Savannah Swingsaw Read Online Free PDF Page A

you."
    Rodeo held the shank flat in his hand, the way an experienced knife-fighter would. Bolan spread his arms wide, centering his gravity as he backed up slowly.
    From behind him came the creaking of a wheelchair, and Lyle Carrew swung into view, setting the brake on his chair, smiling for the first time since Bolan had met him.
    "This I got to see," he said, rubbing his hands together. Rodeo's toothless pal groped around on the ground, trying to pull himself up. Blindly he grabbed Carrew's wheelchair. "Hey, man," Lyle said, hammering him on top of the head with a fist, knocking him back to the ground, dazed. "Hands off," he said.
    The first cut came from a fake. Rodeo thrust the blade low toward Bolan's stomach, forcing the Executioner to dodge to the left. When he did, Rodeo whipped the shank upward toward Bolan's exposed throat. Bolan pivoted in time, but the steel shank scored, tracing a bloody line across his shoulder. The slash burned a little, but Bolan ignored it. He'd fought guys with knives before.
    Many didn't know how to use them properly. Those who knew what they were doing were another matter.
    Especially when they were that tall.
    The hand with the knife teased at Bolan, flicking out, then pulling back without committing itself. Bolan watched it, saw the tattooed tail of the snake coiled around the wrist, the rattles etched onto the back of the hand.
    "Come on, you guys," Carrew encouraged. "These guards aren't going to play dumb forever."
    Rodeo lunged again, the blade torpedoing at Bolan's heart. Bolan chopped at the wrist, knocking it away. That blow would have broken an ordinary man's wrist. Not Rodeo's. He kept coming, thrusting the knife in quick jabs. Bolan leaped out of the way each time, finally grabbing the wrist and pulling Rodeo closer, snapping his forehead into Rodeo's chin, trying to twist the blade out of Rodeo's hand.
    "Guards!" someone whispered.
    Rodeo and Bolan pushed apart. There was more to fear from the guards than from each other. Inmates had all the time in the world to deal with petty squabbles. But not from solitary confinement. By the time the guards pushed their way through the crowd, Bolan and Rodeo were standing far apart, Bolan helping Reed to his feet, Rodeo nudging his men with his feet.
    "What's going on here!" the first guard demanded. "What happened?"
    "Basketball," Bolan said, "We were playing. Scrambling for the ball. A wild elbow, you know. Accident."
    "No harm, no foul," Rodeo agreed.
    "Search 'em," the first guard ordered, throwing all of them up against the wall. They patted each prisoner down, but there were no weapons. Rodeo's blade had been passed on to a friend who was already on the other side of the yard.
    The guard pulled Rodeo's heavy henchman to his feet, wincing at the pulpy shredded face.
    "Holy! Get this one down to the infirmary."
    "What about me?" Rodeo's other man asked, his toothless mouth a bloody hole.
    "Yeah, you too. Let's go." The first guard hauled them off. But Bolan saw a look pass between the second guard and Rodeo, something like a shrug.
    Rodeo nodded and rubbed his hand over his lumpy bald head, fingering his braided tail. He stared down into Bolan's eyes, and growled, "Soon, Blue. Very soon."

7
    Bolan leaned over his cell's tiny sink and dabbed some wet toilet paper to the cut on his shoulder. Behind him, Lyle Carrew put on reading glasses and jotted notes in his steno pad.
    "Thanks," Bolan said.
    Carrew didn't look up.
    "You talking to me?"
    "Yeah. I said thanks."
    "For what?"
    "For your help out there. Flooring Rodeo's henchman."
    Carrew looked up and laughed.
    "Hell, I wasn't helping you, fish, I was hurting him. Big difference. Bastard touched my chair. I taught him not to."
    "Yeah, well, thanks anyway." Carrew frowned at Bolan. "I don't want you getting the wrong idea, fish. That could be fatal. Nobody around here helps anybody else unless they want something. I don't know what you want from that Reed kid, that's your business. You