The woman nodded. Tears streamed down her face.

“Just don’t let him hurt my babies!” she whispered.

Bolan took out his .44 AutoMag and put two shots through the hayloft door.

“Give me a minute, then yell to him that I ran into the fields through the apple orchard. He’ll leave. Stay hidden until he’s gone.” She was shivering. He hugged her tightly. “Your kids will be fine. Just do what I told you.”

Bolan put one more round through the hayloft opening, then turned and ran. Just past the house, Carboni fired the big .44 at him but missed. Bolan jogged behind the house and continued. He had to get the maniac away from the children.

He ran to the stream and splashed across, continuing into the brush on the far side, occasionally splashing back across the little creek. He still had his three weapons but was not sure how he could use them out here.

Hearing an unusual noise, he turned and saw a tractor bouncing across the field. It came to a fence and plowed through it, knocking down posts and snapping barbed wire.

Bolan stopped running but stayed hidden in the brush.

Two minutes later he saw that the tractor was being driven by Carboni. Rolling along at ten or twelve miles an hour, it was soon entering Bolan’s range of fire.

“Just a little closer,” Bolan said, urging the killer to swing toward the creek. The Uzi was good for accurate firing at more than 200 yards, but the closer the better, and the target was still 150 yards away. He steadied the Uzi on a small log and sent five rounds toward the bouncing tractor. They slammed into the tractor but missed the driver.

Carboni was moving off the seat as the second spray of 9 mm parabellums slashed toward him. One must have hit him because he fell off the tractor. When it chugged by, he was nowhere to be seen. The tractor kept on going until the engine coughed and died fifty yards down the field.

Bolan fired into the tall grass just to the left of the spot he had last seen Carboni, then rolled to his right on instinct. A .44 round sang through the trees.

That gave the Executioner an idea. He picked a sturdy small tree and climbed fifteen feet high.

Now he could see the flattened grass where Carboni had slithered away. Evidently he had crawled toward a farm road half a mile away. A small depression opened into a little ravine, and Bolan saw that it soon became deep enough to hide Carboni as he ran.

The Executioner climbed down and ran along the high ground, certain he could find a spot somewhere ahead where he could pin down the Mafia hoodlum in the low ground.

There came a scream as of an animal in mortal danger. Bolan ran over a small rise and peered into the gully. Three hundred yards ahead Carboni was lying in the grass, struggling with something on his foot.

The Executioner fired twice toward the hoodlum, not expecting a hit.

Carboni screamed again, tore something off his foot and limped into the brush along the stream in the narrow valley.

A hundred yards farther, he climbed the bank, then disappeared over a ridge, evidently working toward the country road.

Bolan ran, cutting through the ravine to see what had given Carboni trouble.

It was a steel-jawed animal trap, now with blood on its teeth. It could easily have broken Carboni’s ankle. At least it would slow him down.

The Executioner ran up the hill, made certain Carboni was not waiting to ambush him at the top, then went over the ridge along a different route than the Mafia killer had taken.

Limping, Carboni was well down the slope, angling for the road. Down the road about a mile, Bolan could see a pickup truck approaching. Carboni saw it, too, and hurried to get to the road before it passed.

Bolan wished he had brought the Weatherby Mark V instead of the Uzi. With the Mark V he could have picked Carboni off at half a mile.

Bolan ran forward, surprised at the strength and determination of the wounded man in front of him, yet hardly aware of his own injured arm. Carboni ran hard the last hundred yards and stumbled onto the macadam roadway before the pickup arrived. He dropped to his knees and waved.

Billy Olsen saw the man running toward the road and slowed. As the man fell to his knees and waved, the year-old pickup slammed to a stop.

Billy’s wife, Faye, frowned.

“We’re gonna be late, Billy.”

“Man needs help. Got blood on his leg.”

He turned off the engine, stepped out of the rig and went around the front.

“Looks like you could use some help, mister,” he said.

“Sure as hell can,” Carboni said, swinging the big AutoMag around and killing Billy Olsen with one shot through the heart.

Faye screamed and moved to start the pickup. But the keys were in her dead husband’s pocket.

Carboni saw her and laughed.

“Need keys, lady. Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want your rig. Get out.”

He took the keys from the dead man’s right-hand pocket and returned to the pickup. He knew Bolan was around somewhere, but in another thirty seconds it would not matter.

“I said get out of the truck, bitch!” Carboni shouted.

The woman, numb from witnessing the coldblooded murder of her husband, was momentarily frozen in the seat. At Carboni’s command, she leaped from the pickup and ran.

As soon as she was away, four rounds of 9 mm parabellums burst through the windshield; one grazed Carboni’s shoulder. He started the truck, shifted into low and bombed down the road.

Bolan fisted Big Thunder, aimed and fired.

The .44 round is a .44 revolver bullet mated to a cut-down 7.62mm NATO rifle cartridge case. The AutoMag is as close to a rifle as any handgun can be. Ejected from the 6.5-inch barrel at 1,640 feet per second, the round ripped into the pickup’s engine block. It smashed into a piston, ripped the connecting rod away and jammed it into the crankshaft, instantly killing the engine. The pickup wheezed to a stop.

Carboni swore.

As a burst from the Uzi swept into the cab, Carboni slid out the far door and ran for the ditch. His right leg felt as if it was being dipped into fire with every step. His left leg had taken a bullet but did not hurt. He lay in the ditch watching for Bolan. This would be the time! He felt it. He would play dead and let Bolan investigate the pickup — then blow the bastard away and collect the head money. Five million dollars!

He fought off a wave of dizziness and continued to watch the roadway and the pickup.

Five minutes later he was still watching.

A car approached, slowed near the body of Billy Olsen. His widow appeared at the side of the road and flagged it down. She got in and it turned around and raced away.

Carboni knew he had to move. Within minutes the woman would contact the police and the place would soon be swarming with cops.

Move... where? The ditch was too shallow to protect him if he stood, so he crawled away. He saw another farmhouse half a mile away, and recognized it as his best chance. Ahead was a cornfield. Yes! He would run through the corn toward the farm as fast as he could.

He tried to block the pain in his leg and the aches from a dozen bruises and cuts. He was moving, that was the important thing.

To take his mind off the pain of crawling, he concentrated on memories.

He had grown up in a neighborhood in Philly where if you weren’t tough you didn’t survive.

Kicked out of three high schools, he finally went into business for himself instead of finishing his sophomore year. He became a hubcap specialist for garages, which paid him two dollars a hubcap and sold them for six to twenty. For a year he stole hubcaps on order, making as much as a hundred dollars a week.

Then he got busted and spent six weeks in juvenile detention, where he met guys as tough as he was. On the outside again, he and three of his new friends began a small protection racket.