Blood Rites

Crawford dropped behind a tree whose trunk was stout enough to cover him from any shooters working near the building. One armed man should be his only adversary, but he couldn’t sell the woman short, either. She had an instinct for survival, and you never knew who might be handy with a weapon, if one fell into their hands.

Armed or not, she had to die.

The notion of a white man bursting in to save her boggled Crawford’s mind, but he couldn’t afford to focus on that now. Survival was his one priority—which meant getting through the firefight with his skin intact and finishing the job he’d been sent to do. If he fell short, the death awaiting him at Winston Channer’s hands would make a gunshot seem like Heaven’s blessing.

He looked around and found the other two survivors from his car still crouching near it, angling weapons toward the visitor’s center, waiting for a target to reveal itself. Beyond them, four men from the second car were circling through the shadows cast by the building, seeking the man who’d brought them under fire.

Crawford hissed at his two lazy soldiers, then took a chance and raised his voice when they ignored him. “Move your ass!” he commanded, punctuating the order with an emphatic motion from his rifle.

Glowering, the two of them broke cover—and a bullet instantly found Byron Taylor, spinning him around with blood spraying as he hit the road facedown. Ini Munroe, beside him, gave a yelp and sprinted toward the building where the other soldiers were engaged in tracking down the sniper.

“You bring his head to me!” Crawford shouted after them. “And find the woman!”

Munroe offered no acknowledgment, but kept on running with his head tucked low, ready to open fire with his Kalashnikov if threatened. Trouble was, the threat might not be recognized until another bullet struck and laid him out.

Crawford knew he’d have to move soon. Hiding while his soldiers did the dirty work might be the normal mode of operation in some syndicates, but in the Viper Posse, leadership was understood to mean precisely that. Word got around if someone in the upper ranks was slacking.

Which was the first step toward a bloody end.

Cursing, he edged around the tree, taking a precious moment to prepare himself, then burst from cover, shouting, “Burn in hell!”

Whatever waited on the Other Side, two of his men had solved the mystery already, and instinct told him they would soon have company.

* * *

BOLAN SAW THE second runner drop, then swung back toward the quartet from the second chase car. They were fanning out along the east wall of the visitor’s center, crouching as they scuttled through the shadows, searching for the shooter who had slain their comrades. So far, none of them had spotted Bolan, but his good luck couldn’t last much longer as they closed the gap, advancing steadily.

One way to keep from showing muzzle-flashes was to lob a frag grenade.

He palmed one of the M68s, pulled its pin and pitched the grenade overhand. The bomb had a three-second fuse plus an impact fuse for backup, which would blow the charge three to seven seconds after it hit the ground or some solid object. No backup was needed this time, though, as the timer worked efficiently to fill the night with smoke, fire, shrapnel and screams.

It wasn’t a clean sweep, of course. The shooters had been smart enough to spread out while they hunted, so that one burst from an automatic weapon couldn’t drop them all at once. Two took the brunt of it, riddled with jagged shards of steel, and one shooter’s arm separated from his trunk and went airborne, hand still clutching his machine pistol. The little stutter gun erupted when it hit the pavement, emptying its magazine with one long burst.

The two remaining soldiers from the second car were stunned, one of them limping as he tried to turn and flee, but neither one of them was going anywhere. Bolan had spotted them while the shrapnel flew, and clipped the limper with a single round between the shoulder blades that punched out through his chest and sprayed the nearby stucco wall with blood. It took a moment for the dead man’s injured legs to get the message, then they folded, dropping him facedown onto the sidewalk.

That left one, and he was running for his life, firing backward, blindly, with some kind of stubby Kalashnikov carbine. Bolan recognized the Russian weapon’s sound and ducked a stream of slugs that fanned the air above his head, finding his spot by pure dumb luck.

The Executioner framed the shooter with the Steyr’s sight and hit him with a double-tap that ripped into his left side, low, an inch or two above his waistline. Nearly lifted off his feet, the soldier spun, dreadlocks fanned out around his screaming face like serpents on Medusa’s scalp, and went down firing, landing heavily, his back against the wall.

It shouldn’t take him long to bleed out, but he was a danger in the meantime, his Kalashnikov still spitting death in Bolan’s general direction. One more shot from twenty yards drilled through his forehead, bounced his head against the stucco as it emptied through a fist-size exit wound, then let him slump, slack-limbed, into the awkward sprawl of death.

How many left?

He made it one man from the first car, at least three from the third, if he’d taken out its driver. Bolan still had work to do, and he was running out of time before some passing driver heard the sounds of battle coming from the park and called the cops.

The one thing Bolan would not do, regardless of the circumstances, was initiate a firefight with Miami-Dade Police. He’d made a vow, at the beginning of his lonely war, that he would never drop the hammer on a cop. Law enforcement officers, in Bolan’s mind, were “soldiers of the same side.” He’d evade them by whatever means he could, but always stopping short of lethal force.

Which meant he had to mop up his remaining enemies and haul ass out of there before the police arrived.

Tick-tock.

He was about to go after the shooters from the third car when a flash of light from Bolan’s right alerted him to trouble. It was the Marauder’s dome light, coming on because one of its doors had opened. The woman bolting out of panic at the gunfire? Or had someone found her?

Either way, he had to check it out, but he couldn’t leave enemies behind while his back was turned.

Mouthing a curse, the Executioner moved out.

* * *

GARCELLE BROUARD HAD heard enough, huddled against the floorboards of the white man’s car, to know that he was never coming back. She should have bolted instantly, the moment she was left alone, but something—maybe confidence in how he’d handled Channer and his soldiers at the Kingston House—had made her play along.

And now, was it too late?

She had to find out for herself.

She fumbled blindly for the door latch, reaching up, behind her head, afraid to show herself with bullets flying all around. She nearly changed her mind when an explosion echoed through the night, and what in hell was that about? She heard men screaming, more guns going off, but so far—miracle of miracles—no slugs had struck the car in which she sat.

That almost changed her mind, a small voice in her head saying, Stay here!

“No way,” she answered.

Had she already lost her mind? Garcelle decided she would leave that worry for another time. Right now, the one thing she was focused on was getting out of here alive.

She found the latch at last, yanked it, and threw her weight backward against the door. It gave and nearly spilled her to the pavement, as a dome light flared above her, telling anyone nearby that she was on the move.

“Damn!”

She rolled out of the Mercury, landed on all fours, and reached up to shut the door, hoping that Channer’s men were all too busy fighting for their lives to notice her. Those men had come specifically to kill her, but there was a chance her unknown rescuer would keep them busy long enough for her to sneak away.

What did she owe a perfect stranger, after all?

Only her life.

That almost stopped her. Almost. But she told herself she’d suffered through enough already, and she couldn’t help the stranger, being unarmed herself. Police were bound to show up any minute, and the last thing Garcelle needed was to wind up in a jail cell.

No. She was definitely running. It was every man—or woman—for themself.

Garcelle began crawling toward the nearest cover, some tall trees, the nearest of them about fifty feet away. She could duck behind them, scramble to her feet and run, if no one cut her down before she reached them. A bullet struck the pavement near her left foot, stinging Garcelle’s calf with asphalt shrapnel.

Move!

Throwing caution to the wind, she vaulted to her feet and ran as if her life depended on it—which, in fact, it might.

No warning shouts behind her. That was good, at least. If she could get a head start on whoever tried to follow her, maybe she could lose them in the dark. If not…well, it was better than remaining in the stranger’s car, a stationary target.

Garcelle slammed into a solid body. She recoiled from the impact, lost her balance and fell back to the ground.

One of the Rasta goons stood over her, leering, his automatic weapon aimed at Garcelle’s face.