It was a Chevy, one of the small economy models, about two years old, and it was carrying a fresh accumulation of plateau dust. It also carried four men, each of whom seemed very much out of place on this Puerto Rico back-road.
They were total strangers to Bolan. They were also, he quickly deduced, strangers to the land. The vehicle had come to a quick halt at first sight of the cabin, then quietly reversed its track and came to rest around a bend in the road.
As four men stepped outside and stood conversing across the roof of the vehicle. They spoke quietly, too softly for Bolan's ears to pick up more than a word here and there — but definitely English words.
The car was radio equipped. One of the men leaned inside and said something into a mike. A responsive squawk from the radio receiver confirmed that English was the language in use, but again without sufficient clarity for Bolan's understanding.
The problem, from Bolan's standpoint, was the question of identification. If the guys were cops, he could simply fade out. Evita would be left in good hands and Bolan himself would be in no worse shape than at any time since he'd hit the island.
If they were not cops though…
One of the men was pulling a sawed-off shotgun from the rear seat. Another was spinning the cylinder of a heavy revolver and checking the load. The guy at the radio swung back to the outside and passed a soft command to the others.
They split up.
One remained with the vehicle. Another advanced along the road toward the cabin. The other two went to opposite sides and disappeared into the brush.
They were closing on the house.
Bolan would have preferred to take them while they were bunched up. If the guys turned out to be some of Lavagni's scouts, there could be hell to pay now. A guy on the short end of the odds could not afford to allow such a situation to get out of his direct control.
Bolan had done so.
But there was that nagging question of identification… another of the built-in handicaps to the Executioner's war effort.
He moved on deeper and circled back for an approach from the rear, then he stepped onto the road and came in with the fiery red sun setting directly behind him.
The guy was leaning against the car, his attention focused in the direction of the house, when the quiet jungle cat moved in behind him and the heavy steel muzzle of the Thompson dug into his spine.
He stiffened, and froze there, and Bolan could almost feel the tumbling energies of that suddenly electrified mind.
"Okay, okay," the guy said, in a voice with all the moisture suddenly gone out of it. "Don't, for God's sake."
It was a matter of blind reaction versus conditioned instincts, and Bolan had his identification. The guy was no American federal cop; he was no kind of cop.
Without wasting another precious second of time, Bolan whipped the stock of the heavy gun up and against the back of the soldier's skull in a lashing slap. The guy crumbled without a sound and sprawled face down in the dust. Bolan turned him over and gave him another vicious jab to the throat, then he stepped over the lifeless remains and hurried on along the road toward the cabin.
Big Eve was alone up there and definitely not about to fall into good hands.
The one with the shotgun was moving into the yard as Bolan rounded the bend, another was stepping out of the bushes to the right.
The front door to the cabin was standing open, and he saw a flash of motion across that open doorway.
"Hold it!" Bolan yelled, more for Evita's benefit than for anything else.
The guy in front whirled, bringing the shotgun around with him, and the Thompson's opening argument caught him in mid-turn and laid him down in a convulsive sideways sprawl. The shotgun boomed, sending its double-oughts spraying harmlessly into the air.
And then Evita was standing there in that doorway, clad only in a bra and a half-slip, and a Thompson was in her arms.
She screamed, "Mack!" as her chopper erupted, the fire going toward a point on Bolan's blind left side.
The weapon was too much for her and she was fighting to keep that bucking muzzle down, but to no avail. Her fire-track was a chaotic sweep skyward — but it was evidently soarey enough to send her target diving for cover after one wild shot at Bolan. Meanwhile the guy on the right had gone for Evita. He was running across the yard and firing from the hip, the heavy slugs from the revolver chewing up the doorjamb behind her.
Living large, a lot of life could be packed into a single second.
And a lot of death.
All of the foregoing had been playing upon the background of Bolan's consciousness, reeling out in frozen sequences of peripheral awareness; perhaps, he reflected later, it was the awareness of that submerged human side of man-in-combat.
From the moment of first blood, however, back at the vehicle, Bolan's single overriding consideration was for the safety of Evita Aguilar, Big Eve. The combat order was as single-minded, and the panoramic action outside that cabin was telescoped into a single moment in time and as a continuous movement in attack-mode.
His first burst caught the front man and sent him beyond the lens of that mental telescope. The second burst unfalteringly found its track onto the gunner at the right, and the guy's last couple of rounds toward Evita were probably no more than the dying reflex of his trigger-finger. He was stopped in mid-stride and punched back for several yards loss before touching down — and already Bolan was swinging into the threat from the left.
The guy over there was diving away from that harmless confrontation with Evita's Thompson, and Bolan's next burst added measurably to that movement, sending the guy into a somersaulting roll into the bushes.
A snap-glance toward the cabin assured Bolan that the girl was okay. He went quickly from body to body, verifying the results, then he slung the heated Thompson across his back and went to the woman.
Her eyes were wild but exhilarated as she let the heavy weapon droop and then fall to the steps. She crumbled into his arms and he pulled her in close.
"You okay?" he asked anxiously.
"Yes, yes, okay," she panted.
"You were great," he told her.
"Great, no. Out of mind, yes. Why would anyone build a locogun such as this one?"
Bolan strangled off a chuckle as his fingers encountered the unmistakable sticky warmth of blood. "You're hit," he announced calmly, and spun her about for inspection.
"It was wee a sting of the bee," she said raggedly. "It is nothing?"
He grunted and replied, "Well, almost nothing. But you'll have a souvenir to show your grandchildren."
A .38 slug had plowed a shallow furrow along the soft underside of her left arm, just below the armpit. Another inch toward center and it would have been a fatal wound. By such insignificant dimensions of mass were the measurements of life and death.
He pulled her into the cabin and quickly washed the wound with soap and water, then he applied a disinfectant from the kitchen cupboard and bound the arm with gauze.
"We have to hurry," he said rightly.
"I am all right," she assured him.
"Okay, get your clothes on. Those guys are part of a coordinated sweep."
Evita nodded her understanding and finished dressing, wrinkling her nose at the torn blouse. "I put back on the stink of Glass Bay," she commented lightly.
Bolan did also, hastily donning the slacks and shirt he had worn, there. Then he told the woman, "Go through this place with a fine comb. Make sure there's nothing left behind to show I've been here."
He started for the door but she reached out and stopped him, laying her cheek against his chest and encircling him with her arms.
Bolan said gruffly, "It'll be okay."
"Mack, I… all this death. It does not bother you?"
Of course it bothered him. He told her, "How much choice is there, Evita?"
She shivered and lifted the troubled face to peer into his eyes. "I am just now realize… this terror, this bloody struggle… it is all of your life. It is never ending, is it? I can give you a choice, Mack. Surrender to me. Go with me to San Juan. I promise you, there is feeling for you in this commonwealth. I have friends, high friends. I will fight to keep you in Puerto Rico."
Bolan sighed and told her, "You're not thinking straight, Evita. First item, you told me yourself that the law wants me dead in Puerto Rico. I'd never see the inside of a police station. Second..."
"I will guarantee you differently!" she cried. "I swear!"
"All right, even if you could guarantee something like that — I've never heard of a jail or a prison that was secure against the reach of the mob. They'd love nothing better than to have me boxed in and defenseless, and they wouldget to me, Evita."
"There could be designed a suitable protection," she replied stubbornly.
Bolan shook his head. "Not a chance. As for keeping me in Puerto Rico, I am wanted for capital crimes in a dozen states and two foreign countries, not to mention that I'm an army deserter and also top man on the FBI's list. Assuming that I could get tried and released in all those places, which would be a wonder equaled only by the second coming of Christ, I would still have years of court battles to look forward to, and with Johnny Matthew dogging me every step of the way."
"Who is this Johnny Matthew?"
"The non-existent Mafia," he said whimsically. "If you're wondering about my chances with legal justice, just consider that weird fact. The mighty U.S. government has backed down to the point of using a cover name when referring to Mafiosi. They are Johnny Matthew now."
"Yes, I have heard of this timidity," she said quietly. "It is shameful."
"Anyway," he added, smiling soberly, "I am not ready to throw down my gun and walk peacefully away. I'm my own Pentagon now, my own war department, and my own executive branch of government. I make the decisions and I carry them out. And it's war, Evita. War to the bloody end."
"It is your choice," she murmured, taking a wooden step backwards.
"It's no choice at all," Bolan told her. "It's the only way to go."
He spun away from her and went outside.
When Evita joined him there moments later, the jeep had been pulled into the yard and the three bodies were piled into the rear. Bolan was carefully collecting the ejected shells from the Thompsons. She helped him round up the fallen enemy weapons, and these were added to the collection in the jeep.
"What is your plan?" she asked him.
"I'm taking this load of garbage out of here," he replied. "There's a car just up the lane, also another dead soldier. I'll pick him up, and you follow me out in their car."
"We will abandon the jeep?"
"That's the idea. I noticed a strip-mine up along the foothills. Do you know the place?"
She nodded. "It is Aggregates Limited. About three miles from here."
"Okay, then I'll follow you. Come on, let's hit it. Too much delay already."
Bolan drove her to the other vehicle, where he picked up the fourth body and gave Evita a snub nosed .32 from the shoulder holster of the first victim.
"This one I can handle," she assured him, spinning the cylinder with an expert touch.
He said, "I'll bet you can," and went to inspect the Chevy.
She followed close on his heels and announced, "It is a Glass Bay company car. But something has been added."
"The radio?"
"No." She ran a hand across the top of the car. "This."
She was pointing out a peculiar design on the roof. Four circular plastic decals were placed along the centerline, each colored a bright orange. Bolan had noted the design earlier, but had thought nothing of it.
"That's new, eh?" he mused.
"Yes. It is new since this morning."
"Air spotters," he muttered.
"What?"
"It's for visual identification from the air."
"The helicopters," Evita decided. "They have been added to the hunt, no? But it will be night very shortly. The marks and the helicopters will mean nothing in the night."
Bolan said, "These will. That's luminescent paint."
"We can peel them off."
"No," he replied quickly. "We leave them' on. This can be turned to our advantage. Listen, Evita, you'll have to drive the jeep. I hate to put you in charge of a hearse, but..."
He was interrupted by the squawking of the radio inside the Chevy, as a testy New England accent swelled in from a noisy background to demand, "Ground Four, Ground Four, what have you got? Report, dammit!"
Evita was counting the four decals atop the car with exaggerated stabs of a forefinger. "I believe you are being paged," she said.
Bolan grinned and leaned in for the microphone. "That's a chopper," he told her. "I could hear the rotors in the background."
He thumbed the mike into transmit mode and put on his street voice. "Ground Four," he announced casually. "Nothing here. Another farm shanty. It's clean."
"Air One, okay," came the noisy reply. "But stay close to the damn radio, eh? Go on to the next checkpoint."
Bolan was gambling. He showed Evita crossed fingers and thumbed on the transmitter again. "Bullshit," he snarled. "It's damn near dark and all we've done so far is roust a bunch of peasants. I say we're wasting it."
"So you got something brighter in mind?" was the response from the chopper.
"Yeh, and I can see it from here," Bolan's street voice replied. "There's a strip mine just up into the hills. Can you see it?"
"Air one, naw, we're running the beach right now. You got a feeling about that place?"
"I got so much feeling I'm getting hard," Bolan reported.
The guy in the helicopter chuckled and said, "Okay, follow your needle, tiger. Call in as soon as you get up there."
"Ground Four, right, you'll be the first to know."
Bolan threw the mike onto the dashboard and turned a worried face to the girl. "Well now we'll see," he told her.
"That was very clever, learning his position," Evita commented. "You act very well, Mack Bolan. You could have made it in Hollywood."
He grinned and said, "Yeah, just another wasted life. Where did Mack Bolan go wrong, eh?"
"More men should be so wrong," Evita said soberly, then the she spun about and marched to the jeep, climbing in without a glance at the cargo behind her.
Bolan sighed and slid into the Chevy.
Yeah, already Fairyland was far behind them. Big Eve knew it. And she'd found another corner of hell to hang her hat on.
So had Bolan. He was about out of ammo for the Thompsons — and they were hardly worth the trouble of dragging around. With a coordinated air-ground search by Lavagni plus the unknown quality of police threat awaiting him at Puerta Vista, the gauntlet seemed to be shrinking in around him.
The jeep pulled up beside him and the girl showed him a tense smile. "I want you to know," she said, "that I agree with your choice. Perhaps I am the bad cop. But I must follow my conscience. And my conscience tells me that the good cop would help you, Mack Bolan, not conspire for your death."
Bolan said, "Thanks. I like this hat too, Eve."
Her smile brightened then abruptly disappeared, and the jeep leapt forward.
Bolan see-sawed the Chevy into the turnaround and plowed on after her.
Yeah, she'd found a new corner of hell, all right.
Where had Mack Bolan gone wrong?
Somewhere between hell and paradise, in a lost corner of that great jungle called life.
And he absolutely would not have had it any other way.