Then, less than fifty feet distant, the jeep swerved to the left at an impossibly sharp angle. It flipped into the air. As Bolan dived into the copter's cockpit, he had a visual flash of a body cartwheeling through the air, arms and legs outflying. When the jeep blew, he and Toby were still close enough to the ground to feel the leading edge of the shock waves. Bolan slipped on his headset in time to hear her ask, "What now, Captain Fire?" Somehow the adrenaline of the armory blitz had overcome the pain in Bolan's shoulder, but it returned with a vengeance as he slipped into the gunnery harness anchored to the front passenger seat's frame.
The human resistance below had been broken, and the means to finish off the armory was in Bolan's hands.
But he knew that it was not enough. No one Edwards, Khaddafi, or anyone like them would exploit this U.S. base again. The mission would only be done when Bolan had wiped it off the face of the earth.
"The planes, Toby," Bolan said. "It's mop-up time."
Toby kicked the little bird into a side-slip, and they skimmed the top of the hangar before she pulled up, holding steady at 100 feet, just upwind from the big bellied C-119 Flying Boxcar. Bolan selected one of the Light Artillery Weapons he had liberated from Edwards's cache. He pulled the pins to' expand the disposable fiberglass tube, raised the pop-up sights. His right foot groped out the door for the skid, found it, let it hold his weight, then he leaned farther out. The gunnery harness would not reach.
Toby turned in time to see his hands working to free the buckles. "Oh, no, you don't," she snapped.
"I have to be completely clear of the cockpit," Bolan smiled tensely, "or the backburn knock us out of the sky."
"You're hurt, Mack," she began to plead.
"Hold her steady," Bolan interrupted, then stripped off the headset. He held the LAW in his right hand, grasped the doorframe with his left, ignored the wrenching pain.
Then he was completely outside and dropping into a straddle on the skid, steadying himself against the fuselage in a last desperate demand that his body not betray him. Bolan got the C-119 in the sights, squeezed out fire. The rocket whooshed away on a trail of flame, impacting in the midst of the transport's fat body. A moment later the fuel tanks went, the impact flipping the nearby Beechcraft onto its back, while a huge plate of the C-119's body metal sheared into the Lear. Bolan stabbed a forefinger forward, and the copter eased in the direction indicated. Bolan leaned inside, snagged the second LAW. The one bored in at the base of the control tower. The tower swayed like a redwood tree sawn three-quarters of the way through, then it toppled to the apron in a grinding dusty crash. The chopper lifted skyward, skittering above the hangar. Someone had remained the heavy chattergun. A line of .50 slugs punched across the chopper's tail.
Bolan ignored him as he sent home the third LAW round. The rocket punched through the thin metal of the Quonset hut's roof near its middle. A heartbeat later, the armory's contents began to blow.
A roiling pillar of fire erupted through the ceiling, great spouts of molten metal cascading into the air like a demonic fountain. Jagged strips of metal, giant in size, flew incredible distances. Waves of shock and heat banged across the base. The effect was virtually thermonuclear. Angry balls of flame roared into the billets and offices, some of them already bursting into spontaneous combustion. Across the wide street, hangar walls bent and buckled and distorted, and roofs sagged like Silly Putty before collapsing. The gunnery jeep exploded throwing parts of the gunner into the madness. And the few terrorists still alive were caught under the hellish downpour of white-hot liquid metal, volcanic spews of sheet-fire, charred chunks of human flesh.
Bolan let the LAW'S disposable tube drop from his stiff fingers. When he tried to climb back into the cockpit, he found he could not. Toby gaped at him in alarm, tried to reach across toward him. Bolan flashed her a hand signal. When she hesitated, he circled thumb and forefinger in an "okay" sign. Even that was an effort. She brought the chopper down well outside the perimeter fence, hovering a few feet over the grass to allow Bolan to slip to the ground. He managed to get to his feet by himself. When Toby leaped from the cockpit, ducked around the chopper, and flew into his arms, he even managed to maintain his balance.
Epilogue
Maintaining the balance. That, in the world view, was what it was all about. He had achieved it once again.
For now. Hell was not for the living, it was for the dead, may they rest in peace. Someday Mack Bolan, too, would rest. For now, he had to find his way among the living. As had long ago been prophesied, The Executioner would live life to the very end.