the near window and let daylight into the killer's skull before he could free his Police Special from its shoulder holster.
The wounded assassin was quickly sucked under. His screaming face gurgled beneath the heaving slime; the last corner of the Shogun's roof squelched out of sight.
Bolan stood and went to examine the bodies.
Zero.
Negative as the corpses in the hotel room in Reykjavik gray coveralls with no labels, no identifying marks; no papers, no documents, not even a wallet. The one undamaged face was neither Oriental, middle eastern nor Mediterranean in type. Like the others it could have come from any country in Northern Europe.
The Executioner sighed. He reloaded the AutoMag, climbed into the G-Wagen and fired the engine. He drove back toward the wrecked Audi, stopping on the way to recover his luggage from behind the stone monument. A hell of a way civilization had come since they were erected, he thought bitterly.
Bolan hoped the other stranded gunmen seeing the red utility return would assume their prey had been eliminated in the firelight and their comrades were on the way back to report success.
But it was too much to hope for.
Maybe they could see that there was only one rider instead of three; maybe there was some signal he should have given. In any event they opened fire while the G-Wagen was still more than one hundred yards away.
That was their first mistake.
The range, again, was too great for the handguns they were using. They must have concentrated all the heavier stuff they had on the spearhead detail in the Merc. That was the second.
Their third mistake, fatal in any warlike encounter, was to underestimate the strength and determination of their opponent.
Bolan made no attempt to slacken speed, take evasive action or duck out of the fight. He drove the heavy Mercedes utility straight at the sedan, keeping an iron grip on the bucking wheel with one hand, pumping lethal .44 boat tails from the AutoMag with the other hand.
The two-man crew from the Audi Quattro was out of the car and behind the hood before the Mercedes made half the distance, spitting death from revolvers he guessed to be Police Specials, like the dead driver's. But the relatively lightweight .38's were no match for the steel-drilling, 240-grain messengers of death thundering from the Executioner's cannon. After a few snap shots the goons dropped from sight, obviously waiting for him to exhaust his magazine.
The Merc's windshield was holed in two places; the laminated glass starred but held. Apart from the last of a rear window there was, so far as Bolan could see, no other damage. He braced himself for the shock, steering the G-Wagen hard at the Audi's rear quarter.
The massive iron grille protecting the utility's front smashed into the sedan's rear wheel and trunk, mangling the bodywork and rupturing the fuel tank. Gasoline splashed out as the Audi tipped over onto its side with a screech of crumpled steel.
Bolan rocked the G-Wagen to a halt and leaped down behind one of the boulders. Big Thunder's magazine was empty but now he held the Beretta 93-R in his hand. Folding down the forward hand grip, he sighted carefully and loosed off a single shot.
The slug was well aimed, striking the rock on which the Audi had foundered at a shallow angle and ricocheting away in a shower of sparks. The inflammable vapor rising from the savaged fuel tank ignited with a dull thump. An instant later the gasoline remaining in the tank exploded, transforming the capsized Audi into a blazing fireball.
From beneath the boiling, black-tinged maelstrom a scarecrow figure erupted, beating ineffectually at its flaming clothes with charred hands.
Bolan fired a mercy round to terminate the hood's agony.
The last man the one the Executioner was determined to keep alive dashed out from behind the holocaust and headed for a rock shelf, firing from the hip as he ran.
Bolan dropped him in midstride with an auto 3-shot aimed low. The hardman's gun