“What are you doing?” Carter said, realizing for the first time what Bolan was doing.
“Getting James’s van back,” Bolan said.
“No way! We can stop them with the chopper!” Carter said, leaning past Bolan to bark a series of orders at the pilot. “There’s no need for you to do this!”
The helicopter dropped toward the road and cut in front of the van, its rotors sending a cloud of dust flying up. The van turned sharply, veering off the road and into the desert proper. Carter cursed and the pilot followed obligingly. The back doors to the van flew open and gun barrels appeared. The pilot hauled back on the stick, pulling up sharply and nearly dumping Carter out the side. Bolan grabbed the back of his windbreaker and pulled him back inside. “You were saying?” Bolan said.
“Hell with it! Do what you want!” Carter said. His face was flushed red, though whether with anger or fear, Bolan couldn’t tell.
“I always do,” Bolan said. He stepped to the door. “Keep over them! I don’t want to wind up splattered on the side of a saguaro somewhere!” he shouted to the pilot. The man gave him the thumbs-up and swooped over the van, keeping pace. Bolan took a breath and leaped. There was a heart-stopping lurch and then he slammed into the cold metal roof of the vehicle. With no time for niceties, he drew his knife and cut the cords connecting him to the helicopter.
A moment later, bullets chewed upward through the roof. Bolan rolled off, jamming his KA-BAR into the roof to keep himself from being flung off the bouncing, rocking van. He set his boots against the side of the vehicle and drew his Desert Eagle with his free hand. The big-bore pistol could easily penetrate the sheet-metal skin of the van and he wasted no time in stitching a line of bullet holes across the side. The van lurched and Bolan was forced to flatten himself against it as the spines of a cactus carved the back of his harness to rags and tatters.
When no more gunfire came from the back, Bolan holstered his pistol and slid along the side of the van toward the driver’s-side door. Eyes caught sight of him in the side mirror, and a familiar grin beamed at him as Sweets ducked his head out the window and pointed his pistol at Bolan.
“Man, Cousin Frank! You’re like a bad penny! We just can’t get rid of you!” The Parabellum punctuated each word with a snarl and Bolan felt the burning passage of a bullet across his cheek.
Twisting with animal speed, Bolan reached out and grabbed the barrel of the pistol, bending it away. Sweets squawked and the van turned, whipping around a hundred and eighty degrees as he and Bolan struggled for the weapon. Spitting dust and blood, Bolan managed to wrestle it away and he let it drop into the night. He followed up with a punch to Sweets’s face.
The van cut back the other way as Sweets slid to the side, shaking his head. Bolan grabbed the door and jammed his knife into the roof of the cab. Sweets lashed out with his boot, kicking the door open. Bolan swung out, clinging to the door with all his strength. Then Sweets slammed his boot against it to keep it from swinging back shut and howled like a coyote.
“Gonna scrape you off like a bug, boy!” he yowled, hands gripping the wheel with maniacal intensity.
Bolan gritted his teeth and reached for his pistol, hoping he could reach it before Sweets rammed him into a rock or cactus. He drew the Desert Eagle and it boomed solemnly, piercing the engine block of the van. The vehicle shuddered suddenly, like a heart-struck bull, and it slewed around and slowed.
“No! No, no, no, no!” Sweets shrieked, stomping ineffectually on the gas. Bolan dropped to the ground as the van careened forward; it was carried by its own momentum toward a saguaro that was at least twice its size. Sweets threw up his hands as the van crashed into the cactus and the top of the latter cracked and crashed down, perforating the cab. Sweets threw himself clear at the last minute.
He rose to his feet with a wet chuckle. Bolan stood some distance away, his pistol in hand. “You’re done,” the Executioner said, his voice like the bell of doom to Sweets’s ears.
“Yeah? Well, it was a good run, right?” Sweets said, spreading his hands and stepping away from the van. He grinned wildly, his eyes shining coldly in the moonlight. He glanced up at the helicopter swinging around overhead and clucked his tongue. “I wonder if ol’ Digger and Mr. One-Eye will make it? Probably so, seeing as how you wasted all this here time with me. And then, of course, ol’ Philo will have his way with that little filly.”
Bolan felt a chill course through him. “Where are they?”
“Who can say? Probably halfway to Tucson by now. Digger is a better driver than me.” Sweets’s hands dropped. “Always was.” He looked at Bolan. “I always wondered what a last stand felt like.” His smile spread and turned crooked. “Got to say, it ain’t as much fun as them books make it out to be.”
Bolan knew what was coming a moment before Sweets reached for the gun holstered at the small of his back. As the pistol sprang into view clenched in the other man’s hand, Bolan fired.
Sweets sat down abruptly, his chest and belly suddenly soaked through with red. Legs spread, hands resting in his lap, he looked up at Bolan and said, “You...shithead.” With a smile and a chuckle, Django Sweets toppled over face-first into the dust.
Bolan was already running for the helicopter, even as Sweets’s body ceased twitching.
Chapter 24
Tariq Ibn Tumart ran, his breath burning in his lungs. He ran through the ruins of his most audacious plan in years, and counted himself lucky that the bitch’s bullet had only grazed his ribs. His pistol was slippery in his hand and he resisted the urge to look back.
He’d take his chances in the desert. He knew how to survive in the desert, though the Sonoran Desert was a world away from the sands of North Africa. He could live rough and lick his wounds for a few weeks, until they stopped looking for him. And then what?
The thought almost brought him up short. And then what? Back to Algeria? Al Qaeda wasn’t going to be pleased. He’d gotten a hundred of their most fanatical men dead or in custody and not a single American death to show for it. That wasn’t acceptable, by the ways that they measured things. He knew they’d hunt him down, no two ways there. He’d be dodging fanatics for years to come.
He could stop and surrender. Turn himself in to Interpol and trade information for a cushy life in some high-security detention center. He owed nothing to anyone, and struggle for its own sake was not a virtue he held dear.
He snarled in frustration. No! No, he could no more surrender than he could slink back home. He was caught in a trap of his own making, and there was nothing for it but to try to salvage something. Anything.
He would start again, with a new identity. They might suspect, but the services he provided were too valuable to be so easily dispensed with. They would forgive him when the Americans wiped out another cell, or the British killed another section head. Then they would need him. Yes, they would gladly welcome him back then. He rubbed his neck, still feeling the noose, despite the optimism.
He stopped as lights blinded him. Two military SUVs sat at the end of the street, headlights blazing. Men with guns and uniforms waited. Their tension was evident in their postures. Mexican Federales, looking for anyone trying to get out of town.
He realized that the sound of gunfire had died away to nothing. His men were either dead or had given up, their dedication to martyrdom waning in the face of an organized resistance. Killing a school full of children was far different from facing armed men, and many fanatics found their enthusiasm dimming in such situations. Such was to be expected. Not everyone wanted to die heroically. Tumart himself felt that it was far better to live to fight another day. Last stands were for madmen and movie heroes.
Tumart licked his lips. He was only going to get one shot at this. He stuffed his gun into the back of his denims and stumbled out into view, his hands raised. Men shouted at him to stop, but he continued to stumble forward, as
if he didn’t understand. His body tensed and then uncoiled. He threw himself flat and drew his pistol, firing. The headlights went out with a tinkle of broken glass and he rolled to his feet, firing at the last place he’d seen human forms. A man screamed and others shouted. Tumart rushed forward, circling around to the side of an SUV. Dropping to the ground again, he rolled beneath it and fired, plucking the legs out from under another man.
As the man fell screaming, Tumart slid out and shot him in the head. A third man raced around the end of the other car, indistinct in the darkness. The mercenary spun and fired smoothly, blowing him backward. Three men died in as many minutes. He took a breath and bent to see which one had the keys.
A pistol clicked behind him and he stopped. “Step away from them,” Tanzir said.
Tumart raised his hands and stood. “Well, this is awkward, is it not?”
“No. You’re under arrest,” she said.
“Do you still enjoy saying that?” he said.
“More and more each time,” she said. “Drop your pistol and kick it away. Now.”
“Done,” he said, doing as she said. “I surrender, of course.”
“I have no doubt, seeing as you’re caught.” Tanzir stepped closer. “On your knees.”
“Is this really necessary?” Tumart said, turning slightly. “I’m happy to go with you.”
“On your knees, Tuerto!” she barked.
“No,” Tumart said, whipping a throwing knife from the sleeve of his jacket and sending it flying toward her. She sprang back and the blade cut a red line across her chin. Tariq lunged for her, grabbing her weapon and trying to wrestle it out of her grip. “Give me that, witch!”
“Get off me!” she said, snapping a knee into his belly. He stumbled back, pain flaring in his side. She fired and he tumbled onto his back. She rose over him, aiming at him. “On your belly!”
“I’d rather not,” he said. “Besides, you’re out of ammunition.” As she glanced at her gun, he kicked it out of her grip. Rising to his feet, he sent a blow winging toward her throat. She blocked it with both hands and they parted, breathing heavily. The sound of a helicopter rose in the distance.
“We could have been such friends,” he said. “I had it all planned out. A trip across America, and then to Montreal. Lovely town, Montreal. From there, to Paris. The City of Light is wonderful this time of year.”
“Shut up,” she said.
“But you had to go and spoil it all by being an altogether different type of policewoman than you first claimed to be,” he continued, ignoring her. “I am hurt, here, in my heart.”
“I’ll hurt you,” she snapped, sliding forward, the heel of her palm striking out toward his face. He moved aside, and caught her under the arm with the edge of his hand. She staggered and he stooped, having maneuvered himself toward one of the dead men. Swiftly he pulled the pistol from the man’s belt and aimed it at her. She stopped, her face going pale.
“It could have been lovely,” he said.
“Lovely,” someone said, behind him.
A noose of iron fingers closed around his throat and Tumart tried to howl as he was jerked into the air. He dropped the pistol and clawed at the fingertips exerting such inexorable pressure on his windpipe. His feet dangled several inches off the ground and the edges of his vision devolved into colored sparks and black smoke.
“Can you see the black bird?” a voice like stone grating on stone said mildly. “I want to know if men can see it. I want to see it, so you have to say. Can you see it?”
Tumart, panic washing away what remained of his self control, reached helplessly toward Tanzir, tongue bulging from between his lips as the life was strangled out of him.
“Can you see it?”
Tumart’s vision went all black, and sound vanished, swallowed by the muffled quiet of oblivion. Inside his head, something popped and then Tariq Ibn Tumart, El Tuerto, escaped the final trap and plunged into whatever awaited him in the next life.
Digger shook the body, and then let it fall into a heap in front of him. “I don’t think he saw it,” he said, looking blankly at Tanzir for a moment. Then, slowly, a sickening smile spread across his glass-marred features. “You’ll help me see it, though, won’t you? I can see the feathers in your hair.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, realizing even as she said it that he was far past the point of sanity. Whatever thin blanket of normalcy his true self had been hiding under had been stripped away, and all that remained was a monster quite unlike the man he’d just casually strangled in front of her.
She felt no sympathy for Tumart’s fate, but neither did she wish to join him in death at Digger’s hands. Tanzir made a lunge for the pistol Tumart had dropped. Digger was faster. His hand closed on her wrists and he whipped her through the air, causing her to crash against the side of the nearest SUV. She dropped down, her ribs making odd movements inside her. She fell forward and tried to crawl away, but Digger followed her doggedly. He grabbed her ankles and dragged her away from the vehicle.
“You’re being selfish,” he said like a parent lecturing a child. “Django said you were mine, and I want you to help me see the black bird you’ve got inside you. All women have one, just like Momma. I need to see it again, just once. It was so beautiful and it hurts me in my head to think about it,” he said, letting her leg drop and crouching over her. He drew the knife from his belt and pressed the tip to her cheek.
“I can’t think of nothing else no more,” he said, looking around at the burning buildings that surrounded them. The whole town was rapidly becoming an inferno, burning away as if it had never been. The fire was reflected in his eyes and Tanzir felt more frightened than she ever had before in her life. “I can’t think of nothing but the black bird. I don’t know where Django is...or anybody else. But it don’t matter. All I need is you,” he said, looking back down at her.
She kicked him in the balls. He squalled like a panther as she eeled out from under him and ran, clutching her ribs. Digger shook himself and loped after her.
She ran away from the fire and into the desert. The moon beamed down with a yellow glare across the blue sand as she moved, her ribs grating against one another with every step.
The town was a line of fire when she stumbled into the gulley and crashed into the scrub brush. Breathing heavily, she tried to claw her way free. She heard rocks crack and pop beneath Digger’s tread. And there was something else...a quiet, quick padding.
A shadow fell over her. Digger looked down at her. “Coyotes,” he said. “They can smell them bodies cooking. It makes them hungry and greed makes them brave,” he went on. “That’s what my momma said.” He gestured with the knife. “If you run, they’ll take you.”
“If I don’t, you’ll do the same,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, smiling. He reached for her as the coyotes in the darkness began to howl.
Chapter 25
“Look, just wait a minute!” Agent Carter said as Bolan dropped onto the ground. “We’ll get together a proper search party after we get James here to the medicos.”
“No time,” Bolan said, looking up at the FBI man. “If Sweets wasn’t lying, then Tuerto is making a run for it.”
“We’ve got the other choppers out now...they haven’t seen anybody...no vehicles, no one on foot, nobody!” Carter said, his tie flapping in the updraft of the chopper’s rotors. “They ain’t going nowhere!”
“All the more reason to find them quick,” Bolan said. “Agent Tanzir is good, but can she take on God knows how many men looking to die for the cause?”
“I—” Carter began. Then he shook his head. “I’ll send backup. Interpol is on its way. Try not to get yourself killed, Cooper.”
“I’ll do my best,” Bolan said as the helicopter lifted off and rose back into the night sky.
A moment later, Bolan was moving quickly through the heat and ash, his eyes scanning the streets for any sign of Tanzir. Carter assured him that the town had been emptied of everyone still breathing, including the people in the dance hall, but there had been no sign of Tanzir. Bolan stepped over a body and continued. Nearby, a building collapsed with a roar and cleansing flame caressed the dark sky. By morning, the coyote nest would be nothing but ash, and the plans of the Holy One Hundred with it.
But Bolan wouldn’t be satisfied until he found Agent Tanzir. He hoped she was just holed up somewhere, with Tuerto in custody. But he had a feeling that that wasn’t the case. When he found the second van, his suspicions were confirmed.
He stepped around it carefully, eyeing the dead men. Looking around, he began to put together a picture of what must have happened, and he was forced to shake his head in respect for Agent Tanzir. She was determined, he had to give her that. Then he saw the blood trail—both of them. One came from the side, and the other from the front of the wrecked van. Both of them were heading in the same direction.
He followed the trails through the town and came to the SUVs and the bodies. Bolan sank to his haunches beside Tuerto’s body and he traced the marks on the mercenary’s throat. Someone had strangled him, and crushed his windpipe in the bargain. Someone strong. A cold sensation settled in his stomach. Footprints made a strange pattern in the dirt, and he grunted. “Digger,” he said.
It had been too much to hope that the big man had been killed. Bolan checked the clip on his Desert Eagle and looked at the desert. Somewhere, he heard the high-pitched howl of a coyote and his skin crawled. He broke into a sprint, following the footprints.
The moonlight cast a dull blue tint of everything, and he had no trouble following the trail. His heartbeat sped up, and he said a silent prayer that he would find Tanzir in time. This wasn’t a race he could afford to lose. He pushed himself harder, running until his abused lungs flapped in his chest like deflated balloons and spots danced in front of his eyes. The smell of blood and a rank animal odor reached his nose. He slowed.
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