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.
After the last rock rolled by in a cloud of dirt and pebbles, Bolan leaped forward and raced around the slope in time to see his target leave a cleared section and enter heavy timber again not far from the highway.
Bolan ran faster now, fired his .44 AutoMag twice just to let Joey know he was still around.
In the heavy timber, Bolan heard the sounds ahead. The sounds of exhaustion, gasping and coughing. He came around a bend in the trail. A few steps later, the Executioner stopped.
The chase was over.
Joey Canzonari lay on the ground, exhausted. He struggled to sit up when he saw Bolan before him. The mobster's face was bright pink from the exertion.
Sweat dripped from his nose and chin. His hair was wet and plastered against his head.
"You going to blow me away?"
"Why not? Isn't that the way you made your bones?"
"I'm only a bookkeeper and a computer man."
"Yeah, one of the innocents. And your hobby is killing girls and importing submachine guns for fun and profit."
"Who the hell cares?"
"Right. You have bigger worries. Like trying to convince me that you did not help torture Charleen."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Canzonari clutched his wounded right hand with his left, sliding both of them toward his ankle. Bolan seemed not to notice the movement.
"So what do we do now?" Joey glared at the Executioner.
Bolan lowered the 93-R. "Up to you. Do you want to go back and face smuggling charges on the guns?"
"Look, there's enough money for you to live like a prince for the rest of your life. Five million dollars!"
"You don't have that much, Joey."
"My father does. He can get it for you." Suddenly Joey pulled a snub-nosed .38 from an ankle holster.
The weapon barely cleared leather when Bolan lifted the Beretta and fired at the Mafia gunman.
The round slammed through Joey Canzonari's right cheekbone and was deflected upward into his brain. He dropped the .38 and fell against the bloodsplattered fir. A gray-brown pulpy mess spilled from his shattered head.
Bolan stared a moment, his finger still on the trigger.
Then he walked away from the corpse and slowly slid the 93-R back in leather.
The Executioner deduced his bearings from the snow-capped side of Mount Hood and walked back toward the cars.
Fifteen minutes later he saw Joey's car.
On the front seat was an attache case filled with money, probably some kind of downpayment on the submachine guns. It would make a good deposit in The Executioner's war chest. He threw the case in the crew wagon he had driven out and started toward Portland.