Don Pendleton - Ripple Effect

“I bluffed their wheelman once,” Bolan said, his eyes locked on the rearview now. “I don’t know if he’ll tumble twice, but it’s the only chance we have right now.” And then, “Hang on!”

Dixon couldn’t be sure exactly what the stranger did next, but he seemed to stamp down on the brake and the accelerator simultaneously, meanwhile spinning the wheel rapidly to his left. The net effect included squealing tires, a revving engine and a dizzying 180-degree turn that left rubber scorch marks on the sun-bleached asphalt of the parking lot.

Dixon was still recovering from the bootlegger’s turn, trying to get his stomach back in place, when Cooper floored the gas again and charged off toward their enemies.

This time, two chase cars were approaching, side by side and barreling ahead at sixty miles per hour. Dixon wondered if the drivers were prepared to lose their second game of chicken to this brash American.

“Ready?” Bolan called as his window powered down, right arm extended with his Glock clenched in his fist. “Okay, then. Give ’em hell!”

BOLAN WAS COUNTING on surprise and sheer audacity to give him an advantage over his pursuers, but it was still a gamble. Repetition of a tactic could be perilous, yet Bolan’s options were distinctly limited. He couldn’t drive around Jakarta with the shooters on his tail until his car ran out of gas, nor did he care to bail out in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare and take the battle back to urban infantry maneuvers.

Barring reinforcements, which he didn’t have, the chicken run would have to do—but with a twist this time.

The chase cars were advancing side by side, with several feet of empty space between them, giving the shotgun riders and whoever occupied the back seats room to aim and fire their weapons. Bolan’s angle of attack meant that, unless they rammed him, he would pass along the driver’s side of the vehicle on his right, while Dixon faced the front-and back-seat guns of its companion, on their left. Bad luck for Dixon, but if he had nerve enough, they just might make it work.

Bolan began to fire his Glock when they were twenty yards from impact, three rounds out of eighteen gone before he sighted on the left-hand chase car’s windshield. Two shots drilled through the driver’s side, and then he saw the black sedan begin to swerve off target.

He had a glimpse of someone in the back seat, leveling a weapon larger than a pistol, flinching from the windshield hits. Before the shooter could recover, Bolan triggered two more shots and punched him backward, out of view. A jagged muzzle-flash spit bullets through the right-hand chase car’s roof.

To Bolan’s left, Tom Dixon’s .40-caliber pistol was hammering away, while a Kalashnikov erupted, chattering defiance. Bolan heard a couple of the rifle’s slugs strike home, like hammer blows against the hired Toyota’s flanks. They apparently missed the tires and engine, but Bolan flinched when Dixon grunted, wondering if he’d taken a hit.

They roared on past the chase cars, Bolan’s eyes pinned to the rearview mirror as he asked, “Are you all right?”

Dixon was swiping at his cheek with bloody fingertips. “I think so. Caught a splinter, maybe.”

Lucky.

“Here we go again,” Bolan warned. “This time, don’t expect a break.”

“I’m ready,” Dixon said.

Swerving through the turn, Bolan saw one carload of his assailants stalled, its lifeless driver slumped behind the wheel, the shotgun rider scrambling out on foot. The other car was swinging back around to make another run, with the AK protruding from a window on the driver’s side.

The other side could make a sieve of his Toyota with the Kalashnikov, he knew, chewing him and Dixon into hamburger. The rifle was a killer at three hundred yards, three times the theoretical effective range of Bolan’s Glock, ten times its practical effective range.

He couldn’t duel the rifleman, but he could seize the moment to his own advantage.

If he dared.

Bolan stamped down on the accelerator, hurtling toward his enemies. “Be ready when I make another turn, and brace for impact,” he told Dixon.

“Impact. Jesus.”

Bolan tore across the parking lot, directly toward the second chase car, locked on a collision course. At the last moment, when it seemed explosive impact was inevitable, he swung through another tire-scorching one-eighty, starting so close to his adversaries that the swerving rear of his Toyota struck their front end like a half-ton slap across the face.

The Executioner was out and running, even as the aftershocks of impact shuddered through both vehicles. He saw Tom Dixon moving on the other side, pistol extended as he raced back toward the chase car, his face etched in a snarl.

Then Bolan started firing, pumping Parabellum rounds into his shaken enemies at point-blank range. The AK handler took one through his left eye socket, and another through his gaping mouth for safety’s sake. Up front, the shotgun rider had to have dropped his pistol, fumbling on the floor between his feet as Bolan turned and shot him once behind the ear.

Dixon took out the driver, blasting rounds into his neck and chest. Behind him, Bolan saw the last man from the other chase car hobbling toward them, lining up a shot, and called a warning to his contact.

Dixon turned, fired once and missed, then nailed it on the second try, even as Bolan helped him with a rapid double tap.

And they were done.

Around them, only corpses shared the battleground.

“We’re out of time,” Bolan told Dixon, “and we need fresh wheels. Tell me your story on the way.”

“WHAT KIND OF BACKGROUND do you need?” Dixon asked when they’d cleared the killing ground.

“Start from the top,” Bolan replied, “but don’t go back to Genesis.”

“Okay. I’ve been on-site for just about a year. Before that, I did two years stateside. Nothing relevant. You may know that al Qaeda and some other groups with similar potential have had cells in Indonesia since the nineties. Not surprising, when you think about it, since the population’s mostly Muslim. Eighty-odd percent. And they’ve got reasonable access to material support from China, too.”

Bolan had known that going in. He waited through the appetizer, for the main course.

“Now, this Talmadge character’s been in and out of Indonesia for the past three years, I understand,” Dixon continued. “We hear rumors that he may’ve been involved with some of the activity in East Timor.”

Activity presumably referring to the genocidal action instigated by Indonesian rulers in 1999, when East Timor’s population voted to secede from its parent nation and enjoy self-rule. By the time UN peacekeepers restored a semblance of order and supervised East Timor’s first election in April 2002, an estimated three hundred thousand persons were dead, East Timor’s meager infrastructure lay in ruins and the mostly agricultural economy was belly-up.

“Which side?” Bolan asked.

“Hard to say. The rumors go both ways,” Dixon replied. “Since then, our boy has mostly been a gun-for-hire and part-time training officer for outfits like Hamas, al Qaeda and the Islamic Jihad. No Muslim background that we know of, but he likes those petrodollars. Has three bank accounts, one each in Switzerland, the Caymans and Sri Lanka.”

“It’s a small world, after all,” Bolan remarked.

“And getting smaller all the time, apparently,” Dixon said. “In the past eleven months, Talmadge has logged close to a half a million frequent-flyer miles. We’ve tracked him back and forth to different parts of Europe, to Australia and New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, and once to Canada—B.C., specifically. He’s literally all over the map. Some of it’s visits to his banks. The rest, we’re guessing meets with his employers and some contract jobs that just coincidentally occur when he’s nearby.”