Free The Avenger 4 - The Devil’s Horns by Kenneth Robeson

wheel effortlessly.
    “Did you know there might be trouble with this job? The racket’s after us.”
    “So I heard,” said Smitty.
    “You don’t seem very excited about it,” grinned the young fellow beside him.
    “I’m a peaceable guy,” said Smitty. “But if anybody wants trouble—” He hunched vast shoulders.
    “I’ll bet you’re good in a fight,” said the other man admiringly. “Look out—”
    A small sedan had shot heedlessly from a side street. Smitty twirled the truck’s massive wheels as if they’d been a flivver’s. But still he couldn’t avoid the result of the sedan’s rash move. There was a clump as the right end of the truck’s bumper caught the left front fender of the little sedan.
    “This is it,” Smitty heard himself say aloud.
    The foreman had been worried about a dark detour far out in the country. But the racketeers’ plan hadn’t envisaged a country road. They’d laid their trap right in town.
    Smitty reached for a gun.
    “No, you don’t,” came a voice. And a gun muzzle jammed into his side.
    The voice was the voice of the red-headed helper, and the gun was in his hand. Smitty turned toward him.
    The youngster’s eyes were feverish, frightened, but resolute. His hand, Smitty could feel, was shaking a little. A shaking finger on a trigger is a deadly thing.
    “So you’re in with the gang,” Smitty said.
    “That’s right,” said the youngster, trying to bluster even while his voice trembled.
    “Pretty new at it, aren’t you?” said Smitty calmly.
    “Well, what the hell. You have to start sometime. I’m not going to drive a truck at forty per all my life.”
    Two men came out of the sedan, with tommy guns. From a dark corner nearby, came four more men, also armed. They swarmed up the cab.
    “Out, you two!” one snarled, poking his gun toward the giant.
    “I’ve got him covered, Tony,” quavered the redhead.
    “Oh, hello kid,” said Tony. “You get out, too. Pete, take the truck and go fast and far.”
    Smitty got out, with a flock of guns on him. It was all right. He’d had orders to get himself captured. The Avenger had wanted him to, so that he could see who was in this racket crowd, and perhaps learn a bit about the higher-ups. The giant was fast and agile. He could have taken that gun from the shaking youngster beside him in the cab if he’d wanted to. He might even have beaten the situation here, with incentive enough.
    The redhead got out, too. One of the men got into the truck, jammed it clear of the half-wrecked little sedan. It thundered down the street, veering off into darker streets at the next corner.
    And the men with Smitty and the red-headed kid just waited. That was funny. Smitty couldn’t figure that one out.
    “Where the hell are they?” snarled the one the kid had called Tony. Then he shot into the air.
    From down the street came the answering wail of a police-car siren, as it rushed to investigate.
    “Fade—Manks, Bert and Sling.”
    Three of the five racketeers went back to the dark corner from which they had emerged. There was the purr of a motor, as they got away from there. Tony, and another, continued to hold guns on Smitty.
    Covering him that way, Tony reached with his left hand into a side pocket and got out an automatic.
    “Tony,” gulped the red-headed tyro in crime, “the cops! Don’t you think we ought to lam?”
    “Nope,” said Tony. “That ain’t the plan.”
    And he shot the kid through the heart with the automatic in his left hand.
    It was the most barbarous, coldblooded, unexpected thing that could be imagined. Tony and his pal stared down at the dead youngster, so swiftly trapped in the crime net he had helped to fashion. Smitty stared, too, then roared.
    “Why, you—”
    The automatic was wrenched from Tony’s hand, and nestled in Smitty’s huge one. Smitty snapped the trigger at Tony.
    And nothing happened.
    “Thanks,” said Tony. “Nice prints on that gat, now.”
    Then the cop car came