Firing on the roll, he saw the cop topple backwards — even so, the long-barreled police .38 was up and voicing its parts in the firefight. A body crashed through onto the porch, and the other sounds were being added to the uproar. A man was swearing loudly and painfully from somewhere inside the house; a door banged and running feet thudded closeby. The Luger swung and spit and the thudding feet became a falling body.
The cop was saying, "Dammit, dammit," and trying to lift himself up. Jean Kirkpatrick was a kneeling statue in the shrubs beside the house. Another crack of glass from the house and another volley of lancing flames and Bolan felt the projectiles breezing him. He rapid-fired into the flashes and they ceased, replaced by a moan and the clatter of a heavy gun meeting wooden floor.
Bare seconds had passed. From both sides now new sounds joined the thunder of the night as automobile engines came alive. Bolan yelled, "From the street! Down flat!— as he fought a new clip into his Luger. He jettisoned the silencer and ran to the police car, wrenched the door open, leaned across, and turned on the headlamps, then ejected himself in a backward leap. The uprange vehicle was coming forward, running without lights, but caught now in the glare from the police car.
Bolan's Luger came up and he was sighting down at full extension when his heart again took a dive into his stomach. A small figure in tight-fitting fatigues was caught also in the glare of the headlamps as she ran from between two houses uprange, dropped to one knee, and began banging away with the heavy .45 at pointblank range into the approaching vehicle. The windshield shattered and the Mafia vehicle arced into the curb and halted with a squeal of rubber and a volley of returning fire.
Bolan was running forward and rapid-firing in an agonized attempt to draw the fire away from Margarita, but he was too far away and too late. He saw her spin and go down on her face, and then the threat from the other flank was bearing down upon him and he realized that he was exposed in his own light.
He saw the flame leaping from the yard in front of Kirkpatrick's and heard the roar of the .38, the returning volley from the speeding car, and he thought there's a cop with guts as he realized that the .38 was drawing fire originally intended for Bolan. He leapt into the street and let the Luger have its head. It bucked and thundered its repeated defiance of the charging vehicle until it faltered and swerved and plowed into the police car with a grinding, shearing impact, trying to climb the rear deck, and then falling to its side and going to ground like a downed rhino. A streak of fire whooshed the length of the vehicle and it exploded into a white fireball, the police car following immediately almost like a reinforced echo. Bolan poised midway between two urgent callings, Margarita at one flank, Kirkpatrick and the cop at the other. The cop he knew to be alive and in imminent danger of roasting, and the cop won the toss of Bolan's mind.
He ran into the yard, grabbed the fallen officer by the armpits, and dragged him well clear of the inferno and into an adjoining yard. Wilson was staring at him with glazed eyes, the .38 still tightly clenched in a balled fist. He had a hole in his shoulder and one in the leg, and bleeding like hell from both. Bolan whipped the combat kit from his belt and peeled off two compresses, quickly applying them to the wounds. He took the .38 from the cop's fist and guided both hands to the compresses, commanding, "Keep a pressure!"
Jean Kirkpatrick staggered into the scene, breathing raggedly and on the edge of hysteria. Bolan grabbed her and pulled her to her knees beside the officer. "Watch him!" he ordered. "Stop that bleeding!"
She nodded her head in understanding. Before he dashed away, Bolan squeezed her shoulder and barked, "That boat! Give me the name again!"
"What?"
"The boat, the floating palace! What's the name?"
"Merry Drew," the stunned girl mumbled.
Bolan ran around the inferno, recklessly charging the other flank — but there was nothing there to challenge him. The other vehicle was gone. He loped on down to the spot where he had seen Margarita fall, looked about with a growing desperation, then stooped to pick up a once-jaunty and now blood-smeared field hat. Impressions in the soft earth of the lawn showed clearly where a heavy vehicle had swung in a savage, wheel-spinning turn. He followed the marks over the curbing, and ran into the street, his eyes straining into the distance. House lights were coming on clear into the next block, but nothing was moving through his vision field. He thought he heard the sound of a laboring engine, rapidly receding, but he could not be sure of even that. All he was sure of was that they were gone . . . and that they had taken Margarita with them!
A curious crowd was gathering at the scene of the fire. A man in pajamas came hurrying out of the house where Bolan stood. He glared at Bolan and snapped, "What the hell is this? What is this?" But Bolan was already moving and gone himself, racing off between the houses and to the next street. He found his car and screamed off in a hopeless search for a bloodstained vehicle with shattered glass. Though the entire fire fight had consumed barely one minute, he knew that he was too late. But the soldada was in that shattered vehicle, and it was an even bet that she was alive and unwell and that her fate was consigned to the untender mercies of the Talifero brothers. Bolan had to try. In the name of all that Mack Bolan held holy, he had to try!
Chapter Fifteen
Requiem for a soldada
Captain Harmon beat the ambulance to the scene by a matter of seconds. Wilson was conscious and grimacing with pain, and his first words to the captain were, "Well, I met Bolan."
Hannon said, "Okay, okay," shushing him and moving quickly aside to make room for the ambulance attendants.
An intern moved in and took over, quickly assessing the damage.
Wilson chuckled through his pain. "I'm not dying, cap'n," he said. "Don't look so worried. If you think I look bad, you oughta see the other guys."
A uniformed officer hurried the Kirkpatrick girl away. "The kid's all right," Wilson said, following the girl's departure with his eyes. "Take care of her cap'n. Somebody wants her bad."
"Yeah," Hannon mused. "The same guy who wouldn't think of shooting a cop."
"No nine millimeters in me, sir," the Lieutenant protested in a weakening voice. "Bolan had a Luger. Hell, he saved my butt — hers too."
The wounded officer was being carefully lifted onto a gurney. Pain rippled across his face. He set his jaws and spoke between tightly clenched teeth. "It was an ambush. The house . . . and cars, each end of the block. We were almost into it . . . then Bolan came sailing off the roof. Just like Batman. He had a Robin with him, too . . . little guy, down the block."
"He had what?"
"Little guy . . . in army clothes . . . got hit . . . down the block."
Hannon would have liked to have heard more, but the lieutenant was being hurried to the ambulance. The attendants scampered in behind the gurney, the door closed, and the vehicle threaded between police cars and fire trucks — and Hannon's first casualty of the Bolan Wars was sped away from the scene of combat.
The captain wearily squeezed the back of his neck and began trying to reconstruct the sequence of possible events in the incredible carnage of Palmetto Lane. It was almost impossible to accept . . . and yet, there it was. Hannon went methodically about his business, with a growing respect for "the confused kid," and with the strengthening conviction that "a death trap" would never be the answer to the Bolan problem.