Don Pendleton: Save the Children

The building around him echoed with shouts and movement as running men...

it was impossible for Bolan to tell how many in the poor acoustics of the club...

closed in from different points toward the lobby area and this corridor.

Less than sixty seconds had elapsed since he had dispatched the doorman at the front entrance. He knew he had perhaps half that amount of time remaining before Parelli's security force found him.

That suited Bolan.

He had come here for Parelli, sure, but if that mean young savage was already gone, as the receptionist had told him, then a few of Parelli's goons would have to suffice to convey the message Bolan wanted delivered.

Justice had come to Chicago.

He sent the office door flying inward and off its hinges with one fierce kick. He threw himself back against the wall to the side of the door to dodge any gunfire from within, waiting for a few moments.

He met no challenge there.

He flung himself into the darkened room in a somersaulting roll that brought him to his feet in a combat crouch against the far corner, Big Thunder tracking the gloom around him for something to kill.

Nothing.

Empty save for plush furnishings dominated by a desk that looked big enough to land an aircraft on.

He reached into a pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small object that burned cold in his palm.

A U.S. Army marksman's medal.

He tossed the medal onto the middle of the desk on his way out.

The wailing fire alarm echoing through the building suddenly ceased.

The sound of voices came to him from the racquet-ball court.

Two of Parelli's goons, each carrying a sawed-off shotgun, cautiously stuck their heads and gun barrels around the corner of the doorway to the racquetball courts, looking nervous and careful after they saw the pile of bodies near the lobby.

The smoke from that direction was dissipating but it still clouded their vision enough to give Bolan the edge.

He triggered a round and one of the live heads down the corridor disintegrated.

The other head pulled back in.

Bolan left the office and crossed to a nearby fire exit, giving the metal bar a kick when he reached it.

The door did not open.

Locked.

He fired a round that reverberated in the confines of the corridor. The slug shattered the locking mechanism.

Bolan exited through the side door, palming a fresh clip into the butt of the AutoMag as he strode along the darkened side of the building, past a smelly dumpster, in the direction of the parking lot. The hot barrel of the .44 was smoking in the brittle night air as the AutoMag probed the gloom, the steady eyes of the man behind it searching for targets.

Bolan reached the corner of the building at the edge of the parking lot.

What he guessed to be the remainder of Parelli's security force was occupied with restraining a fiercely struggling young woman. The parking lot had emptied of cars during the minutes Bolan had been killing people inside the health club. The center's patrons wasted no time in fleeing for cover.

Two of Parelli's hoods, looking like big bears in furry topcoats, had the woman in an arm-grasp from either side.

She was in her mid-twenties, Bolan estimated. He registered shining dark hair. She wore a down jacket and Levi's.

They struggled near an idling Lincoln Continental in which Bolan saw another man at the wheel, the back door of the Lincoln yawning open.

The three men and the woman tangled between the Lincoln and a Porsche that it had just pulled up next to.

Bolan knew the Lincoln had not been in the lot on his way in. He had the impression that the hoods in the Lincoln had surprised the woman in the act of something by or near the Porsche.

The only other car in the parking lot was the Corvette that Bolan had arrived in, apparently undisturbed where he'd parked it.

Police sirens yodeled in the distance, drawing closer but still at least a mile or so away.

Bolan readily recognized the hood who faced the woman as she struggled wildly in the grip of her two captors.

It was the doorman. He whipped his head around in the direction of the health club and shouted.

"We got one of 'em! Let's go!"

No one came from inside the building in response.

Bolan figured he'd killed the ones the chucker thought he was calling to.

The bouncer's face looked battered under the mercury vapor lights of the parking lot, blood smearing a broken nose.

The hood jerked back in the direction of the woman, who appeared finally subdued by the other two hulks. He demanded something of her that Bolan could not hear.

Bolan held his undetected position a moment longer, combat-crouched in deep shadow away from the mercury vapors. Big Thunder was firmly gripped in a two-handed firing stance, waiting only for a clear shot that would not endanger the woman.

She seemed to be losing some of her fight but Bolan grinned to himself when he saw her spit in the doorman's face instead of answering whatever he asked her.

The bouncer lashed out with an open palm that connected with her face loud enough for Bolan to hear. The blow was powerful enough to drive the woman to her knees in the snow.

The two hoods retained their viselike grip on her.

The woman's raven hair fell across her face. Her head dropped.

For an instant Bolan thought he'd been too late, that she was now unconscious or dead, that he'd waited too long to fire.

He realized she was alive when she screamed.

The bald giant reached one hand and grabbed a handful of her shoulder-length hair, brutally tugging her head back. He produced a switchblade knife, which he flicked open, bringing the point around to hold against the lady's jugular. He repeated his demand, again inaudible to Bolan.

The kneeling woman watched the knifeman with wide, fearful eyes. She shook her head, refusing to answer.

She was low, right where Bolan wanted her.

The blade man did not release her hair. He moved the knife along her neck, tracing lower as she shuddered in the grip of the other two. He ripped open her down jacket as if oblivious to the police sirens closing in.

Bolan could see the knife tracking lightly across the lady's chest.

Baldy repeated his question to her.

Bolan opened fire.

The bald head disappeared under the impact of the 240-grain boattail slug.

The two hardmen holding the woman reacted with the automatic reflexes of seasoned street soldiers, the one on the woman's left releasing her, falling back, pawing for hardware beneath the bulk of his winter coat.

The man inside the car shouted something.

The punk on the woman's right retained his grip on her upper arm with his left hand and dipped for hardware with his right even as he turned and propelled her into the Lincoln.

Bolan tracked his sights on the guy who almost had a pistol out.

Big Thunder erupted again.

The round hurled the guy against the Porsche parked next to the Lincoln. His body pitched across the Porsche's windshield as he fell to the other side.

The other hardman bodily tossed the woman into the back of the Lincoln.

The limo screeched away from there before the man was fully inside, the car door slamming shut behind him under the car's momentum.

The crew wagon picked up some steam, swerving into a tire-shrieking one-eighty, the driver playing the wheel and pedals like an Indy champ.

The big machine rocketed toward the street.

Bolan left the shadows of the building for a better line of fire.

The Executioner triggered the AutoMag three times, pausing between each shot only long enough to ride out the hand cannon's mighty recoil.

Sparks of each of those projectiles spanged off the Lincoln's bulletproof body.

The speeding tank fishtailed into a skid onto the street and zoomed out of sight, heading north, by which time Bolan had already made it down the terraced incline separating the building from the parking lot.