The last pair of fraggers caught the men rushing away from the first explosions.
In all, more than half the men were goners, and many of the rest screeched in pain and agony.
The Executioner settled behind a bulldozer and fired over it. Every man who held a gun became a target.
Nobody knew where the silenced shots came from. Six men hid behind the big box. Bolan picked off three of them with two bursts from the silenced Beretta.
"I'm getting the hell outa here!" a voice screamed.
"Yeah? Where you going, dumb ass? Get on the floor and find out who's shooting." A man rose and ran for the far door. Bolan brought him down with two slugs of a 3-round burst.
More random firing sounded. Then a commanding voice rang out, "Cease fire, dammit! Don't shoot unless you got a good target. Look for the bastard!"
Bolan spotted the man who had spoken.
The man continued, "Hold your fire until we get a fix on the..." His final words were cut off as one carefully aimed round jolted through his forehead, spilling his brains.
Bolan worked quietly toward the door. The explosions might bring the police, or might not, this place being some distance out of town.
He took a smoke bomb from his webbing and pulled the pin. He threw it as far as he could into the warehouse. It went off with a pop, and heavy, thick smoke rolled out.
"Fire!" somebody screamed.
Bolan found the way to the door was blocked by a heavyset Mafia soldier looking the other way and waving a .45. He turned when Bolan coughed, and swung his gun around. The Beretta sneezed twice and the hulk died where he stood, his finger too slack to pull the trigger.
The Executioner jumped for the door, exited and darted behind the big combine outside.
A sleek black Cadillac wheeled up, and its driver jumped out and ran for the warehouse, his weapon ready. A younger man stepped from the back seat, noticing the smoke pouring from the structure.
"Joey?" Bolan called.
The young man spun around, stared at the combine. The Executioner revealed himself, and Joey Canzonari jumped behind the wheel of his Caddy and skidded away.
Bolan ran toward one of the four crew wagons.
The keys were still in it, as per Mafia practice whenever a fast getaway is anticipated. He leaped in, started it, and gunned after the gangster. Joey was a quarter of a mile ahead, speeding through a red light.
Bolan was not sure where the guy was going, but he chased loyally. They turned onto the broad highway to Sandy. The only place to go from there was south over secondary roads toward Salem or around the Mount Hood Loop highway.
The cars slashed through the early-afternoon traffic at seventy-five miles an hour. Then the road narrowed and signs promised Alder Creek and Brightwood. They were on the quiet Mount Hood tourist highway. Bolan wondered when and where the Mafia Don's son would stop and fight.
The two vehicles wound upward into the Mount Hood National Forest. Bolan decided to put the other car off the road for a final confrontation. He raced alongside and nudged the other rig, hearing sheet metal scrape. But the other Cadillac was as heavy as his and could not be budged. Joey raised a pistol, but before he fired, Bolan hit the brakes and eased back.
Next he crept up on the bumper of the Caddy, nosed against it and tromped on the gas. The car shot ahead faster. Bolan pulled back from the swerving rig and took out Big Thunder. It was time for a sure thing.
He aimed at the left rear tire, waited for a straight stretch of road and fired. The heavy slug blew a four-inch gash in the tire.
Joey's Cadillac swerved to the left, bolted across the oncoming traffic lanes, nosed through a ditch, climbed six feet up a stand of Douglas firs and rolled over into the ditch.
The Executioner parked on the shoulder and ran toward the overturned car.
Twenty feet away, he stopped and readied the Beretta 93-R.
Water hissed from the crumpled radiator.
Bolan approached the rig and looked in the upside-down rear window. He could not see a body inside. He looked on the passenger's side.
No one there.
A twig snapped in the brush above him. Bolan jerked up and saw the flash of a yellow shirt as someone darted into the undergrowth.
The jungle fighter dropped to the ground, crawled through the fern and light brush to a two-foot-thick fir and stood behind it. Now he was in his element. Now he was in Vietnam.
Faint footsteps sounded ahead. The Executioner lifted the Beretta and advanced to the next thick tree. Again he held his breath and listened.
The footsteps were clearer now and came from straight ahead. Bolan tried to visualize the map. They had not yet come to the little town of Rhododendron, so they were several miles west of the peak of Mount Hood, which rose to over eleven thousand feet and carried a snowcap year round.
But they were high enough on the slopes that there were ten miles of untracked wilderness ahead of them. Going north the way Joey was heading, they could hike all the way to the Columbia River highway before they found a road. The guy must be planning to circle back.
Twice more Bolan charged ahead, following a faint trail of crushed ferns and the sounds of flight. Then he saw Canzonari cross a small clearing.
The Mafia specialist turned, snapped off a quick shot and disappeared into the woods.
His young prey was moving slower now, the Executioner could tell. He was a city boy, getting tired. Whereas the trail had been through the thick brush of the rain forest, now it met a game trail where deer moved for water and forage.
Bolan was sure that Joey would use the trail as the path of least resistance.
He charged along a small stream, around a bend, down a six-foot embankment, then stopped. Ahead, Canzonari lay flat on a rock to drink from the stream. Seeing Bolan, he rolled away, fired once and ran.
The Beretta spat out a 3-shot volley, and Bolan saw one bullet hit the hood's left arm.
Joey screamed. The sound faded as he vanished into a clump of maples.
Bolan jumped over a fallen log, and dropped to a crouch behind a young cedar. Joey was circling now. Bolan pursued the sounds, stopping every few feet to listen.
For ten minutes Bolan tracked his quarry deeper into the woods, finally spotting him briefly as he worked across a bald area of shale along a small ridge. Except to get over ravines and ridges, the young creep was doing as little climbing or descending as possible.
Twenty minutes later Bolan spotted him sitting against a fir. The guy was panting, near exhaustion. He sat with his handgun up, watching his backtrack.
Bolan worked around him, then aimed and fired the Beretta at the guy's weapon hand. The slug slammed into the slide just over Joey's trigger finger, ripping the .32 from his hand.
He roared in pain, then jumped up and stumbled toward the downed weapon, looking for his attacker.
He tripped and almost fell. He did not recover the small gun in the leaves and ferns. He bellowed in anger and plunged forward into brush and out of Bolan's sight.
Then he screamed.
The Executioner rushed over and looked. He saw only Oregon sky and a cliff. Twenty feet below Joey had landed in soft dirt and brush. He staggered to his feet and ran into deep cover.
But he was making no attempt to hide his trail, which swung around and headed back toward the highway. Bolan figured that hadn't been planned.
He realized that the younger Canzonari was injured and lost.
The terrain became a rocky and barren slope again, and Bolan saw signs of recent lightning fire. He was halfway across the slope when a rock rolled down ahead of him. Then came another and another.
Bolan looked upward and saw the flash of a shirt as more boulders crashed down the slope toward the Executioner, each dislodging others. Soon a minor rockslide was thundering toward Bolan.
There was no time to outrun it. Bolan darted behind the closest tree. It was barely two feet thick, but it prevented the heavy rocks from hitting him.