2

It was night and the cold mistral wind was rushing down the Rhone Valley when Bolan pulled the BMW sedan off the expressway and drove through a deserted rest area to the gas station. No cars stood by the rows of brightly lit pumps, and as he coasted to a halt an attendant came out of the pay booth. “Fill her up?”

Bolan nodded, glancing beyond the booth to the refreshment bar as the man stooped to unscrew the gas tank’s cap.

It was then that Bolan saw the boots, toes pointing skyward, protruding from behind the candy counter at the rear of the small shop.

And that the nozzle in the attendant’s hand was attached not to a hose but to an 8-round magazine.

Bolan hit the driver’s door handle and dropped as the gun barrel rose to the window and belched flame.

The glass imploded, spraying the interior of the car with cubes of crystal. Bolan’s reflexes, honed to razor edge keenness by a lifetime in the killing grounds, were that vital hundredth of a second faster than the assassin’s. The soldier had the door open and was already pitching down and out while the killer’s trigger finger tightened.

The hot breath of the deathbringer fanned his cheek as he fell but Bolan was untouched.

He shoulder-rolled on the asphalt and came up crouching beside the BMW’s front wheel. His Beretta 93-R was already out of its underarm rig and seeking a target.

Bolan peered beneath the vehicle and saw the killer’s feet skating around the front of the car. The warrior unleashed a 3-round burst, and then another, the blasts deafening in the confined space beneath the hot engine.

There was a scream of pain and the thump of a falling body as one of the 9 mm slugs shattered an ankle.

But the gunman had thrown himself down behind the raised concrete platform on which the pumps stood... and now there was a second voice shouting, and more footsteps pounding toward the BMW from the refreshment counter.

Bolan eased himself away from the wheel, then ran, crouching, for the next row of pumps. He dived for cover once more as the newcomer opened fire. Cement chips stung the Executioner’s face. There was a tinkle of falling glass from the pump’s savaged dials. And now cold, aromatic liquid gurgled across the back of his hand: gasoline was splashing from the broken viewer at the top of the hose.

The second man was holding a compact submachine gun — Bolan guessed it was a mini-Uzi — strafing the pump area with hot lead as he approached.

There were ten rows of pumps ranked beneath the station canopy, in staggered formation to accommodate heavy vacation traffic. Bolan’s BMW was parked in the fourth line; the Executioner himself was crouched behind the fifth. He emptied the magazine of the auto-loader and ran for the sixth, scrambling between pumps and over the platform. If he was lucky, maybe he could hold them off until the next customer drove in for gas.

Maybe.

He glanced toward the access strip leading from the expressway.

Bolan frowned. A cord with small triangular flags was strung across the entrance to the rest area.

There had been no cord when Bolan arrived.

That meant they had been waiting for him. It also meant that there was a third killer at large. The guy who had positioned those flags would be on his way to join the battle. And unless Bolan moved now he would be enfiladed.

Behind him there were four more rows of pumps, and then a strip of hardtop bordering a shrub-covered bank that separated the station from the expressway. He slammed a fresh magazine into the Beretta.

The thug with the shattered ankle was firing from the far side of the BMW. The hardman with the Uzi was up and running. Bolan waited until the gunner was almost beneath the canopy, braced his weapon in the classic shooting stance and dropped the killer with a 3-round punch.

The third man was approaching now. His silhouette was lost against the dark mass of shrubbery, but Bolan could hear his footsteps swishing through long grass. Maybe thirty yards away.

Bolan raced toward the seventh row... the eighth... the ninth. Panting, he dropped behind the concrete ledge. He had to make those bushes before Number Three was within accurate target range.

Halfway to his feet, he froze. A big sedan with no lights was crawling into view from behind the candy shop.

Bolan was momentarily stymied. He had not counted on any reinforcements for the hit team. He dismissed it, as another question crowded his mind.

Were they waiting for The Executioner... or for Kurt Sondermann, the dead German he was impersonating?

It had to be the hit man, Bolan thought. A helicopter had ferried him from Interpol headquarters in Geneva to the place where the German had been killed. But even if anyone had known Bolan was in Geneva, had seen him board the chopper, there was no way they could have ferreted out its destination.

And unless the Interpol chief or the French Counter-intelligence man were tied in with the Mob, there was no way anyone could have guessed at the Executioner’s involvement.

On the other hand, Chamson and Telder had known of the hit man’s plans, so perhaps others closer to his own line of business could have been equally well briefed.

Sondermann’s BMW had run off the road at 100 plus miles per hour, the Swiss and French lawmen had told Bolan. The German had been thrown clear of the blazing wreck, killed instantly. In his pocket, there was a reservation confirming a two-day stopover at a motel outside Lyons. Bolan — provided with a similar car, Sondermann’s license plates, and the dead man’s papers — had taken up the second of those days.

The Executioner spent a moment reasoning out how the killers had known which gas station the BMW would stop at the following night on its way south.

They knew the car and its fuel capacity. So, it was simple to estimate roughly where the BMW would need to refuel. The filling stations on the expressways were between ten and twenty miles apart, as a rule. If the killers covered three they should be ninety percent certain to catch the BMW.

So, sure, it all made sense to the soldier. What did not make sense was why they were so anxious to keep Kurt Sondermann away from Marseilles.

Right now, Bolan had no time to squander on guessing games.

The sedan had stopped on the far side of the canopy, out of effective range for the Beretta. Bolan was familiar with the pattern. Once the guy coming up through the bushes was in position, the car would move forward again, high beams lancing the darkness. Anyone caught in the open would be pinned against the night, as effectively as a moth on a display board, target for a hail of death hosing in from three directions.

It was even more vital now that he quit the shelter of the last row of pumps and find cover in the bushes.

Suddenly the wind started to blow again. It was a typical mistral — one minute still as death, the next, rushing at full bore, flattening the grasses. Bolan took advantage of the abrupt change.

This time he fired no warnings to keep the opposition heads down. He was on his feet and running, dodging, racing for the safety of that bank as a fusillade roared out behind him, ripping apart the night with their hellfire din.

Slugs scuffed the macadam to left and right and punctured pumps in the final row. At the last moment, a bullet took away the heel of Bolan’s shoe, to send him hurtling forward on hands and knees.

The fall saved his life: a murderous volley fanned the air above him as he fell, the deathstream savaging the space he’d occupied a moment before. He remained prone on the hard ground, bellying rapidly toward the bushes.

He was in the shrubbery now, branches and leaves threshing angrily above him, breathless in the shadows beneath the howling wind.

With blinding brilliance the headlights swamped the neon beneath the canopy. A voice from behind the car shouted instructions. There was a brief reply from farther along the bank. The gunman approaching from the access strip was now as vulnerable to Bolan’s fire as the soldier was to the sedan. The hardman would be worming his way toward the Executioner at ground level.