Collision Course

He scrambled up the service ladder set into the shaft. Above him the bottom of the elevator smoothly powered down toward him. He was in a race, climbing against the clock, and now time had run out. He’d tried to play Paolini for a fool and had been off by a good thirty seconds.

That could prove to be a lifetime.

Realizing he would have to climb faster if he wanted to make it, Bolan stopped to replace his Beretta in his shoulder holster. His right hand slid the muzzle of the weapon into the sling as his left wrapped around the rung just above his head.

The metal rung was covered in some cold, slimy fluid. Perhaps it was maintenance oil or some other service fluid; in the dim light Bolan couldn’t tell. His hand slid off the slick metal, surprising him, and he overbalanced. His hands flung outward and one foot slipped off the rung below him. As he scratched for purchase his pistol fell away.

Darkness enveloped him as he fell, bouncing off the walls of the elevator shaft. His hands reached out to grasp the rungs of the service ladder. His sudden stop pushed him roughly up against the sheer metal wall again, forcing air from his lungs. His head slammed forward and his lip was split against the steel ladder.

The agony was a sharp, sudden shock and his tenuous grip weakened and then slipped. He fell backward down the shaft for a second time. His leg was jerked cruelly in its socket and he came to a brutally abrupt halt, his ankle twisted in one of the rungs.

Hot spears of pain lanced through his leg and muscles and tendons shrieked in protest at the tension.

Above him the elevator raced down.

Bolan reached up with one strong hand to pull himself back up. His face was sticky with blood from his nose, and his lips were bloody and swollen as he fought to regain control of his breath.

Bolan fought himself up into a vertical position. Standing on the ladder, favoring one leg, he stretched out a blood-smeared hand and pried his fingers into the rubber buffer curtain set between the floor-level doors.

The muscles along his back and shoulders bunched under the strain. With a final desperate exertion, the top half of the fingernail on his middle finger was ripped away, but the doors came open under his grip.

He looked up. The bottom of the elevator was in plain sight, rushing down toward his upturned face. Bolan tensed then sprang off the ladder rung, reaching out for the opening. He scrambled through the opening just as the elevator filled the space directly above him.

Adrenaline shot through his body, and Bolan found the desperate strength he needed to live. He pulled himself through the opening just as the elevator dropped past him. He had made it.

PAOLINI STRUCK the Executioner like a runaway locomotive, driving him back into the open shaft. Their momentum was greater than the elevator’s and they hit the roof of the carrier hard. They fell like squabbling cats, punching and striking at each other as they dropped.

In the split second before they smashed into the elevator roof, Bolan managed to twist his enemy beneath him so that he landed on top of the capo. Paolini kicked his adversary away from him, knocking him back across the elevator roof to the other side of the lift. Bolan rebounded off the wall of the shaft and bounced forward to his knees before coiling and leaping to his feet.

Both men sprang forward and, locked together, they struggled as the elevator descended to the basement.

When Bolan had been in the Army, he’d undergone training in defense against attack dogs. The premise had been as simple as it was brutally effective. You gave the animal an arm, knowing it would be bit, then the free arm came down like a bar and wrapped around the back of the dog’s head where the skull met spine. The man then fell forward and the beast’s neck snapped like a stick of rotten wood.

Bolan’s arms broke the clinch and one forearm pressed hard against the Italian’s face. His other arm slid into place behind the man’s neck, right where the skull met the spine. He began to push.

Paolini could feel his neck begin to break. Terror lent him a superhuman strength but to no avail. His huge fists hammered into Bolan’s midriff, his knee attempted to maul Bolan’s crotch, but the Executioner ignored the blows, the damage, the pain.

The elevator settled into position on the ground with a subtle lurch, just enough to cause Bolan’s injured leg to buckle. He tripped back and fell through the open maintenance hatch, dropping straight down through to the elevator compartment below.

His purchase suddenly gone, Paolini tumbled forward, as well. His momentum carried him down through the elevator hatch to land on top of Bolan. A backward elbow caught the Italian in the face, stunning him for a second as Bolan lunged for the pistol lying on the floor next to Delgaro’s limp hand.

Bolan lifted the pistol just as the elevator doors slid open and Paolini’s heel cracked hard against his wrist, sending the handgun spinning off out of the compartment. Bolan twisted back toward the Mob enforcer and saw him clawing his own Croatian HS 2000 out of a shoulder sling. Bolan brought a hammer-hard fist up from the hip and smashed it into Paolini’s temple, staggering the man as he tried to rise to his knees.

Bolan’s other hand lanced out and tried to take the pistol from Paolini. The two men struggled for control of the weapon. Bolan drew back his left hand to strike the other man again.

Paolini squeezed the trigger, and 9 mm rounds riddled the roof and walls of the elevator as he continued jerking the trigger. The pistol bucked and kicked in their hands as Bolan tried to wrestle it free, slugs stitching a crooked line across the wall toward the control panel.

Three soft-nosed slugs smacked into the delicate electronics and chewed their way through the thin outer casing. The elevator doors finished sliding open as sparks flew in rooster tails. The lights went out the instant Paolini pulled the trigger on the final bullet in the handgun.

Once again darkness enveloped Bolan.

Paolini swung wildly in the darkness, his knuckles clipping Bolan on the chin. The American’s head snapped back and he rolled with the force of the blow, letting it carry him back away from the mafioso.

As he finished his backward somersault, he felt the cool hardness of a concrete floor. He had cleared the elevator, but the basement was as dark as a tomb.

Bolan rose and reached out a hand to either side of him in the pitch blackness. He walked quickly forward, lifting his feet high and putting them down flat to avoid tripping in the dark. Despite his precaution, he nearly tripped over some obstacle and he used the noise to dodge hard to the left, coming up against a wall.

He pressed his back against the structure, his ears straining to catch any sound. Silence was the key. When you fought with one sense gone the surest way to victory was to deprive your opponent of his other senses.

He stood motionless, fighting to control his breathing, painfully aware of how loud his ragged, gasping breath had to be. After what felt like an eternity he regained control of his body.

Holding his breath, Bolan strained to listen.

Soon the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears deafened him to the point that he was defeating his original purpose. Slowly he exhaled, struggling to keep the escaping breath silent.

Then he heard it. He heard Paolini breathe. He couldn’t be sure, but it had seemed, in that instant, that Paolini was no more than a few yards from him.

Bolan began to move. He kept his back flat against the wall, his hands reaching out far to the sides to feel for obstacles. He moved slowly, crossing one leg over the other. He swallowed tightly, concentrating on pinpointing Paolini’s exact location.

Five steps and then he halted. He could hear no sound. Tension gripped him, but only for a moment. Bolan had spent too many years on the hellgrounds to be killed by indecision.

He swallowed tightly and then stepped away from the safety of the wall. He couldn’t hear Paolini moving, and he froze. After a short while he heard the strained outlet of escaping breath and realized Paolini had been listening for him.

In the deep darkness of the basement Bolan had his enemy pinpointed. He stepped forward and reached a sprint in three quick strides. Bolan leaped into the air, thrusting out both feet before him.

His injured leg struck Paolini in the gut, driving the younger man’s arm into his own stomach and forcing the air from him. Bolan’s other leg struck the cinder-block wall Paolini had been standing against and buckled under the force of impact.

Bolan bounced away, striking the floor on his rebound. Paolini fell beside him and the Executioner rose, smashing his fist down. He nearly cried out in pain as his knuckles struck the concrete floor and his arm went instantly numb.

He heard a sharp crack and instinctively threw up his good arm to ward off the invisible blow. His forearm jerked under the force of some club, probably a snapped-off broom handle.

Intuiting Paolini’s position by the angle of the blow, Bolan whipped his legs around and he felt the Italian topple. He heard Paolini’s club clatter away as he slammed to the floor, and Bolan snatched up the weapon for himself.

Bolan didn’t hesitate. He rose to one knee and brought the stolen stick crashing down. The stick splintered along its length from the force of the blow on Paolini’s body.

Paolini responded like a fighter, lashing out quickly. The ball of his foot slapped into Bolan’s face, driving him backward with the blunt force of a sledgehammer.

Bolan felt fresh blood hot in his mouth as his bottom lip was cut by his own teeth. Again he used the energy to roll with the blow and disengage, flipping over backward and gaining his feet. He tripped and fell back, landing hard on his butt with a jar that seemed to loosen his teeth in his head. He blinked in surprise. He was sitting up higher than the floor. He reached behind and realized he was on a flight of stairs.

Bolan turned and scrambled up the steps, racing so fast that his head butted against the door. He yanked at the knob.

It was locked.

Bolan felt around the walls, found what he was looking for and the lights came on as he flicked the switch. He blinked in the sudden illumination and looked behind him. Paolini was at the bottom of the staircase, a jagged-ended broom handle in his fists. The left side of his face was a long purple bruise where Bolan had struck him with his own club.

As Paolini began to slowly climb the steps, his eyes never left Bolan’s for an instant. “You’re mine now, hardass,” he growled. “I’m gonna jam this stick in your heart.”

Paolini raced up the last few steps and jabbed the splintered end of the stick forward in an attempt to stab Bolan. The Executioner dodged to the side and kicked Paolini in the face. Weakened, the man tumbled down the stairs rolling end over end.

The mobster hit the bottom step at a wrong angle, and Bolan heard the snap of the Italian’s neck as it broke. The Mob lieutenant plopped into an unceremonious pile of tangled limbs at the bottom of the stairs.

Bolan quickly descended and confirmed the kill.

Then he turned to collect his weapons and search for an exit route.

6

The day that Stephen Caine quit his job he didn’t tell anyone he was going. He wouldn’t need the job; it would only slow him.

He walked out of his office and to the elevator. He wanted a drink. Inside the elevator he suddenly realized he couldn’t remember what his office looked like. Couldn’t remember the faces of the people there, or their names.

He wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to return to the blue collar bar. He didn’t belong there. His father would have belonged there and so, by definition he didn’t belong there. He was going to go some place upscale but mellow, maybe with a piano player.

In the Explorer, on the way to the lounge, Caine began to cry. The tears streamed down his face in salty rivers. Six casualties a day. All of them dying just like his buddy Angel Ramos had in Mogadishu: hard and bloody.

In the car Caine remembered the medicine the Army doctors had given the men of the unit upon rotating home, just until the nightmares and flashbacks had stopped, or subsided anyway. He figured there had to be several dozen pills out there that could help trip the switch to stop the images, stop the tears. He didn’t think the doctors would hesitate to give him some pills if he told them about Mogadishu.

The piano bar was quiet and open but comfortably dark, and Caine didn’t look out of place in his suit with loosened tie. He drank straight through into evening and met the hooker once the sun had gone down.

Her name was Stephanie, and he was pretty sure from the start that she was a call girl. She was beautiful and didn’t look anything like Charisa and, unlike Charisa, she didn’t seem to have a problem getting blasted with him. He got his first Xanax from her, a little pill she fished out of the bottom of her Versace handbag. He watched the way the ends of her long brown hair rubbed across the smooth curves of her spilling cleavage while she dug for the pill. She smelled really good, and after she gave him the antianxiety medicine he decided she could really be into him. He washed the pill down with a swallow of imported beer.

“Because of demagogues,” he finished.

“Demagogues?” she asked.

“Yes, demagogues. A political leader who gains power by appealing to people’s emotions, instincts and prejudices in a way that is considered manipulative and dangerous…to paraphrase.”

“So you’re saying the President is a demagogue.”

“Yes. The problem is that the electoral college failed. The system is flawed. It is flawed because we only have a two-party system. The parties that control the electoral college are partisan. So maybe they would vote to check a demagogue who was an independent, but never to check one from within their own party. Without agreement, which is impossible in partisan atmospheres, the electoral college could never keep out a demagogue if they emerged from one of the two ruling political parties. The system fails.”

“That’s democracy.” Stephanie shrugged. She seemed to be tuning him out, bored. But Caine was talking mainly to hear his own voice anyway. What he was planning was a big deal, and it scared the hell out of him. The Xanax seemed to help.

Stephanie’s eyes were like glass marbles and her words came out softly slurred.

“But if democracy had ever been intended to be a simple mob rule then the founding fathers never would have inserted the electoral college into the process to begin with,” he continued. “It is a part of the system. The system failed.” And six a day are dying because of it, Caine thought to himself.

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, Thomas Jefferson had a few ideas….” Caine trailed off and took a drink.

Her hand came to rest on his thigh and the scent of a sensuous perfume drifted over him. He felt himself respond and knew what he wanted, even though he understood what Stephanie was.

“I meant tonight,” she purred. The purr was as slurred as her words.

Caine looked over at Stephanie and smiled. He felt warm and detached, and he knew now that if he needed to do something then it would be much later and he would be detached enough to do it then, too.

Thomas Jefferson had known what to do about demagogues, but Caine would be doing it in his own way. The plan started to coalesce in his mind as he stared into Stephanie’s eyes. He was not yet sure what it involved, but he was certain it would get to the truth, to the pattern that ran beneath the surface.

“You ready to get out of here?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, “I’m ready.”

The sudden resolve in his voice suggested he was talking more to himself than to Stephanie.

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