"Mr. Parelli, they..."
He skidded to a stop as he saw the corpses.
The silenced Ingram came up and stuttered again, drilling the Mafia punk who was trying to withdraw. Three 9 mm slugs all but took the guy's head off his shoulders, pitching the standing corpse back out through the door.
Bolan grabbed Lana's hand and they ran out of there, vaulting over this latest kill without slowing.
Outside was an inferno.
All of the tractor trailer trucks were ablaze, the flames roaring high into the night sky, the heat tremendous.
Ignited gasoline had been blown out from the trucks in a circle as the fuel tanks exploded, the resulting fire reminding Bolan of a napalm raid in Vietnam as he and the woman hustled away from the office.
The flames had reached the maintenance garage, the front wall of which was already burning, but the building that housed the children was untouched, the tractor trailer rig still in place at the loading dock.
Men ran everywhere, machine guns ready, looking for the ones responsible for this destruction. Several of them staggered around like human torches, having been drenched by the burning gasoline when the trucks blew.
The Executioner and Lana Garner rushed toward the warehouse, losing themselves around the periphery of the wild confusion for nearly the whole distance, before one of the scurrying guards spotted them.
"There they are!"
Those were his last words. Even as the man swiveled his weapon toward the two running figures, Bolan snapped a burst at him with the reloaded Ingram. The man pitched backward, a death reflex triggering his weapon uselessly into the air.
A shotgun boomed up ahead and Bolan saw one hood standing on the loading dock next to the open doors of the truck. The thug started firing at Bolan and his companion but the guy's aim was thrown way off by his excitement at spotting them.
Lana assumed a crouched shooting stance. She triggered the Beretta in three-shot mode and the report was barely audible beneath the hellfire raging all around them.
The shotgunner jackknifed forward as the slugs punched into his guts, and he free-fell from the loading dock and did not move.
Bolan and the woman reached the dock, their shifting position still not pinpointed by the majority of hoods who were looking around wildly, searching for targets. Shouts punctuated the cacophony of terror, carnage and confusion that reigned in the compound.
Bolan left the ground in a leap, vaulting to the loading dock without bothering with the steps at the side. His momentum carried him forward, and he fell, the maneuver saving his life as an automatic pistol sprayed bullets through the air where he had been a split second before.
His silenced Ingram spit dirty orange flame, and ejected shell casings glinted in the conflagration. The Executioner returned fire from the ground and his slug sent a geyser of red out the guy's back.
Bolan propelled himself sideways as more rounds chewed into the concrete floor to his right.
Lana appeared at the top of the steps. She knelt and opened fire on the two men who had been concentrating their fire on Bolan.
The pair of hardguys had no time to swing their weapons toward her; they had expected the Executioner to be on his own, and the 9 mm bullets from the lady's Beretta sent both hoods toppling over each other. One of the men was only wounded. He started screaming.
Bolan finished the job with a tight burst from the Ingram and the screaming stopped. He fed his smoking weapon a fresh magazine.
Lana came over to join him.
For a moment, the man and woman stood back to back, each scanning for human targets and finding none.
Bolan saw two guys running toward the loading dock from the direction of the burning rigs. He triggered a burst that sent both hoods into tumbling falls from which they did not rise.
Then he heard the children crying.
Lana heard it, too. She lowered the Beretta and turned toward the truck.
The children were all inside, huddled as far forward as they could get, away from the sounds of hell.
Some of the kids were calm, almost too calm; many of the others were crying, shivering, some were screaming pitifully.
Lana ran into the truck, her steps echoing hollowly in the metal confines of the trailer.
Some of the children cringed away from her, but she fell to her knees and threw her arms around as many of them as she could reach, doing her best to bring some order and adult reassurance.
"It's all right, kids," she told them in a choked voice, tears running down her face. "It's okay now."
Bolan stood at the rear of the truck, the Ingram ready, waiting for the next wave of violence to come at them. He felt eyes watching him and glanced over.
One of the kids, a little boy no more than six or seven, was staring up at him, seeing a tall, grim-faced giant in black, weapon ready, features grimy from powder smoke. Bolan tossed a wink at him and the little boy's face broke into the widest gap-toothed smile Bolan had ever seen.
A bullet slapped past Bolan's head and made him spin around. The Ingram chattered and two more of the enemy were punched back down the steps before they could make it halfway up.
Lana started to stand and join Bolan.
"Stay there!" Bolan rapped, motioning her back. "Stay with the kids. Are they all there?"
Lana looked around and got several nods in answer to the question.
"I think so!" she breathed.
Bolan loosed the Ingram, returning it beneath his right arm. Then he drew Big Thunder.
"Everyone hug the floor and stay toward the front," he instructed.
Lana's eyes widened as she realized what he was going to do.
They had to get out of there. The truck's metal trailer was good cover, but the heat from the fires was intensifying and it wouldn't be long before the gas tank of the vehicle exploded. It made sense to take the kids and the truck out together.
Bolan leaped down from the dock and ran toward the front of the tractor trailer truck.
The heat from the flames, together with the diminishing ranks and the lack of enthusiasm of the Mafia soldiers now that their boss was dead, had caused the remaining force to withdraw toward the fence surrounding the trucking company. But now they spotted Bolan and opened fire.
Projectiles ricocheted harmlessly from the cab and body of the truck.
A burst of autofire caught the windshield and shattered it into myriad cubes, the broken glass covering the interior of the cab.
The driver's door was open.
Bolan stretched his arm and gripped the window, hoisting himself up behind the steering wheel, feeling the door shiver under his hand as a bullet thudded into the metal.
The truck's engine was still idling.
Bolan booted the clutch and the gas together and upshifted the big rig away from the loading dock with a tremendous surge of horsepower.
He hauled the wheel around, steadily increasing his speed. The roar of the diesel engine filled the cab, and cold wind whipped through the blown-out windshield as Bolan put the pedal to the metal and pointed the truck's radiator toward the closed mesh gates in the front fence.
Several of the dispersing Parelli hardforce were gathered in front of the gates where they had been about to withdraw.
When they saw the truck barreling at them, some of the men scattered and two of the dumber ones held their ground and opened fire, pouring lead at the oncoming truck.
Bullets whistled all around Bolan and he hoped none of them found their way through to the back of the truck where Lana and the kids huddled.
He steered with his left hand and unlimbered Big Thunder with his right. He opened fire through the blown-away windshield, the AutoMag thundering as he sent high-caliber fire toward the gunners who tried to dive aside at the last second.
They were not fast enough, and the big semitrailer truck slammed into them, their screams lost to Bolan beneath the truck's engine roar and the sounds of tearing metal as the truck smashed through the front gates.