Collision Course. Don Pendleton

like an eternity he regained control of his body.

      Holding his breath, Bolan strained to listen.

      Soon the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears deafened him to the point that he was defeating his original purpose. Slowly he exhaled, struggling to keep the escaping breath silent.

      Then he heard it. He heard Paolini breathe. He couldn’t be sure, but it had seemed, in that instant, that Paolini was no more than a few yards from him.

      Bolan began to move. He kept his back flat against the wall, his hands reaching out far to the sides to feel for obstacles. He moved slowly, crossing one leg over the other. He swallowed tightly, concentrating on pinpointing Paolini’s exact location.

      Five steps and then he halted. He could hear no sound. Tension gripped him, but only for a moment. Bolan had spent too many years on the hellgrounds to be killed by indecision.

      He swallowed tightly and then stepped away from the safety of the wall. He couldn’t hear Paolini moving, and he froze. After a short while he heard the strained outlet of escaping breath and realized Paolini had been listening for him.

      In the deep darkness of the basement Bolan had his enemy pinpointed. He stepped forward and reached a sprint in three quick strides. Bolan leaped into the air, thrusting out both feet before him.

      His injured leg struck Paolini in the gut, driving the younger man’s arm into his own stomach and forcing the air from him. Bolan’s other leg struck the cinder-block wall Paolini had been standing against and buckled under the force of impact.

      Bolan bounced away, striking the floor on his rebound. Paolini fell beside him and the Executioner rose, smashing his fist down. He nearly cried out in pain as his knuckles struck the concrete floor and his arm went instantly numb.

      He heard a sharp crack and instinctively threw up his good arm to ward off the invisible blow. His forearm jerked under the force of some club, probably a snapped-off broom handle.

      Intuiting Paolini’s position by the angle of the blow, Bolan whipped his legs around and he felt the Italian topple. He heard Paolini’s club clatter away as he slammed to the floor, and Bolan snatched up the weapon for himself.

      Bolan didn’t hesitate. He rose to one knee and brought the stolen stick crashing down. The stick splintered along its length from the force of the blow on Paolini’s body.

      Paolini responded like a fighter, lashing out quickly. The ball of his foot slapped into Bolan’s face, driving him backward with the blunt force of a sledgehammer.

      Bolan felt fresh blood hot in his mouth as his bottom lip was cut by his own teeth. Again he used the energy to roll with the blow and disengage, flipping over backward and gaining his feet. He tripped and fell back, landing hard on his butt with a jar that seemed to loosen his teeth in his head. He blinked in surprise. He was sitting up higher than the floor. He reached behind and realized he was on a flight of stairs.

      Bolan turned and scrambled up the steps, racing so fast that his head butted against the door. He yanked at the knob.

      It was locked.

      Bolan felt around the walls, found what he was looking for and the lights came on as he flicked the switch. He blinked in the sudden illumination and looked behind him. Paolini was at the bottom of the staircase, a jagged-ended broom handle in his fists. The left side of his face was a long purple bruise where Bolan had struck him with his own club.

      As Paolini began to slowly climb the steps, his eyes never left Bolan’s for an instant. “You’re mine now, hardass,” he growled. “I’m gonna jam this stick in your heart.”

      Paolini raced up the last few steps and jabbed the splintered end of the stick forward in an attempt to stab Bolan. The Executioner dodged to the side and kicked Paolini in the face. Weakened, the man tumbled down the stairs rolling end over end.

      The mobster hit the bottom step at a wrong angle, and Bolan heard the snap of the Italian’s neck as it broke. The Mob lieutenant plopped into an unceremonious pile of tangled limbs at the bottom of the stairs.

      Bolan quickly descended and confirmed the kill.

      Then he turned to collect his weapons and search for an exit route.

      6

      The day that Stephen Caine quit his job he didn’t tell anyone he was going. He wouldn’t need the job; it would only slow him.

      He walked out of his office and to the elevator. He wanted a drink. Inside the elevator he suddenly realized he couldn’t remember what his office looked like. Couldn’t remember the faces of the people there, or their names.

      He wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to return to the blue collar bar. He didn’t belong there. His father would have belonged there and so, by definition he didn’t belong there. He was going to go some place upscale but mellow, maybe with a piano player.

      In the Explorer, on the way to the lounge, Caine began to cry. The tears streamed down his face in salty rivers. Six casualties a day. All of them dying just like his buddy Angel Ramos had in Mogadishu: hard and bloody.

      In the car Caine remembered the medicine the Army doctors had given the men of the unit upon rotating home, just until the nightmares and flashbacks had stopped, or subsided anyway. He figured there had to be several dozen pills out there that could help trip the switch to stop the images, stop the tears. He didn’t think the doctors would hesitate to give him some pills if he told them about Mogadishu.

      The piano bar was quiet and open but comfortably dark, and Caine didn’t look out of place in his suit with loosened tie. He drank straight through into evening and met the hooker once the sun had gone down.

      Her name was Stephanie, and he was pretty sure from the start that she was a call girl. She was beautiful and didn’t look anything like Charisa and, unlike Charisa, she didn’t seem to have a problem getting blasted with him. He got his first Xanax from her, a little pill she fished out of the bottom of her Versace handbag. He watched the way the ends of her long brown hair rubbed across the smooth curves of her spilling cleavage while she dug for the pill. She smelled really good, and after she gave him the antianxiety medicine he decided she could really be into him. He washed the pill down with a swallow of imported beer.

      “Because of demagogues,” he finished.

      “Demagogues?” she asked.

      “Yes, demagogues. A political leader who gains power by appealing to people’s emotions, instincts and prejudices in a way that is considered manipulative and dangerous…to paraphrase.”

      “So you’re saying the President is a demagogue.”

      “Yes. The problem is that the electoral college failed. The system is flawed. It is flawed because we only have a two-party system. The parties that control the electoral college are partisan. So maybe they would vote to check a demagogue who was an independent, but never to check one from within their own party. Without agreement, which is impossible in partisan atmospheres, the electoral college could never keep out a demagogue if they emerged from one of the two ruling political parties. The system fails.”

      “That’s democracy.” Stephanie shrugged. She seemed to be tuning him out, bored. But Caine was talking mainly to hear his own voice anyway. What he was planning was a big deal, and it scared the hell out of him. The Xanax seemed to help.

      Stephanie’s eyes were like glass marbles and her words came out softly slurred.

      “But if democracy had ever been intended to be a simple mob rule then the founding fathers never would have inserted the electoral college into the process to begin with,” he continued. “It is a part of the system. The system failed.” And six a day are dying because of it, Caine thought to himself.

      “What are you going to do?”

      “Well, Thomas Jefferson had a few ideas….” Caine trailed off and took a drink.

      Her hand came to rest on his thigh