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  The smoke rose about halfway up the chimneys, then seemed to hit an invisible ceiling. The oily rope flattened into a small cloud, seemed to balloon out, then dissipated.

  "I don't like the looks of that," Sipe managed to shout before his jaws banged together again.

  Bolan kept his eyes on the flat cloud. As they labored up a gradual incline, he could see that they were only a couple of miles away from the chimneys. When they crested the hill, Sipe braked to a skidding halt. The warrior noticed tracks to his right and pointed to them. "Somebody's been here recently. I can't tell whether they were coming or going, though."

  Sipe rolled his window down and leaned out with the binoculars. Without having the dusty windshield in his way, he was able to see more clearly. Tracking the oily smoke back to its origin, he spotted the wreck of a helicopter in the saddle between the two chimneys.

  10

  Randy Carlton scrambled to his feet and began to run. The oily smoke of the destroyed helicopter filled the gap between the chimneys. Against its backdrop, he noticed another, paler smoke, its slender tendrils twining upward and slowly dissipating in the dry air. The desert was suddenly silent, except for the crunch of his boots on the sandy soil. He still couldn't see the Bronco, but as he drew closer it was apparent that it was the source of the pale smoke.

  He called to Ralston in a voice that was half shout and half whisper. He stopped to listen for an answer, and when none came, he increased his speed. The roof of the Bronco came into sight, a thick green line broken by the arms of clustered saguaro. As he got closer, he saw the roof line broken by odd marks, then realized they were bullet holes, the paint chipped and broken around them, raw metal scars glinting in the sunlight.

  He was aware only of the slap of the glasses around his neck and the canteen at his waist. His feet felt leaden and the ground seemed to stretch out and away from him, as if the faster he ran the farther he had to go. Then he broke through into a clearing, and stopped dead in his tracks. The window frames of the Bronco were nearly vacant, yawning at him like the mouths of dead men, black and motionless, lined with sets of jagged glass teeth.

  The shattered glass was strewn on the sand, sparkling like cheap jewelry tossed away in disgust. Carlton called to his partner again, and heard nothing. He began to walk forward cautiously, shifting the Winchester nervously in his hands. Approaching the vehicle from the rear, he couldn't see anyone inside. He backed away a bit and circled to the driver's side, moving forward on tiptoe. The steering wheel had been shattered, its hard plastic reduced to a pair of splintered spikes jutting up like antlers, the broken ends as ugly as raw bone.

  He tiptoed to the door and leaned in. The seats were full of broken glass, but the Bronco was empty. The side windows were gone, too; chunks of glass covered the rear floor. Bright spots of sun spilled through the bullet holes in the roof and sparkled on the litter. Small rainbows refracted by the rough edges of the glass winked and flashed as he turned his head from side to side.

  "Will? You there? It's me, Randy. Will, where are you? You okay?"

  The passenger door was open, and Carlton walked to the other side of the vehicle. A few drops of blood, already dried by the sun, half soaked into the sand, dribbled toward the base of the chimneys, and he began to follow them. Several feet from the Bronco, they stopped. The soil had been disturbed, and he walked faster, following the tracks.

  A sudden crash sent him diving to the ground, until he realized it was the chopper wreckage shifting as it burned. He looked up at a saddle-shaped notch, about thirty feet off the ground, and saw part of the still-flaming shell, its paint peeled and metal blackened.

  Climbing to his feet, he caught a glimpse of the familiar green of the Border Patrol uniform. He scrambled through some tangled brush and found Ralston lying on his left side. As Carlton bent down, he already knew it was useless. Ralston's shirt was soaked with blood. A small crusty patch of sand beneath his partner's crooked left arm glistened dully. A few small insects crawled across the dark patch and disappeared.

  Ralston's eyes were open but glazed, his chest motionless, his open mouth slack. Carlton bent his ear to the bloody shirt, but his partner's heart had stopped. He straightened up and closed the man's eyes with a rough thumb and stood to look at the burning wreck of the chopper. He raised a clenched fist and shook it, but didn't have the heart to curse the flaming hulk and its dead occupants.

  He walked back to the battered Bronco and opened the driver's door. He brushed the broken glass from the seat and climbed in. The radio mike lay on the floor, its case shattered and wires sprouting like the springs of an old mattress. The key was still in the ignition. He turned it, and the engine sputtered, then caught. Steam began to spurt from under the hood, and he shut the engine off.

  Climbing out, Carlton popped the hood release and walked to the front of the Bronco. One bullet hole in the hood seemed to be the only damage to the engine compartment. He spotted the source of the steam almost immediately. A gaping hole in a radiator hose leaked coolant. A small greenish pool had collected in the sand under the engine, at its center a deep depression where the slug had buried itself in the ground. With a little luck and a little gaffer's tape, he should be able to patch the hose long enough to get back to a main road.

  A distant buzz seemed to be tugging at his consciousness as he opened the tool chest in the rear of the 4x4. It whined and snarled, and finally unable to ignore it any longer, he turned to see a cloud of dust rushing toward him. He climbed onto the running board and saw a Jeep, four men on board, racing directly at him.

  Carlton jumped onto the ground and grabbed his carbine. He backed away from the 4x4, peeking over his shoulder to make sure he didn't impale himself on a cactus. He ducked down behind a fat prickly pear and watched the Jeep approach. The vehicle skidded to a halt alongside the crippled Bronco, and a tall thin man jumped out of the passenger seat.

  The man seemed to be made of old leather, and the garish clothing he wore made him look like a scarecrow in some disco version of The Wizard of Oz. On his head he wore an elaborately feathered Stetson with a snakeskin band, the rattle clacking as he moved. The fabric of his purple shirt, large white polka dots sprinkled everywhere but on the puffy sleeves, glistened in the sun, shimmering as he moved. White bell-bottom pants and black boots completed the costume. A droopy mustache, Pancho Villa style, waggled as he said something over his shoulder to the men in the Jeep, but the patrolman couldn't make out the words.

  Carlton started to back away, but slipped and fell. A cactus spine embedded itself in his left wrist, and he cried out involuntarily. The scarecrow turned, reaching for a pistol on his hip. The other men jumped out of the Jeep, and Carlton ran.

  As he raced toward the base of the chimney to find some solid cover, the first spray of automatic rifle fire zipped overhead and slammed into the rock. He took one in the shoulder and stumbled, scrambling forward on hands and knees. Working backward up the slippery pile of rock, Carlton ducked into a small cleft and waited.

  Bracing his carbine against a ledge on a boulder, he drew a bead on a polka dot, dead center, and fired. The scarecrow fell slowly, like a collapsing balloon. The other three men, right behind him, ran for cover. Carlton caught the squat Mexican in blue denim in the upper arm, and he pitched backward. The remaining men cut for the Jeep, while the patrolman got to his feet and tried to steady his aim as he fired a third time. The shot missed and the fleeing men reached the Jeep just as Carlton squeezed off another round. The men dived backward, an M-16 flying to one side.

  Then Randy heard another vehicle.

  * * *

  "You're right. There's a chopper there. It must have crashed."

  "How?" Bolan asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, how did the pilot get so close to those rocks? What the hell was he doing in that tight?"

  Before Sipe could venture a guess, Bolan pointed to a new cloud, a ball of dust sweeping around the base of the rocks from the right. The young
attorney passed him the glasses, and Bolan opened his door and stood on the running board.

  "Two four-wheel drives, six or eight men, and they're shooting at somebody." He ducked back into the Renegade and closed the door. Sipe kicked the vehicle into gear and plunged over the crest of the hill.

  Zigzagging in and out among the gargantuan saguaros, the Renegade roared and skidded as Sipe worked the clutch and brake. Even in four-wheel-drive, it was all he could do to keep the vehicle upright and headed in the general direction of the rocks.

  "You got a gun?" Bolan shouted.

  "A.38, why?"

  "You're going to need it."

  "We don't know that. We don't even know who those men are. They might just be a bunch of kids raising some hell."

  "Folks around here usually do that when a chopper blows up?"

  Sipe didn't answer. Bolan was right, and he knew it. They were on the valley floor now, and the sound of gunfire came in sporadic bursts. As they charged into the clear, Bolan spotted the Border Patrol 4x4, its hood up, and Sipe screeched to a halt alongside it. Both men jumped out, Bolan racing to the front of the abandoned vehicle. He noticed its missing windows and poked his head inside, seeing nothing but scattered glass in the seats and rear, a smear of blood.

  "Look around here, Sipe. I'm going to go after those Jeeps."

  "You'll need help."

  "Come on, then. But watch me. Don't go off half-cocked. Understand?"

  Sipe grinned and gave him a thumbs-up, twirling the pistol on its trigger guard. Bolan shook his head, then sprinted toward the sound of gunfire. The deep bark of a carbine gave him hope that at least one of the border patrolmen was still alive.

  The warrior dropped to a crouch and moved forward carefully, picking his spots before darting from cactus to shrub to whatever passed for a tree in the desert. The firing ahead had abated somewhat. He couldn't tell, and didn't want to guess, whether that meant the patrolman was holding his own or was out of luck.

  Suddenly he was in the clear. The two Jeeps were parked near the base of the wall, but both were deserted. The sharp report of the carbine echoed across the desert floor, magnified by the silence and the hard face of the rock. Bolan crouch-walked to the rear of the nearer Jeep, then dropped to one knee. Both engines were running.

  Quickly he crept forward, turned off the ignition and pocketed the keys. He did the same with the second Jeep. He spotted a rifle in the front seat and tossed it to Sipe. The blood-smeared corpse, its tongue already lolling thickly, lay on its back in the sand. Bolan felt a little better, knowing the odds had been cut.

  The firing had stopped altogether. Bolan could hear a conversation in harshly spoken Spanish drifting through the sparse growth. Edging ahead, he spotted three men crouched behind a huge, blocklike boulder. One of them was pointing up the face of the left chimney, and Bolan followed the man's extended arm to a shallow notch in the rock face, just behind a cluster of boulders. That had to be where the lawmen were holed up. The other hardmen were nowhere in sight.

  Bolan wanted to get a fix on the others before betraying his presence, but time was a luxury he didn't have. He turned to see where Sipe was, but the attorney had disappeared. Suddenly he saw Sipe rise out of a crouch and approach the three men from behind. The pistol in his hand was extended straight out. The man might not like guns, but there was no quarreling with his guts… just his common sense. Bolan raised the Weatherby and drew a bead on the centerpiece of the trio, just as Sipe hollered for them to raise their hands.

  The three men spun around like kids caught peeking through a whorehouse window. Sipe took a step forward; the man on the left, partially concealed behind the center gunman, moved his shoulder slightly. Peering through the Weatherby's scope, Bolan missed the motion. He saw the middle man sidle slightly to the right, and shifted his aim. The middle man dropped straight down as Bolan found the gunman on the left. He squeezed the trigger, just as he heard a burst from a submachine gun. The target spun like a broken top as the heavy Weatherby slug slammed into his shoulder, shattering the shoulder blade on the way out.

  Looking for his next target, Bolan dropped his aim and found the middle man twisting to one side, his feet digging at the slippery soil. He squeezed off another round, drilling the prostrate gunner in the side. The man bent in two, then jerked like a broken puppet for several seconds. He was still quivering as Bolan swept the scope to the right.

  The third man had beat a hasty retreat.

  The warrior charged forward. Sipe lay on his side, facing away from Bolan. Kneeling beside the attorney, he grasped the fallen man's shoulder and felt the sticky shirt cling to his fingers. Sipe rolled onto his back with no resistance. A jagged lines of holes crossed his chest from left shoulder to right hip. The shirt was a solid red mass.

  Ronny Sipe was dead.

  Bolan looked up at the column of smoke, then turned to the mound of scree at the base of the chimneys. Someone shouted in Spanish from a tangle of cactus between Bolan and the rocks. Then a flash of pale blue darted from left to right among the shades of green, and Bolan brought up the Weatherby.

  Using his scope, he moved from cactus to cactus, scanning anything large enough to offer some cover, until he found what he was looking for. A patch of faded denim, no more than an inch wide, stuck out from behind a ragged saguaro. Bolan watched, but the man stayed out of sight. Voices echoed from the rocks, and the Executioner knew he didn't have time to wait.

  The saguaro was tall, but no more than the thickness of a thigh. Its soft, pulpy interior was no real protection from a high-velocity projectile. Bolan studied the denim for a second, shifted his aim high and to the right, then squeezed. He saw the saguaro explode, and the denim disappeared. If he had calculated right, he had a head shot.

  Dead on.

  11

  Bolan worked laterally along the base of the rock. The firing was sporadic now, an occasional shot echoing up and away, soaring into the sky and disappearing like a bird heading south. The jumble of fallen rock gave the gunmen a distinct advantage. He had as little cover for himself as the saguaro had offered his last target.

  He still hadn't seen them, and nothing they had done gave him an indication they knew he was behind them. But Bolan was not about to take a chance. Ronny Sipe had already made the mistake of assuming too much. It had cost him his life.

  The Weatherby, reloaded, hung from his shoulder by its leather sling. The rifle was fine for selective, long-range fire, but the kind of close-up, rapid fire he would need to take these guys out called for a different kind of tactic. Bolan wanted to be able to sling lead around like a desperate politician slings mud. In this kind of confrontation, how accurate was less important than how much how fast. The Uzi he had snatched from one of the dead men was just the ticket. Two extra magazines didn't hurt, either.

  But the biggest unknown in the equation was time. As far as Bolan knew, at least one of the pinned-down border patrolmen was wounded. If both were there, they might both be bleeding to death while he maneuvered. Assuming the worst was a two-edged sword. It made sure there was nothing casual about the approach. But it also meant you might lose your cool unnecessarily.

  Angling sharply toward the left, Bolan pressed in toward the base of the chimneys. The entire valley floor around the red rock columns was a tangle of broken stone, great, flat slabs of rock lying cheek by jowl with boulders, small rocks crunching under foot. The whole mess looked like some psychotic version of Stonehenge. Fixing the gunmen's location by ear, the warrior tried to get as close as he could without exposing himself.

  Using tangled thornbush as cover, he worked his way to within thirty feet of the outermost ring of fallen rock. He was close enough to the chimneys to hear the sucking wind of the burning chopper. Its smoke had thinned considerably, but flames still leaped into the air thirty or forty feet above the wreckage. The stone itself had been dyed a deep, sooty black by the rising smoke.

  Falling to his stomach, Bolan wriggled forward, darting in among the th
orny branches like a fat snake. The inch-long thorns snagged on his clothing and stabbed through to the flesh, ripping and shredding his shoulders and back. The wounds, both scratches and punctures, itched and burned as if the thorns had been dipped in some exotic toxin.

  The thin but persistent growth crept right up to the very edge of the fallen rock, and Bolan found himself flush up against the flat red face of a huge boulder. To the left, a narrow gap would just admit him, but he had to bend his body into the thorns in order to slip around a sharp outcrop where the boulder had sheared away from the chimney. A thick slab, split away on impact, lay flat on the ground, and its top edge was as sharp as a razor. One consequence of infrequent rain was the absence of erosion. Knife edges on the rock tended to stay sharp.

  Reaching down along a thorny branch, trying to find where it joined a trunk, Bolan grabbed a smooth, dry surface. The bark felt almost silky. He began to work the branch back and forth, trying to crack the bark and rip the branch away. The tough, thick fibers of the branch bent and twisted, but wouldn't give. Letting it go for a second, he repositioned his hand and twisted the branch toward the edge of the rock. Whipping it back and forth against the stone, trying to avoid making a sound, he sawed away, slowing ripping through the tough branch almost fiber by fiber.

  After five minutes, during which only one shot had been fired, he finally succeeded in ripping far enough through that he could tear the branch away. The gathering quiet disturbed him. The wounded man hadn't fired in more than a quarter of an hour. If he was out of ammunition, it wouldn't take long for the others to figure it out. It was also possible he had lost consciousness. That, too, would be an invitation for a quick frontal assault.

  Either way, Bolan would then lose the edge of the pincer effect. With the remaining gunmen trapped between two points of fire, the advantage was his. Once the border patrolman was out of the picture, it shifted back to the gunmen.