Then the front door of the ZIL popped open and another figure started out.
Bolan tracked the AutoMag in that direction.
The front seat gunner managed to get all the way out of the ZIL, then Big Thunder roared again along with a blistering salvo from both of Niktov's gunmen.
The second ZIL gunner performed a jerky little dance sideways, blood spraying the night. His body slammed into the open front door of the car before collapsing in a lifeless heap.
Bolan started to track the .44 AutoMag back from the falling figure toward a man emerging from the back seat, but the gun crew in the ZIL functioned with the same precision as Niktov's men, hitting with lightning speed, undeterred by the death of two of their own.
The guy who stepped from the back seat of the limo carried some sort of heavy device that he wore like a backpack. It featured a curved tube, which he held in front of him. He stood over the corpse of the first man from the back seat and aimed the contrivance — which Bolan immediately identified as a flamethrower — in the direction of Niktov and his two bodyguards, obviously planning to take out the three clustered together by the Rolls-Royce before swinging the lethal fire-spitting weapon at the single man, Bolan.
One of Niktov's men, or maybe it was the art dealer himself, shrieked in panic at the realization of what had come for them.
The guy by the ZIL triggered the flamethrower.
The weapon emitted a mighty whoosh of sound and fury. A long tongue of fire spat out across the distance to engulf the trio next to the Rolls.
All three men began dashing around madly, human torches wailing in agony. One of them fell and touched off a small fire on the ground, while the other two — it was impossible to identify them anymore — ran in frantic, blind circles during the moments before the licking flames rising fr6m their bodies could claim their lives.
The dude by the ZIL kept his finger on the flamethrower's trigger device, tracking the fire-spewing tube toward Bolan's position across the clearing in front of the monument.
Bolan aimed Big Thunder with both hands and triggered a headbuster.
The head hit tunneled the man's skull, slamming the body backward against the trunk of the limo. The deadly tongue of flame formed a new target as the killer's death reflex action kept the thing going, its redirected line of fire wavering as the man fell, the flames shooting now at the nearby Fiat.
Bolan saw it coming and flung himself on top of Zara to shield her.
The Fiat was engulfed by flame, and the car detonated with a tremendous roar that lifted the small vehicle off the ground, the explosion doubling when the gas tank blew.
Chunks of red-hot flying metal razored in every direction, but at such an angle that none of the fiery shrapnel cut into Bolan or the woman he protected on the ground.
With the power of the blast, the exploding car rose off the ground in an oily fireball.
The stream of fire vanished back into the tube as the dead man behind the flamethrower finally collapsed onto the blacktop of the parkway, his dead finger relaxing from the weapon's trigger.
The ZIL's tires screeched one more time, and the limo jumped forward in a high-speed getaway, front and back doors slamming shut with the momentum.
The muzzle of an automatic weapon nosed out from the lowered back window and opened fire, peppering the area around Bolan and Zara with a burst of projectiles that zinged close overhead and into the branches of the tree, the gunner's aim thrown off by the driver's hasty withdrawal.
Bolan rolled off Zara. "Are you all right?"
The Gypsy woman started to stand. "Y-yes," she muttered, somewhat in shock.
Bolan whirled away from her in the direction of the ZIL rocketing away from them.
The scene in front of the war monument looked as if a war had been fought there.
The bodies of the three slain gunman from the ZIL lay sprawled on the concrete apron at the base of the statue; the smoldering heap of unrecognizable charred meat was all that remained of Niktov and his two men.
The nauseating odor of roasted human flesh hung in the night air, and a grayish haze wafted over the "battlefield."
The ZIL, barreling away without headlights, almost gained a curve in the terrain of the parkway that would take it out of Bolan's sight.
Bolan aimed carefully, his left hand steadying his right wrist, and triggered a round from Big Thunder. He heard the loud bang as one of the limo's rear tires exploded.
The ZIL weaved erratically, the driver fighting frantically to correct the drift of the hurtling limousine, the taillights winking as he pumped the brakes, which only made things worse. Moments earlier the ZIL had accelerated to ease into the curve.
The limo shuddered into a sideways skid, then flipped over, rolling amid the mixed racket of shattering glass, crunching metal and flying hubcaps. A high-pitched human scream emanated from inside the ZIL an instant before the car came out of its third roll to smash lengthwise into a tree.
The sedan burst into flames, torching the tree, too.
Bolan held his shooter's stance and palmed a full clip into the AutoMag's butt while he swung the awesome hand cannon a full 360 degrees, eyes and weapon functioning as one, seeking more targets.
And finding them.
Zara saw it, too.
"The Rolls," Bolan told her.
He gripped the attaché case Niktov had handed him, pulling Zara along with him.
They hurried toward Niktov's Rolls-Royce.
The Moscow park had come alive.
Bolan sensed, saw, movement closing in from every direction now in the light of the burning tree. With his own night-honed vision, he verified every quiver of something wrong that he had experienced since arriving in the park less than ten minutes ago.
He and Zara reached the Rolls.
Paramilitary-garbed lines of rifle-bearing policemen swooped down toward the scene by the monument, coming in from the higher ground.
Niktov had been one hell of a hustler while he lasted, thought Bolan, but he was no damn strategist!
Bolan figured the police must have had the whole meet under surveillance, but he did not waste time now trying to make sense of these unfolding events.
The rear corner of the Rolls had been burnt a charcoal black near the spot where Niktov and his goons bought it from the flamethrower, but the luxury vehicle appeared otherwise undamaged as Bolan lunged into the front seat behind the steering wheel.
The Rolls purred to life like a contented kitten oblivious of the carnage befallen this place and that which was yet to come.
Zara leaped into the passenger side, slamming the door even as the big car bulleted away from there.
"Strap yourself in," Bolan instructed.
He steered with one hand while fastening his own seat belt with the other.
Zara's dusky face gleamed with excitement and some fear.
"Niktov said this car was bulletproof!"
"We're about to find out," Bolan growled.
He powered the Rolls into a turn, whizzing past the spot where the ZIL and the tree were burning.
The line of men closing in from all sides opened fire, the rapid reports of their weapons in the open night air sounding like popping firecrackers.
The pinging of dozens of projectiles hitting and bouncing off the Rolls-Royce's armor plating was real enough. The windshield and the closed window on Zara's side spiderwebbed around magically appearing notches carved by the bullets, which did not penetrate but still made it difficult for Bolan to see.
He upshifted and hammered down, knowing damn well that these Moscow cops closing in would hardly leave the road out of the park unattended.
Headlights were coming in fast ahead, and behind, as a look in the rearview mirror told him.
Bolan kept the Rolls's pedal to the floor.
The car picked up more speed.
* * *
Captain Zuyenko and Sergeant Kulik raced down the incline toward the scene of devastation around the war monument.
Zuyenko made certain to stay well behind the advancing line of his men. He noticed Kulik did the same. Zuyenko had no intention of catching a bullet. This night would make his career, not take his life, he told himself.
He and Kulik had left the unconscious woman securely restrained in the patrol car well behind them, and Zuyenko barely thought of her now as he and Kulik reached the monument.
The Rolls sped away, his men firing after it as the luxury machine smoothly took the turn near the burning ZIL.
Zuyenko glanced around at the horror spread out before him.
Three dead men fallen where the ZIL had stood, all three taken out by the big stranger in black.
Zuyenko almost vomited at the sight of what remained of Niktov and his two hirelings.
Sounds of rifle fire peppered the night from the direction the Rolls had taken. At that moment Zuyenko's men should be tightening the circle around it.
Kulik, whom Zuyenko knew had seen combat in Afghanistan before being mustered out and becoming a cop, appeared as stunned as his captain. The sergeant surveyed the wreckage of demolished cars and human remains on the ground around them.
"Whoever that man was," Kulik said in awe, "he certainly knows his business when it comes to killing. Who could he be?"
"We'll find out when he's in the morgue," Zuyenko snapped.
"That Rolls is most likely bulletproof," Kulik offered. "You think he and that woman with him have a chance of escape?"
One of the BTR-40s came slamming in past them, the gunner gripping the mounted submachine gun in the turret for support as the driver gunned the vehicle in hot pursuit of the Rolls. The other BTR-40 would be closing in on the parkway from the opposite direction.
If that would not do the trick, Anatoli Zuyenko had ultimate faith in the ace up his sleeve. He smiled to himself at the thought even as the stench of burning meat pinched and stung his nostrils. He had placed a team armed with an RPG-7V rocket launcher at each entrance of the park, concealed next to the BTR-40s.
"No, Sergeant," he told Kulik, "that Rolls-Royce will not escape. It may be bulletproof, but it is not rocket proof."
Kulik nodded when he remembered. "The rockets will stop them."
"They will indeed," Zuyenko snarled with certainty, "and that big bastard driving the Rolls will be as dead as the rest of them, whoever he is!"
* * *
Zara peered out through the bullet-webbed windshield of the Rolls at the headlights closing in on them on the parkway from both directions.
"There's no escape!" she cried out to the man behind the wheel as the Rolls sped along. "But we cannot give up!"
"I wasn't planning to," Bolan growled.
He did not slack off on the Rolls's speed. He eyed the night beyond the bulletproof glass, rapidly judging his options.
The hurtling luxury vehicle had left most of the Moscow police units behind, the paramilitary cops closing up the flanks of the two advancing lines too late.
Rifles continued crackling from behind, bullets ricocheting off the car.
The ends of both advancing lines continued firing at the Rolls from either side of the parkway, but Bolan's primary concern at that moment centered on the sets of headlights racing to box in the Rolls.
He identified the oncoming vehicles as BTR-40 armored cars.
The turreted submachine guns in both vehicles opened up with steady salvos at the same time, hails of 7.62 mm slugs drumming off the Rolls from both directions, snapping more spiderweb designs across front and back windshields. These bullets did not penetrate either.
Many of the machine gun bursts missed the Rolls altogether and began dropping some of the men closing in from the sides of the road, Moscow cops toppling left and right like bloody bowling pins as projectiles from their own force leveled them along the parkway.
Bolan saw that neither of the BTR-40s showed any indication of slowing down as each armored car shaved the space between them and the Rolls in an effort to stitch the Rolls in a withering cross fire.
Muscovite cops knelt below the errant streams of gunfire from the BTR-40s and continued peppering the receding Rolls with rifle and machine gun fire.
The Rolls was on a collision course with the armored car blazing in from ahead, so Bolan took the only real option he saw open for escape.
He palmed the steering wheel, bracing himself against the seat and seat belt, seeing Zara do the same.
The Rolls bumped off the parkway, jarring mightily as its four wheels bounced across a culvert, speeding directly at the nearest line of men firing at it.
Crouched gunners dispersed in every direction when they saw the Rolls abruptly alter its course and begin heading toward them.
Slugs continued raining in on the speeding juggernaut, inflicting no more damage than before.
Machine gun fire from both BTR-40s ceased as the vehicles commenced braking before colliding head-on, the gunners realizing that some of their fire had felled their own ranks.
The Rolls jounced at full speed along the park's turf.
Bolan saw a flurry of figures dodging frantically to escape the oncoming car, all, except for two, making it.
One man was almost flattened when he failed to scramble out of the path of the Rolls. The left front fender caught him a killing blow that pitched the cop, arms windmilling, like a child's discarded rag doll.
Another unlucky enemy stumbled, screamed and died as the heavy-duty vehicle rode over him, front tires and back pulping the Russian enforcer into the park grass.
Zara gasped in horror.
Bolan whipped the steering wheel to his right again.
The Rolls made a run parallel to the parkway toward the nearest entrance.
He hurriedly scanned their backtrack in the inside and outside rearview mirrors and saw a broken line of Moscow cops stumbling here and there, picking themselves up, stunned by his maneuver of cutting right into them.
Some of the paramilitary force pulled their weapons around, unleashing single shots and bursts that proved ineffectual, while others ran to their fallen comrades.
The BTR-40s bunted each other in their haste to swing around and renew the pursuit.
Bolan saw a plainclothes cop yelling, shouting, waving orders to his men, but it did not appear to be doing much good.
Yeah, thought the man behind the wheel of the Rolls, we just might make it!
He steered the machine back onto the parkway, straightening out the vehicle in a speedup toward the park entrance, which he could now see some two hundred meters along the straightaway. He saw no more headlights coming in from that direction, only city streetlights and the buildings beyond the perimeter of the park. He coaxed more speed out of the Rolls.
The men on foot had been left well behind, the armored patrol cars swinging around fully now to give chase, but Bolan knew they would be no match for the Rolls on an open stretch of street.
He and Zara could outrun their pursuers and ditch the ostentatious wheels before reinforcements could be called in. He only hoped Katrina had made it through the lines of ambushers. He would be able to find out about that through one channel or another as soon as he and Zara broke clear. And if Katrina had fallen into enemy hands, he would not rest until he extricated her.
But first the Rolls had to make the park entrance onto the street.
They almost did.
The Rolls-Royce reached a point one hundred meters from the shadowy entrance archway of the park when an explosion of fire zeroed in at the Rolls from the deepest shadows of the park's perimeter.
Not rifle fire, Bolan's subconscious told him in a fractured instant of realization.
A lengthy trajectory, like a pointing finger of flame, reached out at the Rolls from that direction.
Rocket launcher!
Bolan jerked the steering wheel with everything he had, avoiding a direct hit, but no amount of evasive maneuvering could take the Rolls totally beyond the incoming rocket's deadly path.
The last thing Bolan heard before th
e explosion was Zara's scream.
Then the rocket hit with a detonating impact that robbed him of all control.
The world was eaten alive by an ear-splitting explosion, the force of the incoming rocket flipping the heavy car end over end, tossing Bolan right along with it.
6
Bolan had no choice but to ride out the tumbling assault of sensation and sound as the Rolls-Royce took the blast of the incoming rocket.
His fastened seat belt held him from bouncing around inside the heavy car, which was little less than a tank thanks to the armor plating installed by Niktov. The only conscious thought Bolan registered during those crazy seconds, which seemed like an eternity, was a degree of surprise that he retained his conscious faculties at all. Something kept telling him he should be dying. Or maybe he was.
The instant the limo stopped its roll, Bolan shook his head rapidly to clear it, automatically reaching to release his seat belt even before his rational mind took stock of the situation.
The ruined Rolls came to rest on its right side, the passenger side.
Bolan steadied himself in the overturned vehicle. In the process he discovered that he had suffered no serious injuries, thanks no doubt to the seat belt. He knew he'd have plenty of aches and bruises once the initial shock wore off, but they would not be enough to keep the Executioner out of action.
Bolan regained his full battle awareness, unholstenng Big Thunder. He glanced down at the passenger side where Zara had been sitting. It was flush against the grassy ground. She was still strapped into her seat belt, but it had not saved the Romany beauty's life.
The indirect rocket hit had caught the front end of her side of the car. Either the initial explosion or the flipping of the vehicle had killed her. Zara's head drooped at an impossible angle, neck broken, her dark hair matted against the red meaty mess of her smashed face.
Bolan muttered a hot curse of sorrow and anger, then pulled himself up and out from his side of the car, pushing the driver's door open with his left arm, rapidly hoisting himself out. He dropped to the ground, moving away from the Rolls.
Moscow Massacre Page 8
