The stone hit the side of the rental car, and in the night air it sounded like the sedan's door being pulled shut.
Bolan charged at the van full speed now, the .44 AutoMag gripped in his right hand, but the vehicle was still another ten meters away from the intersection.
The Executioner braced himself as he ran.
He heard the explosion behind him an instant after the rock hit the Mustang. The blast lit up the night with a silver flash that rocked the ground under Bolan's feet.
He was right.
The Mustang was wired to explode in case the ambush was not successful.
The night blitzer looked back to see the rental car go up in a fireball eruption.
The van roared to life and the vehicle shot forward.
At first Bolan thought he would not catch the van before it got away.
But the driver decided to withdraw on the same street that led back to the main avenue by which the vehicle had followed Bolan there.
They were too sure of themselves.
The van swung in a screeching U-turn that almost capsized the vehicle.
The driver stood on the gas as the bulky vehicle lurched forward, accelerating the hell out of there — on a course that would take it right past Bolan's position on the tree-lined street.
Without slacking pace, Bolan reholstered the AutoMag. He used his momentum to jump and grab a low-hanging branch.
He hoisted himself up into the lower branches as the van gunned by beneath him. Bolan dropped onto the vehicle as it sped by, spraddling himself on the roof. He knew that the occupants of the hurtling van would hear the thump of his landing but not have time to react.
He gripped the left bar of the roof rack to steady himself on the slippery surface. With his right hand, Bolan pointed the .44 AutoMag into the cab of the speeding vehicle. He opened fire blindly.
Someone screamed shrilly.
"Agh! My ear! He shot off my fucking ear!"
The van reached the intersection.
The driver yanked to the left in a wide arc that caused the wheels to ride the curb with enough impact to loosen Bolan's grip on the roof rack, pitching him to the ground.
He landed on the springy turf of a well-tended lawn, coming out of the roll in time to see the glow of the red taillights diminishing in the distance as the speeding van rocketed past the hulk of the flaming Mustang.
The sound of squealing tires filled the night air as the fleeing vehicle began a mad swerving pattern.
The wandering van presented an almost impossible target for the ace marksman. But Bolan decided not to risk a shot that could endanger innocent bystanders in this residential area.
He turned on his heel and jogged back along the street to where the CIA agents had parked their Ford near the Interstate offices.
Bolan saw no sign of the wounded CIA man who had started to follow him.
He reached through the driver's-side window of the Agency car and felt along the steering column. The keys were in it. He slapped the big AutoMag back into sideleather on his hip, then climbed into the Ford. The Executioner gunned the car to life and burned rubber in hot pursuit after the escaping van.
* * *
Bob Gridell's heart pounded against his rib cage like a jackhammer. The injured CIA man forced himself to walk along on the dark street in pursuit of the big gunman.
He paused for a moment when the chatter of automatic-weapons fire sounded from up ahead. Then he gripped the .38 even tighter in his right hand and pushed on, almost delirious with pain.
The shooting stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
Seconds later a loud explosion blasted the night, almost pitching him to the pavement.
Momentarily distracted by the eruption, Gridell sighted the unmarked Ford. Suddenly the vehicle roared to life and executed a squealing U-turn that left a smoking patch of rubber on the tarmac.
Gridell raised his .38 and assumed a shooting stance as best he could. Pain knifed through him as he triggered three shots after the receding car. The reports from his pistol thundered in his ears as he realized his shots were going wild.
The agent's own car was out of range.
The CIA man held his fire.
All he could do was helplessly watch the taillights of the Ford disappear into the distance.
The echo of gunfire faded from suburbia.
Residents got braver. They clustered along the tree-lined street that had so suddenly become a hell-ground. Curious chatter filled the air.
Gridell lowered his pistol.
He turned, wearily, painfully, forcing himself to limp back to the nearest house.
Six men dead, including a partner; a kid who never had the chance to prove himself.
A stolen unmarked car.
And a wild card.
John Phoenix.
11
Bolan caught up with the van on Rhode Island Avenue. It was heading southwest, back across the state line into D.C., retracing the route that had led the parade of death into Brentwood.
The Executioner held his tracking position as far back as possible.
Traffic along the main artery was even sparser than before, and Bolan realized the men in the van were not trying very hard to evade him, heavy traffic or light. Unless, of course, they were luring him into a trap.
John Phoenix intended to trail these rats back to their hole.
The Executioner would blow hell out of whatever rat hole the van led him to.
The trail was heading back to the sprawling ghetto.
He followed the van off the main avenues, away from the bright lights, to a city block of vacant tenements that loomed like monoliths against the cloudy night sky, a city block of condemned renewal.
Bolan watched the customized vehicle turn into a street flanked by deserted tenements and another block that had already met the demolition crew's iron ball.
It was a desolate scene in the middle of the city. The sounds of midnight D.C. were muffled, distant; it could have been a universe away.
The driver doused his headlights as the van came to a stop in front of an apartment building. Car doors opened. Bolan guided his own vehicle into a turn, out of sight, before the occupants of the van could turn fully around on their way into the nearest tenement.
They disappeared inside.
Bolan unleathered the AutoMag and padded after the two men.
He paused, flattening himself against a wall at the open entranceway to the condemned building. He held up the stainless-steel .44, ready for anything. Ready to kill. He eased into the tomblike shell that had once housed life but now only reeked of dry rot and decay.
He heard faint voices coming from down a dark corridor. The voices were muffled by walls.
Bolan kept his back pressed to the grimy wall of the corridor. He moved slowly, being careful to step only where the floor met the baseboard of the wall, avoiding any loose floorboards that could cause a warning squeak in a building this old.
He followed the sound of the conversation to a room where the door had been taken off the hinges. A rectangle of dull grayish light fell upon the scuffed floor of the corridor.
Bolan made it to that entrance in a half dozen soundless strides.
He stood just out of view of whoever was talking inside.
He listened.
"The bastard shot my fucking ear clean off!" a voice whined in agony.
Another male voice said, "You bleedin' like a stuck pig, Jimmy Lee."
"You made your report. Have him patched up, Sam," said a third voice.
"Uh, what about you and, uh, the lady here?" the second person asked.
"John Phoenix is dead, ain't he?" growled Boss Voice. "I plan to stay right here and keep on doing what I've been doing. Ain't nothing to worry about."
Bolan had heard enough. He stepped into the room.
Three black guys.
The driver, and a guy who held his ear and looked like all his blood was draining out of the wound where Bolan had shot him.
She was at the precious stage between girl and woman, innocence and sensuality in equal measures.
Bolan guessed her age to be eighteen. Shoulder-length golden hair framed a pretty face with a smattering of freckles. Her blue eyes held a glazed look and perspiration glistened on her nubile body.
Bolan straddled the doorway, tracking the .44 to cover the three men.
He addressed the young woman without looking at her.
"You're in a killing zone, young lady. Back off."
"I'm Ali's woman. Go to hell, mister," she said rebelliously.
"Cap him!" hissed the half-naked dude.
All three men fell away in separate directions, clawing for hardware. Even the bleeding Jimmy Lee.
Bolan put the wounded man out of his misery with a .44 headbuster from Big Thunder that sprayed the wall behind him full of brains and skull bits.
Sam, the driver of the van, was tracking on Bolan with an Uzi that he had slung beneath his jacket; the gun he'd ambushed Bolan with. But Sam was too slow.
Big Thunder spoke again as another projectile opened Sam's throat. A gaping hole appeared in his neck. The guy shuddered and collapsed lifeless on top of Jimmy Lee.
Bolan heard the blonde shriek.
He whirled in a crouch, just in time to see Ali half dragging the naked blonde out of the doorway.
The young woman was stumbling along willingly after the black, as they disappeared into the corridor outside the room.
Bolan angled for a bead on the woman's boyfriend, but she kept getting into the line of fire.
Bolan realized that they were heading toward the front of the tenement building.
Bolan quick-stepped into the corridor just as the black guy and the nude blonde reached the front entrance of the building.
Ali still had a tight grip around the woman's wrist.
"Hold it right there, you two," ordered Bolan.
He sighted down the hallway on the man.
The blonde was still in the line of fire.
The man spun around, releasing the girl's wrist. He flashed his right forearm up under her throat, pulling her back against him as a shield. Ali raised the .45 and pressed the automatic's muzzle against the girl's right temple.
Her eyes flared with new panic.
Ali's arm crushed the breath out of her.
"Wait!" she screamed. "No!"
The black glared over her shoulder at the man with the AutoMag.
"Drop your piece, motherfucker, or I'll waste this bitch."
It registered fully with the blonde.
"Ali! What are you doing?"
Bolan had aimed at a spot between Ali's eyes, but there was death reflex to consider. The damn .45 could still go off.
The girl jerked her head sideways, away from her lover's pistol.
Bolan triggered a round and the minihowitzer recoiled in his hand, spitting flame and a .44 flesh-eater that blew Ali's .45 automatic to bits. The impact obliterated three of his fingers along with it in a violent red spray.
Ali snarled in pain like a wounded tiger. He released the blonde and shoved her at Bolan, delivering a brutal chop to the side of her neck with his good hand.
The girl's eyes rolled back in her head.
She was deadweight coming at Bolan.
Ali expected Bolan to catch the nude form.
Bolan sidestepped, the AutoMag tracking back to Ali.
In the heartbeat it took for Bolan to sidestep the blonde and let her collapse against the nearest wall, the wounded black dodged out of the condemned tenement, back onto the sidewalk.
Bolan raced after him.
The big blitzer cast a glance at the crumpled figure of a naked woman on whom the tables had turned. She was unconscious.
A car engine roared to life in front of the building.
The Ford that belonged to the CIA was stolen again.
Bolan reached the front steps of the deserted tenement just in time to see the Ford flash past a sporty Lancia that was parked near the tenement. The fleeing car disappeared from sight around the corner of the building.
Nothing moved.
Bolan held in a bitter curse that burned in his throat.
He turned and reentered the building.
He walked by the unconscious blonde into the room where he had killed the two other blacks.
Bolan checked the dead men's wallets.
Drivers' licenses identified the deceased as Sam Catcher and James Lee Brown. Some pictures, miscellaneous junk, what looked like a gram of coke wrapped in tin foil snug in each wallet.
And each pocketbook yielded two hundred fifty dollars in brand-new bills.
Bolan grabbed a blanket from the bed and went back to the young woman.
There was no time to waste. Gunfire in this area could go unreported. It often did. But Washington was the most policed city in the nation. The call-in could already have been made.
He wrapped the blonde in the blanket.
There was nothing erotic about her nakedness. She was too unconscious to be sexy.
He picked up the strap purse she had instinctively grabbed in flight. He checked the handbag and discovered the ownership papers of the Lancia.
He carried her outside.
He moved around the building where he had seen the sports car. He placed the girl in the passenger seat, then got behind the wheel. He went through her purse again and found the keys to the car.
He found something else in the young lady's purse that he checked on as soon as he steered the Lancia safely a couple of blocks away.
It was the lady's driver's license.
And the deadly maze took on one more curious twist.
The damndest one in a night of damnation.
Her name was Kelly Crawford.
Bolan felt his gut clench.
He checked Kelly's address.
General Crawford had a daughter named Kelly.
The same General Crawford who had been Bolan's commanding officer in Vietnam, and had been instrumental in setting up the Stony Man Farm operation.
Kelly Crawford.
The general's daughter.
Out cold in a blanket and nothing else in a car driven by Bolan.
Some night, yeah.
And the killing had only begun.
12
Bolan had not intended this night in Washington to be one of rescuing damsels in distress or engaging everyone he encountered in pointless firefights. Sometimes, though, a man is forced into pure reflex response.
Kelly Crawford, case in point.
Bolan braked the Lancia for a moment at a drive-up pay phone and looked up General Crawford's residence in an area directory. It was listed and matched the address on the license in the young woman's purse.
He drove west on Constitution, through the moderate night traffic. Cruising at the legal speed limit, he took the Roosevelt Bridge across the dark expanse of the Potomac into Virginia.
The blonde in the blanket and nothing else batted her eyes open as Bolan swung south in the direction of the general's home in the upper-class suburbs of Alexandria.
Kelly Crawford said nothing to Mack Bolan. She glared straight ahead into the night as he drove, pulling the blanket tighter around herself, not even acknowledging the man beside her with a glance.
Bolan could see nothing of General Crawford in the girl's physical appearance. She must have taken after her mother.
Retired Brigadier General James Crawford and his daughter lived in a neighborhood of winding streets, the homes set back from the streets on manicured lots separated from each other by trees and evergreen hedge.
A porch light went on when Bolan wheeled the Lancia to a stop on the half-circle gravel driveway in front of a sprawling bungalow.
The door opened and General Crawford stood there
.
The girl in the blanket ran past her father into the house, out of sight.
Bolan stepped in and punched off the porch light. He closed the front door.
The general watched the big man with steady eyes, noting the AutoMag holstered at Bolan's hip.
"Colonel Phoenix, would you mind telling me what the hell is going on here?"
The general's warm Arkansas drawl was taut with concern.
This man was the closest thing Bolan had ever had to a father figure, after his real father.
Sam and Elsa Bolan had instilled in their son the basic morality of right and wrong that inspired Bolan to this day.
General Crawford had taken a green young recruit and made of him a combat-hardened veteran. The general made a soldier out of Mack Bolan in Vietnam.
Crawford visited Bolan in the earliest stage of the Phoenix program when Bolan had been holed up recovering from the plastic surgery that had transformed The Executioner into John Phoenix. There had been some briefings after that, but Bolan had not seen General Crawford from then until this moment.
Bolan nodded in the direction the general's daughter had taken.
"You've got some trouble, General."
"I've had trouble with Kelly since the day Lucy died eleven years ago. Come in, Colonel. Drink?"
"I could stand some coffee."
"In the kitchen."
Crawford led the way.
They sat at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to perk.
"I've only got time for a quick stop," said Bolan.
"Tell me what happened."
"Kelly has rough friends."
"A black guy?"
"Three of them. Two of them are dead. Datcher and Brown, if it matters."
"It doesn't. One got away?"
Bolan nodded. "Wounded."
"That would be Jones. Were they... harming my daughter?"
Bolan told the general what happened.
The general registered no outward emotion as he listened. He stood and prepared the cups of coffee.
"Tell me about Jones," Bolan requested when he finished his report.
The general handed Bolan a cup of coffee.
"Grover Jones. He started calling himself Damu Abdul Ali a few months ago."
"How long has Kelly known him?"
"A few months. I expressly forbade Kelly to see him again. She decided it was because he was black."
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