Payback. Don Pendleton

some bungee cords fastening a suitcase to the rear seat. He walked forward holding the bag.

      The third biker stepped up with a small, clear plastic case about the size of a matchbox. It contained three small tubes. He reached into his pocket and came up with a Buck knife, which he flipped open. The blade shone in the moonlight.

      “Well, open the motherfucker,” the lead biker said.

      Morris looked to Lassiter, who nodded.

      After Morris unzipped the suitcase, he lifted the lid. It was full of neatly wrapped, bricklike blocks sealed in plastic.

      The biker with the knife reached for one.

      “Take one from the bottom,” the first biker told him.

      “Show us the money first, asshole,” Lassiter said.

      The gap-toothed biker glared at him momentarily, but Lassiter knew it was all bluff. If this idiot had any sense at all, he’d know when to rein in his tough-guy act.

      Gap-tooth motioned for the second man to open the suitcase. It was full of rubber-banded hundred dollar bills.

      “Make sure there are no flash rolls,” Lassiter said.

      Morris grinned as he moved forward. Suddenly, his body made an uncontrollable jerking motion and his hands went to his chest. By the time Lassiter heard the sound of the report he was already dropping to the ground.

      Gap-tooth and his friends weren’t so lucky. They looked around and started to draw their weapons, but more shots sounded. One by one they went down, in rapid succession.

      Two snipers, Lassiter estimated. The shots had come in too quickly to be from one weapon. The snipers were using night-vision scopes, he figured.

      He rolled over, wedging himself into the dirt so he could get to Morris.

      His hands found the kid’s neck. No pulse. He swiveled the head toward him. Open, dead eyes stared back.

      At least it’d been quick, Lassiter thought. The bullet had hit him in the back and exited the front. A massive tear in Morris’s shirt indicated a big exit wound. It had been made by a large-caliber round. Lassiter brought the radio to his mouth and said, “Condition red. We’re under fire here, over.”

      No response.

      That probably meant that whoever it was had already taken out his two men with the semi.

      Another shot ripped the dirt a few feet from Lassiter’s head.

      You missed, asshole, he thought. That was your first mistake.

      He reached into the pocket of his cargo pants and grabbed the cylindrical object there. He rolled onto his back as his fingers found the plunger, and he closed his eyes.

      He felt the pop and then heard the rushing release. Seconds later the popping sound told him the Starlite flare had ignited high overhead, and he rolled to his feet, running all-out toward the expanse of low hills to the west. From the trajectory of the rounds, that had to be where the snipers were. And if his luck held out, they were temporarily blinded by the star-light, star-bright flash.

      For once, he hoped his adversaries had been using night-vision goggles.

      As he passed the van, he paused to rip open the passenger door and pull out the M-4. If he was going to have a chance, he’d have to settle it rifle to rifle. Snapping off the safety, Lassiter continued his run. Ahead of him something moved.

      Your second mistake, asshole, he thought as he brought his M-4 up and fired.

      The shadowy figure jerked in the fading light of the descending flare. His spotter next to him obviously panicked and turned to flee. Lassiter’s second shot got him squarely in the back.

      Time to zigzag, Lassiter thought as he made an abrupt right turn. If he was setting up the ambush, that’s where he would be. The light from the flare was almost totally diminished now, but perhaps a hundred feet ahead he saw two more men moving in the darkness. He flipped the selector switch to full-auto and sprayed their position. They did a pell-mell dance of death before falling.

      Lassiter got to their location and flattened out, grabbing the elongated barrel of the Barrett sniper rifle. It had a mounted night-vision scope. The spotter had a set of goggles on his face. Lassiter aimed the Barrett toward the black silhouette of the semi and used the goggles to survey the area. Three figures moved by the truck. A van had pulled in behind it. Someone had been tailing them, but who?

      Better take care of these three before I worry about that, he thought as he braced the butt of the Barrett against his right shoulder. The scope gave him a telephoto green image of the three men. One of them was frantically talking on a cell phone. The second held a radio to his mouth, and as Lassiter’s hearing began to return, a radio on one of the dead men next to him crackled.

      “Al, what’s going on?” the voice on the radio said. “Did you get them?”

      Lassiter lined up the man’s chest in the crosshairs, then squeezed the trigger. The jolt was hardly perceptible as the big, .50-caliber shell popped out of the ejection port. He lined up the crosshairs on the second man, the one with the cell phone.

      Squeeze, boom, pop. His ears automatically went into audio-occlusion due to the concussion of the blast.

      Lassiter swiveled the barrel to the third man and repeated the action.

      Squeeze, boom, pop. He immediately got up and sprinted toward the semi, circling and pausing periodically to check for any more hostiles. Everything looked pacific in the tranquil green field of display. When he got to the scene, he checked his fallen men first. All dead.

      It looked as if they’d been caught off guard. They probably thought the real action was unfolding down the dirt road. The hostiles were all dead, too, and Lassiter dragged the bodies to the side of the road and quickly went through their pockets, but found nothing in the way of IDs. He did a cursory search of their van as well, again finding nothing in the way of traceable identifiers. This was beginning to take on all the earmarks of a Company operation. He did find a GSP with this location blinking. Somebody had planted a tracker on either the semi or his van.

      But who? And why? Although the why might take a bit of figuring, he already had a good idea about the who.

      All that would have to wait a bit longer, he thought. He had a mess that he had to clean up.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Bolan watched as the mountainous terrain of the dry Arizona landscape became gradually bisected with ribbons of highway that intersected with small clusters of buildings and finally with larger towns and cities. As they neared Tucson, the expanse of buildings and civilization grew denser, but Bolan wondered what it had looked like back in the day, when the first settlers edged westward, facing the adversity of the savage land. The tops of some of the mountains, he noticed, were blackened from the summer’s wildfires. He’d spent more years than he cared to remember putting out wildfires of a different type.

      Grimaldi banked the plane and began calling the airport to report their approach. When they’d been cleared for landing he swiveled toward Bolan, who sat in the copilot’s seat, and grinned.

      “See? Aren’t you glad we waited until morning before we took off?” he asked.

      Bolan said nothing as he watched the ground gradually getting closer and closer.

      Grimaldi spoke again to the control tower and slowed the Learjet’s descent a bit more.

      They were at perhaps five hundred feet now, going over a shopping center and a ball field. When they touched down about thirty seconds later it was as easy as a limousine making a lane change on a freeway.

      “And how’s that for the epitome of smoothness?” he asked.

      “Careful,” Bolan said. “Don’t strain your arm patting yourself on the