Don Pendleton - Patriot Strike

Bolan didn’t have a clue what was produced there, and he didn’t care. The place was obviously closed, no cars in the employees’ parking lot. Tapping the RAV4’s brake pedal, he swung in off the street and rolled across the lot, which was lit by bright halogen lights.

* * *

“HE’S STOPPING HERE? What the hell’s he thinkin’?” Jesse Folsom asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Bryar Haskin snapped. “Let’s take ’em while we can.”

“Some kinda trick,” suggested Jackson.

“Doesn’t matter.” Haskin jacked a round into his shotgun’s chamber. “Now he’s off the road, we got ’im.”

“Light ’em up!” said Jimmy Don Bodine.

“Hold off on that,” Haskin commanded. “Don’t forget Kent wants ’em both alive, if possible.”

“If possible.” The echo came from Jackson. “Leaves a lotta wiggle room.”

“You screw this up,” said Haskin, “you’ll be wigglin’ when he hooks your nuts up to that hand-crank generator with some alligator clips.”

Jackson had no response to that, and it was just as well. Folsom, at the Yukon’s wheel, swung in behind the black Toyota, chasing it across the mostly empty parking lot, back toward a row of semitrailers lined up closer to the factory. Haskin had no idea why their intended prey would trap himself that way, instead of staying on South Alamo, maybe trying to lose them on the Pan Am Expressway farther west, but he didn’t plan to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“C’mon!” he barked at Folsom. “Catch ’em, damn it!”

“Workin’ on it,” Jesse answered back, accelerating with a squeal of tires on asphalt.

Haskin had no clue who was driving the Toyota, but it stood to reason that the lady Ranger would be armed. A pistol only, since he’d seen her walking empty-handed at the Alamo, unlikely that she’d have some kind of tiny submachine gun underneath her leather jacket. Could be damn near anything inside the fleeing SUV, though, so they’d have to hit it hard and fast, before the stranger at the wheel could start unloading on them.

“Hey! You’re losin’ it,” warned Haskin, as the RAV4 swerved around behind semis, ducking out of sight.

“No place for ’em to go back there,” Folsom assured him. “Ain’t no exit from the lot on that side.”

“You’d better hope not. If they get away—”

“You worry too much,” Folsom answered, almost sneering.

Haskin fought an urge to punch him, the worst thing Haskin could do when they were doing close to sixty miles per hour. If Folsom crashed the Yukon, it would be Haskin’s ass when Kent heard how their targets had wriggled through the net.

Haskin had expected the Toyota’s driver to swing back around, upon discovering that he couldn’t escape the parking lot, but there was no sign of the RAV4 yet. It was a big lot, sure, but not that big. You couldn’t lose an SUV, unless—

“Hold up!” he ordered.

Folsom shot a sidelong glance his way.

“They’re layin’ for us!” Haskin blurted, but his driver didn’t get the message. They kept rolling, passed the nearest semitrailer, turning left to follow the Toyota. Haskin didn’t see the other car at first, imagined that its wheelman must have found an exit from the big lot after all or maybe plowed straight through the shrubbery that lined it on the west. He was about to say so, when a sudden blaze of high beams blinded him. He raised one hand to shield his eyes.

“Goddamn it!”

The words were barely out before a bullet drilled through their windshield, clipped the rearview mirror from its post and dropped it into Haskin’s lap. Folsom was cursing like a sailor with his pants on fire, spinning the Yukon’s wheel, as more slugs hit the SUV, pounding its body like the sharp blows of a sledgehammer.

* * *

BOLAN HAD RACED around the line of semitrailers, running almost to its end before he whipped the RAV4 through a rocking bootlegger’s turn. It wasn’t too hard, once taught the trick, using the hand brake and accelerator in collaboration, power steering helping out. With an SUV there was a risk of tipping over, but he had kept them upright—though not without eliciting a little gasp from Adlene Granger.

“Out!” he snapped, when they were barely settled, reaching toward the backseat for his hidden Colt AR-15. She bailed from the passenger’s side. He had already doused the domes, but a pool of light still glowed beneath the dashboard with the SUV’s doors open. Not enough to matter for his purposes, as Bolan crouched behind his open driver’s door and Granger found her cover in between two massive semis.

Any second now...

The chase car roared into view right on schedule, headlights lancing toward the parked RAV4. They had to see it, but the black car sitting there, stopped dead and going nowhere, would confuse them long enough for Bolan to begin the fight on his own terms. A slim advantage, when he guessed they were outnumbered two to one, at least, but he would take what he could get.

Which, at the moment, was a blast of high beams for the chase car’s driver, followed by a clean shot through its tinted windshield. Bolan didn’t count on hitting anyone with that first round, but it did have the desired effect, forcing the larger SUV to swerve away from him, tires screeching on the asphalt as its wheelman panicked.

Bolan tracked the Yukon with his rifle sights, squeezed off another round that sent its left-front tire into a wallowing rumble, the rim biting blacktop. That didn’t help the driver with control, but he still managed not to flip it, trying to put space between himself and Bolan as he rolled off toward the tall white stacks on the far side of the parking lot.

Looking for cover, Bolan realized, and he was determined not to let them reach it. Breaking from his own partial concealment, after switching off the Toyota’s headlights, Bolan sprinted in pursuit of the Yukon. He was the hunter now, whether the Yukon’s occupants knew it or not. The game had turned around on them, but there was no change in the stakes.

Still life or death.

Before his targets reached the three silo stacks, Bolan stopped short, lined up his shot and punched a double-tap through the retreating 4x4’s rear window. Glass imploded, and he thought he heard a man cry out; whether in pain or mere surprise, he couldn’t say. Then the SUV changed course again, now rolling toward a fence and wall of shrubbery that screened the parking lot’s west end.

Better.

Over there, the only cover waiting for them was the vehicle they had arrived in. They could try to scale the fence and run away, but that would place them with their backs toward Bolan, no hands free for fighting while they made the climb. He could shoot sitting ducks all night, though Bolan hoped to wrap this up without much wasted time.

And if he had a chance to quiz one of his enemies, so much the better.

The Yukon rolled on toward the fence, then veered off to the right. That placed the driver’s side away from Bolan, and he saw the doors fly open, dome lights glaring briefly until they were shut once more. It looked like four men piling out, none seemingly impaired, going to ground behind the full-size SUV.

Now Bolan was in the open and in danger as they started firing—one from each end of the Yukon, one underneath it and one blasting directly through the SUV, its back windows both rolled down.

Not good.

His opposition had two shotguns and two rifles, both feeding the standard 5.56 mm NATO ammunition by their sound. One hit from any of those guns could be enough to finish him. Whether they scored with buckshot or one of the NATO tumblers traveling at 3,100 feet per second, either would create catastrophic damage upon impact with flesh and bone.

He hit the deck and rolled, scrabbling away to his left, toward the last semitrailer in line. It stood some fifty yards from the Yukon, easy pickings with his AR-15, but Bolan still had two problems.