Blood Rites. Don Pendleton

and was ready when the buzzer rang from downstairs, the doorman announcing that her escorts had arrived. She took her rolling bag, two guns inside it and the P2000 SK in her purse, and left her comfortable flat, perhaps for good. If she did not return, so be it. Finding new accommodations would not be a problem.

      She was more concerned about survival at the moment.

      And revenge.

      * * *

      FROM CORAL GABLES, Bolan traveled north to Miami Shores, a stretch of waterfront abutting Biscayne Bay. Here, the Viper Posse made their presence felt by dealing drugs while skirmishing with the gangs that had preceded them, as well as latecomers who’d claimed a slice of turf after the fact.

      His target was another posse hangout, this one called Armagideon, a Rasta variation on the final clash of good and evil from the Book of Revelation.

      Bolan parked a block down range, on Northeast 96th Street. He locked up the Marauder and took the Steyr AUG and pistols with him as he walked down to the club, scanning the street along his way for any lookouts. He saw none and wondered if word of his first clash with Channer’s minions hadn’t reached the village yet, or if the soldiers here had chosen to ignore it.

      Either way, they were about to get a wake-up call.

      As he approached the club, Bolan heard its roof-mounted air conditioner kick into life, its droning loud enough to cover him as he tried the front door’s knob. It turned and Bolan slipped inside, his silenced rifle up and ready to meet any challenge from within, but no one stopped him as he cleared a smallish entryway and moved along a short hall, toward the sound of reggae music. He had nearly reached a curtain made of colored beads when the expected outer guard appeared, clutching a sandwich in his right hand, a beer bottle in his left.

      The shock of being confronted by a man with a gun immobilized his adversary for a crucial second. Bolan took advantage of it, squeezing off a single shot that drilled the hungry man’s chest and punched him backward through the rattling curtain, toward the strains of island rhythm. Bolan followed, arriving just as the dead man’s companions registered his body flopping on the floor.

      Four of them leaped up from a card table where they’d been playing poker; two more bolted from a bar on Bolan’s right, reaching for weapons hidden underneath their baggy tie-dyed shirts. A seventh posse member was behind the bar, cracking a beer, but he dropped it when he noticed the intruder and his automatic rifle.

      Time does not slow down in combat. Quite the opposite, in fact. When the smoke clears, survivors may have only fragmentary memories of what they did, or who they killed, in order to survive. Bolan, thanks to his long experience, saw everything that happened with a perfect clarity, but had no images of slow-mo tumbling corpses, bottles shattering artistically behind the bar, or any other tricks well-known from Hollywood.

      It was an ugly business, killing, and he did it very well.

      He had the Steyr set for 3-round bursts and made them count, beginning with the guy behind the bar, who had more cover and was reaching for a weapon. That target fell, surrounded by a drifting mist of blood, as Bolan turned to work the room, tracking from left to right and nailing others as they came. When he finished, there were nine rounds left in his translucent magazine, and pools of blood were spreading on the vinyl-covered floor, merging to form a single crimson lake. Of seven adversaries, only one had fired a shot, and that was wasted on the ceiling.

      When no one else appeared, Bolan took the time to move behind the bar and smash a number of the rum and whiskey bottles shelved there. Then he ignited their dribbling contents to produce a wall of hungry, hissing flame. He saw no sprinkler system—tag them with a violation of the building safety code—which would allow the fire to spread, and maybe find its way upstairs before some passerby raised an alarm.

      You wanted Armagideon, he thought. So, here it is.