Face Of Terror. Don Pendleton

of them.

      Now it was time to pursue the other four running in opposite directions across the wide-open spaces of the pastureland.

      Bolan whipped the wheel to the right and accelerated once more. The Hummer dived and jumped over the uneven surface beneath its tires. Ahead, Bolan could see two of the running mafiosi—one wearing a charcoal-gray business suit, the other dressed in a more comfortable track suit—running as best they could. But regardless of the fact that he wore running clothes, the man inside them wasn’t a runner. He was at least fifty pounds overweight and doing more waddling than actual running.

      As they closed the gap to roughly ten yards, the fat man pulled a bright nickel-plated revolver from somewhere inside his jacket and threw a wild shot back at the Hummer. Bolan pushed the pedal down harder, and a second later the big vehicle was rolling along right next to the man.

      The overweight Mafia man was huffing and puffing like a freight train on its final run before being scrapped. And it looked to the Executioner as if it took all of his last strength to lift the brightly shining wheelgun in his hand toward the open window of the Hummer.

      Bolan extended his left hand out the window and tapped the trigger yet again.

      All three 9 mm hollowpoint rounds coughed out of the sound-suppressed weapon and into the face and throat of the fat man.

      Bolan drew a bead on the other man heading in the direction of the highway. He was on the other side of the Hummer, and Bolan said, “Get ready.”

      Jessup nodded and extended his rifle barrel out the window. But for this shot there would be no need to kneel on the seat or strap himself in. He could do it from where he sat.

      A lone, frightened and confused cow suddenly appeared in front of them as if out of nowhere. The Executioner twisted the wheel hard, barely brushing past her without hurting her. The mooing sounded more like a roar as they drove on.

      Fifteen seconds later, they were next to the man in the charcoal-gray suit. It was the same man Bolan had hit in the shoulder, and he held that shoulder with his other hand as he ran, a grimace of severe pain covering his face. But that hand also held a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, and as the Hummer neared, he attempted to raise it just as his overweight friend had tried with his nickel-plated revolver.

      Jessup changed his plans. For life.

      The Executioner watched out of the corner of his eye as the DEA agent lifted the barrel of his rifle and carefully triggered a double-tap of 5.56 mm NATO rounds into the mafioso. The first one caught the man in the center of the back, causing him to suddenly halt his running. The second round exploded the back of his head as he fell, leaving no question in either the Executioner’s or Jessup’s mind that he was dead.

      Bolan wasted no time.

      Another quick U-turn and the Executioner was already flooring the accelerator across the pasture. Ahead, he could see two tiny moving specks that he knew were the final two Mafia soldiers. They were still moving, but they looked as if they were tired. One speck had even slowed to a walk.

      Bolan glanced to his right as they passed the wreckage of the other two pickups again. Far in the distance, hustling deeper into the pasture, he could see the Jeep and two pickups that had darted away as soon as the Hummer had left the road. If he and Jessup could just take out these last two mafiosi quickly enough, there was still the chance that they’d have time to catch up to the men escaping with the drug money.

      Rolling on across the prairie, Bolan drove up next to the walking man. Dressed like the others, he had taken time to light a cigarette and now huffed and puffed on the unfiltered smoke that was clenched between his teeth.

      As the Hummer neared, the man turned and looked back at it.

      Bolan wondered if he might be able to take this man alive. If he could, he would. Not out of any sympathy for such a parasite who fed off the misery of others’ addictions, but in order to collect information.

      The Mafia man gave him no such chance.

      As they neared the man, he turned and raised a small Skorpion submachine pistol. A smattering of bullets hit the windshield but the small, low-velocity rounds barely even marked the windshield. As they drove on, however, nearing the man, his angle of fire changed.

      A second before he had a shot at Bolan through the driver’s window of the Hummer, the Executioner extended his hand once more and tapped another 3-round burst into the man’s face. Not even his mother would have recognized him as he settled on the grassy ground of the cow pasture.

      Kicking their speed yet another notch, the Executioner came to a man who looked to be much younger than the other mafioso. In his early twenties, Bolan guessed, he was definitely in better shape. But the uneven pastureland was no cinder track, and the ruts and holes—not to mention the mounds that often crumbled under the feet—were slowing him.

      The Hummer was still twenty yards behind him when the younger man turned. Instead of a business or track suit, he wore khaki slacks, a blue blazer and a paisley tie around the collar of his white button-down shirt. He looked more like a young attorney than a Mafia soldier, the Executioner thought as he twisted the steering wheel, turning his side of the truck to face this last man, then skidding to a halt.

      The young man reached under his left armpit with his right hand.

      But that was as far as he got toward his weapon.

      The final 3-round burst in the Beretta’s 15-round magazine flew out of the barrel with three quiet burps. All three hit the center of the mafioso’s chest and exploded his heart. He fell straight back away from the Hummer, dead before he hit the ground.

      The Executioner turned immediately for the vehicles still escaping across the pasture. They were at least a mile away now, and they’d be hard to intercept. Maybe impossible. It depended on whether they were just fleeing haphazardly or if they’d had some backup plan for a situation such as this.

      Bolan frowned. They looked as if they knew what they were doing. And his gut instinct was that this escape route was part of a well-thought-out backup plan.

      As he took his foot off the brake pedal and returned it to the accelerator, Jessup said, “You think there’s a chance of catching them?”

      The Hummer tore up more wild grass as it picked up speed. “I don’t know,” the Executioner said. “But it won’t hurt to give it a shot.”

      BEHIND THE WHEEL of the Jeep, Harry Drake looked up into the rearview mirror. “Those bastards in that Hummer are coming after us,” he told Sal Whitlow, who sat in the passenger’s seat of the vehicle. Like Drake himself, Whitlow wore green camouflage BDUs and a boonie hat. A Russian Tokarev automatic pistol rode in a holster on his belt, and a Russian Kalashnikov AK-47 lay across his lap.

      “They’ll never catch us.” Whitlow chuckled, turning in his seat to smile back into the pasture. “That yellow submarine’s almost like a tank. But this Jeep and the four-wheel-drive pickups are enough for this terrain.”

      “I hope you’re right,” Drake said as he turned slightly to miss a small scrub tree. “And I hope our ticket out of here is waiting where he’s supposed to be.”

      “He will be,” Whitlow said confidently, turning back to face the front. “Joe Knox is solid SAS. I met him several times when we trained with the Brits.”

      Drake nodded. He was trusting Whitlow’s judgment, as well as his word. They’d served together as Army Rangers during the first Gulf War, then worn the green beanies of the Army’s Special Forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The two men were more than friends. They were like brothers.

      Just the same, Drake was glad he’d downed a Lortab and a Xanax—painkillers—with a mouthful of whiskey right before the yellow Hummer appeared. His nerves had been on edge lately, and the mixture of drugs was sometimes all that kept him from screaming out loud.

      As the Jeep took a rise, then suddenly plunged downward toward a dry creek bed, Drake twisted his neck and looked at the Ford F250.