Collision Course

by Don Pendleton

  Caine picked up his cell phone and pгеррed his speed dial. He eased the big black Suburban, identical in almost every way to the ones interspersed among the limousines of the fast approaching motorcade, out into the street. Up ahead on Independence Avenue a black-and-white patrol car blocked off traffic. Two officers stood on the street to either side of their vehicle.

  It was evening, well past rush hour, and the traffic on Independence was light. To make his approach at good speed, Caine needed to cross the center and race up the other lane.

  One of the police officers stood at the open passenger's-side door, talking into his radio. Parked at the intersection only yards away sat Caine's vehicle-based IED. Just as Caine reached the first of the civilian cars lined up by the police roadblock, the first vehicle of the presidential motorcade zipped past, lights flashing and siren wailing.

  Caine wheeled the Suburban into the wrong lane and watched the mix of black limos and giant SUVs race past his point. The police officer on his radio saw the behemoth Chevy Suburban break ranks and he stepped away from his car. With the tint on the windows the big vehicle looked official.

  Momentarily confused, the officer turned to look back at the convoy running up Fourteenth Street behind him, obviously wondering if the Suburban belonged to the press corps or the Secret Service.

  "Number nine," Caine said and he wouldn't have recognized his own voice if he could have heard it from beneath his hockey mask.

  He hit the speed dial and the explosion came hard half a heartbeat later. The explosion was rolling thunder as the tour van just north of his position blew. The boom was so loud glass shattered up and down the stretch of street and a volcanic column of pitch black rose into the air. Secondary explosions of vehicle gas tanks rupturing tripped in daisy-cutter chains, and metal pieces from ripped-apart automobiles began raining down.

  It was on.

  24

  Immediately after the explosion there was a squeal of brakes as impeccably trained Secret Service drivers began reacting. A burning body arced out of the smoke and bounced hard off the pavement. The windshield had been blown out of the limo, and Caine caught a glimpse of two charred corpses flopping like dolls.

  One-handed, Caine guided the Suburban fully into the empty street lane on Independence Avenue. The two policemen at the intersection had been tossed to the ground and a three-foot-long piece of fender jutted from their windshield like the hilt of a sword.

  More chemical machine than human, Caine used his thumb to queue up his speed dial. In the middle of the street Secret Service drivers were already beginning to execute their evasive maneuvers. The downed policeman closer to Caine pushed himself up off the street, hands scrambling for his gun.

  The trunk of the Buick Skylark exploded with devastating, merciless force. More black-and-white smoke rolled out across the street like a supernatural sea fog, and the entire intersection was immediately obscured. The police cruiser and two civilian cars parked behind it at the checkpoint were thrown onto their sides like playing cards and their gas tanks erupted in orange flames.

  Caine couldn't hear the screams as he gunned the Suburban forward. All he could hear was the roar of the Suburban's big-block engine as he gunned it directly toward the smoke and violent turmoil.

  * * *

  Bolan spotted the black Suburban charging up through the smoke that followed the initial explosion, and he knew that more mayhem would surely follow. It was his job to limit the damage, protect the President and his wife as best he could.

  "Get down," he instructed the President and the first lady.

  The Executioner moved across the rear compartment to place himself between the President and the onrushing Suburban. He knew they were safer inside the vehicle than trying to make a run for safety, but still he felt helpless.

  The flash of the second detonation blinded Bolan, and in the moment before the concussive wave rocked the limousine, he threw himself forward to shield the President. Then he was flung back against the seat, and his world went black and silent.

  * * *

  The Suburban shuddered as he rolled over the charred corpse of one of the D.C. cops. Caine cut around the funeral pyre of one vehicle and launched himself into the smoke.

  Car number nine contained the rapid-reaction force of SWAT officers, which was the reason Caine had targeted that vehicle specifically. The SWAT team would be armed with 5.56 mm M-4 carbines and their armor would be more advanced than that of the rank-and-file VIP protection agents. Caine had seen the Skylark-trunk blast push the SWAT SUV over onto its side, and he felt sure he had bought himself long, precious moments.

  The trouble was the President. Generally the President rode in vehicle number six, but in reality it could be cars five, six or seven if the Secret Service used a shell-game strategy. Caine's plan for picking out the President was simple. He'd watch to see which vehicle the agents and officers scrambled to protect, and he would rain hell down on that one.

  Out of the smoke a crumpled, stalled limousine appeared. Vehicle number seven. Caine cut the wheel to the side to avoid the wreck. A uniformed police officer with a 12-gauge shotgun appeared suddenly in the middle of the street. The bumper of the Suburban slapped the man hard and sent him tumbling away like a bowling pin.

  An eddy in the smoke showed a limo turned diagonally in the street—all the rubber on its tires had been blown clean of the wheels. Instinct made Caine home in on the vehicle. He had captured the line of vehicles like a digital snapshot in his mind before triggering the first blast, and he was absolutely sure he was running down vehicle number six, the designated presidential limousine.

  As he surged forward, the litno's door popped open and a wild-looking man in a dark suit scrambled out. A flat, black automatic pistol filled his hand and his dazed expression twisted into startled fear and anger as he saw Caine's Suburban racing toward him.

  The agent lifted his Beretta and began pumping rounds at the monster SUV as it ran him down. He made no attempt to save his own life, and Caine's suspicions about the position of the President were confirmed. The 9 mm rounds pinged and whined as they ricocheted off the engine block, but Caine was doing close to forty miles per hour by the time he hit and nothing was going to slow him down.

  The front of the Suburban SUV slammed into the bodyguard, pinning him between vehicle grille and the limo door. The man screamed hard as blood painted the Suburban's windshield in the brief moment before the air bag deployed. Caine felt the reverberation of the impact travel up through the steering column and shake him like a child.

  Though braced for the impact, he was still jerked forward violently. The exploding air bag burst out and slammed him backward with stunning force. The concussion rattled him, but because of his chemical cocktail Caine was at once too relaxed and too keyed up to be subdued.

  His searching hand found the handle of the ice pick where it thrust up from the cushion of the passenger's seat. He wrapped his fingers around it in a tight fist and yanked it free before plunging it into the side of the air bag pinning him to the seat. The deflation was instantaneous, and he felt air rushing out as the bag collapsed under him like a punctured lung.

  Moving fast, he threw open the driver's door even as multiple car alarms began blaring around him. The strap of his AKM pulled against his neck as he backed out of the vehicle, dragging the ballistic shield out of the Suburban cab along with him.

  He hit the ground and the smoke choked him immediately. The glassy eyes of the dead agent looked at Caine from the crumpled, bloody hood of his vehicle. He heard angry shouts, knew desperate men were running closer now. He banked on his quasiofficial appearance slowing the approaching agents' reaction times and granting him initiative.

  Confusion reigned on the scene. He looked like one of the good guys, and the explosions could have caused the Suburban-versus-limousine wreck. He had a number of situational factors he was exploiting to shift and keep momentum. The ballistic shield was up and on his arm. He held the Kalashnikov by
its pistol grip and pushed out against the tension of the sling strapped around his body, forming a fulcrum that worked as a third hand.

  Caine stepped around the open door of his SUV. He was close enough to rake the inside of the limo with his Kalashnikov. He sensed movement and whirled, instinctively bringing up the shield. He was so chemically jacked his slightest motion rewarded him with nearly preternatural results.

  The Secret Service agents raced out of the roiling smoke, their hands raised protectively over faces as they cried toxins clear of their eyes, Beretta pistols naked in their fists. They saw Caine, suited up like a riot cop but then registered the incongruous shape of his drum-mounted AKM assault rifle.

  Caine scythed them down in a wild, loose Z-pattern burst designed to take them in the low belly, groin and hips beneath the protection of their body armor. Screaming, the agents fell, blood spurting from their wounds. One of the agents, a beefy man with a blond crew cut, managed to get off two tight shots despite his crippling pain, but the 9 mm pistol rounds struck the ballistic shield and Caine finished him off with a 5-round burst that tore the crew cut off his head.

  Caine spun back toward the presidential limo and saw an agent drawing down across the roof of the vehicle above the middle-compartment doors. Caine ducked behind the ballistic shield and the pistol round careened off the top of his Kevlar helmet, staggering him.

  He fired a burst of the heavy 7.62 mm slugs. The recoil shook the weapon in his hand, sending reverberations up his arm like an industrial jackhammer. The softball-size lump of his bicep knotted in reaction to the stress but held the bucking weapon easily. Shell casings spilled out of the oversize ejection port in a tumbling arc of spinning brass to bounce off the black asphalt at his feet. Cordite fumes filled his nose with the stink of burned gunpowder, invigorating him.

  Caine had loaded his drum with a tracer every third round to help him direct his aim while he fired one-handed. A laserlike stream of bullets poured into the immobilized limousine. It shattered the bullet-resistant glass like falling hammers and ripped through the cavity between the car doors. A tracer round, burning lava hot, burrowed into the seat stuffing under the plush leather seats and set the bench on fire.

  Three more rifle rounds struck the firing Secret Service agent, shattering his femurs and kneecaps. The man shrieked in agonized shock and spun away from the limo, dropping to the street. Kane stepped out to the side and pivoted so that the smoking muzzle of his Kalashnikov was aimed through the shattered window and toward the interior of the presidential vehicle. He saw the pitch-black glass divider separating the rear compartment of the limo from the center and aimed his fire toward it.

  He triggered a burst and cackled in glee as the glass divider spiderwebbed under the impact of his fusillade. The driver's door flew open to his left, and Caine turned, hidden behind the shield on his arm.

  The driver, his face black-eyed and bruised from his own air bag deployment, was still dazed by the impact of Caine's Suburban but managed to throw himself from the car, sweeping up the Beretta in his hands. Caine dropped into a crouch behind the ballistic shield as the pistol roared. The bullets snapped into the shield, shoving it hard up against Caine's Kevlar-protected shoulder and arm.

  He was slow turning in the bulky armor with his long weapon and some distant, disembodied part of his mind thought a collapsible-stock weapon would have been more versatile even as he closed the distance. It didn't matter, he thought just as dispassionately, there were no do-overs. The Secret Service agent burned through his magazine trying to bring Caine down, but the assassin was impervious to the bullets.

  Caine brought the Kalashnikov to bear and burned off a burst from point-blank range, splashing blood from the government bodyguard across the street. Caine rose as the agent riding shotgun dived across the front seats and fired.

  Sparks shot off the street as the man aimed for Caine's ankles in an attempt to bring him down. A 9 mm Parabellum round ricocheted up and shattered the ceramic insert on Caine's shin guards. Caine staggered, almost tripping, and three pistol rounds struck him center mass in the back, failing to crack the titanium plates secured in his vest's Kevlar weave. The kinetic energy staggered him, but the pain impulse from the blunt-force trauma never reached his brain.

  Caine threw his arm out to block the rounds coming in from the side and raised the red-hot muzzle of the AKM. The agent in the limo front seat fired twice, catching him high on the torso, but the rounds were ineffective for anything besides staggering Caine back into the door of his Suburban.

  Caine triggered the AKM, screaming as he rained fire down on the man without remorse. Blood splattered the inside windshield of the limousine, and the agent's body shuddered. With the trigger still held down, Caine swept his weapon around as he spun toward his other attackers.

  A pistol round cleared the lip of the shield and slammed into his Kevlar helmet, cracking the ballistic face shield at an attachment point. Caine's head snapped back under the concussive impact and his ankle, weakened by the pistol round that had cracked his shin guard, turned, spilling him to the ground.

  From his back Caine fired his AKM, jerking the muzzle in a careless figure-eight pattern that threw out a virtual wall of lead across the width of Fourteenth Street. He saw government agents jerk and dance as his main battlefield rounds burrowed into them, easily knifing through their own lighter ballistic vests. They hit the ground hard under the onslaught and flopped like fish cast into the bottom of a boat.

  Out of the smoke a SWAT member, dragging a bleeding and nearly useless leg, appeared. He wore a Kevlar helmet and heavy vest. In his hands was a 5.56 mm M-4 carbine. The collapsible stock was extended and the trooper shuffled forward in ungraceful movements, firing 3-round bursts in tight, precise patterns.

  The bursts struck the downed Caine, shattering his inserts under the impact of the high-velocity rounds. Caine drew into a fetal position under his shield, gasping for breath as deep bruises mottled on his body under his armor. He lifted the Kalashnikov and cut the SWAT team gunner off at the knees.

  The man screamed long and loud as he fell, his head bouncing mightily off the street. Caine met his eyes across the scant twenty yards and saw the bodyguard's pain and terror.

  Was that how Justin had looked when they got him? Caine wondered as he pulled the trigger on his AKM and finished off the helpless agent.

  Shaken and hurt from dozens of impact injuries, Caine forced himself to his feet. He felt short of breath but not tired, not by a long shot. A stray bullet had sliced the sling of the Kalashnikov and he left the assault rifle lying forgotten on the smoking, bloodstained street. Agents fired from across the hood of the closest vehicle, but again the pistol rounds proved ineffective against Caine's ballistic shield.

  His hand went to the big handgun on his right thigh. He closed a possessive fist around the pistol grip of his Automag V .50-caliber pistol. He yanked the massive handgun clear of its nylon shoulder holster as multiple rounds ricocheted off the Suburban and the limousine around him. Caine leveled the clumsy hand cannon.

  Reinforcements from the police and Secret Service began arriving on the scene, looking panicked and brandishing weapons. The law-enforcement officials were frantic and nearly suicidal in their attempts to reach the President's vehicle. Caine threw himself forward into the bloody seat of the limousine's middle compartment.

  Bits of flesh like scraps of torn wet paper were splashed across the interior, mixed with chunks of pink matter and enough blood to fill a children's wading pool. The ballistic shield couldn't fit through the door opening, and Caine's dive was jerked short. Rounds struck the shield like lead raindrops as he fought to free his arm.

  Because the ballistic shield was attached to his left arm, Caine found himself in an awkward position, sprawled out across the smoldering midcompartment seat with his back toward the rear. He would be forced to fire over his gun hand shoulder toward his own back unless he could free himself from the shield. Across the seat he could see out through
the open door into a wall of black smoke.

  The glass divider into the rear compartment was spiderwebbed across its length with impact damage and Caine raised the heavy pistol, firing from centimeters away. Muzzle-flash spit from the barrel like flame from a dragon's mouth. The big handgun bucked hard in Caine's grip, and the report was loud enough to hurt even Caine's explosion-deafened ears. The angle of his grip on the pistol was so awkward the recoil almost ripped the heavy Automag from his fingers.

  A hole the size of a golf ball punched through the already compromised safety glass. Caine heard a high-pitched shriek of terror. He went to trigger the .50-caliber hand cannon again. Out on his right side, through the open limo door, he caught the flash of movement. The rear-compartment passenger's door flew open and Caine knew his prey was trying to escape.

  Suddenly he was jerked from the left. A man in a dark suit grabbed the edge of his ballistic shield where it was caught in the door, desperately trying to pry it back. A uniformed officer with a Glock pistol shoved his handgun around the edge and began to fire into the limo.

  The range was brutally close and 9 mm bullets hammered into Caine like clubs. He groaned out loud under their savage impact. A bullet smashed through the face shield and then shattered the hard plastic of the black hockey mask.

  Caine's cheekbone cracked under the concussive force and jagged splinters of plastic lanced his eye, blinding him. He bucked as though electrocuted and screamed, the Automag falling from his hands. He felt slugs strike him in the already shattered inserts over his abdomen. He was too weak to fight, and the agent hanging on to his shield managed to straighten his arm all the way out at the elbow.

  Caine brought his right hand up. A 9 mm slug blew his pinkie off, but the wound seemed so distant to his shocked mind it was almost as if it had occurred to someone else's body. His wounded hand reached the suspender strap of his harness where he had secured the garage-door opener with black electrician's tape.