He steered the boat to an unlighted dock with a paved walkway leading up to a large office building on Wacker Drive. He leaped out of the craft.
Uniformed officers came running toward him from both directions, yelling at him to halt.
He plucked a smoke grenade from the combat webbing on the blacksuit and tossed it into their midst.
The knot of cops flattened when they saw the object flying toward them.
The grenade spewed out its thick smoke as it bounced across the ground.
Bolan swung the other way, jogging almost directly toward another group of officers who started spreading out in different directions for cover when they saw the big man in black loping toward them.
The cop in the lead stopped in his tracks and swung up his service revolver.
"Stop!"
Bolan's heart was trip-hammering against his rib cage. He heard coughing behind him. He glanced over his shoulder without slowing his pace.
Several policemen from the first group staggered out of the smoke cloud, coughing, rubbing at their eyes.
One of those cops unleashed a shot at Bolan.
The slug screamed close by over his head.
Too close.
One of the second group of officers took a nosedive as he heard the bullet whipping by, even though it didn't hit anything.
"Dammit, hold your fire!" The strident command came from the cop who had ordered Bolan to freeze. "You might hit one of our guys!"
Bolan had been counting on this.
He sprinted for a nearby office building, its many windows dark at this hour except for the lobby and back entrance onto the terrace fronting the river.
The walls of this skyscraper were smoked glass, with a double door in the middle of the first floor.
Bolan headed for the parking lot on the far side of the building.
If he could get hold of a car...
He heard the police pounding after him.
The night was alive with shouts and movement, the occasional innocent bystander scurrying out of his way. The sounds of more sirens barreled toward him from all sides beyond the building.
This time they had him boxed in tighter than along Lakeshore Drive.
These would be some of the same men, he reasoned, and they would be out in full force, for blood...
He gained the parking lot with those cops no more than seventy-five yards behind him.
Mack Bolan looked around wildly. The odds were against him finding an unlocked vehicle. He ducked between two cars and crouch-walked along the row of autos until he came to the last car. It was parked closest to the wall that bordered the lot.
The Executioner knew that he was running out of time. The pursuing police would fan out around him in the parking lot the moment they arrived there.
If they found him where he crouched now, there was no way he would be able to avoid a shoot-out with the cops. And it was something that he didn't even want to contemplate. Still Bolan had no intention of losing it all in Chicago.
He dropped flat onto his stomach and bellied under the car, knocking the back of his head on the undercarriage a couple of times in the process.
He wasn't there for longer than a couple of heartbeats when he heard an engine gun to life to his right. He turned his head and spotted white-lettered wheels rolling slowly backward out of a parking space.
Bolan wormed out of his cover to see a young woman behind the steering wheel of a Datsun 300 ZX.
He raced toward the side of the crawling vehicle and yanked open the driver's door.
The woman turned a panic-stricken face toward this looming figure in black. The sheer terror told Bolan that she feared for her life.
It saddened the warrior instantly, because it was a reflection of what "civilized" society had become. He meant the woman no harm, but as far as the lady was concerned, she was a goner. After all, this was Big City, U.S.A.
Bolan spoke urgently, and it was only then that he saw a measure of relief cross the young woman's face.
"I need to borrow your car, miss. I won't hurt you."
She swallowed and slipped out from behind the wheel. Bolan jumped into the Datsun and slapped the gear lever into reverse. The entire encounter had taken less than a minute.
The Japanese sportster roared backward when he floored the gas pedal. Bolan caught a glimpse of a uniform in the rearview mirror.
One of the cops was right behind him.
He slammed a booted foot down on the brake pedal, rocking the Japanese sportster to a stop.
The cop, who had been running full blast when he saw the car suddenly backing toward him, wind-milled his arms to keep his balance. His palms slapped against the trunk of the stopped Datsun to keep from falling.
Bolan stomped on the gas, shifting.
The Datsun jumped forward, right out from under the cop leaning on the trunk.
The guy fell, and as Bolan pulled away, he saw the officer getting to his feet, dusting off his hands.
A squad car, top lights flashing, careered into the exit Bolan had been heading for.
He sped down one aisle of the lot with the cruiser on his tail, siren wailing.
When he reached the end of the row of parked cars, Bolan spun his steering wheel and felt the tires shuddering on the pavement, the Datsun threatening to roll over as he turned 180 degrees into the next aisle.
Behind him, the police vehicle did not handle the turn as well, the driver's side crunching into a low brick wall that bordered the parking lot.
The wall ran around three sides of the lot, Bolan saw as he headed back toward the exit. On the fourth side, the one bordering Wacker Drive, a hedge about the same height took the place of the wall.
Another cop car closed in on that exit, squealing tires smoking beneath the streetlights as it slid into position to block that exit.
Bolan floored the Datsun's accelerator, angling the car left to drive full speed straight for the hedge.
The shrubbery gave way, parting under the nose of the Datsun as Bolan had hoped it would, with no hidden posts or fencing to stop his run.
He felt a surge of relief as the Datsun rocketed through to the other side.
A sidewalk ran along the other side of the hedge, with cars parked at the curb.
Bolan pumped the Datsun's brakes, yanking the steering wheel hard at the same time with a finger on the horn.
The car raced along the sidewalk, away from the office building and the parking lot, the few pedestrians diving out of the way when they heard the insistent warning of the horn.
At the end of the block was a gap in the line of parked cars.
Bolan sent the Datsun rocketing through that break, lurching down over the curb, skidding out into the slow-moving traffic along Wacker, easing in and out between lanes of crawling vehicles full of rubberneckers gawking to see what all the excitement was about. They almost missed Bolan entirely until the Datsun whizzed by.
He heard tires squealing and motorists cursing, but somehow there was no crunch of metal against metal.
State Street was ahead of him to the left.
He sent the little car spurting toward it.
He took the turn on two wheels.
Traffic was thick but he was able to weave in and out and make good time.
A glance in the rearview mirror told him he had shaken off his pursuers for the moment. He took a lightly traveled road that he knew would lead him to the city's suburbs. Ten minutes later he spotted a phone booth. He parked the car in some shadows and made another scrambled call to Stony Man Farm.
"What've you got, Bear? Come up with anything?"
"I take it Parelli wasn't aboard his yacht."
Kurtzman's troubled grumble carried clearly across the highly classified connection from Virginia.
"It was a trap," Bolan told him. "We're up against one sharp savage. Smarter than most. I want this one, Bear. I want Parelli so damn bad I can taste it. But I need a lead, something to go on. The guy could already be slipping out of the city."