Darkness enveloped them and carried them along toward a rendezvous with death.
2
Through the fog, Bolan spied the checkpoint at fifty feet. He eased off the gas, coasting as he scanned the driveway for sentries.
He found a pair — one in the middle of the drive, another half-hidden inside the gatehouse. He saw them before they heard the car, but they were already on alert and waiting for him.
At twenty feet he kicked on the Caddy's high beams, framing the nearest guard at center stage. Inside the gatehouse, his partner was speaking rapidly into a telephone.
The walking guard was moving up to meet the car, one arm raised to shield his eyes against the light. His free hand drifted toward his right hip, casually opening his jacket to reveal the glint of holstered hardware.
Bolan never let him reach it. The Beretta chugged twice, one parabellum slug drilling through the man's palm, a second ripping through the open oval of his lips as he tumbled back from the car.
His partner in the gatehouse dropped the phone.
Swinging up a large-bore revolver, bracing it with both hands, he tracked the target. Bolan punched the gas, angling his Beretta through the open window as the Caddy sprang forward, growling.
For an instant they were face to face, their eyes meeting, locking over gun sights. Then they were firing at point-blank range. The warrior's reflexes gave him a split-second advantage.
Bolan saw the gatehouse window shiver and buckle with the impact of his 9mm rounds. The sentry was sent spinning like a top, his Magnum handgun blasting aimlessly at walls and ceiling, searching for a target he would never find.
They reached the gate, Bolan's appropriated tank shearing through the flimsy locking mechanism, peeling back the wrought iron like it was tinfoil. There was a hellish grinding sound as the ruined gates raked along their flanks, and then they were clear, gaining the highway in a surge of desperate speed.
Bolan swung the Caddy north, following a track that would eventually put him on Highway 131, a few miles north of Tiburon. From there, it was an easy run south on Interstate 101, across the Golden Gate and into the teeming anonymity of San Francisco.
His high beams reflecting on the fog were blinding, so Bolan kicked them down to low and finally shut them off completely, trusting to the Nitefinders. Even with enhanced vision they were going dangerously fast. He eased back on the accelerator, watching his speedometer needle drop through the seventies, settling around a risky sixty-five.
The lady was fully alert now, watching him wide-eyed and keeping her distance. From the corner of his eye, Bolan saw her reaching for the inside door latch.
"Not at this speed," he cautioned her. "If you're hot to go back, I can let you out anywhere along here."
The small hand froze, finally retreated. It took another moment for the voice to function.
"No thanks," she said. "I'm not going back."
Bolan gave her points for common sense and coolness under fire. She was holding up, and that was something in itself.
"I guess I ought to thank you," she was saying. "You may have saved my life."
Bolan's voice was curt.
"Thank me later. I haven't saved you yet."
His eyes fastened on the rearview mirror where two sets of headlights were boring through the fog. The chase cars were running in tandem and closing fast. They hadn't spotted Bolan yet, but at their present rate of speed it was only a matter of moments.
Bolan considered running for it, but instantly rejected the idea. He didn't want the hunters on his tail all the way to San Francisco. If he had to fight, he would choose the site, a battlefield affording him some combat stretch. Bolan didn't want his war in the city streets if he could keep it out.
"We've got a tail," he snapped. "Get down on the floor and stay there."
She glanced backward, then did as she was told. Her eyes never left Bolan as he drew the silver AutoMag and laid it ready on the seat beside him.
Instead of speeding up, he backed off the gas, dropping down another five miles an hour. The chase cars were gaining. In another moment they would have the Caddy in their sights. Bolan had one desperate chance, and it required split-second timing. If he blew it, he would have sacrificed his lead for nothing.
The point car was almost on top of them, closing to a range of twenty feet, when he hit the lights. A screech of rubber told him it had worked; the driver had mistaken his taillights for brake lights in the foggy darkness. At once he accelerated, and cut off the lights again.
Behind them, the point car was standing on its nose, drifting as the driver hit his own brakes in reflex action. A collision was narrowly averted as the second car swerved around its leader, tires screaming. For a moment they were running side by side in Bolan's wake, filling both lanes, and then the second driver gunned it, moving up to draw abreast of the Caddy.
Bolan had the .44 in hand as the chase car pulled alongside. A sideways glance revealed the stubby shotgun protruding from window, angling toward the Cadillac. The gunner's face was a pale blur.
Bolan tapped the brake, falling back, just as the enemy put on a burst of speed. The shotgunner fired and missed, pellets spraying off across the Caddy's nose. Bolan poked his autoloader out the window, ripped off a burst in rapid fire. He fought the massive recoil, never letting up until the slide locked open on an empty chamber.
Sledgehammer blows pounded the chase car, drummed on metal, shattered safety glass. Men cursed and screamed. None thought about returning fire.
They were all too busy dying.
The driver lost it and his car slid sideways, rolling, rupturing its gas line, doors flapping opened expelling bodies. The battered car was already burning as it came to rest across the highway, blocking both lanes of traffic.
The driver of the second car slammed on his brakes to avoid colliding with the flaming wreck. Bolan seized his opportunity and floored it, pulling away in a major burst of speed. In the mirror he saw headlights behind him, edging cautiously around the wreckage and bouncing as the driver steered his tank over a corpse in the road. Another moment, and the fog closed in behind him, cutting off his view of the pursuers.
But the Executioner had seen enough.
He knew his enemies were not stopping for survivors. They were continuing the chase.
And they would not be fooled a second time by flashing taillights in the dark.
Bolan knew he would have to stop them now, on the open road, or risk a hot pursuit into downtown San Francisco. It was no choice at all, and the warrior turned his mind to ways and means.
He could try to lose them in the fog, take a side road and hope they passed by. Or he could lead them on a merry chase through the foothills until one of the cars ran dry, letting fate choose the final battlefield. Either choice was risky, to himself and his silent passenger.
Bolan opted to take the offensive. He would not hide, cringing with the woman, nor leave his fate to random chance. A savvy warrior chose his own killing ground whenever possible, and Bolan was a seasoned veteran at the game. The game was life.
A half mile farther on he hit the brakes, cranking hard on the wheel, putting the Caddy in a screaming 180-degree turn. As they rocked to a halt, facing back uprange, he loaded a fresh magazine into the AutoMag.
Shaken by the wild ride and her recent brush with death, the woman did not budge from under the dash. Bolan caught her staring at him and he recognized the hunted look in her eyes. He pitied her.
Except there wasn't time for pity now.
"Leave the car," he commanded. "Get off the highway and find a place to hide. Don't come back until I call you."
She was trembling, slow to move, and he had to snap at her to break the trance.
"Now!"
She moved, scrambling up and out of her hole, pausing in the door for a backward glance.
"Thank you," she said. And that was all.
The man in black didn't watch her go. He was occupied with killing, and the woman-child would
have to fend for herself.
Bolan eased the door open and crouched behind it with the AutoMag resting on the windowsill. It was a shaky bench rest, but the only one he had. The door would serve him as a shield when the action started.
Unless the enemy was firing Magnums.
Or, unless they rammed him head-on in the darkness.
Unless...
Headlights were coming now, and Bolan waited, watching as they closed the gap.
At fifty feet he turned on the Caddy's high beams, swung the big .44 out and onto target. He squeezed a quick double blast through the grille, and another through the windshield, seeking flesh this time. He was rewarded as the broad arch of glass exploded in a thousand pieces.
Without its driver, the crew wagon swerved off the road, rearing up and climbing an embankment. It never had a chance in the contest against gravity, and Bolan watched it sliding back down again, ending on the shoulder with the driver's side down.
He circled the dying tank, nostrils full of dust and the stench of gasoline. Clinging to the darkness, he was careful to avoid the glare of headlights from the Cadillac.
From twenty feet he watched a gunman wriggle through the shattered windshield, scrabbling away from the wreck on all fours. The guy was dazed, bleeding from a scalp wound and casting glances all around in search of an enemy.
"Over here," Bolan called, his voice reaching out across the darkness.
The man turned toward him, reaching back inside his tattered coat even before he made the recognition. He identified the voice of death, and he responded as he was trained.
Bolan stroked his autoloader and dispatched 240 grains of death along the track. Expanding lead met yielding flesh, and the rag-doll figure did a clumsy backward somersault, flattening against the crew wagon's hood. Bolan watched him slide down again, leaving crimson tracks across the dusty paint.
Inside the car, he found the driver tangled in his steering wheel. Dead hands reached out and a single eye stared at Bolan from the mangled ruin of his face. Another man was crammed in against the driver, head cocked at an outrageous angle, bloody spittle drooling from his mouth in scarlet threads.
There was moaning from the back seat.
Bolan worked his way around, peering cautiously inside through another window. A battered face was looking back at him, the lips moving, nothing but a steady groan coming out.
The man was dying in his own blood, body twisted frightfully beyond repair when the crew' wagon crashed and rolled. He was far beyond communicating.
Bolan placed a mercy round between the pleading eyes and took himself away from there, retracing his steps toward the Caddy. He forgot about the dead and concentrated on the living; he had won a battle, but the war was still ahead of him, waiting to be won or lost.
And the warrior knew it could still go either way.
He scratched the surface here, but nothing more. If he wasted any time on the follow-up, he might lose the grim advantage of surprise.
Hell, Bolan knew he might have lost his edge already. He certainly had exposed himself, given the enemy something to think about.
So much for a soft probe in the hellgrounds.
He found the woman waiting for him in the car, a weary, drawn expression on her face. He knew the feeling, sure: he carried it along with him forever, like a millstone tied around his neck.
It was the weariness of death and killing, sanity's rebellion at a savage, insane world.
Bolan felt it, a stirring in the cellar of his soul, and he put the thought away from him. No time for hesitation now, no time for weakness.
The Executioner had found his war again, and he was blitzing on.
3
Twelve hours earlier, the man called Phoenix sat in a briefing room at Stony Man Farm, watching images of murder march across the wall. He registered the carnage, filing it away as he listened to Hal Brognola's terse running commentary.
An idyllic beach scene, ruined by a pair of grossly mutilated bodies. They were female once, but it was tough to tell anymore.
"Santa Barbara," Hal said "Suspect in custody. The freak says he was trying to 'liberate' the girls from earthly problems."
The beach disappeared and was replaced by a fast-food restaurant. Walls and windows were pocked with bullet holes, the wallpaper streaked with blood. There was a body lying in the aisle, another slumped across a table on the far left.
"Terre Haute, Indiana. A teenage couple opened fire on the lunch-hour crowd. Five dead, twelve wounded. They turned the guns on themselves when police arrived."
The restaurant was supplanted by a hectic street scene. An ambulance was parked on the sidewalk, surrounded by patrolmen and pedestrians. Bolan spied a twisted pair of legs protruding from underneath the vehicle.
"This is Reno, Nevada," Hal said, glancing at a note card in his hand. "A college freshman stole the ambulance and ran it down a crowded block of sidewalk. Told police he was teaching the sinners a lesson."
The real-life horror show continued, numbing the senses with a grim parade of massacre and madness. A schoolteacher crucified and left for dead in Lakeland, Florida. Seven killed in an arson fire that razed a Phoenix, Arizona, convalescent home. A bloody shoot-out with drug-enforcement officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Bolan felt the familiar tightness in his gut as he watched the grisly show. Rage, sure — a deep fury at the kind of atrocities man inflicted on his fellow man. Beside him, April Rose watched the slides in stony silence, both hands tightly clenching one of his.
There would be a link, some common thread between the random acts of violence. Bolan knew his old friend well enough to let Hal approach it in his own way and time.
The big fed cleared his throat as the screen went mercifully blank.
"We're looking at a string of incidents from coast to coast, going back two years. The Lakeland crucifixion went down a week ago. No pattern on the surface. Psychos and junkies on a rampage, pushers and gunrunners thrown in for balance. All of them violent, homicidal. No possible connection — except that each and every perpetrator was an ex-member of the Universal Devotees."
"No current members?" Bolan asked.
Hal shook his head.
"Negative. It's all double-checked. Officially, the church has them down as dropouts and defectors. A couple of them were expelled for failure to adopt, unquote. Naturally, church leadership deplores the violence... but it goes on. Drug enforcement and the FBI keep turning up Devotees in connection with narcotics and related rackets. Off the record, that's scarier than all the random slaughter put together."
Brognola punched up another slide, this time a man's face, magnified to twice life-size: an Oriental face, impassive, ageless beyond a talcum dusting of gray around the temples.
A face that Bolan recognized.
"Nguyen Van Minh," Hal was saying. "Founder and leader of the Universal Devotees. He's appalled by rumors that his people are involved with drugs or crime in any form."
"Vietnamese?" April asked.
"That's affirmative. On the record, he's an anti-Communist, family executed in reprisal after Saigon fell in 1975."
Bolan frowned.
"Allfamily? "he asked.
Hal nodded.
"Seems so. Minh got off with prison time, if you can figure that. They cut him loose after three years, and we granted him political asylum. Six months later, he's got himself a church. Claims Christ came to him in prison with a revelation of the one true faith."
"Membership?" Bolan asked.
"Pushing half a million, mostly under thirty. Every convert pledges to divest himself of worldly burdens — like money, cars. You get the picture. They adopt a Spartan life of service to the church."
"I've heard that," April chimed in. "Weren't there some fraud accusations made against the church?"
"That isn't half of it." Brognola shook his head wearily. "Parents have charged Minh with kidnapping, brainwashing, harboring runaways — you name it. So far, nothing sticks."
&
nbsp; "There's more," Bolan said. It was not a question.
Hal took his time lighting his stogie, watching Bolan through the smoke. When the fed spoke again, his voice was unusually grim.
"Justice has him marked as the organizer of a cult-related crime wave. And we're checking indicators that he may be a North Vietnamese, possibly involved in sabotage and spying."
"What indicators?" Bolan asked.
"For one thing, he's a man without a past," Hal answered. "Records out of Nam don't mention him, in Saigon or anywhere else. Military personnel and refugees have never heard of him. For all anybody knows, Minh popped out of thin air sometime in 1978."
Bolan was unsatisfied with that. It was easy for a man to lose himself, his past — especially in Vietnam. A recent extension of his own New War had taken Bolan back to the embattled nation where it all began; there he discovered proof of Americans forgotten and abandoned in the final days of war. And if the records could officially "misplace" two thousand Occidentals...
Hal read the silent question in the warrior's eyes.
"One more thing," he said, and another face succeeded Minh's on the viewing screen.
This time the subject was Caucasian, a man in his late thirties, sandy hair receding in the front. The eyes were alert behind steel-rimmed spectacles.
"Meet Mitchell Carter." Hal said. "Corporate attorney on retainer with the Universal Devotees. He was born Mihail Karpeiyan, the son of Soviet defectors after World War II. Had his name changed legally the year he entered college in New York."
"A mole?" April asked.
"Justice has a strong suspicion. Nothing we can hang indictments on so far."
Bolan saw the pieces falling into place.
"Minh's control," he said softly.
Hal shrugged.
"Fifty-fifty there," he said. "Could be the other way around. We don't have time to check it out through channels."
A final slide flashed on the screen, this one a family snapshot of some kind. The subject was a young woman, red hair cut in a short, boyish style. She was dressed for the beach in a revealing swimsuit, and there was nothing masculine about her figure.
Doomsday Disciples te-49 Page 2
