Prairie Fire Read online

  It was fear.

  The faceless stranger had inspired a feeling in the | Cowboy he could not admit to anyone. Not even to himself.

  The Cowboy was afraid, so be it. Standing in the silent darkness now, he recognized the only antidote for that unwelcome feeling. He would have to face the object of his fear and kill it personally, wash away the stain of cowardice with blood. There was no other way to pin it down.

  * * *

  Bolan heard them coming through the silent darkness. He began to prepare himself before they hit the house on all four sides at once. A charging gunner hit the parlor window screen and burst through, entangled in the chicken wire and cursing as he tumbled to the floor. The guy was scrambling to his feet and milking little probing bursts out of his silenced Uzi as he tried to get his bearings, pumping parabellum rounds into the walls and ceiling.

  Bolan tracked the lurching target with his .22 and stroked the trigger lightly, holding steady as the little stinger ripped through flesh and gristle. It elicited a howl of pain, but his assailant still was up and moving, searching for a target with his blazing stuttergun.

  Bolan pumped the rifle's slide, ejecting empty brass and chambering another round. A hesitation to correct, regaining target acquisition, and his sights were framed inside the yawning oval of the gunner's lips when he squeezed off a second time. Forty grains of screaming death impacted on the target's pharynx, burrowed through and shattered into fragments at the junction of his skull and vertebrae. Instantly deprived of motor functions as his spine was severed, Bolan's mark melted backward in the clumsy sprawl of death.

  And they were all around Bolan now. A pair of automatic weapons opened up inside the kitchen, driving him down and under cover. Above the whisper of the silenced man-shredders, he could hear the other shock troops battering their way through undefended bedroom windows.

  Bolan wriggled back behind the padded easy chair, and it was taking hits, the stuffing sagging from a dozen jagged rents in the upholstery. They had found the range, and they could blast him out of there if Bolan sat around and waited for it.

  Counting down the numbers now, he switched the slender rifle to his left hand, gripped the Uzi with his right and set the fire selector switch on automatic mode. A single stroke would empty his slim reserve of parabellum ammunition in a searing stream.

  The Executioner was cornered, right. Pinned down. Another moment under fire would be his last.

  And in the circumstances, Bolan planned to take the only option open to him.

  He was blasting out.

  If it was time to die, the soldier chose to meet his moment standing up, with all guns blazing. Carrying the fire to his opponents, yeah.

  The warrior coiled his legs beneath him, braced himself to spring. The hammer of his pulse was deafening; it drowned the ripping noise of bullets shredding fabric inches from his head. Another instant, and the numbers all ran down to zero.

  Then Bolan made his move.

  * * *

  For a frozen moment, Jason Chadwick was surrounded by the steamy jungle once again, waiting for the enemy to rush his muddy foxhole. It was 1943, and he was back in Bougainville, prepared to kill or die. Except the Japanese had always come with shrieks and howls and whistles blowing; these new enemies were silent, swift and sure.

  He was ready when a human form exploded through the parlor window, ripping down the screen with its momentum. Jason swung his scattergun to meet the threat, and then he saw the darting tongue of flame from Frank LaMancha's .22. The intruder was returning fire, but awkwardly, encumbered by the twisted chicken wire and staggered by the bullets ripping into him. He stumbled, sprawling, and...

  Crashing, thrashing noises from the nearest bedroom suddenly demanded his attention. Someone — more than one invader, by the sound of it — had breached their slim defenses on another side.

  They were surrounded, dammit, and the time to do or die was now.

  The farmer raised the shotgun, snugged the butt against his shoulder and aligned the sights on the dark rectangle of the open bedroom doorway.

  A hulking body filled the portal, swiftly stepped into the living room. The automatic weapon in his hands was obvious, despite the darkness, bulky muzzle searching for a target.

  Jason looped his finger tight around the shotgun's single trigger, squeezing. As if alerted to the danger the intruder twisted, dropping to a combat crouch instinctively. It was enough to spoil the farmer's perfect shot, but not enough for the invader to save himself completely.

  Jason's weapon roared and bucked against his shoulder. At a range of less than twenty feet, the charge of shot had little opportunity to spread before it struck the gunman's shoulder, spinning him around in a horrendous spray of blood and mutilated flesh. The stunning impact threw him backward, tumbling across the sofa, out of sight.

  A second human shape was piling through the doorway now, already crouching and alert to peril from the darkness. Jason took a moment to correct his aim, and it was all he had before the mercenary spotted him and swung his submachine gun deftly onto target.

  Their weapons opened up in unison, and Jason had a split-second glimpse of winking muzzle-flame before the shotgun's recoil blurred his vision. For an instant he imagined he could see the pellets strike their target. Then a parabellum shocker struck Jason's weapon, knocked it spinning from his grasp.

  A fragment of the shattered bullet opened up his cheek beneath one eye, and he was driven backward, shoulders banging hard against the wall with force that took his breath away. The world was reeling, and Jason knew he was falling just before his skull impacted on the upright heater to his left.

  The flash of light behind his eyes was blinding, and the darkness swallowed him alive.

  * * *

  Huddled behind the sofa, Toni Chadwick tried to blot the sounds of mortal combat from her mind. Beside her, Emma sat trembling against the wall, with knees drawn up against her chest and both hands covering her ears.

  Toni's heart went out to Emma, but her mind was firmly fixed on survival. In her lap, she clutched a wicked ten-inch carving knife selected from the meager kitchen arsenal; a second blade, together with the cleaver, lay between the women on the floor. And if the battle went against them, as it almost surely would, the flimsy arms would have to do.

  She heard the ripping sound as screen and nails were separated at the parlor window. The muffled stutter of an automatic weapon, punctuated by the high, falsetto yapping of a little .22. And now, the crashing sounds of violent entry seemed to come from everywhere at once, smothering her. They were separated from her only by a flimsy wall, the open bedroom door.

  The lady felt a presence close by, then the world exploded overhead. With ringing ears, she recognized the roar of Jason's scattergun. A bloody mist was falling, shreds of fabric interspersed with something else, and Toni's mind rebelled. She felt herself about to vomit.

  A tumbling body struck the couch and toppled over, slithered down headfirst across the ruined cushions. Toni lost her balance, caught herself without relinquishing her grip on the knife and spun around to face the threat.

  A man was sprawled across the couch, head down, suspended by his knees. Even in the darkness, Toni saw his arm was missing. No — it was attached, but dangling out of joint and clinging to its socket by a single, twisted strand of flesh. His blood was everywhere.

  But this one was alive.

  His eyes were open, staring back at Toni with a kind of glazed expression.

  The gunman's coat had fallen open, revealing an automatic pistol in its rigging. As Toni watched, the dying man was groping for it, trying desperately to reach the holstered weapon.

  And he was getting there, by inches. Under all the pain, there was a stark, triumphant grimace on his face.

  Toni had to act, and swiftly. If he reached the pistol...

  She was on her knees beside him in a single fluid movement, both hands locked around the wooden handle of her carving knife. A final moment's hesitation as the br
ight steel flickered overhead, and then she brought it down, astonished as the razor tip disappeared from sight. She put her weight behind it, and the blade was grating, shuddering against his ribs, setting Toni's teeth on edge.

  The gunner stiffened, writhing and growling at her like a wounded animal. The lady lost her balance but retained her grip; the blade snapped off an inch below the hilt, remaining in the body.

  Her assailant convulsed, no longer trying for the pistol now. His single hand was clutching at her, fingers tangling in the folds of Toni's woolen shirt before she had a chance to slip away.

  The one-armed mercenary clung to her tenaciously, his weight an anchor dragging Toni down. A final lunge that popped the buttons on her shirt, and Toni reached the cleaver, brought it up, around and down without attempting to select a target. Frantically she hacked away, aware that she was covered now with blood: it fouled her hair and clothing, smeared her face and trickled down the valley of her breasts, made fingers slippery on the cleaver's grip.

  She had a vague awareness of the clutching fingers loosening their hold, relaxing. With a final manic blow, she left the cleaver firmly planted in its target.

  And now revulsion dominated panic. Toni uttered a silent plea for merciful oblivion, but there was no release for Frank LaMancha's lady soldier. There was nothing now except the hammering of guns.

  19

  Bolan's lunge propelled him over and across the riddled easy chair. He landed on the floor beyond it in a diving shoulder roll. Two kitchen gunners tracked him closely, but his move had taken them off guard, allowed the Executioner a slight margin for his desperate play.

  From a prone position, Bolan swung his captured Uzi around. His targets were the winking muzzleblasts of hostile guns. Hungry parabellum rounds were searching for him, drilling through the wall a foot above his head and to his right.

  Bolan squeezed the trigger, held it down and emptied the Uzi in rapid fire, a single vicious figure eight that swept them both away. He had a fleeting glimpse of bodies reeling backward, weapons pumping fire wildly into the ceiling, bringing down a rain of plaster.

  Bolan's ears were ringing from the burst of automatic fire, the double-thumping blast of Jason's 12-gauge, when the sound of running feet intruded on his racing thoughts.

  Before he could react, a gunner cleared the bedroom doorway at his back and stumbled over Bolan's outstretched legs. The trooper lost his balance, reeling, going down. Reacting swiftly, Bolan jabbed the muzzle of his little .22 beneath the gunner's chin and pulled the trigger.

  The explosion, muffled and confined at skintouch range, propelled his human target backward into free-fall, spewing blood from an ugly hole beneath his jawline. The man tumbled back across the easy chair, bits of bone and brain adhering to the cushion where his shattered skull had come to rest.

  Bolan was on his feet before another gunner showed himself, closing fast. No time to chamber up another round as Bolan pivoted to meet the rush, reacting with the instinct of a jungle predator. Instead of backing off, he moved to meet his enemy halfway, the rifle whipping up and over on a sharp collision course with that charging face.

  A numbing jolt as walnut stock met flesh and bone; they shattered simultaneously, Bolan's rifle stock a flying piece of shrapnel in the darkness. The mercenary stumbled through an awkward little pirouette, both hands uplifted to defend his mangled face.

  The jungle fighter followed up his slim advantage, swung the rifle onto line and pumped a rapid triple punch between the bloody fingers of his adversary's hands, the little stingers ripping into nose and cheeks at point-blank range. The dying gunner melted back, his substance soaking through the bedroom carpet.

  A sudden deathly stillness settled across the indoor hellzone, and Bolan took a moment to pick out the muffled sounds of sobbing from behind the couch. At least someone was still alive back there, but for the moment that person would have to wait. He scanned the killground, assured himself that all their enemies were down and out of action.

  For the moment, right.

  They had repelled a second rush, but they were far from out of danger. He did a rapid body count. Make it ten so far. And how damn many left to go, just waiting in the outer darkness for a signal to attack?

  A cautious soldier never underestimated opposition strengths. He took the worst for granted. And waited.

  Bolan was a cautious soldier, sure, but he did not possess the luxury of time. His little troop was cornered, with their backs against the wall, and their success in the initial holding actions gave him little satisfaction.

  He made another scan, this time for friendly casualties, and settled on the crumpled form of Jason Chadwick. In a flash, the soldier was beside him, checking for wounds. There was a ragged gash below one eye, a lump behind his ear, but the older man was otherwise unhurt, already struggling up to consciousness as Bolan felt the women close beside him. They were crowding in to help as he maneuvered Jason upright, held him there until the farmer could support himself.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine — just hit my head is all." The farmer touched his bloody cheek with cautious fingers. "Give me time to catch my breath."

  He was staring at the younger woman now, a blank expression on his face, and Bolan followed Jason's eye, focusing on Toni for the first time since their desperate battle started.

  In the moonlight filtering through a window, she was like a vision out of hell. The auburn hair was tangled, matted, and the tracks of tears were stark against her bloody cheeks, but he knew instinctively the blood was not her own.

  A glance across her shoulder, and he spied a lifeless gunner draped across the couch, head down, the cleaver buried in his ravaged throat.

  The lady had been taking care of business, and Mack Bolan knew the symptoms of impending shock. He had seen enough of it on other youthful faces in the aftermath of combat. It was Toni's blood initiation, and the shock could push her either way.

  The warrior slipped an arm around her shoulders, held her close and began to whisper, "Hold it all together, Toni. You're a natural survivor, and there's nothing wrong with that. Live large."

  A shudder gripped her, and she half turned to press herself against him now, no longer holding back the tears. Bolan held her for a moment, counting down the numbers, painfully aware that they were running out of time.

  "We haven't got a lot of time," he told them all. "We need to strip the bodies down for arms and ammunition, get ready for the next wave."

  Jason Chadwick cleared his throat.

  "How many do you think there are?"

  Bolan shrugged.

  "Impossible to say. We've hurt them, but we can't take anything for granted. Anyway, we've got a better chance now than we had an hour ago."

  And as he spoke, the Executioner wondered to himself if that was true. If hardware made the crucial difference in the long run.

  He was moving toward the nearest body, keeping low, when Toni's voice arrested him.

  "What is that? Do you smell it?"

  And he did. A smell of burning, subtly different than the acrid stench of gunsmoke, faint at first but growing stronger. The odor seemed to come from nowhere, and from everywhere at once.

  "The cellar!"

  That from Emma, and the soldier found her kneeling with her back to him, a finger pointing in the direction of the bathroom door. Bolan strained his eyes, saw a thread of smoke curling upward through a hairline crack between the floorboards. The slender wisp was followed moments later by another. And another.

  "What's down there?"

  Emma answered him.

  "It's storage, mostly. Some preserves. Storm windows."

  "The stairs."

  "Outside. Against the kitchen wall, east side."

  "All right. I'll have to chance it."

  As he spoke, they heard a motor sputtering to life and revving up above them. In an instant, it was followed by a whining, ripping sound.

  "Chain saw!" Jason snapped. "They're cutting throu
gh."

  And they were out of time, for sure. All the numbers whittled down to zero.

  "Arm yourselves," he cautioned. "From the time I leave, you're in a free-fire zone. Kill anything that moves."

  Bolan scuttled across the living room, homing on his little cache behind the armchair. On the way, he' snared an Ingram, loaded to capacity. Another moment, and he had the sack containing his homemade grenades. Behind him, Toni and her in-laws had begun to forage gingerly among the scattered corpses, hefting automatic weapons, stripping pistols out of shoulder holsters.

  They would have to stand without him, on their own.

  His biggest problem now was getting outside. Alive.

  They would have spotters posted, certainly, but he was hoping that initial losses might have sapped their strength and opened up some holes along the firing line. A moment would suffice, a watcher off his station, or distracted long enough for Bolan to effect his exit from the farmhouse.

  And a window would do nicely for his purposes, if he could just select one that was unobserved. It was a chancy game, attempting to invade the hostile mind and second-guess an adversary, but the Executioner was left with little choice.

  Correction. There was no damn choice at all.

  If he sat still, all four of them were dead. The opposition would not risk another costly rush if they could torch the house or drop a satchel charge from overhead. Whichever way they chose to play it, Bolan and his little troop were literally sitting on a time bomb.

  He decided on the bedroom. A casual sentry would expect evacuees to use the kitchen door and porch, perhaps the spacious parlor window, as an exit. Smaller bedroom windows were inferior escape routes, and with any luck at all would be assigned second priority.

  If they had thinned the opposition out sufficiently.

  If nerves and sheer attrition had combined to make the mercenaries careless.

  If.

  And if he was mistaken in his calculations...