Ripple Effect

He didn’t plan to die that afternoon, but neither had the men he’d lost so far. Wulandari guessed that all of them had counted on another night of drinking, sex and restful sleep after a job well done. For three of them, at least, those plans were rudely swept aside and cast onto the rubbish heap.

Wulandari didn’t care to join them.

“Speed up, damn you!” he grated, striking at his driver’s shoulder with the hand that clutched his radio. The wheelman grunted, flinched, his jerky move reflected in their auto’s swerving progress.

“Hold steady!” Wulandari barked, but he recognized his own irrationality, refraining from another blow.

The car surged forward, somehow finding still more power underneath the hood. They brushed against a slower vehicle, passing too closely on Wulandari’s side, but he dared not complain. His driver was obeying orders, narrowing the gap that separated them from their appointed targets.

Wulandari found the power button for his window, held it down until the tinted glass was fully lowered and a rush of wind filled up the car. He propped his elbow on the windowsill, bracing the Skorpion, but hot wind made his eyes tear, blurred his target as he tried to aim.

He couldn’t tell the driver to slow down, but if he couldn’t see…

Wulandari reached into his shirt pocket, heard fabric rip as he retrieved his sunglasses and slipped them on. It was a little better when he again poked his head outside the speeding car. Not perfect, but at least he had a chance to aim.

And have his head ripped off or shattered, if his driver brushed against another vehicle.

“Be careful now!” he shouted, words torn from his lips by rushing wind.

Sighting as best he could, Wulandari pulled the trigger, spraying five or six rounds from the Skorpion’s 20-round box magazine. A march of bullet holes across the gray Toyota’s trunk rewarded him, before his weapon’s muzzle rose and sent the last two rounds hurtling downrange, wasted.

“Closer!” Wulandari shouted, reaching with his left hand to extend the Skorpion’s wire shoulder stock.

His driver muttered something unintelligible in the roar of wind, but he produced another surge of speed. Wulandari smiled, lips drawn back over crooked teeth, and steeled himself to try again.

“THAT’S TOO DAMNED CLOSE,” Dixon said, his shoulders hunched against the prospect of a bullet drilling through his seat.

“Tell me about it,” the grim man at the wheel replied.

Dixon had drawn his Glock but knew he couldn’t make a decent shot under the circumstances, swiveled in his seat and leaning out the window where he’d have to fire left-handed. He was in this stranger’s hands, with killers rolling up behind them, spraying the Toyota with machine-gun fire.

Terrific.

“There’s more company,” his wheelman said.

Turning so quickly that he sent a bolt of white-hot pain searing along the right side of his neck, Dixon picked out a second chase car gaining on the first. He knew it wasn’t just another crazy native driver, from the way it swerved through traffic, breaking all the rules to overtake the dark sedan bristling with guns.

We’re toast, he thought, but kept it to himself, as if afraid that saying it would realize his fears.

“Hang on,” Bolan said.

“Right.”

It had become their litany, damned near the only conversation passed between them since their mad race from the drab parking garage. He wondered if the man they’d struck was dead or dying, mildly startled to discover that he hoped so.

One less to come back and bite them in the ass, he thought.

But there were still enough behind them to kill him and the man he knew as Matt Cooper. All the men and guns they needed were in the two chase cars. He didn’t know if Cooper could evade them, doubted it, and doubted even more his own ability to come through any kind of urban gunfight with body and soul intact.

Dixon had trained for this, after a fashion, but he’d never really taken any of it seriously. No one in his graduating class believed that they’d be shooting anyone. They were paper pushers, marginal investigators, only dubbed field agents out of courtesy. Even the posting to Jakarta, with the various advisories upon departure, hadn’t driven home the point.

But he was thrashing in the deep end now, and no mistake about it. Under other circumstances, Dixon might’ve said he had a choice—to sink or swim—but as it was, his choices seemed to be preempted by the driver of the vehicle in which he sat, and by the killers burning up the road behind him, shooting as they came.

“You know this neighborhood?” Bolan asked.

“More or less,” Dixon replied.

“I need some kind of cul-de-sac or parking area where I can get some combat stretch, maybe to turn around.”

Dixon thought hard enough to give himself a headache, which was no great trick just then. “Okay,” he said. “You’re heading for a turnoff to the lake. Penjaringan. It’s on your right. Take that and go down toward the water. There’s a parking lot for tourists. Shouldn’t have too many cars, this hour on a week day.”

“Let’s find out,” Bolan said, as the sign rushed at them. This time, when he made the screeching turn, there was no warning to hang on. Dixon was ready for it anyway, and gripped the handle overhead as if he’d been aboard a subway train racing at top speed through the dark.

“We’ve got at least four guys behind us,” Dixon noted when his driver had the gray Toyota running straight and true again. “There could be twice that many.”

“Right.”

“You plan to take them all?”

“I’m working on it,” Bolan said. “But if you have a plan, I’m open to suggestions.”

“Nope. Not me. Just wondered how you meant to pull it off.” The sinking feeling in his gut told Dixon that he was about to die.

“When you’re outnumbered,” Bolan said, flicking another quick glance toward his rearview, “there are three things you can do. I doubt our friends back there are interested in negotiation or surrender.”

“What’s the third option?” Dixon asked.

“Fight like hell.”

“Uhhuh.”

“You’re not a pacifist, I hope?” Bolan asked.

“No.”

“All right, then. If you get a chance to use that Smith, remember what they taught you on the range.”

“Center of mass. Don’t jerk the trigger. Double tap, if feasible.”

“Sounds like the ticket,” Bolan said. “And here we are.”

They roared into a spacious parking lot with fewer than a dozen vehicles in sight, all clustered at the far end, near an area of restaurants and gift shops. Lake Penjaringan was popular for boating, fishing and assorted other water sports, but weekends were its busy time.

“I bluffed their wheelman once,” Bolan said, his eyes locked on the rearview now. “I don’t know if he’ll tumble twice, but it’s the only chance we have right now.” And then, “Hang on!”

Dixon couldn’t be sure exactly what the stranger did next, but he seemed to stamp down on the brake and the accelerator simultaneously, meanwhile spinning the wheel rapidly to his left. The net effect included squealing tires, a revving engine and a dizzying 180-degree turn that left rubber scorch marks on the sun-bleached asphalt of the parking lot.

Dixon was still recovering from the bootlegger’s turn, trying to get his stomach back in place, when Cooper floored the gas again and charged off toward their enemies.