Don Pendleton - Blood Dues

It clicked, suddenly, and Bolan cursed himself for not figuring exactly what was happening when Aiuppa had reached beneath the desk top. The man had pressed a panic button, wired to ring alarms in a nearby building, where Aiuppa's guns would be waiting on the off chance of a call.

Bolan braced his Beretta in both hands, sighting quickly through a plate-glass window on the lead man, one of the shotgunners. The Executioner fired the instant he made target acquisition. The parabellum drilled a neat hole in the glass, a not so neat one in the gunner's chest, and he went down, his shotgun firing aimlessly into the gutter.

Five guns erupted instantly outside, pumping wild, reflexive rounds into the pool hall, raking windows, walls and furnishings without a clear idea of who or where their human target was. Buckshot and revolver rounds were chewing up the tables, bar, the posters hanging on the dingy, unwashed walls.

To stand and fight was suicide, and Bolan, canny warrior that he was, had other plans.

He doubled back along the length of the room, running in a combat crouch. He held his fire, knowing he would need every round in the Beretta if his plan fell through, if they caught up with him in there or when he made it to the outside.

Bolan found the back door locked from the inside and he kicked his way through it and into the alleyway beyond. Turning right, he could see daylight half a block away. He broke for it, pounding along the alley, Beretta in his fist and ready to answer any challenge at a heartbeat's notice.

He heard the voices, scuffling footsteps on the gravel of the alley at his back, and knew that he would never reach the Firebird, waiting for him at the curb. They were already after him, the first wild rounds impacting on garbage cans and raising clouds of brick dust as they ricocheted off walls to either side.

A shotgun roared, and Bolan ducked instinctively behind a dumpster, nearly deafened as the trash container took the buckshot charge, reverberating like a huge bass drum next to his ear.

Another twenty feet across the no-man's land whistling with blistering rounds, and he would reach the street. There was a chance, a slim one, right, that they would hesitate to follow him out there into the daylight.

Knowing the overwhelming odds, Bolan felt he had no chance but to try. He broke from cover, sprinting for the alley's mouth, ready to receive the searing fusillade that would lift him off his feet and send him spinning into final darkness.

But his move apparently surprised the gunners. They were caught flat-footed, thinking he would stay behind the dumpster long enough for them to throw a tight perimeter around him. Now they began firing wildly.

Bolan reached the mouth of the alley, knowing that the sunlight made his silhouette a perfect target. He was weaving to the right and seeking cover when a fiery red convertible screeched up in front of him, almost knocking him back against the bricks.

A woman was sitting at the wheel, a stunning beauty — and it took no more than a second for the warrior to identify her as the one he had first seen in Tommy Drake's embrace.

She was dressed now, right, but still a dazzler. When she looked at him, the Executioner half expected her to open fire on him with hardware of her own.

Instead, she motioned to him and urgently called out in an excited voice.

"Get in! Please hurry!"

The big warrior quickly figured the odds. He might be leaping out of one fire square into another, but he had no options at the moment. And if Bolan had to take his chances with an enemy that afternoon, he would prefer a single woman to an armed platoon of Mafia hardmen anytime.

She floored the gas and dropped, the sportster into first, screeching out of there with rear tires smoking. Long before the troop of pistoleros reached the intersection, Bolan and the woman were turning north onto a major side street, the engine's whine a fading jeer at the frustrated gunmen.

Riding in the bucket seat beside her, Bolan let himself relax a notch. But he kept a firm grip on the hot Beretta, pointing it at the floorboard between his knees. He might have use of it again at any instant, and the Executioner was not taking anything on faith these days.

A death mask could be beautiful, damn right, and if he walked into a trap on this one, Bolan would be going with eyes wide open, primed to kill.

"You won't need that with me," the woman told him lightly, glancing down at the Beretta clutched in Bolan's fist.

The warrior hesitated for a moment, then slowly holstered the 93-R.

"I'll keep it all the same," he answered. "Where are we going?"

"Somewhere safe."

"There's no such place."

"Perhaps. But I could not allow you to be killed back there."

The Executioner risked a cautious smile.

"I'm not complaining, just surprised," he said. "You don't hold any grudge for Tommy Drake?''

The young woman made a disgusted sound deep in her throat, and spat out the open window of the drop-top sportster.

"Drake was a pig!"

Mack Bolan raised an eyebrow, curious and surprised by her reaction.

"If you say so."

She read the unspoken question in the soldier's tone, but she was slow in answering. They were rolling along Northwest 103rd Street, heading toward the suburb of Miami Shores. Behind them, the Liberty City ghetto was an ugly fading memory.

They drove along another block or two before the young woman found her voice again.

"I do what must be done," she said, "like you, Matador."

Bolan felt the warning tingle at the base of his skull.

"Have we been introduced?" he asked her, trying to sound casual.

She flashed him a small secret smile.

"There is no need. You're as my sister said."

Bolan frowned, studying her face. And something did a slow rollover in the back of his mind, stirring sluggishly at first, all hazy from the passing years. There was something in her face, around the eyes...

"Your sister?"

"Margarita."

There was age-old sadness in the woman's voice, and the single word hit Bolan like a hard fist underneath the heart. He was silent for an endless moment, first watching her, then turning to regard the passing storefronts, staring through them without seeing anything.

In his mind he pictured Margarita, brave soldada of the exile cause. He saw her as she was when last he held her — lifeless, brutalized by mobsters who had tortured her in vain, attempting to find out Bolan's whereabouts. He had found her, found them all in time, and the hot flame of his vengeance had touched off the Miami massacre that followed.

Margarita.

Heaven keep her.

"She was a brave soldada," Bolan said, and knew that even as he spoke the words they sounded lame, inadequate.

A measure of the woman's sadness was replaced by pride as she responded.

"Si. I fight a different war against the animals who killed her needlessly.''

"You're undercover?''

She nodded.

"I was placed with Tommy Drake to gather information. He would have been indicted soon.''

"I couldn't wait,'' the warrior said.

"No matter. He did not deserve to live, and it was worth it to be present at his death.''

She spoke with an intensity that would have been disturbing had Bolan not understood its source and motivation. He could read the grim commitment in her tone. Everything about her bespoke determination, singleness of purpose.

Some soldada in her own right, yeah.

The warrior cleared his throat and changed the subject.

"As long as you're intent on saving me, I ought to know your name."

She smiled at him, a lovely young-old smile.

"Evangelina."

Bolan answered with a small grin of his own.

"What now, Evangelina? You were seen back there — at least your car was seen — and now your cover's blown."