“May I know the nature of this gear that you require?”
“Hardware,” he said, “in case I get into a tight place unexpectedly.”
“And these would be illegal tools?”
“I haven’t brushed up on the local statute books,” he said, “but probably.”
“I think I know the man you seek.” She spoke a name and cocked one stylish eyebrow.
Bolan nodded. “That’s the guy.”
“You’re right about his hours,” Herrera said. “He operates a pawnshop as his—how you say it?—front.”
“That’s how we say it.”
“Very good. Unfortunately, he does not open for business until nine o’clock in the morning. Can you do your other business then, as well?”
Bolan considered it. “It would be better after nightfall,” he replied.
“Then you are graced with a free day in San José,” she told him, putting on a smile that seemed a trifle forced. “If you allow me, and you have the energy after your flight, I’ll be your tour guide.”
“Sounds good,” Bolan said, keeping both eyes on the road. “We’ll start with target zones and access routes, then hit the culture afterward, if we have time.”
3
San José
Wednesday, June 20
A bullet struck the rear of Bolan’s rented vehicle and spent its force somewhere inside the trunk. Bolan stood on the accelerator, racing down the narrow alley, scattering trash cans in his wake.
The chase car’s driver didn’t seem to mind. He kept a lock on Bolan with his high beams, plowing through the refuse heaped across his path and battering aside the upended cans.
There were at least two shooters in the chase car, one in the front shotgun seat, another in the backseat, on the driver’s side. Bolan knew that much only from their muzzle-flashes, since the high beams in his rearview mirror ruled out any head count.
Two guns minimum, and Bolan knew the driver would be armed, as well. The odds weren’t bad, compared to some he’d faced.
Suddenly, a second pair of headlights joined the chase, behind the first pursuit car, gaining rapidly along the alley’s dark and narrow track. Bolan ruled out police, because the second vehicle displayed no flashing lights, sounded no siren.
Beside him, Blanca Herrera swiveled in her seat, her face blanched by headlight beams. She watched the chase cars, while Gil Favor huddled in the backseat, offering the smallest target possible under the circumstances.
“Here they come!” Herrera advised him, as if she thought Bolan might be unaware of the pursuit.
“I see them,” he replied. “Hang on.”
Almost before she could react to that warning, they cleared the alley and he cranked the Ford into the sharpest left-hand turn he could manage, startling a pair of jaywalkers who squealed and ran for safety on the sidewalk. Gunfire echoed from the alley at his back, even before the first chase car emerged. The pedestrians went prone.
Bolan was making all the haste he dared on residential streets, watching the sidelines where his own headlights and those closing behind him cast distorted, moving shadows. Any one of them might mask a another late-night rambler, possibly a child, and Bolan had to balance that thought with the threat of death that rode his bumper. At the same time, if he drove too fast and lost control, smashed up the Ford, he and his passengers were facing sudden death, the failure of his mission.
Triumph for Antonio Romano.
“I need someplace where I can deal with this,” he told Herrera. “Ideas?”
She blinked at him, eyes bright with fear, then said, “Maybe the riverfront? They have warehouses, docks. Few people at this hour. Also waste ground.”
“Good.”
Bolan was already speeding northward, in the general direction of the Rio Torres. All he had to do was stay the course and hope the gunners trailing him didn’t get lucky with a bullet to his gas tank or a tire.
“Could you distract them for me?” he asked Herrera.
“What?”
“Shoot back.”
His words seemed to confuse her for a moment, then she powered down her window, leaned into the wind-rush gale and fired a pistol shot at the nearer chase car. Bolan saw it swerve, the driver taken by surprise, losing acceleration just as Herrera fired again.
“Try for the radiator,” Bolan called out to her.
“What?”
“Between the headlights!”
“Sí!”
She triggered two more shots, and while the chase car lost a bit more ground, Bolan had no idea if any of the bullets found their mark. Regardless, he took full advantage of the other driver’s lapse and put more road between them, speeding through dark intersections with a silent prayer that there would be no damned fool driving with his lights off, no foot traffic crossing just as Bolan barreled past.
Gil Favor’s neighborhood boasted some of the smallest street signs known to man, perhaps another mark of high-priced exclusivity. It was impossible to read the signs in the glare of his headlights, racing through the streets at speeds he normally reserved for freeway driving, while two carloads of assassins tried to run him down.
Instead, Bolan reviewed the street map he had memorized that afternoon, while they were killing time. He knew that he must be a good half mile below the riverfront, at least, but he was heading in the right direction, making decent time. If he could just—
The Ford’s rear window suddenly imploded from a bullet’s impact. Herrera bit off the greater part of an instinctive scream, while Bolan ducked and heard—or felt—the slug zip past his face. It struck his rearview mirror, sent it spinning to the floor somewhere, and drilled a neat hole through the windshield as it exited.
Now he was blind in back, except for side mirrors that shrank the chase cars down to toy size. He didn’t need the printed warning that reflected objects May Be Closer Than They Seem.
“Give them a few more rounds,” he ordered Herrera, guessing that she’d fired off roughly half her pistol’s magazine already.
“Right!”
She scrambled to obey, as Bolan held the pedal down and waited for his first glimpse of the waterfront.
BLANCA HERRERA GRIMACED, mouthing silent curses as the wind from behind her whipped long hair around her face, stinging her eyes. It was already bad enough, men she had never met trying to murder her, without betrayal from her own hair in the bargain.
She had practiced often enough with her HK4 pistol to feel confident with stationary, inanimate targets, but this running
