provide better protection between her and the Tahoe than would the thin aluminum bodywork that cloaked the car’s chassis. Once she was safely behind the fender, Bolan pulled his .50-caliber Desert Eagle from the holster on his hip and leveled it at the Tahoe, but the vehicle had already taken off, all four tires laying down dark stripes on the pavement. The vehicle was conceivably within range of the powerful handgun, but Bolan couldn’t be certain that the vehicle belonged to the shooter so he held his fire.
When he was certain the threat had passed and no further shots were coming, he went to check on the victim, though he knew he would find a corpse. No one could have survived a direct head shot like that, especially when it came from what must have been a high-powered rifle. The man was dead, as Bolan had expected. The child in the back smiled at Bolan.
“Patricia,” Bolan shouted, “take care of the kid.”
Jensen went to remove the child from the hot cab. Before she’d even begun to unbuckle the complex car-seat safety harness, Bolan had jumped into the Ferrari’s driver’s seat and punched the starter button. The 670-horsepower 12-cylinder engine roared to life. Ferrari had built the GTO version of the 599 in extremely small quantities to homologate a production race car, and although it bore superficial similarities to the ordinary 599, the GTO was really a barely civilized race car. Bolan accelerated hard out of the gas station, no longer worried about scraping the undercarriage. Unlike the Tahoe, the Ferrari didn’t leave any rubber, thanks to its Formula One–inspired traction control system. Instead, it accelerated like a Saturn V rocket blasting off for the moon.
The Tahoe had about a minute lead on Bolan. In SS trim the Tahoe was no slouch, its V-8 engine cranking out 345 horsepower, but it was still a three-ton truck with the aerodynamics of an oversized cinder block, while Bolan’s Ferrari, with a top speed of almost 210 mph, was the fastest street-legal vehicle ever built. By the time he was half a mile away from the gas station his speedometer read 170 mph and he’d caught sight of the Tahoe. Ten seconds later he’d closed up the gap enough to read the license-plate numbers, or at least he could have read the license plate numbers if the Tahoe had license plates. A plastic placeholder proclaiming the name of a local used-car dealership occupied the space in the rear bumper reserved for license plates. Bolan noted the name of the dealership but seriously doubted that information would be of use. Most likely the vehicle was stolen and the thief had just tossed the license plates and screwed a random placeholder onto the bumper to avoid suspicion.
There was nothing random about what Bolan saw just above the license plate: a metal panel moving aside to reveal a three-inch hole. Bolan saw a faint flash of light from behind the hole and a bullet pierced his windshield, embedding in the headrest of the Ferrari’s driver’s seat, just millimeters from the soldier’s right ear. A spiderweb of cracks crept out from the hole in the windshield. The speed at which Bolan drove most likely produced enough of a slipstream around the car to move the bullet slightly off its intended path, or else it could have been a kill shot.
The soldier didn’t give the shooter enough time to line up a second shot. He squeezed the paddle shifter on the steering wheel twice, dropping the car into Fourth gear, steered into the left lane and floored the accelerator. The Ferrari took off like it had been shot from a cannon, and before the shooter’s weapon had time to cycle another round he was up beside the Tahoe’s rear bumper, leveling his Desert Eagle at the driver’s window. The soldier’s first round shattered the weakened windshield of his own vehicle and thousands of tiny chunks of safety glass exploded across the Ferrari’s hood, most of which were then blown back into the cabin by the air blast. The second shot penetrated the driver’s window of the Tahoe. Bolan had aimed for a spot just behind the driver’s head, knowing that the spalling that the bullet would experience when hitting the glass at that angle would deflect its course.
His estimate appeared to be correct because the Tahoe suddenly veered hard right and plunged nose-first into the ditch alongside the road. The vehicle was still traveling at well over 100 mph and the right front of the hood caught the edge of the embankment opposite the road, flipping the truck in a barrel roll. The Tahoe cartwheeled across a weed-covered lot until it hit what looked like a rusted old storage tank of some sort, wrapping itself around the tank is if the two were part of some modern-art sculpture.
Bolan braked hard and came to a quick stop. He ran across the lot to try to find survivors to interrogate, but knew the odds were against him when he saw the flames rising up from the vehicle. The Tahoe had careened several hundred yards before hitting the tank, and by the time Bolan had crossed half that distance, the small flickers of flame had turned into a raging inferno. When he was within thirty yards, the Tahoe’s gas tank exploded, sending a wave of heat over the soldier, nearly knocking him off his feet.
Bolan got as close as he could to the burning vehicle, but it was far too late to extract any survivors. Flames rose one hundred feet in the air above the remains of the truck. The wreck might still hold some clues, but they would have to be ferreted out by a team of forensic specialists. The soldier watched the flames consume the vehicle, wondering what he had just stumbled across. Was it a hit of some sort? Bolan knew very little about the victim, but from what he had seen, the man seemed an unlikely target for organized crime. The guy had the air of desperation about him, to be sure, but it didn’t strike Bolan as the sort of desperation of a drug addict or gambler who might owe money to the Mafia. The guy looked like he’d fallen on hard times, but he looked healthy, without the pallor and gauntness of a meth addict. And his baby looked healthier and cleaner than had any child of drug-addicted parents that Bolan had ever encountered. Gambling debts might be more likely, but again, the man didn’t look like he even had the resources to gamble at any level high enough to incur the wrath of the Mob.
But what made even less sense, and what Bolan found more worrisome, was that the victim might have been chosen at random. That made the least sense. Why would someone expend the effort to create a vehicle that was in effect an elaborate mobile sniper hide just to assassinate some random citizen? The only possible answers to that question were all chilling to consider.
CHAPTER TWO
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
At the exact moment the clock struck noon eastern time, snipers had hit targets in every major metropolitan area from Bangor, Maine to Key West, Florida. In all, fifty-six innocent Americans had lost their lives. Exactly one hour later, when the clock struck noon central time, snipers had taken out another seventy-five people in cities from Bismarck, North Dakota, to Mobile, Alabama. By the time Mack Bolan arrived at Stony Man Farm, headquarters of an intelligence organization that operated so far under the radar that only the President of the United States and a few select people knew of its existence, snipers had hit targets in cities within the mountain time zone, killing another forty-nine people, again striking exactly at noon.
Bolan arrived at Stony Man in the battered Ferrari at exactly 2:49 p.m. eastern time. The soldier knew that they had just eleven minutes before more innocent civilians were slaughtered up and down the West Coast. Eleven minutes, and there wasn’t a damned thing Bolan could do about it. He’d been in constant contact with Hal Brognola and the crew at Stony Man Farm since just after the Tahoe had burst into flames. He’d returned to the Farm as quickly as possible, but the panic that had ensued after the shootings had ground traffic to a halt. Even though Bolan had been at the wheel of one of the fastest cars on the planet, it still couldn’t fly, and flight would have been the only way to circumvent the miles and miles of snarled traffic that Bolan had been forced to negotiate.
Normally the state of the borrowed Ferrari would have required a bit of explanation, but Brognola and the crew at Stony Man had far more important matters to attend. Like trying to prevent another wave of killings on the West Coast when clocks in the pacific time zone struck noon. Bolan entered the War Room.
“What security measures have we got in place on the West Coast?” Bolan asked without preamble. There wasn’t
