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"What the hell, he ain't coming," someone whispered.

Bolan moved closer to the rest rooms, where he could align two of the ambushers in his field of fire. He pulled down the front handle on the 93-R and fired two rounds. The closer target groaned as he died.

"Was that a silencer?" a voice asked.

The Executioner sent one round into the head of the next target. He died silently.

Two left. Bolan pulled a U.S. Army hand grenade from his combat webbing and hurled it in the direction of the remaining creeps.

It hit the ground, then rolled toward a picnic table and small grill built on blocks. Bolan shielded his eyes.

The blast shattered the night. Someone screamed.

Someone else began firing.

Bolan rolled over and sighted the Uzi on a man behind the picnic table, trying to rise.

"I'm hit!"

Two 5-round bursts from the Uzi rattled through the night to finish him off. The corpse was thrown backward over the table onto the grill, and lay there like a human sacrifice.

The last Mafia ambusher rose from behind a log near the parking lot and fired four times into the area where the submachine gun flashes had appeared. He missed Bolan by six feet, and that cost him his life. Bolan held the trigger down on the Uzi and hosed a double S pattern around the winking flashes of the handgun. A scream followed the roar of the chattergun. Then all was silent.

Crouching, the nightfighter ran toward the rest rooms. There was a Closed sign on the Women's. Inside, Charleen Granger was slumped in a locked cubicle, her eyes puffed up and closed and her lips swollen, obviously from a brutal beating. But that torture had only made her talk, not killed her. A small-caliber weapon had delivered the death blow. Ugly black powder burns surrounded a small purple hole on her forehead.

To Mack Bolan, the place stank of Vietnam. He had his own reasons for thinking so.

He came out running. He moved from cover to cover as he worked toward his car.

The rain began again, a sudden downpour that instantly saturated him. He knew it would ease up soon and drizzle the rest of the night. As Bolan stopped behind a Douglas fir to survey the terrain ahead, he heard a stick break thirty yards to his left, from within the thick woods.

He stayed by the tree. Nothing stirred. He heard distant sirens. A shadow deep in the gloom of the woods moved. There was no sound.

Bolan stared into the blackness. Someone in there was stalking him. The Executioner dashed to the next large tree. A shot rang out. The flash was larger than a normal handgun's. He felt the heavy slug whir by. Bolan cocked the hammer of Big Thunder. He glared into the darkness where he had seen the flash.

He could not find the gunman.

He evaluated his position. Police on the way. A tough opponent tracking him. His car parked where the police would soon find it. He had to get his wheels away.

Bolan ran in the opposite direction to the gunman, counting on the huge tree to mask his retreat.

Hard running brought him to the Thunderbird. He opened it, started it and gunned it down the hill without headlights.

Beyond the first curves he hit the lights and took a round through the side window. He swerved, then roared on.

The road was crooked and steep. A man could run to the bottom as fast as another could drive. The gunman would attempt to go cross-country and intercept him where the road straightened at the entrance to the park. The Executioner accommodated him. He switched off the lights again, rolling through the now-misty rain. He judged where the runner would emerge from the brush, and stopped nearby.

Bolan sprang from the car, quietly closed the door to kill the interior light that penetrated the darkness like a million-watt beacon, and crouched as he ran to the edge of the wooded section that extended down the rear of Mount Tabor Park. He paused and listened to sounds as someone ran through the brush above, then the sounds stopped.

The Executioner held his breath.

Nothing.

A horn honked a block over. A killdeer flushed from a wet perch, sounded a plaintive cry and flew away.

There! Above in the timber a shadow slid from one big fir to the next, then was gone. The man seemed like an expert.

Until he slipped. The crash was loud, less than fifty feet from Bolan.

With the silenced Beretta he sent two 3-round bursts toward the sound target, but heard no response. He moved silently to the other side of the tree. He was at the edge of the woods, the attacker twenty yards within. There was, no cover behind them for fifty yards to the street.

No sound came from the woods. Town noises intruded. Then Bolan rose as he heard something fall ten feet away.

Grenade.

He lunged behind the tree as the bomb shattered the night. The light was brilliant, and he shut his eyes and put a hand over them. There was a shattering explosion.

Stun grenade, he guessed, turning so he could hear anyone approaching. He heard footsteps retreating.

As his sight returned to normal, he spotted a figure running for the roadway. A black Cadillac emerged from the mist and met the runner. The car started a three-point turn, reversing to complete the maneuver. At that moment Bolan had reached his Thunderbird below. He leaped in, ground the starter. The cars were only three or four hundred feet apart. Flames of a muzzle blast came from the enemy car. Then it vanished around a corner.

Bolan gave chase. He had to catch the man, learn his identity, kill him before he became more of a problem.

At first the route bothered Bolan. They had turned north on Sixtieth Street and then a few blocks later were on U.S. 80 North, a freeway heading east along the Columbia River. Bolan would not fire on a freeway even relatively clear of traffic. The chances of injuring passing motorists were too great. Besides, he was trying to figure the strategy of the man in the car ahead.

The odds would be two to one for a fight now, greater depending on how many Mafia soldiers were in the big Caddy. A showdown would suit Bolan just fine.

Ten miles clicked by. Bolan checked the gas gauge; almost full. He settled in behind the wheel, lulled by the rhythm of the windshield wipers.

At times the road was almost at the shore of the great Columbia, then a hundred yards inland, then back to the shore.

Ten minutes later the big car swerved toward a tourist attraction called Multnomah Falls. The vehicle careered across the empty parking lot to the far side. Bolan saw the soldiers bail out of the rig.

Perhaps they saw the Thunderbird. Bolan melted into the heavy brush just past the railing inside the lot.

He crouched behind a large flat-leaf cedar and watched one man run through the parking lot unprotected, then dart into the woods.

The silenced Beretta was ready, and Bolan's jacket was open for access to the Uzi and its fresh 32-round magazine.

A car whizzed by on the road, the song of the wet tires gaining and losing a semitone as it passed.

Ahead Bolan saw a branch moving. He could see maybe twenty feet through the misty darkness.

A shadowy figure ducked under the branch and approached him. Bolan lifted the machine pistol and triggered three rounds. The shadow yelped and toppled backward. The Executioner charged through the brush, and found a trail. A wooden sign, pointing right, read: TO NM FALL'S. The trail led away from the Mafia soldiers. Bolan followed it, climbing until he could see the parking lot. Faint lights, security fights, glowed at both ends.

Bolan watched the area, sectoring it the way he used to with night vision in Nam, watching for the smallest changes in shape or form. He saw something move. Someone was on the trail, coming after him. He stepped behind a big tree and waited, but the man seemed to know he was there and came no closer.