Raw survival was the problem, though. He could not count on living through the next five minutes, let alone the afternoon. Evacuation of the Laundromat was a start, but Stancell still had work to do. The enemy was still out there. Waiting. And while any one of them survived, Rick knew that he would not be whole, would not be free.
He had a job to do, and it was getting late. He prayed that it was not too late, and took himself away from there. To find the enemy.
18
Vickers pulled the safety harness tight across his chest before he started the cruiser's engine. He wasn't concerned with safety — he just didn't want a lucky shot to knock him over, rip his hands off of the steering wheel before he had a chance to show Rivera something special. Glancing at his watch, the lawman saw he had four minutes, thirty seconds left to live, and he was startled to discover he was not afraid.
He put the car in motion, rolling slowly down the alley's length, aware that he had time to spare before the stranger's lethal deadline. It occurred to him that he had never asked the gunman's name, but he supposed it didn't matter. Rivera meant to kill him, kill them all, and any ally in the midst of danger was a welcome hand.
He reached the alley's northern mouth and paused again before he turned the cruiser east toward Main Street. Vickers eased the Python from his holster, placed it on the seat beside him, knowing he would never have an opportunity to use it. It made him feel a damn sight better, having it there, even if that made no sense at all.
He thought that Becky might have figured out his secret toward the end. The stranger knew for certain, somehow; he had seen it clearly, in those graveyard eyes. And yet the man had seemed to pass no judgment on him. Maybe, Vickers thought, the knowledge that he would be dead within five minutes made a difference. Maybe.
But he was relieved that Becky had not challenged him, that there had been no time for her to put the pieces in place. No doubt she would be able to deduce the rest of it, but he would not be there to see the accusation in her eyes, and Vickers hoped the manner of his passing might incline her to spare his soul a kindly thought from time to time.
Three minutes, and he brought the cruiser onto Main Street, idling outside the vacant hulk of what had once been Sundberg's Dry Goods. There was action halfway down the block, and Vickers caught a glimpse of someone on the roof of Stancell's gas station, rising up to take a potshot at Rivera's soldiers with a rifle, ducking down again before they had a chance to return fire. The sniper's profile looked familiar, even from a distance, but he didn't have the time to mull it over. Thankful that some resident of Santa Rosa had come up with guts enough to make a stand, he dropped the squad car into gear and tromped his foot on the accelerator.
Downrange, the gunners saw him coming, heard the squeal of tortured rubber as he powered toward them from a standing start. He hit the switches for the cruiser's lights and siren, letting it unwind as he accelerated past the hardware store, the pharmacy, the clinic where Rebecca and her patient hid. The stranger would be up there, watching from the roof, but Vickers could not see him. He was concentrating on the startled gunners, some of them already scattering, a handful seeming to deduce his target, standing firm and laying down a screen of automatic fire. The cruiser started taking hits, like hail against the fenders, doors and grille. He heard one of the revolving lights explode above him, and he grimaced as a bullet drilled the cruiser's windshield, spilling pebbled safety glass into his lap. He scooped up the Python and thrust it through the vacant window-frame, and he was smiling as he started squeezing off in rapid fire. No time to aim, but at the very least he thought that he could keep the bastards hopping.
Half a block to go, and Vickers swerved his cruiser toward the diner and the cars lined up outside. A flying squad of runners was retreating toward the restaurant and firing as it ran, the bullets drilling bodywork and snapping close beside him in the speeding car. The constable ignored them, as a hunter might ignore the gnats that buzz around his head on an excursion through the forest, concentrating on the sleek Mercedes, which was first in line. It might not be Rivera's private car, although he thought he recognized the dealer's style, but it would do, in any case.
The other winking light exploded overhead, its colored fragments swept away in Vickers's slipstream. He was twenty yards from impact when a white-hot pain shot through his shoulder, knocking him off balance, ripping one hand from the steering wheel. The harness saved him, and he held the cruiser firmly on its course, his boot depressing the accelerator to the floor. He measured out his life in fractions of a second now.
"Kick ass!" he shouted, knowing that the gunners could not hear him, and before the lawman had a chance to lift his good hand off the steering wheel, his world was swallowed up by rolling thunder, tinged with fire.
Lying on the clinic's roof, Mack Bolan watched the squad car and its driver self-destruct. On impact, both the cruiser and the lead Mercedes were obscured by a rolling fireball, oily smoke ascending, blackening the sky. A lake of fire was spreading underneath the other cars in line, and as he watched, a burning scarecrow staggered out, arms flapping in an agonized, demented parody of flight. It was not Vickers, and he let the runner go, his captured automatic weapon seeking other targets in the street below.
He found them almost instantly. A squad of hardguys had emerged from cover near the diner, darting in and out along the edges of the spreading conflagration, desperate to save the other cars before they all went up in turn. Across the street, from the direction of the service station, Bolan heard another rifle shot and glanced that way in time to see the sniper ducking under cover. He had missed that time, but now his enemies were dodging, seeking cover, hastily abandoning their mission with the convoy.
Bolan chased them with a short, precision burst and cut the legs from under one of them, his human target toppling across the line of fire and twitching as the last three rounds tore through his head and chest. The others scattered, seeking cover in the diner, in the mouth of an adjacent alleyway, or veering off across the empty street toward other shops. The soldier tracked them with his submachine gun, dropped another as the runner gained the opposite sidewalk, his death roll ending with the body crumpled against a standing mailbox.
Sudden automatic fire from an entirely different quarter raked the cornice to his left, and Bolan wriggled backward, out of range. The gunners had divided, probably in answer to the challenge of the sniper at the filling station, and a pair of them were on the street below him, firing skyward, pinning Bolan down.
If he had come prepared with frag grenades, it would have been no contest, but it would be suicide to rise above the cornice, scanning for a target while he posed in silhouette against the sky. There might be more than two below, although at present he could only hear two weapons — one 9 mm, by the sound of it, the other popping .45s — and while he might gain time by shifting his position to another section of the road, he might as easily be killed while on the move. Worse yet, he knew that it would not be long before the gunners tried to reach him through the clinic proper, scouring the rooms for safety's sake, locating Dr. Kent and her sedated patient in the process. It was time to move, unless ...
As if in answer to his secret thoughts, the nameless sniper showed himself again, this time directing rapid fire against the gunners moving near the clinic. Bolan could not judge the rifleman's effectiveness, but only one of the assailants answered fire, a ragged burst that drove the sniper under cover once again.