Battle Cry. Don Pendleton

It was a short drive from Ace Storage to JFK International Airport via Shore Parkway and the Nassau Expressway. He dropped his rental car at 1:05 p.m., ate an overpriced lunch in Terminal 4, and took his time checking in for his 6:30 p.m. flight. Security was slow, as always, with the standard questions, pat downs, and inspections of a thousand shoes.

       Bolan passed through the metal detector, raised his arms for an up-and-down pass with a handheld security wand, then waited for his shoes and carry-on to clear the X-ray machine. No weapons there, and nothing to excite the watchers even if they sought a closer look, but he was passed on without opening his bag.

       The rest came down to waiting at the designated gate until his flight was called, reading a travel guide to Scotland that he bought at Hudson News. A detailed map of Glasgow was included.

       By the time a disembodied voice announced the start of boarding for his flight, Bolan was more than ready to be on his way. A patient man by any standard, trained to lie in wait for days behind a sniper scope if need be, he still chafed inside at the inevitable downtime between his acceptance of a mission and the moment when he hit the ground running, embarking on yet another gamble with the Reaper.

       Every time he took a job from Brognola, his life was on the line. Bolan accepted that, but didn’t like to sit around and think about it, when he could be taking action to resolve the issue on his own terms, carrying the battle to his enemies.

       Rising to shuffle forward with the other passengers, when his row was called to board, Bolan looked forward to an opportunity for sleeping on the flight. Once he arrived, there might be no rest until he was finished with his job.

       Or until the job had finished him.

       The thought was there and gone, dismissed as unproductive and defeatist. Bolan always planned to win and to survive. Someday, when he ran out of time like every other human on the planet, he would meet his fate with eyes wide open, fighting back against the darkness.

       And he damn sure wouldn’t go alone.

      Chapter 4

      Glasgow: Present day, 4:36 a.m.

      Bolan had a split second to consider his options, peering at the redhead belted in behind the wheel of a tiny Ford Ka that looked as if it had been kicked in the back end by a giant. He could either squeeze into the shotgun seat, or run for it and hope Boyle’s shooters lost him in the dark.

       He squeezed, she nodded and the little car peeled out with squealing tires.

       “We won’t have long,” she said, working the clutch and five-speed shift as if she knew her way around a race track.

       Bolan checked his wing mirror and saw that she was right. Headlights were lancing out of Boyle’s driveway and swinging after them in hot pursuit. Just one car followed them, likely with three to five men packed inside it, while the rest scrambled to clean up Frankie’s house before the law arrived.

       “You always pick up strangers in the middle of a firefight?” Bolan asked her, cutting to the other chase.

       “Depends,” she answered with an unexpected smile. “Call it a whim.”

       “Whims can be dangerous,” he said.

       “You plan to shoot me, then?”

       “Depends,” he echoed her. “I have to see whose side you’re on.”

       “My own,” she said. “How’s that?”

       “It doesn’t tell me much,” Bolan replied.

       “Call it a spin on the old fable, then,” she said. “This time, the damsel saves the bad man in distress.”

       He flicked another glance at the wing mirror and said, “It works for me, except they’re breathing down our necks right now.”

       “‘O ye of little faith,’” she said, and smiled again, shifting the Ka’s transmission into fifth for greater speed.

       That gave the little car a boost, but they could only go so fast with the Duratec 1.6-liter engine under its hood. They had some kind of full-sized muscle car pursuing them, its occupants likely prepared to open fire as soon as they were close enough to aim reliably, and Bolan didn’t have to ask if there was any body armor on the Ka.

       “Hang on!” his savior warned, downshifting half a second later as they snarled into a sudden left-hand turn. She clearly meant to prove that what her compact lacked in power, it made up in handling.

       Bolan clenched his teeth, hung on and wished her well. He thought about his safety harness, just in case they hit something or someone, but decided not to use it. If they had to stop and fight, he didn’t want to waste an extra microsecond fumbling with an unfamiliar seat belt, when he could be sighting on his would-be killers with the Spectre SMG.

       Bolan was simultaneously checking out the street in front of them, watching the mirror, thinking through the moves he’d have to make if they were stopped, and watching out for landmarks to stay oriented with the street map he had memorized. He knew they were headed north when he got in the Ka, then west after the first turn, but it started getting hectic after that. They stayed with residential streets, but Bolan thought that they were headed in the general direction of the River Clyde.

       For what? Hoping to lose their trackers in a maze of byways? Or to find a place where they could stand and fight?

       He took a closer look at the woman who had rescued him. Her face was set in grim determination, and if he had to guess, he’d say that she was every inch a pro.

       So much for whimsy and coincidence.

       Bolan had to ask himself what kind of pro she was, who she was working for, and how she’d happened to be passing Frankie Boyle’s house at the very moment when he needed help.