The hot breath of the deathbringer fanned his cheek as he fell but Bolan was untouched.

He shoulder-rolled on the asphalt and came up crouching beside the BMW’s front wheel. His Beretta 93-R was already out of its underarm rig and seeking a target.

Bolan peered beneath the vehicle and saw the killer’s feet skating around the front of the car. The warrior unleashed a 3-round burst, and then another, the blasts deafening in the confined space beneath the hot engine.

There was a scream of pain and the thump of a falling body as one of the 9 mm slugs shattered an ankle.

But the gunman had thrown himself down behind the raised concrete platform on which the pumps stood... and now there was a second voice shouting, and more footsteps pounding toward the BMW from the refreshment counter.

Bolan eased himself away from the wheel, then ran, crouching, for the next row of pumps. He dived for cover once more as the newcomer opened fire. Cement chips stung the Executioner’s face. There was a tinkle of falling glass from the pump’s savaged dials. And now cold, aromatic liquid gurgled across the back of his hand: gasoline was splashing from the broken viewer at the top of the hose.

The second man was holding a compact submachine gun — Bolan guessed it was a mini-Uzi — strafing the pump area with hot lead as he approached.

There were ten rows of pumps ranked beneath the station canopy, in staggered formation to accommodate heavy vacation traffic. Bolan’s BMW was parked in the fourth line; the Executioner himself was crouched behind the fifth. He emptied the magazine of the auto-loader and ran for the sixth, scrambling between pumps and over the platform. If he was lucky, maybe he could hold them off until the next customer drove in for gas.