A minute later, the hit man frowned. Bolan had not yet emerged from the car.

Fifty yards behind Carboni, Mack Bolan knelt among the cornstalks, clipping grenades onto his hastily donned combat harness and web belt. He adjusted his AutoMag and put the Uzi on its shoulder strap. Then he moved toward the road, the Uzi up and waiting.

Carboni had crawled along the ditch to the Buick. He walked around the Buick, his big gun ready.

Bolan grinned, wishing he could see the expression on the big headhunter’s face. His contacts told him that Vince Carboni, a former hit man from New York, was smart, mean and resourceful, and had spent three months training before starting the manhunt for Mack Bolan.

Vince Carboni was not a man to take lightly.

He would be furious when he found the Buick’s steering wheel tied down and a big rock on the gas pedal.

When the New York gunner came behind the Buick, Bolan slammed a 5-round burst at him from the Uzi. The mafioso ducked, and the rounds pounded into the Buick.

Bolan’s combat-trained mind had evaluated his options and selected one computer-fast — search and destroy. He needed to eliminate this continuing threat.

Bolan darted up to Carboni’s Thunderbird and looked inside. A Weatherby Mark V rifle lay on the back seat. The Executioner removed the weapon and retreated to the rear of the car. Sheltered behind the car, he decided he could not carry the ten-and-one-half-pound weapon. He quickly took the bolt from the big rifle, making it inoperative, threw the rifle into the cornfield and the bolt in the opposite direction.

Then he moved forward. The Mafia hit man was next on the Executioner’s own hit list.

As Bolan ran for the cornfield, three rounds snapped past him. There were from Carboni’s AutoMag, and now he knew how others felt when he fired his own big gun at them and missed. He charged into the corn, moved inward fifty feet, then carefully worked forward. He tried but could not entirely prevent the tops and tassels of the cornstalks from swaying as he moved from one row to another.

Something black flew through the air toward him.

Grenade! He charged twenty feet down the row, then dived into the soft dirt as the bomb exploded. The inch-thick cornstalks absorbed most of the shrapnel. He had seen the bomb just in time.

One fragger was left in the suitcase in the Buick. What else? Only a .45 and some extra ammo for his weapons. So the fragger probably had been one of his own. He would find out shortly. He moved cautiously toward the road without disturbing a single leaf.

Bolan stopped at the edge of the corn, still concealed. He checked each way and at last saw Carboni behind the dead Thunderbird; one of his legs showed under the car. A 6-round burst from Bolan’s Uzi brought a scream from the mob goon. The hit man fired over the car into the cornfield with no idea where his target was.

Bolan was running short of ammo for the Uzi, which he had taken from the guard at Carlo’s castle. He had two more magazines and that was it. He had to conserve his firepower, since the Uzi was the only long gun in the contest.

Carboni crossed the road, then limped to a fence and crawled under it. By the time Bolan saw him he was a quarter mile away, crossing a pasture toward a dry irrigation ditch.

Sprinting, the Executioner moved the Uzi to single shot and sent two rounds into the ditch where Carboni had vanished. He scanned the area. The irrigation ditch ran toward some farm buildings a mile away, set in the middle of what might once have been a mile-square farm. A small stream with lots of brush and small trees growing along it meandered through the pasture and came within two hundred yards of the barn.

Why was Carboni heading for the buildings? Again Bolan’s combat-trained mind checked off the possibilities and came up with the most reasonable. The thug was hurt and looking for shelter, a longer weapon and possibly hostages to use for bargaining.

Bolan did not like any of these motives. He ran toward the barn, hoping to intercept the hit man before he reached it.

The shot came without warning. It lanced through the air less than three feet from Bolan, and he dived and rolled into a slight depression in the pasture. The second shot missed his head by a foot. Carboni had traveled faster than Bolan had anticipated, and was firing from fifty feet ahead of him.

So much for the first tactic. On his toes and elbows, keeping his body just off the ground, Bolan crawled toward the creek and its cover of brush and trees.

He made it to the creek, taking only one more shot from Carboni, who had worked farther down the irrigation ditch. Carboni would beat him to the barn and the other buildings. That could be a real problem.

Bolan waded across the foot-deep creek and began running along the meandering stream toward the barn, still three hundred yards ahead of him.

He was still fifty yards from where the creek came closest to the barn, when he saw Carboni jump out of the ditch and race for the protection of the wooden structure.

Bolan hoped there was no one home. Maybe they were all out in the fields. As if denying his hope, a screen door slammed somewhere.

Bolan worked out a new tactical plan. He would swing around the barn to the house. He ran hard.

Panting after the four hundred yards, he approached the sixteen or twenty fruit trees behind the house, most large enough to give him some protection.

He took no enemy fire.

Again he dashed from one tree to the next, edging closer to the old two-story frame farmhouse. There was no back door. He knelt behind a bushy apple tree closest to the house. From there he walked casually, the Uzi at his side. He hoped no one would glance out the rear windows.

As he reached the house he heard the roar of an AutoMag. A scream followed. He hit the ground, edged to the corner of the house and looked around.

Thirty feet away, Carboni held a woman around the waist and pulled her close to him. In his right hand was the big cannon. The two figures walked forward and out of sight around the front of the house.

Bolan sprinted to the next corner, and saw a man sprawled on the grass by a wooden gate. Bolan knew he was dead. The mobster must be inside the house with the woman. Kids? Probably. The woman looked to be in her thirties.

The Executioner peered in a window on the side of the house. In a large kitchen with a long wooden table, Carboni sat on a bench, his gun pointed at the woman, who was bandaging Carboni’s calf with some cloth. Behind them a baby sat in a high chair, and two children about six and eight sat rigidly on the far side of the table.

Carboni said something to the woman, who went to a refrigerator and brought out cold cuts. The man was not going to move for a while, but maybe he could be faked outside.

Bolan drew the Beretta 93-R and worked around the front of the house, moving below windows until he was four feet from the open screen door. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Carboni!” Bolan called. “This place is surrounded by our SWAT team. Come out with your hands up and you won’t be shot.”

The Executioner heard movement inside the house, then a woman’s light steps running up some stairs. Heavier footsteps came toward the door.

“Damn! Nobody out there. Must have been that bastard Bolan!”

The steps retreated, and the Executioner went to the kitchen window and looked in. The three kids sat where they had been. The woman was gone.

Carboni grabbed the six-year-old and held him against his chest. The big .44 AutoMag muzzle pressed on the boy’s head.

“Farm lady. You come down here in ten seconds or I’m gonna blow this kid of yours right straight to hell!”

“No!” she screamed and came running into the room, a deer rifle still in her hands. She dropped the weapon and held out her arms.