His veteran's sixth sense saved him again. The gun was equipped with a sound suppressor, and there was a flash hider over the muzzle. But something indefinable in the gloom a darker patch of shadow that moved, a tiny scrape of metal, a rolled-down auto window that snared a gleam of light from a distant street lamp warned him of danger. He shoved the doorman violently down the steps and dropped to the sidewalk in a single fluid motion.

The shut of the gun was barely audible. The metal-jacketed death bringer spanged off the restaurant-area railings behind Bolan's head and screeched into the sky. The second shot flattened itself against the brickwork at the top of the steps, at the height Bolan's chest would have been an instant before.

Then a bus rumbled down the street with a string of cars behind it. A truck laden with barrels passed in the other direction. By the time the street was clear again, Bolan was facedown along the slant of the stairway, elbows resting on the sidewalk, the Beretta cradled in his two hands.

He held his breath, scanning the line of parked cars on the far side of the roadway. He figured the shots came from one of them. Or maybe from a marksman standing between two of the vehicles.

Or even someone hidden in a doorway on the opposite sidewalk.

Bolan's ice-chip eyes raked the target area.

"What the hell's going on?" the doorman's angry voice protested from below. "You can't..."

"Crazy fool with a gun," the Executioner whispered. "Keep quiet and stay where you are."

"You're the one's that's crazy! Let me call the pal..."

"No! Let me handle it." Bolan's voice was not much louder than a whisper, but it was enough to pinpoint his position for the hidden gunman. The silenced weapon coughed three more times. Bolan ducked below the top step as the slugs gouged chips from the flagstones paving the sidewalk.