Don Pendleton - Baltimore Trackdown

Bolan left the phone booth and drove north. He hit the Jones Falls Expressway and continued north across the Beltway. The small town of Brooklandville was ahead. It was almost rural here, a few small farms and acreages. Traffic fell to nothing. Carboni pulled up behind the Buick and leaned out the window. There was no chance now to disguise a tail, but at least there would be damn few witnesses out here.

His first shot blew the left rear tire. The Buick moved sideways, then back, as it stopped on the right shoulder.

Carboni braked the T-Bird to a halt fifty yards behind and ducked. He went out the side door and saw that the Buick’s door was open, too.

Beyond a small ditch was a field of corn, head high. Bolan was out there somewhere.

Carboni jumped back in the car as a small-caliber shot thunked into the door where he had crouched. He went out the door on the other side and stared into the cornfield. Before he could determine a strategy, the boom of an AutoMag broke the silence and the rented Thunderbird rocked as the heavy round crashed into the engine. He heard steam escaping and swore.

His wheels were probably dead! Carboni charged around the back of the car, raced across the ditch and into the cornfield. He paused in the corn, breathing heavily, then held his breath and listened.

All he heard was leaves rustling in the breeze. Where the hell was Bolan? He looked down the row, but the lush growth of the stalks and leaves obscured the view beyond about a dozen feet in any direction. He looked over the top of the six-foot tassels, but saw no one.

Carboni moved deeper into the field toward the spot where he supposed Bolan had to be. All he wanted was one good shot. Just one and he would collect five million dollars!

The hit man eased forward again, then stopped. He heard an engine grind, catch and wheels spin. Carboni screamed and reversed, running wildly through the corn, holding the AutoMag ready.

The damn Executioner had slipped back to the Buick and was moving.

Carboni saw the Buick drive along the shoulder, its back tire flopping. His .44 AutoMag ejected three rounds into the side windows. Then a round hit the gas tank. Gas gushed out but did not explode.

Carboni was running as fast as the car was flopping along. He charged along the ditch, figuring the rig could not move more than three or four hundred yards with only the fuel in the carburetor and fuel pump.

After a hundred yards the Buick wavered, and the engine sputtered and died. Carboni went flat on the ground in the ditch and waited for Bolan to step out and die.

A minute later, the hit man frowned. Bolan had not yet emerged from the car.

Fifty yards behind Carboni, Mack Bolan knelt among the cornstalks, clipping grenades onto his hastily donned combat harness and web belt. He adjusted his AutoMag and put the Uzi on its shoulder strap. Then he moved toward the road, the Uzi up and waiting.

Carboni had crawled along the ditch to the Buick. He walked around the Buick, his big gun ready.

Bolan grinned, wishing he could see the expression on the big headhunter’s face. His contacts told him that Vince Carboni, a former hit man from New York, was smart, mean and resourceful, and had spent three months training before starting the manhunt for Mack Bolan.

Vince Carboni was not a man to take lightly.

He would be furious when he found the Buick’s steering wheel tied down and a big rock on the gas pedal.

When the New York gunner came behind the Buick, Bolan slammed a 5-round burst at him from the Uzi. The mafioso ducked, and the rounds pounded into the Buick.

Bolan’s combat-trained mind had evaluated his options and selected one computer-fast — search and destroy. He needed to eliminate this continuing threat.

Bolan darted up to Carboni’s Thunderbird and looked inside. A Weatherby Mark V rifle lay on the back seat. The Executioner removed the weapon and retreated to the rear of the car. Sheltered behind the car, he decided he could not carry the ten-and-one-half-pound weapon. He quickly took the bolt from the big rifle, making it inoperative, threw the rifle into the cornfield and the bolt in the opposite direction.

Then he moved forward. The Mafia hit man was next on the Executioner’s own hit list.

As Bolan ran for the cornfield, three rounds snapped past him. There were from Carboni’s AutoMag, and now he knew how others felt when he fired his own big gun at them and missed. He charged into the corn, moved inward fifty feet, then carefully worked forward. He tried but could not entirely prevent the tops and tassels of the cornstalks from swaying as he moved from one row to another.

Something black flew through the air toward him.

Grenade! He charged twenty feet down the row, then dived into the soft dirt as the bomb exploded. The inch-thick cornstalks absorbed most of the shrapnel. He had seen the bomb just in time.

One fragger was left in the suitcase in the Buick. What else? Only a .45 and some extra ammo for his weapons. So the fragger probably had been one of his own. He would find out shortly. He moved cautiously toward the road without disturbing a single leaf.

Bolan stopped at the edge of the corn, still concealed. He checked each way and at last saw Carboni behind the dead Thunderbird; one of his legs showed under the car. A 6-round burst from Bolan’s Uzi brought a scream from the mob goon. The hit man fired over the car into the cornfield with no idea where his target was.

Bolan was running short of ammo for the Uzi, which he had taken from the guard at Carlo’s castle. He had two more magazines and that was it. He had to conserve his firepower, since the Uzi was the only long gun in the contest.

Carboni crossed the road, then limped to a fence and crawled under it. By the time Bolan saw him he was a quarter mile away, crossing a pasture toward a dry irrigation ditch.

Sprinting, the Executioner moved the Uzi to single shot and sent two rounds into the ditch where Carboni had vanished. He scanned the area. The irrigation ditch ran toward some farm buildings a mile away, set in the middle of what might once have been a mile-square farm. A small stream with lots of brush and small trees growing along it meandered through the pasture and came within two hundred yards of the barn.

Why was Carboni heading for the buildings? Again Bolan’s combat-trained mind checked off the possibilities and came up with the most reasonable. The thug was hurt and looking for shelter, a longer weapon and possibly hostages to use for bargaining.

Bolan did not like any of these motives. He ran toward the barn, hoping to intercept the hit man before he reached it.

The shot came without warning. It lanced through the air less than three feet from Bolan, and he dived and rolled into a slight depression in the pasture. The second shot missed his head by a foot. Carboni had traveled faster than Bolan had anticipated, and was firing from fifty feet ahead of him.

So much for the first tactic. On his toes and elbows, keeping his body just off the ground, Bolan crawled toward the creek and its cover of brush and trees.

He made it to the creek, taking only one more shot from Carboni, who had worked farther down the irrigation ditch. Carboni would beat him to the barn and the other buildings. That could be a real problem.

Bolan waded across the foot-deep creek and began running along the meandering stream toward the barn, still three hundred yards ahead of him.

He was still fifty yards from where the creek came closest to the barn, when he saw Carboni jump out of the ditch and race for the protection of the wooden structure.

Bolan hoped there was no one home. Maybe they were all out in the fields. As if denying his hope, a screen door slammed somewhere.

Bolan worked out a new tactical plan. He would swing around the barn to the house. He ran hard.