“They’re all down,” John reported unemotionally.
“Spider, too?”
“Spider, too. Plus two of Ship’s inside boys.”
The Federal procession had hit the road and was passing back westward.
Domino told his lieutenant, “I sent Paul to bring Ship back. You take some trackers to the rear. I want that boy and I want him heavy. It’s twice he’s made a monkey of us. It’s twice he’s used cops to do it. I don’t like the smell. I don’t like the way he always seems to know everything that’s going down. I want him alive, even if it’s no more than a talking head. I want that boy screaming turkey. I think we’ll solve a lot of problems all over the outfit when we get that.”
“Right,” John said. “What do we do about the women?”
“Find Bolan, you’ll find the women. Don’t come back without them, John.”
John said, “Right,” and moved away.
Domino was left standing alone in the grass.
He could not believe it. He simply could not …
For the first time in a long time, the headhunter felt like tearing his hair and yelling—at anything, at anybody.
Bolan! He was the guy! He was behind it all!
How did the goddamn guy pull such shit as that?
How did he do it?
All the legends, all the stories, and the reputation of the guy had sounded like typical street-soldier romantic bullshit all this time. But now it all was like swarming bees trying to use the Domino for a hive. It was not just a lot of romantic …
For the first time, Domino knew fear. Not that kind of fear—that kind of fear you lived with all the time. But for the first time in his impressive career, Domino knew the fear of failing.
How could he return to the headshed, on such a sensitive mission, without the goods?
A mild shudder traveled his full length.
To hell with Bolan! Bolan wasn’t the mission—he was just an obstacle that no one could blame Domino for anyway. He wanted the guy, sure, but that was secondary.
First, he had to collect Ship and the two women.
In the process, or after the process—it mattered not—he would collect Mack Bolan’s talking head.
Domino, the Blackest of all Aces, sure as hell was not going to blow this one.
He signaled to a couple of gun bearers and made a run for his car. He was going to blow some fucking heads, that was what!
Ecclefield leaned forward across the seat as soon as they were clear of the estate and told his driver, “Turn on the CB to Channel nineteen and pass the mike back here.”
The truckers’ channel was very noisy. The Fed waited briefly then broke it. “This is the Screaming Eagle for a short. Is the Big Guy wearing ears?”
He was delighted and a bit surprised to receive an immediate response. “Yeah, come on back, Eagle.”
“Let’s Ten-twenty-seven to Seven.”
“Ten-four, I’m going down.”
The driver switched to Channel seven. Ecclefield announced into there, “Screaming Eagle on the break.”
“Right. This one is better. I’m on you.”
“How’d your thing pan out, Big Guy? I heard you coming but nothing going away.”
“Right,” replied that strong voice. “It went without a hitch. Love and kisses to you and all of yours. The Ten-thirty-six was perfect.”
“Glad to hear it. I have a fascinating development to report.”
“Is it a fit subject for citizens radio?”
“If we keep it clean, yeah. Would you believe that I came away with a male V.I.P. volunteer for room and board at my uncle’s house?”
“I might believe that, yeah. Is it a V.I.P. like a ship that passes in the night?”
“That kind, yeah. You don’t find that surprising?”
Bolan replied, “It sort of fits something I’ve been looking at, Eagle. I suggest that you find him a cool room. He may be especially susceptible to heat.”
“Okay, yeah, I can appreciate that.”
“Also, you might look for something that came away right behind you. I’d call it that way, for sure.”
“For sure, a definite Ten-four on that, okay. We’ll watch it. How do you figure my roomer?”
“I’d say he’s feeling a bit insecure. A lot of the V.I.P. houses are affecting people that way right now, I hear. You might talk to your fraternity brother in wonderland about that, for sure.”
“For sure. I’ll do that, Big Guy. I’ll be close to the landline all day if you should need a Ten-twenty-one.”
“Right. I’m Ten-sixty-four, down and gone.”
Ecclefield sighed and passed the mike forward.
Sciaparelli growled, “What was all that shit? You think nobody knew what you were talking about?”
“Don’t get testy with me, mister. I’ll stop the car right here and boot you out on your own.”
“You heard what your boss said. Find me a cool room.”
Ecclefield found himself grinning at his prize guest. He was almost tempted to tell him who “Big Guy” really was. Almost. Not quite. If any of this afternoon’s real truth should leak into the wrong ears, young David Ecclefield would need a fraternity of friends, indeed, just to keep his own ass out of the slammer.
“Cool, hell,” he told the big cheese. “I’m putting you in a deep freeze, mister.”
“The deeper the better, kid,” Sciaparelli muttered.
“It doesn’t come free, you know.”
“Show me an ice cube, kid, and I’ll show you any damned thing you want to know.”
“Can I rely on that?”
“Long as I can rely on you, sure.”
Young David could not believe his good fortune. He had something in his pocket that no one else had ever had, at any time.
He had himself a genuine singing boss. And he owed it all to the fraternity.
“Something’s wrong up ahead!” his driver announced worriedly.
Ecclefield took a quick look and yelled, “Don’t stop! Go around it!”
“It” was a roadblock, three automobiles wedged into an accordion formation across the narrow roadway.
And suddenly they were plunging over the curb and across the sidewalk into thick brush. There was nothing to be heard but the unceasing chatter of automatic weapons and a corresponding rain of angry hornets zipping through the vehicle, and the whole beautiful world seemed to be falling in on him.
He’d blown it, for sure.
There was nothing whatever in his pocket now but warm sticky blood and a crashing realization of failure.
A microphone was dangling just above his head. He grabbed it and punched the button to sigh, “Ten-thirty-three, Big Guy. Two minutes west of the pickup and Ten-thirty-four.”
He did not know, in afterthought, why he’d done that.
Maybe he’d just wanted the big guy to know that Young David had blown it. Maybe it was meant as a statement that the Big Guy’s way was the only way. Or perhaps he’d meant it as a final farewell to the fraternity of blitzing buddies.
One did not rationalize one’s own final moments.
15: Battle at Paces Ferry
Bolan’s path of retreat was a little-used back road running roughly parallel to the route of the Federal convoy, and he was an estimated one mile north when he heard the Ten-thirty-three (emergency) break. His response to the help needed Ten-thirty-four was an instinctive and unthinking swerve southward, the mind pitching forward to overlay the terrain in that trouble zone in a mental search for the most likely point of ambush.
The response by the Corvette was magnificent. That super-souped power plant took the spur without a murmur of complaint to send him hurtling along that winding chute with a surge such as he had never before experienced in a land vehicle.
The center of gravity was low and the road purchase superb. Curves were something to challenge only the nerve of the driver, not the roadability of the vehicle.
And that trip was, in retrospect, somewhat aki
n to the launching of a rocket toward free fall in space. All the poop was delivered into the running jump; the rest was a lazy coasting. The tach needle had climbed steadily and quickly to surpass the redline and on to the peg in the first quarter-mile. He’d eased off then, fearing that the engine would blow up, and she was hovering at that redline when he executed the final curve and screamed into pay dirt. He had not noted the m.p.h. gage, only the tach, but transpired time alone told the ground-speed story.
He was at the scene in less than thirty seconds.
The lady was unconscious. She had come around briefly from the tap he’d given her, had become very emotional, and had then slipped back into the Land of Nod. She’d evidently been under severe emotional strain for quite a long time. If she felt like letting go for a while now, then the rest could only do her good—and it was good for Bolan, as well. He had not felt equipped—given the circumstances of the moment—to handle an emotionally overwrought woman.
Now, he was doubly grateful for the unconscious state of Suzy Sciaparelli. He left the car at the junction just down-range from the sounds of battle, partially concealed in bushes at the side of the road and well clear of any possibly straying bullets.
The neighborhood was a mixture of “well-fixed” and “quite well.” The homes along this section of the road were irregularly spaced at intervals ranging from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards. The ambush point was at a curve and adjacent to an overgrown unimproved lot at one side of the road, with dense woods on the other.
Three vehicles with official-looking markings were forming a roadblock. A furious gun battle was in progress. Five vehicles of the Federal convoy were skewed around up-range, beyond the roadblock from Bolan’s position. Apparently, he had come in on the attacker’s unprotected rear.
A sixth vehicle had obviously attempted to run the blockade. It was on its side in the empty lot, bullet-riddled.
The G-men were in a bad defensive set. Three guys with choppers had cover behind the blockade. They were keeping the Feds pinned from the front while others were laying on them from the woods.
Bolan was running up on the exposed rear of the roadblock, AutoMag at the ready, when the significance of the markings on those blockade vehicles descended on him.
They were police cars.
His initial reaction to that discovery was one of horror. Was it a ghastly error in identification—with soldiers of the same side engaging one another?
Was the roadblock a police response to the gunfire on upper Paces Ferry Road?
The question was answered immediately by the evidence fresh at hand. One of the machine-gunners whirled to Bolan’s approach, and Bolan immediately recognized the frozen expression of a headhunter. He’d seen the guy earlier that day at the airport.
Big Thunder boomed without considering the matter further. The guy’s head exploded, splattering frothy red jelly across a police decal on the vehicle’s door.
Another guy came around with his piece at full chatter. Round two ended the chatter at quarter-circle and punched the guy back the way he’d come, sending him sprawling facedown between two of the vehicles.
The third guy’s attention was elsewhere. He’d risen up to duel a Fed who was advancing along the safe side of the stalled convoy. Bolan sent a pair of head busters thwacking into the base of the guy’s skull in a lightning one-two, the first strike lifting him off his feet and the second tumbling him onto the hood of the vehicle.
Another guy came running out of the woods behind the block then froze in mid-stride for one startling moment of second thought, a riot gun at hip level, staring with rounded eyes at the man with the thunder-pistol. He wore the khaki uniform of a sheriff’s deputy, and the face on the guy was positively ashen.
It was a rather electric situation.
Bolan had been conditioning his survival instincts since the start of this long war—conditioning them to accept death from behind a badge rather than to send death the other way.
“It’s my difference,” he’d kept telling himself. “It’s the only definitive line between myself and the enemy.”
This was admittedly a somewhat fuzzy confrontation for that instinct. It was not really a situation for instinct alone to handle. The troubling question of identity had been resolved once, at the beginning of this battle. Instinct had handled that one okay, yeah, leaping to a quick friend-or-foe identification despite the presence of confusing camouflage.
This one was different. This one involved the badge itself, and that carefully cultivated death instinct was balking at the earlier decision.
It was a moment frozen outside of time, yeah.
Instincts were obviously flowing in both directions across that moment. Either man would have been a goner for sure, otherwise.
Then the moment came unstuck and moved on.
Someone in the woods behind the deputy screamed, “Hit ’im, Billy Bob!”
The deputy very softly said, “Fuck it.” He casually showed Bolan his back and strolled nonchalantly into the covering trees.
Bolan moved off in the other direction, toward the overturned vehicle.
The gun battle beyond the barricade had taken a sudden turn for the Feds, now that the pressure was released from the front. They were getting it together now, pressing the counterattack, and the fire from the woods was becoming sporadic and disheartened.
A rear door had been thrown open at the top of the overturned car. Bolan hauled himself up there and leaned into the opening for a quick eyeball.
Two men were in there.
One was the young strike-force boss. He had blood on his head and he was twisted across the backrest of the front seat.
The other man was crumpled beneath the steering wheel.
Both were unconscious.
Bolan went quickly to work, and he had them both lying in the grass beside the vehicle when a pair of Feds came jogging to the rescue, also.
Bolan was performing mouth-to-mouth on the driver. One of the Feds took over from him while the other examined young David.
“I think he’s okay,” Bolan panted. “More blood than damage. Concussion, probably.”
The guy had a service .38 in his paw. He gave Bolan a long scrutiny, then sheathed the weapon.
“That was some goddamn fancy shooting, buddy,” he said admiringly, “but you’d better truck it, now. I’d hate to have to explain you when the real cops show.”
Bolan asked him, “Where’s Sciaparelli?”
The Fed’s eyes flared and leapt to the car as he replied, “Isn’t he—I assumed—Ecclefield had him.”
Bolan growled, “He doesn’t have him now.”
“Nobody came near this car, mister,” the Fed said. “I had it covered all the way, ready to stop any movement on it. There wasn’t any.”
Bolan sighted back along the curve and told the guy, “You couldn’t see the wreckage from there.”
“I could see everything else.”
“You couldn’t see a guy moving through this grass,” Bolan argued. “Maybe he crawled away. He could be hurt. I suggest you start beating these bushes.”
“I suggest you truck it,” the Fed replied, with a grim little smile.
Bolan curled his lips back at the guy and trucked it.
Young David would be okay, unless he could not handle a scalp laceration and mild concussion.
The rest of the strike force, except for the driver of Ecclefield’s car, seemed to be okay—discounting the hurts of a couple of walking wounded who were obviously not in bad shape.
The injured driver had begun responding to the resuscitation when Bolan was relieved of the task. There were internal problems there, but he’d probably make it okay.
The only open question from the incident was the Rat of Atlanta. And, at the moment, Mack Bolan could not have possibly cared less about the fate of Charlie Sciaparelli. The guy fully deserved every unhappy thing that could possibly fall his way.
Bolan could certainly attest to that from personal obse
rvation. He had a twenty-six-year-old lady on his hands who looked forty and who may never know another totally sane day in her lifetime.
And that tragic lady’s problems had not ended yet.
Another car was pulled into the bushes behind the Corvette.
Three guys were standing at Bolan’s vehicle. Two were at opposite sides of the convertible, trying to drag the woman from the car, while the other merely stood and watched with a frozen face.
A familiar, frozen face. Bolan had checked out the guy earlier that day.
The Domino, yeah.
16: Living Good
Big Thunder leapt out there to hold unwaveringly on Domino’s right eye from six paces out as Bolan commanded, “Leave her!”
The two guys who were leaning into the car froze at their uncomfortable positions.
A pistol was visible at Domino’s belt, but the hands were a flicker too far away to try for it.
He was a cool one, though, yeah.
“This must be big bad Bolan,” he said smoothly.
Big bad Bolan did not want a shoot-out—not here, not in this situation. The targets were too scattered and the woman too vulnerable to an accidental hit.
He said, “Put the lady down. We’ll call it a draw. Good-bye.”
“Can’t do that, bad man,” the ace replied. “There’s no draw, and it’s too tight to say goodbye. You can’t take us all. So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to start with you,” Bolan told him. “Tell me good-bye or tell it to your head, guy.”
“It’s too dumb. We can make a deal.”
“What’s the deal?”
“I’ll let you keep Ship. You’ll let me keep the woman.”
Bolan told him, “I don’t have Ship, and you don’t have the woman. So what’s to deal?”
Bolan had been watching for it, and he got it. Those eyes. They dulled, just a whisper. The guy was losing it. He was falling apart, inside.
“Last chance to tell your head good-bye, Domino.”
“Look—it’s better than you think. Ship defected. He went away with some Feds. So I’ve lost it here. Okay. Where I’ve really lost it is back at the shed. You know. You and I are of the same cut. Right? Okay. All I want is a bit of dignity to take back with me. The woman will provide that. I’ll settle for that now. She won’t get hurt. And maybe I won’t get hurt too much. It doesn’t involve you at all. Why should anybody get hurt? Isn’t that better than dumb?”
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