"So Sal gave her a punishment to fit the crime, eh?" Bolan raged on. "I'm giving you the same, guy!"

He ripped the pants off the guy and flung him to the grass flat on his back, pinning him there with a foot on the throat while he sprang the wicked stiletto.

The guy gurgled, "What? What? No, God, no — not that!"

"What's wrong, Eunuch Baby? Doesn't the punishment fit?"

"My God, I don't think she's dead! I'm sure she's not! Just look where I told you. God, don't do this!"

Bolan buried the stilletto into the ground between the guy's quivering legs. "Next time," he promised, "your stinking sperm will be spilling. If you've lied to me, guy … this is your last chance to fix it."

"I swear! Swear!"

Bolan left Cass Baby there, half-swooning and stewing in his own bitter juices.

It was no fun baiting a guy that way. Necessary, sure, but not fun. Necessary because the truth had suddenly become so damned important. And Bolan's own rage at the unhappy turn of events out front made the baiting only about half sham. And he was at least 99% certain that he'd squeezed the bleeding truth from the guy.

But that "victory" was not so sweet. Not at all sweet. As Toby had said, during those last moments when they were together, the goal may not be worthy of the cost of the search.

A bag of bones did not a victory make.

And a snappy lady fed who just damn it had to think for herself had obviously decided to pay the supreme price.

If she had ... damn it, if she had ...

Yeah. Men could cry, too.

21

Sold

Holzer had been en route home for a quick cleanup, a bite of chow, maybe even a brief nap, when he intercepted the contact alert from Strike 8.

It had been a damned long day, with strain enough during the past eight hours alone to wring a guy dry.

He had been up with this case for almost twenty hours — but the flash from Grosse Pointe Woods was like a magic wand waved above his head.

He felt as giddy as a teen-ager chasing a fire truck when he sighted the task force beating it along the shore drive — downright exultant when he saw them take the turn up Vernier.

This was his territory, by damn — he knew a better and quicker way that should put him on the scene a couple of ticks ahead of the pack.

He flashed on past the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club and took a death-defying turn onto Hawthorne, letting out his siren and running with lady luck in a balls-out sprint to Matter, then screaming north into the stretch for Yorktown Parkway.

Straightening into the parkway, he killed the screamer and went it on beacon alone. He damn near creamed a putt-putting Volkswagen at the first intersection, immediately thereafter shakily deciding to sacrifice a bit of speed in the interest of survival. Sure as hell he wanted to at least be there for the wrap-up of this case.

As he would later recall, that slowdown was primarily responsible for the weird things that followed.

Holzer was approaching the scene on a westerly course. The destroyer force should have been pounding northward from Vernier on a right-angle course to his. But, obviously, they had made a circle-around for some tactical reason, and now he could see them swinging onto the parkway just ahead to run westerly along his same approach ... and leading him by a good two hundred yards.

So Holzer swung south, then west again, fuming over being beat out in his own backyard and damned if he would run up their tails.

Another spine-tingling turn and he was now running northward, approaching the scene on the path that had apparently been rejected by the roving detail.

He did not have their tac channel on his radio and therefore could not understand the play.

All he could do now was lose the race.

But he heard the double ba-loom of a riot gun and other firing far ahead, and he was close enough to see that plunging vehicle careening into the trap — and now he understood the maneuvers of the Tac Force — damn it — just a flash too late, he understood them.

Another vehicle had been parked broadside in the street just beyond the intersection. It was now wheeling about in hot pursuit of the fleeing vehicle.

Holzer could not brake his charge from ninety to zip in the time required to avoid running up on the chase vehicle, but he gave it the old college try, suddenly painfully aware that he was interfering with a closely coordinated trap set.

He hit brakes and wheel together and locked them in, spinning dizzily for a moment, then recovering to careen into the intersection and plunge eastward along the side street.

Well, almost.

His front wheels jumped the curb, and he plowed through shrubs and saplings for about two hundred feet before wrenching loose and going into a skid toward the other side.

He hit a fence over there, and his bumper must have caught on something immovable. It popped him around like the snap of a whip, pushing him into a sidewise skid that quickly became a roll, and Holzer in his seat strap inanely thought of those kid days at the fair and the rollo-plane when he chucked up meatballs and spaghetti in a spray onto the onlookers below — at the same moment wondering if that was to be his dying thought, the sole flashback of a life he had thought so memorable … what a hell of a way to go.

He blacked out. For how long, he could not guess — probably no more than a matter of seconds. He came out of it with the awareness of flames strong in his consciousness and mixed with the stark realization that he was pinned immobile in a collapsed vehicle that could blow sky high at any moment.

In the licking of flames he saw a devil dancing in the street just outside — but then he immediately decided that this was merely another "death flashback." It was not a devil dancing.

It was Mack Bolan, that same face that had grinned at him so winningly and framed the words: "Let's see, it's John Holzer, isn't it?"

Yeah, and even at that it was better than meatballs and spaghetti in upchuck.

But the vision was not holding to the script. What it was saying was, "Don't move. Stay calm. I'll get you out."

Shit! No flashback!"

The goddamn guy was out there, in the flesh.

Holzer tried his own mouth and found it working. And, of course, it came up with something appropriately stupid. "How'd you get here so quick, Stryker?"

"Just happened along," the big, cool bastard replied. "Listen now. It's a bad situation. The windshield has come down on you. There's a jagged edge poised right at your jugular vein. I can't move it. The roof is buckled in. The gas tank could go any minute. If I raise that roof, you're liable to get it in the neck. If I don't raise it, you're sure to either fry or fly. So I've got to raise it. Soon as you can get your hands free, protect your throat all you can."

"Got you," Holzer said, surprising himself with his own detachment. "How're you going to raise it?

"The only way I know," the guy said.

And then he was in there with Holzer, on hands and knees in that wreckage. Holzer could see the veins popping in the guy's neck, could almost feel the surge of vital juices flowing into challenged muscles as the guy groaned and strained to straighten himself.

"Watch it!" the guy grunted.

And then John Holzer felt the impossible occurring, the roof moving off of him, an arm loosening — and the guy strained on.

"It's coming," Holzer whispered. "Hold it ... wait! ... my throat — ungh — okay, got it. Shit, man, let's go."

Thinking back on it, Holzer realized what a fantastic feat it had been; at the moment it seemed as easy as smoothing a piece of rumpled Reynold's Wrap.

Suddenly the guy had him by the armpits, tugging him loose, pulling him free, grunting and damning and dragging in a mad frenzy — and then it went, the gas tank.