“He’s wet. Can I take him out and change him?”
“No, he won’t melt. Just shut him up.”
A beer can hit the table.
There was a chance the man would release the boy and go after Bolan, but the Executioner doubted it. This guy was a professional. He would take every advantage he could.
At the edge of the doorway, Bolan could see half of the kitchen, but the table and the people were in the other half. He would throw the flash-stun grenade near the table. Pitch it and hope. If the hit man got Bolan, the rest of the family was dead, anyway. He had to take the chance.
The Executioner wanted to look inside, but knew he couldn’t risk it. He was ready. Kneeling, he brought up the Beretta and let the arming handle pop loose in his hand. Two seconds later, he lobbed the grenade into the room.
It exploded almost as it hit the floor.
Bolan had closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears, and saw the flash through his eyelids. Then he charged into the room.
The blast was louder than anything Bolan had heard outside a war zone for a long time. The baby screamed. Carboni dropped his AutoMag, then grabbed the woman. Both blinded, they stumbled backward, but Carboni remained covered by the woman. Bolan had no sure shot.
“Bastard!” Carboni screamed. He produced a knife from his pocket and opened it into a five-inch murderously sharp blade.
“Move a step, Bolan, and I gut her. You want that? Move and she and the kids are dead. You got that, bastard?”
He was still blind, stalling for time. Bolan aimed at the only sure target, his right shoulder, and the knife fell from his hand. Carboni screamed and hunched behind the woman, one hand around her throat. He stumbled toward the door into the living room.
“Stay there, Bolan, or I’ll rip out her carotid artery.”
Bolan lifted the baby, gave him to the girl and hurried the children out of the house. They ran toward the barn.
Bolan returned inside just in time to grab the shotgun and realize the .44 was no longer on the floor where it had fallen. The Executioner heard something and dived just as the big .44 AutoMag like his own fired twice in rapid succession.
12
The first bullet missed Bolan by inches. The second slammed into his left arm and then out. An inch lower and it would have broken the bone. He was lucky to get only a surface wound.
His Beretta stuttered out three rounds in return, chipping away at the doorframe through which the commission’s hit man had vanished. Bolan bolted through the kitchen into the living room. The hit man and his hostage had moved to the back hall, near a bedroom.
The woman screamed.
“You just lost your advantage, Carboni.”
“I’ve got the woman.”
“You kill her, what do you have left?”
“You won’t let her die.”
“Don’t count on it,” said Bolan. “Go ahead and blow her away. That will make my job of killing you that much easier.”
The only answer was silence. Bolan heard a muffled scream, then a window shatter. The Executioner sprinted out the front door and around to the back. Carboni, dragging the woman, was running for the barn. Bolan fired into the air, the woman fell and clawed at Carboni until he released her.
The Mafia’s hireling turned and sighted the heavy pistol at Bolan. Knowing how accurate the AutoMag was, Bolan dived to one side and rolled. He came up with the Uzi ready and sprayed a dozen rounds, then zigzagged for the barn. Another three shots from Carboni missed him. Carboni dived through the barn doorway. The woman ran back to the house.
Bolan retreated to a cement well house, six feet square, that stood between the barn and the house. The woman left the house and ran to the well.
She was frantic, her eyes wild, her hands clawing the air.
“Where are my babies?” she screamed at the Executioner.
“They left the house,” Bolan said. “I think they went to the barn.”
“But that monster is there!”
The hayloft door swung out and clattered against the side of the barn. From the shadows inside came Carboni’s voice.
“I have three hostages now, Bolan. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to throw out your weapons one by one, and then stand in the middle of the yard. If you don’t do that in twenty seconds, I’m going to take this little girl and smash her skull against this post, then toss her out.”
“No! No! No!” the woman screamed. Bolan grabbed her and pulled her behind the well.
“Listen to me!” he said to her, staring into her face. “He’ll do exactly that if I stay here. So I’m going to run into the fields. If he wants me, he’ll have to leave the kids here. When he goes, get the kids away. If you don’t have a car, run for it in the opposite direction. Don’t stay here. Understand?”
The woman nodded. Tears streamed down her face.
“Just don’t let him hurt my babies!” she whispered.
Bolan took out his .44 AutoMag and put two shots through the hayloft door.
“Give me a minute, then yell to him that I ran into the fields through the apple orchard. He’ll leave. Stay hidden until he’s gone.” She was shivering. He hugged her tightly. “Your kids will be fine. Just do what I told you.”
Bolan put one more round through the hayloft opening, then turned and ran. Just past the house, Carboni fired the big .44 at him but missed. Bolan jogged behind the house and continued. He had to get the maniac away from the children.
He ran to the stream and splashed across, continuing into the brush on the far side, occasionally splashing back across the little creek. He still had his three weapons but was not sure how he could use them out here.
Hearing an unusual noise, he turned and saw a tractor bouncing across the field. It came to a fence and plowed through it, knocking down posts and snapping barbed wire.
Bolan stopped running but stayed hidden in the brush.
Two minutes later he saw that the tractor was being driven by Carboni. Rolling along at ten or twelve miles an hour, it was soon entering Bolan’s range of fire.
“Just a little closer,” Bolan said, urging the killer to swing toward the creek. The Uzi was good for accurate firing at more than 200 yards, but the closer the better, and the target was still 150 yards away. He steadied the Uzi on a small log and sent five rounds toward the bouncing tractor. They slammed into the tractor but missed the driver.
Carboni was moving off the seat as the second spray of 9 mm parabellums slashed toward him. One must have hit him because he fell off the tractor. When it chugged by, he was nowhere to be seen. The tractor kept on going until the engine coughed and died fifty yards down the field.
Bolan fired into the tall grass just to the left of the spot he had last seen Carboni, then rolled to his right on instinct. A .44 round sang through the trees.
That gave the Executioner an idea. He picked a sturdy small tree and climbed fifteen feet high.
Now he could see the flattened grass where Carboni had slithered away. Evidently he had crawled toward a farm road half a mile away. A small depression opened into a little ravine, and Bolan saw that it soon became deep enough to hide Carboni as he ran.
The Executioner climbed down and ran along the high ground, certain he could find a spot somewhere ahead where he could pin down the Mafia hoodlum in the low ground.
There came a scream as of an animal in mortal danger. Bolan ran over a small rise and peered into the gully. Three hundred yards ahead Carboni was lying in the grass, struggling with something on his foot.
The Executioner fired twice toward the hoodlum, not expecting a hit.
Carboni screamed again, tore something off his foot and limped into the brush along the stream in the narrow valley.
A hundred yards farther, he climbed the bank, then disappeared over a ridge, evidently working toward the country road.
Bolan ran, cutting through the ravine to see what had given Carboni trouble.
It was a steel-jawed animal tra
p, now with blood on its teeth. It could easily have broken Carboni’s ankle. At least it would slow him down.
The Executioner ran up the hill, made certain Carboni was not waiting to ambush him at the top, then went over the ridge along a different route than the Mafia killer had taken.
Limping, Carboni was well down the slope, angling for the road. Down the road about a mile, Bolan could see a pickup truck approaching. Carboni saw it, too, and hurried to get to the road before it passed.
Bolan wished he had brought the Weatherby Mark V instead of the Uzi. With the Mark V he could have picked Carboni off at half a mile.
Bolan ran forward, surprised at the strength and determination of the wounded man in front of him, yet hardly aware of his own injured arm. Carboni ran hard the last hundred yards and stumbled onto the macadam roadway before the pickup arrived. He dropped to his knees and waved.
* * *
Billy Olsen saw the man running toward the road and slowed. As the man fell to his knees and waved, the year-old pickup slammed to a stop.
Billy’s wife, Faye, frowned.
“We’re gonna be late, Billy.”
“Man needs help. Got blood on his leg.”
He turned off the engine, stepped out of the rig and went around the front.
“Looks like you could use some help, mister,” he said.
“Sure as hell can,” Carboni said, swinging the big AutoMag around and killing Billy Olsen with one shot through the heart.
Faye screamed and moved to start the pickup. But the keys were in her dead husband’s pocket.
Carboni saw her and laughed.
“Need keys, lady. Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want your rig. Get out.”
He took the keys from the dead man’s right-hand pocket and returned to the pickup. He knew Bolan was around somewhere, but in another thirty seconds it would not matter.
“I said get out of the truck, bitch!” Carboni shouted.
The woman, numb from witnessing the coldblooded murder of her husband, was momentarily frozen in the seat. At Carboni’s command, she leaped from the pickup and ran.
As soon as she was away, four rounds of 9 mm parabellums burst through the windshield; one grazed Carboni’s shoulder. He started the truck, shifted into low and bombed down the road.
Bolan fisted Big Thunder, aimed and fired.
The .44 round is a .44 revolver bullet mated to a cut-down 7.62mm NATO rifle cartridge case. The AutoMag is as close to a rifle as any handgun can be. Ejected from the 6.5-inch barrel at 1,640 feet per second, the round ripped into the pickup’s engine block. It smashed into a piston, ripped the connecting rod away and jammed it into the crankshaft, instantly killing the engine. The pickup wheezed to a stop.
Carboni swore.
As a burst from the Uzi swept into the cab, Carboni slid out the far door and ran for the ditch. His right leg felt as if it was being dipped into fire with every step. His left leg had taken a bullet but did not hurt. He lay in the ditch watching for Bolan. This would be the time! He felt it. He would play dead and let Bolan investigate the pickup — then blow the bastard away and collect the head money. Five million dollars!
He fought off a wave of dizziness and continued to watch the roadway and the pickup.
Five minutes later he was still watching.
A car approached, slowed near the body of Billy Olsen. His widow appeared at the side of the road and flagged it down. She got in and it turned around and raced away.
Carboni knew he had to move. Within minutes the woman would contact the police and the place would soon be swarming with cops.
Move... where? The ditch was too shallow to protect him if he stood, so he crawled away. He saw another farmhouse half a mile away, and recognized it as his best chance. Ahead was a cornfield. Yes! He would run through the corn toward the farm as fast as he could.
He tried to block the pain in his leg and the aches from a dozen bruises and cuts. He was moving, that was the important thing.
To take his mind off the pain of crawling, he concentrated on memories.
He had grown up in a neighborhood in Philly where if you weren’t tough you didn’t survive.
Kicked out of three high schools, he finally went into business for himself instead of finishing his sophomore year. He became a hubcap specialist for garages, which paid him two dollars a hubcap and sold them for six to twenty. For a year he stole hubcaps on order, making as much as a hundred dollars a week.
Then he got busted and spent six weeks in juvenile detention, where he met guys as tough as he was. On the outside again, he and three of his new friends began a small protection racket.
For six months they prospered. The merchants wanted help controlling the kids on the long block, and if the Pro club told the teen gangs to quit harassing a certain shop, they did or found themselves beaten up.
One shop owner did not understand this form of American free enterprise and refused to pay fifty dollars a week for protection.
Carboni, the biggest of the Pro team, volunteered to have a “talk” with the slender Puerto Rican immigrant who was trying to make a living to support his six children, two sisters, an uncle and three cousins.
The young Carboni called him out in the alley and explained that all the other merchants gladly paid the money to prevent the small gangs of punks from ripping up their stores. The Puerto Rican had learned the money system and could count out change in dollars and cents perfectly, but did not know much English. His fifty English words were not ones Vince Carboni wanted to hear.
Carboni slapped him around a little and the Puerto Rican went for a knife in his pocket. Then Carboni got mad and began to take the “goddamn greaser” apart with his bare hands. The knife got knocked away before it drew blood, and Carboni, who was more than six feet tall and had done enough work in a gym to have developed powerful arms and shoulders, pounded the slender body until it sagged to the ground.
He picked up the unconscious form to give him one last pasting. He swung his big fist at the storekeeper, who was on the verge of consciousness, then swung harder, his scarred knuckles pounding into the man’s jaw.
The crack of bones breaking came softly, but Carboni heard them. He left the body in the alley and swaggered away. Damn! He had broken the little guy’s neck! He’d killed the son of a bitch!
The police did not interrogate the Pro group. Everyone on the block knew that the Puerto Rican had refused to cooperate, but nobody said a word. Carboni went around to the store owners the next day and signed up six more. They quickly made verbal agreements and turned over two weeks in advance of the new seventy-five-dollar fee.
There was no more trouble with the shop owners for almost a year. Carboni took over the leadership of the Pro team as it moved into burglary and then into the armed robberies of a few liquor stores.
When Carboni held his first .32-caliber revolver, he knew he had found his true calling. He practiced until he was proficient with the little gun, then got a .38 and a year later a World War II .45 automatic, used and battered.
When he was nineteen he was invited to work for a loan shark who occasionally needed “persuasion” power with some of his customers. That marked the beginning of a long and fruitful association with the Mafia and the people who now would pay Carboni five million dollars for the removal of their most persistent threat, Mack Bolan.
Vince Carboni looked up and saw that he had reached the cornfield. He glanced back as he moved up to the side of the road, then peered over the low crown. He could not see the bastard Bolan anywhere. He crawled across the ditch, then rose and ran into the cornfield.
No shots.
He felt better. Now, he wanted to get to the farmhouse, set up a trap for Bolan and collect the five million. He would be a legend in the Mafia, the man who blew away the Executioner!
* * *
Fifty yards away, Mack Bolan was tying a makeshift bandage around his upper left arm, which was still bleeding. Although he knew where Carb
oni was, he had not been in a position to shoot. As he tied the bandage with his right hand and his teeth, he watched Carboni bolt through the corn.
The Executioner frowned as he realized Carboni was heading for another farmhouse. He had to get there first and set up a little surprise for him, a deadly one.
Figuring Carboni would penetrate the field deeply enough to remain hidden, and that that would also mask his view of the road, Bolan rose from the ditch, adjusted his equipment and began a jog along the shoulder. The farmhouse was a little more than half a mile away. He should be there in about three and one-half minutes. Carboni could not make that kind of time through the corn.
Bolan ran up the driveway of the farmhouse and was approaching the back door when a shotgun was pushed through a hole in the screen door, and pointed directly at him. He was no more than ten feet away.
“Don’t even breathe hard, young feller. We know all about you. Got it on the telephone. You’re the bastard who shot down young Billy Olsen in cold blood. In my time I’d just blast you straight to hell and bury you in the cornfield.”
Bolan was staring at the shadowy figure of a man about seventy-five years old. “Sir, you’ve got the wrong man. I’m chasing the same man you’re talking about.”
“Not likely. Said you was a good talker. Now put down them weapons and lie down on your back. Do it now. My trigger finger ain’t as steady as it used to be.”
Bolan’s mind raced. Probably buckshot in the gun, which would cut him in two if it hit him. There was nothing nearby to hide behind. There was no bluff left. All he could count on was that the man had slow reflexes.
“I’m not the man you want!” Bolan shouted. “He’s coming right down there by your barn.” Bolan turned and pointed, dived and rolled the other way, then jumped up and zigzagged behind a picket fence around the inner yard. The shotgun roared, but it was aimed high, probably deliberately. Bolan dashed toward the barn and was soon out of range of the buckshot. No more shots sounded.
Bolan looked at the cornfield. He saw no movement. His gaze swept the area as he would a section of no-man’s-land, watching for enemy troop movements. He repeatedly scanned the section nearest the road, moving his eyes like the sweep-line reader on a cathode-ray tube.
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