"What's this all about?" Bolan asked innocently.
"Whaddya think, fish?"
"Maybe my pardon came from the governor?"
"Yeah," the guard snorted, "I want ya to meet the governor and his staff." He prodded Bolan ahead of him down the dim hallway. The doors on either side began opening. Three rough-looking men with shanks stood sneering at Bolan. And finally at the end of the walkway, Rodeo stepped out, his fists fitted with heavy brass knuckles with sharp one-inch spikes protruding from each knuckle.
9
"Wait outside," Rodeo told the guard, who grinned and left. The door closed behind him with a hollow thud.
Bolan was silent. He eyeballed each man carefully, analyzing from the way they moved what their strengths and weaknesses were. He didn't find many weaknesses.
The three men faced Bolan in the narrow corridor like a wall of malignant flesh, their hard thick bodies tense and bristling. The flat, crudely made blades shone dully in their hands.
Behind them, Rodeo chuckled.
There was no way out. On the other side of the door, their bribed guard was waiting. On this side, three armed bone-crushers and one bald giant with spikes on his knuckles.
Some choice.
"You boys can cut him up some," Rodeo was telling them, "but I want him alive." He hoisted his studded knuckles. "For these. My tenderizers."
Bolan fell into his combat stance, feet apart, weight evenly distributed. The corridor was too narrow for any fancy moves, but if he could get the knife away from one of those guys, he might just have a chance. Slim, but a chance.
The first to step forward was the heavy one with the matted hair on his arms and neck, the one whose face Bolan had ground to guacamole dip earlier that day. The nose was pushed to the left now with blood crusted darkly at each nostril. Raw tracks swirled across his face where the skin had been raked away.
"Easy, Bradley," Rodeo cautioned.
"Watch him." Bradley lumbered forward, his long blade stabbing the air in front of Bolan.
Bolan backed up, keeping a few feet between him and Bradley. He watched the hands, the shank flipping back and forth between them as the man with the raw face tried to catch Bolan by surprise. "Get his nuts," one of the other guys encouraged. The third man nodded, but didn't say anything. He was the one whose teeth Bolan had kicked out. Bolan glanced over his shoulder at the thick glass window in the door. The guard who'd escorted him here had his face pressed against the glass. He was grinning, chewing his gum excitedly. He reminded Bolan of those guys who like to watch dogfights, cheering the dogs on until one has gnawed through the other's throat, leaving his dying body convulsing in the dirt.
"Come on, big man," Bradley said. His eyes looked huge and white set in that pulpy skinless face. His knife tattooed the air in front of Bolan's face.
The Executioner backed up another step, but there was only three feet between his back and the door.
He didn't want to get cornered here, so he had to make his move. Soon. He feinted to the left, then kicked up his right foot, trying to catch Bradley's knife hand. But this time the heavy man was ready. He pivoted away from Bolan's foot and slashed at it with his shank. The knife caught Bolan low on the shin, slicing through his heavy pants and socks, plowing open a furrow of skin all the way to the bone. Bolan felt the blade's bite, the blood soaking into his sock.
Bradley's eyes lit up when he realized he drew blood. Bolan could swear the man began to drool as he grew even hungrier for more. He plunged forward, a little too anxiously, his shank flicking upward toward Bolan's face. The Executioner yanked himself back just as the blade hissed by his right eye. Then he ducked under the knife, knocked Bradley's arm into the wall and drove his fist straight into the fat man's throat. Bradley managed to tuck his chin down enough to deflect much of the punch's power, but still he staggered back from the blow, flopping against the door of one of the solitary confinement cells.
He clutched at his throat with one hand, rasping while his other hand swung his knife at Bolan like a scythe. He moved toward Bolan on unsteady legs, his knife arcing back and forth, sizzling through the humid air. Bolan was backing up again. The shank nipped closer and closer to his stomach. Behind him, the door was only two feet away, the guard grinning through the glass. Bolan looked up from the probing knife into Bradley's savaged face. The scab tracks made him look even wilder, almost deranged. C'mon, Bolan thought, this isn't where it all ends. Not yet. Not here. Too much to do. For Hal, for April. For himself. The Executioner shrugged off the defeatist thoughts. He parried a quick thrust from Bradley and decided he'd played the guy's game long enough.
With no weapon and no place to run, he took a giant step back, his shoulders bumping into the door, then slid under the chopping blade, knocking Bradley's thick legs out from under him. The knifer toppled over and Bolan was on him like flames on gasoline. He twisted the shank out of the dazed man's hand, lifted the blade over his head with both hands and plunged it into Bradley's chest, puncturing the heart. Blood sprayed up over his hands and along his forearms. The struggling body went flaccid beneath him and he yanked the bloody knife out and faced Rodeo and his two men.
They stood unmoving.
Bolan glanced over his shoulder and saw the guard was no longer peering in the window. Had he gone to get help? No time to worry about that now. Bolan still had three armed men to face, and they weren't going to make the mistake of coming at him one at a time.
The door behind him burst open and Lyle Carrew sat there in his wheelchair, shaking his head at what he saw. "A party and no one invited me?" He rolled through the door, his wheels running over the hands of the unconscious guard.
"Stay out of this, Carrew," Rodeo said. "Ain't none of your business."
"I don't know about that, man. This fella stole my shank, then lets your bozo guard take it away from him. Guy like that needs a lesson."
Rodeo smiled, fingered his braided hair. "Just what he's about to get. You welcome to join in, get a piece."
Carrew tapped his shank against his palm, thinking.
"Nah, I guess not. Guess I'll just take him back to the cell and handle it my way."
"No way," the toothless henchman growled.
"Boone's right, Carrew. You best get your ass the hell out of here. Otherwise you're buying his trouble. That what you want?"
"Nope. It surely isn't." He backed up into the doorway, his wheelchair holding the door open, but blocking any exit. He dropped his shank into his lap, then began tugging at the armrest of his chair. It popped free. "I told this big dumb guy that he was on his own. That you'd be eating his liver for dinner."
"What're you doing?" Rodeo asked, stepping closer.
"I warned him. Didn't I warn you, Blue?"
"You warned me," Bolan said.
Carrew nodded. "See? I warned him." He pulled a piece of the aluminum tubing free from the chair. It was about a foot long. Then he began dismantling some of the spokes from the large wheel of his chair. They popped right out. "Me, I'm only in for a few days, maybe a few weeks, depending on how pissed that judge is that I yelled at. Contempt of court, no big deal. Am I right?"
"He's right," Bolan said to Rodeo.
Carrew twisted the spokes into six-inch lengths.
They looked to Bolan as if they'd been specially made that way, to break into those sections. Carrew leaned over the side of his chair and pried the unconscious guard's mouth open, probing inside with his fingers, then smiled when he found what he was looking for. The wad of chewing gum.
"What the hell you doing?" Rodeo snarled.
"Minding my own business, man. The only difference is...." He tore a hunk of gum from the wad, rolled it into a ball between his thumb and fingers, then stuck it on the end of one of the wire spokes. He inserted the spoke into the cylinder, put the tube to his mouth and pointed it at toothless Boone.