The Caddy drifted with its four tires smoking, but the wheelman missed the pileup by a yard or two and came to rest upon the shoulder of the road, his engine stalling. A single figure staggered from the raging bonfire in the middle of the highway. He was wrapped in flames, a lurching, screaming scarecrow. The Executioner was sighting for a mercy round when a secondary blast rolled out and knocked the figure sprawling, snuffing out the final spark of life.

Doors were springing open on the second Caddy, shaken gunners piling out with weapons in hand but aiming nowhere as they took in the holocaust at center stage. One or two of them were shielding their eyes from the heat, none looking out for Bolan as he drew down on them, with the silver AutoMag from less than thirty yards away.

His first round took a shotgun rider in the chest, 240 grains of pitiless extinction ripping through his heart and lungs and blowing him away. His flaccid form rebounded off the fender of the Caddy, touching down beside a startled comrade.

Number two had heard the shot, had long enough to gauge its source and pivot on his heels in that direction before Bolan stroked the hand cannon's trigger once again, dispatching death across the intervening no-man's-land. The gunner's head snapped back and kept on going, portions of it outward bound and lost in darkness. The guy was dead before he knew it, and the Executioner was tracking on to other targets long before the gunner hit the ground. Three.

Four.

Five.

They toppled like silhouettes in an amusement arcade's shooting gallery, the last one getting off a single shot that never came within a hundred yards of Bolan.