Carboni had slowly passed to make certain, then circled the block and followed the pair to a car. They drove around and then stopped and talked. Later they drove downtown, where the woman got out and hailed a taxi.
Pure chance that he had spotted Mack Bolan, but hed take it.
When Bolans Buick pulled away from the curb, Carbonis Thunderbird followed two cars behind. He had practiced following cars around New York; if you can tail a car in Manhattan, you can stay with one anywhere. Carboni was an expert. As long as the victim did not know he was being followed, Carboni usually stayed three or four cars behind. If the other guy knew, it became a race, not a tail.
Carboni knew at once that Bolan had no idea he was being tailed. The Buick sedan wound through several streets, then stopped near a phone booth. Carboni parked across the one-way street and watched.
He had been waiting a long time for this chance. The commission first came to him a year ago. He had been happy working in New York as an enforcer and eliminator, as they called it now. But the commission offered him ten times the money he was making, and his own don urged him to take the job, so there was no problem either way.
He spent two months on weapons, learning everything he could about handguns, all the auto and semiauto submachine guns, and then taking a postgraduate course from an old sapper about gunk, juice, powder and plastic explosives.
For two weeks he spent sixteen hours a day reading everything the commission had collected on the Executioner. They had copies of every story printed in the United States.
Slowly Carboni filtered out fiction from fact, the hype and local paranoia from the reality. He knew more about Mack Bolan, his family, his involvement with the government at Stony Man Farm and his subsequent disengagement from Uncle Sam than anyone in the Mafia.
Now he planned to kill Bolan!
Carboni had missed the bastard in Portland, but just barely. This time he would not miss. It was a matter of pride now.
There was only one restraint. Vince Carboni was not going to sacrifice his own life just to get the Executioner. He could not spend that five-million reward if he were laid out in a coffin. Which was why he did not unlimber his .44 AutoMag right then and blast Bolan as he stood in the phone booth. Not with a hundred witnesses to identify both him and the car. He was too smart for that.
Bolan left the phone booth and drove north. He hit the Jones Falls Expressway and continued north across the Beltway. The small town of Brooklandville was ahead. It was almost rural here, a few small farms and acreages. Traffic fell to nothing. Carboni pulled up behind the Buick and leaned out the window. There was no chance now to disguise a tail, but at least there would be damn few witnesses out here.
His first shot blew the left rear tire. The Buick moved sideways, then back, as it stopped on the right shoulder.
Carboni braked the T-Bird to a halt fifty yards behind and ducked. He went out the side door and saw that the Buicks door was open, too.
Beyond a small ditch was a field of corn, head high. Bolan was out there somewhere.
Carboni jumped back in the car as a small-caliber shot thunked into the door where he had crouched. He went out the door on the other side and stared into the cornfield. Before he could determine a strategy, the boom of an AutoMag broke the silence and the rented Thunderbird rocked as the heavy round crashed into the engine. He heard steam escaping and swore.
His wheels were probably dead! Carboni charged around the back of the car, raced across the ditch and into the cornfield. He paused in the corn, breathing heavily, then held his breath and listened.
All he heard was leaves rustling in the breeze. Where the hell was Bolan? He looked down the row, but the lush growth of the stalks and leaves obscured the view beyond about a dozen feet in any direction. He looked over the top of the six-foot tassels, but saw no one.
Carboni moved deeper into the field toward the spot where he supposed Bolan had to be. All he wanted was one good shot. Just one and he would collect five million dollars!
The hit man eased forward again, then stopped. He heard an engine grind, catch and wheels spin. Carboni screamed and reversed, running wildly through the corn, holding the AutoMag ready.
The damn Executioner had slipped back to the Buick and was moving.
Carboni saw the Buick drive along the shoulder, its back tire flopping. His .44 AutoMag ejected three rounds into the side windows. Then a round hit the gas tank. Gas gushed out but did not explode.
Carboni was running as fast as the car was flopping along. He charged along the ditch, figuring the rig could not move more than three or four hundred yards with only the fuel in the carburetor and fuel pump.
After a hundred yards the Buick wavered, and the engine sputtered and died. Carboni went flat on the ground in the ditch and waited for Bolan to step out and die.
A minute later, the hit man frowned. Bolan had not yet emerged from the car.
Fifty yards behind Carboni, Mack Bolan knelt among the cornstalks, clipping grenades onto his hastily donned combat harness and web belt. He adjusted his AutoMag and put the Uzi on its shoulder strap. Then he moved toward the road, the Uzi up and waiting.
Carboni had crawled along the ditch to the Buick. He walked around the Buick, his big gun ready.
Bolan grinned, wishing he could see the expression on the big headhunters face. His contacts told him that Vince Carboni, a former hit man from New York, was smart, mean and resourceful, and had spent three months training before starting the manhunt for Mack Bolan.
Vince Carboni was not a man to take lightly.
He would be furious when he found the Buicks steering wheel tied down and a big rock on the gas pedal.
When the New York gunner came behind the Buick, Bolan slammed a 5-round burst at him from the Uzi. The mafioso ducked, and the rounds pounded into the Buick.
Bolans combat-trained mind had evaluated his options and selected one computer-fast search and destroy. He needed to eliminate this continuing threat.
Bolan darted up to Carbonis Thunderbird and looked inside. A Weatherby Mark V rifle lay on the back seat. The Executioner removed the weapon and retreated to the rear of the car. Sheltered behind the car, he decided he could not carry the ten-and-one-half-pound weapon. He quickly took the bolt from the big rifle, making it inoperative, threw the rifle into the cornfield and the bolt in the opposite direction.
Then he moved forward. The Mafia hit man was next on the Executioners own hit list.
As Bolan ran for the cornfield, three rounds snapped past him. There were from Carbonis AutoMag, and now he knew how others felt when he fired his own big gun at them and missed. He charged into the corn, moved inward fifty feet, then carefully worked forward. He tried but could not entirely prevent the tops and tassels of the cornstalks from swaying as he moved from one row to another.
Something black flew through the air toward him.
Grenade! He charged twenty feet down the row, then dived into the soft dirt as the bomb exploded. The inch-thick cornstalks absorbed most of the shrapnel. He had seen the bomb just in time.
One fragger was left in the suitcase in the Buick. What else? Only a .45 and some extra ammo for his weapons. So the fragger probably had been one of his own. He would find out shortly. He moved cautiously toward the road without disturbing a single leaf.
Bolan stopped at the edge of the corn, still concealed. He checked each way and at last saw Carboni behind the dead Thunderbird; one of his legs showed under the car. A 6-round burst from Bolans Uzi brought a scream from the mob goon. The hit man fired over the car into the cornfield with no idea where his target was.
Bolan was running short of ammo for the Uzi, which he had taken from the guard at Carlos castle. He had two more magazines and that was it. He had to conserve his firepower, since the Uzi was the only long gun in the contest.