Ripple Effect. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Collateral damage, and he couldn’t do a thing about it in his present situation. Bolan hated it when bystanders were sucked into his war, but in each case where that occurred, the choice belonged to someone else. One of his enemies. To Bolan’s certain knowledge, he had never injured a civilian noncombatant beyond minor cuts and bruises, in the most extreme of situations. Shrapnel did its own thing, and to hell with consequences, but he specialized in strikes of surgical precision, taking out his targets without any street-gang drive-by nonsense that was typically a waste of time and ammunition.

      Clearly, those pursuing him had other views on how a battle should be fought.

      The hell of it was that they still might win.

      Dixon had reached the other sidewalk now, and Bolan joined him a second later, shoving him for emphasis when Dixon slowed to see if he was keeping up.

      “Third level,” Bolan rasped at him. “A gray Toyota four-door, backed into space 365.”

      “Got it!”

      They’d passed the stairs already, which meant running in a long, slow zigzag pattern up one sloping ramp after another, to the third floor of the vast parking garage. There were at least a hundred parking spaces on each level, overhead fluorescent lighting casting pools of shadow between cars that could conceal an army of assassins, if they knew where he had parked.

      They don’t, he thought. Why chase us, otherwise?

      That logic got them to the third level, but Bolan half imagined running footsteps just below them. Shooters catching up? Maybe a rent-a-cop who’d glimpsed his pistol as they entered?

      Bolan palmed the rented vehicle’s keys and thumbed the button to unlock its doors. The dome light flared, helping direct Dixon to the car. While the agent threw himself into the shotgun seat, Bolan slid in behind the wheel, cranked the ignition and released the parking brake.

      “They found us!” Dixon told him as the gray Toyota leaped out of its parking space.

      “Hang on!” Bolan said to his passenger. “It’s all downhill from here.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      Three shooters formed a fragile skirmish line across the exit ramp as Bolan’s hired car hurtled toward them, gaining speed with an assist from gravity. The middle man carried some kind of Uzi submachine gun knockoff, while his flankers brandished shiny semiautomatic pistols. When they saw that Bolan wasn’t slowing, the bookends dived for cover, while their seeming leader opened fire.

      Too late.

      His first round cracked the gray Toyota’s windshield, two or three more struck the window frame and roof with glancing blows and all the rest were wasted as the bumper clipped his knees and rolled him up across the hood, then tossed him high and wide over the speeding car.

      Wild pistol shots rang out behind them, none finding their mark, and Bolan’s vacant rearview mirror told him that the bookends had decided not to mount a hot pursuit.

      He slowed when they were out of range, hoping to pass the exit booth without another incident, but then he saw the cashier craning a look from his window, obviously trying to pinpoint the source of gunfire. Bolan floored the gas then, surging forward as the clerk ducked backward, out of sight. They hit the flimsy wooden barricade at fifty, smashed on through it and were gone.

      More damage to the rental, there, and Bolan knew he’d have to ditch it soon, or else risk drawing more attention from police. Before he thought about new wheels, however, there was still the matter of escaping from their present trap.

      They weren’t clear yet. He was prepared to bet his life on that.

      To prove his point, a navy-blue sedan bearing two or three men raced head-on toward Bolan’s vehicle, when he had barely cleared the gate of the municipal garage. The grim-faced driver seemed intent on ramming him, but Bolan called his bluff.

      Another terse “Hang on!” to Dixon, and he held down the accelerator, holding steady on the steering wheel. Most hit men, in his experience, lacked the fanatic’s common urge toward martyrdom. In short, they shied away from suicide whenever possible—but there were always rare exceptions to the rule.

      With thirty yards between them, Bolan wondered if the other driver had the grim resolve to take him out at any cost. A head-on collision at their current rate of speed meant almost certain death, regardless of the built-in air bags or the safety harness that he hadn’t taken time to buckle as they fled. No vehicle created for the world’s civilian markets could save its occupants if they were doing sixty miles per hour and they hit another car doing the same. That made the terminal velocity 120 miles per hour.

      And the operative word was terminal.

      “Jesus!” Dixon blurted out. “What are you—?”

      “Doing,” or whatever else he meant to say, was swallowed by an incoherent squeal of panic, just before the chase car’s driver swerved to save himself, jumping the curb and scattering pedestrians as it decelerated brutally, tires smoking on the pavement.

      Bolan took advantage of the lag, however brief, before his enemy could turn and follow him. Accelerating toward the nearest busy cross street, he decided slowing for the turn would be a costly waste of time, more likely to produce an accident than to avert one. It was all-or-nothing time, and Bolan’s life was riding on the line.

      “Hang—”

      “On, I know,” Dixon finished for him, clutching at the plastic handgrip mounted just above his door. “Just do it.”

      Bolan did it, swerving into northbound traffic with a chorus of protesting horns and overheated brakes behind him. He was looking for police cars now, as much as shooters, hoping that it wouldn’t turn into a three-way race.

      The press of traffic slowed him, but he still made fairly decent speed. Jakarta’s drivers didn’t dawdle unless they were stuck in traffic jams, and some of them were dare-devils in their own right. He watched for hunters, heading either way, and warned Dixon to do the same.

      “I’m on it,” the agent replied, his voice sounding more normal than it had a moment earlier. “Sorry about all that back there.”

      “It may not be your fault,” Bolan said, knowing even as he spoke that Dixon probably had missed some sign that he was being followed to the meet, and likely well before.

      But, then again, it could’ve been his fault. They’d likely never know unless the trackers overtook and captured them.

      How many in the hunting party? Bolan couldn’t say. He’d dealt with three men on the run, a fourth in the garage, with two more seen on foot and two or three in the chase car. Beyond that, he’d be guessing, which was usually a waste of time and energy.

      If Bolan couldn’t count his enemies, he would assume they had him covered, both outnumbered and outgunned. He’d act accordingly, and put a damper on whatever latent cockiness he might’ve felt after a hell-for-leather getaway that left him and his contact more or less unscathed.

      They weren’t clear yet.

      And if he needed any proof of that, his rearview mirror gave it to him, framing a blurred image of the navy-blue chase car.

      “Incoming,” СКАЧАТЬ