Vegas Vendetta

Bolan sprang toward a curtained doorway, no more than two table-lengths away. Guns roared and spat-angry little hornets of destruction in hot pursuit, and they were zipping the air all about him, thwacking into the wall beyond and plowing into tables to either side of his backtrack. Behind him he could hear Max's methodical response, the air suddenly cleared and the roar of weapons died off.

Also behind him a loud voice was proclaiming, "We are federal officers! All of you stop firing and throw down your weapons!"

And then Bolan was through the curtains and ru

The door swung open and Bolan skidded to an abrupt halt.

Harold Brognola stood there, blocking the way with a sawed-off shotgun raised and ready.

The sad-faced lawman hesitated for perhaps a heartbeat.

And, in that heartbeat, Bolan was aware of a small figure swinging in around him.

Time froze, and Bolan's thoughts raced on, stretching the moment into an infinity of ideas, and he knew that Max Keno, the career tagman, was acting out a subliminal reflex as deeply-rooted as Bolan's own rage for survival, that he was moving his own life into the breach between certain death and "the boss's" precious body — and little Max Keno died like the true tagman he'd always been.

He took the shotgun charge full in the chest, his pistol firing in reflex, and he was swept back by the blast and flung into the corner of the hallway.

The shotgun clattered to the floor and Brognola sank down with a Keno bullet in the thigh.

Their eyes met and locked momentarily. Bolan threw a regretful and silent farewell to the remains of little Max, and he patted Borgnola's shoulder and went on.

Numbers. Never people, just the goddamned numbers.

It was begi

A familiar voice behind Bolan cried, "Lookout!"

Bolan was throwing a fresh clip into the Beretta, a split-second operation when the chips are down, and he was also throwing himself off the target line in another of those frozen-moment experiences.

The blonde — the Ranger Girl, Miss Badmouth herself — was the owner of the familiar voice, and his side vision was catching her in a mind-jarring and time-freezing expose of slow-motion action frames. She was wearing the same wispy outfit he'd first caught her in and a little nickle-plated revolver was daintily spitting flame from her outstretched hand.

In the front view, the guys at the doorway were wheeling into a rapid reverse and falling back into the dining room, aided and abetted by the volley of small calibre slugs whizzing into their midst.

Bolan tossed three quick rounds their way to punctuate the withdrawal, and he snared the girl's hand and pulled her along with him to the rear door. The kitchen help were all headed in that direction already — with alacrity — and Bolan merely followed the crowd.

They broke into the fresh air and the girl urgently whispered, "The desert is your only chance!"

"Not quite," he muttered, and left her standing there beside a cook in a high white hat as he ran to the corner of the building and started the hand-over-hand climb up the metal ladder to the roof.

The time was 8:59.

Despite everything, right on the numbers.

He thought he could hear the chugging of a rotary-wing craft somewhere in the distance as he gained the roof of the casino.

The girl was coming up the ladder behind him.

He took a moment to tell her, "Bug off, dammit!"

"I hope you know what you're doing," she panted. "Give a girl a hand?"

A commotion on the ground just below made the decision for Bolan. He grabbed her arm and yanked her over the parapet and, in the same motion, sent three rounds phutting down the reverse course.

A pained voice below screamed, "Oh shit!" and a volley of fire tore into the parapet.

The roof was flat, in typical desert style, and broken only by the small superstructure of "Vito's joint," which had been so painstakingly emplaced there by a man of caution, about halfway to the street end of the building. The rest of the roof was open range and plenty large enough for a whirly-bird to nest upon.

Someone was standing in a darkened window of the adjacent hotel, at about the third floor level and just across the roof from Bolan's position. Two, three, someones. Bolan was trying to keep an eye on them, protect his rear at the ladder, and watch for the helicopter all at once.

He told the girl, "Thanks for the assist, but I wish..."

She swung in behind him and Bolan heard her little pistol biting on empty chambers. He whirled and put a nine-millimeter marker on the forehead of a guy peering up over the roof parapet. The guy disappeared with a grunt.

Toby gasped, "Do I hear a helicopter?"

He muttered, "I sure hope you do."

And then the little hummingbird swung in out of the darkness and reflected the neon glare from the strip. The guys at the hotel window had spotted it also, and they'd spotted the pair on the roof, as well. People were shifting around over there, and Bolan caught the glint of a rifle barrel emerging from the window. He unloaded the Beretta in a rapidfire at the window just as the little bird came to a hover above him.

A rope ladder tumbled down. Bolan grabbed it and, pulled the girl over and told her, "Go!"

She shook her head and said, "This is where I bug off. Good luck, swinger. We'll cross again."

He took a second away from his precious numbers to give her a stare, and then he knew.

He said, "It's your dice, honey," and, he quickly ascended the rope ladder.

"Move it!" he yelled when he was halfway up, reinforcing the command with a wave of his hand.

And then they were going straight up and slipping away over the. desert, and the glare of the neon jungle was falling off and diminishing, and it all looked, so small and insignificant now.

And, of course, it was.

Epilogue

"You said nine o'clock," the pilot reminded him, yelling to be heard above the racket of the rotors. "Was that close enough?"

"It was plenty close enough," Bolan yelled back.

Yeah. Plenty close enough.

It had been quite a fling at Vegas.

Carl Lyons, he hoped, would be alive and well because of that fling.

A bit of rot, here and there, had been surgically removed, from the American swing scene. It would, of course, grow right back… but a guy had to keep trying.

He'd met some nice people along the way. And left some.

He hoped that Hal Brognola wouldn't feel too badly over his failure, and somehow, Bolan knew that he would not.

He'd gained a new insight into the lesser men behind the guns. Lesser? No. Bolan would never forget little Max Keno.

As far as the Taliferi… he hoped they'd found enough blood to wash their hands with… but he did not particularly care one way or the other. It was their vendetta not his. He would not go so far as to scratch them out of his combat book… he'd thought them dead before and been proven wrong.

Tommy Anders, the hottest ethnologist in the land, now there was a guy. Bolan hoped that he would not retire from the soul biz of America.

As for the blonde… Bolan was feeling a bit upset over that item. All tht while she'd been… What? Where did she fit? Fed? Was she working with Lyons? Was Anders part of tht game?

He sighed over the memory of her, knowing that she was a gal who could can for herself… but ht had to wonder what she was really like. She's been playing a role. Probably as much a role as Bolan's Vinton routine. Would they cross trails again?