Patriot Strike
Page 19
He took the lady at her word and left her, once she’d risen to her feet and proven she could stay there, with the M4 in her hands. Around her, Ridgway’s men were either down or on the run.
Bolan moved on into the smoky darkness. Hunting.
* * *
LURCHING FROM THE ruin of his ranch house, Ridgway dropped his plan for battling the unseen enemy and staggered toward the line of vehicles that stood some fifty yards to the north. He wanted out, away from there, and wasn’t waiting to collect a driver or a team of bodyguards. From what he saw and heard around him, it appeared that many of his men had already deserted him, the lily-livered cowards.
Simon would be somewhere in the midst of it, no doubt, but that was too damned bad. He was a soldier, drawing hazard pay, and now he had a chance to earn it or die trying. Ridgway liked him well enough, but, hell, it wasn’t like the two of them were family. Coetzee was just another hireling who had let him down.
Screw him.
The first car Ridgway came to was a Ford Explorer. Keys in the ignition naturally, so the boss could take a spin around the hacienda anytime he wanted to—or in a pinch, like now, run for his life. Ridgway slid in behind the wheel and propped his Remington across the empty seat beside him, easily within his reach. He turned the key and revved the 4.0-liter V-6, feeling its power through his hands and feet.
A few more minutes and he’d be away from there, hightailing back to Maracaibo where the Learjet 60 waited for him, fueled and ready for a hop to somewhere else, another hideout where he’d finally be safe.
Ridgway switched on the headlights, gasping at the vision of a tall man dressed in camouflage fatigues, standing some thirty feet in front of him, holding a weapon that resembled an inflated version of an old-time tommy gun. Its stovepipe muzzle seemed to be aimed straight at Ridgway’s face.
“All right, you pissant!” Ridgway muttered. “Show me what you’ve got!”
He stamped on the accelerator, hurtling forward, as the stranger fired into the Ford Explorer’s grill. Ridgway could actually see the fat projectile flying toward him, then it struck, and he was in a spinning hell of fire, smoke, thunder, as the SUV stood on its nose, then slowly toppled over on its roof.
* * *
MACK BOLAN CROUCHED beside the Ford and peered in through the shattered driver’s window. Ridgway lay contorted on the vehicle’s inverted ceiling, legs twisted, his face a mask of blood. One eye focused on Bolan as he wheezed, “Who are you?”
“Just a soldier,” Bolan answered.
“Bull...shit. Tell me, damn it.”
“What’s the difference?”
Above him, on the capsized undercarriage of the SUV, a burst of flame erupted, then began to spread along the fuel line.
“Have to...know,” Ridgway insisted.
“I’ve always thought the trouble with this part was too much talk.”
Bolan silenced Ridgway with a point-blank 5.56 mm mercy round and went to look for Granger in the night.
Epilogue
Miami International Airport
“The doc in Maracaibo wasn’t bad,” Granger said. “I definitely like those pills he gave me.”
“They use good people at the consulate,” Bolan agreed.
“I thought they’d ask more questions. Well, some questions, anyway.”
Instead of getting into Hal and how he’d pulled some strings, Bolan replied, “They didn’t want to know.”
“Makes sense, I guess. Am I allowed to ask you where you’re going next?”
“I won’t know till I get there,” Bolan said. A small lie, better for them both.
“Ships passing in a stormy night, I guess.”
“It happens.”
They were calling Granger’s flight now. She rose from her seat with the barest hint of a wince. “Well, if you’re ever back in Texas...”
“Right.”
“Who am I kidding, eh?”
She kissed him on the cheek and turned away, proceeding to her boarding gate without a backward glance. Bolan stood watching, to be sure, then shrugged it off and moved along the concourse toward his own gate. Still another forty minutes left to kill before the flight he’d booked to Richmond and a rental ride to Stony Man.
He might be back in Texas someday, but they both knew that he wouldn’t call, wouldn’t disrupt the Ranger’s life once it had settled back to normal. If it could.
His normal was the hell grounds, and another battle waited for him, maybe coming up tomorrow or the next day after that.
The Executioner was moving on.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460329146
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike Newton for his contribution to this work.
PATRIOT STRIKE
Copyright © 2014 by Worldwide Library
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