Don Pendleton - Council of Kings

To Mack Bolan, the place stank of Vietnam. He had his own reasons for thinking so.

He came out running. He moved from cover to cover as he worked toward his car.

The rain began again, a sudden downpour that instantly saturated him. He knew it would ease up soon and drizzle the rest of the night. As Bolan stopped behind a Douglas fir to survey the terrain ahead, he heard a stick break thirty yards to his left, from within the thick woods.

He stayed by the tree. Nothing stirred. He heard distant sirens. A shadow deep in the gloom of the woods moved. There was no sound.

Bolan stared into the blackness. Someone in there was stalking him. The Executioner dashed to the next large tree. A shot rang out. The flash was larger than a normal handgun's. He felt the heavy slug whir by. Bolan cocked the hammer of Big Thunder. He glared into the darkness where he had seen the flash.

He could not find the gunman.

He evaluated his position. Police on the way. A tough opponent tracking him. His car parked where the police would soon find it. He had to get his wheels away.

Bolan ran in the opposite direction to the gunman, counting on the huge tree to mask his retreat.

Hard running brought him to the Thunderbird. He opened it, started it and gunned it down the hill without headlights.

Beyond the first curves he hit the lights and took a round through the side window. He swerved, then roared on.

The road was crooked and steep. A man could run to the bottom as fast as another could drive. The gunman would attempt to go cross-country and intercept him where the road straightened at the entrance to the park. The Executioner accommodated him. He switched off the lights again, rolling through the now-misty rain. He judged where the runner would emerge from the brush, and stopped nearby.

Bolan sprang from the car, quietly closed the door to kill the interior light that penetrated the darkness like a million-watt beacon, and crouched as he ran to the edge of the wooded section that extended down the rear of Mount Tabor Park. He paused and listened to sounds as someone ran through the brush above, then the sounds stopped.

The Executioner held his breath.

Nothing.

A horn honked a block over. A killdeer flushed from a wet perch, sounded a plaintive cry and flew away.

There! Above in the timber a shadow slid from one big fir to the next, then was gone. The man seemed like an expert.

Until he slipped. The crash was loud, less than fifty feet from Bolan.

With the silenced Beretta he sent two 3-round bursts toward the sound target, but heard no response. He moved silently to the other side of the tree. He was at the edge of the woods, the attacker twenty yards within. There was, no cover behind them for fifty yards to the street.

No sound came from the woods. Town noises intruded. Then Bolan rose as he heard something fall ten feet away.

Grenade.

He lunged behind the tree as the bomb shattered the night. The light was brilliant, and he shut his eyes and put a hand over them. There was a shattering explosion.

Stun grenade, he guessed, turning so he could hear anyone approaching. He heard footsteps retreating.

As his sight returned to normal, he spotted a figure running for the roadway. A black Cadillac emerged from the mist and met the runner. The car started a three-point turn, reversing to complete the maneuver. At that moment Bolan had reached his Thunderbird below. He leaped in, ground the starter. The cars were only three or four hundred feet apart. Flames of a muzzle blast came from the enemy car. Then it vanished around a corner.

Bolan gave chase. He had to catch the man, learn his identity, kill him before he became more of a problem.

At first the route bothered Bolan. They had turned north on Sixtieth Street and then a few blocks later were on U.S. 80 North, a freeway heading east along the Columbia River. Bolan would not fire on a freeway even relatively clear of traffic. The chances of injuring passing motorists were too great. Besides, he was trying to figure the strategy of the man in the car ahead.

The odds would be two to one for a fight now, greater depending on how many Mafia soldiers were in the big Caddy. A showdown would suit Bolan just fine.

Ten miles clicked by. Bolan checked the gas gauge; almost full. He settled in behind the wheel, lulled by the rhythm of the windshield wipers.

At times the road was almost at the shore of the great Columbia, then a hundred yards inland, then back to the shore.

Ten minutes later the big car swerved toward a tourist attraction called Multnomah Falls. The vehicle careered across the empty parking lot to the far side. Bolan saw the soldiers bail out of the rig.

Perhaps they saw the Thunderbird. Bolan melted into the heavy brush just past the railing inside the lot.

He crouched behind a large flat-leaf cedar and watched one man run through the parking lot unprotected, then dart into the woods.

The silenced Beretta was ready, and Bolan's jacket was open for access to the Uzi and its fresh 32-round magazine.

A car whizzed by on the road, the song of the wet tires gaining and losing a semitone as it passed.

Ahead Bolan saw a branch moving. He could see maybe twenty feet through the misty darkness.

A shadowy figure ducked under the branch and approached him. Bolan lifted the machine pistol and triggered three rounds. The shadow yelped and toppled backward. The Executioner charged through the brush, and found a trail. A wooden sign, pointing right, read: TO NM FALL'S. The trail led away from the Mafia soldiers. Bolan followed it, climbing until he could see the parking lot. Faint lights, security fights, glowed at both ends.

Bolan watched the area, sectoring it the way he used to with night vision in Nam, watching for the smallest changes in shape or form. He saw something move. Someone was on the trail, coming after him. He stepped behind a big tree and waited, but the man seemed to know he was there and came no closer.

The Executioner ran thirty yards up the trail. Ahead he spotted a small stone bridge that spanned the creek below the cataract. He heard the pounding water. The falls were not wide, but were of great height. He had read about them in tourist brochures back at the hotel.

He stopped by the bridge and listened. Someone moved behind him. Bolan traveled thirty feet beyond the bridge and waited. For a minute he heard nothing unusual. Then he heard labored breathing and saw a man round the curve in the trail, racing toward the bridge.

The man held a handgun. Bolan fired twice. The Mafia goon spun around from the force of the 9mm parabellums, fell over the parapet of the small bridge, and screamed as he dropped twenty feet to the pool below. He floated for a moment, then drifted downstream.

A sign beyond the bridge indicated the trail continued to the top of the falls, but warned of a three-mile round trip.

Another sign said: PARKING LOT. Bolan deduced the trail was circular. Good. Now he had to discover how the Caddy. He doubted that either of the dead soldiers behind him had been the gunman who had fired at him from the car. They had been too careless.

Bolan neared the parking lot without seeing any movement. He crouched near a big tree and waited.

The roar of a big handgun took him by surprise, and as he dived he felt the bullet bum through the shoulder strap of his combat harness. It did not draw blood as it slammed past him into the brush.

The flash had appeared ahead to the left, but the man would not have lingered. Bolan moved to the two-foot log that bordered the parking lot.

The crew wagon was to his right, the Thunderbird to the left. But where was the gunner?

Hurried footsteps sounded on the pavement. They moved to the right. Two 3-round bursts from Bolan's silenced Beretta produced no results. He eased to his feet and worked toward the Caddy. Had the gunman turned tail, or was he retreating to a better position?