behind the Chevrolet, trailing blood without a word.
The passenger door opened. Bolan, on his feet, came around the Chevrolet, his head swimming. He was close to passing out, but cleared the rear bumper of the Chevy in time to see the gunman pulling a leather shoulder bag from the car.
The wounded man’s hand came up with a grenade.
No, Bolan thought. Not a grenade. An incendiary device. The red canister was clearly marked. There were more of the weapons visible in the leather bag. It was possible the gunner and his driver had been a mop-up crew, whose job may well have been to burn the safe house to the ground—and shoot down any stragglers in hiding within, who would be driven outside by the flames. It was a proved tactic when cleaning out a nest of vermin.
The hostiles, whoever they were, hadn’t counted on being interrupted. Bolan’s presence had to have thrown them off their game. Then again, the fire raging in the kitchen would have consumed the house eventually. The occupants of the Chevy might have been waiting to see if that happened, saving them from leaving behind more evidence that wouldn’t quite fit with a nice, clean theory of gang warfare among skinheads and other criminals.
The theories flitting through Bolan’s mind were sound enough but, he realized, disjoined and oddly timed. He was fading on his feet. The muzzle of the FN P90 began to drift… .
The wounded man saw his opportunity and took it. He popped the pin on the incendiary and made as if to throw it.
Bolan shot him.
The Executioner tried to snap his weapon back into position, but his knees were turning to rubber beneath him. He managed to hit his enemy in the chest.
The incendiary, pin freed, fell into the bag of similar bombs.
Every hardwired instinct Bolan had told him to go, and go fast. He turned and found himself stumbling, dragging, rolling. Clawing at the pavement, he nearly fell flat on his face, but then was up and running, pumping his legs, screaming. He let the P90 fall to the end of its sling and bellowed at the bystanders who had not already sought cover from the gunfight.
“Go! Bomb! Run!”
They fled before him, trying to escape the seemingly crazed, bloody man flapping his scorched limbs at them.
The first incendiary went off. Almost, but not quite in the same beat, the others erupted. A white flash and a ball of heat punched Bolan in the small of his back, burning his neck, singeing his hairline. He tried to turn, tried to cover himself, tried to bring his arms up to protect his head.
Then he was falling. As he floated through the air, suspended in space, he turned his head and saw the finger of thick black smoke roiling from the flash-burned Chevy and climbing high into the sky.
The pavement rushed up to meet him.
The soldier didn’t feel the impact. He was suddenly prone, staring at the blue sky, watching the smoke climb to heaven. He was losing all sense of time. He heard voices; he saw faces. Were civilians gawking at him? Trying to help him? He had no idea how long he lay there. It might have been seconds; it might have been hours.
As gray snow crawled in from the edges of his vision, finally carrying him to oblivion, he thought he heard the sound of helicopter rotors.
The darkness claimed him.
CHAPTER FIVE
He woke to find himself staring into Jack Grimaldi’s face.
“Somehow,” Bolan said, “I always knew it would end like this.”
“You aren’t dead, Sarge,” Grimaldi said, grinning widely. “And I’m sure no angel.”
“I was thinking just the opposite.”
“You must be feeling better if you can make bad jokes. Here. Take a sip of this.” Grimaldi handed him a bottle of water and helped the soldier to sit up. Bolan realized they were in the back of the Pave Hawk. He had been lying on an olive-drab Army blanket between the bolted seats.
Bolan took a long sip of water and then looked down at his hands. Grimaldi had sprayed them with translucent, liquid skin. His palms were numb.
“Switch that to your left hand,” Grimaldi said, “and give me your right.” Bolan extended his right hand, which his friend turned palm-up and began dressing with light gauze.
“How long was I out?” the soldier asked.
“Not long enough,” Grimaldi said. “I gave you some painkillers that will be wearing off soon. There’s more in the medical kit.” He gestured for him to switch hands, then began the process of wrapping his left palm. Bolan sipped more water. It wasn’t cold, but was delicious anyway. His throat felt raw.
He looked out past the unmanned door gun of the Pave Hawk. The chopper sat in the center of a broad expanse of scrub and sun-baked dirt on what he took to be the outskirts of Alamogordo.
“You’re in rough shape, Sarge,” Grimaldi said. “Nothing that won’t get better provided you take a couple weeks’ vacation.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Bolan told him.
“Right.” Grimaldi shook his head. “I shot you up with some of the pain amps in your kit. As much as I dared. It’s going to wear off and you’re going to hurt again. You’ll need to stay on top of that.”
“I can manage.”
“We’ve got a blacksuit squad on-site cleaning up the damage,” Grimaldi said, “and running interference with the Alamogordo PD, who’re hopping mad. All but the two cops whose lives you saved. They’ve been debriefed.”
“Somebody beat us to the safe house. Killed everyone inside.”
“Yeah.” Grimaldi nodded. “The officers kept asking me if you did that. Although I don’t think they really believed it.”
“The house?”
“A complete loss,” Grimaldi said. “The bomb started a fire that burned the place to the ground. You’re lucky. It could easily have killed you and your two new friends.”
“The Chevy,” Bolan said. “Getaway car. Two men. One automatic weapon. They were with whoever hit the safe house.”
“Uh…yeah.” Grimaldi hesitated. “About that. Both men and the car were burned to a crisp. Any clues we might have found inside…well. You get the idea. We’ve had the bodies routed to a facility we control, for autopsy, but running their dental records will take time.”
“Yeah.” Bolan shook his head.
“Here,” Grimaldi said. “I made you something.” He handed over a pair of leather gloves. Bolan held them up curiously. He realized that the fingers had been removed.
Grimaldi held up a pair of medical shears. “These are yours, too.” He put them back in the kit. “Those gloves are sized for my mitts, which are a little smaller than yours. Without fingers, though, it won’t matter.”
Bolan pulled the leather shells on over his hands. They fit snugly but weren’t too tight. The cut-up gloves covered his dressings and protected his scorched palms.
“Thanks, Jack,” Bolan said. “You know you’ve got a pretty decent bedside manner?”
“No, I don’t,” Grimaldi replied. “I’m about to spoil your mood. You want the bad news or the bad news?”
Bolan said nothing. He raised an eyebrow.
“We’ve got a big problem,” Grimaldi explained. He produced a replacement earbud and his own secure satellite phone. “I can use the transmitter here in the chopper to relay to the Farm,” he said. “Use my phone. The earbud is from the spares here.”
“The problem?” Bolan prompted.
“Idle hands,” Grimaldi said. “You didn’t find