Don Pendleton - Blood Play

Grimaldi sped forward, then pulled to a stop alongside his colleagues. Bolan and Kissinger piled in, slamming fresh cartridges into their weapons.

“Stay on ’em!” Kissinger shouted.

“I aim to,” Grimaldi replied. “Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls!”

The Stony Man pilot floored the accelerator. The taxi’s wheels spun in place a moment, then gained traction and hauled the vehicle forward, past the disabled Cadillac.

The chase was on.

BY THE TIME THE panel truck had left the parking lot, Franklin Colt’s abductors had already stripped him of his cell phone and hog-tied him by the wrists and ankles with duct tape. There were no seats in the rear of the truck, and Colt lay pinned against the cold metal floor, his captors kneeling on either side of him. They’d pulled a stocking cap down over his head, as well, and there was little he could see through the tight-woven fabric. He assumed the men were hoping to conceal their identities, but during the brief skirmish in the parking lot he’d gotten a good look at them. He didn’t know them by name, but he recognized them from the casino. They were regulars who spent most of their time at the roulette and blackjack tables. Franklin suspected they were more than mere players, however, given their burly physiques and the frequency with which they would wander off to the main bar to meet with one of the pit bosses whenever they went on break. Judging from their accents, he figured the thugs, like most of the casino’s executive personnel, were either from Eastern Europe or Russia. He had a good idea, as well, as to why they’d taken him hostage.

“Who are those other men?” one of the captors bellowed at him over the drone of the truck’s engine.

“Friends,” Colt muttered, wincing as he spoke. He’d been struck in the face several times and his jaw was throbbing. He could taste blood in his mouth and traced the source to a split on his lower lip.

“Friends with guns!” the captor shouted. “Who are they working for?”

“I don’t know!”

Colt groaned as his interrogator kneed him sharply in the ribs.

“What did you tell them?”

“What would I tell them?” Colt countered, feigning ignorance. “What’s this all about anyway? What do you want with me?”

“You know!” his captor shouted. “Don’t pretend you don’t!”

“I’m just a res Indian who minds his own business,” Colt protested.

“We know better! If you know what’s good for you you’ll start—”

The interrogation was cut short when one of the truck’s tinted rear windows imploded, shattered by a 9 mm slug that lodged itself in the headrest of the front passenger seat. The driver responded by jerking the steering wheel, throwing Colt’s abductors off balance. One of them caromed off the side of the truck while Colt’s inquisitor fell sprawling alongside him.

“We can worry about him later!” the other man shouted. “We need to take care of these people, whoever they are! They’re after us in a goddamn taxi!”

The inside of the truck suddenly reverberated with the deafening reports of an assault rifle. Colt assumed that Kissinger and his friends were the ones being fired at. His concern for their safety was mixed with no small measure of admiration at how quickly they’d responded to his abduction.

Cowboy hasn’t lost his chops, Franklin thought to himself.

The second thug let loose with another autoburst, then cursed.

“Where’s our backup?” he roared.

WHEN COLT HAD BEEN taken captive, his abductors had made a point to take his car keys and kick them just beneath the Nova’s chassis near the left front wheel. Moments after the panel truck had pulled out and sped toward the pay station, SVR operative Viktor Cherkow had abandoned his surveillance post outside the baggage claim area across the street and jogged past stalled traffic to the parking lot. When he reached the Chevy he stopped and crouched in the rain, pretending to tie his shoes. Once the panel truck had crashed through the barrier and sped into the street, Cherkow grabbed the stray keys and let himself into Colt’s Nova. The plan had been for him to go through the vehicle for evidence Colt might have brought along with him, but when he saw Bolan and Kissinger fire at the panel truck and then take up chase in a passing taxi, the Russian decided the search would have to wait.

The moment he keyed the ignition and heard the Nova’s rebuilt V-8 rumble to life, Cherkow smiled to himself. He wasn’t sure how much horsepower Colt had harnessed under the hood, but he suspected it was a lot more than whatever would be powering the taxi.

“I’ll catch up soon enough,” he vowed as he revved the engine and shifted into Reverse.

In his haste, Cherkow squealed out of his parking space just as a Mercedes GLK was pulling forward from the space directly behind him. Cherkow cursed as he rammed the SUV, crumpling its front end. The Nova hadn’t been retrofitted with air bags, and the impact threw Cherkow against the hard plastic of the steering wheel. Dazed, the Russian groped at his bruised ribs. Behind him, the other driver rocketed from his vehicle and stormed forward, kicking the Nova.

“Look where you’re going!” he roared. “I just bought this car!”

The man had nearly reached Cherkow when the Russian threw open his door and pointed the MP-446 Viking combat pistol he’d just yanked from his shoulder holster. He fired a single 9 mm round into the other man’s forehead, then slammed the door shut and threw the Nova into first gear. His rear bumper was still snagged to the Mercedes and when the Chevy screeched forward, the steel strip pulled loose and clanged to the asphalt a few feet from where the owner of the Mercedes had fallen, spilling his blood into a growing puddle of rainwater.

Cherkow sped toward the pay station, reaching it just as the parking attendant had charged out to inspect the damage caused by the panel truck. The man dived to one side to avoid being run down when Cherkow raced past the pay booth and quickly veered past the disabled Cadillac so that he could take up pursuit of the taxi. There were no cars between them, and as he eased down on the accelerator, Cherkow quickly began to gain ground. Given the rain-slicked surface, the mobster was forced to toss his gun on the seat beside him and keep both hands on the steering wheel.

“That’s all right,” Cherkow told himself, “I won’t need a gun to take care of them.”

ONE EXIT BEFORE INTERSTATE 25, the panel truck abruptly cut across two lanes of traffic and shot down the ramp leading to University Boulevard. Grimaldi followed suit in the taxi. It would have been a dangerous enough maneuver on dry ashpalt and both vehicles nearly hydroplaned off the road as they took the sharp turn. The taxi, its front hood already scarred by AK-47 rounds, took on more damage as it swerved onto the shoulder and brushed against a guardrail before Grimaldi corrected course and eased back onto the roadway.

“Nice save,” Kissinger told him.

“Yeah, well, I’d stay buckled up if I were you,” Grimaldi responded, keeping an eye on the truck. “I’m sure they’ll keep trying to shake us.”

Bolan was in the backseat, pensive, Beretta at the ready. He’d only fired at the truck once since getting into the taxi, but if Grimaldi could get within closer range, he hoped to get off a few more shots.

At the end of the ramp, the panel truck turned left, heading away from the city. By the time Grimaldi made the same turn, there was nearly a hundred-yard gap between the two vehicles. The rain had begun to pick up, forcing him to peer through the mad thrashing of the windshield wipers. A streak of lightning lit their way briefly as the pursuit continued southward, past an industrial park and the University of New Mexico’s Championship Golf Course. By the time they passed the Rio Bravo intersection, the center median had widened and there was no longer any other traffic to contend with. Grimaldi gave the taxi more gas, quickly gaining on the truck. A quick look in his rearview mirror revealed the flashing lights of a police cruiser turning onto University Boulevard far behind them.