Don Pendleton - Baltimore Trackdown

“Of course not, but cops are always targets.”

“Your choice. See me there in half an hour or forget it.”

“I’ll be there.”

Bolan ran for his car. He was on the side of town nearest the park, and wanted to be there first. He hoped Davis wouldn’t send any patrol cars as backup. He figured not. Davis would know about the head money and would want the five million all to himself.

Ten minutes later, Bolan drove into the green area, eased into the second parking lot and checked out the first. It was too big to set up an easy trap. He filled a two-and-one-half-gallon garden sprayer with the cans of liquid he had bought earlier and set the nozzle to eject a steady stream instead of a spray. Then he sat behind a big maple tree and waited in the moonless night.

Precisely on time, a car rolled through the gate and into the first parking lot. It came to the end and stopped fifty feet north of Bolan. The headlights snapped off and the door opened, spreading light inside the car. It would make Davis almost blind to the outside.

Quietly Bolan moved into the darkness and trailed a three-inch stream of gasoline from one of the cans ten feet behind the unmarked police car. He made a U with the gasoline, pouring it on both sides of the car.

The darkness and the light inside the car let him do the task unseen. He crept into the wooded section at the end of the parking lot, shouldered the heavy sprayer and moved toward the car. He settled behind a wide tree to the right of the car but out of range of the headlights, in case the cop turned them on.

“Davis, is that you?” Bolan called. His voice sounded strangely hollow in the dark outdoors.

A figure stood beside the door.

“Yeah, so let’s talk.”

“Take out your piece and lay it on top of the car.”

“Hey, you don’t ask a cop to give up his weapon.”

“I do. I’m allergic to cops. But you’re safe with me, you know that.”

There was a pause, then a sound of metal against metal. Bolan figured Davis would also have a hidden weapon.

“You’ve been lucky so far, Davis. You’ve got away with everything. First the two thousand a month bribe money you’re taking from Don Nazarione, then the snuff on Lieutenant Paulson, and the blackmail on the two assistant chiefs. You even pulled off the cocaine plant on Chief Vincent.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You, Davis. You’re just dirty as hell. Do you want to give up all this and turn state’s evidence against Nazarione and his killers? If you do, we can save you from the death penalty.”

“You’re insane. I’m a cop. Six awards for valor, three commendations. I didn’t come out here to be insulted.”

“Don’t leave just yet.” Bolan drew Big Thunder and put one heavy .44 round from the AutoMag into the police car’s engine, then another. “Your wheels just died on you, Davis.” He struck a match, lit the remaining nineteen matches in the book and threw the flaming cardboard torch into the dark stain of gasoline on the tarmac.

There came an immediate whooshing sound as the gasoline and the vapor burst into flame. The trail of fire raced around the U shape he had poured.

Davis screamed and fired two shots from a handgun. Bolan, wedged behind a tree, pumped up the sprayer, triggered the nozzle and sent a stream of gasoline into the closest trail of flames. Quickly he laid down a gasoline line in front of the car, closing the box of flames around the car.

Davis fired again, missed and yelled.

“What the hell you doing? I came out here to help you!”

“You came out here to kill me and collect the reward from the Mafia commission. It isn’t going to work.”

Bolan sent a dozen shots of the gasoline at Davis, who stood beside the car. In a few seconds his clothes were soaked with gasoline.

“Now, Davis, you try to run through that ring of fire and you go up in flames. Let’s get practical. You answer some questions and I might not kill you.”

“Go to hell, Bolan! I’ll get inside the car.”

“Then I’ll shoot at the gas tank and set the car on fire.”

Davis had started to get in the car. Now he stopped. Through the snapping of the flames, Bolan heard Davis sigh.

“Okay. What questions do you have?”

“When is the takeover try on the police department?”

Davis inhaled sharply. “How did you know about that?”

“Doesn’t matter now. When is it?”

“They haven’t told me for sure yet. It’s soon.”

“How many cops does Nazarione have on the take?”

“How many... probably three hundred or so. He doesn’t tell me that.”

“Why was Chief Smith killed?”

“Because he was not the kind who could be turned around to our way of thinking.”

Bolan used the sprayer again to increase the fire surrounding the car, then sprayed Davis again before he slid inside the car.

“Just a reminder, Davis. You’re not fireproof.”

“Fuck you, Bolan.” The cop fired two shots; both missed. The Executioner moved behind the tree. He knew he had to get around behind the rig and spray a new line yet stay out of the light.

He walked deeper into the brush, then ran to one side and sprayed the fire line again. The gasoline burst into flames in the air and worked back toward the nozzle, but Bolan stopped the stream.

Two more shots came, one nicking the metal sprayer tank.

The fire line vanished for six feet across the back of the U.

Bolan ran toward it. He sensed the cop making a dash for it, too. There was not enough time for the Executioner to run there and reestablish the flames.

Instead he turned and drew a new line closer to the car, directly in front of the running cop. The thin line of fire and the lawman got to the same point simultaneously. After a second, Davis’s saturated clothing burst into flames.

Davis screamed.

Bolan stopped squirting and stared.

Davis became a six-foot torch. The flames shot up his pant legs and across his jacket in one whooshing vapor explosion. His hair sparked like fireworks in tiny balls of flames, then burst into fire as he screamed and tried to beat it out with his hands.

Somehow he had lived through the vapor explosion when the oxygen in the air around him had been sucked into the fire. Now he staggered and fell, trying to roll. His screams came one on top of another.

As he rolled, the fire snuffed out under him, but as soon as the air hit his clothing again the gasoline reignited and burned fiercely, as only a petroleum fire can.

Davis rolled again and again. His hand came out, seeking help.

For a moment in the firelight, Bolan saw the captain’s face clearly. His eyebrows were gone, his hair was blackened stubble, his ears were on fire. Now his eyes made one last frantic appeal. Then his hand fell, and his lungs filled with the inhaled gasoline vapor. Flames danced over his body. The vapor in his lungs exploded and Capt. Harley Davis’s chest erupted outward, blowing vital organs onto the pavement and snuffing out any life that had persisted through the twenty seconds of the immolation.

Bolan returned to the woods beyond the parking lot. Already the fire was going out. Scraps of clothing on the body only smoldered once the gasoline had burned away.

The Executioner dropped the sprayer and moved through the woods toward the second parking lot. Hearing sirens, he ran, started his Buick and drove out the far park entrance and continued slowly back toward town.

Davis had had a choice. He could have cooperated if he had wanted to. Essentially he’d killed himself. Bolan had only made it convenient for him to do so.

Somewhere along the drive, Bolan peeled from his hands the thin surgeon’s gloves he had worn during the confrontation and threw them out the window.