Don Pendleton - Run to Ground

He pushed forward and stood, tracking with the Beretta in his left hand and Big Thunder in his right. Two men, already closing fast at twenty yards, were about to realize their last mistake too late, as Bolan's furtive movement brought their eyes and guns around toward unexpected target acquisition. They had bet their lives that he was behind the Dumpsters, and it was the soldier's moment to collect, in full.

He lightly stroked the 93-R's trigger, ripping off a 3-round burst that caught the foremost gunner in the chest and knocked him backward, off his stride and off his feet. He jerked and twitched for a moment, like a viper with a severed head, and then lay still. His partner, meantime, leaped across the new obstruction, desperate to stay in motion, counting on the Dumpsters for his own protection. He pegged a shot at Bolan, missing him by yards, undoubtedly aware that he could never make it, that his life was measured out in fractions of a heartbeat.

Bolan put a 3-round cluster through the runner's throat and nearly took the man's head off in the process, the lethal impact spinning his assailant right around and hurling him against the wall of an adjacent shop. Rebounding, Bolan's late opponent left wet traces of himself behind, like abstract artwork on the dusty stucco, drying quickly in the desert heat.

Four down, but there had been another, and before the thought had time to form, he was aware of subtle movement there, behind another Dumpster, halfway down the alley's length. A head and shoulders were revealed, hands interlocked around a pistol aimed at Bolan from a range of fifty feet. He squeezed the trigger of his AutoMag three times in swift succession, heard the heavy boattails clang against the siding of the Dumpster, drilling through, and then the silhouette of his assailant seemed to sag, collapsing, disappearing by degrees. The hands veered skyward, swinging up the pistol into close alignment on the sun, while head and shoulders kept on sinking, out of sight. Another moment passed, and the lifeless hands had disappeared as well.

He didn't bother checking on the guy. If his target was not dead or dying, he was out of it, so far as any action was concerned. Whatever happened to him now, the Executioner had business elsewhere, and Rivera's goon would have to look out for himself, if he was still alive.

Beyond the roofline of adjacent buildings, Bolan saw the rising smoke of shops on fire and knew the town was dying while he watched. Its death might be a swifter one, more merciful than lingering extinction brought on by neglect, but he could not escape a pang of guilt. If not for him, Rivera would have shown no interest in Santa Rosa, and the blight of Bolan's private war would not have fallen on so many other lives.

But there was no time to wallow in self-condemnation now that it was done. Survival was the top priority, for Bolan, for the citizens of Santa Rosa. Some of them, at least, were standing tall against the enemy; continued firing from the Main Street battleground informed him that Rivera's men had not found it easy going. He thought about Grant Vickers, the elusive sniper on the roof of the garage, and wondered if there might be others, fighting even now to save the town that was their home.

He hoped so, realizing that the only hope for Santa Rosa lay within her people. If they cared enough to stand and fight, there might still be a chance. If they did not, then the town and all had been long dead before Rivera ever showed his face and called for Bolan's blood on Main Street.

Concentrating on Rivera, the soldier knew his best and only chance of ringing down the curtain on the dealer's game was through a confrontation with the man himself — a confrontation in which only one of them would walk away.

There might still be a chance to keep Rivera from annihilating everyone in Santa Rosa, if the Executioner was swift enough and sure enough about his tactics. He would have to find a way inside the diner, first of all, or force the dealer to emerge... but, then again, the latter course of action might not be the problem that it seemed. Rivera had already been deprived of transportation, and the town was burning down around him. He would have to find some wheels, unless he meant to hang around and fry, or wait for the eventual arrival of the state police. But to acquire another car, or cars, it would be necessary to dispatch his gunners, singly or in teams. And if they failed to reappear...

Rivera would be forced to do it himself.

It was a plan, but Bolan knew that his success in pulling off the scheme was far from guaranteed. He might yet fail, and failing, he would lose it all: his war against Rivera's filthy empire, his crusade against the broader evil of the savages. He knew that death had been inevitable from day one, but the reality was something else entirely. Bolan was not ready to surrender by any means, but it was time to face the fact that he was not immortal, that he might not make it out of Santa Rosa.

He might die here, and with the town in flames, Rivera's troopers on the prowl, there was a chance his death might never be officially discovered. Johnny would suspect, of course, suspicion growing into certainty with time, and he would pass the word to Hal and the team at Stony Man. It did not matter to the Executioner that he might die unheralded, unnoticed by the world; what bothered Bolan was the thought that he might die in vain.

If he allowed Rivera to escape, resume his dirty trade from the Sonoran rancho, then he would have failed. It would not matter if he killed off half the dealer's troops and left the others scattered in the desert. The viper's lethal head might still survive, unless he crushed it totally, without remorse.

And that brought Bolan back to penetration of the diner, or a suck play that would draw Rivera into the open. There appeared to be no third alternative available within the time remaining.

He was conscious of the seeping blood inside his shirt, the denim sticking to his ribs and underneath his arm. He would not bleed to death before he finished with his work, but it was a distraction, and it weakened him by slow degrees.

No time to waste, then. If he meant to do it right, he had to do it now. The soldier turned to face the alley's southern mouth... and froze. His eyes were riveted upon the muzzle of an automatic pistol, aimed directly at his face from fifteen feet away.

"You're not one of them," Rick Stancell said.

"You got that right," the stranger answered, seeming to relax a bit.

Rick kept the big man covered, anyway, uncertain of himself now that another player had been dropped into the game. His father's death was proof enough that no one could be trusted absolutely. Granted that this man was not with the invaders — and he must not be, for Rick had watched him kill a number of them in the alley — he was obviously dangerous, for all of that. An unknown quantity at present, he might prove to be another enemy.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the one they're looking for."

"That doesn't tell me anything." Rick held the captured automatic steady, leveled at the stranger's face.

The big man thought about his answer for a moment, as if cooking up a lie inside his mind, but when he spoke again, Rick thought his words rang true enough. "My name is Bolan. I've been working to eliminate Rivera's operation in Sonora. He's the leader of this gang, the one who made the speech on Main Street."

"I was there."

The stranger nodded solemnly. "I saw you. I'm sorry about your father... and the girl."

Rick stared, dumbfounded, at the older man. How could he know? Instead of asking, Stancell simply said, "Her name is Amy."

Bolan nodded. "She's all right, for the moment. It's important that Rivera's men don't get a chance to check out the clinic."