Extreme Justice

“Sounds good,” Bolan said, keeping both eyes on the road. “We’ll start with target zones and access routes, then hit the culture afterward, if we have time.”

3

San José

Wednesday, June 20

A bullet struck the rear of Bolan’s rented vehicle and spent its force somewhere inside the trunk. Bolan stood on the accelerator, racing down the narrow alley, scattering trash cans in his wake.

The chase car’s driver didn’t seem to mind. He kept a lock on Bolan with his high beams, plowing through the refuse heaped across his path and battering aside the upended cans.

There were at least two shooters in the chase car, one in the front shotgun seat, another in the backseat, on the driver’s side. Bolan knew that much only from their muzzle-flashes, since the high beams in his rearview mirror ruled out any head count.

Two guns minimum, and Bolan knew the driver would be armed, as well. The odds weren’t bad, compared to some he’d faced.

Suddenly, a second pair of headlights joined the chase, behind the first pursuit car, gaining rapidly along the alley’s dark and narrow track. Bolan ruled out police, because the second vehicle displayed no flashing lights, sounded no siren.

Beside him, Blanca Herrera swiveled in her seat, her face blanched by headlight beams. She watched the chase cars, while Gil Favor huddled in the backseat, offering the smallest target possible under the circumstances.

“Here they come!” Herrera advised him, as if she thought Bolan might be unaware of the pursuit.

“I see them,” he replied. “Hang on.”

Almost before she could react to that warning, they cleared the alley and he cranked the Ford into the sharpest left-hand turn he could manage, startling a pair of jaywalkers who squealed and ran for safety on the sidewalk. Gunfire echoed from the alley at his back, even before the first chase car emerged. The pedestrians went prone.

Bolan was making all the haste he dared on residential streets, watching the sidelines where his own headlights and those closing behind him cast distorted, moving shadows. Any one of them might mask a another late-night rambler, possibly a child, and Bolan had to balance that thought with the threat of death that rode his bumper. At the same time, if he drove too fast and lost control, smashed up the Ford, he and his passengers were facing sudden death, the failure of his mission.

Triumph for Antonio Romano.

“I need someplace where I can deal with this,” he told Herrera. “Ideas?”

She blinked at him, eyes bright with fear, then said, “Maybe the riverfront? They have warehouses, docks. Few people at this hour. Also waste ground.”

“Good.”

Bolan was already speeding northward, in the general direction of the Rio Torres. All he had to do was stay the course and hope the gunners trailing him didn’t get lucky with a bullet to his gas tank or a tire.

“Could you distract them for me?” he asked Herrera.

“What?”

“Shoot back.”

His words seemed to confuse her for a moment, then she powered down her window, leaned into the wind-rush gale and fired a pistol shot at the nearer chase car. Bolan saw it swerve, the driver taken by surprise, losing acceleration just as Herrera fired again.

“Try for the radiator,” Bolan called out to her.

“What?”

“Between the headlights!”

“Sí!”

She triggered two more shots, and while the chase car lost a bit more ground, Bolan had no idea if any of the bullets found their mark. Regardless, he took full advantage of the other driver’s lapse and put more road between them, speeding through dark intersections with a silent prayer that there would be no damned fool driving with his lights off, no foot traffic crossing just as Bolan barreled past.

Gil Favor’s neighborhood boasted some of the smallest street signs known to man, perhaps another mark of high-priced exclusivity. It was impossible to read the signs in the glare of his headlights, racing through the streets at speeds he normally reserved for freeway driving, while two carloads of assassins tried to run him down.

Instead, Bolan reviewed the street map he had memorized that afternoon, while they were killing time. He knew that he must be a good half mile below the riverfront, at least, but he was heading in the right direction, making decent time. If he could just—

The Ford’s rear window suddenly imploded from a bullet’s impact. Herrera bit off the greater part of an instinctive scream, while Bolan ducked and heard—or felt—the slug zip past his face. It struck his rearview mirror, sent it spinning to the floor somewhere, and drilled a neat hole through the windshield as it exited.

Now he was blind in back, except for side mirrors that shrank the chase cars down to toy size. He didn’t need the printed warning that reflected objects May Be Closer Than They Seem.

“Give them a few more rounds,” he ordered Herrera, guessing that she’d fired off roughly half her pistol’s magazine already.

“Right!”

She scrambled to obey, as Bolan held the pedal down and waited for his first glimpse of the waterfront.

BLANCA HERRERA GRIMACED, mouthing silent curses as the wind from behind her whipped long hair around her face, stinging her eyes. It was already bad enough, men she had never met trying to murder her, without betrayal from her own hair in the bargain.

She had practiced often enough with her HK4 pistol to feel confident with stationary, inanimate targets, but this running battle through the streets of San José was something else entirely. In her wildest fantasies, Herrera had thought that if she ever tried to shoot another human being it would be in some classic film noir setting, possibly a city park at midnight or the murky hallway of a derelict motel.

The last thing she’d imagined, when she set out with Matt Cooper to retrieve his witness from a mansion in the heart of San José, had been a bullet-riddled car chase leading to the riverfront.

If they survived that long.

She saw more muzzle-flashes from the nearer chase car and replied with two rounds from her own weapon. The sharp reports, though swiftly blown away, still stung her ears. The target vehicle swerved jerkily, but once again she couldn’t tell if either of her bullets had made contact.

In the excitement, Herrera had forgotten that she was supposed to count her shots. Had she fired six or seven? Since the pistol’s slide was closed, she had at least one cartridge left before she had to fumble for the spare clip in her handbag.

Now the second car was gaining ground, trying to pass the first or pull abreast so that gunmen in both chase cars could fire at her and Cooper. Angry at the presumption of her enemies, Herrera triggered her first shot at the second car—and saw her pistol’s slide lock open on an empty chamber.

“Damn it!”

She ducked back inside the Ford’s window, wind-tangled hair obscuring her vision as she reached down for her purse. She’d dropped it on the floor between her feet, after they shoved Favor into the car, before their enemies had shown up and begun the chase.

She snatched the bag and opened it, rooting past wallet, lipstick, compact, facial tissues, hairbrush, searching for the one thing that might save her life. Of course the pistol’s extra magazine had slithered to the very bottom of her bag, beside a jingling key ring.

She dumped the purse into her lap, snatched up the slim black magazine and let the other items spill between her legs, onto the floorboard. One touch of a button dropped the empty magazine out of her pistol’s grip, and she replaced it, thumbed the catch to close its slide and put a live round in the chamber.

Ready.

I’ll count this time, she thought, and know when I run out of bullets.

When she was unarmed, helpless against her enemies.

“We’re getting there,” Cooper said from the driver’s seat.