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  The Wolfman wasn't moving, but his shotgun lay beneath the dash. Skag retrieved it, feeling dizzy when he moved too quickly, and wondered if something might have snapped besides his nose.

  No matter.

  He had counted bikes before the roof fell in, and there were only eight in sight, which meant their strike force had been cut by half. His brothers needed him, and pain was nothing in a situation where it all came down to do or die.

  Skag worked the shotgun's slide to chamber up a hot one and went out to meet the enemy.

  * * *

  Blinded by a rolling cloud of dust, Frank Chaney never saw the gunner aiming at his cruiser from the van's back door. He did see brake lights flaring as the vehicle in front of him began to slide, and then the world blew up in Chaney's face. A blast of buckshot ripped through his radiator, flinging back the hood to cut off any vestige of a forward view.

  He jerked the steering wheel hard left, accelerating in a bid to miss the braking van and simultaneously spoil the gunner's aim. There was no second shotgun blast, no impact, and he was preparing to congratulate himself on the evasive move when everything went wrong. The front tires on his cruiser lost their traction, while the rear dug in and punched him through a broadside skid.

  Remembering his training, Chaney cut the wheel in that skid's direction, trying to correct, but it was hopeless. When the cruiser rolled, he hung on to the steering wheel, white-knuckled, cursing as the microphone from his dash-mounted radio whipped out to smack him in the face.

  The shoulder harness saved his life, though Chaney wasn't sure of it for several moments. Hanging upside down, the vehicle filled with swirling, choking dust, he might have been in hell as easily as Texas. Only pain told Chaney that he was still alive, and at the moment he hurt everywhere.

  The cruiser's roof hadn't collapsed, and he attributed that fact to sandy soil as much as any triumph of construction from Detroit. The siren moaned and died, a sweet relief, and only hissing static issued from the radio. He would have lost the whip antenna, surely, but there was a walkie-talkie in the glove compartment. Once he freed himself…

  Despite the ringing in his ears and sounds of gunfire in the middle distance, Chaney could hear footsteps crunching on the sand and gravel. He groped for his empty holster, then remembered that the Smith & Wesson had been in his lap before he rolled. There was no sign of it now. For all he knew, it could have been thrown clear of the vehicle.

  That left the shotgun. Straining, he could just grasp the barrel, but his fingers wouldn't reach the latch to free the weapon from its dashboard mount. He needed four more inches, and he'd have to lose the shoulder harness first, before he had a prayer.

  Too late.

  The footsteps halted just outside, and Chaney craned his neck to catch a glimpse of denim cuffs and motorcycle boots. He made another lunge to reach the shotgun latch and missed it, fingers scrabbling for the latch securing his seat belt when the outlaw knelt beside his open window, bending down to show a broken nose and bloodied smile.

  "You're hurting, old man." The smile was gloating now, and Chaney wondered if the punk was stoned. "What say I help you out?"

  He saw the shotgun then, a sawed-off Remington. Up close it looked like a bazooka, and its blast would have about the same effect on human flesh.

  "I'll prob'ly get myself in trouble," the biker said, "shooting piggies out of season."

  "Reinforcements coming," Chaney told him, marveling at how calm he sounded. "Don't make it any harder on yourself."

  "You got it wrong, pig. I'm about to make it hard on you."

  The punk reached through the window, snuggling the shotgun's muzzle against Chaney's forehead. "Pucker up, old man. It's time to kiss your ass goodbye."

  * * *

  Hunched down behind the bullet-scarred vehicle, Johnny waited for the jackals to find him. He was fuzzy on the details of the action, but he knew the squad car had arrived. As well as a van that carried reinforcements for the enemy. How many? He didn't have a ghost of an idea, but it would make no difference in the long run. The Bolans had to deal with all the bikers, or they'd be dead.

  A bullet cracked against the Jimmy's windshield, followed quickly by another, and he tried to gauge the angle. It was hopeless. He'd have to meet the enemy before he could destroy them, and it galled him, crouching under cover while they stalked him.

  It was time to move.

  He broke from cover at the Jimmy's tailgate, churning dust with loping strides as two guns started tracking, barking at his heels. He placed them, saw the bikers start to follow, and it was all he needed — something in the way of solid targets, a substantial enemy instead of fleeting shadows in the wasteland.

  The nearest cover was an old, cast-off refrigerator. The door had been removed, in deference to safety, and the shelves inside were filthy with a combination of petrified food scraps and accumulated desert soil. He slid behind the reefer, just as bullets started smacking into bleached enamel, but he wasn't going to be pinned this time.

  Instead of lying low, Johnny kept on moving, circling around the fridge and emerging into view before his enemies could halt their charge or change direction. The younger Bolan caught them in the open, his mini-Uzi rattling at full throttle. The first rounds nailed the biker on his left, causing the guy to trip over his own feet, and he spun as he fell with arms outflung in death.

  The second guy veered sharply off his course and snapped off two pistol rounds that very nearly did the job. Johnny heard them whisper past his face, and then the Uzi answered, chopping down his adversary on the run. The biker stumbled, nearly caught himself, then his brain shut down, his heart pumping blood through holes instead of veins and arteries.

  A scarecrow figure was emerging from the outlaw van, and Johnny moved to intercept, alert to any other dangers, but spotting none. The biker seemed to be unarmed, and he looked startled as he noticed Johnny, standing with the Uzi leveled from his waist. "Well, shit," he said, "this ain't my day."

  For reasons Johnny would never comprehend, the biker started to run for the Jimmy, his knees and elbows pumping as he made a desperate run to nowhere.

  Johnny shot him with reluctance, knowing as he pulled the trigger that the guy would find himself a weapon somehow, somewhere, conscious of the fact that letting him survive would jeopardize their mission and their lives. He made it quick and relatively clean, if such an adjective can be applied to parabellum manglers tearing into flesh at seven hundred and fifty rounds per minute.

  Either way, he got it done, and an eerie silence settled on the killing ground. But where was Mack? And where the hell, in all that carnage, was Aguire?

  * * *

  Bolan circled toward the capsized squad car, making a half circuit before he spotted the biker, kneeling in dirt beside the inverted driver's door.

  "Pucker up, old man," he said. "It's time to kiss your ass goodbye."

  "Make sure you really want to pull that trigger," the soldier cautioned, leveling his CAR-15 at the disheveled figure.

  Frozen in his place, the outlaw turned his head enough to give himself a view of Bolan and the weapon that was pointed at his face.

  "I'm pretty sure," he said, and grinned.

  "You're tired of living?"

  "Everybody has to go sometime."

  "Your choice."

  The biker seemed to have a sudden inspiration. "See, thing is, I've got a job to do, you dig?"

  "He's not a part of it."

  "Pig made himself a part of it. He has to learn you don't go fucking with the Mongols, man."

  "And when you pull the trigger, when you're dead, what happens to your job?"

  "It's fucked, man. Someone else will have to pick it up from here."

  Again, the solder said, "Your choice."

  If there was any thought behind the move, it didn't show. The biker rocked back on his haunches and swung up the sawed-off 12-gauge, triggering a blast as Bolan sidestepped and dropped to a combat crouch. At farther range, the pellets w
ould have nailed him, but he had allowed for distance and the shots skimmed past him, scattering across the wasteland at his back.

  A short burst from the CAR-15 punched his adversary backward, leaving crimson traces along the squad car's dusty fender. Kneeling beside the car, he peered inside and saw a middle-aged patrolman hanging in a shoulder harness, bruised and coated with a layer of grit, but otherwise intact.

  "Need help there?"

  Johnny had approached without a sound, and now he helped his brother pry the driver's door open, and haul the cruiser's single occupant clear of the wreck. When he was on his feet and mobile, Bolan turned to his brother and said, "You'd better get our friend. He's in the pit."

  "Can someone tell me what the hell is going on, here?" Even in his shaken state, the officer was working, trying to make sense of what had happened. He was conscious of the gun in Bolan's hands, but he didn't appear intimidated.

  "I'd say you deserve some answers," Bolan told him, "but the plain fact is, I haven't got the time to fill you in."

  "You won't be going far in that."

  The trooper nodded toward the Jimmy, which was scarred by more than a hundred slugs. Bolan saw that it had settled heavily to port and both tires on the driver's side were punctured.

  "You've got a point."

  He glanced in the direction of the van, which seemed intact, and caught a glimpse of Johnny and their passenger, returning from the pit.

  "We're changing cars," he said when they arrived. "Let's shift the gear."

  "You mean to leave me out here?" There was apprehension in the trooper's voice.

  "You should have company before too long, but just in case, you'll find a CB in the Jimmy."

  "What the hell am I supposed to call all this in my report?"

  "A moving violation?" Johnny suggested, edging toward the van with heavy duffels from the Jimmy. Aguire had cargo of his own, but Johnny kept a watchful eye on their companion, making sure he didn't help himself to any hardware.

  "Why'd you take him out?" the trooper asked. "That punk, I mean. You could have popped him after, and you'd have no witnesses."

  "It cost too much," the soldier said. "I'll take the odds the way they are."

  The trooper thought about that for a moment, something softening behind his eyes. "I owe you one," he said at last.

  "Take care," the Executioner replied and turned away to join his brother and Aguire in the van. He knew they'd be lucky if they made it to the highway and got clear before more cruisers started to arrive. If they could make it into Lubbock, they could think about another change of wheels — or license plates, at least.

  But Lubbock lay two hours north, across the killing ground.

  15

  They spent an anxious hour in Lubbock, hosing down the van at a self-serve car wash. They also exchanged their license plates for a new set, which were in the parking lot of a suburban shopping mall. It was the best that they could do, without a whole new paint job or a different set of wheels. Bolan had decided that their risk in sticking with the van would be no worse than that entailed in ripping off another car.

  "I still don't like the way these guys keep popping up," Johnny said. "It's like we've got a tail, but we can't see it. Someone's tipping off the opposition everywhere we go."

  It hit the soldier all at once, a plausible solution he could never prove, yet it covered all the facts.

  "The Jimmy," Bolan said simply.

  "How's that?"

  "We got our wheels from the DEA. Suppose they came with something extra?"

  "Damn! I never thought of that."

  "I didn't either, until now."

  "You think?"

  "Pratt was concerned about a leak. Could be the opposition has a man inside the motor pool."

  Aguire poked his head between them. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"

  "A homer," Johnny told him. "You can plant it anywhere inside a car — or outside, for that matter — and the signal registers with various audio-visual receivers. With a homer in the car, they could lay back and follow every move we made from something like a mile away."

  "It plays," the Executioner agreed. He felt embarrassed that he hadn't checked the vehicle in Jacksonville, but if the homer had been properly concealed, he might have missed it, anyway.

  "And now that we have lost the car?" Aguire sounded hopeful, but his face was sculpted in a frown.

  "We should be home and dry," Johnny said.

  "Not necessarily." The solder felt his brother and Aguire staring at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "We can't afford a case of overconfidence," he said. "There might have been a homer, but we don't know that for sure. And if there was, we haven't won the war by ditching the vehicle. How many Mongols are there in the state?"

  Aguire shrugged. "Perhaps three hundred. I'm not sure."

  "That means at least two hundred and eighty still alive, and any one of them might pass along this van's description to the others. Hell, it could be on the air, for all we know. Without the Jimmy's scanner, we can't even check to find out if we're wanted."

  Johnny made a sour face and checked his mirror. "Man, you sure know how to rain on a parade."

  "Just covering alternatives."

  "I hate it when you're right. It always means bad news."

  "What can we do?" Aguire asked.

  "We're doing it," the Executioner replied. "Keep rolling while we can, and flatten anyone who tries to stop us. It's the only game in town."

  * * *

  "What kind of pickup did you say it was?"

  Frank Chaney made a show of thinking hard, as if the question taxed his brain. A Chevy. Eighty-six or eighty-seven, if I'm not mistaken."

  "Black?"

  "As coal."

  "And you saw… what? Three bikers in the cab?"

  "Don't quote me. I was kind of busy there, if you recall."

  The Texas Ranger stowed his notebook in a pocket, lifting off his Stetson long enough to wipe a handkerchief across his sweaty forehead. He'd heard the story out, doubling back on minor points to keep the details fresh in mind.

  "Okay," he said, when he was finished with the hat trick. "Let me see if I've got everything. You saw this pack of Mongols on the highway and you started trailing them to see what they were up to."

  "Right."

  "You hadn't gone too far when they swung back and started blasting at that Jimmy over there."

  "The Jimmy and a pickup."

  "Right. I'm not forgetting that. The one that got away."

  Frank Chaney forced a smile. It went against his grain to lie that way, but he was paying off a debt the only way he could.

  "You couldn't see the number on that Chevy?"

  "I was lucky I could see the highway," Chaney countered. "First I crack one bike head-on, and then the bastards blow my windshield out. I couldn't find the rigging dashboard once we left the pavement and I started eating everybody's dust."

  "All this…" the Ranger waved an open hand to indicate the scattered dead"…was taken care of by the time you got here?"

  "Damned if I know. They were shooting when I got here, then I took another hit and rolled the cruiser. I'll be catching Billy hell for that. I guarantee."

  The Ranger nodded sympathetically. "I know exactly what you mean. Once they get over being grateful you're alive, they're bound to chew your ass out."

  "My commander likes to do the chewing first, so nobody mistakes him for a bleeding heart."

  The Ranger had been mulling something over, and he laid it out for Chaney. "You know," he said, "on deals like this I always figure we've got two clubs fighting over territory, sales — whatever."

  "That makes sense."

  "But have you noticed anything about the dear departed?"

  Chaney glanced around the battleground, where several bodies had been bagged by ambulance attendants, ready for their last run to the morgue. He frowned and shook his head. "Like what?"

  "Their colors."

  "So?"


  "They're all the same. All Mongols. It's a funny thing, I mean. They start the shooting, they do all the chasing, and we haven't got a single body from the other side."

  "I hadn't noticed."

  "Well, you had your hands full, like you said. It strikes me funny, though. It strike you funny?"

  "I'm no expert," Chaney said. "You don't see many gang wars when you're writing out citations all day long."

  "I guess that's right."

  "The plates might tell me something."

  "I've already put them on the wire, but it's a long shot. Chances are they're stolen, or the car is. Maybe both. I wouldn't hold my breath."

  "Okay."

  "About that peckerhead who tried to waste you in the car…"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Somebody up and shot him there, before he had a chance to dust you off?"

  "I'm standing here."

  "You wouldn't have a notion why they did that, would you?"

  Chaney shrugged. "I figure he was on the losing side. I just got lucky with the timing."

  "Yeah, could be." The Ranger didn't sound convinced. "Things happen like that, sometimes."

  Chaney's captain arrived, crawling from his chauffeured cruiser and slapping dust from trousers creased so sharply they could cut your skin. "Goddamm it, Frank," he bawled from fifty feet away, "what happened here?"

  "It looks like snack time," Chaney told the Ranger, putting on a weary smile.

  "Good luck," the Ranger told him. "I expect we'll be in touch."

  "Be looking forward to it," Chaney said, and turned away to face the music.

  There were worse things, he supposed, than having someone chew your ass. Like being dead, for instance. Or like running for your life, with every man against you, knowing there was no place you could hide.

  Frank Chaney waited for the storm to break and smiled, because he knew damn well that it was good to be alive.

  * * *