Council of Kings (6 page)

Bolan tried to beat down his terrible sense of dread and urgency as he drove across the river to Mount Tabor Park. He was to meet the kidnappers "at the top, near the rest rooms." Usually there was time to prepare a battle plan, to position his transport strategically. But it was too late for that now.

He would have to play it as it came.

He passed through the park entrance and continued up a hill along a curving road to the top. There was a parking lot and grass and trees. The rest rooms were on the far side, and he veered away from them and parked below the crest of the hill, out of sight of anyone waiting above. A dozen cars were parked along a rim lookout, filled with what he guessed were a dozen couples not paying much attention to Portland's lights spread romantically below. Bolan carried the Uzi and the silenced Beretta. On his right hip hung Big Thunder. He was as ready as he would ever be.

Bolan ran for the woods beyond the lawn. Ensuring that he was unseen, he worked slowly through the fir trees and brush toward the rest rooms. After traveling about fifty yards he saw a man behind a tree near a picnic table with a rifle beside him and a pistol in his hand. The Executioner bellied closer. He moved another twenty yards behind cover, and in the pale light of an overhead bulb outside the rest rooms saw the mobster from fifteen feet away. Bolan tried out his stage whisper.

"Hey! Bolan the Bastard showed yet?"

The man did not turn. "No, and get back to your damn post."

The Executioner used the silenced Beretta 93-R and drilled a hole through the soldier's head.

He watched and waited. The luminous dial of his watch showed 12:15.

Twenty yards forward, near a big Douglas fir, a figure stood and stretched. Number two. During the next five minutes, Bolan spotted numbers three, four and five. A police cruiser swung through the parking lot, throwing a spotlight on each of the cars, and one by one the smoochers in the Chevys and Datsuns started the engines and roared down the hill. The prowl car made one last circle, sweeping the hill clean.

"What the hell, he ain't coming," someone whispered.

Bolan moved closer to the rest rooms, where he could align two of the ambushers in his field of fire. He pulled down the front handle on the 93-R and fired two rounds. The closer target groaned as he died.

"Was that a silencer?" a voice asked.

The Executioner sent one round into the head of the next target. He died silently.

Two left. Bolan pulled a U.S. Army hand grenade from his combat webbing and hurled it in the direction of the remaining creeps.

It hit the ground, then rolled toward a picnic table and small grill built on blocks. Bolan shielded his eyes.

The blast shattered the night. Someone screamed.

Someone else began firing.

Bolan rolled over and sighted the Uzi on a man behind the picnic table, trying to rise.

"I'm hit!"

Two 5-round bursts from the Uzi rattled through the night to finish him off. The corpse was thrown backward over the table onto the grill, and lay there like a human sacrifice.

The last Mafia ambusher rose from behind a log near the parking lot and fired four times into the area where the submachine gun flashes had appeared. He missed Bolan by six feet, and that cost him his life. Bolan held the trigger down on the Uzi and hosed a double S pattern around the winking flashes of the handgun. A scream followed the roar of the chattergun. Then all was silent.

Crouching, the nightfighter ran toward the rest rooms. There was a Closed sign on the Women's. Inside, Charleen Granger was slumped in a locked cubicle, her eyes puffed up and closed and her lips swollen, obviously from a brutal beating. But that torture had only made her talk, not killed her. A small-caliber weapon had delivered the death blow. Ugly black powder burns surrounded a small purple hole on her forehead.

To Mack Bolan, the place stank of Vietnam. He had his own reasons for thinking so.

He came out running. He moved from cover to cover as he worked toward his car.

The rain began again, a sudden downpour that instantly saturated him. He knew it would ease up soon and drizzle the rest of the night. As Bolan stopped behind a Douglas fir to survey the terrain ahead, he heard a stick break thirty yards to his left, from within the thick woods.

He stayed by the tree. Nothing stirred. He heard distant sirens. A shadow deep in the gloom of the woods moved. There was no sound.

Bolan stared into the blackness. Someone in there was stalking him. The Executioner dashed to the next large tree. A shot rang out. The flash was larger than a normal handgun's. He felt the heavy slug whir by. Bolan cocked the hammer of Big Thunder. He glared into the darkness where he had seen the flash.

He could not find the gunman.

He evaluated his position. Police on the way. A tough opponent tracking him. His car parked where the police would soon find it. He had to get his wheels away.

Bolan ran in the opposite direction to the gunman, counting on the huge tree to mask his retreat.

Hard running brought him to the Thunderbird. He opened it, started it and gunned it down the hill without headlights.

Beyond the first curves he hit the lights and took a round through the side window. He swerved, then roared on.

The road was crooked and steep. A man could run to the bottom as fast as another could drive. The gunman would attempt to go cross-country and intercept him where the road straightened at the entrance to the park. The Executioner accommodated him. He switched off the lights again, rolling through the now-misty rain. He judged where the runner would emerge from the brush, and stopped nearby.

Bolan sprang from the car, quietly closed the door to kill the interior light that penetrated the darkness like a million-watt beacon, and crouched as he ran to the edge of the wooded section that extended down the rear of Mount Tabor Park. He paused and listened to sounds as someone ran through the brush above, then the sounds stopped.

The Executioner held his breath.

Nothing.

A horn honked a block over. A killdeer flushed from a wet perch, sounded a plaintive cry and flew away.

There! Above in the timber a shadow slid from one big fir to the next, then was gone. The man seemed like an expert.

Until he slipped. The crash was loud, less than fifty feet from Bolan.

With the silenced Beretta he sent two 3-round bursts toward the sound target, but heard no response. He moved silently to the other side of the tree. He was at the edge of the woods, the attacker twenty yards within. There was, no cover behind them for fifty yards to the street.

No sound came from the woods. Town noises intruded. Then Bolan rose as he heard something fall ten feet away.

Grenade.

He lunged behind the tree as the bomb shattered the night. The light was brilliant, and he shut his eyes and put a hand over them. There was a shattering explosion.

Stun grenade, he guessed, turning so he could hear anyone approaching. He heard footsteps retreating.

As his sight returned to normal, he spotted a figure running for the roadway. A black Cadillac emerged from the mist and met the runner. The car started a three-point turn, reversing to complete the maneuver. At that moment Bolan had reached his Thunderbird below. He leaped in, ground the starter. The cars were only three or four hundred feet apart. Flames of a muzzle blast came from the enemy car. Then it vanished around a corner.

Bolan gave chase. He had to catch the man, learn his identity, kill him before he became more of a problem.

At first the route bothered Bolan. They had turned north on Sixtieth Street and then a few blocks later were on U.S. 80 North, a freeway heading east along the Columbia River. Bolan would not fire on a freeway even relatively clear of traffic. The chances of injuring passing motorists were too great. Besides, he was trying to figure the strategy of the man in the car ahead.

The odds would be two to one for a fight now, greater depending on how many Mafia soldiers were in the big Caddy. A showdown would suit Bolan just fine.

Ten miles clicked by. Bolan checked the gas gauge; almost full. He settled in behind the wheel, lulled by the rhythm of the windshield wipers.

At times the road was almost at the shore of the great Columbia, then a hundred yards inland, then back to the shore.

Ten minutes later the big car swerved toward a tourist attraction called Multnomah Falls. The vehicle careered across the empty parking lot to the far side. Bolan saw the soldiers bail out of the rig.

Perhaps they saw the Thunderbird. Bolan melted into the heavy brush just past the railing inside the lot.

He crouched behind a large flat-leaf cedar and watched one man run through the parking lot unprotected, then dart into the woods.

The silenced Beretta was ready, and Bolan's jacket was open for access to the Uzi and its fresh 32-round magazine.

A car whizzed by on the road, the song of the wet tires gaining and losing a semitone as it passed.

Ahead Bolan saw a branch moving. He could see maybe twenty feet through the misty darkness.

A shadowy figure ducked under the branch and approached him. Bolan lifted the machine pistol and triggered three rounds. The shadow yelped and toppled backward. The Executioner charged through the brush, and found a trail. A wooden sign, pointing right, read: TO NM FALL'S. The trail led away from the Mafia soldiers. Bolan followed it, climbing until he could see the parking lot. Faint lights, security fights, glowed at both ends.

Bolan watched the area, sectoring it the way he used to with night vision in Nam, watching for the smallest changes in shape or form. He saw something move. Someone was on the trail, coming after him. He stepped behind a big tree and waited, but the man seemed to know he was there and came no closer.

The Executioner ran thirty yards up the trail. Ahead he spotted a small stone bridge that spanned the creek below the cataract. He heard the pounding water. The falls were not wide, but were of great height. He had read about them in tourist brochures back at the hotel.

He stopped by the bridge and listened. Someone moved behind him. Bolan traveled thirty feet beyond the bridge and waited. For a minute he heard nothing unusual. Then he heard labored breathing and saw a man round the curve in the trail, racing toward the bridge.

The man held a handgun. Bolan fired twice. The Mafia goon spun around from the force of the 9mm parabellums, fell over the parapet of the small bridge, and screamed as he dropped twenty feet to the pool below. He floated for a moment, then drifted downstream.

A sign beyond the bridge indicated the trail continued to the top of the falls, but warned of a three-mile round trip.

Another sign said: PARKING LOT. Bolan deduced the trail was circular. Good. Now he had to discover how the Caddy. He doubted that either of the dead soldiers behind him had been the gunman who had fired at him from the car. They had been too careless.

Bolan neared the parking lot without seeing any movement. He crouched near a big tree and waited.

The roar of a big handgun took him by surprise, and as he dived he felt the bullet bum through the shoulder strap of his combat harness. It did not draw blood as it slammed past him into the brush.

The flash had appeared ahead to the left, but the man would not have lingered. Bolan moved to the two-foot log that bordered the parking lot.

The crew wagon was to his right, the Thunderbird to the left. But where was the gunner?

Hurried footsteps sounded on the pavement. They moved to the right. Two 3-round bursts from Bolan's silenced Beretta produced no results. He eased to his feet and worked toward the Caddy. Had the gunman turned tail, or was he retreating to a better position?

Bolan fingered the two fraggers he carried on his webbing. If the target came near enough to the Cadillac, Bolan could decimate man and machine with one grenade. But that was wishful thinking.

Another booming round zapped through space, hitting a dozen feet away.

Bolan's machine pistol punched out nine shots this time, aimed on both sides of the muzzle-flash. But again no hits.

His target was back in the brush now, moving deeper into the woods.

The Executioner heard a clunk on the pavement and expected the worst. He dived over the two-foot log edging the parking lot as the rain-filled sky was split open by the ripping, tearing blast of a fragger. But none of the shrapnel found Bolan.

He uttered a stream of agonized screams, which became groans, then died.

The Executioner lay behind the log, the Uzi charged and ready for the man to come gloat over his kill.

Bolan crouched behind the log for five minutes, waiting for the Mafia hit man. He did not come. The ruse had failed.

He rolled silently toward the brush, came to his feet by two sheltering trees and looked toward the parking lot.

The enemy crew wagon was still there. There was no sign of the other man but Bolan knew he was out there somewhere, a skilled, patient guerrilla fighter. The consequences of their meeting would be deadly.

The Executioner leaned around a tree and aimed the Uzi across the lot.

He fired a 3-round burst into the crew wagon, then scattered six rounds where he figured the enemy might be hiding. There was no return fire. As soon as he fired, Bolan darted to another large fir ten feet away. Bolan pondered his next move. There was only one thing to do: flush out the gunner.

The Executioner moved through the woods silently, working away from where his enemy must be and toward the Thunderbird. There was no sign of his opponent near the car. There had been no time or opportunity for his enemy to booby-trap the vehicle.

Crouching, he ran to the rig, jumped in the passenger door and slid across to the driver's seat.

The little light inside the car had lit and darkened.

Bolan watched the lot and saw a tiny light flash in the Caddy.

Someone had seen and done likewise.

The Thunderbird charged across the wet pavement toward the other car. As it neared, the Caddy came to life, snarled across the lot, slithered out the exit and roared onto the highway along the Columbia River, moving eastward. The Thunderbird followed.