Free MacK Bolan No. 62: Day of Mourning by Don Pendleton Page B

a smoking patch of rubber on the tarmac.
    Gridell raised his .38 and assumed a shooting stance as best he could. Pain knifed through him as he triggered three shots after the receding car. The reports from his pistol thundered in his ears as he realized his shots were going wild.
    The agent's own car was out of range.
    The CIA man held his fire.
    All he could do was helplessly watch the taillights of the Ford disappear into the distance.
    The echo of gunfire faded from suburbia.
    Residents got braver. They clustered along the tree-lined street that had so suddenly become a hell-ground. Curious chatter filled the air.
    Gridell lowered his pistol.
    He turned, wearily, painfully, forcing himself to limp back to the nearest house.
    Six men dead, including a partner; a kid who never had the chance to prove himself.
    A stolen unmarked car.
    And a wild card.
    John Phoenix.

11
    Bolan caught up with the van on Rhode Island Avenue. It was heading southwest, back across the state line into D.C., retracing the route that had led the parade of death into Brentwood.
    The Executioner held his tracking position as far back as possible.
    Traffic along the main artery was even sparser than before, and Bolan realized the men in the van were not trying very hard to evade him, heavy traffic or light. Unless, of course, they were luring him into a trap.
    John Phoenix intended to trail these rats back to their hole.
    The Executioner would blow hell out of whatever rat hole the van led him to.
    The trail was heading back to the sprawling ghetto.
    He followed the van off the main avenues, away from the bright lights, to a city block of vacant tenements that loomed like monoliths against the cloudy night sky, a city block of condemned renewal.
    Bolan watched the customized vehicle turn into a street flanked by deserted tenements and another block that had already met the demolition crew's iron ball.
    It was a desolate scene in the middle of the city. The sounds of midnight D.C. were muffled, distant; it could have been a universe away.
    The driver doused his headlights as the van came to a stop in front of an apartment building. Car doors opened. Bolan guided his own vehicle into a turn, out of sight, before the occupants of the van could turn fully around on their way into the nearest tenement.
    They disappeared inside.
    Bolan unleathered the AutoMag and padded after the two men.
    He paused, flattening himself against a wall at the open entranceway to the condemned building. He held up the stainless-steel .44, ready for anything. Ready to kill. He eased into the tomblike shell that had once housed life but now only reeked of dry rot and decay.
    He heard faint voices coming from down a dark corridor. The voices were muffled by walls.
    Bolan kept his back pressed to the grimy wall of the corridor. He moved slowly, being careful to step only where the floor met the baseboard of the wall, avoiding any loose floorboards that could cause a warning squeak in a building this old.
    He followed the sound of the conversation to a room where the door had been taken off the hinges. A rectangle of dull grayish light fell upon the scuffed floor of the corridor.
    Bolan made it to that entrance in a half dozen soundless strides.
    He stood just out of view of whoever was talking inside.
    He listened.
    "The bastard shot my fucking ear clean off!" a voice whined in agony.
    Another male voice said, "You bleedin' like a stuck pig, Jimmy Lee."
    "You made your report. Have him patched up, Sam," said a third voice.
    "Uh, what about you and, uh, the lady here?" the second person asked.
    "John Phoenix is dead, ain't he?" growled Boss Voice. "I plan to stay right here and keep on doing what I've been doing. Ain't nothing to worry about."
    Bolan had heard enough. He stepped into the room.
    Three black guys.
    The driver, and a guy who held his ear and looked like all his blood was draining out of the wound where Bolan had shot him.
    They were talking to a lithe black dude who