Slowly nearing the van, the Executioner saw that at least two men remained inside the vehicle. One manned the supergun, unloading on his targets with a slow but steady rhythm, while another fired a submachine gun from the driver’s seat. There might be others inside, as well, but Bolan was counting on a two-man minimum as he approached from their blind side.
Who should he try to handle first?
The big gun had wreaked havoc on the limousines, and was hammering the banquet hall. Its shooter couldn’t mark specific targets on the far side of that punctured, smoking wall, but each hot round had the potential to ignite The Espadrille and burn it down with everyone inside. Smoke curling from the only windows he could see told Bolan that the place might already be burning.
On the other hand, the cockpit gunner had a clear shot at the Secret Service vehicles, a few of Tischler’s scrambling bodyguards, and various pedestrians across the street who hadn’t run for cover. His shouts and cackling, audible above the sounds of gunfire, signaled that he liked his work and wouldn’t be content with a minimal body count.
“Come on, you bastards!” he was calling to the pinned-down federal agents. “Come and get it!”
Sirens, adding background music to the drama, told the Executioner that he was running out of time. No slacker when it came to making tough decisions, he stepped forward, still unnoticed by his target, and fired a short burst through the open passenger’s window, cutting off the gunner’s latest taunt in midsyllable. The guy slumped forward, dropped his piece outside the van, and shivered once before his body settled limply in the driver’s seat.
A voice called from the rear compartment of the van, “Razor? Are you all right?”
Weighing his angles of attack, Bolan reached up and tried the passenger’s door, half surprised when it opened to his touch. It was a long step up, the Colt Commando leading, and before he had a chance to use it, another skinhead was upon him, clutching the rifle, cursing as he tried to wrench it free of Bolan’s grasp.
They grappled in the space between the two front seats, Bolan fighting silently while his adversary spewed nonstop profanity. Bolan’s rifle was the fulcrum between them, both men clinging to it while they flailed away with boots, knees, elbows, now and then a fist withdrawn to take advantage of an opening. Bolan absorbed blows to the head, chest, shoulders, hammering swift kicks into the skinhead’s ribs, shins, hips and groin.
It was the Thunderbolt that won the struggle for him, finally. As they lurched from the front seat, inching farther yet into the cargo bay, Bolan had his first glimpse of the supergun, mounted on a tripod behind his opponent. A snarling lunge drove the Nazi back into the Thunderbolt, its stock gouging between his shoulder blades. At the same time, Bolan spun his Colt Commando like a baton, forcing the skinhead to either let go or risk snapping the joints of his shoulders and elbows.
The Nazi let go.
Without a second’s hesitation, Bolan swung the carbine like an ax, slashing its butt across his adversary’s face. One cheek caved in, the skinhead sagging backward, barely conscious. Bolan spun his piece around and put a slug between the young man’s eyes to finish it.
The Thunderbolt stood waiting on its tripod, beside a crate half-filled with ammunition. Bolan’s orders called for him to either claim the weapon or destroy it, but the close proximity of Secret Service agents and police restricted his ability to carry out either of those tasks. With no explosives readily at hand, he couldn’t guarantee the supergun would be disabled, even if he hosed it down with 5.56 mm slugs at point-blank range. As for escaping with the weapon…
A sudden thought occurred to him. He stooped beside the crate of ammunition, lifting out a single round for close examination. It resembled nothing quite so much as a 20 mm cannon round, though its projectile had some kind of plastic coating that he guessed would either peel away in flight or else disintegrate on impact. Otherwise, the brass casing and primer were identical to any other center-fire cartridge Bolan had ever seen.
He bent once more and ripped away half of the lifeless skinhead’s shirt, retreating to the van’s cockpit. Incoming rounds flew thick and fast around him as he stepped down from the open doorway, crouching, looking for the van’s gas cap.
CURT WALGREN WAS TRACKING his enemy when Bill Jackson nearly stumbled into him, recoiling with a gasp of stunned surprise. The young skinhead was red-faced, breathing heavily, clutching his automatic rifle to his chest as if he thought the piece would ward off hostile fire.
Distracted from his quest, Walgren snapped angrily at Jackson, “You’re supposed to be with Connolly and Gellar in the van!”
“No, sir! I mean, yes, sir! But Razor ordered me to scout the line and see if I could spot the big Jew.”
“Gellar ordered you to leave your post?”
“Yes, sir. I didn’t want to do it, but he said he’d shoot me if I didn’t, and—”
“Goddamn it! Come with me!”
“Yes, sir!”
There was a worried look on Jackson’s face, but he obeyed and fell in step beside Walgren, retracing his path toward the van. Walgren was seething at the thought of Gellar’s insubordination, countermanding orders from the ARM’s supreme commander as if he had some authority to guide the battle’s course.
A lesson was in order, and Walgren looked forward to delivering it in person. Gellar had been on the brink of insubordination when they planned the present mission, and it was now apparent that he’d crossed the line. At such a crucial moment in the struggle, Walgren couldn’t afford to overlook such insults to his personal authority.
Not when he had already risked—and lost—so much.
They had halved the distance to the van, Jackson fairly treading on his heels, when Walgren heard the skinhead curse behind him, stopping short. He turned in time to find Jackson crouching, shoulders hunched, facing a stranger in a suit whose jacket hung askew, the seam of its left shoulder torn. The stranger wore dark glasses, one lens missing to reveal a narrow, nervous-looking eye, and he held an MP-5 submachine gun poised with its muzzle midway between Walgren and Jackson.
“Secret Service,” he declared, making no effort to display a badge. “Both of you drop your weapons where you stand, step back a pace and raise your hands.”
Jackson was trembling like a palsy victim, but he didn’t yield. “You want my piece,” he answered, “come and get it!”
Walgren’s voice lashed out at him. “Jackson! You heard the man. Lay down your weapon.”
Suiting words to action, Walgren stooped and placed his AKSU on the ground. Jackson was turning, staring at him, with the Fed still watching every move the skinhead made, when Walgren drew his pistol in a single fluid move and triggered two quick shots from twenty feet.
One missed, the other drilled his target’s abdomen, as Walgren flung himself aside, dodging the line of fire. The Secret Service agent staggered, stumbled, holding down the trigger of his SMG as he began to fall. The stream of Parabellum slugs caught Jackson in a ragged line across his chest and blew him backward, emptying his AK as he fell. Walgren lay huddled in the shadow of a sleek Mercedes-Benz and watched the dead men dance together, twitching from the impact of high-velocity bullets until their trigger fingers lost purchase and they collapsed almost simultaneously.
Alone once more, Walgren lurched to his feet, retrieved his Kalashnikov and turned back toward the van. From twenty feet away, he spied his enemy crouching beside the vehicle, stooped over the hatch for the gas cap.
BOLAN’S PLAN WAS SIMPLE: wrap the supercartridge in fabric and wedge it tightly into the van’s gas-tank funnel, with the projectile pointed downward, then step back and detonate the primer with a gunshot. If it worked out, the van would be engulfed in flames, his best hope of disabling the supergun before he fled the scene.
Assuming he could get away at all.
And if it didn’t work, he’d still have time to make another wick, light it and blow the tank that way.
Maybe.
He wound a shirttail strip around the fat brass cartridge, pushed it halfway down the spout until it jammed there, then eased back a pace and raised the carbine to his shoulder. It was set for semiauto fire, one shot per squeeze, and one was all he’d get on this attempt. If Bolan missed the primer, or it failed to detonate for any reason, he would likely rupture the shell’s brass casing and render it harmless.
One shot, then, and he’d have to make it count.
Bolan was peering through the Colt Commando’s sight, leaning toward target acquisition, when a voice behind him called out, “Not so fast!”
Bolan froze where he stood, uncertain who the man behind him was or what he planned. A bullet without warning would’ve done the trick, but this one had something to say. Was he a Secret Service agent, or a Nazi with a gift for gab?
Instead of having Bolan drop his gun and turn around, the new arrival said, “You really thought that you could kill me, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Bolan replied, “until I’ve seen your face.”
“So, turn around,” the voice instructed him. “But carefully. I want your weapon pointed at the ground.”
Bolan obliged, surprised that he had not been told to place the carbine on the ground. Surprise turned to amazement as he swiveled on his heels and found himself confronted with a man he had already killed, in Illinois.
“You see?” the specter told him, smiling wickedly. “I don’t stay dead.”
“Congratulations,” Bolan said. He couldn’t think of any other answer at the moment.
“Your kind think you can kill the movement with the messenger,” Curt Walgren said. “But I’ve got news for you. You’ve failed. The messenger is still alive. You’ll never stop the movement.”
Bolan had no time to consider where this man had come from, who he was, or who had died outside Chicago, wearing Walgren’s face. Unless he dealt with this fanatic in the next few seconds, they would be hip-deep in uniforms and Bolan would’ve missed his chance to trash the supergun.
“I’d love to stay and chat,” Bolan said, “but I’ve got a deadline.”
Walgren’s mirror image grimaced at him. “You’re already standing on it, dead man. But before you go, I want to know who sent you.”
“Can’t you guess?” Bolan asked.
“What? You mean—”
He nodded, playing to the Nazi’s paranoia. “Who else has the money or the influence?” Bolan asked.
“Yes! I knew it!” Still, behind the smile, there was a trace of doubt. “But how’d you know about the Thunderbolt, and where to find it?”
“Well—”
It started with a shrug, then Bolan threw himself sideways, crouching and thrusting with his legs at the same time. He raised and fired the Colt Commando in a firm one-handed grip, unloading half the magazine before asphalt arrested his progress.
The Walgren look-alike was jerking, taking hits, and firing back at Bolan with his AKSU rifle, but his dying hands went spastic on him and he couldn’t find his target. Bullets ripped along the drab flank of the van, punched through to end their flight somewhere inside. When he collapsed, his attitude revealed the slack finality of death.
Rising, Bolan spared the dead Nazi one brief glance, then turned and found his mark again. The wailing sirens were on top of him, drowning the sound of conscious and coherent thought. He sighted on the cartridge primer, fired and turned to run.
Bolan covered three long strides before the van’s gas tank exploded and the shock wave sent him tumbling through space.