He pushed aside the sadness and moved over to the long tubelike object positioned alongside the range finder, final-checked the azimuth calculations, and began the ten-second countdown. The tube belched and hissed and the projectile roared down the range. The Big Kill was on.
"Jesus Christ!" Pappas yelped. "What was that? Where'd it come from?"
"Rocket of some kind!" Weatherbee yelled.
The streaking glow had roared through the night air at dazzling speed, impacting on the lower corner of the mansion in a thunderous explosion. All lights had winked out and only the dull, licking flames at the devastated corner were providing illumination. A man was screaming in obvious agony, and the excited, raised voices of other men could be heard calling to one another.
Weatherbee and Pappas were on their feet outside the squad car at the perimeter of the property, looking down on the house from about 300 feet. "Where'd the damn thing come from?" Pappas repeated excitedly.
"Those hills over there," Weatherbee snapped. "Hand me those binoculars!"
"Think we oughta go down there, maybe give 'em a hand?"
"You outta your mind? They'd shoot us as quick as they'd shoot Bolan. Besides, he isn't finished with them, bet your ass on that."
"Good Mary, Mother of God!" Plasky cried. "He's bombing us!"
"Shut up, shut up, and get your head down, you idiot" Seymour snapped. "F'Chn'st's sake, that was just the first shot!"
"Shot? Shot? You call that a shot? Where's Sergio? What the hell is Sergio doing?"
"Everybody keep down and stay calm," Sergio's voice intoned loudly, floating down from the higher level. "Did anybody see where it came from?"
A chorus of excited voices all tried to report at once.
"Outta the sky!" yelled one.
"Th' south corner!" came another intelligible response.
"It came right outta th' fuckin' moon," reported a voice close to Seymour.
"Aw shit, shit!" Sergio cried. "Keep your eyes open now! Look for a flash, anything, a bit of smoke, just keep your eyes open!"
"Heads up, pip, pip, and all that shit," Seymour muttered to himself.
The Executioner was completing another countdown. He hit Zero and the flare gun at the same instant, then smiled and picked up the Marlin, peering through the scope. Seconds later the flare shell opened in the sky directly above the Frenchi mansion and floated gently groundward in startling brilliance, lighting the area like a personal sun. Bolan's scope was already seeking the Frenchi roof when the shell burst into brilliance, a dazed, upturned face raised to the white hot sun loomed into the vision-field and Bolan's educated finger took spontaneous action. The big gun roared and bucked against him; he fought it steady, hanging grimly to the eyepiece and saw his target go down, hands digging at the belly. Bolan nodded in confirmation of his correction; from chin to belly was about 15 inches. He swung slightly left and picked up another target; another squeeze and buck; a few more degrees left, another target, again a squeeze; and another, and another, and he had counted off but five seconds. He laid down the Marlin and bent his eye to the range finder for a broader view. That roof was full of men, some still standing and staring stupidly into the brilliance, others seemingly frozen with surprise and fear, one was trying to support a bloody and obviously dead body; but most were at least partially concealed behind the low parapet at the edge of the roof. Obviously nobody had spotted his muzzle-flashes; there was no return fire.
Bolan shook his head sadly, muttered, "Who's the amateur?" and went into another countdown.
"There's four dead and one wounded up here" an excited voice called down.
"Sergio! Sergio? What do we do?"
"How long do those damn things burn?"
"Down, down, everybody keep down and eyes open!" It was Sergio, huffing with excitement. "Pete! Barney! Start raking that hillside!"
The abrupt chatter of a machine gun broke the deadening pall, then another, and nobody really cared if there were a target to shoot at or not. Just the sound of firepower, coming from their camp, was a comfort in itself. Then another light streaked in from the darkness.
"Christ, lookit, another whizzer!"
The rocket slammed into the roof with a heart-stopping thunder of sound and flame, just as the flare burned out, dislodging men, stone, and mortar alike to rain onto the patio below. Screams of terror and groans of agony rose up in its wake, and then there was nothing but the frightening blackness of the night. A machine gun resumed its chatter, firing sporadically, but there was little cheer to its impotent message. Men were running blindly through the darkness. Muffled curses, labored breathing, and exclamations of pain and horror told the story of untrained would-be combatants; and still it was not the ending, but only the beginning. The walking explosions began then, in a pattern of terror that left no stone of the Frenchi mansion untouched or unshaken. And even the machine guns ceased their useless chatter, and the exodus of The Family was in full sway.
"He's shelling them with mortar fire," Weatherbee announced grimly. "My God, that must be sheer hell down there."
"Where'd that guy get that kind of stuff?" Pappas wondered, in an awed voice.
"That's not the point. The point is, he knows how to use it. Hell, this is full-scale warfare. One-sided, yeah, but hell, this is the side I was feeling sorry for. Jesus Christ!"
The vibrations of warfare were being felt even from their vantage point, and a chunk of shrapnel whizzed into the door of the squad car, missing Pappas by inches. "Hit-the-fuckin'-dirt," he said calmly, and fell to a prone position alongside the car.
"I think I've spotted him," Weatherbee declared. "Near the top-of the hill, almost directly across from the house. You can't see anything from these mortar launchings, but if he shoots another of these rockets-well, just keep your eyes peeled thataway."
The sergeant's eyes were peeled another way, however, onto the horror of sound, vibration, and powder flashes below; then another flare lit up the sky, and the sergeant shielded his eyes from the brilliance and peered dutifully toward the distant hill. "What a guy," he said softly. "What a hell of a guy."
The hell of a guy was having troubling second thoughts of his own. It had gone entirely too easily. The enemy was in full rout and not one threat, not one, had come his way. Either he had grossly overestimated them, or else... He put his eye to the Marlin's scope and rapid-fired five rounds into an automobile that was swerving along the looping driveway. The car left the drive, curved about, and bounced back onto it and toppled onto its side like a toy, then burst into flames. Another car, which had been following closely behind, plowed into the wreckage, and moments later there was another explosion. The scene revealed beneath the glare of the second flare was a tribute to carnage and destruction. The house was all but levelled, two of its walls standing grotesquely in a pall of dust and smoke. Many of the cars in the parking area were buried beneath debris; broken windows and damaged bodies of others showed the marks of concussion and flying objects. Human bodies were strewn everywhere.
They should have a big punch somewhere," Bolan murmured. "Surely, surely." He fired off another flare and began searching the rubble through the range finder; then he heard a familiar sound, one he had not heard at such close range since Vietnam; it was a chopper, a helicopter, and it was close, damn close. Cops? he wondered. Or The Family's big punch?
Bolan hastily selected a flare with a short-time fuse, reset the azimuth on the flare gun, and let it fly. It flashed into brilliance almost immediately, lighting the sky at high altitude above the canyon floor and catching the chopper in bright illumination. It was so close that Bolan could see the pilot throw a protecting arm across his eyes, and the startled face of a white-haired man showed clearly in the window. The settling flare also illuminated Bolan's position; the chopper heeled rapidly over into darkness as Bolan reached for the Marlin. He could hear it swooping close in a tight circle, then it edged back into the flare's circle of light and began spitting fire at him from the rear deck as an automatic weapon began unloading on him. The range finder skittered away, propelled by a steel-jacketed slug, and Bolan rolled away, fighting the Marlin to his shoulder, fighting also an impulse to fire from the hip, and then the chopper was gone again. Bolan rolled over to a tree stump and sat placidly, waiting, sighting along the side of the scope toward the sound of the windmill.