"That Goddamn Braddock!" Conn snarled.
Bolan's jacket had already dropped away, revealing the small chattergun. "They're not cops!" he snapped, slumping in the seat and getting a good grip on the door latch. The sudden movement sent shivers of agony into his fast-awakening face.
Conn's gun hand was fighting the flap of his hoister when a submachine gun appeared over the hood of the Chrysler and a high-pitched voice sang out, "We want your passenger out on the street where we can get a good look at him. Slowly, slowly. Come out with both hands in sight."
Bolan glanced at Conn and pushed the door open.
"You don't want to go out there, Mister!" Conn hissed.
"Amen," said Bolan.
Conn released his door and cracked it open. "Get ready to hit the deck." Then he was throwing himself sideways toward Bolan and his foot was grinding the accelerator into the floorboard. The big car spurted forward in a wild semi-circle, windshield and window glass shattering under a steady drumfire of heavy-calibre-bullets as the chopper cut loose on them.
"You're on your own, Mister!" Conn cried, just as the police car plowed into the Chrysler.
The staccato of the machine gun silenced abruptly. Bolan found himself lying half out of the car. Conn, his door jammed against the Chrysler, was firing his revolver through the shattered windshield. A new volley of fire, this time from the rear, tore through the police car. Conn grunted and said, "Shit, I'm hit."
Bolan drew his legs clear and rolled under the car, passing beneath both vehicles and scooting into the open on the far aide of the Chrysler. A large man with a gashed forehead was staggering out of the driver's seat and almost placed a foot on Bolan's chest. Bolan shot him in the mouth as the man gaped down at him, and he had to dodge the falling body. The Mafioso with the machine gun was kneeling against the curb, blood trickling from a compound break at the left elbow. He tried to bring the big gun up with one hand. Bolan zippered him from groin to throat with a quick upward sweep of his chattering weapon. He slung his own gun, then, and crawled carefully toward the fallen submachine gun.
Conn was lying in the front seat of the police car, firing sporadically to the rear, from around the doorpost. The two men who had approached from the house were holding cautious cover behind a line of trees some thirty feet to Bolan's left flank; one of them was shouting instructions to the rear vehicle. Bolan scooped up the submachine gun and lay a heavy fire pattern into the distant car, spraying for and finding a hot strike. Flames began licking around the hood, then there was a whooosh as fire enveloped the entire vehicle. A blazing figure staggered clear just as the whole thing blew in a roaring explosion.
Conn yelled "Bingo!" and began plunking shots toward the trees. Bolan abandoned the machine gun and moved out in a flanking maneuver with his lighter chattergun. The two men broke their cover, fleeing toward the house. Bolan was vaguely aware that Genghis Conn had moved with him, leaving his wrecked vehicle and moving rapidly across the street to the line of trees.
The resuming chatter of Bolan's light weapon was eclipsed by the sudden balooom of a shotgun. One of the fleeing men crumpled in midstride and crashed to the ground in a lifeless heap. The shotgun roared again and the second man was flung about in a flopping tumble. Conn stepped back into the street, smoke still curling from both barrels of the shotgun, and stared silently at Mack Bolan.
Bolan slipped a fresh clip of ammo into his gun and walked slowly toward the lawman. "Good shooting," he said quietly, " . . . for a peace officer."
Conn grinned and his eyes turned to a quick appraisal of the battle zone. "Damn, that. was quick;" he said in an awed voice. The right side of his khaki shirt was wetly red.
"How bad are you hit?" Bolan asked him.
"Not as bad as it feels, I guess," the lawman replied. "I'll just step back over to Doc Brantzen's and let him take a look." He was moving toward the police cruiser. "Think that Chrysler will run?" he asked Bolan.
"It looks all right," Bolan said.
"Okay. What I said goes. You're on your own. I'll give you a one minute jump. Then I'll have to call in. But listen . . . show up in my town again, I'll shoot you on sight." He was easing himself carefully, into the cruiser and searching for the radio microphone. "Off the record, Mister, I admire your guts. But I wouldn't give two cents for your future, new face or no."
Bolan said, "Thanks," and dragged his suitcase from the rear seat, tossed it into the Chrysler, pulled carefully away from the cruiser, and made his exit with a squeal of tires. In his rearview mirror, he saw Jim Brantzen running across the grounds of New Horizons, heading for the police car, a medical bag in his hand.
Bolan took the corner with a fishtailing swing, straightened out, and unleashed the power of the big car. The pain and the excitement had gotten to him. He ran a hand inside his shirt, probed carefully along his ribs, and came out with reddened fingers. In addition to everything else, he had been hit. He felt unreal, giddy, and suddenly very weak. Bolan fought down a wave of nausea and forced himself to concentrate on a way out of town. Little demons with tiny flamethrowers were working themselves into the bone above his eyes and sending pulsating bolts of hell down into his nose, flaring into his cheekbones, and along the jaw ridges. The throbbing slice along his ribs seemed pleasurable by contrast.
He remembered something Flower Child Andromede, one of his Death Squad dead, had said once: "Hell is for the living."
Mack Bolan knew where his new horizon was leading him.
It was the Horizon to Hell.
Chapter Nine
The imbalance
According to the official record, the October 5th bloodbath at Palm Village was sparked when the Chief of Police was stopped at an illegal roadblock on the eastern edge of that city. Aware that his small desert town had become the object of a search for the infamous Mack Bolan by a special detail of Los Angeles police as well as by "triggermen from an L.A. mob," Chief Robert (Genghis) Conn stated that he had at first thought the roadblock to be the work of the special police detail headed by Los Angeles Captain of Detectives, Tim Braddock, but that "it immediately thereafter became clearly evident that I had happened into a Mafia dragnet for this Bolan character."
Upon questioning by reporters, Chief Conn was unable to explain how he had single-handedly slain the eight gunmen at the scene, who were armed with two submachine guns as well as a variety of other weapons. "At a time like that, who's thinking?" Conn remarked. "It's a matter of reflexes and instinct, I'm as surprised as anyone that I came out of it with only a scratched rib."
Several newsmen, in filing their reports, hinted that the full story had not been revealed, pointing out the similarity of this initial battle at Palm Village with other known episodes involving Mack Bolan, the Executioner. The ensuing action in that previously peaceful city proved more typical of police-gangster confrontations and shootouts. Responding to Chief Conn's alarm, three cars of the special LAPD detail which converged on the scene flushed another group of supposed book salesmen (later identified as Cosa Nostra "soldiers," as was the first group) who had been canvassing a neighborhood several blocks to the west of the first encounter.
"They (the book salesmen) opened fire first," said Sgt. Carl Lyons of the L.A. detail. "I wouldn't even have noticed them otherwise. Apparently they had heard the fireworks from Genghis Conn's shootout and, misreading it as a hit on Bolan, were trying to divert us from the scene. There was just myself and Patrolman Hank Edwards in my car. We were sprayed by an automatic weapon from pointblank range, and Edwards lost control of the car. We rolled, and I guess that's what saved us. There were five gunmen in the attacking force, and they had quite an arsenal. The overturned cruiser gave us good cover and the radio was still operational. We had help in a matter of seconds. Three of the hoods were killed at the scene, one surrendered with a flesh wound in the leg, and another tried to escape in their vehicle. He ran right into Captain Braddock at the first intersection and was killed in the collision. The Captain got out of it with only a wrenched shoulder. I guess the single gunman who managed to break out and flee from the shootout with Conn just kept on going. No . . . we have no idea of his identity."