, but he’d balked at saying life or death. That part would have to be explained in person, face-to-face, tomorrow morning.

Lubbock’s FBI office, on Texas Avenue, watched over nineteen of the state’s 254 counties. Lubbock, in turn, was supervised from Dallas, one of the bureau’s fifty-six regional field offices scattered nationwide. Granger didn’t trust the Dallas office and in fact had been advised to seek out only one of Lubbock’s resident agents.

Hence the delay.

If he could trust just anyone, he could have strolled in off the street last week, sat down and told his story to the first G-man or G-woman available. That wouldn’t fly, however. Not with the explosive secret he was carrying, the stakes that he was playing for. He’d asked the only person that he really trusted for some advice and had received a single name.

Case closed.

Now all he had to do was make it through the next—what? Thirteen hours and change?—to have that talk, give up his evidence and breathe a huge sigh of relief over a job well done.

A job he’d never wanted, obviously, but it made no difference. Sometimes a circumstance reached out and grabbed a guy by the throat, and wouldn’t let him go.

So here he sat, on his bed in Room 19, watching a crazy show about a woman with six personalities, while he ate his KFC meal with a Ruger Super Redhawk .44 Magnum revolver beside him. It was the “small” model, with a 7.5-inch barrel versus the maximum 9.5-inch, still bigger and badder than Dirty Harry’s Smith & Wesson Model 29. It would kill anything that walked on two or four legs.

And Granger hoped it would keep him alive.

By this time tomorrow he would be in protective custody—assuming he lived that long and that any such thing still existed. Granger wasn’t even sure the FBI could protect him.

Still it was the best chance he had left. His only chance.

The wacky chick on TV was dressed like a man now, drinking a longneck Corona and scratching herself like a truck driver in a strip club. Hell, she was in a strip club, paying ten bucks for a lap dance. Granger scowled and switched it off with the remote, not minding nudity but put off by what he regarded as the program’s sheer absurdity. He reached out for his soda can, ready to wash down some of the colonel’s original recipe—and found it empty.

“Crap!”

The pop machine was four doors down from Granger’s room, tucked into an alcove with an ice machine at the motel’s northeast corner. He didn’t like going outside in the dark, not tonight, but the chicken was stuck in his throat now. There went another dollar fifty for a can of fizzing syrup that he used to get for half a buck.

He took the Ruger, tucked it inside the waistband of his slacks as best he could and donned a jacket to conceal it. Desert nights were cold, so no one would think twice about the jacket, and he didn’t plan on meeting anybody, anyway. He was the only tenant on the backside of the Golden Sage, nothing but open land and scrub brush stretching away into the night.

Granger made sure to take his key, the beige door locking automatically behind him. No surprises waiting for him when he came back with his overpriced drink in its plastic ice bucket. A short walk, out and back. No problem.

Until the black Cadillac Escalade rolled into view, its high beams nearly blinding him.

Granger didn’t react at first, telling himself it might just be another guest arriving, then his brain kicked into gear, asking him why in hell the owner of a brand-new Escalade would spend five minutes at the Golden Sage Motel.

No reason in the world, unless he happened to be hunting.

As the Caddy’s doors swung open, Granger dropped his empty bucket and started hauling on the Ruger. Snagged its front sight on his Jockey shorts but ripped it free, aiming the big wheel gun with trembling hands. He noted four men flat-footed by the Escalade, its driver still behind the wheel, and fired once at the nearest of them, praying for a hit. It felt miraculous, seeing the big man topple over backward, going down.

Granger was running then, with gunfire snapping, crackling and popping in the night behind him. He ran past his room and kept on going past his Camry, since the keys were in the motel and there was no time to get in the car anyway. Running like his life depended on it.

Which, of course, it did.

The first rounds struck him when he’d covered all of twenty yards. They lifted Jerod Granger and propelled him forward, airborne, arms and legs windmilling as he found that he could fly. It was a freaking miracle.

But landing was a bitch.

The sidewalk rushed to meet him, struck the left side of his face with force enough to crack the cheekbone. Granger scarcely felt it, going numb already. He could barely find the strength to feel for his Ruger, but the gun had slipped beyond his reach.

Like life itself.

Footsteps approached him, voices muttering as if from miles away and underwater. By the time his killers started firing down into Jerod’s back and skull, he was already gone.

Chapter 1

San Antonio, Texas

Midnight at the Alamo. Not dark—spotlights shone off the old mission’s facade—but, hanging back a hundred yards, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, still found shadows to conceal him as he walked a circuit of the battle site.

Once upon a troubled time, the Alamo had stood on San Antonio’s eastern outskirts. Today it commands a plaza downtown, surrounded by streets named for marytrs: Bonham, Bowie, Crockett, Travis. Men who had stood their ground and had died for an idea called Texas.

Bolan’s first impression of the place was mild disappointment. He had expected more, somehow, from a national shrine. Something larger, perhaps, than the squat adobe-brick structure before him. Sixty-three feet wide and twenty-three feet tall, besides the parapet, extending back one-hundred-odd feet from the plaza in front.

Not much to it, until factoring in 189 defenders, mostly civilians, fighting to the death against some eighteen hundred trained regulars, both infantry and cavalry.

Remember the Alamo? San Antonians don’t have much choice.

Bolan wasn’t here to study history or pay his personal respect to heroes, though he did that automatically, at any battleground or military graveyard. He was at the Alamo to keep a date, obtain some information, maybe save some lives.

How many? That was still an open question, which he hoped to answer as soon as he spoke to his contact.

A Texas Ranger, no less. How perfect was that?

Bolan had flown into San Antonio International Airport from Dulles, in Virginia, and then rented a silver Toyota RAV4. His ID—a more-or-less genuine Texas driver’s license in the name of Matthew Cooper—had served him well at his previous stop, a store with broad, barred windows whose tall neon sign promised Guns! Guns! Guns!

Thanks to Texas’s lax firearms legislation, Bolan’s purchases included an AR-15 rifle, the civilian semi-auto version of an M16A1; a Benelli M4 Super 90 semi-auto twelve-gauge shotgun with extended magazine and collapsible buttstock; a matched pair of Glock 22 pistols, chambered in .40 S&W; and a Buckmaster 184 survival knife. He added a fast-draw shoulder rig, a clip-on holster for his belt, two dozen extra magazines and all the ammo he could carry. Bolan paid cash—lifted from an L.A. crack dealer some months before—and made the salesman’s day.

“Y’all come back now, hear?”

A little tinkering would turn the AR-15 into a full-auto weapon if Bolan had the time. Meanwhile it was a good killing machine straight off the rack. He would have liked at least one sound suppressor for the Glocks, but that meant filling out a lot of Class III paperwork and waiting while it cycled through the ATF labyrinth in Washington. In a pinch, the Buckmaster was quieter than any firearm and never had to be reloaded. He’d simply have to be up close and personal when he went in for the kill.

This was supposed to be a peaceful meeting, though. No fuss, no muss, no bodies on the ground.

Supposed to be.

So here at the Alamo, he wore the Glocks and knife concealed, leaving the rifle and the shotgun in his rented SUV. He had parked it down on Crockett Street and had walked back to the Alamo, dodging the streetlights where he could. If all went well, it was a relatively short walk back to catch his ride. If not, two blocks could be a lethal gauntlet.

Fifteen rounds in each Glock’s magazine, plus two spares in the pouches on his shoulder rig and two more in his pockets. Enough to stop a midsized company of soldiers, but it only took one lucky shot by an opponent and the game was over. Bolan could die and never know what hit him, sure. The way a combat soldier always hoped to go, if old age wasn’t on the table.

But until that happened, he was working every angle for security. Taking nothing for granted beyond his next step, his next breath.

* * *

“WHERE IS SHE?” Jesse Folsom muttered.

“Runnin’ late,” Bryar Haskin said. “How the hell should I know?”

“We just sit and wait for her?” asked Jimmy Don Bodine.

“Naw,” Haskin answered back. “We gonna go ’n’ get a lap dance, then tell Kent we didn’t wanna stick around. How’s that sound to ya? Think he’ll like it?”

“I just meant—”

“Check this out,” Cletus Jackson said, from the backseat.

A car was turning north from Crockett onto Alamo Plaza. It slowed for the parking lot’s entrance, then swung in it. Creeping along, the vehicle slid into a space about two hundred feet from the old Mexican mission.

“That her?” Folsom prodded.

“Can’t tell,” Jackson said. “Wait and see, with the dome light.”

The car was a black Dodge Avenger, four door, not an obvious cop car. Haskin puzzled over that, since they were waiting for a cop—a lady cop, at that—but he supposed that she could be off duty, driving her own vehicle. It didn’t matter what she came in, after all, as long as she went home with them.

The cop...and whoever she was meeting at the Alamo.

“I still can’t see the driver,” Jackson said, to no one in particular.

“It’s one of ’em,” said Haskin. “Has to be. Who else would be here when the place is closed?”

“Damn tourists,” Bodine suggested. “Wanna snap a picture standin’ in the lights.”

“Parkin’ as far as they can get from anything?” Haskin snorted dismissively. “We got one. Now just keep your eyes peeled for the other.”

“You figure they’ll be packin’?” Jackson asked him.

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Hell, I am.”

That was a fact. Between them, they were carrying two pump-action shotguns, one Heckler & Koch HK416 carbine chambered in 5.56 NATO, one AK-101 feeding the same NATO rounds and at least four handguns. Bodine sometimes wore a second pistol in an ankle holster for backup, normally a Colt .380 Mustang Pocketlite, but Haskin hadn’t looked to see if he was packing it tonight.

They had firepower, anyhow, and horsepower under the hood of their GMC Yukon, with its 5.7-liter turbocharged Chevrolet small-block V8 engine. Haskin wished they’d had a bit more brainpower, but these were good boys, dedicated, all straight shooters. He would work with what he had.

And how hard could it be?

Pick up two people from the ever-loving Shrine of Texas Liberty and take them back to headquarters for questioning. It wasn’t like they had to fight John Wayne and Richard Widmark, or even Billy Bob Thornton. Sure, one of them was a Texas Ranger, but she was a woman, for God’s sake.

One woman then and she’d be packing, but he didn’t know about the other one. Haskin had no idea who else they were looking for—a man or woman; white, black or whatever—but it stood to reason that there’d be at least one other gun against their eight or nine.

Safe odds, if only they had been allowed to kill their quarry, but that wasn’t in the cards. His orders were to bring at least one of them back alive and preferably both. Headquarters couldn’t question corpses, and if Haskin dropped the ball on this one, it would be his own ass on the charcoal grill. And that was not one of them whatchamacallits. Simile or metaphor, maybe an oxymoron.

Screw it.

“Here goes,” said Jackson, as the Dodge Avenger’s driver opened up her door and stepped out. She’d turned the dome light off—smart thinking—but the parking lot was lit for security’s sake, and Haskin recognized her from a photo he’d been shown that afternoon.

“It’s her,” he said. The lady Ranger.

“One down, one to go,” said Bodine, like he had just invented math.

“Suppose the other one don’t show?” asked Folsom.

“Then we bag this one,” Haskin replied. “Call it a night.”

“We have to take her straight back?” Jackson queried. “She’s a looker.”

“Remember what we’re here for, damn it. And remember what you stand to lose, if you screw it up.”

* * *

WATCHING FROM THE SHADOWS, Bolan saw his contact step out of a vehicle he took to be her personal ride. Nothing the Texas Rangers would select for chasing outlaws on the open road, and Bolan wasn’t sure if they did any undercover work. He knew the force was small—about 150 officers to police America’s second-largest state and its twenty-six million inhabitants. Not to mention the countless tourists, drifters and undocumented aliens. Only a handful of Rangers were women, and Bolan was looking at one of them now.

He knew her face from photos he’d received in preparation for the meeting. She, on the other hand, wouldn’t know him from Adam until Bolan introduced himself. Photos of Bolan—with the new face he had worn since “dying” some time back in New York City’s Central Park—were scarce as the proverbial hen’s teeth. He hadn’t bothered changing fingerprints at the same time, since he was dead to the world, and Uncle Sam’s elves had purged every file they could find that contained Bolan’s prints—from the Pentagon and FBI headquarters, to LAPD, NYPD and so on down the food chain.

In that sense, at least, it was good to be dead.

The Ranger he had come to meet, by contrast, was very much alive. And Bolan hoped to help her stay that way.

Adlene Granger was thirty-one years old, five-seven without standard Ranger cowboy boots and Stetson hat, her frame packed with 137 fairly trim, athletic pounds. Green eyes and auburn hair, no known tattoos, although she had a scar inside her left forearm from taking down a crackhead who had pulled a razor in the scuffle. All of that was in her file, together with the fact that she had shot two would-be bank robbers in Brownsville, on a stakeout, killing one of them.

But now she needed help and couldn’t ask her fellow Rangers. Couldn’t put her faith in local law enforcement, Texas-style. She wasn’t all that keen on trusting Feds—from what Bolan understood—but everybody had to lean on someone, sometime.

Nature’s law.

Enter the Executioner.

His contact—Ranger Granger?—had a tale to tell, and Bolan had agreed to listen. He already knew the basics from his briefing, but he needed more details. Needed to know if it was serious enough to rate his kind of handling and yield a positive result.

Bolan had known too many dedicated and courageous women of the law to swallow any crap about their runaway emotions, inability to cope with crises or the rest of it. Short of a power-lifting contest in the heavyweight division, Bolan couldn’t think of any field where women did not rival or surpass their male competitors—and he had seen some Russian ladies who could hoist the big iron, too.

He wasn’t looking for a partner, though. Had no intention of enlisting anybody for his mission, if it turned out that there was a mission here, deep in the heart of Texas. He wanted information he could act on—if it seemed his kind of action was appropriate—while Ranger Granger went back to her normal daily life and put their meeting out of mind as best she could.

Simple—unless it wasn’t.

Bolan knew she had a personal connection to the problem, but he didn’t know how far she planned to chase it. He would have to make it crystal clear that he was not recruiting, not inviting her to join in a crusade. She would be briefing him and nothing more.

He hoped.

Emerging from the shadows, Bolan showed himself, waited and watched her start the long walk from her Dodge Avenger toward the south end of the Alamo’s facade. She took long, determined strides, an easy swing to her arms. She wore hand-tooled boots with sharply pointed toes, blue jeans, a denim shirt under a thigh-length suede jacket. The jacket was unbuttoned, granting easy access to a good-sized pistol on her right hip, worn in a high-rise holster.

Here we go, he thought, standing his ground.

* * *

“YOU SEE ’IM?” Jackson blurted out.

“We ain’t blind,” Haskin told him.

“Let’s get after ’em,” said Bodine.

“Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?” Folsom challenged.

“Look, we know it’s her and likely him, but I ain’t making no mistakes ’cause we got hasty.”

“What, you think he’s just some random guy walkin’ around the Alamo?” asked Jackson.

“Making sure don’t cost us nothin’ but a little time. And they ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“Oh, yeah? Suppose his wheels is back there and they just take off?”

“We ain’t afoot,” Haskin reminded him. “And Kent didn’t put you in charge.”

“Hey, I’m just sayin’—”

“Shut your piehole, will ya? Lemme see what’s goin’ on.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

At times like this, Bryar Haskin wished he didn’t have to deal with idiots. They were useful, in their way, but Christ, their whining grated on his nerves.

He watched the woman walk toward the man who had appeared as if from nowhere—meaning that he’d walked up somewhere from the south, maybe approached by way of Crockett Street. Whatever. He was here now, if it was him, and while Haskin had no serious concerns on that score, he was still determined to be sure before he made a move.

It was interesting that the guy, whoever he was, made no attempt to meet the woman halfway. He hung close to the Alamo, ready to duck back out of sight and under cover at the first suggestion of a trap. A cagey bastard and corralling him could take some doing. Granted, Haskin had three men to back him, odds of two-to-one, but if the man and woman separated, and it turned into a foot chase, they were screwed. He didn’t plan to run around the Alamo all night, like some dumb cluck in one of The Three Stooges comedies.

And what if someone started shooting? They’d have cops up the wazoo in nothing flat, the very last thing he needed on a job like this. He thought about the shit storm that would rain down on him if he got arrested, and it made his chili supper curdle in his stomach.

Not a freakin’ chance.

Haskin clutched his Ithaca 37 shotgun—the Deerslayer Police Special version—in hands that were suddenly sweaty. At first he had relished being in charge of this mission, taking it as a sign of advancement, but now he saw how it could blow up in his face. Spoil everything, in fact. And it would be his fault if anything went wrong.

Across the parking lot, the lady Ranger was within twenty feet of Mr. X and closing in. They hadn’t started talking yet, as far as Haskin could tell, but he couldn’t swear to it. There’d likely be some kind of recognition signal, or a password, then they’d either start to do their business or the Ranger would bail out, if she discovered the guy wasn’t who she had come to meet.

The odds of that were nil, but Haskin wasn’t taking any chances.

Wait and see.

Now they were close enough to speak without raising their voices, and he wished he’d brought a shotgun microphone to supplement the Ithaca. Something to let him eavesdrop for a little while before they rushed the couple, maybe pick up something useful for the chief, in case one or both of the targets went down for the count or was trained to resist interrogation. It would stand him in good stead, a little extra boost, but thinking of it now did Haskin no damned good at all.

“We goin’ in or what?” Bodine asked.

“Hang on a sec,” said Haskin.

“But—”

“You heard me!”

“Jeez.”

He knew that it was risky, waiting, but he had to do this right the first time. There would be no do-overs. Wishing he’d brought more men or spread the ones he had around the park with walkie-talkies, Haskin scowled into the night.

“All right,” he said at last. “Hit it!”

* * *

“WHAT BRINGS YOU to the Alamo at night, mister?” the Ranger asked when she was twenty feet away.

“Greetings from your uncles,” Bolan told her.

“Uncles?”

“Sam and Hal.”

“That makes you...?”

Knowing she had the name and nothing more, he told her, “Matthew Cooper.”

“I’m Adlene Granger. Sergeant Granger.”

“Right.”

“You want to see ID?” She reached toward an inside jacket pocket.

Bolan waved it off. “Been there, done that.”

“So there’s a file on me?” she said, half smiling.

“There’s a file on everyone.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said, shifting gears.

“Well, here I am.”

“And you know what this is about?”

“Not all. The basics,” Bolan answered. “I was told you’d fill me in.”

“Right here?”

“Your call,” Bolan said. “We can take a walk, a ride, whatever.”

“You weren’t followed?”

“No.” He’d spent some forty minutes driving aimlessly through San Antonio to guarantee it.

“I guess this is as good as anyplace,” she said. “But maybe we could step out of the light.”

As if on cue, a set of high beams blazed to life, pinning them where they stood. Bolan made out the hulking shape of what appeared to be a full-sized SUV, charging from its hiding place behind the screen of trees surrounding Alamo Plaza. It hadn’t trailed Granger’s Dodge, meaning it had been in place before the meet, its occupants apprised of when and where to strike.

“You said—”

“They didn’t follow me,” Bolan assured her, as his Glock cleared armpit leather.

Adlene Granger drew her own sidearm, a Heckler & Koch HK45, and raised it in a firm two-handed grip. “I can’t believe I missed them, damn it!”

“Who says you did?”

“But—”

“We should go,” he told her.

“They’re between us and my ride,” she said.

“Not mine,” he said. “Come on.”

She almost seemed reluctant not to stay and fight it out, but turned and followed Bolan at a sprint, the SUV roaring across the parking lot behind them. The headlights tracked them until they cut around the rear end of the Alamo and ran into another line of trees.

“What about my car?” she called to Bolan.

“We’ll come back for it,” he said. Skipped the obvious, not adding, if we can.

A twelve-gauge blast echoed out behind them, buckshot chipping the flagstone walk that had been laid around the old mission-cum-fortress. It was hasty, not a good shot, but they couldn’t count on someone with a shotgun missing them consistently.

Bolan was grateful for the cover when they reached the tree line, doubly glad that architects and landscapers hadn’t designed any access to the property on this side of the Alamo. Unless the SUV was supercharged, with a bulldozer blade attached, its driver would be forced to turn around and circle north or south around the plaza to pick up their trail.

It was a lucky break, but nothing more. They still had two long blocks to cover before they reached his rental on Crockett Street. The shooters could reverse their course and gain some ground, but they’d be confined to streets, while Bolan and the Ranger could run in a straight line, due south to his ride.

“Jesus!” Adlene Granger gasped, close on his heels. “If they knew I was coming here—”

She didn’t have to finish it. Prior knowledge meant a leak somewhere. It meant someone on her short list, one of the people she trusted, had no place there. Bolan, reasonably certain the tip hadn’t originated from his side, wondered how far the lapse would set them back.

Or whether it would get them killed.

They made it to the RAV4. Bolan keyed the automatic locks from half a block away, hearing the chime, seeing the taillights flash once. He slid behind the wheel, let Adlene take the shotgun seat and gunned the straight-four 1AZ-FSE engine. Peeling out on Crockett, eastbound, he saw headlights racing down Alamo Plaza, then turning to follow him.

So much for shaking the tail.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked Granger.

Half turned in her seat, pistol still in her hand, she replied, “Bet your ass.”

There it was then. Game time.

Chapter 2

Washington, D.C.—Earlier

Mack Bolan stood before the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, considering its four bronze lions—two male and two female—guarding a pair of cubs. Beneath each brooding cat he found a carved inscription. Tacitus, from ancient Rome, stated In valor there is hope. The Book of Proverbs reminded Bolan that The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

He wasn’t sure about the second part, having known some so-called righteous folks who didn’t have the courage of their own convictions. He could buy the first bit, though. The wicked could run, but they couldn’t hide.

At least not from the Executioner.

Bolan’s visit to Washington, and to this memorial in particular, was not a matter of coincidence. He wasn’t a casual tourist and most emphatically was not on vacation. He had come to meet one of his oldest living friends, a certified member of an endangered species, to discuss a matter of the utmost urgency.

Or so Bolan had been told.

This friend, Hal Brognola, had an office nearby, in the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Bolan had not seen it from the inside, and he likely never would. Although no longer wanted by the Feds and physically unrecognizable to those who’d hunted him during his long one-man campaign against the Cosa Nostra, Bolan knew that strolling through the halls of justice would be deemed a breach of etiquette. How could he be there, anyway, when he officially did not exist?

So, when he got an urgent call from Brognola, they either met at Stony Man—a working farm and the nerve center of the clandestine operation Bolan served, sequestered in the Blue Ridge Mountains—or at some public location in or near D.C. Crowds kept the pair of them anonymous, while they discussed their bloody business with a modicum of privacy.

Hiding in plain sight.

Today Bolan perused the names of fallen heroes who’d been shot, stabbed, bombed and bludgeoned while defending those in peril. Some had died in car crashes, during hot pursuits or when their aircraft had plummeted to earth on a surveillance mission. Others had succumbed to strokes or heart attacks on duty. Buildings had collapsed on some, as in New York on 9/11. Some had been cut down by friendly fire.

It was a war out there, as Bolan knew too well from personal experience.

He would have liked to say the good guys were winning, but each day the news refuted it.

Part of the memorial was still under construction—a National Law Enforcement Museum authorized in 2000 and scheduled to open in 2015. Bolan hoped he’d be around to visit it sometime. For now he stood and watched the workmen from a distance while a stocky figure sidled up to join him.

“Planning to pitch in?” Brognola asked.

“Not my kind of tools,” Bolan replied. He was more inclined toward the demolition side of things.

“Good flight?”

“The usual.”

Bolan had been in San Diego, visiting his brother, when the call from Washington had come through. A red-eye flight from San Diego International to Dulles, through Chicago O’Hare, had delivered him in time for breakfast and his meeting with Brognola.

“How’s Johnny?”

“Busy,” Bolan said. “What did they used to say at Pinkerton’s? The eye that never sleeps?”

“Gets bloodshot,” Brognola replied. “I hope he’s working on a low profile.”

“I think the spot as P.I. to the stars was taken.”

“Just as well. If he starts showing up on the entertainment channel, it might ring somebody’s bell.”

“He’s covered,” Bolan said, hoping that it was true.

“Ready to take a walk?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

They strolled past waist-high curving granite walls decorated here and there by wreaths, bouquets and brightly colored bits of paper bearing messages of love and sorrow. To their left, a woman in her mid-thirties knelt, tracing one of the names as Bolan had seen others do at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“What do you know about secession?” Hal inquired.

“It didn’t work out well for the Confederacy,” Bolan said.

“I mean more recently.”

“I’ve heard some rumbles. Saw something on CNN.”

“After the last election, Boston Tea Party types in all fifty states filed petitions for secession from the Union,” Hal informed him. “Most of them were no more than farts in a whirlwind. You need twenty-five thousand signatures to garner a response from the White House, and most didn’t come close. Texas led the field with over one hundred twenty-five thousand signatures. On the other hand, a petition to deport everyone who signed a petition to withdraw their state from the U.S. has close to thirty thousand signatures, and it’s still growing.”

Bolan smiled at that. “Is secession even legal?”

“Nope. Doesn’t stop the nuts from trying, though.”

“Not much we can do about that,” Bolan said. “If I remember my high school government class, the right to petition is guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

“And it’s not the scribblers who concern me,” said Brognola. “I was thinking more about the flakes who just might try to pull it off.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“As a matter of fact,” Hal replied, “there might be.”

“Might be?”

“Here’s the deal. Three nights ago, in Lubbock, Texas, persons unknown killed a fellow named Jerod Granger. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of him. It barely made the news in Texas, much less anywhere outside the state.”

“But you’re aware of it.”

“Only because I know his family. Back in the day when I was with the Bureau’s field office in Dallas, my partner and I got assigned to a case in that neck of the woods. Kidnapping for ransom that turned into murder. You know the G gets in on those under the Lindbergh Law, presumption of interstate flight, yada, yada. Anyway, while we were working it, I got to know a Texas Ranger who was on the case. Lou Granger.”

“Relative of the victim?”

“His father. We stayed friendly, which doesn’t happen often, and we kept in touch after I transferred out of Texas. For a while there, Jerod and his sister used to call me Uncle Hal. Go figure, eh?”

“Why not?”

Hal shrugged. “Anyway, the day after Jerod went down, I got a call from his sister, Adlene. She’s a Ranger now herself. Jerod had phoned her to arrange a meeting with a G-man, ultraurgent. Spoke about secession and catastrophe, gave up some names but wouldn’t cover any details on the phone. Jerod had a face-to-face lined up the next morning with sis’s trusted number one guy, but Jerod never made it. Next thing Adlene knows, she’s making an I.D. for the Lubbock County coroner.”

“And then she called you.”

“Right. Not much to offer in the way of evidence, but when I got the gist of it and heard the names...well, something clicked. It’s worth a closer look, I think.”

“How are the parents taking it?” asked Bolan.

“Cancer took the mother, Jeannie, back in ’95. Lou bought it in a single-car collision two years later.”

“Rough,” Bolan said.

“So, anyhow, I said I’d see what I could do. What we could do.”

“Except she thinks that ‘we’ would be the Bureau?”

“Hmm.”

“Why not the Rangers, since she’s one of them?”

“There could be problems with security.”

“The FBI? Homeland Security?”

“Both say the information is too vague, one of the names too prominent. Plus this is Texas. They’re still having nightmares over Waco.”

“When you say ‘too prominent,’ who are we looking at?” Bolan asked.

“Have you heard of L. E. Ridgway?”

“Rings a distant bell,” Bolan said, “but I can’t place him offhand.”

“No great surprise. The ‘L. E.’ stands for Lamar Emerson. He’s the founder, president and CEO of Lone Star Petroleum and Aerospace Technology.”

“That’s not a common merger, is it?”

“Not at all. In fact,” Hal said, “from what I gather, it’s unique. Lamar made his first couple billion from the East Texas Oil Field, pumping crude and natural gas in the fifties. Today he’s got rigs all over the state and offshore. The aerospace deal fell into his lap when NASA started cutting back on some of its programs. He started out making components for their rockets and space shuttles, then got the bright idea of privatizing outer space.”

“Say what?”

“You heard me right,” Hal said. “Lone Star is planning junkets to the moon aboard their own space craft, beginning sometime in the next couple years. They’re catering primarily to governments, with a projected round-trip price tag of one-point-five billion dollars, but private parties who can foot the bill are also welcome.”

“So, if you’re Bill Gates and you want to take the flight of a lifetime, they’ll send you?”

“Just imagine,” Hal said. “The Koch brothers can take off and really look down on us earthlings.”

“Well, it’s odd, I grant you.”

“Here’s the kicker. For as long as he’s been filthy rich, Ridgway has been a top contributor to far-right causes. Started with the Birch Society and veered off toward the fringe from there. Militias, neo-Nazis, Klans, Army of God—”

“The clinic bombers?”

“Yep. With friends like those, you know he has to be pro-life. But lately he’s been concentrating on a home-grown bunch of mixed nuts calling themselves the New Texas Republic.”

“And we’re back to secession,” said Bolan.

“In spades. They started out running maneuvers, getting ready to defend us from some kind of weird Red Dawn scenario, plus armed patrols along the border for illegals. Now they claim the country can’t be saved. It’s too far gone with socialism, communism, fascism, Sharia law—they aren’t exactly scholars, if you get my drift.”

“And Ridgway’s keeping them afloat?”

“In high style,” said Brognola.

“Maybe he could send them to the moon.”

“Funny you’d mention that. About those rockets...”

Bolan felt a chill, although the morning sun was warm.

“In that last call from Jerod to his sister, there was mention of fissile material.”

The stuff that caused chain reactions in nuclear fission. The modern Big Bang.

“And Homeland still won’t touch it?”

“Not until we have a better case,” Brognola said.

“Okay. Let’s hear the rest.”

The rest—or most of it—was in files on a CD Brognola gave to Bolan for more leisurely perusal, while he waited for his flight to Texas. Adlene Granger was expecting him—expecting someone—for a meet in San Antonio at midnight. Why she’d picked the Alamo was anybody’s guess. As good a choice as any, if it worked; as bad as any other, if it didn’t.

At Dulles, Bolan found a corner seat near his departure gate, back to the wall, and used earbuds to keep anyone nearby from eavesdropping. The files, as usual, included still photos, video clips and facsimiles of documents.

First up was a biography of L. E. Ridgway, from his humble roots in Oklahoma through his first East Texas oil strike, the remarkable bad luck that haunted his competitors—fires and explosions, vandalism to their rigs and vehicles, some disappearances—and his advance to the top of the Fortune 500 list.

While his business and his wealth grew, the FBI began to notice his increased financing of far-right extremist groups—all dedicated to the proposition that America was under siege by enemies within; as well as standard adversaries like the Russians, North Koreans and Chinese. Ridgway and his compatriots apparently believed that every U.S. president since Herbert Hoover was a communist, a fascist or some whacky, nonsensical combination of the two.

These extremists hated government, minorities, the very concept of diversity and fumed nonstop about ephemeral conspiracies to persecute white Christian men. As for the ladies, the members thought they should just stay home, cook dinner, tend to the kids—and, if required, help clean the guns.

Not all of the yahoos were just talk, of course. Several groups that Ridgway had supported over time were linked to acts of domestic terrorism. Everybody knew about the Klan’s shenanigans—cross burnings, bombings, drunken drive-by shootings.

But Ridgway had also been connected to a handful of so-called militia groups that had stockpiled illegal weapons, threatened government officials and conspired on various occasions to attack public facilities: federal buildings, natural gas pipelines—never Ridgway’s—and power plants.

One “Aryan” gang wanted to poison a midsized city’s water supply in Arkansas, but state police foiled their plan. None of the indictments from those cases ever touched Ridgway or Lone Star Petroleum, but Ridgway lurked in the background like a fat old spider spinning its web.

The move into privatized aerospace technology had been a break from Ridgway’s normal style. He was literally going where no man had gone before, hiring personnel laid off by NASA, planning to conquer space and turn a tidy profit in the process. With billions to spend, he had acquired a decommissioned space shuttle, set his team to work improving it and pronounced it ready to soar.

Media reports claimed Lone Star Aerospace was near completion of the solid rocket boosters necessary for a launch, along with an overhauled Lunar Excursion Module—the LM-14, scrapped when plans for Apollo 19 fell through—and a snazzy Lunar Roving Vehicle. Show up with a truckload of cash and anyone could drive a dune buggy around the dark side of the moon.

There was nothing on the CD about fissile material. Bolan would have to hear that from the Ranger, assuming there was anything to tell.

From Ridgway, he moved on to Hal’s files on the New Texas Republic, a secessionist militia outfit based in Tom Green County, near San Angelo, Texas. Headquarters was a rural compound squatting on scrubland west of town, home to eighty-odd families, by the FBI’s estimate.

The NTR’s founder and crackpot-in-chief was Waylon David Crockett, a self-proclaimed descendant of Davy Crockett, one-time Tennessee congressman and Alamo martyr. That genealogical link had never been confirmed officially, but Waylon’s adherents in the NTR were satisfied.

Crockett had grown up poor and tough in Brownsville, on the Tex-Mex border. Starting at the tender age of fifteen, he had been arrested nineteen times, convicted on two juvie raps and three adult charges. The most serious, drug dealing, had sent him to Huntsville’s prison for a five-year stay, but he was paroled in three.

Crockett had found the Lord while he was caged, and came out preaching a mix of politics and ultrafundamentalist religion, picking up disciples as he had roamed across the countryside. He first hooked up with Ridgway shortly after 9/11, when Crockett joined the Midland Militia, ready to defend his state against a rampaging Islamic horde that never showed up. Three years later he’d branched out on his own with the NTR and welcomed Ridgway’s whole-hearted financial support.

The New Texas Republic hadn’t been accused of any criminal infractions yet, but it was on watch lists maintained by the FBI, ATF and Homeland Security. Budgetary constraints and Crockett’s strict screening process for new recruits had foiled any covert infiltration so far, but there were always rumors: hidden arsenals, inflammatory words, dire schemes.

Crockett’s second in command was Kent Luttrell, ex-Klansman, ex-security guard for the Aryan Nations “church” compound in Idaho, ex-member of California’s Minuteman Project—the “citizens’ vigilance” border patrol praised by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2005 for doing “a terrific job” against illegal immigrants.

Five years running, Kent had made news for holding candlelight prayer vigils on June 11, the date when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed for mass murder. Now Kent was the NTR’s sergeant-at-arms, enforcing discipline and supervising details of the minuscule “republic’s” daily operations for his chief.

The two of them made a peculiar pair. Crockett was five foot five and wiry, had a Charlie Manson smile and looked like he’d forgotten how to use a comb around the time he quit high school. Most of his photos showed a face with sunken cheeks and stubble, bushy brows and dark eyes possessed of a thousand-yard stare. He wasn’t quite the Unabomber, but a stranger could have been excused for thinking Crockett and Kaczynski had been separated at birth.

Luttrell, by contrast, was a strapping six foot five, clearly a bodybuilder, with a blond buzz cut and narrow brows to match. His thick arms swarmed with typical tattoos—iron crosses, lightning bolts and swastikas, the usual—while the police files said his broad back bore a life-sized portrait of Der Führer dressed in shining armor, battle flag unfurled.

That had to have stung.

Photos depicting Crockett and Luttrell together showed a Mutt and Jeff team—almost comical until you thought about their records and their crazed philosophy. They had been dangerous as individuals, before they met. Together, Bolan reckoned, they were even worse.

The New Texas Republic had an estimated 650 members, half of those residing more or less full-time at Crockett’s Tom Green County compound. A few of the others were locked up on various charges, mostly weapons’ violations or domestic violence, with the remainder at large throughout Texas. Bolan viewed the available mug shots and candid photos, memorizing the angry faces for future reference, in case they crossed his path.

Finally he turned to Adlene Granger’s file. It surprised him to discover that she’d joined the U.S. Army out of high school, age eighteen, with the announced intent of making a career in uniform. The 9/11 strikes occurred when she was two years in, and she’d been posted to Afghanistan.

Two tours over there, with action around Kandahar and Tora Bora, had changed her mind about an army life, but not the uniform. She’d separated from the service at twenty-two and had joined the Texas Rangers when they had started taking on women to prove they were diverse. She’d earned her sergeant’s stripes last year, something to celebrate.

Now she had lost the final member of her family to unknown gunmen. She knew he needed to report something urgent, but he wouldn’t share details on the telephone. Ridgway was mentioned and the NTR, something about fissile material, but Jerod Granger had not lived to pass on anything more. Adlene had considered talking to her boss in Austin, then decided she should try her Uncle Hal, instead.

Bolan had no idea what he would find in Texas. Maybe nothing but the paranoid delusions of a dead man—but if that were true, who’d want him dead? From the description of his body and the crime scene, it had been a more-or-less professional elimination. At the very least, Bolan knew the shooters had experience. They’d killed before and had gotten away with it.

But maybe not this time.

Bolan wasn’t, strictly speaking, in the vengeance business. He wouldn’t mind taking out the team that had killed Jerod Granger—three different weapons had been confirmed—but that didn’t rate a call from Stony Man or a flight to San Antonio. He would assess the situation once he’d heard the Ranger’s story and decide on where to go from there.

Full speed ahead or back to Washington with a report for Hal, scrubbing the job.

If Ridgway, Lone Star and the NTR were up to something wicked—planning a catastrophe, in Jerod Granger’s words—Bolan would see the mission through. If it was all just smoke and mirrors, another zany pipe dream from the “New World Order” crowd, he’d walk away.

He heard his flight’s first boarding call, erased the CD and switched off his laptop, then headed toward the gate, hoping he wouldn’t have to share his row with some behemoth or an infant that would wail for fourteen hundred miles, across four states. A little peace and quiet would be nice.

But something told him that it wouldn’t last for long.

Chapter 3

San Antonio—Now

Rolling east on Crockett, Bolan soon found himself approaching Bowie Street. He could go north or south from there, not straight, since one-way Elm Street turned to meet him up ahead, barring access to the north-south lanes of Interstate 37.

Turning left on Bowie would propel them north to Fourth Street, back toward downtown San Antonio. A right-hand turn would lead south to Market Street, which then became South Bowie, just to keep drivers confused. South Bowie granted access to the interstate, but if Bolan stuck to surface streets, he would be leading his pursuers into residential neighborhoods.

No decent choices, either way.

Whichever way he chose, he risked having cops join the parade and putting bystanders in danger. If he made it to the freeway, it could add potential contact with the state’s highway patrol. The only law he likely wouldn’t see would be the Texas Rangers—and he had one of them riding in his shotgun seat.

With half a block to spare, he chose the right-hand turn. Given the hour, Bolan knew downtown would have more traffic on the streets, people returning home from restaurants, concerts and theaters, whatever. More police patrols, for sure, keeping an eye on high-rent stores and offices. If he could lead the hunters south, then west toward the San Antonio River, the street map he’d memorized during his flight told Bolan he would find dead ground, where they could stop and settle it.

The hunters hadn’t lost Bolan when he had turned onto South Bowie, but they hadn’t started shooting, either. That was good news, and he wasted no time trying to interpret it.

“Who’s likely to be tracking you?” he asked his passenger.

She answered with a question of her own. “What were you told about this deal?”

“The basics. Ridgway and the NTR.”

“Okay. It could be either one of them, assuming there’s a difference. Lamar won’t soil his hands, but he could give the order. Might demand a video, for his enjoyment over cocktails later.”

“Not police,” Bolan confirmed.

“No lights or sirens,” she replied. “No way.”

That made it easier. At the beginning of his one-man war against the Mafia, Bolan had drawn a line he would never cross. When dealing with police at any level, in any given situation, he would not use deadly force. Whether they qualified as heroes or were nothing more than thugs in uniform, he treated law enforcement officers as soldiers on the same side. Bolan would not spill their blood, even in self-defense.

He’d sent a few to prison, sure, but that was something else entirely.

Mercenary killers, on the other hand, were fair game whenever and wherever they crossed paths with the Executioner.

South Bowie reached East Commerce Street, and Bolan took a right there, racing west to catch South Alamo. The chase car hung in there, trying to ride his bumper, but the lighter RAV4 kept a few car lengths between them, weaving just enough to cut the hunters off from passing by on either side, where they could get a clean shot at the smaller SUV.

Not yet.

The farther they could go without a shot fired or a squad car joining in the chase, the better Bolan liked it. They would have their showdown soon enough, in true Wild West tradition, more or less.

South Alamo took Bolan and Granger on a long southwestern swing through tree-lined residential areas, rolling inexorably toward the river and a strip of warehouses that served its traffic. There were few pedestrians around as they passed by darkened homes, some with the flicker of a television screen behind drawn curtains, others with their occupants asleep before another workday in the city. Maybe roaring engines caused a ripple in their dreams, but Bolan was satisfied to spare them from a running firefight.

“Gaining,” Granger cautioned. Nothing that his rearview hadn’t shown him.

“Just a little longer,” he replied.

“Why aren’t they shooting?”

“Maybe someone wants to have a word with you.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Not if I can help it, Bolan thought, and squeezed a bit more speed from the Toyota’s growling engine.

He could see a bridge across the river coming up, a strip mall to his left once they’d crossed it and a factory of some kind to his right, with giant stacks and at least a dozen semitrailers lined up outside, waiting for loads. A triple set of railroad tracks ran through the plant and disappeared beneath an elevated walkway. A sign atop the tallest portion of the factory read Pioneer. Another, set above the three tall stacks, read White Wings.

Bolan didn’t have a clue what was produced there, and he didn’t care. The place was obviously closed, no cars in the employees’ parking lot. Tapping the RAV4’s brake pedal, he swung in off the street and rolled across the lot, which was lit by bright halogen lights.

* * *

“HE’S STOPPING HERE? What the hell’s he thinkin’?” Jesse Folsom asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Bryar Haskin snapped. “Let’s take ’em while we can.”

“Some kinda trick,” suggested Jackson.

“Doesn’t matter.” Haskin jacked a round into his shotgun’s chamber. “Now he’s off the road, we got ’im.”

“Light ’em up!” said Jimmy Don Bodine.

“Hold off on that,” Haskin commanded. “Don’t forget Kent wants ’em both alive, if possible.”

“If possible.” The echo came from Jackson. “Leaves a lotta wiggle room.”

“You screw this up,” said Haskin, “you’ll be wigglin’ when he hooks your nuts up to that hand-crank generator with some alligator clips.”

Jackson had no response to that, and it was just as well. Folsom, at the Yukon’s wheel, swung in behind the black Toyota, chasing it across the mostly empty parking lot, back toward a row of semitrailers lined up closer to the factory. Haskin had no idea why their intended prey would trap himself that way, instead of staying on South Alamo, maybe trying to lose them on the Pan Am Expressway farther west, but he didn’t plan to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“C’mon!” he barked at Folsom. “Catch ’em, damn it!”

“Workin’ on it,” Jesse answered back, accelerating with a squeal of tires on asphalt.

Haskin had no clue who was driving the Toyota, but it stood to reason that the lady Ranger would be armed. A pistol only, since he’d seen her walking empty-handed at the Alamo, unlikely that she’d have some kind of tiny submachine gun underneath her leather jacket. Could be damn near anything inside the fleeing SUV, though, so they’d have to hit it hard and fast, before the stranger at the wheel could start unloading on them.

“Hey! You’re losin’ it,” warned Haskin, as the RAV4 swerved around behind semis, ducking out of sight.

“No place for ’em to go back there,” Folsom assured him. “Ain’t no exit from the lot on that side.”

“You’d better hope not. If they get away—”

“You worry too much,” Folsom answered, almost sneering.

Haskin fought an urge to punch him, the worst thing Haskin could do when they were doing close to sixty miles per hour. If Folsom crashed the Yukon, it would be Haskin’s ass when Kent heard how their targets had wriggled through the net.

Haskin had expected the Toyota’s driver to swing back around, upon discovering that he couldn’t escape the parking lot, but there was no sign of the RAV4 yet. It was a big lot, sure, but not that big. You couldn’t lose an SUV, unless—

“Hold up!” he ordered.

Folsom shot a sidelong glance his way.

“They’re layin’ for us!” Haskin blurted, but his driver didn’t get the message. They kept rolling, passed the nearest semitrailer, turning left to follow the Toyota. Haskin didn’t see the other car at first, imagined that its wheelman must have found an exit from the big lot after all or maybe plowed straight through the shrubbery that lined it on the west. He was about to say so, when a sudden blaze of high beams blinded him. He raised one hand to shield his eyes.

“Goddamn it!”

The words were barely out before a bullet drilled through their windshield, clipped the rearview mirror from its post and dropped it into Haskin’s lap. Folsom was cursing like a sailor with his pants on fire, spinning the Yukon’s wheel, as more slugs hit the SUV, pounding its body like the sharp blows of a sledgehammer.

* * *

BOLAN HAD RACED around the line of semitrailers, running almost to its end before he whipped the RAV4 through a rocking bootlegger’s turn. It wasn’t too hard, once taught the trick, using the hand brake and accelerator in collaboration, power steering helping out. With an SUV there was a risk of tipping over, but he had kept them upright—though not without eliciting a little gasp from Adlene Granger.

“Out!” he snapped, when they were barely settled, reaching toward the backseat for his hidden Colt AR-15. She bailed from the passenger’s side. He had already doused the domes, but a pool of light still glowed beneath the dashboard with the SUV’s doors open. Not enough to matter for his purposes, as Bolan crouched behind his open driver’s door and Granger found her cover in between two massive semis.

Any second now...

The chase car roared into view right on schedule, headlights lancing toward the parked RAV4. They had to see it, but the black car sitting there, stopped dead and going nowhere, would confuse them long enough for Bolan to begin the fight on his own terms. A slim advantage, when he guessed they were outnumbered two to one, at least, but he would take what he could get.

Which, at the moment, was a blast of high beams for the chase car’s driver, followed by a clean shot through its tinted windshield. Bolan didn’t count on hitting anyone with that first round, but it did have the desired effect, forcing the larger SUV to swerve away from him, tires screeching on the asphalt as its wheelman panicked.

Bolan tracked the Yukon with his rifle sights, squeezed off another round that sent its left-front tire into a wallowing rumble, the rim biting blacktop. That didn’t help the driver with control, but he still managed not to flip it, trying to put space between himself and Bolan as he rolled off toward the tall white stacks on the far side of the parking lot.

Looking for cover, Bolan realized, and he was determined not to let them reach it. Breaking from his own partial concealment, after switching off the Toyota’s headlights, Bolan sprinted in pursuit of the Yukon. He was the hunter now, whether the Yukon’s occupants knew it or not. The game had turned around on them, but there was no change in the stakes.

Still life or death.

Before his targets reached the three silo stacks, Bolan stopped short, lined up his shot and punched a double-tap through the retreating 4x4’s rear window. Glass imploded, and he thought he heard a man cry out; whether in pain or mere surprise, he couldn’t say. Then the SUV changed course again, now rolling toward a fence and wall of shrubbery that screened the parking lot’s west end.

Better.

Over there, the only cover waiting for them was the vehicle they had arrived in. They could try to scale the fence and run away, but that would place them with their backs toward Bolan, no hands free for fighting while they made the climb. He could shoot sitting ducks all night, though Bolan hoped to wrap this up without much wasted time.

And if he had a chance to quiz one of his enemies, so much the better.

The Yukon rolled on toward the fence, then veered off to the right. That placed the driver’s side away from Bolan, and he saw the doors fly open, dome lights glaring briefly until they were shut once more. It looked like four men piling out, none seemingly impaired, going to ground behind the full-size SUV.

Now Bolan was in the open and in danger as they started firing—one from each end of the Yukon, one underneath it and one blasting directly through the SUV, its back windows both rolled down.

Not good.

His opposition had two shotguns and two rifles, both feeding the standard 5.56 mm NATO ammunition by their sound. One hit from any of those guns could be enough to finish him. Whether they scored with buckshot or one of the NATO tumblers traveling at 3,100 feet per second, either would create catastrophic damage upon impact with flesh and bone.

He hit the deck and rolled, scrabbling away to his left, toward the last semitrailer in line. It stood some fifty yards from the Yukon, easy pickings with his AR-15, but Bolan still had two problems.

He needed a line on his targets, of course.

And he had to reach cover alive.

* * *

“GET OUT! OUT! OUT!” Bryar Haskin shouted, shoving Folsom when the driver moved too slowly to suit him.

“Jesus, man! I’m go—” Folsom’s words were cut off as he spilled from the Yukon, Haskin crowding out behind him on the driver’s side, the steering wheel bruising his ribs. He nearly stepped on Jesse as he fell.

Cursing a blue streak, Folsom kicked back at him, almost brought him down, and in the process accidentally saved Haskin’s life.

The impact made Haskin stumble and drop to one knee just as a bullet smashed the Yukon’s right-front window, passing within an inch of Haskin’s head. He could have sworn he felt it graze his hair before it whispered off into the darkness. Another bullet hit the open driver’s door a heartbeat later, spraying Haskin’s face and neck with jagged bits of steel and plastic.

“Agh!”

He slammed the door behind him, cutting off the Yukon’s dome lights, staying low in case the rifleman kept shooting through the SUV.

“Shoot back!” he ordered. “What in hell’d we bring these guns for, anyway?”

It took another second, but his boys got in the spirit of the thing, returning fire. Haskin angled his Ithaca across the Yukon’s hood and fired a blast toward the parking lot, seeing a figure drop and roll out there but having no idea if he’d been hit. Doubtful, in the confusion, with his own guys firing wild and ducking back before a lucky shot could pick them off.

Speaking of which, Haskin felt too exposed aiming across the Yukon’s nose, so he went prone and aimed his twelve-gauge underneath the SUV. Not hiding, get that straight; being crafty, with a bid to cut their adversary’s legs from under him, leaving him helpless on the blacktop. Might have worked, too, but it seemed as if the guy was gone now. Likely over by the nearest of the semitrailers, lining up another shot.

And what about the lady Ranger? Where was she?

Haskin had little time to think about it, as his first guess was confirmed. A muzzle-flash winked at him from the darkened space between two trailers, fifty yards or so away, and Haskin heard slugs punching through the Yukon’s right-front fender, hammering the engine.

Shit!

Damned inconvenient for them if they had to leave their ride behind, although its registration wouldn’t lead investigators anywhere. That was the beauty of a holding company, something Haskin had heard about but never really understood until it was explained to him in simple terms, of late—a paper trail that led the cops in circles without yielding any information that could hang him or his friends if anything went wrong.

Like now.

As for escaping, they could always take the other guy’s Toyota once they’d finished with him. And the Ranger. Couldn’t forget her, since she’d started this whole fouled-up business in the first place. Kent still wanted her alive, but Haskin wasn’t sure he could deliver on that order, given how things stood right now.

How long before the shooting brought a prowl car, followed by a SWAT team? He wasn’t sure, but every passing minute made their prospects worse. He tried to picture Kent’s reaction if they all wound up in jail but didn’t like where that was going, so he pushed the image out of mind.

More bullets slapped at the Yukon. “We gotta flush that bastard out of there,” Haskin told his men.

“Go for it,” Jackson answered, making no attempt to move.

“You scared of goin’ out there?” Haskin challenged him.

“Damn right!”

“Well guess what?” Haskin snarled, jabbing his shotgun’s muzzle into Jackson’s ribs. “You’re goin’ anyhow.”

“Son of a bitch!”

“Move it!”

Still cursing, Jackson waddled toward the Yukon’s tailgate, braced himself and charged into the open, firing as he ran. And covered all of ten feet, maybe less, before a bullet brought him down.

And that left three.

* * *

BOLAN HAD DROPPED the runner with a head shot, easy, and his friends were clearly having second thoughts about an all-out rush to finish it. He glanced back toward the RAV4, saw no sign of Granger and hoped she’d keep it that way while he finished up the skirmish. Bolan’s chance of capturing a shooter for interrogation seemed less likely now, but any hope remaining would require the gunmen to be driven out from under cover, where he’d have an opportunity to pick and choose.

How best to do it?

While they popped off wasted rounds—some scoring hits on semis, others squandered on thin air—he sighted on the SUV’s fuel tank. The Yukon carried twenty-six gallons of gasoline when it was filled to the brim, but Bolan didn’t need a full tank for his purposes. Three rounds fired through the right-rear quarter panel were enough to set it dribbling, a small lake forming underneath the vehicle.

Now all he needed was a spark.

The cornered gunmen didn’t seem to see where he was going with it, firing back at Bolan for the sake of making noise, the nearest of their shots missing him by two feet or more. Meanwhile he concentrated on the Yukon’s right-rear wheel. He flattened its tire with one shot, then directed three more at the rim, trying to strike a spark.

He was rewarded by a puff of flame, the gas fumes catching, then the spilled gas on the blacktop came alight and sent its head back to the leaking fuel tank. Bolan waited for combustion, heard one of his hidden enemies growl out a warning to the others, but it came too late. The gas tank blew, lifting the Yukon’s rear end on a bright cushion of fire, some six to eight feet off the ground.

That sent them running. One man, in flames, broke out to his left with staggered steps, wailing, then dropped to hands and knees, trying to roll the fire out as it bit into his flesh. His two companions ran the other way, toward the silo stacks, firing in Bolan’s general direction as they fled.

A pistol cracked from somewhere to his right, distracting Bolan for a split second before he made it out as a .45. Granger was pitching in to help, her second shot dropping the forward runner in a boneless sprawl. His sidekick skidded to a halt, couldn’t decide which way to turn his automatic rifle, so he swept the parking lot at large with crackling fire, hoping to score a lucky hit. He drew more fire from Granger, off the mark this time, and ran toward the stacks again.

They’d lose him there, and Bolan couldn’t have that, even if he gave up the chance for an interrogation. Lining up his shot, be put a round between the shooter’s shoulder blades, the impact lifting Bolan’s target and propelling him some six or seven feet, shoes churning empty air. He landed facedown on the asphalt, rifle skittering away from lifeless fingers, and lay still.

All done...except that one of them was still alive and whimpering.

Bolan crossed to stand by the shooter who had been on fire a moment earlier. Reached down to pluck a pistol from the burned man’s belt and to toss it out of reach, into the shadows. Crouching down beside him, breathing through his mouth to minimize the stench of roasted flesh, Bolan asked, “Who sent you after us?”

“You...get...nothin’...from...me.”

“A name, that’s all,” Bolan replied. “You don’t owe them a thing.”

“What the hell...do you...know?” Wheezing smoke came from the man’s mouth and nose.

“I’m guessing Crockett,” Bolan said.

“Screw...you.”

“Or maybe Ridgway?”

One eye widened slightly, or the other might have narrowed. With the scorching on the shooter’s face, Bolan couldn’t be sure. A wink? He doubted it. More likely pain, sending a tremor through seared flesh.

“So, nothing?”

“Uh...uh.”

“Okay then.”

He rose, backed off a pace and plugged a mercy round into the shooter’s blackened forehead.

“Jesus God!”

And turned to find the Ranger watching him, a grim expression on her face.

“We’re done here,” Bolan told her. “Time to go.”

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