two of you. Do you get my drift?”
“We get it,” one of the agents said, then stooped to begin trying to lift the unconscious man into his arms.
“Good,” Bolan said. He holstered the Desert Eagle, turned back toward the plane and climbed aboard once more.
Grimaldi was exactly where Bolan knew he’d be. His back rested against the side of the fuselage. Blood was splattered all over the cabin, and dark red stains dripped down behind the pilot. “Whoever said this was bullet-resistant,” the pilot said in dry humor, “might have been stretching the truth a little.”
Bolan hurried toward him. “How bad are you hit, Jack?” he asked.
“Not all that bad, I don’t think. One round in the chest. High above the heart. The other one’s in my leg. Dangerously close to the femoral artery. But like they say, a miss is as good as a mile.” He coughed. “It tore through my pants, barely missing a part of my anatomy that I’d just as soon die as lose.”
“Then let’s get you out of here so you can use it again,” Bolan responded.
Grimaldi shook his head. “Uh-uh, Sarge. I can smell the gas and I know there’s fire. This thing’s going to blow any second. You’ll never make it carrying me. Take off. On your own. There’s no point in both of us dying.”
“Neither one of us is going to die,” Bolan said as he reached down, grabbed Grimaldi’s hand, pulled him up and threw him over his shoulder in a classic fireman’s carry.
“Well, if we both get vaporized in the next two seconds, don’t blame me,” the pilot said.
But Bolan wasn’t listening. He made his way to the doorway, opened it and looked down, surprised to see the Secret Service agents waiting. The man with the blond brush cut was awake again. He had a swollen chin, which had turned red and promised to be black and blue by tomorrow. But he didn’t seem angry.
The soldier dropped down to the tarmac and yelled over the continuing gunfire, “Go! Get out of here. Do it!”
The men turned and took off away from the plane. The Executioner—with Grimaldi still over his shoulder—followed. He was well aware of the fact that the farther they got behind the plane, the better targets they provided for the snipers. But taking the chance of being hit by a bullet at that range was far smarter than awaiting certain death when the fire finally reached the aircraft’s fuel tanks.
They were roughly 150 yards from the aircraft when it finally exploded.
Bolan set Grimaldi on the tarmac and turned back toward the plane. Flames and smoke rose high enough to hide them no matter how skilled, how well-armed the snipers were—or how many of them were out there.
“So much for our low-profile entry into the country,” Lareby said. Bolan watched him as he stared back at the flames jumping from what was quickly beginning to look like a fiery dinosaur skeleton in a museum. The fire had spread to all parts of the plane.
Lareby knelt next to where Grimaldi sat. “Better check you out, sport,” he said. “Hold still. I’m a physician, after all.”
“Then get to work and prove it,” Grimaldi came back. “But I’m okay, seriously.”
“You’re okay for the moment,” Lareby said. “But in about ten minutes the adrenaline is going to wear off, and you’ll feel like someone jammed a hot branding iron through you.”
“I’ve lived through worse than this before,” the pilot said.
Bolan had been too busy to notice Lareby’s black leather bag. But he watched as the man pulled out a stethoscope, a hypodermic needle and a small vial. “What are you giving him?” he asked in a stern voice.
“Morphine,” Lareby said. “He’s right—his wounds aren’t life-threatening. The material in the ballistic siding slowed the bullets, and you couldn’t have asked for cleaner shots. Upper chest, then on out the back. Missed the lung. Worse-case scenario, it may have chipped a shoulder blade.”
“How about the leg wound?” Bolan pressed.
“He won’t be running any marathons for a while,” the CIA man said. “But it’s nothing. The blood’s already starting to coagulate.”
“I said I was all right,” Grimaldi said as the tried to get up off the ground. This time Bolan helped Lareby hold him back down, twisting him onto his back.
Only then did Bolan see how much pain there actually was in his old friend’s eyes. But the eyes were the only place it showed. His face looked more angry than hurt.
“They had to be loaded up with armor-piercing rounds,” Lareby said as he probed further at the pilot below him. “The wound channel is so straight you could stick a pencil through it. Hardly any tissue damage to the sides of the bullet’s path.” The CIA doctor pulled off the cap on the hypodermic needle with his teeth, spit it to the side, then punctured the top of the tiny vial with the needle. Holding it upward, he injected Grimaldi’s arm with the morphine and, one by one, Bolan watched the wrinkles in the Stony Man pilot’s face smooth out as the drug hit his system.
Grimaldi finally grinned. “You know,” he said. “On second thought, I think the adrenaline is wearing off. You wouldn’t by any chance have a six-pack of that stuff you can leave with me?” His tongue suddenly loosened, Grimaldi continued with, “They got any flowers around here?” he asked jokingly. “I’m getting this uncontrollable urge to wear flowers in my hair and go to San Francisco.”
Bolan and Lareby hauled Grimaldi to his feet. “Sorry, Flower Child,” Bolan said. “But Timothy Leary’s dead and the Age of Aquarius is long gone.”
“Maybe for you, Sarge.” Grimaldi laughed. He was standing on his own now, but his feet were still wobbly. “But I’ve got all of Janice Joplin, Blind Faith and Cream on CDs back in my car. It’s to drown out the ‘rap’ I have to endure at stop-lights.” He frowned for a moment, scratching his chin. “Or they might be in my room back at the main house. But I’m gonna look until I find them and—”
Bolan cleared his throat. “Jack?” he said.
“Yeah?” the pilot said.
“No more morphine-speak, okay? Just shut up.”
Grimaldi lost his grin. “Gotcha,” he said.
A moment later, Bolan had taken him by the arm and was moving him backward, farther away from the fiery plane. When he had gotten the pilot out of earshot of the other men, Bolan turned to look at them.
They all stared back. And unless he missed his guess, they were all wondering just what the “main house” was.
Jack Grimaldi had realized his mistake even before Bolan spoke, and he said, “Sorry, Sarge. I guess I could blame it on the morphine, but that’s no excuse.”
Bolan turned his back to the rest of the men in case any of them read lips. “It’s no big deal, Jack,” he said. “But these guys are paid to be suspicious of anybody and everybody. Look at it from their point of view for a moment. We suddenly appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and they get orders directly from the White House that we’re in charge. And while we know all about them, they know nothing about us. We’ve
