Devil's Mark. Don Pendleton

road was defensive, as well. It had wrecked the BMW, and it turned and twisted away from the main track a hundred yards from the entrance to the canyon. It would funnel the enemy straight in. Bolan started to suspect this little box canyon had fought off Aztecs, conquistadors and cowboys as well as federales and drug lords in its time.

      Bolan lifted his binoculars. He made it eight vehicles, SUVs of various makes, 4x4s and all either black, dark blue or dark green with tinted windows. They were bee-lining for the hidden box canyon like the outriders of the apocalypse.

      The soldier eyed the canyon mouth once more. “Fire at will, Fausto!”

      “Sí, señor! I wait for the good shot! As you!”

      Bolan’s heart sank at the sound of a turboprop engine somewhere out above the salt flats. “Bree! Take this!” Bolan tossed his weapon back.

      “Fausto! Give me your gun!”

      Smiley caught the grenade-loaded assault rifle. Fausto made an unhappy noise, but the Garand sailed out of the slit window like a harpoon at Bolan. He caught it and strode out to the goat corral. A red-and-white Beechcraft Twin Bonanza broke the canyon rim and soared over to take a good look at the pueblo. Bolan snapped the rifle to his shoulder, and the ancient weapon bucked in his hands as he tracked and fired. The Bonanza dived. The Garand spoke five more times, then pinged as it racked open on empty and spit out the empty 8-round clip. The aircraft sailed out of sight over the mountain rim.

      Bolan tossed the empty Garand back behind him. “Feed me!” He caught the grenade-mounted assault rifle that came looping over his shoulder.

      “Well, that was effective,” Smiley commented.

      “The plane is their spotter, and all they spotted was one man with a rifle, and I want them to come in a rush.”

      “Oh.”

      Chickens squawked and scattered as he took over the shade of the low adobe wall. Vehicles filled the mouth of the box canyon. The lead was a black Hummer H3T pickup that filled the single lane dirt path. The other seven 4x4s bounced and bucked like broncos over the bumps and ruts to either side. Fausto’s rifle began cracking in slow, aimed semiauto fire. The Hummer slowed and stopped as the other seven vehicles surged on. No gunmen hung out the windows or the sunroofs. They came on as if they intended to ram the pueblo. Bolan had scoped the approach with the eyes of a trained sniper. A tumbleweed beyond Wang’s beleaguered BMW was Bolan’s marker. He waited for the enemy to reach the magic sixty-meter mark. A gunmetal Chevy Suburban was first across the finish line.

      Bolan sent him the big payoff straight from the People’s Republic of China with love.

      The stubby assault rifle slammed against Bolan’s shoulder as the 70 mm rifle grenade spigotted off the muzzle and spiraled in straight and true. The elongated green football of the warhead punched through the Suburban’s windshield and turned its interior into a blast furnace. Bolan flicked his selector switch to full-auto as he swept his assault weapon onto a Toyota Landcruiser and burned all thirty rounds from the magazine into the windshield. It cracked and raddled but didn’t break. Bolan tossed the smoking, empty weapon behind him as the Suburban smoldered and died.

      “Feed me!”

      Bolan didn’t even have to look back. Another grenade-mounted assault rifle fell into his hands as if he was running a timing pattern. He put his front sight on the Landcruiser and squeezed the trigger. The Toyota went up like a torch as shrapnel tore open its gas tank and superheated gas and molten metal detonated it. The RAV4 next to it went up on two wheels from the blast. Bolan burned his mag into the windshield. The RAV wasn’t armored, and the bullets swarmed through the glass. The driver died and the RAV rolled ugly. Bolan tossed his exhausted weapon back.

      “Feed me!”

      The bucket brigade sent another grenaded weapon into the Executioner’s arms. He aimed and fired, and a Ford Bronco burst apart like a beer can full of firecrackers. He put thirty rounds into a Lincoln Navigator, but it came on with a total disregard for life and limb.

      “Feed me!”

      Bolan caught his next weapon and cracked the Navigator open like an egg. There were only two vehicles left, but they were uncomfortably close. A Porsche Cayenne wasn’t a typical suicide sled, but the Porsche came on with its gears grinding and its engine snarling like a panther. Bolan’s rifle brutally bucked against his shoulder as it slammed its two-pound payload airborne. The Porsche managed to crumple, expand and burst into flames all at the same time. Bolan dropped to a knee as flaming Porsche parts peppered the pueblo.

      “Feed m—” Bolan rose as an ancient Ford F-150 came on like the Devil himself was on its heels. “Smiley! J.W.! Hammer him!” The old Ford’s straight eight engine roared like a dinosaur, and it thundered in at ramming speed. Bolan emptied his clip into it.

      Rifle grenades thudded right and left. The Ford went sky-high. Bolan dropped prone. The low adobe wall cracked and spit orange dust as something very heavy with a lot of pepper behind it crashed against it. A smoking steel bumper scythed overhead and slammed into the pueblo. Bolan waited as bits of truck rained down and popped up as the last of the scrap metal clattered to the ground. “Feed me.”

      Bolan caught a rifle and gazed across the sea of burning hulks. Gravel crunched behind him as the rest of the team emerged. The box canyon was an automotive graveyard in which most of the occupants had unwillingly been cremated. Tortured metal popped and ticked. The F-150’s fiery demise had happened at nearly point-blank range, and it had liberally sprayed Wang’s BMW with burning gasoline and flying auto parts. The luxury sedan was just starting to burn in earnest. Only the RAV-4 wasn’t burning, but it lay on its back with a broken spine. The windshield was gone, and the two bullet-riddled passengers in front hung motionless and broken by their seatbelts.

      Fausto clapped Bolan on the shoulder and cackled happily. The ancient redoubt of his ancestors had survived another siege. “¡Bueno!”

      Wang stared inconsolably at his burning BMW. “Fuck.”

      Shell-shocked goats and chickens staggered about, making odd noises.

      Smiley and Villaluz fanned out on either side of Bolan, their rifles at the ready.

      Bolan eyes went beyond the smoldering SUVs and coolly observed the command vehicle. The Hummer H3T held position near the mouth of the canyon, its engine running, black paint gleaming. The tinted windshield stared at Bolan in opaque hostility. “What’s the max range on these bad boys, J.W.?”

      “Like I said, maximum effective range is seventy-five meters,” Wang said. “They’ll go a might farther but, it’s all Kentucky windage after that.”

      “Mmm.” Bolan nodded. He snapped up his weapon, took a moment to raise his sight about a foot over the top of the Hummer and fired. The 70 mm munition spiraled off across the canyon. It fell about fifteen meters short and another ten wide. Red desert dust vomited upward in a column as it detonated, and shrapnel sparkled off the Hummer’s sides. The staring match continued. The range was too long for rifle grenades, but for a rifle it was spitting distance. Bolan peered down his sights. “Let him have it.”

      The rifle rattled as the Executioner held down the trigger. Smiley, Wang and Villaluz added their weight of shot on full-auto, as well. Fausto’s big rifle boomed as he joined the fusillade. The Hummer suddenly looked as if it were in a wind-tunnel full of fireflies. Sparks streaked off the grille and hood and glass chips erupted in geysers from the windshield. But the Hummer just wasn’t affected by the Chinese assault rifle rounds. Fausto’s big bullets didn’t seem to bother it much either. The big, black 4x4 was armored up well beyond normal levels of executive protection.

      Everyone’s rifle racked open on empty nearly at the same time.

      Bolan slapped a fresh magazine into his weapon. The dark Hummer just sat there observing them with what seemed to be impassive evil.

      Smiley shook her head as she reloaded. “Whoever these guys are, they’re really starting to creep me out.”

      “Feed me,” Bolan