Chapter Nine

Worlds

A looming blob of the city's snow-removal machinery spun around the corner directly in Bolan's path and hogging the intersection, flashing yellow lights trying to tell him what he already knew, but a moment too late. He cranked the wheel and stomped the gas pedal, putting himself into a crabbing slide through the intersection and clearing the behemoth by inches. It whirred on past him and the VW continued in an uncontrolled skid at quarter-broadside, the rear wheels digging futilely at the icy slope along the curbing, front wheels vainly trying to show the way back to the proper track. And then he was really in trouble. The curbing flanged off into a dipping driveway to an underground garage; the VW slipped into it, spun, and came to rest with one rear wheel edged into the curbing at the far side, positioned front-end-out with absolutely nowhere to go.

And moving cautiously past the snow-remover less than a half-block to the rear, came the persistent headlamps of the tail car.

Bolan commanded Rachel to stay put, and leapt out and ran down the street to meet them, intent on keeping the firelight as far from the VW as possible. The tail car passed beneath the overhead lighting of the intersection, Bolan could see that it was one of the stubby quasi-sportscars of foreign make — hardly typical of mob wheels. At a time like this, though, one did not take chances. He raised the Beretta and rapidfired a line of holes across the top of the windshield in a left to right scan.

The little car immediately went into a spin, the horn sounded briefly, front wheels hit the curbing in a sideways slam and jumped it, and the vehicle came to rest broadside across the sidewalk. Bolan was on the hump of the road, the Beretta at arm's length, sighting down through the swirling snow at pointblank range. A window on the driver's side cracked open and a quavery voice yelled, "Hey God hold your fire! We're friendly!"

"Come out of there backwards!" Bolan commanded. "One at a time! Hands on the roof before I see the rest of you!"

The driver came out of there thusly, scrambling in his hurry to comply with the instructions. After his feet became grounded, he started to turn around but Bolan froze him with an "Huh-uh! Stay! Arm's length from the car and lean on it, feet apart! And move away from that door!"

He followed instructions to the letter. A moment later another man came scrambling out feet first and went through the same routine.

Bolan moved forward and frisked them, then stepped back and ordered, "All right, turn around and show me those faces."

They were young faces — early twenties, Bolan guessed — and very, very frightened. The boy who had been driving reacted suddenly to something behind Bolan and yelled, "Rachel, for God's sake tell this guy who we are!"

The girl was moving up behind Bolan. He gave her a quick snap of the eyes and growled, "I told you to stay put."

"I couldn't," she replied. The voice was coming out jerky and weird — the eyes were big and sort of haunted, and she was giving Bolan that rve-never-truly-seen-you-before look.

He softened his tone and asked her, "Do you know these people?"

"I don't recall the names," she murmured lethargically. "They're friends of Evie."

The Beretta stayed right where it was and Bolan addressed himself to the men.

"Why were you tailing me?"

"We didn't even know it was you," replied the driver, a blond youth. "It was Rachel we were tailing."

"Why?"

"Well… if you're who I thinkyou are…" The boy glanced at his companion, then at Rachel, the gaze finally returning to rest on the tall man in buckskins with the ready gun. "We, uh, wanted to make contact with you."

"Why?"

The boy shrugged and again looked at his companion.

The other youth, a dark Italian-type, told Bolan, "We thought we might develop a mutual interest."

Bolan replied, "You have to talk straighter than that."

"We wanted to join forces."

"Against whom?"

The boy fidgeted, and the driver took it up again, and he was getting braver. "You're smart enough to — "

Bolan snarled, "I'm smart enough to stay alive! I can't say that for you two!"

The dark one hastened in with, "Look, should we be standing out here in the street? What if the fuzz should happen along?"

"What do you suggest?" Bolan asked him.

"Let's find some place better to talk," the boy replied.

"We think Evie might be in trouble," the blond one quickly added.

The Beretta came down but remained in view. Bolan told them, "If you guys turn sour, you'd better know… I'd as soon wipe you as look at you."

Rachel made an odd little sound and marched back to the VW. Bolan watched her disappear into the blowing snow, then he holstered the Beretta and told the two young men, "Okay, let's go find that place. You'll have to help me get my vehicle back onto the street. How about yours? Think it'll run?"

The blond laughed nervously and said, "I think it'll run okay. But you sure creamed that windshield. I wonder if my insurance pays off on acts of war?"

Bolan dug into his pocket, peeled four Harlem-fifties from a roll, and gave them to the blond boy.

"My insurance pays off on everything," he told him. "Will that cover it?"

The boy was surprised but he nodded his head and accepted the money. "What happened to your bus?" he asked in a greatly relaxed tone.

"It's caught on a downslope," Bolan told him. "We can push it out."

The dark youth was getting into the car. He ran his fingers along the top molding of the windshield, carefully examined the four ragged holes, and sighed loudly and announced to nobody in particular, "That's as close as I ever want to come."

The blond laughed again and said, "I guess he could have just as easily brought them in dead center."

Bolan said, "That's right," spun about and returned to the VW.

The sports car joined him there. Bolan ordered a sullen Rachel Silver into the driver's seat and gave her terse instructions regarding traction on slippery surfaces, then the three men got behind and pushed and heaved and grunted the laboring micro-bus onto flat surface. Then the blond grumbled something about the front wheels of his car being "knocked out-of-line and vibrating like hell" — so Bolan took it slow and easy and the two-car caravan crept cautiously along the treacherous streets until they came to an all-night automat.

They parked the vehicles on the next side street and trudged back to the automat, got coffee and pie and took it to a quiet corner where the three men talked of politics and racketeers and dishonest public servants, and of a young girl who talked too freely to possibly the wrong people. Rachel listened brooding and kept her silence. She very rarely looked at Bolan, and when she did it was with a tinge of ill-concealed disgust.

It was her turn, Bolan thought, and she was flinging something back into hisface now. It hurt a little, sure, but if what she'd seen out on that street was enough to turn her off, then Bolan had to be thankful for early favors. Rachel did not have Viking guts — she was not a Valentina nor a Theresa, and she demanded her own image of purity from her men. He fervently wished her luck, though doubting she would find much. Under the right conditions that beast would emerge, and a woman like Rachel would find it difficult to remain "in love" with the same guy for very long. A Jesus very rarely came along. And when he did, the Rachels of the world didn't stand a chance of latching onto him.

So Bolan inwardly felt sorry for the girl, and he saved a little of the pity for himself and for the loss of an impossible dream briefly held, and then he turned his full attention to the gory world of Executioner Mack Bolan.

He took the names and numbers of his two "advisors," jotted pertinent notes into his little poop book, and he knew that he was entering into a new phase of his war against the Mafia.

After an hour or so he steered Rachel back to the micro-bus and drove her back to the high-rise where the nutty dream had begun and where it was ending.

"Short romance," he told her as he pulled beneath the awning to let her out.

Her first words since the showdown on the street were, "I'm sorry. I had romanticized what you are."

"And what am I?" he asked quietly. "A killer," she replied.

He jerked his head forward in a curt nod. "That's me," he agreed. "And if those had been killers behind us — what then? What should I have been, Rachel?" She shivered and said, "I'm sorry, I…" He said, "Goodbye, Rachel. Thanks for my life." She whispered, "Goodbye, Mack Bolan," then she was out and gone and Bolan knew that something fine had departed his life.

Correction. Something fine had almost enteredhis life. Thank God it hadn't quite made it The Executioner had enough working against him — he did not need the additional complications of…

He threw the bus into gear and eased away from there.

A glance into the rear-view and it was gone already, lost in the great sticky gobs of winter's fruit, and back there — behind that swirling screen of white darkness — he saw in his mind's eye a thing of indescribable beauty crawling naked upon a table to escape the harsh world of men in a shadow world of gods.

"Come out, Rachel," he murmured aloud. "This is the only world you've got"