The tail was gaining. He could make out hostile faces behind the broad, tinted windshield. Reaching inside his jacket he drew the Colt Python .357 Magnum out of its holster and laid it on the seat beside him.
The woman saw his move and craned around in her seat, following Hannon's gaze, picking up the tail through the window.
And Hannon was surprised at the look of grim determination on her face as she pulled the little nickel-plated autoloader from her handbag, jacking back the slide to chamber up a live one.
Their eyes met briefly, and he found something inside there that he had seldom seen in the eyes of combat-hardened veterans. Strength, a hard, indomitable will — all tempered by a healthy fear of what was coming.
Some lady, right.
They shared a fleeting smile and then his eyes were on the road, his mind fully occupied with their immediate predicament. He milked some more speed from the Chevy's straining engine, but the more powerful Caddy was chewing up the distance between the two vehicles. The crew wagon's grill was inches from their bumper now, and Hannon flirted with the thought of slamming on his brakes, forcing them into a collision and coming out with all guns blazing while they were still dazed.
Just as quickly he saw the gun muzzles nosing up above the dashboard, recognized the automatic weapons back there and abandoned the idea.
Any chance they had remained in flight now. Standing still, they could only be cut to ribbons by the gun crew.
Suddenly the Caddy surged around them, gaining on the driver's side, pulling abreast. In his side mirror, then through the window itself, Hannon could see weapons jutting from the power windows as they slid down, opening a field of fire.
John Hannon cranked desperately on his own window handle, using all his strength, and he had the glass almost halfway down before the handle came off in his hand with a resounding snap. Cursing wildly, he dropped the useless crank and snared his Python from the seat beside him, lifting it and trying hopelessly to find an angle through the half-open window.
He was tightening into the squeeze when the guns in the Caddy erupted, raking his Chevy with a shattering broadside. Glass flew everywhere, jagged shards embedding themselves in his cheek and throat. Bullets drilled through the door and bodywork, one of them tracing fire across his thighs, another boring deep into his side, reaming vital organs along the way.
Hannon lost control of the Chevy, doubling over the wheel as the car jounced across the shoulder, swerving off pavement onto gravel, finally grass. The Caddy swept on past them, one parting burst turning the windshield into crystals, the glass suddenly imploding in a thousand pebbled pieces.
On the seat beside him he heard Evangelina scream, then the car was plowing shrubbery under, straining at the leafy barrier and finally stalling out amidst the ruins of a demolished hedgerow.
Through a haze of pain John Hannon was aware of everything around him. He could feel the blood puddling in his lap, the throbbing of his wounds, a creeping chill that could only mean one thing.
As if from far away he heard the engine ticking, slowly cooling down, and beneath the hood, a steady dripping from the hoses severed by the broadside fusillade. It might be gasoline, he knew, but suddenly it did not seem to matter.
Something was holding his legs down, and Hannon realized that his gun arm was also pinned against his side. Glancing down, vision blurry from the blood of ragged scalp wounds streaming across his face, he recognized the girl.
She had fallen toward him when the Chevy came to rest. Now her head was resting in his lap, her shoulder jammed against his forearm, pinning it against his seat.
It took only a glance to tell the veteran of Homicide that she was gone. The bullet's entry wound above one eye was tiny, but the fist-sized exit pit behind her ear had taken everything inside and scattered it across the back seat of his loaner.
She was dead as hell, and rising through the pain, John Hannon felt a sudden sense of failure. He had promised Bolan that he would protect the girl, and now he was directly responsible for killing her. He might as well have pulled the frigging trigger personally.
The fingers of his right hand still were locked around the Python's grip, and Hannon tried to free his hand from underneath her. He had to get out of there while wounded legs and leaking veins still had the strength to carry him away.
The girl was out of it, and Hannon had to think in terms of personal survival.
Reaching down, he tried to lift her head, and in the process saw that much of the blood pooling down between his legs was hers.
He was reaching for the door handle, when a hulking shadow loomed beside the car. A man-shape blotted out the sinking sun and cast sudden darkness across the wounded and the dead.
They had, of course, returned to check their score.
He should have seen it coming, known that on the second hit they would not risk another near-miss foul-up.
Hannon tugged at the Magnum. Its front sight snagged in the material of Evangelina's bloodstained blouse, digging into a lifeless breast. He tried to curse, but at the moment he could muster nothing louder than a whimper.
The hitter raised a weapon — Hannon recognized it as an Uzi — and he racked the cocking lever back to chamber up a round.
"It's checkout time," the hitter told him, grinning.
Hannon closed his eyes and let the darkness carry him away.
18
Bolan saw the flashing multicolored lights ahead and started braking, letting other traffic pass him by, already looking for a place to park the dark, unmarked sedan. He had exchanged the car for Evangelina's conspicuous sportster an hour earlier, meaning to return her car later, but now he feared that he would never have the chance.
He had been drawn there by a shooting broadcast over the portable police-band monitor he carried in the car. The dispatcher named John Hannon as a victim, fate unknown, and there was mention of an unnamed female in the car.
It was enough.
He drove now with a lead weight sitting in the center of his chest, precisely where his heart should be. He found a place on the grassy shoulder of the highway and scanned the scene up ahead: an ambulance, the back doors standing open; state police cars and other unmarked vehicles belonging to the men from Metro Homicide. The uniforms and plainclothes officers were mingling on the shoulder of the highway, watching as two paramedics carried a sheet-draped figure toward the open rear of the meat wagon. Inside, another body was visible, already strapped to a stretcher and ready to go.
Bolan felt the life drain out of him. His pulse was pounding in his ears. Across the narrow span of manicured grass a nondescript Chevrolet was buried nose into a hedge, and from where he sat the Executioner could see the shattered windows, the bullet holes that pocked the fading paint job.
A motorcycle cop in helmet, shades and jackboots was approaching him, one hand raised in warning as Bolan alighted from the car, his face carved into a scowl.
"I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to move along. This is official business."
Bolan let him see the fake credentials briefly, snapping the wallet shut and returning it to an inside pocket before the officer could study it in detail.
"LaMancha, Justice," he snapped. "It's as official as they come. Who's in charge here?"
"That's Captain Wilson, sir." The motor officer pointed through the little crowd of shifting bodies. "Over there."
Bolan followed his aim to a man in a gray three-piece suit. He was standing slightly apart from the rest, staring at the bullet-ridden Chevy. The name touched a bell in his memory, calling up fragmented images of another time, another Miami.