Baltimore Trackdown by Don Pendleton Page B

made the difference as it came closer and closer. Bolan speeded up, found the spot he wanted on the sparsely traveled country road, then yelled.
    “Brace yourself, I’m doing a slide stop. We’ll be sideways in the road, and we both go out your door. Stay low, take the Uzi and some extra magazines and be ready to defend yourself. These Mafia hit men don’t care how they kill you.”
    Chief Smith nodded. He grabbed the Uzi, three extra magazines and two frag grenades.
    The Chevy screamed into the braking slide and stopped, almost fully blocking the narrow road. The Caddy could pass if it slowed and took it easy on the shoulder, but Bolan did not think the Mafia driver would try.
    They left the car by the passenger door. Bolan opened the rear door and pulled the suitcase to the edge of the back seat for easy access.
    “Here they come,” Bolan said. “Let’s give them a welcome.”
    “They have to shoot first,” the chief said.
    “They just killed your driver!”
    “That was a different car, different men.”
    The Caddy slid to a stop thirty yards away. Four pistol shots ripped into the morning air. Two of them caught body metal, two more went through the front windshield.
    Bolan lifted the French army rifle and shattered the crew wagon’s side windows with six rounds.
    Bolan’s next burst went between the Caddy’s wheels. When the firing stopped he heard a scream of rage.
    “Get behind the front wheel and stay low,” Bolan said.
    An answering burst of fire came under the Chevy. He heard one automatic weapon. It had to be an Uzi.
    A man sprinted from the Cadillac, angling toward a row of trees and brush at the side of the road.
    The chief lifted the Uzi and sent three rounds at him. He missed. He corrected and the next five rounds put the runner down.
    Bolan watched as the Mafia soldiers tried to lay down a protective hail of fire. The windows in the Chevy broke into thousands of granules of glass. Bolan scattered two more bursts from the rifle, then reached in the suitcase for a fragger.
    “You’ve used these?” he shouted to the chief over the sporadic pistol fire.
    The chief nodded.
    “Good. Let’s do it. You put one at the front of the car, and I’ll get one to the rear.” They both pulled the safety pins and looked at each other. Bolan bobbed his head. The chief threw first. His grenade hit short and rolled within three feet of the Caddy before it exploded. Before the noise died down Bolan threw his small bomb slightly behind the rig so it would roll just beyond it. The explosion came first, then the screams of pain as jagged steel met flesh.
    An Uzi opened up on full-auto, screaming twenty 9 mm parabellums into and under the Chevy. Bolan threw one more grenade and rolled it under the Caddy, hoping it would explode just on the far side.
    When it went off there was silence on the country road for a moment. A car came up behind them, and the chief waved it back, flashing his badge at the surprised driver. The car turned and raced away.
    The silence continued from the Mafia machine.
    “I’ll go check it out,” the chief said.
    “No, Chief. You didn’t even make the SWAT squad. I do this kind of work all the time. You keep that Uzi handy.”
    Without a wasted motion, Bolan jumped into the six-foot ditch at the side of the road. He had taken no enemy fire. He bent over and ran along the ditch, two fraggers swinging on his black combat harness. Big Thunder jolted where it was tied down at his hip. He carried the French army rifle like a toy.
    When he was beyond the Cadillac, he rose and looked over the lip of the ditch through some tall grass.
    He saw only one man standing, and he was bleeding from the head and chest. The man turned and sent a dozen rounds from the Uzi in the ditch twenty feet away from Bolan, then dropped the weapon, let out a soft cry and collapsed.
    Bolan fired two shots into the air, but without reaction from the Mafia soldiers. Slowly he moved toward the battered crew wagon. Four