The soldier made his move, already up and running as the scheme took shape. The building next to Santa Rosa's clinic, seemingly a vacant storefront, stood across an alley roughly ten feet wide. In case the scuttling gunner might have missed his move, he fired an aimless burst skyward as he ran, then tucked the stuttergun beneath his arm and leaped across the yawning canyon of the alleyway.
It was an easy jump, all things considered, but the roof of the adjacent building was a good foot taller than the clinic's, with a higher cornice, and the soldier lost his footing, going down on hands and knees to catch himself, the submachine gun clattering beside him. Thankful that the roof was flat, instead of canted at an angle, Bolan spent a heartbeat breathing deeply, mindful of the sudden, spastic pain that emanated from his wound as sutures tugged against the tender flesh. Below him, angry shouts and a halfhearted burst of autofire informed the soldier that his shift had not been overlooked.
With any luck, they would pursue him, leaving Dr. Kent and Amy Schultz in peace for now. If nothing else, the Executioner could try to buy them time, a chance to cut and run, but he was not primarily concerned with holding actions. It was not by accident that he was closing on the diner, where the greatest concentration of Rivera's gunners seemed to be. The palace guard would stand its ground around el jefe, and if Bolan did not miss his guess, Rivera would be inside the restaurant.
Grant Vickers had succeeded in annihilating the Mercedes tank. The other cars in line were burning furiously, on the verge of secondary detonations as their fuel tanks were licked by flames. As they exploded, one behind the other, it was like a string of giant fireworks, spewing jagged shrapnel, spouts of oil and gasoline like fiery streamers in the air. A Cadillac, parked close behind the long Mercedes, was the first to blow, its broad hood airborne, like a piece of cardboard riding on a desert whirlwind. Next in line, a dusty squad car — captured somewhere, somehow, from the Border Patrol — erupted in a ball of greasy flame. A secondary blast destroyed the cruiser, broke its back, and left it squatting like a blackened toad on melting tires. The others blew in turn, their detonations culminating in a blast that ripped the stolen ambulance apart, emergency supplies and rolls of bandages erupting, all in flames. A tank of oxygen exploded, with the echo of a giant's fowling piece, and then the battleground fell relatively silent, save for the devouring crackle of the flames.
It was an artificial peace, and swiftly broken as Rivera's gunners scrambled out from under cover, gawking at the ruined vehicles that were their only transport home. They would discover other cars and trucks in Santa Rosa, given time, but it was Bolan's task to keep them jumping, whittling the ranks, so that they never found the necessary time to mount a search. He raised his captured weapon, rattled off a 3-round burst, and heard the hammer fall upon an empty chamber. Feeding in his solitary backup magazine, he was prepared to spray the street again when hostile fire erupted on his flank and drove him back to cover.
Bolan realized that he was cornered. He could not retreat in the direction of the clinic, nor could he advance to the diner from where he was. His only avenue of exit was the alley in back, assuming that the gunners did not flank him first, and in the absence of a ladder he would have to jump.
Procrastination was a fatal flaw in combat situations, and the soldier did not hesitate once he had weighed the narrow range of his alternatives. He popped up, fired a burst in the direction of the diner, then pivoted to bring the gunners near the clinic under fire. Before they could react, he was already moving out, across the dusty roof and toward the alleyway that ran behind the buildings fronting Main Street, separating them from stucco homes that faced the desert to the west.
A glance in each direction, verifying that the enemy had not surrounded him completely, and the Executioner was looking for the best way down when something hit the roof behind him, heavily, and started rolling. Bolan spun around and saw the frag grenade as it began to wobble toward him. He could hear the doomsday numbers falling as the lethal egg rolled closer, and he did not need to calculate trajectories to know that he was in deep trouble. Escape was mandatory, and it could not be postponed.
He leaped, free-falling, and the shock wave struck him in midair. He was a tumbling straw man, trapped and buffeted inside a smoky thunder clap, with angry hornets buzzing past him, plucking at his clothing. Then the ground was rushing up to meet him, and there was not even time to break his fall.
Rivera came out of his hiding place behind the counter, and he saw the line of cars outside reduced to twisted, smoking hulks. They were on foot now, but he knew that other vehicles would be available. It was not the destruction of machines that worried him, but rather the realization of who had destroyed them.
The constable had turned against him with a vengeance, overriding years of purchased loyalty to sacrifice his life for the town, choosing fiery death above allegiance to Rivera. It was not a typical reaction, and the dealer was disturbed. If he could not control his underlings, if one whom he considered bought and paid for could betray him thus, what might the other citizens of Santa Rosa do? What might they risk to save their miserable pest hole of a town?
The nameless rooftop sniper had apparently been joined by yet another, this one with an automatic weapon. Betting the percentages, Rivera recognized the odds against a local citizen possessing a machine gun, and he knew that in all probability the weapon had been captured from a member of his own crew. That meant another casualty, and he was stricken by the rapid decimation of his forces, conscious of the fact that they could not hold out for long inside the diner, if the town should rise against them.
Moving closer to the windows, scanning through the smoke, he searched the street for a sign of Hector. Shadows darted in and out amid the drifting, oily clouds, but he could not pick out their faces or identify the men beyond a general knowledge that they were his men, his troops. They held the street, but they were fighting desperately to keep it, and Rivera wondered if it might be a losing battle. Should the other citizens of Santa Rosa be prepared to sacrifice themselves as Vickers had, Rivera's gunners could not hope to stand before them. They had been outnumbered from the start, and blind fanaticism neutralized the opening advantage of their weapons, their professional experience.
It struck the dealer that he might be marked to die in Santa Rosa, but he pushed the thought away. He had survived too many close encounters with the Reaper to be daunted now, and he would persevere, no matter what should happen on the street outside. His honor was at stake. Rivera had not worked so long and hard to give it up without a fight. He had not killed so many men to be intimidated by a village full of peasants in rebellion. If he could not wipe them out entirely, he could make the bastards pay a ghastly price for their resistance. Even if the peasants should defeat him somehow, in the end they would remember him in grief and rue the day when they had raised their hands against Luis Rivera.
The cars were burning out, except for their upholstery and carpeting, but now there seemed to be more smoke outside than previously. Glancing to the south, Rivera saw a tongue of flame, extruded from the shattered windows of an empty shop. Beside it, yet another store was burning, and he saw Camacho now, with several other pistoleros racing from a third shop as the smoke began to billow on their heels.