Fatal Combat. Don Pendleton

the narrow sidewalk and between a building and a light pole, drawing sparks and the shrieking of metal on metal from the flank of the tortured rental car. One of the gunmen wasn’t fast enough; he fell under the crumpled bumper of the Dodge, causing the vehicle to bounce upward over the speed bump of his sudden corpse. Bolan dug in, accelerating again, causing Davis to grimace as the Charger burned sideways on squealing tires. Davis dropped one more shooter and Bolan punched yet another in the head and neck.

      “Who are they?” Davis shouted over the din.

      “Hired help,” Bolan said, dropping a nearly empty 20-round magazine and swapping it for a fresh one from the pouches in his custom leather shoulder holster. “And they didn’t just come from nowhere. Look for a vehicle with passenger capacity, or a cluster of cars.”

      The Charger’s engine was starting to spew black, oily smoke, spraying the wrecked windshield with spurts of oil. Bolan urged it on, shooting across the street, charting a course directly for a man with a MAC-10 submachine gun dressed in dark pants and shirt with a stained trench coat over these. Something about this one, in particular, struck Bolan as familiar—just as the Charger struck its target. A spray of heavy .45-caliber slugs almost chewed through the roof as Davis and Bolan threw themselves to either side. The bullets ripped up the interior of the car and smashed out what was left of the rear window.

      Bolan cut short, sharp circles with the car, his jaw set, his eyes roving the crowd and the players running among it, gauging targets of opportunity and screening friendlies from his mental computations. He gripped the wheel with one hand and fired with the other, the Beretta barking a deadly rhythm. He stroked triple bursts of 9 mm hollowpoint rounds from the snout of the machine pistol, cutting down another, and another, and another gunman. Bodies were beginning to pile up two deep, or so it seemed.

      That was an illusion brought on by the adrenaline, the tunnel vision, the tachypsychia of mortal combat. Bolan, while not immune to the physiological effects of life-and-death battle, was certainly no stranger to these sensations. He was as comfortable operating with and through them as it was possible for a human being to be. Still, that did not mean a great deal. Bolan understood, as so many veteran operators did, that much of combat efficacy was simply learning to function efficiently and accurately despite the psychological effects of the fight itself.

      Combat was as natural to Bolan as breathing. And he did not think these things, did not subvocalize them, did not consider them as he swapped out another empty 20-round magazine in the Beretta, leaning on the steering wheel with his left knee as he racked the Beretta’s slide and chambered the first round.

      “Cooper!” Davis yelled. Again Bolan did not think; he did not need to ask. He flattened himself against his headrest and squeezed his eyes shut, tucking his chin, as Davis’s Glock came up in his direction.

      The shots were deafening in the enclosed space of the Charger’s front seats. Davis had seen the man in the leather jacket before Bolan and had responded, as he was trained to do. The gunner held a drum-fed semiautomatic shotgun and managed to scrape the driver’s-side fender of Bolan’s vehicle with double-00 Buck pellets as he went down. Davis’s shots took the shooter in the neck and under the jaw, folding him in a heap like dirty laundry. Bolan’s ears were ringing, but he nodded once in acknowledgment to Davis nonetheless. The kid was good.

      Bolan urged the Dodge back toward the Detroit police, who were using their vehicles as cover and firing straggler shots into what little resistance remained. As quickly as it had begun, the worst of it seemed to be over. Bolan hit the brakes suddenly, jerking the car to a stop, and leaned out his window, tagging a running gunman who was trying to break for a nearby alleyway. The man went down yelling, with a bullet in his leg, and Bolan was out of the rolling car with his Beretta in his fist.

      Behind him, Davis scrambled into the driver’s seat and stepped on the brake again before shifting the battle-torn Dodge into Park.

      Bolan was on his quarry like a hawk on a mouse. The shooter rolled onto his back, his leg spraying blood from a bad wound, his face already pale as he brought up his TEC-9. The Executioner slapped the ungainly weapon aside as he landed on the wounded man’s chest with one knee, driving the air out of the gunner’s chest.

      “Junk,” Bolan said, snatching the TEC-9 from the man’s hand. He shoved the black muzzle of the Beretta into his face. “Always were a jam waiting to happen.”

      “I want a lawyer!” the disarmed shooter squealed. “I got rights!”

      “Give me a name,” Bolan said. “Or all you’ll get will be a bullet in the brain when I’m finished with you.”

      The dialogue sounded corny even to Bolan, but it was the kind of language spoken by punks-for-hire. Bolan could hear Davis coming up behind him and hoped the young detective wouldn’t overreact to the soldier’s bluff.

      “A name,” Bolan said. Sirens were erupting from the lot across the street as the police, having cleared their part of the gun battle, moved to seal off the area. It would be only moments before some of them blundered into this little scene. Bolan didn’t have time for that. He heard Davis behind him, running interference as the first of the Detroit PD closed in and started asking questions. He gave Davis mental points for that. The kid was doing well during his trial by fire. The noise and activity behind them increased as emergency response personnel started to arrive. More Detroit PD were showing up by the carload, too. The sudden war on this already tainted city block had brought half the department out in a bid to clamp down on the chaos.

      In the noise and confusion, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Bolan’s prisoner tried to make play. The knife came out with surprising speed. Bolan heard the snick of the blade opening just as he caught the movement; he was ready for it. He grabbed the would-be killer’s knife hand and wrist in a crushing grip. Behind him, Davis gasped, probably because he was watching Bolan’s knuckles go white. Something cracked in the wounded man’s hand and he yelped. The folding combat knife fell to the pavement.

      “Give me a name,” Bolan repeated. “Or I’ll break the other one.”

      “Don’t know,” the man blurted, shaking his head as his pride gave way to pain. “Contract job. Never saw a face.”

      “Contract on who?” Bolan demanded.

      “Jacket…” the man said, gritting his teeth. “Jacket pocket.”

      Bolan carefully reached into the man’s jacket and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. The sheet was a photocopy of a photograph. The photograph showed Bolan meeting with Adam Davis outside the station house to which Davis was assigned. It was grainy and had obviously been taken with long-distance equipment. Bolan’s face was circled in a whorl of yellow highlighter.

      Bolan signaled to the police officers nearby, who closed in to take custody of the wounded shooter. The Executioner led the confused Davis several paces away from the main knot of uniforms and support personnel before showing him the paper.

      “But this…” Davis looked at it. “What does it mean?”

      “It means somebody knew to watch,” Bolan said.

      “Watch for what?”

      “Outside interference.” Bolan folded the paper and pocketed it. Turning, he watched the wounded gunman being ushered, under guard, to an ambulance that was just rolling up. Several men in suits, badges displayed prominently on their belts, clustered around Bolan and Davis, giving them the hairy eyeball; these would be Detroit detectives eager to ask this representative from Washington just what the hell was going on, and what Bolan thought he was doing. The soldier could almost write this dialogue himself; he had heard it often enough.

      Bolan took out his secure smartphone and began moving deliberately from corpse to corpse, kneeling over his fallen enemies with the phone so he could snap their pictures. Davis followed him, looking as if he was ready to draw the Glock he had only just reholstered. Bolan couldn’t blame the kid. The abrupt battle had the Executioner’s own system working against the fight-or-flight dump of adrenaline that lingered even though the gunfight itself was over.

      “What