Kill Shot. Don Pendleton

nickname “Murderapolis,” and it had earned that moniker because of killings that had, for the most part, occurred within twenty blocks of the clubhouse. The taxi company’s headquarters had been a virtual fort, with razor-wire fences, thick brick walls and entrances that were well-controlled and easily defensible.

      Bolan didn’t expect any activity outside the clubhouse since it was almost noon and the city seemed virtually deserted, but when he drove past the clubhouse he saw a group of five men beating another man senseless in the vacant lot adjacent to the Slave’s property. The men doing the beating all wore Slave cuts—the sleeveless denim jackets on which club members displayed their colors or club patches.

      So much for inconspicuous, Bolan thought. He flicked off the traction-control switch, downshifted again and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The rear tires broke loose in a cloud of smoke, and he power slid the Mustang onto a concrete slab that had to have been the driveway of whatever structure had once occupied the vacant lot. Before the car came to a complete stop, Bolan threw open the driver’s door and bolted toward the group of men, crossing the thirty-foot distance in several long strides. The five assailants had barely had time to look up from their victim before Bolan was on top of them.

      The Executioner snap-kicked the man closest to him in the head, which jerked back at an impossible angle. His neck broken, the man toppled to the ground. Two of the other men stopped beating the victim and brought the broken pool cues they’d been using as clubs to bear on Bolan. Before the wooden sticks could contact the soldier’s skull, he reached up and grabbed them both, one in each hand. Bolan flipped the cue in his right hand around so that he was holding the fat end of the club and speared its original owner through the eye with the jagged broken end. The soldier felt the bone in the eye socket give way and the cue penetrate the man’s brain pan. Two down, three to go.

      By this time, the remaining assailants had turned their attention from the man on the ground and attacked Bolan. With the pool cue in his left hand Bolan whacked the man closest to him across the temple, and the man went down, but this left Bolan vulnerable to the other two attackers. One of them, a burly giant with a long red beard and even longer hair, tackled him, knocking him flat on his back, while the other one smashed a cinder-block-size fist into the soldier’s face. Bolan brought a knee up into the groin of the man who’d tackled him but was unable to avoid another blow from that oversized fist. This time the soldier saw stars. He knew he had to end this fight soon, or his attackers would end it for him.

      But ending the fight would be a challenge. Bolan’s knee to the groin had slowed his attacker, but the man was tough and it hadn’t taken the fight out of him. Bolan kicked the man in the jaw, driving him up and away. The other attacker tried to drive his fist into Bolan’s face one more time, but the soldier managed to twist to the side and avoid the blow. As he did this, he reached down and pulled a custom-made eight-inch bowie knife from a sheath in his boot and in one sweeping motion he brought the knife around in an arc and drove it through the man’s ribs, just below his armpit. He pulled out the blade and a geyser of blood erupted in its wake. Bolan had severed the man’s aorta as well as both his pulmonary arteries; he’d bleed out in a matter of seconds.

      Knife in hand, the Executioner turned to face the final assailant, but the man standing over Bolan held something in his hand that trumped the soldier’s bowie knife: a Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan revolver. Judging from the diameter of the bore in the barrel staring down at Bolan’s face, the revolver was chambered for a .454 Casull cartridge.

      The man pulled back the hammer and aimed the sights of the stubby revolver on a spot that looked to be directly between Bolan’s eyes. Just as he seemed about to pull the trigger, the soldier detected movement behind the man. An instant later a steel pipe swung through the air and caught the Slave on his temple. Bolan heard the crunch of breaking bone and saw the man’s eyes roll up in his head. He collapsed, revealing the bloody figure of the beating victim.

      “We have to get out of here,” the man said. “There’s twenty or thirty more where these guys came from, and they’ll be out here any minute.” Bolan didn’t need any more explanation than that and both men raced back to the Mustang. By the time the doors to the clubhouse opened and men started pouring out, Bolan had rowed through three of the Mustangs six gears and the speedometer needle had hit 100 mph. Someone from the club house managed to fire off a few shots at the fleeing Ford, but by that time Bolan was already three blocks away.

      When they were out of sight of the clubhouse, Bolan asked his passenger, who appeared to be taking inventory of his injuries, “Are you hurt bad?”

      “I think I have some broken ribs,” he said, “but I’ll live. You okay?”

      Bolan rubbed his swelling jaw. “Nothing an ice pack won’t take care of. What did you do to those guys to make them want to kill you?”

      “It’s not what I did,” the man said. “It’s what I am.”

      “What’s that?” Bolan asked.

      “A Hellion.”

      “What were you doing at the Slaves’ clubhouse?”

      “I wasn’t there by my own choice,” the man said. “They grabbed me at a bar in Anoka and brought me here.”

      “Were you wearing Hellion colors?” Bolan asked.

      “No. I wasn’t trying to commit suicide, if that’s what you’re asking. But they know who I am, and apparently they knew where to find me.”

      “Were they going to kill you?”

      “I suspect that was their plan,” the man said. “I appreciate your putting a stop it.”

      “Don’t appreciate anything just yet,” Bolan said. “I’ve got some questions for you, and if I don’t like your answers, you might wish I’d never broken up your little tea party back there.”

      “You a cop?”

      “Do I look like a cop?”

      The man pondered the soldier’s question a moment. “You just killed three Slaves, and the two we left breathing looked like they’ll be sucking their meals through tubes for the rest of their lives. If you’re a cop, you aren’t like any of the cops I ever saw.”

      “If you don’t tell me what I want to know,” Bolan said, “you’re going to wish I was a cop.”

      “Look, man, you saved my life and you just took out a bunch of Slaves. Even if you were a cop, you’d have my respect. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Where do you want me to start?”

      “How about you start with your name?”