Patriot Acts. Don Pendleton
me to Phoenix?” Bolan asked.
“Chances are that our killer’s flown the coop,” Brognola stated.
“It’d get me closer to him,” Bolan said. “I might be able to figure something out.”
“Jack’s just landed at LAX. With the Gulfstream, you could fly to Moscow if you wanted,” Brognola said. “Granted, I hope you don’t have to.”
Bolan glanced through the window of Wolfe’s lab, seeing four men in dark suits and sunglasses get off an elevator. They had visitor badges, and U.S. Treasury IDs hanging from their suit lapels.
“Jo, did the Treasury Department say anything about sending someone over to pick up the cash you ran through their listing?” Bolan asked.
Wolfe looked up from the money. “No. In fact they only wanted me to keep a couple bills for them. The rest I was told to break down for chemical composition testing. As long as I gave them the results—”
“Get down!” Bolan snapped.
The four men spotted the Executioner and his crime lab compatriot, and pulled submachine guns out from under their jackets. The only T-men Bolan knew who carried compact subguns were the Secret Service agents assigned to presidential protection details. Four counterfeiting investigators wouldn’t require that kind of firepower, especially when paying a visit to the LAPD.
Bolan lunged across the table and knocked Wolfe to the floor an instant before the safety glass of the lab blew into translucent chunks. Wolfe grimaced, Bolan’s weight crushing down on her for only an instant before he rolled off. The Desert Eagle filled his hand and he snapped off the safety with practiced skill.
Wolfe pulled her sidearm from her own holster, a .45-caliber Glock 30.
“Stay down,” Bolan snarled. Whoever the gunmen were, they were disciplined. The streams of autofire were relentless, meaning that they were staggering their bursts, allowing their partners to reload.
Bolan guessed the position of the elevator through the low aluminum wall. At least one hose of 9 mm autofire came from that direction and the Executioner triggered his Desert Eagle, burning off the massive handgun’s .44 Magnum payload. A scream of agony and a stutter in the constant cacophony of automatic weapon fire rewarded Bolan as the 240-grain slugs punched through the slim metal skin of the lab.
“Bastards toasted my microscope,” Wolfe snarled. “I want a piece of them.”
“I get first crack. If they somehow get past me, they’re all yours,” Bolan replied. He dumped the partially spent magazine and fed it a fresh stick.
“Hand over the cash and no one gets hurt!” came a bellow. Bolan grabbed a stool and swung it up through the shattered window. Uzi fire rattled, perforating the vinyl-clad seat. The angle betrayed the shooter’s position and Bolan popped up. The front sight of the Desert Eagle locked on the Uzi-packing fake Fed. A single .44-caliber round slammed the gunman in the chest, hurling him to the floor. Bolan swiveled and saw a third gunman line up on him.
More thunderbolts ripped from the Desert Eagle, but the raider dived back into the elevator.
Wolfe lunged and shouldered Bolan to the floor as another rattling snarl of gunfire swept through the window. She grunted, spinning and clutching her shattered shoulder.
“He’s still kicking,” the scientist rasped as she tried to control the bleeding.
“Body armor,” Bolan mused.
“Head shot,” she suggested.
Bolan didn’t waste the breath to let her know how obvious the advice was. He sighted on the perforated low wall and saw the flicker of movement through the bullet holes torn by the fake T-man. The Desert Eagle hammered out a rumbling thunderstorm of heavy slugs. Four rounds smashed through the sievelike wall panel, blowing it over. On the other side, the Uzi-packing man slumped lifeless, half of his face ripped off by a wide-mouthed hollowpoint round. The gun lay silenced between splayed legs.
A cabinet shuddered as more submachine gun fire rattled from the direction of the elevator.
“My paperwork,” Wolfe groaned. Her face was screwed up in pain. “Dammit, stop shooting my files!”
Bolan rose to his feet and aimed at the gunman he’d nailed in the legs. The man swung his Uzi and pulled the trigger, but the weapon was empty. The Executioner vaulted over the cabinet and the low wall, spearing through the window. The third and fourth shooters were nowhere to be seen. He saw the wounded gunman struggling to reload his Uzi, but Bolan kicked the weapon from his hands and smashed his heel against the man’s jaw on the swing back. Lab staff members came running.
“Officers! Secure this man!” Bolan snapped. “Get a medic for CSI Wolfe!”
“They moved out that way,” a technician said. She held the side of her face, a shredded strip of skin livid from where she’d been pistol-whipped with an Uzi. “There’s a controlled access stairwell, but they shot the lock to shit.”
“I’m on it. Someone get on the radio and tell everyone to keep out of these guys’ way,” Bolan ordered. “They don’t care who they kill.”
“And you?” the hurt tech asked.
“I keep them from killing,” Bolan said, racing off toward the stairwell.
3
The Executioner heard the gunmen’s thundering footsteps below him in the stairwell. Bolan took the flights fast and furious, hopping when he was halfway down and rolling along the walls to eat up his forward momentum and get turned around to take the next flight. He was almost to the second floor when he heard the emergency exit slam open one floor below.
Bolan swung around and saw a dark-suited fake Treasury agent swing up his machine pistol. He lurched backward. A stream of 9 mm slugs filled the air where his head had been only moments ago, plaster chewed out of the under-sides of the stairs above his head. He aimed his Desert Eagle and spiked a quartet of .44 Magnum slugs at the shooter. There was a snarled curse of panic as the man retreated.
Bolan bounded down the final steps as he holstered the big handgun and pulled his shoulder-holstered Beretta. The two men, posing as federal agents, had infiltrated the Los Angeles Crime Lab in an effort to gain control of counterfeit cash that Bolan was investigating. The two had survived the initial conflict, and the Executioner was going to keep the pair from escaping.
At the bottom of the steps, he burst into an alley and spotted the pair piling into their car. The Executioner raised the Beretta and ripped off a 3-round burst that took out the rear window of the car. They had a driver waiting behind the wheel, and he gunned the engine, tires spewing smoke before they caught hold and pushed the car forward.
Hot pursuit time, Bolan mused as he charged the length of the alley, punching more rounds, this time ripping 9 mm bullets into the road by the tires. After two tribursts, the right rear tire of the sedan exploded violently, flopping on its rim. The right fender screeched, wailing as it was shredded on contact with the wall, pulled off course by the deflated ring of floppy rubber.
Gunshots tore through the rear window, automatic weapons in the hands of the fake Feds churning out slugs. Had the driver not been in a struggle to maintain control of the limping sedan, the gunmen could have nailed the Executioner as he charged after them. But rather than hit their target, autofire sprayed wildly. As it was, the sedan ground to a halt, the front bumper rammed into a telephone pole. The driver ground the stick shift, trying to get the car into Reverse.
Bolan fired again, sinking another burst through the rear window, and suddenly the two muzzle-flashes became one. Bolan ducked behind a large garbage bin and reloaded his Beretta, knowing that at full gallop, he couldn’t have been certain of a direct, fight-stopping hit on one of his opponents. Rather, it was likely that the silent weapon needed recharging, or had jammed.
Sure enough, a handgun took up the slack of the quieted Uzi. Bolan took a moment as bullets hammered the garbage bin, drew and