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  Rising, he checked the Steyr’s transparent magazine by firelight, saw he’d used about two-thirds of it, and was preparing to replace it with a full one when a harsh voice called out from behind him.

  “Freeze right where you are! Police!”

  * * *

  FOR A SECOND, Vinnie Gallo worried that he wouldn’t get the latch inside the metal cabinet to open. It was sticking tight, and he regretted that he’d tried it only once since the escape route was completed. If the latch had rusted shut—

  His momentary panic fled as he applied some extra pressure to the latch and forced it open. Swallowing the string of curses that had built up in his throat, he pushed through into the five-car garage, turned right at once and found the light switch with a minimum of fumbling. White fluorescent lights hummed overhead and bathed a row of brightly polished vehicles in a glow devoid of any warmth.

  Standing in front of him, nearest to farthest, were a navy blue Cadillac CTS-V Coupe, a white Jaguar XJ full-size luxury saloon, a red Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan, a silver Lexus GX midsize SUV and a cream-colored Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé. Gallo loved each and every one of them, but didn’t have a lot of time to dick around deciding which to pick.

  “Get in the Caddy,” he told Cavallaro. “I’ll drive.”

  “Not so fast,” a gruff voice stated, drawing Gallo’s full attention to a side door that was standing open when it shouldn’t be.

  How the hell did I miss that? he asked himself, disgusted.

  And he saw one of the dicks, Mick Strauss, half smiling at him, his complexion washed out by the overheads, some kind of fancy shotgun in his hands.

  Gallo, holding his own 12-gauge, said, “Christ, I didn’t think you’d make it. Where’s your partner?”

  Strauss gave a quick one-shoulder shrug. “Around here somewhere.”

  “You should go and find him,” Gallo said. “It ain’t exactly safe out there.”

  “You’re telling me? I shot a black on your lawn. What’s up with that?”

  “Gate crashers,” Gallo said. “There goes the neighborhood.”

  Strauss barked a laugh. “That’s rich. Looks like you’re taking off.”

  “Nothing to hang around for, is there?” Gallo asked him.

  “I was thinking you could pay me, first, before you split. I’ll hold my partner’s half until I see him.”

  “Pay you what? Your monthly envelope isn’t fat enough? Last job you did for me, you screwed it up so bad it’s come to this. You should be paying me, you lousy—”

  Strauss shot Cavallaro without warning, opened up his chest with buckshot, blowing him away, and jacked another round into the chamber as he swung his piece to cover Gallo.

  “Jesus, man! What the hell’d you do that for?”

  “Got your attention, didn’t it?” the cop asked. “Now, then, about my payoff.”

  “How much you think I’m carrying?” Gallo asked, dry-mouthed, wondering if he could level his Benelli before Strauss squeezed off another round.

  “I’m having second thoughts about it,” he replied. “Thinking I’d rather be a hero than some two-bit dago’s button man.”

  He raised the shotgun, and Gallo did all he could think of, turning so that Strauss would have to shoot him in the back, trusting the tailored ballistic jacket as he hunched his shoulders, ducking forward, praying that the buckshot wouldn’t strike him in the head.

  It felt like King Kong punching him, and there was thunder in his ears as Gallo slammed against the Caddy, spine and ribs on fire. But he was still alive, goddamn it, turning as he fell and firing twice with the Benelli semiauto, blasting Strauss off his feet and back out through the door he had entered.

  Fighting for breath, Gallo lurched to his feet, slumped back against the pellet-dimpled CTS-V Coupe and tugged open the driver’s door.

  * * *

  “LET ME GUESS,” the cop said. “You two assholes are the ones who started all this.”

  Bolan stood silent, facing him, as Johnny spoke. “I’d guess you started it when you killed Joe Dirks.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Which one are you?” Johnny asked. “Strauss or Kelly?”

  “Leo Kelly, at your service. Mick’s around here somewhere.”

  “Call him,” Johnny said. “We’ll have a square dance.”

  “I’m not in a sharing mood,” Kelly replied. “For the record, which one of you pricks killed Greg O’Malley?”

  Bolan broke his silence, asking, “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me,” Kelly admitted. “Say you both were in on it. Looks better that way, when I’ve got you tagged and bagged.”

  “Big hero,” Johnny said. “Is that the plan?”

  “Why not? I’ve spent enough time taking human garbage off the streets. I got some recognition coming.”

  “How’s that reconcile with working for the Mafia?” Bolan asked.

  “Nothing wrong with moonlighting.”

  “Or murder?” Johnny interjected.

  “All depends on how you look at it. I mostly wasted pricks who had it coming anyway.”

  “And Joe Dirks?”

  “You’re a broken record, pal. That one should of minded his own beeswax.”

  “It doesn’t bother you at all, does it?” Bolan asked.

  “Nope. Can’t say it does,” Kelly replied.

  “It bothers me,” a voice said from the shadows, bringing Kelly’s head around.

  “The hell? Sarge? Listen, man—”

  Kelly began to turn, raising his shotgun, but a pistol cracked once, twice, three times, the muzzle-flashes merging into one. Shot through, he fell almost at Bolan’s feet, gasping the final microseconds of his life away.

  “Sergeant Mahan,” Bolan said to the tall and weary-looking man who stood before them.

  “You,” Mahan replied. “Is this your party?”

  “I sent out the invitations,” Bolan said. “B.Y.O.G.”

  “For guns. That’s cute,” Mahan replied. “Now, exactly what in hell am I supposed to do with you?”

  “Your call,” Bolan told him. “Whatever you decide—”

  “You don’t shoot cops. Yeah, I remember. Thanks for leaving that to me.”

  “You call this one a cop?” Johnny asked, pushing it.

  “He used to be, I guess. None of us come out squeaky-clean.”

  “You’ve done all right, from what I hear,” Bolan said.

  Mahan glanced back toward the house in flames. “I couldn’t root this out,” he said. “The Gallos of this world get fat and sassy while I’m bagging two-bit losers.”

  “Saving lives,” Bolan said.

  Mahan eyed the body sprawled between them. “Not tonight.”

  Before Bolan could answer that, he heard the rumbling sound of a garage door opening behind him, turned and squinted in the glare of high-beam headlights as a sleek car hurtled toward them, engine snarling.

  Johnny raised his Steyr without thinking, caught a fleeting glimpse of Vinnie Gallo’s face behind the steering wheel before firing a short burst at the windshield. Then he dodged to his left, dropping and rolling, bobbing upright once more and leveling his rifle. His brother and the detective sergeant were unloading at the same time, rapid-firing at the Cadillac as it raced toward them, moving only when it was a matter of survival, in the final seconds.

  Then the car was past them, homing on the distant gate, with Gallo still accelerating. Johnny held the Steyr’s trigger down and tried to stay on target as he burned up half a magazine in no time, peppering the Caddy’s trunk and bumper. Mahan’s pistol pop-pop-popped in his two-handed grip, the cop forgetting that he had two felons right in front of him, focused as he was on halting Gallo’s flight.

  And for a moment, Johnny thought t
hat Mack had given up. He’d let the Spectre drop and dangle from its shoulder sling, but then he raised the Milkor MGL, peering downrange through its reflex sight, the red-dot kind that helped pinpoint a target on the move. Then he began to fire, squeezing the trigger slowly and deliberately, cranking off three rounds before he paused.

  The Caddy took all three, a walking chain of blasts that marched across its trunk lid, roof and hood like triple lightning strikes. They didn’t stop the car immediately, but its flaming hulk veered to the left and lost momentum, rolling to a smoky halt before the fuel tank blew and spread a lake of fire around the once-luxurious machine.

  “Jesus!” Johnny couldn’t have said if that was awe or simple weariness in Mahan’s voice. “You guys don’t screw around.”

  “We can’t afford to,” Bolan replied.

  “So, now what?” Johnny asked. “You lock us up?”

  Mahan considered it, his eyes narrowing as he heard sirens warbling in the distance.

  “It means a lot of paperwork,” he said at last. “Explaining things I don’t even pretend to understand.”

  “So, then...?”

  “You have a ride around here somewhere?”

  “Not too far,” Bolan said.

  “Then I’d suggest you get the hell away from here,” Mahan replied. “Give me time to come up with some kind of fairy tale to cover this.”

  “You sure about this?” Bolan inquired.

  “Not even. So you’d better haul ass while you can, before I change my mind.”

  They hauled, without another word or backward glance. The brothers scaled Gallo’s wall not far from where they’d entered the estate, clearing the grounds as cruisers, unmarked cars and a SWAT van started rolling in, their red and blue lights strobing, sirens winding down.

  A block away, the Mercury sat waiting for a long ride back to someplace safe.

  Epilogue

  “You’ll get in touch with Zoe?” Bolan asked his brother.

  “Try to, anyway. Or else she’ll get in touch with me.”

  “What will you tell her?”

  Johnny shrugged. “She knows her brother’s gone. The hard part will be living with it.”

  “Maybe Mahan will come up with something.”

  “Maybe,” Johnny said. He didn’t sound convinced.

  “You did a good job,” Bolan stated.

  “Like when you tell someone they’ve done their best, meaning they screwed things up with good intentions.”

  “No. Not meaning that, at all.”

  “I sucked you into this, because I couldn’t handle it myself.”

  “No shame in that.”

  “And I’m a cop-killer,” Johnny reminded him.

  “It isn’t something you’ll forget,” Bolan said, “but there’s no need to keep punishing yourself. O’Malley chose his road and reached the only end it could’ve had.”

  “You’ve never done it.”

  “There but for the grace of—”

  “Yeah, I hear you. Doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “It’s not intended to. What time’s your flight?”

  “Nine thirty-seven, if you can believe it. I’ll be lucky if we’re in the air by ten-fifteen.”

  “Good to be home, though,” Bolan said.

  “I guess.”

  “You may want to consider laying off the field trips for a while.”

  “I hear you, bro’. I’m selling off my frequent-flier miles.”

  “I’ll try to swing out that way, pretty soon.”

  “Be good to see you,” Johnny said. “Without the rest of it, I mean.”

  Without the rest of it, Bolan thought, meaning endless war, bloodshed and the incessant threat of sudden death.

  “Without that, right.”

  But something told the Executioner that he would never be without it. He, like Greg O’Malley and the rest, had picked a life path that was strewn with corpses, fraught with peril. He had chosen it with eyes wide-open, and he couldn’t honestly pretend that he had no regrets. Or that he’d “win,” whatever that meant, in the end.

  But he would keep on fighting, sure.

  It was the only way he knew to play the game.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN-13: 9781460323151

  First edition December 2013

  HARD TARGETS

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike Newton for his contribution to this work.

  Copyright © 2013 by Worldwide Library

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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