The Beretta 93-R was Bolan’s favorite shoulder-rig weapon. It was also, Telder had told him, the gun usually carried by Kurt Sondermann. To keep in character, Bolan was therefore armed with the pistol recovered from the German’s dead body.

The German hit man’s Beretta sported the front handgrip that folded beneath the barrel and could be used to steady the gun and minimize the rise in accurate firing. Now that he had a little more time to think, Bolan figured he could use it. Something he had seen glinting on the station forefront in the lights of the sedan had given him an idea.

From beneath the gas-station canopy a slight grade led toward the exit strip, and a thin rivulet of the volatile fuel, reflecting in the harsh illumination, was trickling slowly down the slope.

The sedan was moving again. It was halfway across the staggered rows of pumps, veering from side to side as the headlamp beams swept the shrub-covered bank.

Bolan folded down the foregrip and wrapped the fingers of his left hand around it. The Beretta’s butt nestled in his right palm, and the index was curled around the trigger.

Prone in the shadows, he leaned on his elbows and sighted carefully. He thumbed the auto-catch and put a couple of 3-round bursts in a tight pattern at the base of a pump. The spirit gushed out; from where he lay he could smell the odor of the fuel.

The light beams had jerked his way when the shots rang out. Now livid flashes winked from the driver’s window.

Heavy slugs ripped through the branches above him. The sound of the burst was muffled, snatched away by the wind.

Bolan rolled farther down the bank, crouched behind a larger bush. For the moment, he had to forget the killer who would be trying to enfilade him: he needed all his concentration for the task at hand.

The mistral screeched through dry stalks and sang in the wires somewhere overhead, that fed electricity to the station. Occasionally headlamp beams from traffic on the expressway swept through the foliage, but the sound of the engines was lost in the wind.

Bolan waited.

Gasoline from the drilled pump had flooded out to flow down the grade. He could see the vapor shimmering above it in the glare from the approaching sedan. Back on single-shot action, he sighted the Beretta between the car’s front wheels and squeezed the trigger.

The slug plowed into the moist macadam. He crouched lower, flattening the trajectory, fired again. A ricochet. The car’s radiator grill was a yard from the high-octane gas flow.

Bent lower still, straining his eyes, Bolan held his breath and coaxed a third shot from the 93-R.This time the heavy slug, traveling almost parallel to the tarmac, homed in on one of the flints surfacing in the worn matrix of the macadam.

The round glanced off the stone and thunked into the underside of the vehicle, leaving a spark behind it.

The spark jumped into the inflammable vapor rising from the spreading gasoline.

The whole sweep of gasoline ignited with an explosion that rocked the ground as the sedan passed over it.

Instantly, the car was transformed into a blazing fireball. The pump that Bolan had holed went up with a roar. Flames flattened, teased out, driven by the wind, reached white-hot fingers around other damaged pumps and squeezed smoke, then fire, from their shells. Out of the holocaust that had been the sedan, a blackened scarecrow figure seething with tongues of flame flopped screaming onto the pavement.

Within seconds the whole area beneath the canopy was an inferno. From the center of the fiery maelstrom there was a colossal explosion as an underground tank blew. The concrete roofing collapsed and flames boiled skyward, pillowing a huge column of black smoke.

Bolan’s eyebrows, lashes and hair were singed by the furious heat. The killer from the car now lay motionless with smoke and steam wisping from his charred body.

Bolan scrambled around to face the slope rising from the rest area. The last assassin was someplace there among the dancing shadows between the bushes.

The Beretta’s first magazine had been emptied and nine shots had already sneezed out from the 15-round spare. Expecting no trouble before he reached Marseilles, Bolan had carried no more. He would have to be damned sure of his target if the last six rounds were to get him out of here.

Another smaller detonation cracked out from the far side of the blaze. He guessed the fumes in the empty tank of his BMW had erupted.

Lit by the leaping flames, the bushy slope was a chaos of flying shadows and branches tossed by the gale.

When the first shot came, it was from a point nearer down the bank than Bolan had expected. He heard nothing over the moan of the wind, saw only a pale twinkle of fire stabbing the shadows among the redder reflections of the flames.

A stream of lead from an SMG on full-auto thwacked through the branches above Bolan’s head. Twigs and leaves fluttered down around him. A sudden gust blew them away across the bank. The killer saw the movement and fired again.

Aiming above the muzzle-flashes, Bolan sacrificed a couple of rounds, but the light was deceptive and this time he didn’t score.

Four shells left in the magazine.

Now the invisible gunman was nearer, perhaps no more than twenty yards away. Bolan ducked and rolled once more to a new position.

There was a long burst, uncomfortably close.

Bolan uttered a realistic cry of pain and sprawled, still in shadow, on his back. He snicked the Beretta to 3-shot mode. The Executioner was counting on the carelessness born of confidence, something he had seen happen to the enemy many times in Vietnam: not making sure of the kill. Suddenly, Bolan realized that he was dealing with a professional.

Because the killer was running toward him. But it did not necessarily mean that the guy wanted to finish him off. Maybe they had orders to take Sondermann alive.

No matter. The gunner was playing the Executioner’s kind of game.

There was a clatter of loose stones and a sudden rush of feet as a dark silhouette materialized, dashing down the slope to leap on Bolan’s barely visible body.

The guy was suddenly in mid-air, flailing the SMG like a club.

Bolan drew up his knees. As the killer plummetted toward him, the Executioner impacted his heels in the man’s belly and kicked out ferociously.

The guy emitted a yell of astonishment and fear as he flew up over Bolan’s head. While he was airborne, a cartwheeling target against the roaring flames, Bolan raised the Beretta and caressed the trigger.

One of the shots drilled the hood’s shoulder, one screamed into the sky, the third took away the top of the man’s head.

The impact of the 9 mm parabellum spun him sideways and he crashed into the branches behind Bolan.

Still clutching the 93-R, Bolan stood and ran toward the candy store behind the raging fire.

He had to leave fast. A couple of semis and several cars had already pulled up at the entrance to the rest area, and there was a small crowd of rubberneckers advancing toward the flags.

He skirted the raging fire and approached the store. The lights had gone but the structure was intact. Bolan peered over the counter.

The attendant lying there had been shot in the neck. The body of a second man, stripped of its coverall, had been dragged farther back, beneath the soft-drink dispensers. There was nothing Bolan could do for either of them.

He figured his best plan would be to climb the fence sealing off the rest area and strike out cross-country until he came to a highway. It would be easier to find transport — and risk fewer questions — than a return to the expressway.

He was hurrying away from the building when he heard a faint cry over the crackle of the flames.

He looked over his shoulder and saw something moving between him and the fire. He moved closer. It was the man with the shattered ankle. Bolan had assumed he’d been incinerated when the gasoline ignited, but he had managed to drag himself fifty yards beyond the blaze.