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  The chopper was a dark, insectile silhouette beside the ore refinery, its engine silent now, the rotors dropping slightly. Bolan couldn't tell if anyone was inside, but he was banking on the strike force leader being smart enough to realize the helicopter made a tempting target.

  Bolan closed the gap with a 40 mm round, his aim dead-on at thirty yards. The high explosive impacted on the chopper's windshield, punching through before it detonated and granting him a microsecond's view of startled faces in the cockpit.

  The helicopter rocked and listed, bright flames leaping from its shattered insect head, the long antennae of its rotors drooping farther, one sheared off completely by the blast. The fuel tanks blew a moment later, finishing the job, but Bolan didn't wait around to watch the barbecue. A squad of five or six gunmen had begun to pepper his position, firing from the shadow of the old refinery, and he was forced back under cover by the storm of lead.

  How many? Did it matter? He was more concerned about the van, and wondered whether the invaders had breached the building yet. The sliding doors were booby-trapped with Bolan's final frag grenade, but there were other ways inside. It suddenly occurred to the warrior that a victory — however long the odds against its happening — would leave them helpless if the van was damaged or destroyed. They couldn't walk Aguire to Los Angeles, and if the hostile rolling stock was also put out of commission…

  Bolan shrugged the problem off and concentrated on a more immediate concern: survival. Several of his enemies were shifting position, angling for a better shot. Retreat seemed futile, even suicidal, and he seized the only option left.

  He would attack with everything he had.

  * * *

  Pratt saw the helicopter explode and the two-man crew incinerated where they sat. The goons were losing it before his very eyes, and there was nothing he could do to stem the tide.

  "For Christ's sake, can't your people shoot?"

  The side of beef named Solly pinned him with a baleful eye, then turned away to watch the action. To be fair, his men were shooting, demolishing the ancient storefronts with a hail of automatic fire, but Pratt could only wonder if they had a target.

  Solly's team had been about to breach the refinery when the helicopter blew, and one of them had spotted something in the shadows. All five men were blasting at the darkness, now, and while it sounded awesome, Pratt wasn't impressed. It didn't matter if they fired a million rounds, unless one scored.

  He felt a sudden, near-compulsive urge to move, do anything except stand idly by while everything went down the tubes around him. Pratt had wondered, from a distance, how the other teams had missed Aguire. Now he knew, and he could see it happening again if some decisive action wasn't taken.

  "Help me find their car," he snapped at Solly.

  "Screw it. I got business here."

  Pratt saw no point in arguing. He turned away and circled through the shadows, moving toward the flank of the refinery. He deliberately ignored the giant sliding doors in front, his instinct telling him that if the place was wired to blow, the loading bays would certainly be covered. He'd have a better chance with windows, or prying back a sheet of corrugated metal from the walls.

  Why risk it?

  The refinery appeared to be the only building where Brognola's soldiers could have stashed a car, and Pratt knew he'd have to neutralize their wheels to guarantee a kill. On foot, Aguire and his escorts weren't going anywhere.

  Pratt worked his way along the building's long west flank, the sounds of automatic fire diminished as he turned the corner. Solly's gunners might get lucky, and his gesture might be totally unnecessary, but the man from the DEA had given up on leaving things to chance. If he was wasting time, so be it; but if Cipriano's hardmen blew it, Pratt would have a cool ace up his sleeve.

  He found a window and tried it, straining as it trembled. It finally gave, deluging him in flakes of rust and the accumulated grit of decades. Swiping at his eyes, Pratt palmed a penlight, and angled its narrow beam inside, playing it across the tattered fabric of conveyor belts and the Quasimodo hulks of old machinery. He nearly missed the van, but swung the penlight back to double-check by the fleeting glint of chrome.

  He had it!

  Satisfied that any lookouts would have wasted him by now, Pratt pocketed his flashlight, stowed the automatic in his belt and wriggled through the window. Cobwebs tangled in his hair, and more grit trickled down his collar, but he let it go, refusing to consider the assorted vermin that would surely find the place a happy hunting ground. It didn't matter if an army of tarantulas was waiting for him in the dark. He had the van, by God, and that could only mean he had Aguire by the balls.

  * * *

  Upstairs in the hotel, Aguire crouched beside a window and peered at the street below. He watched the gunmen scuttle back and forth along the lines of limousines, illuminated by the burning point car, pumping wild, impulsive shots through every storefront on the street. They wasted no rounds on the hotel's upper stories, since no hostile fire had come from that direction. Carlos wondered briefly if he might ride out the storm by simply staying put.

  In answer to his silent question, three men broke away from the concealment of the nearest limo, charging over open ground to storm the front of the hotel. He heard the lobby doors burst open, automatic weapons raking woodwork, falling silent as the gunners realized they had no living targets.

  Blanski had already gone, the thunder of his exit followed shortly by the destruction of the helicopter, beside the old refinery. A skirmish had erupted there, and Carlos wished the big man well.

  The sound of angry voices carried up the stairs. Aguire cocked his automatic pistol, turned from the window and headed toward the open door. He prayed that they would pass by him, and fleetingly considered places of concealment, but realized there was nowhere he could hide in safety if the hunters came upstairs.

  At first the silence made him think they had retreated, but he dared not check the window, frightened that his footsteps would be audible to anyone inside the lobby. Long moments passed before he heard the telltale creaking of a stair below, and realized that one of them at least was on the way.

  Initial fear gave way to grim determination. Carlos had been faced with other killing situations in the past, and he had never flinched from shedding blood in settlement of arguments or business deals. Tonight, with his survival threatened, he would do his best with what he had.

  Four rounds, three targets. He wasn't an expert marksman, but it could be done.

  His enemy had reached the landing, hesitating there before continuing his climb. Another moment, and Aguire heard the risers groan beneath the gunner's weight, remembering each sound the stairs emitted during his ascent. He placed the man halfway down the second flight and closing. In another moment, he would clear the landing on Aguire's floor.

  No time to waste. The Cuban crossed the landing in a rush, forsaking silence in his bid for speed. The gunman heard him coming, fired a burst to clear the stairs of opposition, but Aguire caught him by surprise, his pistol thrust between the balusters to drill the startled profile with a shot at point-blank range.

  The impact drove his target sideways, before he tumbled backward in a boneless somersault. Momentum carried him across the landing and through the flimsy rail.

  Aguire spotted the dead man's submachine gun — a compact Heckler & Koch — lying halfway down the stairs, where he had dropped it as he fell. The weapon might be empty, but with only three rounds in his pistol, Carlos knew it would be worth the risk.

  He lunged around the newel post, rushed down the stairs and was bending to retrieve the weapon when a bullet sliced the air beside his face. Recoiling, he beheld a second gunman lurching up the lower flight of stairs, an Ingram in his hands. Raw survival instinct took control. Aguire triggered off a double punch in rapid-fire, one round wasted, the other drilling through his target's shoulder and throwing him off balance.

  It wasn't enough. The mafioso snarled and raised his weapon, grin
ning through his pain as he prepared to make the kill. Aguire spent an endless microsecond aiming, then fired his final round. The gunner's head snapped back on impact, his dead eyes rolling back and crossing as if trying to glimpse the empty socket in his forehead.

  Aguire scooped up the submachine gun before his lone surviving adversary could recover his composure. He pointed it, and, uttering a silent prayer, depressed the trigger. If the piece was jammed or empty, the Cuban was dead, and it would all have been in vain.

  A dozen rounds exploded from the H&K's muzzle, nearly blinding him with the flash before the magazine ran dry. Downrange his target did a jerky little dance of death, held upright by the bullets ripping through his torso. It suddenly collapsed when the puppet strings were clipped by silence.

  Slouched against the banister, Aguire drew a grateful, ragged breath and nearly gagged on smoke. The lobby was in flames. The stove had been toppled from its moorings, spilling red coals and ash across the ancient wooden floor. Flames were already licking up one wall and blackening the ceiling with their touch.

  He ditched the submachine gun's empty magazine and circled wide around the spreading fire to reach the body of his first successful kill. Aguire rummaged through the dead man's pockets, breathing through his mouth to counteract the stench of scorching flesh, and found three extra magazines before he backed away.

  Two gunmen lay crumpled near the open back door. Aguire raced passed them and made his way outside, escaping from the flames.

  * * *

  "Ten minutes, Max," the G-man said.

  Beside him, Leo Turrin pressed his face against the nearest window, wishing for a moon to light the rugged landscape. They were apparently on course, but he couldn't have proved it either way. The land below seemed featureless, unchanging, swaddled in a cloak of midnight shadow. On a bet, Turrin couldn't have proved that they were still in Arizona, much less closing on their target.

  Too damned late, he thought. The bastards would have made their kill by now. It might be possible to catch them on the road, exact a measure of revenge, but he remembered he was riding with the FBI. Unless the mobsters tried to waste a Fed, their capture would be handled strictly by the book, complete with courteous Miranda warnings, everything all nice and tidy for the courts.

  And how else could it play?

  The only men with guts enough to go that extra mile were down there somewhere, in the darkness, being used for target practice while the Bureau flew in circles. Helpless anger made him clench his fists so hard his knuckles cracked.

  "We've got a visual," the pilot announced. "Some kind of fire, down there."

  Perhaps two miles ahead of them he saw a glowing ember in the darkness. As they closed the gap, they picked out the outline of a building totally engulfed by fire, two stories, maybe three, and burning like a tinderbox.

  At a quarter mile out they saw the winking muzzle-flashes of weapons in the street.

  "Take it down!" he shouted to the pilot.

  "Cancel that," the Phoenix agent snapped. "We're not about to set down in the middle of a firefight, mister." Turning to the men at the controls, he ordered, "Put it on the road, a hundred yards this side of town."

  Disgusted, Leo found he couldn't argue with the logic. It would be suicidal to land in the middle of hostile guns without cover. By landing on the road, they had a chance — however slim — of taking Cipriano's gunmen by surprise. If nothing else, they would have sealed the only exit from the town, ensuring that their enemies would have to stand and fight or scatter through the hills on foot.

  He eased the four-inch Python from its armpit holster, swinging out the cylinder to double-check the load. Six live ones. He patted down his pockets, drawing meager reassurance from the bulk of half a dozen speed-loaders. If he needed more, he'd just have to pick something up along the way.

  One chance was all he asked, for Striker and the kid. One chance to bring them out of it alive.

  And failing that, one chance to even up the score.

  * * *

  Bolan's enemies were counting on a concentrated barrage of fire to drive him back, but the warrior caught them by surprise. He fired a 40 mm fragmentation round, reloading while the explosive was airborne, and rode out the shock wave while advancing under cover of the shrapnel swarm.

  They saw him coming and opened up with automatic weapons and a scattergun. But they were dazed and shaken by the grenades, and their aim wasn't as accurate as it should have been. They raised a cloud of dust and filled the air with angry, zinging hornets, two of which grazed Bolan, but he answered their fire before they had a chance to score a killing shot.

  The launcher belched again. A high-explosive round impacted on a wall of the refinery, spewing flame and twisted shards of corrugated metal. Bolan saw one gunner decapitated by a flying sheet of steel, his headless body lurching through a drunken semblance of the limbo before it finally collapsed.

  Another knelt in dust turned muddy with his comrade's blood, an Uzi spitting in his hands. The Executioner was forced to veer hard left, a stream of parabellum manglers knifing through the air and tracking him before he fired a burst in reply, toppling his adversary in an awkward sprawl of death.

  At twenty yards, the three survivors lost their nerve and scattered, one man limping on a leg already torn by shrapnel. Bolan cut both legs from under him and dropped him in his tracks, another short burst marching spurts of dust across his prostrate body.

  And that left two.

  He switched the M-16 to semiautomatic, brought it to his shoulder and sighted on the nearest runner in a world of dappled firelight. Bolan stroked the trigger once and saw fabric of the gunner's jacket pop on impact, dropping him with the concussion of a solid blow between the shoulder blades.

  One left. He was ready when the final shooter turned to make his stand. Bolan triggered two quick rounds, the tumblers drilling flesh and fabric at a range of fifty feet. His target vaulted backward, arms outflung as if awaiting crucifixion.

  Then Bolan was up and moving, sprinting past the giant sliding doors of the refinery and homing on a smaller access door around one side. Other than some superficial damage from his high-explosive round, the building was intact — and so should be their van. Once inside, he'd be able to disarm the booby trap and throw the great doors wide, prepare to make a break while there was time. If they were in their places, he'd pick up his brother and Aguire along the way.

  If they weren't…

  The soldier closed his mind to the unthinkable alternatives. The door swung open at his touch, and he stepped through into darkness, briefly framed in silhouette by firelight from outside.

  He barely heard the pistol shot that slammed him to the ground.

  20

  The darkness saved his life. Bolan spent a moment lying on the floor of the refinery, exploring the sensations of his body, working on a damage estimate. His knees and palms were scuffed and raw where he had fallen, and there was a distant pounding in his skull, his pulse reverberating, swelling as if someone had applied a tourniquet around his neck. He felt a sudden rush of nausea and rode it out in silence, keeping both eyes open, studying the darkness. Afterimages of the explosive muzzle-flash were printed on his corneas in multicolored specks of light.

  His left shoulder was numb from the impact of a high-velocity projectile, but Bolan could feel warm blood inside his shirt, the fabric sticking to his ribs. The sticky mess had reached his waist already, so the wound was fairly large and bleeding freely. Spreading dampness on his back told Bolan that the wound was through and through.

  How badly was he injured? Rolling slightly to his right, he found that he could move his arm, though with difficulty. Nothing broken, then, and no damage to the major ligaments or tendons. He'd have to stanch the flow of blood, and soon, but there was nothing he could do until he found out who had shot him, where they were and how many of them had him covered in the darkness.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, a disembodied voice called out "Blanski? Gre
en? Sing out if you can hear me, man."

  Bolan recognized the voice as Felix Pratt's, and sudden anger gave him strength to shift positions, crawl on his belly through the dust until he found substantial cover at the base of a conveyor belt. The M-16 went with him, balanced on his shoulders like a blade of grass across a creeping beetle's back.

  "We need to have a pow-wow, man," the agent called. "Let's work this out."

  "I hear you, Pratt."

  He half expected gunfire, but the outlaw Fed responded verbally, apparently conserving ammunition.

  "Blanski. Yeah, I figured it was you. Hey, listen, man… you have to understand about just now. I've been a little wired, you know?"

  "They tell me selling out can do that to you."

  "I don't blame you being pissed, okay? My fault, no question. I just figured you'd be shooting first, and asking questions later. I had to get your attention, understand? So we could talk."

  Bolan used the momentary lull to wedge a handkerchief inside his shirt, against the bleeding entrance wound. His face contorted in a grimace as the pain began to show its ugly face.

  "That's a hell of an icebreaker, Pratt."

  "I got carried away, all right? So, sue me."

  "I'd prefer to kill you."

  "That's your first reaction, sure. But think about it, Blanski. We can help each other out, here."

  "How?"

  He needed time to gauge the distance and the angles of the shot, and Pratt would give it to him if they bargained long enough.