heavy-caliber bullets ripping through walls and furniture. Hinshaw and company were catching hell in Phoenix, and Bonelli could do nothing but sit there and listen to it happen. And then, suddenly, he could not even do that. The line went dead.
But no, it couldn't be dead. He could still hear the sounds of battle, the staccato gunfire and booming explosions. They sounded the same, and yet different at the same time. Sharper somehow, and clearer. Closer.
Nick Bonelli rose from his chair and bolted for the study door as the floor beneath him lurched in another blast. The rattle of gunfire was loud in his ears now, and there could be no possible doubt as to its meaning. Lucania burst through the door at that precise instant, a thin trickle of dark blood bisecting his ashen face.
"It's a hit," he shouted at the would-be Boss Of Bosses. "We're being hit!"
Bolan had pushed the warwagon hard, urging unaccustomed speed from the Toronado engine and reaching his target in western Tucson with minutes to spare. Nick Bonelli's fortress home lay there, almost on the fringe of Rolling Hills golf course and backed against a river bed called Pantano Wash. Bolan made a quick drive-by, pressing the appropriate button on his command console to trigger the "collection" of data from miniature recorder-transceivers previously installed on the Bonelli Phone terminals. The taped data was pre-edited and time-phased, Omitting wasteful periods of silence to present an uninterrupted flow of intelligence. The playback was running as Bolan prepped for combat, enlightening him as to the latest troop movements and reassuring him that the capo was at home within those walls.
He stowed the warwagon In a screen of willows along Pantano Wash, on the northwest flank of Bonelli's hardsite, and immediately enabled the rocketry, aligning selected points of the manor house and fortifications in the range finder of the firing grid and registering the coordinates in the memory bank. His touch upon a special set of controls meshed the computer and firing mechanism, setting the rocketry on "automatic." He set the console timer two minutes ahead and quit that vehicle, the sounding of the lethal metronome loud in his ears.
The Executioner moved swiftly over the arid ground, despite the tremendous load he carried.
Along with the Automag and Beretta, extra clips and grenades girding his waist, he carried his big double-punch weapon, the M-16/M-79 combo. The autoloading assault rifle could spew 5.56mm tumblers at a rate of 900 rounds per minute, while the 40mm hand cannon slung underneath was a single-shot breech-loader, handling tear gas, buckshot or HE rounds at the discretion of the gunner.
Satchels filled with Clips for the M-16 and mixed rounds for the grenade launcher completed the Bolan combat rig, upping his normal weight by some seventy-five Pounds.
He did not seem to feel that weight or be affected by it as he scaled the stony wall and put himself inside Bonelli's estate. He moved swiftly across the rolling expanse of finely manicured lawn, making no effort at concealment while his mental alarm clock ticked off the numbers until doomsday.
The first hardman saw him at fifty yards out. Obviously unable to believe his eyes, the guy just stood there and gaped for about a half-second too long. When he made his move, simultaneously squawking a warning and reaching for his sidearm, the effort was too little and too late. Bolan's finger stroked the trigger of the M-16 and the guy went into a jerky little dance of death. The gunfire alone would have alerted the whole compound, but it was instantly eclipsed by the sound of hell arriving to visit the ungodly.
Bolan had glanced at his watch and saw the sweep second hand signal doomsday. Over his left shoulder, then, came a faint whoosh from the warwagon's rocket pods as the thunderbolts came in directly on time and on target, rattling over the low defensive wall at three-second intervals. Number one erupted at the
But no, it couldn't be dead. He could still hear the sounds of battle, the staccato gunfire and booming explosions. They sounded the same, and yet different at the same time. Sharper somehow, and clearer. Closer.
Nick Bonelli rose from his chair and bolted for the study door as the floor beneath him lurched in another blast. The rattle of gunfire was loud in his ears now, and there could be no possible doubt as to its meaning. Lucania burst through the door at that precise instant, a thin trickle of dark blood bisecting his ashen face.
"It's a hit," he shouted at the would-be Boss Of Bosses. "We're being hit!"
Bolan had pushed the warwagon hard, urging unaccustomed speed from the Toronado engine and reaching his target in western Tucson with minutes to spare. Nick Bonelli's fortress home lay there, almost on the fringe of Rolling Hills golf course and backed against a river bed called Pantano Wash. Bolan made a quick drive-by, pressing the appropriate button on his command console to trigger the "collection" of data from miniature recorder-transceivers previously installed on the Bonelli Phone terminals. The taped data was pre-edited and time-phased, Omitting wasteful periods of silence to present an uninterrupted flow of intelligence. The playback was running as Bolan prepped for combat, enlightening him as to the latest troop movements and reassuring him that the capo was at home within those walls.
He stowed the warwagon In a screen of willows along Pantano Wash, on the northwest flank of Bonelli's hardsite, and immediately enabled the rocketry, aligning selected points of the manor house and fortifications in the range finder of the firing grid and registering the coordinates in the memory bank. His touch upon a special set of controls meshed the computer and firing mechanism, setting the rocketry on "automatic." He set the console timer two minutes ahead and quit that vehicle, the sounding of the lethal metronome loud in his ears.
The Executioner moved swiftly over the arid ground, despite the tremendous load he carried.
Along with the Automag and Beretta, extra clips and grenades girding his waist, he carried his big double-punch weapon, the M-16/M-79 combo. The autoloading assault rifle could spew 5.56mm tumblers at a rate of 900 rounds per minute, while the 40mm hand cannon slung underneath was a single-shot breech-loader, handling tear gas, buckshot or HE rounds at the discretion of the gunner.
Satchels filled with Clips for the M-16 and mixed rounds for the grenade launcher completed the Bolan combat rig, upping his normal weight by some seventy-five Pounds.
He did not seem to feel that weight or be affected by it as he scaled the stony wall and put himself inside Bonelli's estate. He moved swiftly across the rolling expanse of finely manicured lawn, making no effort at concealment while his mental alarm clock ticked off the numbers until doomsday.
The first hardman saw him at fifty yards out. Obviously unable to believe his eyes, the guy just stood there and gaped for about a half-second too long. When he made his move, simultaneously squawking a warning and reaching for his sidearm, the effort was too little and too late. Bolan's finger stroked the trigger of the M-16 and the guy went into a jerky little dance of death. The gunfire alone would have alerted the whole compound, but it was instantly eclipsed by the sound of hell arriving to visit the ungodly.
Bolan had glanced at his watch and saw the sweep second hand signal doomsday. Over his left shoulder, then, came a faint whoosh from the warwagon's rocket pods as the thunderbolts came in directly on time and on target, rattling over the low defensive wall at three-second intervals. Number one erupted at the
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