Authors: Craig Sargent
Once upright, the Harley shot forward like a rocket. He had gone perhaps a third of the distance—two blocks—toward April when
they opened up.
Opened up
was hardly the term for it, as instantaneously, all the stores on both sides of the mall erupted with automatic and semiautomatic
gunfire. They had taken the girls out but left the windows, not wanting to give away the fact that anything was amiss. Shards
of glass ripped toward Stone and Excaliber, peppering parts of them with tiny fragments of glass, and instantly they began
to bleed. Stone swiveled the machine gun back and forth on the bike. This time he kept his finger on the trigger. Finger-sized
slugs shot out of the smoking muzzle and migrated into the stores. Blood-soaked bodies came flying out of them, bouncing from
wall to wall and then spitting right out in the street, corpses ready to return to the dirt.
Stone swiveled the machine gun constantly so the scythe of firepower reached into every store, ripping into the darkness from
which scores of little flames kept erupting as they fired back. The gauntlet was almost overwhelming, and as he felt slugs
whizzing through the air all around him, Stone knew that if he had the nine lives of cat—as someone had once suggested—he
was about to use up about fifty of them.
But there was no turning back. Not with the only damn person he ever cared about on the whole fucking planet being kept prisoner
inside a piece of Plexiglas. Stone got to within a block of the plastic jail cell when the level of fire got absolutely scalding.
He wheeled into a doorway, emptying a blast inside the place and hearing a few satisfying screams from the darkness, then
skidded around on one foot, bringing the bike to a squealing and dusty stop. The pitbull let out a groan of dismay, but it
was so dizzy from the ride that it couldn’t really muster up more than a low howl. Stone ripped out his Redhawk with the telescopic
sight and ran to the shattered window frame, holding the big Magnum in his right hand and his Uzi autopistol in the other.
If death was stalking him, it was going to have to take a bellyful of bullets in the process.
Stone barely reached the smashed frame when he saw two figures drawing a bead on him from across the street. He swung the
Uzi up and pulled the trigger hard, turning the bucking auto from side to side fast. Two muscle-bound torpedoes, their bodies
jerking around like someone had just put gerbils up their asses, blood pouring from numerous holes in their faces and chests,
came exploding out of the window frame and into the walkway. They both seemed to walk forward a few steps, as if anxious to
meet Martin Stone, the man who had just killed them. Then they both collapsed into the glass-strewn cement, falling atop each
other like two drunken buddies who had just painted the town—and themselves—red.
Stone carefully tilted his head around the side of the blasted window and saw April—and his eyes widened in horror. They were
undoing the lock, opening the door, taking her away. They weren’t even going to let him get to the bait. He was a fool for
thinking he had even the slimmest chance. Still, it wasn’t over yet. He leaned around quickly, as slugs danced by him, looking
for a fleshy partner. Stone lifted the big Ruger and stared through the floating red-dot sight atop it. He got the thugs back
in the center of the dot just as the Mafia gunner was pulling April down onto the stone corridor. Stone pulled the trigger
hard, and the torpedo turned and caught the slime in the right shoulder. The sheer force of the big .44 slug ripped into the
abductor, and the man flew around like a top and slammed into the wall behind him.
But, lest Stone begin to feel hope, another one of the late Scalzanni’s crew appeared from nowhere and grabbed April, who
was starting to fall forward, not even able to stand up on her own, as drugged out as she was. Throwing her right over his
shoulder, the mafioso ascended a ladder that led to the roof of a store. Stone kept his finger on the trigger of the Redhawk,
following the bastard every step of the way, but there just wasn’t a chance. A shot that would take him would just as likely
kill or severly injure April. Bullets zeroed in on Stone as snipers in buildings up and down the mall were finding his range,
but he kept watching, praying for a clear shot.
Suddenly things got even worse. For as the torpedo reached the roof and climbed out, a chopper appeared out of the dark, smoky
mists that stroked the mall from every side. Before Stone’s horrified eyes, the helicopter darted down onto the concrete roof.
The mafioso threw his captive female roughly into the small cockpit, which was just big enough for two, then jumped in behind
her, picking her up again and putting her on his knee. Stone could see him gesticulating wildly at the pilot, who took off
frantically and with such speed that the chopper’s spinning blade nearly collided with another three-story-high roof. Then
he seemed to regain control and the craft beelined north—out of the burning city. Before Martin Stone could do a fucking thing
about it, his sister was into the closing darkness, as if in the talons of a hawk heading off with its prey to some dank and
foul nest.
“Fucking bastards,” Stone screamed, knowing as he did so that his words were as useless as bullets in reaching the chopper.
The storm of return fire was getting absolutely searing, reaching for him and drawing closer by the second. Stone pulled back
inside, into the glass- and blood-splattered darkness, and jumped onto the Harley. The pitbull was attached to the seat like
a piece of wallpaper to a wall, his head buried between his front paws, as if he just couldn’t bear the sight of the carnage
unfolding around him.
“Tough guy, huh?” Stone snorted as he jumped onto the seat in a flying leap. “Well, hang on, ’cause we’re going to the rodeo.”
The dog would have howled back some sort of protest, but it didn’t want to move its head even one inch into harm’s way and
so only was able to make a gurgling sort of sound from between its trembling paws. Stone leaned down far forward on the bike
and pulled back hard on the throttle. The huge Electraglide shot forward like a stallion leaving the gate. It slammed through
what had been the door frame of the place and skidded out into the firefight that was still blazing.
Without slowing, Stone curved the bike across the street and then straightened out, heading quickly back to the other side
again, like a sailboat tacking back and forth. He shot up the block toward the Plexiglas cage where April had recently resided
as shots pinged along the walls and concrete floors trying desperately to find some nice soft part of him.
Then Stone saw the bastard he had winged lying there, his eyes still open, breathing hard. He headed toward the man, who was
half lying behind a concrete trough. Stone brought the Harley to a skidding stop, the tires coming to rest only a foot or
so from the hit man, who, even in his pain, winced as he thought for a second that Stone was going to run him over.
“Where?” Stone screamed out, his right boot digging into the big stomach of the Mafia torpedo. “Where the fuck did they take
her?” He lifted the Redhawk and slowly aimed it between the man’s eyes. “You might actually live, asshole, though you won’t
look too pretty—if I
don’t
kill you.” He lowered the pistol to the slime’s face until the wide black muzzle was about an inch from the tip of the bleeding
nose. “Now tell me—where did they take her?”
“Sure—I’ll—I’ll tell you.” The torpedo smirked. “Don’t mean nothing to me. “To Alamosa. It was Vindigi’s idea. He said he
knew who would want the bitch. I don’t know who—I swear. Alamosa—that’s where. Alamosa…” Slugs were pouring down now, and
Stone felt one shoot into the leather seat just between him and the dog. The animal let out a sound like a fingernail scraping
along a chalkboard but didn’t move an inch from its ostrichlike position.
“Now let me live! You promised, man, you,” the hit man pleaded, his dry, thick lips sliding over each other in fear.
“I lied,” Martin Stone said coldly, not feeling very generous today. He pulled the trigger and turned his head as the whole
center of the man’s face turned into some sort of Picasso painting. Then the corpse toppled over and would now have to make
its pleas to the keeper of the thick gates of heaven.
Stone shot around and pulled back hard on the accelerator. The bike sat up in a wheelie for several seconds, giving a good
target to the snipers a block or so behind him. A slug tore into the fatty part of his leg before the bike came down again,
and he grunted with pain. This was crazy. He’d be ready for the strainer in a few more seconds. He saw a concrete-walled store
to the left and suddenly veered toward it, firing a scissor of slugs back and forth, twice, right into it. Without stopping
to give a business card, he drove the bike straight through the door, which fractured off its frame and flew off. He came
to a skidding stop inside, ripping his eyes around to see if there was danger.
But the only danger was in slipping in the blood of the dead would-be assassin, his double-breasted suit riddled with smoking
holes through which rivulets of red were running. Stone glanced behind him to make sure the pitbull wasn’t going to run off
chasing rats or something, but the animal was clutched solidly around the seat, its eyes shut as tight as bear traps. A wall
of fire began reaching for the store he was in, and slugs zipped into the walls, richocheting off so that in seconds the large
concrete-walled room was filled with ringing, whistling lead bugs just looking for a place to land.
His eyes caught a doorway in the back, a curtain hung over it. “Beggars can’t be fucking choosers,” Stone mumbled to himself
as he twisted the handle of the Harley and it rocketed forward, straight into the curtain. For all he knew, there was a brick
wall on the other side. Well, he was about to find out the experimental way. Stone involuntarily closed his eyes as the bike
hit the black cloth drape. But when he opened them a split second later, they were in the back of another store that must
have stood in the next corridor over. There were stacks of knives and blackjacks all over the place, but Stone just wheeled
the Harley through the long room, knocking it all over and sending tables flying. The metal bull in a china shop whinnied
and snorted like a thing alive, wreaking havoc throughout the place.
As Stone came roaring by, men jumped as if they were diving off the high board. To each side he saw the front door just ten
yards ahead and aimed for it when out of the corner of his eye he saw the proprietor of the store, a fat, balding sludge of
humanity, rise up from behind the cash register trying to sight Stone up in his 12-gauge double-barrel. Stone knew instantly
that he didn’t have time to swivel the .50-caliber around. Besides, the bastard was at the wrong angle; the gun would never
reach him. Acting with lightning-quick reflexes, he ripped the bike to the right at the same second he twisted the throttle.
The Harley moved so fast, it outran the speed of the fat man’s finger. The 1200-cc hit a stack of blankets piled up in front
of the counter and went up and off of them like a ramp. The front wheel of the bike slammed into the top part of the storekeeper’s
face and chest, cracking it all to pieces, slamming the skull into two almost symmetrical pieces, both of which fell off to
the sides, the entire brain flopping down and onto the floor like an egg from out of its shell or some hideous jellyfish from
the very bottom of the sea, trying to find a home.
The Harley rocketed over the corpse and straight into the front window where the front tire slammed through the display of
cardboard figures—one guy taking another guy out with a blackjack. Then he was into the glass, which sprayed out as if they’d
just gone through a waterfall of exploding chandeliers. When he dared open his eyes again after a few seconds to make sure
none of the glass got in them, Stone saw that he had come completely through the block and was now on a new, undamaged mall
corridor. And not a guard was anywhere.
This one was filled with women, naked, drugged out of their young, terrified minds. Stone couldn’t let them stay on the inside—not
with what he had in mind to do. He remembered seeing one of the goons who had just abducted April reaching down to the front
of the Plexiglas booth she had been in.
Stone stopped the bike, jumped off, and searched at the base of the first of a whole long block of the glass cages. He found
what looked like a control box and saw two instructions: Open Window-One, and Master Control—Open All Windows This Block.”
But there were just keyholes beneath the writing. And he didn’t have the fucking keys.
“Shit,” Stone spat in exasperation. What was he going to do, call out for a fucking locksmith? He reached for the .44 and
ripped it out, holding the muzzle about six inches from the “Master” keyhole. He turned his head and fired. The bullet turned
the whole cylinder into a mass of twisted brass, and every prison window down the corridor clicked open. Stone jumped back
on the bike and rode slowly down the street, screaming at the prisoners to get out.
“This whole place is going up. You hear me, girls? Get the hell out of here. If you can move and the one in the next booth
can’t, help her.” A few of them seemed to stir and push out against the windows, which swung open easily. But the rest either
half dozed or looked at Stone like he was a rooster from Mars. He swiveled the .50-caliber so that it was aimed at the top
of their booths and above their heads, and let loose with a burst. He fired down a line nearly a hundred feet long, so glass
and wood and cement went flying all over the place. The explosion made a hell of a lot noise, which had been Stone’s intention.
That seemed to wake most of them up, he noted with satisfaction as he kept on driving slowly. “Move—get the hell out of here.
I’m telling you, this whole place is going to go up in one hour. You hear me? One hour. Get the fuck out of here.” With Stone
screaming and cursing commands, the pitbull joining in with a bloodcurdling howl and an occasional firing of the .50-caliber
machine gun, the girls began stirring a little more. In fact, they positively hauled ass once they saw he was serious. Dozens
of naked women began running like wild animals down all the mall corridors.