Terrible Tuesday

The Executioner, Book Thirty-four

Don Pendleton

For my mother, who raised me to be a gentle man—and nearly succeeded; For my wife, who took over the terrible task—and led me to the typewriter; For my daughters, who make gentility not only desirable but mandatory; For all, because they remind me that gentle is not soft, and that a man’s treasures are worth protecting.

It is a common prejudice advanced by the intelligentsia of every age that soldiering is a mindless profession undeserving of any moral respect, as though somehow the preservation of the estate of mankind is a minor effort to be left in the hands of fools and brutes.

—Don Pendleton (unpublished memoir)

Away with those that shall affirm learning to surpass arms; for I will say unto them … they know not what they say.

—Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote)

Not all scholars are soldiers. But I have never known a good soldier who is not also a constant scholar.

—Mack Bolan (from his journal)

PROLOGUE

“You’ve done your mile in hell,” Brognola told him. “Now it’s time to end it. More important work awaits you.”

Hal Brognola was the nation’s number one cop in the official war on organized crime. He was also the President’s chief advisor on internal security matters. Curiously enough, he was also among Mack Bolan’s closest friends and supporters—in a covert sense. Bolan was an outlaw. He was wanted by the police in virtually every major city in the country and in various foreign capitals, as well. He was at the top of the FBI’s “most wanted” list. If he were to be tried in each court having jurisdiction over his various “crimes,” he would die of old age long before the final charge could be heard.

Except that Bolan had always known that he would never die of old age, nor would he ever stand that first day at the bar of justice. Because others sought Mack Bolan and his day of “atonement” with much more fervor and determination than all the police agencies combined. He would not survive the first night behind bars—and Bolan had forever known that. Those “others” were the Mafia—and Mack Bolan was their mortal enemy. From the first clash of arms in his unofficial war against the Mafia, Bolan had been fully aware that he had embarked upon that “last mile” of the condemned man. There was no turning back, no reversal of the inexorable law of the jungle to which he had consigned his destiny.

An ancient sage had observed: “A man’s character is his fate.” Bolan understood that. And accepted it. He’d been a deathmaster in Vietnam—“the best of the best,” as described by a former commanding officer—but it seems that the Bolan character had been rather well formed even before the Vietnam experience.

In an early Vietnam journal, the young soldier had written: “I am beginning to understand this enemy. I am in Quai Tho—or what is left of Quai Tho after the VC withdrew. It numbs the mind. Compared to these guys, even napalm seems merciful. If they do this to their own people, what would they do to my people if they had the chance. Yes, I understand them now, I think—but there is no hatred in that understanding. This is the twentieth century, and civilized men will not hate the savages. But we cannot allow them to have their way. I believe I understand why I am here, even if most of the world does not. The savages cannot be allowed to inherit the earth. I try to picture them sweeping into Pittsfield the way they swept Quai Tho. The very image stuns the mind. I am glad we are fighting them here, not there. I don’t claim to be a scholar, but I have studied military history and I know that the story of mankind has forever been a contest between negative and positive—the barbarians versus civilization. And I guess that is why I am here, today, in the ruins of Quai Tho.”

A couple of Vietnam tours later, back home now in Pittsfield, that same warrior would write: “Why defend a front line eight thousand miles away when the real enemy is chewing up everything you love at home?”

The real enemy … this was Mack Bolan’s awakening to the understanding that human savagery knows no geographical boundaries. Mack Bolan had met the Mafia … and now he could understand this enemy, as well.

“A man’s character is his fate,” said Heraclitus.

“I have seen the enemy,” said Mack Bolan, “and I cannot turn away.”

Heroes may be made in heaven, but they are realized only in hell.

Which is, perhaps, why the offer from Washington was so difficult to refuse.

“End it,” urged Brognola, following Bolan’s 32nd devastating campaign against that enemy at home. “You’ve beat them … in every practical sense. There’s nothing left now but the mop-up—and others can handle that as well or better than you. We need you in Washington. You’ll be given full amnesty—a new identity, a new life, a whole new reason for living. Can’t you accept the obvious? You’ve won! You beat that damnable last mile! Your time in hell is finished!”

But Bolan was not so sure. The military mind did not see the situation in precisely the same terms as the police mind.

He had to be sure.

“I’d like to come in, Hal. I want to. I really do. I am sick to death of this whole business. Please tell the President that I am flattered and warmed by his offer. But I have to set my own timetable. I have to do it my own way … in my own time.”

It had something to do with character.

“You’ve just got to do that second mile, eh?” Brognola replied, already resigned to the idea.

“If that’s what you want to call it,” Bolan quietly told his friend. “All I need, though, is six days.”

Remarkable. The guy wanted six days, during which he intended to finally sweep the country clean of the remaining strongest pockets of Mafia infestation.

Impossible!

But Hal Brognola had learned long ago that—for Mack Bolan—the impossible was merely a way of life. Of course, it could also quickly become a way of death—and that was the line which Mack Bolan had trod throughout his Mafia wars.

But the President wanted the guy—wanted him in the worst way, to head up the country’s official but covert response to the threat of world terrorism and militant anarchy. He was prepared to give Bolan everything that had been taken away by the Mafia wars—and it was a second chance, which no sane man would lightly spurn. Brognola had known how difficult it was for Bolan to make his decision. The “six days” thing was a salve to the Bolan conscience. After all he’d been through, the remarkable warrior still felt uncomfortable with any thought that he may be turning away from a commitment. So he had to go that second mile. And Brognola could respect that. So could the President.

“Give him his six days, then,” said the chief. “But, Hal—I want you to make this your personal responsibility—I want to see the man here, alive and well, at the end of that six days. I want you to see to that. He is to have every support possible.”

Which was a hell of a laugh. There was no way to support Mack Bolan—not in any meaningful sense. The guy played his own game, his own way. Direct support was out of the question. It would also be illegal … and terribly dangerous for any government officer. Bolan did not read a victim his rights before he blew him away. So there was really no way to offer direct support as long as the guy was blitzing the domestic theater. The best Brognola could do, anyway, was to pace the edge of the war zone and hope for the best. The first leg of the six day blitz had gone okay. Bolan had taken on the new Midwestern kingpins and walked away with their heads. Literally. And that took care of “Monday’s Mob.”

But now it was Tuesday. And the man from blood was descending on the West Coast for the second leg of his own version of the Six Day War. He would find a vastly different setup here in California. Much of the Mafia power left in the country was now being consolidated in the western branches of the organization—brokered by a shadowy coalition of once minor hoods under the intriguing banner of the California Concept.

No one in the straight world had yet been able to gain any understanding of what was happening in California, these days. All of Brognola’s intelligence wires had been broken at about the same time that the whispers had begun about the California Concept. Not even Bolan had been able to gather any meaningful pre-intelligence from his usually productive sources.

Brognola was feeling very jittery about the whole undertaking.

And all he could do was pace the edges of the war zone and hope for the best. And maybe that would not be enough… not for Tuesday, Terrible Tuesday.

CHAPTER 1

THE START

Both were naked. He was a hairy guy of maybe thirty years, lean and well-muscled. She was hardly more than a kid, with silky brown hair all mussed and tangled, the pretty face frozen now in an expressionless mold while the awakening eyes tried to understand what was happening.

The water bed sloshed and undulated as the guy made an angry lunge for the covers.

Bolan shoved him back with a foot on the bare chest and a cold caution. “Huh uh. Stay.”

The guy growled a menacing, unintelligible response and glanced nervously at the girl.

He was Terry Fortune—nee Tanto Fortinelli—once apprenticed to primo hitman, Jersey Jake Natti—recently rumored to be a freelance contractor available to any with cash enough—mean as a snake and twice as dangerous.

She was, Bolan hoped, one Darlene McCullough—daughter of a wealthy and politically influential Southern California businessman with strong underworld connections.

The girl was giving Bolan a long, appraising look—apparently unruffled by her exposure to his cold gaze—the eyes dwelling and expanding upon the wicked black Beretta with oversized snout that seemed carved into his big fist.

He instructed her: “Go to the bathroom and get your clothes on.”

“Why?” she asked sleepily, still staring at the Beretta.

“Then don’t,” Bolan said. “I just thought you’d rather not share a bed with a dead man.”

The guy shifted his weight uneasily, sending more strong ripples across the surface of the waterbed, worried eyes beginning to search the corners of the room for a solace that was nowhere to be found. “Who sent you?” he inquired in a choked voice.

The girl said, “This isn’t necessary.”

“We can work it out,” the guy quickly added.

“No way,” Bolan said quietly as he sent a nine millimeter hole to sprout and gush between Terry Fortune’s shocked eyes.

The girl let out a horrified yelp and tumbled from the bed. Bits and pieces of Terry’s unfortunate remains had splashed onto her. She was shuddering and gasping, nearly hysterical in her attempts to rid herself of the organic muck.

Bolan picked her up and carried her to the bathroom. He shoved her into the shower and wet her down good, then pulled her out and toweled her off. The eyes were large and rounded but uncomplaining as he fitted her into blue jeans and blouse. She left the Sunset District apartment at his side, without comment and without looking back, and got into his car with a resigned sigh.

As he started the engine and put that place behind them, she slouched into the far corner of the seat and muttered, “You’re a real bastard, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am,” he quietly replied.

Sure. That went without saying. And Tuesday had only just begun.

“McCullough is scared to death of Terry Fortune,” Leo Turrin had reported to Bolan. Turrin was a longtime friend and ally. Thanks in large part to Bolan’s efforts, he was now privy to the secrets of La Commissione, the Mafia ruling council. He was also a federal cop. “He doesn’t want the kid playing around with the guy, but at the same time he’s afraid to make an issue of it. Terry knows damned well that the old man don’t like it, but he’s just that kind of guy—and that may be the only reason he’s interested in the kid. Whatever, it’s a potentially explosive situation out there—so I think it’s as good a place as any for you to make your start.”

“How’d you get onto it,” Bolan had wondered.

“Hell, McCullough sent word. He wants someone to take Terry Fortune off his back—or out of his kid’s crotch.”

“You mean he actually sent a complaint? Through channels?”

“Not through official channels, no. See, it’s very chaotic out there right now. Nobody knows who’s calling the plays.”

“Who’s their man on the commission, now?”

“Willy Nick—but he’s just a figurehead, a mouth. We get the idea they’re pulling out—setting up their own thing—or at least getting ready to. But, see, McCullough is just an amici d’amicu—a friend of the friends. He’s got no standing so he can’t really make much noise. And apparently he couldn’t find anyone in the local shed who was willing to handle his complaint.”

“This complaint came to you through Willy Nick?”

“No. It came via a guy in Jersey. The guy calls me and says, ‘Look, Leo, our friend McCullough has done us a lot of favors out there. Now he’s calling the tab. We owe him. Let’s get that guy off his back.’ That’s about the gist of it.”

“So who’d you send?”

“We sent nobody, yet,” Turrin replied. “They’re still kicking it around. They worry a lot, lately, you know.”

Yes, Bolan knew about the shaky men of La Commissione and their recent worries.

“Also, they’re trying to figure a way to make it pay. You know?”

Yes, Bolan could understand that consideration, also. When a territory as large and important as California seemed to be breaking away from the national cartel, then the men back east would quite naturally be looking for some handle to keep the thing cozy.

“Send the word back through your man in Jersey,” Bolan requested. “Make it a very quiet word.”

“Okay.” Turrin understood perfectly. “No names mentioned.”

“No names, right,” Bolan said. “Just tell him that a friend will be looking in on the problem.”

It was a good enough place to start, sure.

So now it was started.

It was not quite dawn when the “friend” delivered an errant daughter to the worried father.

The girl evaded a fatherly hug and flounced up the stairs without a word.

McCullough was a large man with thick gray hair and deeply suntanned skin. Maybe fifty, maybe not quite. He’d made a fortune in land speculation and development but not without the right friends in the right places.

He fiddled nervously with his dressing gown as he watched his daughter disappear up the stairs—then he turned to Bolan with an embarrassed grin and warmly clasped his hand.

“You fellows work fast,” he said admiringly. “I just got the word a few hours ago that they were sending someone.”

Bolan did not return the smile. “I know nothing about that,” he replied soberly. “I ran across the kid and I brought her home. That’s all there is to it.”

McCullough winked knowingly and said, “Sure. I understand. Look—I want to go up and have a few words with Darlene. Can you—would you like some coffee? I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Bolan allowed himself to be persuaded to stay awhile. He was shown to a breakfast room from where he could watch the sun rise over the Santa Monica mountains while the host went upstairs for a parley with the rebellious daughter. A silent little man in a white coat brought coffee and a tray of breakfast pastries. Bolan’s trained eye noted the presence of a small revolver concealed beneath the white coat.

“Things are tense,” Bolan said quietly as he accepted the coffee.

“Yes sir, very tense,” the little guy replied. He returned to the kitchen without adding to that brief conversation.

Bolan sipped the coffee and tried to cast his mind into the mood and atmosphere of that brooding home, reaching for an understanding of the forces at work there beneath the surface. He’d been alone for perhaps a minute when a divine creature in flowing silk breezed in and took a chair opposite him at the table. She was too young to be the mother, too old for a sister—and far too beautiful for that hour of the morning.

Bolan showed her a solemn smile and said, “Hello.”

She wasted no time on pleasantries. “I’m told you brought Darlene home.” It was a gentle, melodious voice—neither warm nor cold.

Bolan cocked his head and took his time lighting a cigarette. Then he said, “That’s right.”

“Why?”

He tasted the coffee as he replied, “Who’s asking?”

“Mrs. McCullough is asking.”

“Then you should be asking Mr. McCullough,” Bolan told her.

“Are you a private detective?”

He grinned. “Not hardly.”

“Why doesn’t everyone just leave her alone? She’s an adult, perfectly capable of choosing her own friends and—”

“And her own poison?”

The woman lowered her gaze, took a deep breath, and asked, “Where did you find her?”

Bolan said, “Not even her daddy asked me that.”

“I’m not her daddy.”

“Obviously.” His eyes roamed that lovely face as he added, “Nor her mommy.”

“I’m the only mother the child has known,” she replied calmly.

“You just said she was an adult,” Bolan reminded her, tiring of the little sparring match. He smiled suddenly and asked, “Have I seen you in the movies?”

“Fat chance,” Mrs. McCullough told him in that same melodious voice, neither warm nor cold. She rose gracefully and breezed back out of there.

Bolan’s mind had barely uncoiled from that interchange when a shriek from the kitchen sent him whirling to his feet, the Beretta unsheathed and seeking direction.

But the “direction” was all too obvious.

Several handguns were sounding off simultaneously from behind the swinging door to the kitchen.

That door bounded open as the little guy in the white coat toppled through and slid into the breakfast room on his own blood.

Another guy with gun in hand came charging through and was met there smack in the doorway by a sizzling round from the Beretta. It punched him back into the kitchen and the door swung closed behind the falling body.

Bolan gave it a beat to see what else might try it via the swinging door, then he whirled to the window and kicked his way outside, getting there in time to spot another guy sprinting across the grounds in fast retreat. He quickly released the sound suppressor and hoisted the Belle into target stance, squeezing off a single round that caught the guy in mid-stride at about sixty yards out. The guy did a flinging cartwheel and stayed there. Instantly a car, somewhere down the street, roared into motion with tires squealing in frantic getaway.

The guy on the lawn was dead and carried no identification. Likewise, the one on the kitchen floor. An elderly woman, obviously the cook, had died with a bullet in the belly. The little man in the white coat had taken two hits in the chest, which had killed him instantly.

McCullough was huddled with his ladies in the library.

“I’ve called the police,” he told Bolan.

“Then I’ll be leaving,” Bolan told him. “I wasn’t sent here to start a war, anyway.”

“You didn’t start it,” the guy told him. “But you saved our lives, and we’re grateful.”

No doubt about that, no. This one bore all the signs of a classic hit. A dawn raid. If those guys had gotten their way, they would have left nothing but dead bodies strewn from kitchen to bedrooms. And this could have had nothing to do with the hit on Terry Fortune; there had been no time for such retaliation.

“You’re in big trouble, McCullough,” Bolan needlessly pointed out.

“Yes. I know.”

“Can you handle it?”

“I can handle the police question. I don’t know about the rest.”

The cold Bolan gaze flicked to the women. It met hostility in the young one, apology from the other.

“Get your women out of here as quick as you can,” he suggested. “Send them some place cool and keep them there until I say different.”

The McCullough face showed instant relief. “Does that mean you’ll be staying in town for awhile?”

Bolan gave him a sober smile as he replied, “That’s what it means. Play it careful. I’ll be in touch.”

He gave the women a final, cool inspection then went out of there. The cops would be responding very quickly, in this exclusive neighborhood. He wished to be well clear before their arrival.

The sun was just beginning to show over the hills.

Tuesday, Terrible Tuesday. Already it had claimed the lives of five people in Mack Bolan’s shadow.

And yeah, Leo—it was a hell of an inspired starting place.

CHAPTER 2

CLOSURE

During his New Orleans campaign, Bolan had acquired a twenty-six-foot GMC motor home, or RV (recreational vehicle), which—with the assistance of aerospace engineers who rallied to the cause—became the Warwagon, a rolling dreadnought with advanced electronics systems that had added significant new dimensions to his war effort.

Besides massive and sophisticated firepower, the big cruiser also provided the highest reach in electronic surveillance and intelligence gathering capabilities. The rolling laboratory and gunship had also been “home” to the warrior ever since New Orleans, providing the perfect cover beneath her innocuous RV exterior and allowing the man to move freely about the continent within his own little world, thus avoiding many dangers of detection and entrapment.

But the big vehicle had posed a special problem for this second mile effort. A six-day nationwide blitz could be mounted only with air transportation. Bolan had felt that his effort would be severely diminished if he were to leave the gunship behind. Therefore his single request of Brognola was for air support—an airlift operation to keep man and machine together along that second mile.

Brognola gladly complied, placing a C-135 aircraft with military crew at Bolan’s disposal and further providing a “trusted technician” to pilot and safeguard the gunship for the airlift operations.

The “trusted technician” turned out to be a female operative out of Brognola’s own Washington headshed with the unlikely name of April Rose and the dazzling beauty of a Hollywood starlet. The lady was an engineer and physicist with a specially developed background in computer technology and communications. She was a whiz kid—and a gutsy one, at that.

“The lady has it all together,” Brognola had assured his friend, the warrior. “She can be a lot of comfort and you’re a damned fool if you don’t utilize her talents to the fullest.”

“Just what are her talents?” Bolan had wished to know.

“She can run that bloodmobile for you, I’ll guarantee that. The lady could write the book on that Buck Rogers gear you have in there. That’s mainly why she was selected. I was afraid to turn just anybody loose with that stuff. But she’s a lot more than a babysitter for computers. Believe it.”

Bolan had learned to believe it; the lady had proven her guts and had come through quite well under fire during their initial operation in Indiana. But there had been frictions early on, fueled perhaps by the inevitable male-female chemical reactions flowing between these two exceptional poles of human excellence. Bolan naturally resisted the idea of placing that lovely life in the jeopardy of his savage world. April herself had trouble reconciling Bolan’s modus operandi with her own deeply ingrained concepts of justice under the law. The frictions were still there, just below the surface of the association—and that was natural, also. Even though time expands and relationships mature rapidly in the heat of high adventure, the fact remained that these two had known each other for barely more than twenty-four hours.

Still, frictions and all, the two had reached a certain level of understanding and accommodation in a remarkably short time. They had made war together and they had made a sort of love together. More than anything else, they had made peace together. April Rose was now fully “on board,” and she was providing essential services to the six day war—so much so, in fact, that Bolan would soon be forced to acknowledge that he could not swing it without her.

She was “on board” that Tuesday morning, also.

Bolan established radio communications with his “rolling base” immediately upon departure from the McCullough home.

“Blackjack to base, hello.”

Instantly, cool and calm: “Go ahead, Blackjack.”

“What’s your situation?”

“A lot quicker than you led me to believe. I hardly had time to get set.”

“You’re on it, then.”

“You bet I’m on it, General. We’re heading west on Mulholland—about, uh, two miles east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard.”

“Great. Play it loose. Don’t try to close. Is it wired good?”

“Affirm, the wires are good and I am playing it loose.”

“Maintain track. I am closing.”

“Roger.”

She was sharp, yeah. There had been no thought that the game would erupt so soon. She’d arrived in the McCullough neighborhood just behind Bolan to begin the stake-out. Then, according to her report, she’d hardly settled in when the shooting began. Now she was on that getaway car, trailing loose with an electronic lock to minimize the chance of discovery.

It could be a useless exercise, of course. There was no certainty that the hired killers would provide any sort of useful link to the new conspiracy in California. But Bolan was forced to grab for straws. His own understanding of the situation was entirely nebulous—and although he knew the identity of many of the players, he did not know precisely where all of the diverse connections came together, where each of the particular players fit, nor even if he had the leaders identified. Most discouraging, he did not understand the new logic. What was this proudly whispered California Concept? How did it differ from the standard logic of the Mafia world? Which areas of the straight society were being manipulated and shaped to fit the criminal need?

Each of these were highly important considerations if the blitz was to be effectively targeted.

A large element in Bolan’s success at crime-busting was his understanding of the enemy. It was a game of tactics and strategy, movement and countermovement, a complicated and sensitive game of wits. He did not merely charge in with weapons blazing—although this may appear to be the case to casual observers. The man was much more than a killer, though. He was a soldier—a one-man army in every sense of the term—and he played the game that soldiers had invented: warfare. It was a science and it was an art. Mack Bolan was perhaps the supreme artist in this area of human accomplishment. The big turnabout in the Washington attitude toward this man was a recognition of that expertise. The U.S. government had not extended an official embrace to a psychopathic killer, but to a dedicated and highly accomplished military strategist and tactician.

The Bolan game was not a simple game, no—but, at the moment, it had been reduced to an elemental level of action-reaction. He had hoped to apply pressure that would topple dominoes all along the action-reaction sequence, straight to the heart of the California question, and he had set up William McCullough as the trigger domino. But there was the time factor which Bolan considered inflexible for his six day war, coupled with the principle of uncertainty inherent in any such approach. He had to make a start then run with the developments, relying upon his own fine instincts to seize the proper moment and run the true course.

The hit on McCullough seemed to provide one such moment—and one that held much more dramatic possibilities than the original plan. So Bolan was “playing the ear”—which, simply translated, meant that he was following finely developed instincts and hoping for the best.

Instinct can take the warrior only so far, though. The rest must come from that combination of science, art, and heart that produces the superior warrior—and Bolan was aware of that fact, also.

So it was not a psychopath filled with blood-lust who tracked that hit car into the Topanga Canyon wilds on Terrible Tuesday. It was a scientist and artist with a warrior’s heart, sallying forth to bait the dragon in its lair.

The hell of it was that he did not even know what the dragon looked like.

CHAPTER 3

MISTY

The track had swung south at the upper western edge of Los Angeles, following Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a rugged arterial connecting the San Fernando Valley to the coast above Santa Monica. A pea-soup fog was laying in from the sea to drape the mountains and seep along the canyon toward the valley, clinging in turgid pockets of ground-based clouds to the hollows and depressions of that tangled landscape.

For miles, now, the visibility had been fluctuating rapidly from fifty feet to zero in an unpredictable pattern, at times producing a vertigo-like sensation as the big vehicle crept through the twists and turns of the tortuous route. At one early point, April had to remind herself that she was still within the city of Los Angeles—a curious fact, considering the wild isolation through which she was moving.

The tracking would have been impossible without the aid of the Warwagon’s sophisticated systems—and perhaps it was this very circumstance that was producing the occasional vertigo. She was navigating as much by instruments as by direct reference to the road, dividing her attention between the roadway and the terrain-reference monitor of the navigation console, upon which was displayed a road-sector map overlying the grid of the computer-fed electronic vectoring system. It was a fabulous device, embodying the most advanced state-of-the-art concepts of modern technology, a delight that was not lost on the engineering mind of April Rose. She had told Bolan, at their first meeting: “I’d like to meet the person who designed these systems.” More than that, though, April would savor the opportunity to dig into the computer heart that integrated all those diverse electronic subsystems, combining radar-following, microwave radio, lasers, infrareds, and magnetic field detectors into a single display function to provide, at once, target tracking, track orientation, and terrain-route orientation. The result, as translated to the monitor-viewscreen, provided a visual display similar to a roadmap upon which three tiny, pulsing lights revealed the positions of the target vehicle, the Warwagon, and the chase car bearing Mack Bolan. The three were creeping south along the canyon, spaced about two hundred yards apart—and they had been running in this attitude for more than twenty minutes when the monitor signaled a change of track.

April immediately reported the development to Bolan. “Deviation.”

“Roger. Is it a charted road?”

“Negative. This could be end of track. Stand by.”

A moment later the pulse from the target vehicle changed color from amber to red. “Engine shutdown,” she reported.

“Where away?” Bolan radioed back.

“One hundred yards south of my position, fifty yards east.”

“Stand down,” he instructed. “I am coming aboard.”

She found a broad shoulder and pulled the cruiser off the road, immediately activating the audio scans and bringing them on line. The headlights of Bolan’s car swung in behind her a moment later and the big man came aboard.

He threw her a quick smile and two clipped words—“Good work”—and went straight to the rear. He was removing his clothes—and she knew what that meant. With a guy like Bolan it meant war, not romance. Never romance, damnit. It appeared that such never quite fit into his timetable. Or maybe it was just some anachronism called chivalry that stayed the romantic beast. Whatever, her initial misgivings about their close association had borne no fruit whatever. Within minutes after their first meeting, he was ordering her to undress. For war, naturally. Chivalry or whatever, it sort of hurt a girl’s self-image to have a man stare right through her nudity and think of only war. And even when the war was over, for awhile, he had lain down with her nudity to gently touch and console the hurts and bruises thereon with no attempt whatever to capitalize upon the moment.

“What are you?” she’d asked him whimsically, last night, as they lay closely touching, but not really, during the flight from Indiana. “Some sort of monk?”

And she’d known he was smiling, though she could not see his face as he quietly replied, “Some sort of tired. You too, soldier.”

She was, of course. Damaged, too—though, she thought, not visibly. A madman had played kickball with her pubes, among other indignities. There was no way she could have accommodated any sort of romantic involvement with that area of her anatomy. Maybe the general knew that, or guessed it. But at least he could have tried.

“Catch you later, then,” she’d murmured, feeling all warm and good and secure in the strength of his presence. She’d drifted in and out of sleep while listening to his even breathing, and thinking what a comforting sound it was. During one of the “out” periods she’d gotten herself worked up with a little light sleepytime fantasy and raised to an elbow to lightly brush his lips with hers, thinking him to be safely asleep. But even as their lips touched she saw that his eyes were slitted. He lunged away from that light encounter with the big silver pistol rising up between them.

“Sorry!” she gasped.

“My apology,” he muttered, in a flash totally relaxed again and those remarkable eyes retreating behind the slitted lids.

She’d known, then, how frighteningly close she’d been to death—and she’d gained another important insight into this unusual man. He slept with his eyes open and a gun at instant access. How terrible! How horribly grim for any human being to be forever cocked and ready, poised at the edge of the abyss of death, unwilling to let go even in sleep. And she understood, however imperfectly, the terrible price this man was paying to pursue his “impossible” war.

He’d told her later, “Sure, I sleep. But it’s a trick I learned on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It’s a balancing act, sort of. I guess it’s a form of divided consciousness. The part that needs to sleep, sleeps. The part that needs to remain aware, doesn’t. It’s like the mind posting its own sentry. I call it combat sleep.”

A terrible price, yes. And now the man who warred even as he slept was back there in the war room changing the costumes of unending warfare. He was getting into the “black-suit”—a form-fitting nylon affair, which resembled a surfer’s wetsuit but had been designed for far grimmer purposes. Strategically placed slit pockets on arms and legs provided quick and easy access to various small tools and lethal devices—some as old as mankind, others as new as Moonshot and Surveyor. The suit itself had to be regarded also as a weapon of war, if only for the psychological implications, but she knew that Bolan also placed great store in the outfit for the values supplied toward ease of movement, convenience, and concealment. During periods of darkness, the suit rendered him practically invisible.

He was now drawing on the “combat rig”—a system of belts and devices for carrying guns, grenades, ammunition, and other necessities of war. Earlier that same morning April had experimentally tried to get into that rig and found it almost too heavy to lift. She could not imagine packing it around on her person. Bolan hardly seemed to notice the burden as he easily slipped it on and cinched it down.

“Looks as though you’re going for a heavy score,” she commented, eyeing the formidable figure of the warrior as he touch-checked the weaponry.

That granite face was poised between a scowl and a smile as he replied, “The boy scouts say you should be prepared. I try to be.”

“What’s troubling you?”

“Nothing,” he replied coldly. “You ready to truck?”

She nodded her head in mute response, knowing what was troubling the big softy. He still did not like the idea of sending her into jeopardy.

He instructed her, “Give me two minutes. Then you take a recorder pack and find the telephone feeder. Get the wires on and get back here without delay. Then haul it out of here and wait for me a thousand yards south.” He pushed past her and stepped forward to set the mission clock. “If I’m not back in thirty minutes …”

He did not complete the instruction, nor did he need to do so. April understood.

“Be careful,” she said quietly.

“Always,” he replied, lying in his teeth.

Impossibly, it seemed, the big man had been with her for less than a minute. He was no dawdler—and moments like these sometimes seemed to expand infinitely. The audio sensors were just beginning to growl into a lock-on. April quickly manipulated a control at the console to refine the fix. Deep-well rumbles began issuing from the monitor: a metallic click and thump, as though a door or iron gate had been opened and closed; a snarling whine, definitely canine; ghostly mutterings of male voices in unreadable conversation.

“I can’t clarify that,” she told Bolan.

“Fog refraction,” he explained. “Or terrain factors. Maybe both. Did you hear a dog?”

She jerked her head in a curt nod. “Definitely a dog.”

He sighed and went aft again to select another weapon from the armory—and then, without a word, he was out the door and lost in the mists.

April fought a lump in her throat as she set the timer and began preparing for her own EVA. The emotions inside that vehicle had been as thick as the fog outside—yet out he went without a word. But she was beginning to understand that facet of the relationship, also. It had something to do with “staying hard.” Like sleeping with the eyes open. Like loving without touching. Economy! That was the word! Mack Bolan was a very economical man—in everything but war. He could not afford the emotional seepage; he needed it all where the moment was poised between life and death.

Sure. April understood. And she was weeping silently without tears as she watched the spot where the man of her dreams had entered the mists. What a hell of a waste.

“Live large, big fella,” she murmured to the mists. She understood that one, too. In Mack Bolan’s game, it was the only alternative to dying small.

CHAPTER 4

PORTENTS

The fog was as much a hindrance as a help. Even though it cloaked Bolan in virtual invisibility, the heavy atmosphere also precluded any realistic reconnaissance except by touch and feel. The graveled private drive angled into what appeared to be a shallow box canyon less than a hundred yards removed from the main road. Beyond a chainlink fence with a padlocked vehicle gate loomed the ghostly outlines of a house in low profile. Apparently every light in the place was turned on, but only a pale luminescence seeped through the windows into the enshrouding mists. A security floodlight mounted on a high mast added very little to the visibility factor, imparting only a muted glow to the saturated air immediately surrounding it.

Bolan delicately probed the fence for electrical currents and sensors, then quickly scaled it and dropped lightly to the ground inside, Tran-Gun in hand and ready. The dog appeared immediately, lunging at him from the mists with fangs bared and snarling into the attack.

He met the charge with an upraised foot to the breast and, rolling with it, sent the dog hard against the fence. The impact dazed the animal momentarily. He lay there whimpering and trying to get his legs synchronized for another charge. The air pistol sneezed quietly, imbedding its knockout dart into the fur just below the throat. It was like throwing a switch; the animal instantly curled into a furry ball and drifted peacefully toward doggy dreamland.

Bolan gingerly retrieved the small hypodermic and went on. Two cars were parked abreast on the drive at the side of the house. The one that had brought him here yielded no meaningful identification, but the other was registered to a James Portillo with a San Francisco address. The name touched an elusive little coder in Bolan’s mental mugfile but it would not surface. Even so, the San Francisco connection was interesting enough.

He continued on to the house, a smallish frame structure nestled into the hillside. A patio window yielded quickly to his touch. Too quickly, maybe. He left it and went on around in a cautious recon, checking windows and peering into the lighted interior for a reading of the situation there. The reading was “temporary camp.” There were no curtains or blinds. Walls and floors were bare. Furnishings were minimal and simple. Each of the three bedrooms contained an air mattress and an open suitcase. One boasted a folding camp chair. A single large room served as living room, dining area, kitchen. It held only a portable TV resting on a wooden box, a couple of chairs and a small table. The kitchen appliances were built in. Two men stood at the stove, conversing with great animation. And instantly Bolan had his make on “James Portillo.”

He returned immediately to the patio window and entered the house through a bedroom. Three steps along a narrow hallway took him to the living room. The guys were still going at it, both talking at once with raised voices and heated words.

Bolan moved on in with the big silver AutoMag leading the way and was halfway across the room before his presence there was noted.

A pregnant silence descended abruptly as two disturbed faces turned to an inspection of the warrior.

Portillo was a big beefy guy with graying hair and cherubic face, maybe forty, smooth-looking—a politician type. He’d come up in the Cleveland Mob and gone west with the flow of black bucks from that area, figuring prominently for a number of years as Cleveland’s liaison man with the burgeoning western empires. The dapper front man had disappeared from public view at about the same time as Bolan’s San Francisco campaign. Rumors from both sides had him either dead or retired in Central America. But the name kept popping up in intelligence reports. Bolan had heard it mentioned in a contemporary reference as recently as the Arizona adventure.

In Mob parlance, Portillo was known as a “grease merchant”—a man with important connections into the business and political sectors.

The other guy was a nonentity. About twenty-five, maybe Sicilian and maybe not, tightly kinked hair worn in a neat Afro style, mean eyes.

The differing reactions to the Bolan presence told the tale of contrasting types. Portillo met the threat with a tentative smile and hands raised limply to shoulder level. Mean-eyes was not quite so intelligent. He made a break for gunleather and tried a spinout. Neither move bought him more than a couple of ticks of the heart. The AutoMag thundered once to dispatch 240 grains of splattering death whistling up the guy’s nose. The top of his head exploded and sprayed fragments onto the wall behind, the body falling back into the startled arms of the grease merchant.

Portillo shuddered and withdrew support from that gruesome horror, dancing clear while hastily showing that his hands were high and unencumbered.

“Jesus!” he groaned, eyes glazing on the big silver pistol.

“Kiss it goodbye, Jimmy,” Bolan said coldly.

“Why?” the guy pleaded. “What’ve I done to offend you?”

“You exist. That’s offense enough.”

“Wait! Hold it!” Jimmy the Grease was coming apart rapidly, from the inside. “I know you! I know who you are!”

“Congratulations,” said ice-eyes. “So you know why.”

“But you’ve got it wrong! I’m clean! I’m retired!”

“Tell it to McCullough,” Bolan said.

Portillo’s frantic gaze bounced hopelessly off the walls for several seconds, then he muttered, “Who? I don’t …”

The AutoMag thundered again. The lobe of the guy’s left ear disappeared. He howled and fell to his knees, frantically pinching at the wound to halt the flow of blood.

Bolan calmly told him. “The next one takes the lip. So you better use it while you can.”

“I swear I didn’t send them!” Portillo howled. “You should know better! You know I’m not into that kind of stuff!”

“What are you into these days?” Bolan inquired, the tone almost conversational.

“Nothing! I told you I’m …” Reality had suddenly grabbed hold of the guy. Bolan could see it settling into the eyes, even before that shaking voice continued. “Okay—no—you’re right. It’s no time for word games, is it? I swear I don’t know why I’m here. I was told to come and wait. I would be told when to make my move.”

“What move?”

“I wasn’t told that, either. But you’re right. It had something to do with McCullough.”

“But you don’t know what.”

“That’s right. I don’t know what. I’d tell you if—”

“A guy with your brains can put it together. Put it together for me, Jimmy, while you’ve got brains to put with.”

“I guess—I guess it has something to do with—political, I guess.”

“Uh huh.”

“Probably, yeah. That’s my specialty, of course. I spread the grease, ease the slide.”

“You can’t spread it for McCullough if he’s dead.”

“You’ve got it. That’s right. So I guess I—after—after McCullough.”

“After he’s dead.”

“I think so.”

“Who’s taking him over?”

“God I don’t know. I don’t know, Bolan.”

“Who sent you?”

The guy’s eyes were starting to bounce off the walls again. He was in a hell of a predicament. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

Bolan sent some quick reinforcement to the sagging memory. Another thundering round blew from the ventilated silver barrel and buried itself in the floor between fat knees. Samples of scorched fabric and shrieking skin went with it.

Portillo screamed and fell onto his side, both hands shakingly exploring for damages. He shuddered and very quietly reported in. “Arthur Bloom sent me.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Arthur called and said they wanted me to come here and wait.”

“Who is Arthur Bloom?” Bolan asked, just as quietly.

“He’s in Sacramento.”

“Doing what?”

“Same as me. But he’s a registered lobbyist. Lawyer. Represents many interests.”

“Mob interests,” Bolan said flatly.

The guy sighed. “Them too, yes.”

“So Arthur Bloom sent you.”

“Well it was—message, messenger, he just passed the message along.”

“From who?”

“From … them.”

Bolan coldly inquired. “Would you like one square through the knee, Jimmy?”

No, Jimmy certainly did not want that. Very quickly he replied, “It’s the new bunch—the new—I don’t—you busted California all to hell, you know. Wasn’t much left after Frisco. Hell. These guys just moved it in, slick and easy. Nobody knows for sure who they are.”

“From back east?”

“I doubt that. No. That’s why I—see, I got no connections now—I mean family. That’s all gone. Has no meaning now. Know what I mean? I mean, not like the old days. It’s all new. All changed. Well, mostly. Mostly new.”

“So now you just jump to any fingersnap, eh?”

Portillo gave him a hurt look. “Well no, not—leave me some dignity, huh? I know who sent me. But I don’t have any names for you. See, that’s uh, it’s the new concept.”

Bolan felt the hair rising along his neck. “The California Concept,” he said quietly.

“Right. Nobody knows nobody and nobody knows nothing. Like invisible, but it’s there just the same and everybody is watching his own ass. That’s the way it is now. They say do it and you better damn well do it. ‘Cause you really don’t know where it’s coming from. You do it or you get a bullet and a burial at sea.”

“We’re still talking about the boys, Jimmy.”

“Sure, it’s still the boys. But which boys? That’s the kicker, see. Listen, they don’t have to worry about omerta anymore ‘cause there’s nobody to omerta for. Tell you the truth, Bolan, it’s better this way. You can’t talk if you don’t know what to say. Right?”

“Wrong,” Bolan said. “You’re talking fine. Keep on.”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

“McCullough.”

Portillo sighed. “McCullough is doomed. They missed once. They may even miss twice. But sooner or later they—how’d you get onto this?”

Bolan ignored the question. “Why is he doomed?”

“I swear I don’t know that. Except he obviously has something they want. That’s why I’m here. Not to take it but to grease the slide for them when they take it over.” He sighed again, the sigh ending as a faint sneer. “But these guys—these punks …” His gaze slid to the dead triggerman, then bounced quickly back. “They know even less than me. Like that trained dog out there. Say hit and he hits. He doesn’t ask why and he doesn’t care who. Same with these punks. No more than guided missiles. Do you know, I don’t even know this poor boy’s name? They called him Junior. Supposed to be a hotshot driver. That’s all I know. It’s all I wanted to know. I’m not one of these, Bolan. You should know that. I never killed a man in my whole life.”

Bolan could believe that. But killing was not necessarily the worst of crimes.

He took a small first-aid box from his belt and dropped it onto Portillo’s thigh. “You bought yourself some time,” he told the guy. “Spend it wisely.”

“I’m dead if I do and dead if I don’t,” Portillo replied quietly.

“You’ve been dead all your life,” Bolan said disgustedly.

He went out of there, returning to the mists.

The fog, he knew, was almost portentous of the Terrible Tuesday he was going to find in California.

He had an inkling, now, of what this new “concept” was all about.

It meant fog—ultra-concealment—invisibility—a truly “secret society” of thugs getting set to plunder and loot the great Golden State.

And Mack Bolan himself was still enveloped in the mists. But maybe not for long.

CHAPTER 5

ECHOES

Bolan knew this territory well. Very well. He had come here early in his war to visit death and destruction through hill and dale, from shore to desert, in a titanic struggle to shake down the bloated empire of Julian “Deej” DiGeorge, then undisputed boss of everything west. Despite what had gone before, in Pittsfield, the battle for Los Angeles and environs had marked the moment when Mack Bolan’s homefront effort truly attained the stature of all-out warfare. It also marked a point of maturity for the warrior himself. He had come to Los Angeles with little more than a hope and a prayer, the hounds of hell hot on his scent and closing for the kill. He’d taken his baptism in hell there, emerging a much stronger and far wiser warrior—seeing clearly for the first time the true dimensions of the task he’d set for himself. Undaunted by that vision of hell everlasting, he’d gone on from the Southern California victory to slash at other tentacles of the Mafia octopus, which was strangling the world—never once daring to believe that a final victory would be his, or even possible.

Yes, the warrior had matured here. In a sense, he had died here. It was hallowed ground for Mack Bolan.

And Portillo’s sensing of the changes in the California Mafia was just a bit awry. The knockout punch had been delivered not in San Francisco but in Los Angeles. The later operations to the north, as well as south in San Diego, had been mere peripheral actions when viewed in the total context of the California problem. The real battle had been fought here. And there had been no truly effective Mob movements in the area since the fall of Julian DiGeorge. Until now. And … now … well, now it seemed that someone had found a new handle and was busily rebuilding the crime machine. Bolan’s immediate task—to be accomplished in a matter of mere hours—was to find that handle, tear it loose, and dismantle the new machine. It was not an enviable task … but it was the one at hand, the only game in town for Mack Bolan.

He had made a start.

Now he could do little more than hope for a positive reaction from the other side … and to be there when it came. For that, he was depending upon the technical abilities of April Rose.

She was tense and fidgeting at the communications console when Bolan returned to the cruiser. “How’d it go?” she asked, the voice barely more than a husky whisper.

“You’ll have to tell me that,” he replied, immediately stepping aft to shed himself of the combat rig.

“You were gone so long,” she complained. “I counted three shots and—I wish you’d carry a radio.”

Bolan smiled and said, “Okay. Next time I’ll try to find room for one. What have you got?”

She waited until he came forward before replying. “So far, not a thing. But the patch is good. I know it’s good.”

“If the guy was leveling with me,” Bolan mused, “he could have nothing to move with. He could decide to just hot it out of there. So let’s watch for that, too.”

The lady tried and failed to make it sound like a casual inquiry: “What’s happening, Mack? What are we doing?”

“Don’t ask,” he replied quietly.

“But I am asking. Don’t you think I should? …”

He sighed as he dropped into the command chair and lit a cigarette. “You’re right, April. Sorry. Sure you need to know. Guess I’ve forgotten how to work with a partner.”

“Am I a partner?” she asked, those great eyes flashing at him from the midships console.

He chuckled and replied, “Junior partner, sure. The guy you wired is Jimmy Portillo. He came west on the heels of the big postwar wave from the eastern families. This was open territory, then—from the Rockies to the Pacific. No one family had domain. DiGeorge was just getting his hooks into Southern California. Don DeMarco was quietly mining the San Francisco area. Bugsy Siegel had opened Las Vegas and was moving in on the movie industry. Then comes Portillo. The guy had no rank, no visible power base. But he probably did more than any single man to organize the west and to consolidate most of the power under DiGeorge. DeMarco managed to hang onto his little empire up north, but everything else belonged to Deej. Thanks largely to that guy in there, Jimmy the Grease. When things went to hell around here, though, Jimmy quietly dropped out of the picture. He’s a politician, not a fighter. And his party was out of power. I believe they’re trying to get it back. That would make Portillo a very important man again.” Bolan grinned at the lady. “And we lucked onto him. Your wires, m’lady, could save the day.”

“You believe he’s trying to reconstruct the old organization?”

Bolan shook his head as he replied, “A new one. Maybe larger than the original. Maybe a hell of a lot more dangerous. Whatever, Portillo would be the logical architect. The guy knows the territory.”

“How would he go about it?”

Bolan sighed. “Via the imperfectibility of man,” he replied quietly.

“What?”

“A Mafioso,” he explained, “is a very cynical man. He operates on the oldest vices of mankind. Every man has his price, see—or so the logic goes. A Mafioso religiously believes that. It’s the only thing that makes his world function. Jimmy the Grease could have invented the idea. He’s a genius at buying and selling men’s souls. That’s where any crime syndicate gets its power. And, yeah, Mafiosi are very cynical men. With damn good reason.”

“Are you a cynic?” the lady asked softly.

He grinned and seemed to be thinking about that, then replied, “I’m a spot cynic.”

“What is that?”

“I believe in the imperfectibility of some men.”

“I see,” she said soberly. “Which explains your distrust of our criminal justice system.”

“It explains nothing,” he said tiredly, unwilling to be drawn into another debate on those grounds. “I am not involved in quote unquote justice. I am conducting a war. So let’s not—”

There would be no unwanted debate. As he spoke, the monitor at the surveillance console came alive. Portillo was making a telephone call. The decoder “read” the tone-dial signals and visually displayed the number being called. It was a local area number. April recorded it and cocked a quizzical eye at Bolan as the call went through.

He nodded and muttered, “This could be it.”

It was.

The guy had probably been pulling himself together and tending the minor wounds, trying to decide a course of action—or maybe the delay was natural caution. Whatever, some ten minutes had elapsed since his encounter with Mack Bolan—and the guy was sounding cool and together.

“Yes. Who is it?”

“Hi, this is Jimmy. I have unhappy news.”

“Just a minute.”

There was a brief silence, then another voice came into the connection: “What is it, Jimmy?”

Something was very familiar about that voice.

“Hi. Trouble, I’m afraid. It fizzled.”

“Why?”

“Somebody was sitting and waiting for them. They walked into a lot of unhappiness. The last one. All of them.”

A long silence, then, “All of them?”

“I’m afraid so. All but Junior. And he really pulled a dumb one.”

Muttered curses, then, “What’d he do?”

“Beat it straight back here, that’s what. And brought the heat with him. Can you beat that?”

“What kind of heat?”

“The worst kind. I was just giving him hell about it when this guy walks in on us out of the fog. Right past the damn dog.”

“What guy?” sneered the familiar voice from somewhere in the past.

“You won’t like this,” said Portillo. “Prepare yourself.”

“Don’t say any names right out.”

“I wasn’t going to. No need to. You know what happened to Deej. Well, it’s trying to happen all over again. The guy is back.”

A loud groan preceded the quick response from the far side of that connection. “Are you sure?”

“No way to mistake it. We stood eyeball to eyeball for five minutes or more. He leaned on me pretty hard. Listen. The guy is all they say he is, and more. Listen. I’m a lucky S.O.B. And don’t I know it.”

Portillo was becoming emotional. The other voice was growing colder.

“What’d you have to sell him, Jimmy?”

“You don’t sell that boy, Charlie.” Charlie! Of course! “You just doubletalk all you think you can and you pray a lot. Don’t worry. I gave him nothing. He shot me twice and left.”

“He shot you! What?…”

“Nothing serious, I’m okay. I played dead. Poor Junior didn’t have to play. We’ll have to put him away in a bucket. I don’t know exactly what he told our friend but it sure didn’t buy him any pity, whatever it was.”

“Wait a minute,” said Charlie. “Let me see if I understand this. You say Junior was—”

“He was talking, yeah. That’s all I know. Guess I was unconscious for a little while so I don’t know exactly what was said. When I came to, Junior was pleading for his life and saying the guy should keep his end of the deal. Hey, I was hit—twice. I just laid there. Damn quick, Junior was just laying there, too, only not so lucky. So I don’t really know what was said and what wasn’t. I guess it all depends on what Junior knew. I don’t know what he knew, I leave that to you. But listen, that guy went roaring out of here with blood in his eye, so you better—”

“This was when?”

“Just now. Just this minute.”

“Okay. How’s the fog up there?”

“It’s murder.”

“Okay. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. Right now, nothing, I guess. But I’m very nervous about this whole turn of events. And I’m worried about—well, you better pass the word. It’s big trouble, Charlie.”

“I know it is,” agreed the voice from Mack Bolan’s past. “Okay. Thanks. Do you need a doctor?”

“Naw. I’ll take care of it. You just take care of them.”

“I better tell them. And let them decide …”

“Oh sure,” Portillo quickly agreed. “Tell them. And be careful. You know how this guy operates. He’s hell on wheels.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Let’s keep in touch. Where will you be?”

“I’m checking into a hotel, Charlie. I’ll call you.”

“Do that.”

A deeply troubled man terminated the connection at the far side. An audible sigh from Jimmy the Grease accompanied the final hang-up.

Bolan already had the engine fired and was directing the cruiser through the mists in the return trip to town. The other vehicle had served its purpose; this was as good a place as any to leave it.

April was staring morosely at the dead monitor.

Bolan said, “Good work. Keep the wires on. Did you get that number?”

“I got it,” she grumped.

“Fine. I’ll want you to translate it into name and address. You can use your credentials if you need to. Just get me the fix.”

“I’ll get your fix,” she assured him, the voice small and distant. “Was he telling the truth?”

“Who?”

“Him. Portillo. Is that the way it happened?”

“What do you think?” Bolan growled.

“I think you’re conducting an imperfectible war,” she replied softly.

Maybe so. Yeah, maybe so—regardless of the modus. At any rate, it was no time for a moral defense of the self—and Bolan was beginning to resent the girl’s constant plucking at his methods. He squelched that, though. A war, imperfectible or not, was building rapidly to a white heat. He needed to get the lady to the telephone office. The rest would take care of the rest.

But Bolan did not really need a name.

He had recognized the reedy voice at the other side of Portillo’s call. An echo from the past, yeah—a very unhappy past.

It was the voice of Charlie Rickert, once known and respected as “the twenty-four-hour cop.”

The rest, yes, would take care of even the past.

CHAPTER 6

CHANNELS

There had been a time when Mack Bolan was the hottest “fugitive” in the country—when police of all the various jurisdictional levels kept close tabs on his known movements, reacting swiftly, cooperatively and massively wherever his presence was noted. Tim Braddock, as the first big city cop to head a “get Bolan” effort, had become something of a celebrity in the national law enforcement community and had spent considerable time and energy tracking the fugitive around the country, working with other departments as an expert consultant on the Bolan problem.

Through all that, Braddock had secretly hoped that the Bolan “problem” would never go away—that the guy would go on to success after success and finally achieve his stated desire to rid the world of the Mafia cancer. Nobody gave him much of a chance to do that, of course, but obviously Braddock was not the only cop to secretly wish he could.

A lot of the steam had gone out of the “get Bolan” movement as more and more the law enforcement agencies of the nation began to see the fantastic effect of the guy on the underworld power structures. The federal hunt had fizzled out a long time ago, for all practical purposes. It was even difficult, now, to gain access to the federal files on Mack Bolan. Rumors within the police community had grown to the virtual conviction that Harold Brognola himself was covertly supporting the Bolan crusade. A congressional oversight committee had recently leaked a new rumor that the White House was working up an amnesty package in an effort to bring the crimebuster into official government service.

Braddock had followed all such developments with great interest. He had always admired the guy, even from the very beginning during a time when the hue and cry was hottest for Mack Bolan’s blood—before, even, that climactic moment when Braddock lay dying from Mafia guns and would have bled to death but for the intervention of the “fugitive.”

Yeah. Those had been days hard on the conscience of a good cop. They’d branded the guy with a “mad dog” label and the orders were to “shoot on sight—shoot to kill.”

True, the guy had committed just about every crime in the book. But as the matter began to sift itself into all the neat little police compartments, it became more and more obvious that the only “victims” of Mack Bolan’s war were professional criminals themselves—of the worst kind. Braddock had even been privileged to observe at first hand Mack Bolan’s most outrageous rampage—the one in Boston, when he thought the Mob had snatched and snuffed the ladylove and the kid brother. That had been something else! But even then, with all that mental agony, the guy had not lost his perspective. He had shed no innocent blood during that “kill orgy.”

Big Tim Braddock simply could not read Mack Bolan as a common criminal. Not even as a criminal. The guy was a true hero, in every sense of the word. He deserved a ticker tape parade through every city in the land. He should have schools and boulevards named after him. At the least, at the very least, his name should be stricken from the wanted lists everywhere and carved in granite somewhere as a symbol of rare human courage and commitment.

But the name had not been stricken from the wanted lists. Right here in L.A. there was a whole book of charges against the guy. And, whatever he might feel in his heart, Tim Braddock was still a cop and Mack Bolan was still a fugitive. So it was with no great surge of police spirit that he received the tip that Bolan was back in town. Even less did he like the tipster.

“I don’t want to talk to you, Rickert,” he growled into the telephone.

“That’s your loss, Tim,” said the disgraced ex-cop. “I’m doing you a favor.”

“Do it to someone else,” Braddock said quietly and was about to hang up when the guy said the magic words.

“Bolan’s back in town.”

Braddock paused to light a cigarette and gather his thoughts. Rickert had been a crooked cop, sure, but he was no looneytune. And, of course, the guy held Mack Bolan personally responsible for his downfall. In his own twisted mind, he had plenty of cause for hate.

“Where’d you get that?” Braddock asked him.

“Oh, you know me,” the ex-friend replied breezily. “I still get around. You can take it as gospel. He’s here.”

“For what?”

“What else? You could look into a disturbance at Bill McCullough’s house this morning. Also—you got a pencil handy? I’ll give you an address in Topanga Canyon. It’s out of your jurisdiction, but—”

“I have a pencil,” Braddock said heavily.

Rickert supplied the address, then said: “I haven’t seen the guy personally, but I know a reliable subject who did. And it’s got his tracks all over it. I thought you’d want to know.”

“You ready to produce that witness?” Braddock inquired.

It was purely a rhetorical question. Rickert laughed it away and said, “The guy doesn’t leave many of those, does he? I thought you’d want to get set for the fireworks.”

Braddock sighed into the telephone. “I don’t have to tell you that it’s against the law to give a false report. I hope to hell it’s false, Rickert.”

The renegade laughed lightly at that one, too. “Perish the thought. I wouldn’t even spit on the sidewalk these days, if I thought you were watching. What is it with you, Tim? Don’t you think I suffered enough? The D.A. thought so. After all, I lost my job, my pension, my good name—all on the word of a psychopath.”

“Bolan is not a psychopath,” Braddock said tiredly, “and you lost nothing. You spent it, guy, you spent it all yourself. And if I had my way, yeah, you’d be in the joint right now. The mere mention of your name is enough to stink up the halls around here. And, Rickert—don’t call me again.”

He hung it up and pushed the pad around the desk for a moment, glaring at the telephone.

Damnit. Damnit.

The wrong guy was the fugitive.

He sighed, then, and again picked up the phone.

“Get me a hot line to Washington,” he ordered. “Don’t use the WATS line. I want Harold Brognola, Department of Justice. I don’t want an aide. I want the man himself. Give this the red flag. I’ll sit here until you get him. Get him.”

The newest deputy chief at LAPD knew full well that he was “sitting here” on a time bomb.

But … he had to know. Dammit—he had to know for sure.

The building was one of those new Sunset Boulevard highrise developments, which serve both business and residential needs. Judging by its ground floor office space, SecuriCom was a large and thriving company. It provided security services not only to this building but to a number of industrial and business clients in the area, as well. The record would reveal that many of those—perhaps all—were owned or controlled by William McCullough’s California Investors Limited. Which made for a nice twist to the villainy now afoot within that empire.

Bolan’s Mafia threads and tinted glasses apparently passed the cold scrutiny of the television camera. The door buzzed and opened to his touch. A guy in a snazzy uniform sat at a small turret-console just inside the huge outer office of SecuriCom. He was surrounded by banks of CCTV monitors and other electronic devices. Two more uniformed men sat at desks toward the rear; another was working at a computer.

The guy in the turret shoved an open book toward the visitor. Bolan signed the register “D’Anglia” and shoved it back. The guard half smiled as he asked, “Who’d you want, sir?”

“Rickert should be expecting me,” Bolan said as he gave the place another quick look.

The guy wrote something in the book, then told the visitor, “I guess you know your way.”

He did, yeah. He’d just spotted the door with the gilt lettering: CHIEF INVESTIGATOR. And, beneath that, in smaller print: Charles J. Rickert.

It seemed, on the surface of things, a rather painless exile for a kinky cop.

Bolan’s visual memory of the guy was clouded and tinged with emotion. His one personal encounter with then Lieutenant Rickert had come at an anticlimactic moment, at a time when Bolan was both physically and emotionally exhausted—and Rickert himself had seemed half demented. It was beneath the cliffs of Balboa on a dark and tragic night. Rickert was about to gun down a fellow officer—none other than Carl Lyons, later a federal undercover cop whose friendly path would cross Bolan’s at many points along the wipeout trail. It seemed unlikely that Rickert had ever actually laid eyes on Bolan—and even if he had, his memory would be of a face that no longer existed. Shortly after that encounter, Doc Brantzen had worked his plastic wonders at Palm Desert to fashion the battle mask behind which the warrior had lived ever since. Police sketches of the new face had never really captured it and few living Mafiosi could summon forth a reliable image other than vague references to “them damned eyes” or “cold, man, cold.”

So Bolan felt no great identity risk inside the enemy’s lines. He was also a master at role camouflage—the ability to take on almost any identity of his choosing.

At the moment, he chose to be a Mafia torpedo. And Charlie Rickert, ex-twenty-four-hour cop, seemed to be buying him right from the top.

A television monitor stood beside Rickert’s desk and there was a small console through which apparently he could select any of many closed circuits for display. At the moment, the monitor was displaying the reception area just outside. The guy had obviously seen him coming in.

Rickert did not look up from his desk and there was no exchange of greetings. Bolan went to the window, lit a cigarette, and stood there smoking with his back to the desk.

“There’s big trouble,” he said quietly.

“Don’t I know it,” Rickert muttered. “I hope you didn’t come here to tell me that.”

The voice fit, yeah. A man’s physical parts can change quickly—especially so at Rickert’s age. He was in his late forties, maybe early fifties. The hair was mostly white, now, with little tufts of black here and there, worn short and bristly. Bolan had not remembered that particular feature. And the guy was heavier than he’d seemed that first time around. But it was the same guy.

Bolan turned from the window with a tight smile and said, “Some people worry.”

“As well they should,” Rickert replied, looking at him directly for the first time.

“How about you?”

“Sure. I worry, too. It’s my job to worry.”

Bolan turned back to the window and fiddled with the blinds for a moment, then he moved across the room and took a seat atop the desk.

Rickert growled, “Get your ass off my desk!”

“Put it off,” Bolan-D’Anglia invited.

“Let’s understand it, up front!” Rickert snapped. “I don’t take petty shit! So next time you come, leave the games at the door!”

Bolan chuckled. He said, “You’re okay, Rickert.”

“Get your ass off my okay desk, then.”

Bolan chuckled again and moved away to casually prowl the room. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot,” he suggested, softening the voice. “If we’re going to work together on this, then we should—”

Rickert snapped him off. “Who says we’re working together?”

“Five bills a day say it.”

The guy was mad as hell. “They didn’t say anything about—”

“They don’t have the say. Someone else has a lot more to lose.”

“Someone else?”

“With a lot more to lose,” Bolan repeated.

Rickert understood it, that time. His face flushed angrily and he lunged toward the telephone. “What’s that name again?”

“What’s in a name?” Bolan responded casually. “Just tell them that Crusher has arrived. They’ll report directly to me until this little matter is cleared up. To me! That’s important. All other lines are closed, as of now.”

The guy glared at him for a long moment, then woodenly asked, “How do they reach you?”

“They reach me here,” said Bolan-D’Anglia-Crusher.

Rickert was frowning, his hand poised above the telephone. “That’s not such a swell idea,” he said. “We shouldn’t be mobbing up. Not at a time like this.”

Bolan was damn glad to hear that. He went to the desk and scribbled a telephone number on Rickert’s pad. “You’re right,” he said. “Give them this. It’s a hard phone. They shouldn’t worry about it.”

The ex-cop was still frowning worriedly. “You want them to contact you?”

“Only if the need is great,” Bolan replied. He was instructing the guy, now. He had very deftly taken charge. “That doesn’t apply to you, though. You keep me informed. I want to hear every footstep.”

He was moving toward the door.

“Hold it!” Rickert cried.

Bolan went on to the door before again showing the guy his face. “What?”

“What are we supposed to—what’s the—?”

“What’ve you done, so far?”

Rickert was giving him the fish eye. He rose to his feet and said, “I got the whole force mobilized. I’ve staked out all the hot spots. And I tipped the cops.”

“To what?”

“To what’s going down. I figure they can keep some heat on the guy.” He grinned slyly. “It’s their duty, right? To protect the citizens from maniacs?”

“Just so it doesn’t boomerang,” Bolan said, showing the guy a sour grin.

“What’s to boomerang? We’re covered completely. There’s no way to—I even had to put out some dummy targets for the guy to give him something to hit. I’m on top of it. And you can report that to your man. What I want to know is where you fit.”

“I told you where I fit,” Bolan replied coldly. “Now you tell them.”

Rickert’s gaze wavered. He said, “Sure. What I meant was—”

Bolan growled, “Like I said, you’re okay. Just keep on top of it. You’ll know when I need you. Keep me informed.”

He went on out, left a pleasant word with the guy in the turret, and put that place behind.

It had been a very soft game. Not too soft, hopefully, but strong enough to seize the enemy’s greatest strength and turn it into his own.

And to hell with the “dummy targets.”

Very soon, now, the Executioner should be hearing from them.

CHAPTER 7

UNWIRED

It had been an entirely successful penetration. He had located and invaded what appeared to be the nerve center of the Los Angeles operation, conned the security boss, and left wires all over the joint. Totally successful, yes. So why did he feel so uneasy about the whole thing? It had been a textbook operation. The equipment used was the latest, most sophisticated stuff available for electronic surveillance. A small recorder-transceiver and power pack were neatly tucked away in a wall crevice at the third floor level. Micro-pickups with fantastic sensitivity were emplaced at the reception desk, in the window in Rickert’s office and under his desktop. The confidence act had gone without apparent hitch; Rickert had bought him as a security envoy from the man up high. To all appearances, Bolan had breached the security apparatus of the men he’d come to defeat.

So why the uneasiness?

He’d left the Warwagon stashed two streets over in a residential neighborhood. With all the cautious footwork required to assure his own security, it had taken about ten minutes to return to the cruiser and to initiate contact with his Bell connection. And he still was entertaining that uneasy mental atmosphere as her familiar voice sang through the mobile phone: “Special operator.”

“It’s set,” he reported tersely. “How ‘bout you?”

“We’re already cooking,” she replied, restrained excitement filling that good voice. “He’s talking to someone right now and we’re running the fix. I’ll put it in your collector so keep a watch. How’d the interior decorating go?”

An inexplicable chill traversed the Bolan spine. He shook it away, reminding himself that he was getting too damned emotionally involved with the lady, dismissing the chill as a formless fear. “It went fine. I guess we’re cooking everywhere. You sure it’s okay there?”

“Sure I’m sure,” she said pertly. But then some altered quality of Bolan’s voice in the inquiry must have penetrated. Some of the perkiness dropped away as she added, “Why shouldn’t it be okay?”

“I had a shiver,” he explained. “Combat jitters, probably. Sometimes I can smell the big one coming long before the rest of me knows about it. Uh, listen, these guys are not clowns. They probably have damned good counterintelligence. I want you to play it close to the breast. I’ll call you home as soon as possible. And when I say the word, I want you to come running.”

She gave him a very subdued, “Okay”—remembering, perhaps, the tribulations of yesterday.

Bolan terminated the contact and quickly went to work at the surveillance console. He poked in a computer program, then remoted the whole show to the command console. Then he went forward and immediately set the cruiser adrift.

The “drift” was a planned cruising pattern of the streets surrounding the Investors building and the mission was audio surveillance. The little transceiver, which he had mounted on the outer wall at the third level, was good for about a mile under optimum conditions, but probably would range no more than two or three city blocks in this area of high buildings. With all its limitations, it was a very nice little package. The power pack would allow several hours of continuous operation. The recorder was sound-actuated, though, so continuous operation would be an unlikely circumstance. Actually, days of recorded surveillance could usually be packed into the little machine. Even that capability had never been tested in the sort of operations Bolan conducted. He could command the tiny unit from the surveillance console in the Warwagon to change the mode from Record to Continuous Broadcast or he could trigger “collections” of the stored recordings for high speed playback and tone transmission to the onboard recorders.

As one of the limitations, the remote unit could not record and broadcast at the same time. This normally posed no special problems to Bolan’s surveillance efforts, but this time it did. He would prefer a continuous “live” program from the offices of SecuriCom but he also needed to know what had transpired in there during the fifteen minutes since the recorder began operating.

He opted for a quick collection, a “drain” of stored moments in the recent lift of one Charlie Rickert. The remote unit responded instantly to the summons. A two-second tone sounded in the monitor. The console went into automatic processing while Bolan’s mind fidgeted over the implications of the two-second transmission. There could not be a hell of a lot on there. High speed recovery, sure, but still the ratio figured at about sixty to one—a one-second tone for each full minute of recorded data.

The console was flashing Proceed at him. He gave it the countersign and was immediately greeted by his own voice echoing dully through the audio monitor.

“Some people worry.”

Rickert, then, distantly responding in muffled and indistinct tones, “As well they should.”

Bolan poked in a fast advance, moving well forward of the moment when the second bug began picking up.

It was Rickert’s voice, close and clear now: “Sure. What I meant was—”

Bolan again, himself how distant and a bit garbled: “Like I said, you’re okay. Just keep on top of it. You’ll know when I need you. Keep me informed.”

A dead zone followed—then muffled undertones of quiet male voices—a door sound—footsteps—suddenly this, from Rickert: “Did you get a good look?”

Another voice, unfamiliar: “Not very good, no. But I know I never saw that guy before.”

Rickert: “What about the name?”

“What? Crusher? No, I think that’s a—”

“Sure it is. That’s a—he signed his name D’Anglia.”

“There’s a family back east that—”

“Right, right! I know who you mean! They’re—”

“He’s an import, Charlie. A classic if ever I saw one. A guy like that has only one purpose in life. I wonder what this means.”

“It means—it couldn’t have come at a worse time. But I know for damned sure, hey, he didn’t come all the way from the east just this morning!”

“You’re right exactly. I’d give a nickel to know who’s sponsoring him. Hey, I think the guy knows it all.”

“Sure he knows it all. What the hell you think he came for? He’s the insurance man. Someone way up is paying his freight. I wonder how long he’s been …?”

“Forever, probably. I told you my people don’t take much on faith. I bet they’ve got us under a microscope. I told you—”

Rickert, greatly perturbed: “Jesus Christ!”

“What is it?”

The sound track became very noisy at that point. When Rickert’s voice came again, it was obviously via a more distant pickup—faint, barely readable. “There may be more. I’ll shake it down. You get in there and—is he still on the damn phone? Tell him to—no!—wait!—activate the—yeah!—yeah!”

A door slammed in the distance.

End of recording. And the two-second drain was explained. Sly Charlie had discovered Mack Bolan’s ears.

But what about April’s?

The combat spine had known, sure. And Bolan would forever ponder such inexplicable capabilities of the human mechanism. But it was no time, now, for mind puzzles.

He grabbed the phone and summoned his lady. “Get out of there!” he commanded, the instant the line opened. “Now! Run one block west, one block south. I’ll pick you up. Go now!”

The lady was very confused by all that. Because it was the wrong lady. “What is this!” cried the strange voice. “What’s going on?”

Bolan snarled back, “This is agent Striker! Where’s my special operator?”

“Some men just came and took her away!” the lady wailed.

The Bolan heart was already frozen in place. “Calm down,” he said, talking for his own benefit, perhaps, as much as for the lady’s. “Just take it easy and tell me about it.”

“They came in waving guns. I’m the supervisor. They showed me badges. They said—I told them she was—I thought they were part of—I showed them, and they took her away.”

“When was this?” Bolan asked numbly.

“Just now. Just this instant.”

Sure. The spine had known. The rest of the man should have known, as well. Bolan was not the only guy in town with access to sophisticated equipment.

For every action, a reaction—sure. The art of electronic countermeasures had grown proportionately with the development of electronic snooping. The guys at SecuriCom evidently were experts at the game.

So …

It was a forlorn hope … but the only one at hand.

At their last contact, only a few minutes earlier, April had told him, “He’s talking to someone now and we’re running the fix. I’ll put it in your collector.”

The collector was a recorder drop in the communications computer, fed by a mobile phone loop, used primarily as a means of receiving messages while Bolan was out of the vehicle.

And yes, she’d made a deposit there.

“Striker. A call at 10:17 went to a Jay Leonard at 3040 Silverlake Boulevard in Hollywood. They’re still talking. I’ll deposit the conversation when it is complete, but I want to get you this information up front. We started getting a peculiar ultrasonic pulse on that line a couple of minutes ago. The sine wave reveals a possible ECM characteristic. Also it appears only on the hot side of our patch. I’m afraid it’s a tap detector. I’ll abort as soon as—uh oh—cheese it—looks like a flying squad descending here. Could be cops. Don’t worry, I’ll stonewall. Good luck, Striker.”

Good luck, indeed.

Well … maybe they were cops. It was worth hoping for, anyway. But he could not rest with mere hope. Still … it seemed highly unlikely that Rickert could have reacted that quickly—in a matter of minutes—to locate the tap and put a squad of men down at the source.

He could not rest with unlikelies, either.

And, of course, in the world of electronics, time and space had little meaning. If the guy had the gear to do it, sure, he could have flushed that tap in a split-second and—yeah, yeah, he could do the rest, too. He’d told Bolan-Crusher that he had “mobilized the entire force”—which could mean, among other things, roving squads of security cops blanketing the city with quick-reaction capability. Rickert had been trained by one of the best police departments in the nation. And how many “cops” did SecuriCom employ? No matter about that. He could have lucked into it with a squad in the vicinity of the telephone exchange where April had set up shop. A couple of minutes? Sure. Blind luck or not, the result would be the same for April. So there was damn little hope with the unlikelies.

Bolan had to play it where it lay. Whatever and whomever, the detectives had been detected. Bolan had to take the assumption that April Rose was in enemy hands.

They would not be particularly tender hands.

“Good luck, Striker.”

She was contemplating a stonewall while wishing him luck. Some kind of plucky lady. And, yes, Bolan had to admit the truth: he was very strongly emotionally involved with the lady.

If it was cops … then okay … no problem … no problem.

If not … well, the Striker knew and the lady knew that there was no stonewalling those other people. They could bust the mind wide open and empty everything from it in mere minutes. Nor would they hesitate to do so. Some of them would even enjoy doing it, necessary or not. And there would be no return for April Rose from such an adventure.

Luck, April?

Mack Bolan knew that he and the lady would need much more than luck. They both would need a miracle. And sometimes, a guy simply had to make his own.

He needed to get their attention—their full attention—and to give them something much larger than April Rose to think about. Or else he had to snatch the lady back, damned quick—and that could be the toughest task of all.

Luck, okay. He’d take all he could get. And he’d take one of those miracles, too, thanks.

He’d take whatever the hell he could get.

CHAPTER 8

A QUESTION OF TIME

The question was entirely one of time—and Bolan was not convinced that there was enough of that left in all the world for April Rose.

He left the cruiser idling in the alley and went in via the service entrance.

The naked eye of a television camera ogled him as he stepped through from the receiving docks to the interior passageway.

He was carrying a special cutdown version of the M-79 beneath his coat and the bulge must have been obvious but there was no challenge as he proceeded on toward the nerve center.

Another camera watched him into the short hallway leading to SecuriCom. The one mounted above the security door had little time to read him. He unleashed the ‘79 from twenty paces out, sending forty flaming millimeters of HE thundering into that door and obscuring the hall with puffing clouds of smoke.

The heavy steel door was buckled inward by the blast, hinges sprung and askew, still standing but a bit cockeyed and open to entry.

Some crazy people behind the smoke were firing handguns at phantoms of their own imaginations. Bolan moved inside with the smoke and immediately dispatched another round toward the back wall. The two crazies back there had already opted for cover, but not quite soon enough. The blast caught them both in mid-dive and flung them on into a row of filing cabinets with battering force. These were simple concussion rounds, no shrapnel or other dispersal materials other than the flame and smoke unleashed by the blast itself and super-energized molecules of air. Even so, they could knock a man silly from ten yards—and a contained blast could flatten the walls and drop the roof of a small building.

The guy at the console up near the door had gotten his bell rung by the first blast. He was lolling in his chair about half conscious, blood oozing from both nostrils, not giving a carefree damn about the alarms erupting from his equipment.

Bolan turned into the little anteroom and sent another charge into the door at Rickert’s private office. That one broke into two pieces and hurled itself on into the room. He thumbed in another round as he moved in behind the blast. At that same moment, a trick panel in the wall to his left swung open and a guy in civilian dress came charging out, pistol in hand, wild-eyed and grunting. The charge became a sliding halt in the confrontation with the gaping barrel of the ‘79. The pistol kept on moving across the room as the guy’s hands flew quickly overhead.

“What the hell!” he muttered.

This guy was a brother of the blood, for sure. And Bolan had heard the voice minutes earlier, in the taped conversation with Charlie Rickert.

“You tell me what the hell,” Bolan growled. He punched the weapon into the guy’s belly and shoved him against Rickert’s desk. “Where’s the man?”

“H-he not here! Gone—he left!”

The still smoking muzzle dug deeper. “Know what happens if I let fly right now, amici? They’ll be sucking your intestines off the blinds with a vacuum cleaner.”

The guy had no heart for this sort of thing. Instant sweat appeared on the forehead and the eyes rolled as he yelled, “I swear he left! What can I—what do you—”

Bolan plugged that attempt with another vicious jab into the belly. The guy sucked it in and turned deathly pale. Bolan could see the mind inside buckling. He maintained the pressure and said, “Make me happy.”

“Okay, okay.” the guy replied quietly. He was trying to pull it together and also reaching for a bit of dignity. And Bolan was willing to give him that. “He said he was going to Burbank.”

“What’s so great about Burbank?”

“We got a plant there, a facility. By the airport. We got this problem.”

“You’ve got a problem right here, bud.”

“I know but … this broad, see—we caught a broad. She had a court order, see, which we think is a phony. ID, too, you know—federal, federal ID, also probably phony. It’s a hell of a sweat. See, we—”

“You know who I am?” Bolan growled.

“Sure. You’re D’Anglia. I was here when you—I was in the back room.”

“I don’t know who you are, friend.”

“I’m Lambert. I’m the auditor.”

“The hell you’re Lambert.”

“Oh, well, of course, changed from Lamamammamamma …”

The guy’s tape was stuck. Bolan said, “Changed from what?”

“Lamamammafria. You can see why I changed.”

“What do you audit?”

“I audit the—you know—I audit this account … for them.”

“What account?”

“SecuriCom. I keep an eye on Rickert and his boys.”

“You stink, Lamamamma.”

“What? I don’t—what did I? …”

“Some auditor. These guys walking away with the whole thing and you never tumbled to it? You want me to believe that?”

“I don’t understand—I didn’t know …”

“That broad works for me, guy.”

“Well, we didn’t—I didn’t know! Rickert said—and I figured—I didn’t know what to you saying the guy is kinky?”

“You know damned well he’s kinky!”

“No, I—listen—please—don’t pull that trigger!” The dignity had gone to hell. “I’m sorry about the lady! They’re taking her up to Burbank. Rickert’s meeting them there! I swear—now I swear that’s all I know about it! But if you say he’s kinky then he’s kinky. By god. I’m sorry. I really didn’t—”

Bolan pulled the ‘79 out of the guy’s belly and slapped him across the temple with it. He fell onto the desk and slid to the floor, apparently unconscious.

So far, so good.

Time consumed: about a minute, maybe two.

He explored the back room—a plush little inner sanctum without windows—and found another way out.

Ten seconds later he was in the battle cruiser and pointing her nose toward Burbank.

As he eased onto the street, he could see throngs of curious folk on the sidewalk in front of the building and a couple of police cruisers at the curb with lights flashing. Far down the boulevard, a procession of fire vehicles were approaching the scene.

Bolan had cut it pretty damn close, yeah. But he was now much closer to April Rose—and that had suddenly become the new game in town. Rickert could not have more than a ten minute lead on him. And maybe he could even reduce those numbers just a bit in the chase to Burbank.

The firemen could relax—there were no fires to fight in that joint.

Most of the fire was in Bolan’s belly and it was building by the moment. He’d damned sure better find that girl alive and well. Otherwise, Sly Charlie was going to discover the true meaning of holocaust. And there would be no place in time or space to avoid that reckoning.

Bolan was in love with the lady, for sure.

That, too, was a reckoning to be met—even if it occurred beyond space and outside of time.

CHAPTER 9

THE TURNING

“They’ve located Mr. Brognola, Chief. They’re patching you through, now.”

About damned time. He’d only been waiting for—

“Brognola here.”

“Tim Braddock, Hal.”

“So they told me,” sighed the familiar voice. “It’s the only reason I’m here. What brings you to my table? Long time no see. By the way, I did hear about your new appointment. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” But he had not called for back-slapping. “Where are you?”

“I’m, uh, not in Washington at the moment.”

“I didn’t ask you where you’re not, Hal.”

The guy was not about to tell him, either. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m hoping you can tell me. I received a rather reliable tip awhile ago. Concerns you, I believe.”

“Uh huh.”

“I think so, yeah. It says a certain subject is operating in my town again. I thought you could confirm that for me.”

“A certain subject? Can’t you do better than that?”

“I’d rather not. We both know who I’m talking about. Let’s leave it that way. Is it true or not true?”

The fed sighed then chuckled lightly into the connection. “How would you rather have it?”

“Not true.”

“Then it’s not true.”

“Damnit!” Braddock snapped. “Don’t play games with me! I don’t want—”

“Have a cigar, Tim.”

The son of a bitch. How did you stay mad at a …? “I gave up smoking when I made deputy chief,” Braddock said sourly. “Public image and all that. I’d sort of like to keep the image. You know. No smoke around my head.”

The federal voice was sober and calm as it told him, “I know how you feel. If an apology would help …”

“It wouldn’t. Call the guy out, Hal.”

“I didn’t send him in, Chief. How could I call him out?”

“But you knew about it.”

“I won’t confirm or deny that, either. I’ll say this: there will be a public announcement early next week. From very high. And you will find no smoke about your head. That’s the best I can give you, for now.”

It was true, then—the new rumor. It could be very strange, thought Braddock, the way the world sometimes turned. That other time, back near the beginning of Braddock’s involvement with this “certain subject,” the world had been a far different place. The subject was just another kid from ‘Nam, gone haywire and running amuck in the civil society. Tim Braddock was just beginning to move up in the administrative ranks. Harold Brognola was leading a local federal task force on organized crime. A different world, yeah. Then the world had turned. Mack Bolan became the symbol of red-blooded American heroism and the absolute scourge of the Mafia conspiracy. Tim Braddock was turned into a deputy chief of one of the most respected police departments in the world. And Brognola had become head honcho of federal law enforcement everywhere, advisor to presidents and a consultant to Interpol.

Yes, the three B’s—Bolan, Braddock, Brognola—intertwined by fate and circumstance—or perhaps by parallel destinies, if you could add a touch of romanticism to the strange ways this old world had turned.

“It’s a clean phone, Hal,” he said quietly. “What’s going down?”

“You don’t really want to know that,” was the calm response.

“Okay, maybe I don’t. But tell me, anyway. Is it true what I’ve been hearing from Washington?”

“About our subject?”

“Same subject, yes.”

“Yes, Tim. It’s true.”

Well damn! He could not keep the quiet elation out of his voice. “Okay, I’ll ratify that—smoke on the head or not. It should have come long ago.”

“We tried to send it long ago. The guy wouldn’t accept it. I’m not altogether certain he’s going to accept it this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s given us a conditional go, that’s all.”

“What’s the condition?”

Brognola gave a long, tired sigh. “He’s insisting on a second mile.”

“A second what?”

“Mile. Like the condemned man, back in the age of romance. The last mile, you know. The guy did his, and then some. Now he says he’s got to do it again.”

Braddock did not fully understand. “You mean the whole damned? …”

“Once around lightly, this time … or so he says. He calls it a mop-up. I call it insanity. Did you hear about yesterday?”

To be sure. “I heard, yeah. But I didn’t get all the—”

“We didn’t release it all. I can tell you, though, between buddies, that the heartland of the nation has been thoroughly pacified, to use a military term. It will be a long time before they can gather the pieces for another try. And we’ll be there, bet on it, to fit some pieces of our own into the picture. So …” Another deep sigh. “So I really can’t argue with the man. He’s doing a hell of a job on these people.”

“Yes, I’ve seen a few of his jobs,” Braddock murmured. “I can’t see what he’s going for here, though, this time. I haven’t found any pieces forming a fit of any magnitude since he did it here the first time.”

“There have been, uh, movements, Tim.”

“Gee, thanks for telling me. When did you—”

“I didn’t. He did.”

It was Braddock’s turn for the deep sigh routine. “So he’s taking it apart again, eh?”

“I hope so, yes. That’s the general idea. Hey. Don’t fault me, buddy. I have no control over this subject. Hell, I just trot along behind and try to pick up the broken pieces.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?”

“Huh?”

“Huh hell. You heard what I said. Is this a round-robin telephone connection, Hal? Are you in L.A.?”

The fed chuckled. “Relax. We’re trying to cover the guy, that’s all. I’ve got my orders straight from—well, no, let’s not politicize it. No room for that. I understand, though, they got a full bipartisan okay from Capitol Hill. The thing is set. It’s going, to work. If we can just keep him alive for five more damn days.”

“Did you say five days?”

Counting this one, right. He said six days. Yesterday was day one. Listen to me, Tim …” The guy was becoming emotional—a rare scene, for that one. “It would be the most terrible—it would be—if this subject should fall to police guns, for God’s sake—why, I just don’t think—it would be a national calamity. Talk about politics—the good citizens of this nation would rise up in their wrath to behead us all. And we’d deserve it. We can’t let—”

“You don’t have to sell me,” Braddock growled. “On the theory, anyway. I have to live with the realities, though. We still have wants on the guy and some of them are yours.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And I’ll tell you something, Mister Fed. A good L.A. cop does not play politics. He doesn’t play national opinion polls, either. He plays good guys and bad guys. As of this moment, our subject has been rather thoroughly identified as a bad guy. I can’t call twenty thousand cops in here and tell them to look the other way when a certain bad guy lopes past waving a gun and hurling grenades. Wouldn’t do it if I could. If they can do it for one, then they could decide when and where to do it for any—all on their own. We can’t run a department that way. The law is the law—and that’s the way it has to stay. So what are you suggesting to me, Federale?”

Brognola very quietly replied, “Hey, Chief, it’s your nickel. I’m suggesting nothing. Can I go now?”

“You don’t suck me away that easy, mister. I think you’d better come in. We need to—”

“Nothing doing, Tim—sorry. I really can’t. If the subject is right, we’ll only be around for a few hours, anyway. Suffer us to that extent. I’ll make you a promise. If it goes beyond nightfall, I’ll come in and we’ll put the heads together. How’s that?”

“That’s awful,” Braddock replied, but he knew it was the best he was going to get. He laughed lightly and added, “But I’ll expect you for dinner.”

“Deal,” Brognola said quickly. “Now you promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“You won’t react to wild tips and rumors of war. You won’t throw up a damned Maginot line like the last time.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Braddock replied lightly, “the taxpayers are growing restless over irresponsible spending. We can’t squander the manpower on rumors of war. However …” The tone became heavier as he continued. “When the shooting starts, Hal, you know damned well what our reaction has to be.”

Brognola growled, “Yeah, I know that. Okay. I’m saying goodbye for now.”

“One more thing, old pal.”

“Okay, hit me.”

“Are you carting a federal judge around with you?”

“Where would you get such an idea?”

“A piece of police routine that hit my desk this morning. It says that this special judge has been magically appointed and transported overnight to alleviate some of the overload in this district. I was just thinking how convenient that could be for a—”

“Okay, you got me. He’s mine. It’s one hundred percent legal, strike force authority, so don’t let—”

“Say goodbye, Hal. I believe the shooting has started.”

“Literally?”

“Literally, yes. Goodbye, Hal.”

He put the phone down and turned troubled eyes to the uniformed cop who was fidgeting in the open doorway. “What’ve you got, Johnny?”

“You said you wanted to be alerted to any reports of paramilitary activity or the like.”

The shooting had started, yeah. He’d seen it in Johnny’s eyes even while he talked to Brognola. “Let’s have it.”

“Offices of a security outfit on Sunset Boulevard, Chief. Explosions and gunfire. Street cops on the scene say it looks like a war zone.”

The deputy chief did not need an on-the-scene assessment. His gut already knew, and the scene was clearly imaged in his mind.

Charlie Rickert worked for a “security outfit” on Sunset. And Rickert had longtime associations with certain criminal elements of the community.

“No more rumors,” Braddock muttered.

“Sir?”

“We’ll have to sound an area alert. Advise Communications to stand by for—no, cancel that. We’ll await confirmation. Send Hallowell and his experts to the scene. Tell him I need solid evidence to justify a Hardcase Two.”

The cop’s eyes flared at that one. He’d been around during the original Hardcase—several damned turns of the world ago. “Well bullll shit,” he said softly, forgetting himself for the moment.

“It’s not applesauce, Johnny,” Big Tim growled, perhaps too quietly for the officer to hear.

And indeed it was not. It was the most unpleasant task ever to burden a law enforcement official. He had to do his damndest to catch or kill a man whom nobody really wanted caught or killed. Except the Charlie Rickerts of the world … and their rotten-ass compatriots.

“Wait, Johnny, I—”

Too late. Johnny had already quietly closed the door and departed on his assignment.

Too late, yes.

The world keeps turning, Bolan. Get off, man—get off while you can!

But he knew the guy would not. That guy would only be carried off.

So be it, then. So be it.

CHAPTER 10

CONNECTIONS

That tight coagulation of districts, communities and municipalities loosely referred to as Los Angeles could be a nightmare for the unwary visiting motorist, who had been conditioned to believe that some methodology of rhyme or reason should accompany the laying out of a city’s streets and thoroughfares. Even the highly vaunted freeway system, which serves more vehicles per capita than anywhere else in the world, could bring a lump to the throat and a quiver to the heart at bumper to bumper speeds of 60 mph and more, with vehicles often hurtling along five or six abreast into dead men’s curves, offramps, onramps, upramps, downramps, spirals and clover-leafs—not to mention the bewildering complexity of instructional signboards flashing past faster than the mind can comprehend or even assimilate.

Bolan had to guess that the energy consumed on those freeways each day could probably heat the homes of the entire rest of the nation.

And this was midday traffic. Shudder the mind to even contemplate the peak hours of this madness.

The city of Burbank borders the Los Angeles districts of Hollywood and North Hollywood.

It should be a simple matter, then—shouldn’t it?—to journey from Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood to the Hollywood-Burbank airport.

Wrong.

It seems that Griffith Park, Forest Lawn, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios and the Hollywood Hills form the natural boundary between Hollywood and Burbank. If a guy was determined to stick to the freeways, he could journey east along Sunset to the Hollywood Freeway, then cut back northwest for several miles to North Hollywood, then onto the Ventura Freeway running due east again for a long run to the Golden State Freeway for another jog northwesterly for five miles or so to San Fernando Boulevard and the airport.

Or … he could take the Hollywood to Barham Boulevard then take his chances on the arterials all the way through the city of Burbank in a full south to north transit.

He could also go on up to Universal City and take Lankershim and Vineland … or …

Or, of course, if he was fortunate enough to be driving a vehicle with an onboard navigational computer, he could simply turn the whole problem over to the electronic brain.

The computer advised Bolan to proceed north on Highland for an interchange with the freeway near the Hollywood Bowl, then off at Barham and on to Hollywood Way, which would take him to the southeast corner of the airport and the terminal access. So much for freeways, which figured into that route for only a mile or two.

He accepted that route and gave the thing its head, turning his own mind onto more substantive matters.

He could not dwell upon the present predicament and possible fate of his lady fed. So the mind turned naturally to an assessment of the overall situation now confronting him across this tangled landscape.

Fact: a new “thing” was a building in the Golden State.

Fact: the principals so far encountered were a diverse lot of personalities, such as:

(a) A rich but kinky businessman, whose troubles with a rebellious daughter now seemed remote and unimportant;

(b)a kinky ex-cop who now commanded a private police force of unknown but probably impressive size, which was probably financed by (a) above;

(c) A holdover Mafia master architect from the old order who had direct involvement with:

(d) A nameless team of hitmen who had unsuccessfully tried to snuff (a) above, and also had some connection with (b) above;

(e) A Mafia “auditor” set as a watchdog over (b) on behalf of:

(f) An unidentified “them” who appeared to be the budding bosses of the reconstituted Los Angeles Mob.

Sub-fact, with a question mark:

This new “thing” was being structured along an unusual pattern called the California Concept, which probably meant, in this early analysis:

(a) A combination of Mafia and non-Mafia elements joined together for mutual comfort and assistance,

(b) Welded into a supertight, superquiet organization with:

(c) more lateral than vertical lines of responsibility and activity; and

(d) invisible lines of authority.

In other words, a “Mob” that was not really a Mob, structured along some new “concept,” which did not reveal visible connections between the layers. In simple, it did not appear to be a “crime family” operation.

The traditional Mafia pattern in America was a pyramidal structure with the boss at the apex. He would franchise “territories,” which could be set up geographically or categorically or both, and which would be ruled by sub-bosses who, in turn, would franchise smaller subdivisions to their lieutenants who then would sublet various enterprises to their individual soldiers.

The soldiers were in business for themselves, running their little scams and operations with almost total autonomy so long as they remained within their licenses and in good standing with the “family.”

Just as any individual business that operates under a large corporate umbrella, the bottom level mobsters benefitted from the total power of the full organization without themselves being required to worry about legal services, investment capital, political influence, and so forth. On the other hand, they were merely operating business franchises. The lieutenants took a cut from the soldier’s profits. The sub-bosses took a cut from the lieutenants. And, of course, the boss always got his.

From such a pyramid, the cash flow upward from all the soldiers of a vast empire was astronomical. And, of course, the guy at the top of the pyramid was the guy who grew fat and rich from other people’s labors.

It was an inverted pyramid, of course, tapering back like a mirror-image from its base in the straight world to layer after smaller layer, deeper and deeper into the underworld. Still, it was an almost perfect model of the structure for corporate capitalism—and, being free of upperworld restraints, infinitely more profitable per dollar investment.

Bolan had to wonder, now, what had replaced it. Or had it been replaced, at all, in this California Concept?

Were they or them a group with fully delegated powers to direct the criminal activities in a newly consecrated territory? Were they directors, then, of a new criminal corporation that was trying to build upon the ruins of the DiGeorge empire?

If so, did the fictitious Crusher draw his authority, so presumed and accepted by the boss of the war committee, from the Chairman of the Board himself? Or did such an entity even exist in the real world?

Lamamamma had said to Rickert, in that taped conversation, “I told you my people don’t take much on faith. I bet they’ve got us under a microscope.”

Were “my people” a generalization or did it refer to actual persons behind the scenes of the Los Angeles push?

That same guy had told Bolan-Crusher: “I audit this account for them. I keep an eye on Rickert and his boys.”

Back to them, again. My people?

As opposed to whose people?

McCullough, Rickert, the hit team—not my people, no. McCullough, Rickert—outsiders. Not brothers of the blood. Not in any sense … but a curious relationship. McCullough owned California Investors, which owned, in turn, SecuriCom, which employed Rickert. Yet Rickert’s boys—also not “brothers”—had been sent to snuff Bill McCullough who had appealed to eastern “brothers” for help in his own front yard.

Curious, yeah.

Was McCullough really all that torn up over his daughter’s liaisons—or had that merely been a cover story to involve east with west?

And who was “Jay Leonard”—the recipient of the heavy telephone call that soured the day for April Rose? A call that Bolan had hoped would lead him to the mysterious them. Maybe it had. Or it could, still. Bolan had not lost interest in Mr. Leonard; the interest had simply given way to an overriding priority. But … was Leonard one of them?

It was all very tangled … but not hopelessly so. The confusion was not at all surprising or demoralizing. Bolan had not expected a cakewalk in Los Angeles. If the city’s streets could be nightmarish to the visiting motorist, then certainly the coagulations of underworld power in such an awesome setting could be just as confusing and unwieldy for a visiting crimebuster.

A federal task force of legal experts and methodical investigators would need months and perhaps years to untangle all the diverse interconnections of cause and effect in such an organization. Even then, the legal evidence to effectively prosecute the perpetrators of a criminal conspiracy could be doubly elusive. Meanwhile the shit machine would run on virtually unchecked until it gained such financial strength and political clout that all the good cops in the country could not hope to contain it, let alone dismantle it.

Mack Bolan was not confined to the rules of that sacred game.

All he needed was a chink in the walls, a toehold from which to launch an attack with no holds barred—and, yes, with a bit of luck and a mind that dared, he could dismantle that shit machine in a single day. Let the constitutional lawyers and professional liberals agonize and handwring the loss of the sacred game that made the dungheaps possible in the first place. Bolan was wagine: a war … without convention … and without respect for dumb rules that insured victory to the enemy. He claimed no holiness for his own game, either. There was no mantle of righteousness cloaking Mack Bolan’s war. If his government could catch him at his illegal game—then okay—he’d suffer the consequences without bitterness or complaint—and he would tolerate no battery of lawyers trying to establish his holiness, either.

But that was all theoretical garbage.

If Bolan lost this game, it would be to the enemy—not to the soldiers of the same side. It was not that the cops could not or would not catch him; it was simply that all the odds were with the other side. If he was going to fall, then he knew where that fall would come. His head would end up in a paper sack carried by some gloating geek who …

Ah well. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.

For the moment, Bolan had job enough simply trying to save the day for April Rose.

And if that were not possible?

Well … if that were not possible … then for sure it was going to be one hell of a terrible and nightmarish day for the visiting crimebuster.

And perhaps for this awesome city, as well.

CHAPTER 11

WOW TIME

It looked like a SecuriCom convention. Uniformed men were milling about in the light rain outside and more could be seen inside the office through the open doorway. The building was set on airport property at the south perimeter. It was a warehouse or maintenance garage—or both—with loading docks and overhead doors running the whole length of maybe a hundred yards. There was no fence nor a hell of a lot of tarmac between road and docks. The office occupied the east end. A half dozen cars with company decals were grouped in the small parking area near the office door. Two large vans and a smaller one were backed into loading position at the docks. One of the overhead doors was open and more uniformed people could be seen moving around just inside.

The fog had lifted some time earlier but the cloud base was hovering just overhead—perhaps at a thousand feet or so—and a steady light rain had been falling through most of the journey up from Hollywood. Rickert had arrived just ahead of Bolan and was met outside by two men in street dress. They were standing outside the office jawing in the rain as Bolan cruised by.

A car rental terminal abutted the facility to the west. He pulled into there and parked amidst the U-drives while the combat mind coolly clicked through the various possibilities of approach.

He was not here to thump the chest and announce his rage. He was here to get that girl back, whole and healthy. Suicidal urges would serve no useful purpose toward that goal. He could blast his way in, sure—and maybe he could even blast his way out. But the chance would be about one in a hundred that he would emerge with April Rose all in one piece.

He could go in softly—and maybe even come out the same way. But could he bring the girl with him? Rickert was no clown—and Bolan’s masquerades would perhaps not stand the test of time. Even saying that he could pull it off again, there was no assurance and perhaps only a fifty-fifty probability that Rickert would continue to accept the “authority” of D’Anglia the Crusher. And, of course, it was entirely possible that Sly Charlie had already put the pieces together and come up with Bolan-D’Anglia.

It was no simple decision.

These kinds never were.

In the end, though, it always came down to the simple imperative. Bolan would simply have to seize the moment and run with it. Play the ear. The moment was about as favorable as could be expected. Rickert had just arrived on the scene and was being briefed by his lieutenants. Judging by the pace of other activities there, the thing with April Rose was hardly more than a footnote to the larger endeavor. Obviously the “force” was assembling and preparing for some sort of aggressive action.

So it was a moment out of balance—and Bolan knew that he had to put that moment to work. He had to run with it.

He brought the fire control system to the con and centered the rangemarks on a vehicle in that congregation parked outside the office, poked in target acquisition, set up a one-two automatic program and selected another target for the follow-on, then enabled the rocketry and cycled the system into standby for EVA-Remote.

Bolan was setting up a contingency only; he hoped that he would not have to use it. Other business structures were nearby and a residential neighborhood was just a stone’s throw. He had no wish to spill his war into innocent laps. But he did need that backup. He was going in rigged for light combat. He selected the Auto-Mag as head weapon—a .44 Magnum autoloader, the big stainless steel pistol that Bolan had dubbed “Big Thunder”—and rigged it about the waist. The silent Beretta in shoulder harness remained in place. A variety of small ordnance items—flares, smokers, boomers—went onto the waist rig. Finally he clipped the tiny remote fire control device—the “black box”—onto the readybelt and donned a black slicker to cover it all.

The Executioner was ready to go a’hunting.

The rain was coming much heavier. A personnel door at the west end of the building was covered by one of those damnable television eyes. He warily skirted that hazard at safe range and came in along the loading docks. The guys at the far end, near the office, at least had sense enough to come in out of the rain. They were moving to cover beneath the eaves. The visibility was definitely worsening. With all the movement down there, it was impossible to spot Rickert or even to distinguish clothing in that group.

Bolan went on to the parked vans for a quick inspection of their contents. The larger two were personnel carriers—confirming a gut feeling he’d had about those vehicles. Upholstered benches lined each side, equipment racks filling the center aisle. The small van was outfitted like a plush camper, with much of the rear area devoted to wall-to-wall bedspace. The bedding was mussed. Near the door, Bolan discovered a lady’s slipper. A familiar one, sure. When last seen, that slipper was on the dainty foot of a lady fed.

He moved on inside the party van and across the bed to the rear doors. Tinted portholes looked out onto the dock and beyond into the busy interior of the building. It was a warehouse, yeah—or had been. Now it looked like the staging area for a military operation. Shotguns and riot gear were stacking up just inside. Deeper inside could be seen row upon row of what appeared to be ammunition boxes. Several men wearing SecuriCom uniforms were moving vigorously about—lugging boxes, sorting, stacking.

Outfitting a war party? Probably, yes.

It was beginning to look like a hell of a hard mission. Too hard, perhaps, considering its nature. A hundred armed men or more—alerted, maybe, and simply awaiting the appearance of an undesirable alien in their midst.

Or maybe not.

There was one simple, direct way to find out. Bolan opened the van, gathered the slicker about him, and stepped onto the dock.

A uniformed guy in the doorway gave him a startled look, then cast a curious gaze toward the van from which he had just emerged.

Before the guy could have too much time to wonder about it, Bolan growled at him: “Great day for the ducks.”

The guy looked at the sky as he growled back: “Yeah. We can sure pick ‘em.”

“We almost ready? The boss is here.”

“I saw ‘im. We’re about ready, yeah. You in charge of the?…”

The guy let it hang but Bolan assured him that he was indeed in charge of whatever.

“Yeah.” He tossed April’s slipper into the air and caught it with the other hand. “Where’s Cinderella?”

The private cop chuckled as he jerked his head toward the interior of the building. “She’s in the safe.” He leered. “Didn’t you get enough?”

“Not nearly,” Bolan replied soberly. He stepped past the guy and went inside. Another uniform was standing with hands on hips, staring quietly in his direction. The eyes dropped as Bolan approached and the guy turned busily toward the ammo boxes. “Quick it up,” Bolan growled as he walked past that one.

“Yessir,” the guy muttered.

There was strength in numbers, yeah—the other guy’s numbers, when they grew too great for ready recognition.

No one, now, was paying him the slightest attention though he was virtually surrounded by spiffy blue uniforms. And he was about twenty paces inside when he spotted April Rose.

The “safe” was a glass cubicle at the far wall of the building. It was crammed with electronic panels and other gear. A turret similar to the one noted in the Hollywood office, but much larger, dominated the enclosure. It took two men back to back to man it—and both looked busy as hell. It was quite an operation.

April sat on a high stool in a corner of the cubicle. She looked okay except that her clothing was torn and disheveled. Two guys in civilian clothes seemed to be interrogating her—but no hands were upon her.

Rickert was present, also. He was speaking with great animation and a lot of handwaving into a telephone.

It was a “safe,” yeah. Soundproof—bulletproof, too, no doubt. Not glass, after all, but some heavy plastic material. The combat mind instinctively scanned for support systems even while the greater consciousness was zeroing on the mission goal. It was an old building, but obviously a spanking new control center. That meant a lot of extra power requirements far beyond the original scope of the aged building—plus some heavy air conditioning to keep all those electronics at proper temperature.

And, yes, a fragment of the consciousness had spotted the trunklines coming down the back wall from the attic, numerous air vents in the ceiling—telltale evidence of new wine in old bottles.

But perhaps all of that was in the realm of useless information.

Rickert had spotted Bolan, also—and the displeasure was obvious in that unhappy face. Not alarm, though—just displeasure. The guy was scowling at D’Anglia-Crusher, not at Bolan-D’Anglia. The way things had gone since their last meeting, though, one identity could be about as hazardous as the other.

So which way did the ear turn?

What the hell. He placed his lips close to the door intercom and growled, “Open it, Rickert.”

One of the guys at the turret-console looked up quickly, then back to Rickert. The latter appeared frozen for a moment, the phone still at the ear but drooping away as interest focused elsewhere. Then Bolan saw those tight lips move in a terse command. The door opened. Bolan stepped inside.

April Rose was staring at him with suddenly horrified eyes.

The two guys with her did not notice the reaction; they, too, were giving full attention to the new arrival.

But all of Bolan-D’Anglia’s angered attention was being directed to the unhappy man at the telephone. “You damned idiot!” he said savagely, raising the voice in a clear carry to bounce from all the plastic walls.

It was a good enough approach.

Rickert put the phone down and said woodenly, “I know. I was just talking to Jack Lambert. He says we made a little mistake.”

“Little mistake!” Bolan snorted.

Rickerfc’s voice was ruffled and tense but placating. “You didn’t have to tear up our goddam offices.” His eyes went to the slipper in Bolan’s hand. “How the hell were we to know she was yours? Her goddam stuff all checks out solid. Even the warrant. How the hell were we to know?”

“You didn’t think she was a fed when you grabbed her!” Bolan raged. “Where do you get off disrupting a—?”

“Of course not, we didn’t know what—how the hell?—hey, it was my goddam phones under the tap! You think I hold still for that kind of shit? I warned you before that I—”

Bolan reached the guy in two long strides and caught him flat-footed with a vicious open-hand blow to the face. The guy took off like a whirling dervish, hitting the floor on hands and knees. “You warned me hell!” Bolan said, giving a convincing demonstration of outraged authority. The rage part was easy, requiring no acting whatever.

None of the other four men present moved a muscle or even twitched. Rickert was shaking his head, trying to get the silly out.

Bolan looked at the girl and asked, “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, the voice soft and controlled.

“Lucky for them.” He tossed her the slipper and she caught it. “Let’s go, we’re trucking.”

Rickert pulled himself onto a chair. The left side of his face was beet red and pulsing. “You’re crazy, D’Anglia,” he wheezed.

“Not as crazy as you,” Bolan-D’Anglia replied coldly. “You don’t even know who your enemies are. You’re supposed to be going after Bolan, damnit, not—and you screwed up a heavy—we weren’t earing you, dummy. We were going for the fink.”

“What fink?” Rickert muttered.

“What fink,” Bolan said disgustedly. “You think the guy is psychic or something? How do you think he got onto?—how’d you ever get this goddam job in the first place?”

“We’re going after him,” Rickert replied, smarting under the abuse. “We’ll get him, too, hot ass. And then—well, you and me are going to have it out, D’Anglia.”

Bolan-D’Anglia snorted derisively, took his lady by the hand, and went out of there.

Too heavy? Maybe. Maybe a shade too heavy.

“Wow,” April said quietly as they moved into the warehouse.

“Don’t wow it yet,” Bolan muttered. “We’re a long way from clear.”

A long way, yeah. Rickert and the two other men in civvies came out of the safe room behind them and were tagging along about ten paces to the rear.

No—it was not wow time, yet.

Bolan’s hand moved inside the slicker and found the command button on the black box. He sighed and summoned the fire, calling forth the rocketry program.

Three seconds to raise, another three to lock, one more to fire.

He was counting silently from one-thousand-one and had reached one-thousand-four when Rickert called out to him.

“D’Anglia!”

Bolan muttered to the girl, “Get clear.” Then he halted and turned back. “Yeah?”

April kept on moving toward the large open doorway of the loading dock.

“You, too, little lady. Hold it a minute.”

… thousand-seven …

“Go to hell, Rickert!” Bolan snarled. “You’ve had your—”

The bird came slamming home, rattling the ears and twitching the eyeballs as it plowed into the tight assemblage of vehicles at the east end.

Rickert and his two boys went rigid for a moment, then came unstuck and raced toward the dock as gasoline secondaries began cutting loose. Bolan stepped casually aside and let them pass, taking his lady once again by the hand and moving her on.

The second bird came home just as Rickert reached the loading dock. It blew away the whole northeast corner of the building. The whole structure quivered, puffing flames and smoke back into the warehouse area.

One of the guys with Rickert gasped, “What the hell!”

“Looks like you’ve found your boy,” Bolan said as he moved past them. “Let’s see you take ‘im.”

The private force was running around like ants at a fire when Bolan stepped down from the dock. He swept his lady into his arms and moved west, into the rain and away from all that hell. As Bolan and the lady moved out of earshot, Rickert was yelling for fire extinguishers and warning his troops about the explosives stored in the warehouse.

“Wow!” said April Rose, looking back at the leaping flames and utter confusion behind them. “Or is it still too soon for wow?”

No. It was time for wow. Bolan sent a silent one, himself, toward the heavens and clasped the lady closer.

But he knew that he had not seen the last of Charlie Rickert and his private army. What he had seen of those guys, so far, was barely the beginning.

CHAPTER 12

LINKAGE

April went directly to the bath for hot water and cosmetic repairs while Bolan moved the cruiser back along the service road past the combat zone. Airport emergency vehicles were responding and people were running in on foot from every direction. He wished to get clear—but not entirely—while traffic still could move through the area.

All six of the SecuriCom cars at the east end were tumbled together in a common pyre and the flames were roaring high into the rain-soaked heavens. That end of the building was also engulfed in the action and blue-suited men were scampering about in apparent rescue operations.

Others for whom no rescue was possible were being laid out on the tarmac.

Bolan idly wondered how many men he’d killed with his robot rockets, but knew without attempting a guess that it had not been nearly enough.

SecuriCom was beginning to look like some kind of fantastic setup—so fantastic that Bolan was starting to rethink his logic model for the so-called California Concept.

He cleared the combat zone and went on to the airport terminal where he wheeled about and parked with a clear if distant view of the disaster scene. April emerged from the toilet wearing nothing but panties and bra. She tossed her hips immodestly and called forward, “How do I look?”

“Edible,” he replied, watching her in the mirror.

“Promises, promises,” she grumbled, and went to find fresh clothing.

Two Burbank city police cars screamed past, followed closely by ambulances and a fire department medical unit. A jumble of sirens could be heard approaching in the distance.

When April came forward to the con, she was clad in faded denims and a knit top. She told Bolan, “Your pants are soaked from the knees down. Take ‘em off.”

He just grinned at her and continued the surveillance.

She apparently became aware just then that the vehicle was parked. “Where’ve I been?” she asked, with wonder in the voice. “I thought we—what’re we doing here?”

Bolan knew where she’d “been.” Stress and its sudden release can do strange things to the mind—giddy things. He told her, “Sit down and pull it together, soldier. Our day has just begun.”

“Your day,” she corrected him. “I just had my soldierly adventure.”

“You retiring?”

“I’m thinking about it,” she replied quietly.

He said, just as quietly, “Well … at least a picture is emerging. Your soldierly adventure was a godsend, kiddo. I think I know, now, what these guys are doing.”

He was thinking about that “safe” with its electronic marvels. The plastic fishbowl.

Apparently April Rose was thinking about something else. “You are really some kind of terrific, you know,” she softly told him. “It’s such a damn waste, Mack … such a waste. You could make it big in almost anything you’d like to try. You’re intelligent, articulate … so wise and so … so …”

“So pretty?” he asked, smiling faintly.

“I’m trying to be serious.”

“So am I.” He fired up the optics and tried for a fine resolution through the rain, bringing a hundred feet of service road into the con with them. “Those people want to eat your world, April. It’s been done before. It could happen again. So where’s the waste?”

She did not respond to that.

“You’re the expert,” he said, sighing. “And you were in there longer than me. What did you see?”

She shrugged daintily and crossed her legs. “I saw about a zillion dollars worth of sophisticated equipment. It’s the new standard technology. All the large security outfits these days use that gear, or variations. They could be a legitimate outfit, you know.”

Bolan grinned sourly. “All the large security outfits are not owned lock, stock and body count by the organized underworld. This one is. It’s not just Rickert that’s kinky. It’s the whole damned outfit.”

She said, very softly, “Take me to the Riviera, Mack. Or to Rio. I’ll settle for Acapulco. I don’t want to weep over your broken body. I want to laugh and love and make babies.”

He replied, just as softly, “So do I, April.”

She sighed and went aft, returning a moment later with pad and pencil. Then she sketched as she recalled the contents of that command center. “I saw about a dozen closed circuit systems under constant video monitor. Several banks of video recorders, also—so they’re getting hard copy. And computer terminals—three of them. If they have access, they can hook in anywhere—Washington, Sacramento, city hall. And, uh, telephone relays with audio recorders. What else?—let’s see—oh yeah, I think a microwave system—some sort of telemetry. Miscellaneous scanners, Weepers, radio dispatch systems.” She tossed her head. “It’s a bunch.”

Yes. It was a bunch. But even that was not all.

He asked the lady, “Would you say there are other fishbowls lurking about?”

“Very probably,” she replied quietly. “They’re on some sort of sophisticated linkage.”

Some sort of linkage, yeah.

That was the way Bolan had read it in his once-over-quickly. Which meant maybe a whole damned network of “fishbowls.”

And God only knew what kind of linkage.

They came out as he’d expected them to—three vans, threading their cautious way through the confusion of emergency vehicles and disaster workers, making a run for daylight. Rickert would not wish to have his war party detained by the inevitable police investigation of the incident. He probably would have left only a few men behind to satisfy police curiosity. The rest would be packed into those two personnel carriers. Each of those would normally transport twenty-five to thirty men with full equipment; so, yes, there could be a lot of hell moving out of there—perhaps even headed toward a rendezvous with elements from other facilities in the area.

A lot of hell, yes. And Bolan doubted very strongly that all this force was being deployed solely for his apprehension. Something else, something large, had been set into motion coincidental with Bolan’s arrival on the scene. Something that large required much planning and preparation. And if it were a highly elaborate something, then it probably would not or could not be called off simply because a complication had arisen.

Actually, the rumbles had been moving along Bolan’s intelligence grapevine for quite awhile—since shortly after his command strike at New York. And he’d had this area on his re-visitation schedule even before the recent decision for a six day national blitz.

So it was not entirely coincidence that placed him smack in the middle of this fevered situation in California. Bolan had long ago lost respect for coincidence. Too often had he felt the force of offstage hands manipulating the human actors on this stage called life. Not that he gave much credence to the various theories of predestination and fated lives. But he was a man strongly attuned to “fine” influences; every combatman is—and every successful commander in the field is as much psychic as soldier, winning by hunches and sudden inspirations, which unknowing men call genius.

Military genius, Bolan knew, was no more than the fine art of reading subtle influences and reacting in the proper direction at the proper time.

Influences or whatever had brought him here at this place and time. He would not presume to question the why or the how of that. He was here, that was enough. The enemy was moving massively—and that was too much.

“Linkage,” he muttered as he locked the electronic track on the rear personnel carrier and joined the procession.

“What’d you say?” April Rose inquired.

“Some sort of linkage,” he said, repeating her earlier statement.

“There are all kinds,” she said dreamily. “How ‘bout boy-girl, for starters?”

He showed her a sober smile and said, “Sounds great. Let’s keep it on the agenda.”

“But not for starters, eh?” she said drily.

Not for starters, no. Another sort of linkage had taken the field—the kind that binds man to event, and event to life, and life to the world.

Survival.

Of what? Of the fittest?

No.

Survival of all the things that make life a beautiful event in a meaningful world. Boy-girl linkage insured only a portion of that. Man-event linkage would have to supply the rest.

And Mack Bolan felt unequivocally linked to the large event that was shaping up for this beautiful city.

He took the lady’s hand and squeezed it with all the passions that were his at that moment. He wanted to live, sure. He wanted to love and laugh and sing and dance. He did not want to kill and destroy and hate and weep.

She felt his unspoken anguish. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Me, too,” he replied quietly, and meant it.

Sure he meant it. He was sorry for all the broken dreams and broken hearts and broken lives—everywhere. He was especially sorry for April Rose.

Maybe one day he would take her to the Riviera … and to Rio … Acapulco … and all the other warm places of the world.

Then again, maybe he would not.

CHAPTER 13

FAVORS

The track was running north into the San Fernando Valley and the rain was beginning to slacken a bit. Bolan had just settled into a comfortable pace along the Golden State Freeway when the coder clanged into his mobile phone terminal. He punched the button and said, “Go.”

“Striker, this is Alice.”

“Alice” was Hal Brognola, so coded because of his adventures in Washington, Wonderland by the Potomac.

Bolan’s clouded gaze dwelled momentarily on the lady beside him before he responded. “Are you local?”

“Yes, I’m local.” That good federal voice had a bit of emotion in it. Which was not exactly strange but at least notable. “Can you get to a laundry line?”

He desired a clean telephone contact.

Bolan replied, “Not without missing a play. Can the laundryman wait?”

“I guess not,” said that troubled voice. “Let’s risk the dirt. Where is the babysitter?”

He was worried about April. Apparently Brognola had learned of her misadventure.

“The babysitter is whole and healthy,” Bolan assured the chief fed. He grinned solemnly at the lady as he added, “Sends love and kisses.”

The relief at that news came through clear and clean. “That’s wonderful. I was hoping you were on top of it. I suppose that explains Burbank.”

He’d heard about that, too, already. Bolan told him, “That explains it, yes. You have quick ears.”

“I’m not the only one,” Brognola said worriedly. “An area plan is going down. I think you know what I mean.”

Bolan knew, yes. A police plan. The L.A. area contained dozens of police jurisdictions, but the many agencies could function as one under an “area plan” when the need was there. And these guys had about the best cooperative record going.

“I didn’t expect a cakewalk,” Bolan told his friend, the fed.

“I know you didn’t. I was talking to our hardcase friend awhile ago. The heart is there, Striker—but the fist extends from the mind, not the heart. You get my meaning.”

Bolan got it, sure. And he did not fault those in the police establishment who took their duties seriously. “Everyone does his job, Alice,” he said quietly. “That’s what makes the world go round.”

“Yeah. Well. Wanted you to know. Step carefully.”

“Sure,” Bolan said.

“Uh, say, we picked up the babysitter’s crumbs. Not much there. Meaningless conversation. And you can forget about that Silver-lake address. It’s a punchout.”

Meaning that there was no “Jay Leonard.” Not unless you wanted to give a name to a robot telephone relay. The intelligence game was getting trickier all the time. It was becoming a game for magicians.

Bolan hid his disappointment as he replied to that. “Too bad. Guess I’ve struck out with all the cutesies. Punchout, eh? Is there any way you can follow it down?”

“We followed it to Sacramento. Blind punchout there.”

“Blind?”

“Blind, yeah. It self-destructed minutes before we reached it. No way to bridge that gap, now. So write it off.”

“Maybe not,” Bolan said. “I’m going to give you an open send, Alice.”

Meaning he was going to speak plainly.

“If you think it’s worth it, okay. Go.”

“I think it’s worth it. The pace is getting too hot for cuteness, anyway. Here’s a Sacramento name. Try to plug it into that open gap. Arthur Bloom. Like what the flowers do. He’s connected. Via Jimmy Portillo.”

Brognola whistled at that one. “I’ve been hearing that guy in various ports of call,” he said quietly.

“He was local at dawn today,” Bolan said.

“That’s very interesting.”

“I thought so, too. When I left him, he was hurting mildly and heading for a hole at the Hollywood Hilton.”

“You sure of that?”

“No,” Bolan replied. “But I know he called there for a room.”

“Okay, I’ll look into it,” Brognola said. “As long as we’re getting reckless, what’s happened to McCullough?”

“It broke too fast,” Bolan explained. “I was running with the play and had to leave the guy to his own devices. I suggested he find a hole and stay there.”

“I guess he found one,” Brognola mused. “The whole family has vanished. Who called on ‘im, Striker?”

“The word I get, it came via that connection I was telling you about. But there’s a lot more we’d better save for the laundry line.”

“Uh huh, okay. Will you file a report at your earliest convenience?”

The guy wanted a braindrain on the day’s activities. It was a reasonable request and not at all premature. Both men knew that Bolan was living on the heartbeat. If he should not survive the day’s activities, then at least there should be a hard record of his findings.

And, yes, there was quite a bit of material already that deserved preservation.

Bolan told him, “The babysitter is working on one right now. We’ll drop it in the Z file.” The Z file was a special computer bank in Washington, to which Bolan had access from the Warwagon.

“Do that,” Brognola said heavily. Then, a bit more on the upbeat: “Watch the swinger, pal.”

“Always,” Bolan replied, chuckling, and terminated the contact.

April commented, “He sounded worried.”

“He’s a realist,” Bolan told her. “I think he’s worried more about the L.A. cops than anything else. Probably trying to run some interference and they snapped his tail off.”

“No, he said he wasn’t …” Her eyes said she’d blown it. “Damnit, Mack. Don’t look at me like that.”

“You knew he was in town, eh,” he said, very quietly.

“Not exact—well, sure, I knew he was close by.”

“Why didn’t I know it?”

“I guess it just never came up,” she replied innocently.

“Who’s with him?”

“Oh … I guess … a bunch.”

A bunch, sure. Brognola usually traveled with a strong mobile strike force of federal marshals, whom he generally preferred over the usually stiff-necked FBI agents.

“How close, April?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, a bit irritably. “They’re not going to crowd you. Mr. Brognola knows that you like plenty of room.”

But he did worry about it. Bolan was always very much concerned about the identity of those whom he may encounter in the combat zone. It was problem enough keeping friends and innocents out of the heat even when he knew whom and where.

“Get him back,” he requested.

“Get who back?”

“Brognola.”

“What makes you think I know—”

“Get him!” Bolan insisted.

The girl sighed, made a face, and got him back via mobile phone connection.

“Whose nickel?” asked the familiar voice.

“Guess,” Bolan growled.

“Okay. Okay.” Honestly defensive. “Try to do a friend a favor and all you receive in turn is hostility.”

Bolan said, “You’ve got me wired. Right?”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“Sure I do,” Bolan replied coldly. “You’re standing on my shadow, friend. It hurts. What’s the separation?”

There was resignation in that responding voice. “Call it two minutes. Now how the hell could that hurt?”

“You want to do favors, eh?”

“At your service, sir.”

Bolan said, “Okay. I’ll be dropping the babysitter in precisely one minute. Mark it. One minute. I want you to pick her up.”

April cried, “That’s not fair!”

Brognola said, “That’s easy. Do I get a reason?”

April yelled, “Damn you!”

Bolan said, “She’ll explain it to you. And, Alice—another request—get off my shadow.”

April flounced about in her seat, turning her back to him.

Brognola said, “Don’t be so touchy. We are remaining physically clear of your territory.”

“Physically?”

“Yeah. Physically. But don’t ask us to turn the heart off, guy.”

That was genuine and moving. Bolan’s voice was warm in the reply. “Okay. Just be advised. I will not be looking for friends in the bushes.”

“We are so advised,” Brognola replied.

Bolan said, “Thanks,” and terminated.

April turned a woebegone face his way and said, “That’s the lousiest …”

He growled, “Knock it off, April. I have a job for you. Damned important so forget the sillies. I want you to query every government computer you can find. I want a complete package on McCullough—all of it—his investments, his connections, his marriages, all the troubles with his kid, everything. And I want—”

“But I can do that from here!” she protested. “Can’t I?”

“No you can’t,” he replied firmly. “It would tie up the equipment at a crucial time. Besides, I’d rather you work it on a clean line. Brognola can help with that. Also he can help with the accesses. Several federal agencies have had McCullough under scrutiny off and on for the past couple of years. Hal will know what I need. Be sure you understand completely—then, damnit, get me a full package.”

Her expression had softened. “Then it really is an assignment? You’re not just …”

“Of course it’s an assignment,” he said brusquely. “And I expect you to work your tail off on this. I want the package within an hour or two. Bank it in the Z file for me and send a hit to the floater when it’s ready.”

“Then I can come back?”

“Soon as possible. Sure. Why not?”

“I thought you were … upset with me. Because of …”

He said, “Sure I’m upset. But not enough to slap your ears down. Anyway, we’re partners. Eight?”

Her eyes were revealing a certain confusion but she replied, “Okay. I guess I understand what you want.”

“Get ready for the drop,” he said.

She was at the door ten seconds later when the cruiser pulled to the shoulder.

He blew her a kiss.

She caught it and stuffed it down her blouse as she disembarked.

Her image in the rearview mirror as he pulled away looked small and vulnerable. Yeah, especially vulnerable.

She could have used the onboard computer, sure. And Bolan really did want that package. Even more, however, he’d wanted that girl cleared to the safe zones.

The combat spine had been sending new messages.

A hell of a fight was shaping up. And damn quick.

CHAPTER 14

COMING TOGETHER

The track continued past the city of San Fernando and began to climb toward the high mountains beyond. When it swung abruptly northeastward at State Route 14, pulling toward Soledad Pass, the Bolan spine was at full shiver. He was being drawn into very rugged countryside, into the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles National Forest. On the other side lay Palmdale and the Mojave Desert. Edwards Air Force Base was up that way—also China Lake, site of a Naval Weapons Center. Also a junction with U.S. 395, the main route between Southern California and Sierra Nevada country. Or a guy could link up with Interstate Route 15, the mainline to Las Vegas.

Where the hell were they headed? It was not comforting to contemplate the possibility that they were headed nowhere—that he was being sucked into the boonies and away from where the real action was going down. But that did not seem to fit the circumstances.

Just when the shivers were beginning to spill into the gut, his floater beeped the announcement of an incoming call.

Bolan intercepted the call at the recorder and routed it to the con.

It was Leo Turrin, his inside friend in New York.

“I’m here,” Bolan announced. “What’s on?”

“Can you get to a landline?”

“Not unless it’s a matter of life or death,” Bolan told his closest friend.

“Well, maybe it is,” the little guy replied worriedly. “How far have you gone with that blind date I sent you?”

“All the way,” Bolan said. “She was easy.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s what’s bothering me. Too easy, if you know what I mean. I think maybe she’s infected. I need to talk to you about that.”

“If it’s safe on your end, go ahead. I can’t EVA right now—maybe not for quite awhile.”

Turrin sighed and thought about it for a couple of beats, then said, “It’s okay on my end, sure. I’m downstairs. Listen. The whole place has been going bananas all afternoon.” Meaning the headquarters operation for La Commissione. “They are in executive session right now. It all has to do with your blind date. They had me doing the hot squat for thirty minutes or more. The guy in Jersey denies everything. Says he never heard of your man and that he hasn’t seen or talked to me for over two weeks. Said that right in my face at council. It stinks, Striker. I think it’s a setup. I think—”

Bolan said, “Wait, let me get it straight. Do they know you sent word west for an intrusion?”

“Hell no. That never even came up. I told you before, you know, that they were still considering the request. Well, suddenly it seems to be very hot, after laying cold all this time. I don’t know what caused the heat. I just know it got suddenly hot. They called in the guy from Jersey. He played it dumb. Said I must have talked to some other guy. And, of course, said nothing about the word I sent him last night. So I didn’t, either—naturally. But the whole think stinks like—”

Bolan interrupted to inquire, “Where does all this leave you standing, buddy?”

“I’m okay,” Leo growled. “You know me. I always land on my feet. We sent the guy back to Jersey and I told the men the whole thing stinks. I recommended we pretend no word was received, forget the whole thing.”

“How did that go down?”

“They said okay, sure, forget it. But they didn’t. They’re still up there—making phonecalls by the dozen and sending for this guy and that. They’re still working it, Striker.”

“Those phonecalls—local calls?”

“Not all, no. One to Vegas, a couple to Los Angeles, one to Palm Springs.”

“Who’s in Palm Springs?”

“Bunny Cerrito.”

Cerrito was an elder statesman who’d retired years ago. Bolan said, “Uh huh. Is Bunny keeping a hand in, here and there?”

“Not that I’ve ever seen,” Leo replied. “Hell, he’s about eighty. But you know these old guys, Sarge. They’re never completely out of it until they’re in the grave. I believe Bunny still does diplomatic work, now and then. You know—a call here, a word there.”

Bolan said, “Yeah.” He was trying to fit the pieces. None of it worked. He told his old friend, “I think you’re right. Something’s out of joint. Could you disappear, gracefully, for the rest of the day?”

“Sure,” was the wry reply. “If you think I really should.”

“I think so, yeah,” Bolan said. “And don’t go back into the water until you’ve tested it thoroughly. Eight?”

“Right,” said Turrin. “Well, it’s past four o’clock here. How’s Tuesday shaping up for you?”

“Terrible,” Bolan replied.

“Anything I can?…”

“Where do the San Gabriel Mountains grab you?”

“Nowhere.”

“China Lake?”

“What’s that?”

“How about the Mojave Desert?”

“Big graveyard a la DiGeorge. That’s all it ever meant to me.”

Bolan sighed tiredly and said, “You’re no damn help at all, buddy.” He was getting a deviation signal from the navigation console. The quarry had abandoned Route 14 at North Oaks to swing south again. “Got to go. Drop off, Striker. Play it cool ‘til you hear from me or Hal.”

“Right, gotcha. Stay hard, guy.”

Bolan deactivated the communicator and turned full attention to the track.

The back of his mind, though, was playing with the realization that the radio signal feeding the mobile phone had grown steadily stronger throughout that conversation. It should have been growing weaker, if anything, since the linkage was via Los Angeles Bell and the track had been moving steadily away from Los Angeles. Maybe it was the increased elevation that was helping the signal. Or maybe Bell’s transmission towers were …

That last thought froze into the gray matter.

Linkage. Microwave relays—transmission towers …

Hell! Something was coming together!

It had to do with space age technology and the communications revolution—with magicians playing wondrous tricks with ultra-sophisticated equipment—linkage!

The California Concept?

Maybe.

And maybe Mack Bolan had stumbled onto the caper of the century.

CHAPTER 15

FACES

It was a new asphalt road, unmarked except for notations to the effect that it was private and closed to unauthorized traffic. It ran straight and level for only about two hundred yards, then began a twisting climb with numerous S-curves and switchbacks. Bolan had penetrated for approximately a mile some of the roughest terrain in recent memory when he began receiving disturbing wave patterns on the telemetry. He quickly killed the radar sweep and all other electronic systems and pulled off the road at the first hospitable point.

A cautious EVA exploration confirmed all suspicions.

High fencing and a heavily guarded vehicle gate stood just around the next curve. Worse, a strangely configured antenna system was mounted on the roof of the guard house and was sweeping the approaches—a weird double-dish affair that looked a bit like radar and a bit like microwave, but not really like either. Two men in SecuriCom uniforms manned the gate. Two more sat in a landrover parked nearby. All were packing automatic weapons.

The obvious goal lay about a mile inside that fence—and perhaps a thousand feet above it—visible now and then through the mists only as twinkling red lights atop a nude mountain peak.

Yes, April … linkage.

A large medallion on the vehicle gate was in the shape of two worlds in close conjunction and banded by the inscription:

FACES

Bolan returned immediately to his cruiser and fired up the communications channel to Brognola. It was a necessary risk. He did not want that task force blundering in and setting off alarms. “Keep it short and quick,” he cautioned the chief fed. “Are you still on me?”

“Yeah,” was the quick response. “Sort of. Where’s the party?”

“Top of the world,” Bolan told him. “It’s called FACES. I believe that’s an acronym. It’s hot-wired so stand down right where you are. Turn off all electronic gear.”

“What’s the gig?”

“Ask the babysitter. Tell her it looks like the master link. Shut down everything that radiates. Radios, engines, everything! I’m gone, bye bye.”

Bolan terminated the contact and quickly began preparations for heavy EVA. He chose blacksuit, heavy boots, binoculars, ordnance chestpack, utility backpack—the AutoMag at the right hip—M-16 over’n-under slung to the rear—Ingram “room-broom” dangling to the waist on a neck cord—various other light utilities and weapons—and, finally, as a promised concession to April Rose, a small radio transceiver.

It was quite a load. The ordnance alone weighed forty pounds. But he knew that he had to make the first trip count. There was no way to know what he may encounter inside that fenced area. Only one thing was certain: a long cross-country trek up a mountainside awaited him. He had to be prepared for most anything once he penetrated and made contact. So he EVA’d as a pack mule, leaving the cruiser in good cover and approaching the fenceline well south of the road.

The weather was perfectly miserable. Light rain, patches of fog, chilly. Not much to cheer about if a guy was looking for animal comforts. Bolan was not looking for that—and he gladly accepted the weather conditions as a comforting ally.

He approached warily and made contact at the south corner of the barrier. It was heavy chainlink topped with six strands of barbed wire. And it was instrumented. It was also electrified—and bore warning signs to that effect. Fairly new, too. The fenceline through the rough terrain had been cleared very recently—apparently with mechanized equipment. Tread marks left by a bulldozer were evident and the earth was raw in a six-foot clearance to either side of the fence.

The rain had caused some minor washouts in the steeper spots along that line. This circumstance appeared to offer the best hope for a quiet penetration. Bolan followed the fence westerly, looking for a severe washout. The search was rewarded some ten minutes later where the fence crossed a steep gulley. Tons of rock and dirt had been dumped along the fence line to build up the eroded area and provide a suitable base for the fencing. The attempt had not been entirely successful. New erosions had carried away several yards of fresh dirt from beneath the fence, leaving only the rock and shallow gaps at several points.

Bolan lay his burdens aside and went to work at the most favorable spot, removing rocks and forming a burrow beneath the fence. Five patient minutes of this labor produced a passage large enough for safe entry.

He tied garrotes to his gear and pulled it through then concealed it in bushes inside the compound, proceeding from that point some eighty pounds lighter with only the AutoMag and the Ingram for company.

There was still a hell of a long way to go—and the return trip could seem even longer with all of SecuriCom on his back.

But he needed some visibility.

He needed to know what was here, and who was here—and why any of it was.

Deep in his gut, though, he knew that he had found the California Concept. It was large, and it was heavy, and it was scary as hell—whatever it was.

Apparently Rickert had brought in reinforcements. To protect what? From whom?

Faces.

What the hell could it mean?

Bolan damned sure intended to find out—before he committed himself to open combat on this enemy turf.

A guy at least liked to know what he was dying for.

CHAPTER 16

EPITAPH FOR TWO

The two big tour buses had proceeded on beyond the exit to the private road and were now idling in a small roadside park a quarter-mile or so farther on. Both were outfitted with tinted, one-way glass and bore legends of a sightseeing tour. But the occupants were not tourists and none were particularly interested in the views of this scenic area.

One of the buses was largely given over to electronic equipment. The driver was a federal marshal. Besides Harold Brognola and April Bose, it carried as a standard complement six project technicians with backgrounds similar to April’s.

The other bus was comfortably loaded with heavily armed marshals, stoic professionals who knew how to play the waiting game and did not mind it a bit.

Brognola had thoroughly debriefed his female operative regarding the “master-link” cryptogram supplied by Bolan in that most recent radiophone contact. And he was liking none of it. They had, of course, blanked all systems in response to Bolan’s request for a total electronic shutdown, but the technicians had continued to monitor and measure the electromagnetic emissions of the area with their sensitive devices. They had not assured the chief that their present position was well clear of the disturbance area, which had so alarmed Bolan.

“I am sure,” April told him, “that Striker encountered much stronger levels of the radiation pattern as he approached the source. He probably suspects an intrusion detection system—and, of course, all such systems have strongly defined parameters.”

Another technician reported, “I would guess it to be some kind of microwave pulse emission—but it has other elements accompanying it. We would need a very detailed wave analysis before we could even contemplate countering it.”

The consensus from all the experts agreed with that. One other ventured the further opinion that the emissions were “movement sensing patterns in the microwave spectrum”—and, again, “with something else included.”

“Could they sense the movement of a single man?” Brognola wondered.

“Such a system could sense the movement of a single bird,” was the response. “But such close parameters would defeat the intent. In an area like this, with all the wildlife, you would want to set a threshold that is responsive only to objects of significant mass—such as automobiles and aircraft.”

“Also, electronic surveillance radiants,” April added pointedly.

“That could explain the something else,” said the project leader. “It could mean an electromagnetic field sensor.”

“Which would necessarily be severely localized,” added another.

“But entirely effective,” said the leader.

Entirely effective, sure. And that was bothering hell out of Hal Brognola.

He put April to work on the FACES cryptogram. She scored on the first query. The UC data bank spit the answer right back at them.

FACES: FACILITY FOR ASTRAL CALCULATION

OF ELECTROMAGNETIC

SYNCHRONISMS.

SAN FERNANDO CA 91302

“What the hell is that?” Brognola muttered disgustedly.

But the answer was already being supplied at the computer terminal.

SPATIAL ENERGY RESEARCH.

STUDIES OF STELLAR ELECTROMAGNETIC

PHENOMENA AND THEIR

RELATIONSHIPS TO TERRESTRIAL EVENTS.

“Give that to me in five cent words,” Brognola growled.

“It could mean many things,” April explained. “Stellar electromagnetic phenomena are simply the natural byproducts of processes occurring within stars and star systems. Like pulsars and quasars … black holes … or even sunspots. Any radio engineer can tell you about the terrestrial effects of sunspots. It’s their biggest headache. Sunspots can even cause power blackouts over wide areas.”

“So it could be a legitimate study.”

“Sure. That’s a valid research area.”

“And it could cover a lot of sins,” Brognola decided.

“Electronic sins, sure,” April said. “It’s a perfect cover.”

“Check out this FACES thing all the way,” Brognola instructed his star neophyte. “Mesh it in with the stuff you’re developing for Striker.”

It was getting hairy. Too hairy, maybe. What the hell was going down, here? Who could afford to bankroll an operation like this? Who would even want to? Where was the profit?

He went to his desk and picked up the telephone. The chief fed was worried. Damn worried. Not just for the sake of Mack Bolan, either. Brognola was worried, too, about …

He wanted to consult with the National Security Advisor. And maybe the CIA should take a look, also.

“This is Justice Two,” he told the voice in the telephone. “I’m going to give you an NSC coder prefix then I want you to clear me to a scramble alert wire. Do you understand the request?”

“I understand the request, sir,” was the quick reply. “One moment, please, while I set up the crypto responder.”

But Brognola begrudged the guy that one moment. Bolan was out there somewhere all alone, going single-handedly against God knew what.

FACES?

It was more than an acronym. It could become an epitaph.

The telephone conference consumed about ten minutes of Brognola’s time and attention—and left him feeling none the better. At least he’d alerted the top security brass to the possible international overtones and the Washington machinery was firing up. There would be damned little application to the immediate problem, however.

Worse, yet, April Rose was nowhere to be seen.

The project leader told Brognola that the girl had “received a program package. She put a pistol on her hip and went outside without a word to anyone.”

The “program package” was nowhere in evidence.

And Hal Brognola’s star pupil was nowhere in view outside. Doubledamn! She was taking the package to …

“Make that,” Brognola growled to the world at large, “an epitaph for two.”

CHAPTER 17

WAY STATION

The reconnaissance was revealing a much larger problem than Bolan had anticipated. The last few hundred yards of terrain to the top had no ground cover whatever except that being provided by the weather. He still could not see clearly the top of the mountain. The impression received through the mists was one of a sizable facility with several large buildings and numerous antenna installations—but that was only an impression and could not be relied upon as hard intelligence. The whole thing was nestled in the clouds and—as another impression—seemed to be the highest ground around. On a good day, it might command a view covering hundreds of square miles including the entire Los Angeles basin and perhaps some seven or eight million inhabitants.

Apparently the security force was relying upon the electronic safeguards to keep away unwanted visitors. Bolan had not encountered another human presence since the penetration, nor even a hint that this mountaintop was inhabited. But he knew that it was. And he suspected the presence of another security line encircling the peak—some type of electronic surveillance. The problem was to get across the nude zone and into the encampment without detection. If only he knew what type of detectors …

He was remembering the other SeeuriCom “facilities” and their love affair with CCTV. Video systems could be damned effective, of course, along controlled access routes. But they had their limitations as terrain scanners—especially in weather like this. If the love affair extended into the application here …

Naked-eye visibility out here on this rainy, fogbound, windswept mountainside was rapidly variable from one hundred feet to momentary eclipses of zero feet. Occasionally a tunnel would open to allow brief glimpses along defined corridors penetrating for as much as a hundred yards through the wet atmosphere, but these were extremely veiled glimpses—and a guy could see all sorts of shapes and patterns that existed primarily in his own mind. So there could definitely be a chance against TV scanners.

It was his only prayer and he knew it.

The gut was telling him to chance it. About the worse that could happen would be a fire-fight out here on this slope—and all the conditions were weighted in Bolan’s favor if that should occur. It would be his kind of fight. Even so, it would be a Pyrrhic victory, indeed, to win a minor skirmish and thereby lose the opportunity for the full rout he had in mind.

Also, the possibility remained that the whole thing was a large suck play, designed solely to lure him into an inescapable position. Rickert could be a wily and dangerous adversary. If he’d had Bolan “wired” all the way …

He had to let that idea go. It simply did not seem to fit the pattern of events that had brought him here—and further worries along that line could be self-defeating. Bolan had to play the hand he held.

So, the gut said go, even while the warrior mind was descending into a sort of melancholy. Maybe it was the weather—or the situation—or a combination of both. Probably, though, it was a matter of sheer fatigue coupled with the certain knowledge that the chances were now considerably less than fifty-fifty that he would live to see the beginning of another day. Or maybe it was simply the accumulation of “impossible” missions, which had been weighting his days for such a very long time.

Whatever, Mack Bolan suddenly felt very alone and very tired and very vulnerable. If Hal Brognola were to chance along at that very moment and suggest that they chuck it all and just truck on over to Washington, this instant—well, he just might do that.

But Brognola was too many heartbeats away … and Washington was too many lifetimes ahead … and Mack Bolan was no more alone now than he’d always been since that fated day in Pittsfield when he picked up a Marlin .444 and declared his war against the Mob.

The Mob is still here, guy.

Yeah. Make book on that. Right up there on that mountaintop, a scant two hundred yards through driving rain and scudding clouds.

They’re still trying to eat everything you hold decent and lovely, soldier.

They were doing it, too. A bite at a time.

Who’s going to stop them, guy?

Bolan sighed and got to his feet and went back down the mountain. It took him ten minutes to reach his “stash” and another twenty to return to the edge of the nude zone with his equipment. There, he took it all apart and methodically laid it out in the rain and began reassembling the combat pack.

He ate a chunk of cheese and a chocolate bar and downed half a canteen of water as he reworked the rig. Twenty pounds dropped from the load would mean about two strides quicker in a twenty-yard dash. It was life and death being weighed in that rearrangement.

Satisfied that he’d reached an optimum balance, he strapped on the rig and took a long look up that ghostly, cloud-draped hillside. The view reminded him of a painting he’d seen once, an artist’s idea of a way-station between life and afterlife.

Bolan had no firm commitment to any concept of an afterlife. Heaven and hell could be one and the same place—or perhaps only differing states of consciousness. And maybe the same could be said for life and death.

But hell …

It was not the mission that was bothering him. It was not the weather … or the fatigue … or any fear of Charlie Rickert.

It was April Rose.

He wanted to go on living … for her … with her.

Well, maybe he would. And, then again, maybe he would not.

The next few minutes would tell the tale.

CHAPTER 18

OF HEAVY COUNTENANCE

April had run all the way to the last known fix on Bolan’s vehicle, visions of his torn and lifeless body driving her on and enveloping her in a living nightmare, not stopping once until she rounded the bend in the road and saw the shimmering outlines of the guard house looming in the mists. She instinctively tumbled to the ground, then, and rolled into the bushes beside the road—and it was here that reality and reason began reestablishing command of her thought processes while she lay there panting and fighting her body for control. Her legs were suddenly so much trembling rubber and she could hear her own heart pounding the pulses as she got to hands and knees and crawled back along the roadway toward better concealment. Her stomach hurt and her sides felt like knives were piercing them. Any moment, she knew, she may throw up—and she was sure that the men at the FACES gate could hear her thundering heart.

It thunders for thee, Striker.

Oh God! Please let him be okay!

Steady! Steady, girl! Think like him!

She thought like him—and wore his mind to the place where the Warwagon left the road and buried itself in the forest. And she had no trouble locating the hidden interlocks to defeat the cruiser’s security systems. But she felt like death itself as she stepped into that emptiness and tried to read the vibrations left there by the man she loved.

There were no vibrations.

And perhaps there was no man, by now.

She sank onto the chair in the war room and lay the alarming package of intelligence on the plot table, gazing around expectantly as though he were about to emerge from some trick panel and lay one of those soft smiles on her. He would give her holy hell for being here—and she would remind him that he’d told her she could return upon completing her assignment. He’d forgive her and she’d forgive him—and they’d call off the damned war and go to bed for crazy, crying love—and he’d …

Where was he, damnit?

Steady. Okay. He’s on recon. He’s scouting the enemy camp. Like a cat. He walks like a cat. He wouldn’t go barging in there on a hard EVA without …

Yes he would. He didn’t have the package!

She checked the con for a note or a message and found nothing—then went aft to the “quarters” looking for some nameless comfort.

He was really a most fastidious man. A place for everything and everything in its place. Precise, methodical … everything so proper, so together.

She smiled faintly at the precision emptiness. The military mind. Was there a bit of a sneer in that realization? Could she still have that hangup? What was wrong with the military mind? Why make fun of it? Physical excellence—discipline, duty, honor. What made them stale concepts? Had the world gone so wacky as to …?

The neat row of books above the bunk caught her eye. She had not noticed them before. Some surprising titles, there. She pulled down a worn and well thumbed volume of Don Quixote—the novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Vibrations there, yes. She could almost feel the hand that had turned those pages. It was not exactly light reading, but the sort of thing one might find on required reading lists at school. April had dodged this one. Now the darned thing was vibrating in her hand.

A faded inscription in a feminine hand was on the inside front cover:

Mack honey—sorry it took so long. Had to search every book store in town. Also I read a couple of chapters and got hooked—had to finish it. Too bad you don’t have this guy in ‘Nam with you.

Love forever—Cindy

So! And who was “love forever—Cindy”?

Probably the girl he left at home. Where was she now?

That’s it. Settle the mind on something it can grasp, April. Stop acting like a jerk!

A bookmark was placed at a discourse by the Knight of the Woeful Countenance and several long paragraphs were marked by marginal brackets. She read the discourse all the way through, then returned to read a particular passage twice again. Quixote was speaking:

Away with those that shall affirm learning to surpass arms; for I will say unto them, be they what they list, that they know not what they say; for the reason which such men do most urge, and to which they do most rely, is, that the travails of the spirit do far exceed those of the body; and that the use of arms are only exercised by the body, as if it were an office fit for porters, for which nothing were requisite but bodily forces; or as if in that which we that profess it do call arms, were not included the acts of fortitude which require deep understanding to execute them; or as if the warrior’s mind did not labour as well as his body, who had a great army to lead and command, or the defense of a besieged city. If not, see if he can arrive by his corporal strength to know or sound the intent of his enemy, the designs, stratagems, and difficulties, how to prevent imminent dangers, all these being operations of the understanding wherein the body hath no meddling at all.

Vibrations, sure. The book had all but leapt into her hand. She looked up, half expecting Bolan to be standing there and smiling at her perplexity. The passage so fit her own thoughts, moments before she even saw that darned book.

And there was more, all having to do with a comparison between students and warriors—which also touched a nerve from April’s not-distant past.

… peace is the true end of war, for arms and war are one and the selfsame things. This truth being therefore presupposed, that the end of war is peace, and that herein it doth excel the end of learning, let us descend to the corporal labours of the scholar, and to those of him which professeth arms, and consider which of them are more toilsome.

… the pains of the student are commonly these: principally poverty (not that I would maintain that all students are poor, but that I may put the case in greatest extremity it can have), and by saying that he may be poor, methinks there may be no greater aggravation of his misery, for he that is poor is destitute of every good thing; and this poverty is suffered by him sundry ways, sometimes by hunger, other times by cold or nakedness, and many times by all of them together; yet it is never so extreme but that he doth eat, although it be somewhat later than the custom, or of the scraps and reversion of the rich man, and the greatest misery of the student is that which they term to live by sops and pottage: and though they want fire of their own, yet may they have recourse to their neighbour’s chimney, which if it do not warm, yet will it weaken the cold: and finally, they sleep at night under a roof.

… By this way, which I have deciphered so rough and difficult … they attain the degree which they have desired so much, which many having compassed, as we have seen, which having passed through these difficulties, they command and govern all the world from a chair, turning their hunger into satiety, their nakedness into pomp, and their sleeping on a mat into a sweet repose among hollands and damask—a reward justly merited by their virtue. But their labours, confronted and compared to those of the militant soldier, remain very far behind, as I will presently declare.

The soldier suffers as the student; however:

Let after all this the day and hour arrive wherein he is to receive the degree of his profession—let, I say, a day of battle arrive, for there they will set on his head the cap of his dignity, made of lint to cure the wound of some bullet that hath passed through and through his temples, or hath maimed an arm or a leg. And when this doth not befall, but that Heaven doth piously keep and preserve him whole and sound, he shall perhaps abide still in the same poverty wherein he was at the first, and that it be requisite that one and another battle do succeed, and he come off ever a victor, to the end that he may prosper and be at the last advanced. But such miracles are but few times wrought; and say, good sirs, if you have noted it, how few are those which the wars reward, in respect of the others that it hath destroyed?

… That one may become eminent in learning, it costs him time, watchings, hunger, nakedness, headaches, rawness of stomach, and other such inconveniences as I have partly mentioned already; but that one may arrive by true terms to be a good soldier, it costs him all that it costs the student, in so exceeding a degree as admits no comparison, for he is at every step in jeopardy to lose his life. And what fear of necessity or poverty may befall or molest a student so fiercely as it doth a soldier, who, seeing himself at the siege of some impregnable place, and standing sentinel in some ravelin or half-moon, feels the enemies undermining near to the place where he is, and yet dares not to depart or abandon his stand, upon any occasion whatsoever, or shun the danger which so nearly threatens him? But that which he only may do, is to advise his captain of that which passeth, to the end he may remedy it by some countermine, whilst he must stand still, fearing and expecting when he shall suddenly fly up to the clouds without wings, and after descend to the depths against his will. And if this appear to be but a small danger, let us weigh whether the grappling of two galleys, the one with the other in the midst of the spacious main, may be compared, or do surpass it, the which nailed and grappled fast the one to the other, the soldier hath no more room in them than two foot broad of a plank in the battlings, and notwithstanding, although he clearly see laid before him so many ministers of death, for all the pieces of artillery that from his body the length of a lance, and seeing that if he slipped ever so little aside, he should fall into the deeps, doth yet nevertheless, with undaunted heart, borne away on the wings of honor, which spurreth him onward, oppose himself as a mark to all their shot, and strives to pass by that so narrow a way into the enemy’s vessel. And what is most to be admired is to behold how scarce is one fallen into that place, from whence he shall never after arise until the world’s end, when another takes possession of the same place; and if he do likewise tumble into the sea, which gapes like an enemy for him also, another and another will succeed unto him, without giving any respite to the times of their death, valour, and boldness, which is the greatest that may be found among all the trances of warfare …

April shivered and put the book back on the shelf. The Knight of the Woeful Countenance, yes. Her man. Why fault him for that heavy countenance? He wore it honestly.

She drifted into the armory, still searching for some nameless comfort. Everything in its place …

But everything here was not in its place. A great lot of it was missing. He was not merely scouting, then. He’d gone out rigged for heavy combat. Her heart lurched. How could he hope to …?

The rocket pod had been rearmed—four wicked little firebirds nested there in a fresh bracket. A grenade launcher was missing … a submachine gun … the EVA ordnance pack—heavy combat, yes.

She smiled faintly, noting the absence also of one of a pair of miniature transceivers. She went quickly to the con and switched on the UHF monitors then turned her thoughts back to the timeworn Don Quixote purely as an occupation for her idling mind.

Yes, the world had gone so wacky. That novel was a product of the Middle Ages—somewhere around the 16th century. It had been around a long time. And yet the world had gone wacky. It had been very fashionable for April’s college generation to speak of one world, one people—peace and love and the brotherhood of man—while at the same time very de rigueur to accept the “fact” that all cops are pigs and all voluntary soldiers are blockheads. What had become of “undaunted hearts, borne away on the wings of honor.”

Someone had ripped off April’s generation. Or maybe they’d ripped off themselves. Such confusion, such hypocrisy. “Marching to a different drummer”—all of them, each of them—yet all, it seemed, marched to the same drummer and none thought to inquire where he found his cadence.

Harold Brognola was not a pig.

Mack Bolan was anything but a blockhead.

Cervantes declared that peace was the end of war—the reason for it. Mack had told her that the meek shall never inherit a savage earth. Who was Mack Bolan’s drummer?

She thought she knew, now. And she knew, now, that she would never find that “nameless comfort” for which she had been searching. There was none, for those who love warriors. And it was not all for nothing. It counted, it mattered. It was not a “waste”—even if she never saw his heavy countenance again.

Her own countenance was growing heavier by the moment. It weighted the eyes and pulled at the little muscles of the lips.

Each woman since time immemorial had sat stolidly and awaited news of her warrior.

Not April, damnit. Not April.

She had waited long enough.

CHAPTER 19

THEM

His hunch had been right. A battery of television cameras were emplaced in a circle around the bald knob of the mountain, set into low-profile concrete housings at ground level—most inconspicuous. Apparently they were meshed into a sequenced scan with a slight overlap to provide constant 360-degree surveillance of the approaches. Normal range would provide coverage of the entire nude zone; today, the cameras were having the same visibility problems as any other eyes.

Bolan could not be certain that he had not been spotted already. There could be a ring of steel awaiting his arrival at the top of the hill. But he had to play the hand he held. The best approach would be through the center of a particular scan—avoiding overlaps. That way, he could play to a single eye and double the chances for a successful penetration.

If he could not clearly see the eye, then it should also hold that the eye could not clearly see Bolan. He had to time the charge to coincide with a blind moment—and more, he had to pick a moment that would hopefully extend to the back side of the camera pit.

The moment came—borne by the puffy, ragged edge of a cloud scudding along the slope—and Bolan ran with it, lunging to his feet in a full upright, all-out sprint.

Twenty yards, hell! Make it thirty, with also about a thirty degree upward slope—and momentary vertigo, with the feet pounding the uneven and muddy terrain in an absolutely blind charge.

He overran the pit and tumbled past it, sprawling flat in an exhausted heap. But he’d made it. The trailing edge of the friendly cloud was just then clearing the camera eye. Beyond and just above lay pay dirt, less than fifty yards away … and no ring of steel awaiting. He could see the installation clearly now, moment to moment as the weather would allow.

It looked like a moon base.

Domed buildings were scattered all about with huge antennae of diverse configurations protruding from the domes—also two large towers lifting hundreds of feet higher with twinkling warning lights for aircraft and bearing other antennae—a long, low building that looked like a warehouse—many large house trailers parked all in a row at the far side.

Those latter would be personnel quarters, no doubt—for the guard force, and perhaps even for the technical crews. The two vans that Bolan had followed here were parked in that area. Other vehicles were scattered about. But there was no sign of human activity. Apparently his presence had gone unnoted and none felt a need to venture into the inhospitable weather. Bolan could hardly blame them. They had plenty of reason for confidence in their robot defenses—and it was a chilling, penetrating downpour. Bolan himself was soaked to the bones.

He pulled himself to his feet and walked on to the top of the slope—feeling almost nonchalant, now, inside the security circle. None came forth to challenge him as he ambled past the domed buildings and went on to the tower area. There, he removed the chest pack and began molding explosive strips and applying them to critical stress points at the bases of the towers. Seven minutes later he was walking casually among the house trailers, peering into windows and taking their numbers, dropping here and there beneath the wheeled structures small canisters of chemical smoke and timed explosive devices.

Toward the end of that stroll, he rounded the end of a trailer and came up eyeball to eyeball with a guy in a rainslicker carrying a six-pack of beer. The guy was wearing civvies under that slicker and the face was definitely Mafia, though Bolan’s mental file registered no definite make. Those startled eyes had a definite make on Bolan, though—instantaneously—and the beer went flying as panicked hands sought a fast way inside the slicker.

There was no way that fast. A lightning chop to the throat and a piston-quick knee to the gut, delivered simultaneously, brought a swift end to panic and dropped the guy without a sound or hardly a pause in Bolan’s forward motion. He pushed the falling body on beneath the trailer and kept moving.

Five minutes and counting.

The first domed building to receive his scrutiny contained no personnel. It was only about twenty-five feet in diameter with no interior partitions—crammed with electronics, all busily humming and clicking with robot chores under the orchestration of a central computer. The function was beyond Bolan’s limited understanding; even an engineer may have found it too much for quick comprehension. He left an incendiary with a four-minute fuse and went back outside. All of the domes but one were that same size; all were remote-robot installations, probably feeding a central data control in the remaining dome, a huge structure of, perhaps, a hundred-foot diameter. Bolan was headed toward the large one when alarms began shrieking all over the place. He immediately went down on one knee and brought the combo around in the firing ready, squinting through the swirling mists in an effort to determine from which quarter the attack would come.

It came from the big central dome—but not toward Bolan. A platoon of uniformed guards charged out of there and ran off toward the far perimeter—the side from which Bolan had made his penetration.

The horns were making a hell of a racket, squawking lustily from various points around the compound. Trailer doors were beginning to open and carbon-arc searchlights mounted high on the towers sprang into mist-muted brilliance.

Bolan was wondering what the hell was going down, but he did not have long to wonder. The little transceiver, which he carried in a shoulder pocket, beeped at him. The first thought to touch his mind was that the feds had begun a premature movement. But that thought quickly fled as he inserted the ear plug and growled a quiet “Go!” toward his shoulder.

It was April.

“Striker, thank God! Where are you?”

His heart was frozen. “Me, hell!” he hissed at the offending shoulder. “Where are you!”

“I’m under the south tower!” she replied in a breathless rush. “Guess I tripped an alarm!”

He guessed she hadn’t been as patient with the cameras as she should have been—or maybe she just hadn’t been as lucky.

He calmly instructed the shoulder: “Hit the dirt. A war party is searching for you. If they spot you, throw up the hands and surrender immediately. Roger that.”

“I roger that,” was the faint response.

Then it hit him. He glanced at his chronometer and delayed that instruction. “Forget it! That tower falls in two minutes! Get clear. Walk due west. Roger it!”

“Roger, I am walking due west.”

Bolan raised the combo and let fly a hot one toward the east perimeter to divert the search, then quickly repeated fifteen degrees left. The tandem explosions briefly lit the heavy atmosphere over there and brought raised voices in immediate reaction.

“East rim! Cover it!”

“Spread out, spread out!”

He then sent a couple into the trailers to discourage any hasty movements from that quarter—then went looking for his lady. He found her with the help of leaping flames from a burning trailer and calmly took her hand and led her to safer ground. She was terribly embarrassed and more than a little frightened—but her only words were in anticipation of a harsh rebuke for blundering in where only seasoned professionals belong.

“I’m an idiot,” she said softly.

But there was no rebuke in him.

“We all are, one time or another,” he told her.

It was a moment separated from time and space. The Klaxon horns were still squawking. Flustered footfalls were pounding this way and that across the cloudbound mountaintop while excited voices screamed out instructions and warnings from every quarter.

But this moment belonged to Mack Bolan and his lady. He understood her anguish—and he had never felt closer to another human being.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Me, too,” he said. “We should have gone to Rio.”

She quietly giggled and replied, “I’ll settle for Disneyland.”

“I’d settle for a dry bunk,” he said, chuckling.

A moment carved free from time and space, yeah. But only a moment. He kissed her softly on the lips, then patted her bottom as he told her, “You picked a hell of a time to come calling, lady. I’m busy as hell.”

“So I see,” she murmured. “Is this what they call ‘the Bolan effect’?”

The moment was gone.

He asked, “Why, April?”

“Had to. I got that package you ordered. Thought you’d like to know what’s in it. This is the mother lode, partner. For you, it’s a powder keg. I-I thought … I mean, I was afraid you didn’t know what you were walking into.”

He dropped to one knee and pulled her down beside him. One minute and counting. “I didn’t,” he admitted.

“Your Mister Big is William McCullough. He owns all this—or controls it, anyway.”

Bolan sighed. “It figures. The ants found a new picnic. Why not take it over?”

“Do you know what this place is?” she asked him.

“Vaguely,” he replied. “Looks like a moon base, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what it’s supposed to look like. FACES is in the book as a center for cosmic studies. I’m betting their studies are strictly terrestrial. Did you read 1984?”

The novel by George Orwell. Yes, he’d read it. “The Big Brother routine, eh?”

“Yes, but with a private enterprise slant. I have a two page list of supposedly legitimate corporations who are ‘contributors’ to this foundation. They’re buying eyes and ears, Mack. And the price tag is enormous so you know the profit potential must be, too.”

It was all together, now. Almost.

Twenty seconds and counting.

“How do you read these antennae, April?”

“It’s an intercept system. With the right computers, they can tap the secrets of the world. Anything that moves by radio or long distance telephone. Even ComSat.”

“Not for long,” he murmured.

Five, four …

“Mack, McCullough is—”

… ignition!

“Moon Base” lifted off.

Both tall towers flung their bases aside and came crashing down. A walking line of explosions in the trailer area sent brilliant streamers of fire trumpeting skyward to overwhelm the heavy atmosphere, diverting even the clouds and sucking them briefly off the mountaintop in a hot vertical vacuum.

The power station arced and sputtered, then lent itself wholeheartedly to the festivities, sending horizontal lightning bolts crackling across that tortured landscape before finally escalating into full self-destruct and flinging itself to the four winds.

House trailers leapt and staggered, great rents opening along thin metal walls and disgorging contents and flames and howling men in a cacophony of doom.

It was pandemonium time at Mafia Heights.

April’s eyes were wide pools of awe. Bolan pushed her flat to the ground—commanded, “Stay!”—and went off to join the party.

Most of the activity seemed to be centered around the trailer area. People were yelling and scampering around that disaster zone in total confusion. But that was not the party Bolan had in mind.

Another wild scene was amid the wreckage of the south tower. Apparently the “war party,” which had gone baying after April Rose had recovered their offensive just in time to greet the falling tower. But Bolan’s interest was not there, either.

People were spilling in panic from the large central dome—a mixed group of uniformed guards, whitecoated technicians—and, leading the pack, a tight knit cluster of excited men in business suits, five of them. Charlie Rickert was one. The others rang no bells in Bolan’s memory banks—but this was the party he was seeking, for sure.

A limousine with all four headlights blazing lurched across the tarmac and screeched to a halt across the path of the fleeing group. The civilian party melted into the vehicle and it surged forward even before all the doors were closed. Bolan had a fleeting image of Rickert standing behind, with hands on hips and watching the departure with a twisted smile; but this was not Rickert’s moment.

The tall figure in rain-soaked executioner black stepped onto the roadway in the path of the fleeing vehicle, the combo weapon at the hip, headlamps framing him there in the swirling mists for that split-second of doom. Then the muzzle of the M-16 came aglow with stabbing darts of lightning, which reached out and seized that hurtling mass; and shredded it; and shattered it; and sent it reeling back across the tarmac under a dead-man’s throttle in a closing circle to the starting point. It plowed head-on into the central dome and punched through the steel wall, burying itself to the windshield. And then the gas tank joined the celebration, whoofing into a spectacular finish for that aborted flight.

When Bolan got there, Charlie Rickert was lying on the sidelines in a stupor, a Chief’s Special .38 held loosely in an outflung hand. There was no sign of the whitecoats and only two SecuriComs remained in close focus. Both of those hurriedly threw up the hands and gladly accepted Bolan’s scowling invitation to lose themselves.

He kicked the .38 out of Rickert’s hand and touched the hot muzzle of the ‘16 to the guy’s pulsing throat. Those eyes rolled for a moment, then focused on the heavy countenance above the weapon. Confusion showed there, for a moment, in that searching gaze—then resignation as recognition dawned and the split identities of D’Anglia-Crusher-Bolan merged into one.

“Suckered me again, didn’t you,” Rickert declared weakly.

“You suckered yourself, guy,” Bolan told him. The cold gaze shifted briefly to the burning vehicle. “Them, too. You sold them security, Rickert. You delivered nothing but a flaming coffin.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Rickert growled.

Not exactly King’s English—but it was the answer that Bolan sought. He’d found them—and buried them in the same moment.

“You did,” he assured the security boss.

So much for “them.”

All that remained, now, was to find “him.”

CHAPTER 20

ACES A PAIR

The entire mountaintop was in flames when the marshals arrived on the scene—and the total image was straight out of War and Peace. Dazed and damaged men wandered aimlessly in the rain or sat in the mud with heads bowed in absolute defeat. Others, not so fortunate, lay about the tumbled landscape in lifeless lumps. Vehicles had been demolished, buildings gutted and everywhere was ruin.

Hell had visited the heights that day, and all who’d been there knew it.

The marshals disembarked from their vehicles and stood in silent awe for a moment before moving on in their grim duties. Brognola and a big, square-jawed man stepped into the rain and quietly contemplated the devastation.

“Jesus Christ,” the head fed commented in a choked voice.

“Not so pretty, is it?” said the other.

“Prettier now than before,” replied the fed.

“Say it again, Sam. It gave me chills just thinking of this joint. How could we ever have touched it?”

“Think of some others, then,” Brognola suggested. “Nothing says this is the only one.” His gaze flicked to a gutted limousine, which was partially buried in a burning building. “If there’s anything left to identify, I’m sure you’ll find brothers of the blood in that car. That means cancer cells, pal, and they already could have spread everywhere. What a nightmare. We’ve got to—”

“Not in my territory, I hope.”

“Naw, I’d think not.”

“That’s not what’s clawing your guts, Hal.”

“No—you’re right—I guess I—”

Two marshals, who were coming down out of the bus behind Brognola, were now gazing past him and grinning with unabashed admiration at a tall figure in dripping black who was walking in. The guy was braced from head to foot with every gadget and artifice of warfare old and new. One had to wonder how he could even move under all that load. He was pushing a limping, battered man ahead of him and a soggy young lady was hurrying along at his side.

Double jubilation, sure. And let the gut claw for something else. The epitaphs were for the other side.

“That’s Charlie Rickert,” growled Brognola’s companion.

The chief fed snapped eyes at the marshals, who immediately moved forward to take charge of the prisoner.

“Handle with care,” said the tall man as he turned Rickert over. “We made a deal.”

The marshals hustled the silent prisoner away while square-jaw snapped, “What kind of deal?”

The tall man was giving the guy a searching look, as though trying to place the face.

Brognola harrumphed and quickly leapt into that breach. “Striker, this is Tim Braddock.”

Recognition showed, then. “Captain Braddock,” Bolan said.

“Chief, now,” Brognola corrected him.

“Deputy chief,” said Braddock. A faint smile was setting into the chiseled features as he stretched forth a hand to the man in black. “This is, uh, quite a way outside my jurisdiction, though. I have no official status here. As a private citizen, I’d like to shake your hand, Mr. Striker.”

The protocol was perfect.

Bolan took the hand and gripped it, solemnly replying, “My pleasure.” He then presented the young lady. “Mr. Braddock—my partner, Miss Beautiful.”

“Miss Mischief is what he really means,” the girl said, eyes a’sparkle despite her soggy condition.

“Can’t we get out of the rain?” Brognola suggested.

Bolan’s sharp gaze flicked to the bus. “Who’s inside?”

“Just my driver.”

“Same guy?”

“Same guy, sure.”

Bolan decided, “You can take us down the hill and drop us.”

All four moved inside. Brognola gave the driver instructions and escorted his guests to the lounge area.

“Drink?” he inquired of all at once.

“Coffee, if it’s handy,” Bolan said.

“Me, too,” said April Rose, the teeth beginning to chatter just a bit.

Brognola draped a blanket over the sodden figure and grinned inside. She was sticking damned close to Bolan. He’d been wondering about those two. Now it was patently obvious. A bit sad, though, too—considering their chances.

The bus got slowly underway as the head fed handed out the coffee.

Braddock gave the blitzer time for a tentative sip of the hot liquid, then repeated his earlier question. “What kind of deal, Striker?”

Bolan smiled faintly as he replied, “I gave him life.”

“What’d he give you?”

“Information.”

Brognola injected himself at that point. “I guess he’ll tell us about it, Tim.”

“Not yet,” said the big cold man. “You wouldn’t want it until I’ve checked it out.”

Sure. Brognola knew how this guy checked things out. The evidence was all about them. He’d been “checking out” FACES. Look at it now. But the head fed had no complaints.

Braddock was saying, “If my presence is cramping your style—”

“Not at all,” Bolan assured him. “Maybe you can tell me something. Do you know of any official surveillance on Bunny Cerrito?”

The big cop winced and grunted, “Who?” He recovered before a response could come and amended it with: “Never mind, I heard you. Yes, our OrgCrime Unit gets Palm Springs advisories on his movements.”

Brognola growled, “What’s with Cerrito? I’ve had no rumbles on him since, uh …”

“Since DiGeorge,” Bolan finished it. “Right. But—”

“He enjoys elder statesman status,” said Braddock. “That’s all we’ve noticed since—come to think of it, though, he has been coming into our town quite often, of late.”

“Is he connected to McCullough?” Bolan inquired.

Braddock’s face fell.

Brognola said, “Well there’s a—it’s what brought Tim out …”

Braddock picked it up with a sigh. McCullough is dead.”

Bolan said, “Do tell.”

“And his wife and daughter. We found them hacked to pieces in the basement of their home—and the pieces floating in an acid bath.”

Some indefinable emotion tugged at the stoic Bolan features but it quickly vanished. “When was this?” he asked quietly.

The bus was approaching the gate area.

Brognola went forward to instruct the driver while Braddock handled the inquest.

“We discovered them about noon,” the cop explained. “They’d been in the acid for several hours. Luckily, it was a fairly mild solution. There was still enough left to distinguish the bits and pieces.”

April shuddered.

Bolan asked, “Enough left to positively identify?”

“The ID is tentative, but it will probably stand,” the cop replied. “It’s already fairly solid on the daughter. Had a nasty accident a couple of years ago, lot of broken bones. Forensics found some convincing matches with X-rays from her medical files.”

“The others?”

“Evidence enough,” Braddock sighed, “that the coroner is fairly convinced.”

Bolan said, “Damn!”

He was looking at his lady as though seeing another in her place.

Brognola returned to the group in time to catch the eye signals between the two. He said to April, “I suppose you’ll want to be toddling along with the man.”

“Better believe it,” she murmured.

Bolan said, “Well, maybe—”

“Damnit, no!” she said, quietly defiant.

“What’s going on?” Brognola demanded.

Bolan told him what was going on. “It isn’t done, Hal. I need to check something out. Do us all a favor, though—stay off my shadow. I’ll keep you informed.”

“Do that,” the fed said gruffly. “There’s enough here to keep me busy the rest of the day, anyway.” He looked at his watch. “Which isn’t saying a hell of a lot, anyway.”

The time was five o’clock.

Plenty of time left, though, for that damn guy to burn down a few more mountaintops.

Bolan and the lady were on their feet. Braddock was looking pained, apologetic and a bit flustered all at once. He said to the blitzer, “I never thanked you properly.”

The big guy grinned at him and said, “Sure you did. I like your force, Chief. It’s a hot team.”

He always had a way of passing it back. And now he turned to Brognola and almost casually inquired, “Did you get a wire on Jimmy the Grease?”

Casual, hell. “Yeah,” the fed grunted. “Left his hotel at three o’clock in a rented car. He’s wired.”

“Where’d he go?”

“North on Pacific Coast Highway. Why?”

“Playing on the spine, Hal,” the damn guy explained while explaining nothing at all. “Get me a fix on him and pass it to me, earliest possible. I’ll be rolling on his track.”

April Rose smiled sweetly, and triumphantly, over her shoulder at Brognola as she and her man made their exit, hand in hand.

They disappeared almost instantly into the surrounding forest.

“Quite a pair,” said Braddock, sighing. “It’s almost cute, isn’t it?”

Cute, hell.

It was damned well murderous.

CHAPTER 21

HIM

It was over, really. The whole ambitious empire had been buried atop that mountain overlooking the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles. What remained of the empire, in incidental fragments, would be summarily tracked down and expunged by the collective police efforts of those two good men he’d left back there at the gravesite. And the intelligence package so adroitly gathered by the computer tactics of Miss April the Beautiful would go a long way toward seeing to it that all involved in the intended rape of the public’s privacy would find their just receipts at the hands of the law.

It had been one grand scheme, all right—and it could have worked beautifully except that someone had become just a bit too cute while trying to insure the outcome.

One William the Cute McCullough, by name.

The guy must have thought the world was stocked with dummies—especially those who stood to do him in. He did not trust the mob who had made him and enriched him far beyond any concept of a just reward—nor any of those individual “brothers” who both served and governed him—and he certainly did not trust the law, whose finer nuances he had habitually disregarded and trod upon and crapped upon throughout a long and blemished business career.

He did not trust even his wife of five years, the former Eva Lynn Whitley—ex-beauty-queen and widow of a pioneer electronics developer and manufacturer—nor Eva Lynn’s daughter, Darlene, the comely but wild heiress to the Whitley patents, whom he had legally adopted shortly after the marriage.

He had not trusted even his pals in Sacramento and Washington who’d worked so diligently to bring the pieces home, even to the point of obtaining government grants and blessings for the bogus “spatial energy” studies.

No. He’d trusted none of them. And he thought the world was full of dummies just like himself.

So he got too cute.

It was very likely that McCullough himself had engineered the “problem” between his adopted daughter and Tanto Fortinelli, the hitman—or, perhaps, it was just one of those circumstances that inspire fated moments. Whatever, he’d used that entanglement as a too-cute invitation for an East Coast hitman to cruise over and hit a West Coast hitman. But the men back east were not such dummies. They sat on the request and chewed it, then spit it back out—suspicious, perhaps, that someone was trying to create a problem where no problem should exist. And they were right. McCullough would have loved to get them all out of his hair … forever. The “boys” had never been too understanding about letting go of a good thing—and Bill McCullough had been an extremely good thing for a very long time—in a completely symbiotic relationship with the whole crime structure.

No. They would not let go gracefully.

So McCullough was not entirely a dummy. He was greedy, as well—and a very devious, crafty dude. He would engineer a shooting war—then finger them all one by one, side against side, until finally he had the whole magnificent Big Brother operation all to himself. He intended to share it with no one.

That, probably, was the California Concept in a nutshell.

And certainly there were riches a’plenty to be harvested via the clandestine supersnoop operation. Handled properly—and not too greedily—a mere handful of strategically oriented corporations could manipulate at will the most sensitive business operations that held the world industrial community together: stock markets, commodities, currency exchanges, vital materials, the whole wide range of buying and selling and trading the dwindling resources of a troubled world. And that meant looting, raping, pillaging and sacking on a world scale never before experienced or even attempted.

And, hell, it wouldn’t have stopped there.

They would have soon been into the closets and under the beds of world leaders everywhere—in every sensitive area of human interchange and perhaps in even the most common areas of day-to-day humanity: the teachers, the bakers, the candlestick makers and all the mundane activities that provide the glue for men to live together responsibly.

But Bill McCullough got too cute, too greedy, and perhaps a bit too careless.

He sent to the east for a hitman. Any hitman.

And he got Mack Bolan.

April said, “I don’t understand. Who was trying to take him over? Who sent the gun crew to his house?”

“He sent them,” Bolan said.

“Who sent them?”

“Him. McCullough. It was a set-up. They’d probably been on twenty-four-hour alert for weeks, just waiting the call. And not far away. He sent for them while I was in the house. And sent his beauty pageant wife down to entertain me and keep me there. Poor lady. She never had a prayer.”

“But I still don’t …”

“I was supposed to die there, April.”

“Oh! I see! No I don’t see. Why?”

“The lady was to die. The kid was to die. All the house people were to die. And an East Coast hitman would be left behind as proof positive of treachery and villainy from the east.”

“Oh!”

“Enter, then, Jimmy the Grease. Via the good offices of someone greatly respected—someone like old Bunny Cerrito, who must be getting senile—a retaliatory force would be gathered and sent east to return the favor.”

April sniffed and said, “That sounds like burning the house to warm the bed.”

Bolan chuckled grimly and told her, “Oh, it’s a lot cuter than that, even. McCullough was to die, too, you see.”

“Mack, you’re talking in riddles,” she complained. “It’s giving me a headache.”

He kissed that dear head to ease the ache and said, “Have faith, dear friend, and all shall be revealed to you.”

“Don Quixote,” she muttered.

He gave her a sharp look and replied, “No, I think it’s more like rough New Testament.”

“Close enough,” she said lightly, backing gracefully out of that one.

But he was not so easily put off. “You’ve been into my library,” he noted.

“Is it sacred territory?”

“No.”

“Then I’ve been into it.” She took his hand and gave it a warm squeeze. “And I love it.”

“I love you,” he muttered.

“What did you say?”

“I have to say it twice, eh?”

“Endlessly,” she whispered.

“Okay. April, Miss Mischief, I love you endlessly. But you pull another damn stunt like you pulled today and an end may come a lot sooner than either of us desire. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.

“I could have killed you, myself. Why do you think I demand firm separation from Hal and his people? There’s no place to hold hands in the hellgrounds, April.”

“I know,” she said contritely. “I’m sorry. It shall not happen again. I promise. I understand. Have you ever boarded a galley?”

He showed her a silly grin and said, “What?”

“You know—with those ministers of death scarce a lance’s length away, and the terrible sea yawning two broad feet to either side of that narrow way?”

He chuckled and said, “Damnit, April.”

“Well I have to say something to alter that heavy old countenance. I mean, after all, there’s more to life than arms.”

True. Very true. And this very able and admirable young lady had already added an important new dimension to the life of Mack Bolan.

“Just keep me on my toes, pretty lady,” he growled.

“I’d like to get you on your back, first. Or on my back. I mean …”

She’d turned a fiery red and was sputtering in embarrassed confusion.

“You know what I mean!”

“I’ll let you show me,” he offered, grinning.

“When? Damnit, when?”

“Soon,” he replied. “Very soon.”

And he sincerely meant that.

But first a final item of business in the California sweepstakes awaited his attention. Not much. It was over, mostly. All that remained was almost a personal item.

Yeah.

But a very important item.

CHAPTER 22

HER

The weather had broken. The ragged trailing edge of the system could be seen a mile or so offshore and there were blue skies beyond.

Bolan accepted that as a portent.

Terrible Tuesday was all but finished.

It had been a long and tiring day—fourteen hours, so far, with hardly a break in the galloping pace. But it was ending, now, and none beneath that emerging blue heaven would find more acceptance of that ending than Mack Bolan.

The second lap of the second mile.

The Warwagon was pulled atop a rocky bluff overlooking the cold Pacific. On another jutting finger of rock one hundred and seventy yards south of their position stood a large mansion-by-the-sea. It had a small beach a hundred feet below and a steel ladder descending the rock face of the bluff. To the rear was a swimming pool and a rather large patio with hanging lanterns and other frivolous adornments. Three men sat at a table in that area, talking animatedly over tall drinks. Another three prowled the beach below and another walked lone patrol along the north periphery of the bluff. Very probably others also wandered hither and yon across that property, insuring privacy and tranquility to the three at the patio.

Bolan had those three in the con with him, though, in fine resolution.

April asked, “Who are they?”

“The old hood on the right is Bunny Cerrito,” Bolan explained. “He retired from the business when I was a little boy. Too bad. He should have taken his retirement seriously. I guess someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“Which one is Portillo?”

“The one facing Cerrito. He’s been sort of retired, too—or so it has been said. Jimmy helped put together the original California kingdom. I had it figured that he was helping to build another. Now I wonder.”

“What do you wonder, mine general?”

Bolan sighed. “I think maybe he’s been doing just the reverse.”

“Working for McCullough,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“But I thought he was part of the plot to take over McCullough.”

Bolan sighed again. “So did I. The guy had me convinced. I guess that’s why he’s called Jimmy the Grease. He’s slippery as hell, that guy.”

“But how do you know he wasn’t?” she persisted.

Bolan muttered, “Because that third man over there is none other than Cute Bill McCullough.”

“Are you sure?” April gasped. “That’s Mm?”

Him, yeah. “The one and only,” Bolan assured the lady. “The him I’ve been looking for these fourteen hours. Isn’t it a blast?”

“You knew it already!” she cried. “And you’ve been letting me get headaches with your damn puzzles! Rickert told you!”

“I guess Rickert didn’t know, either,” he replied. “He was lowly security muscle. He may have guessed—but he didn’t know for sure the identity of the man at the top. I was guessing, too, April. I had to see it to know it, for sure. Monsters like that one don’t drift by every day.”

April caught her breath and let out a little moan, the full significance of the thing finally descending. “The bodies in the acid!—they—for real? His wife and daughter?”

“You heard Braddock,” Bolan growled. “The daughter for sure. That means the other is for sure, too. And a stand-in for himself. Damnit, April, adopted or not—a daughter is a daughter! I’ve never known a real brother of the blood anywhere to get himself that bloody. That guy is …”

“You already said it,” she whispered. “A monster. But why? I mean, why the women?”

“I guess it was expedient.”

“What expedient!”

“He arranged his own death, April. You’re the one who pulled the package—everything he had was set up in trust. Guess who’s going to be administering that trust. He wanted the Mob off his back and the law off his tail. The women would have been a constant danger to his new identity. I’ll bet he already has a plastic surgeon stashed and waiting somewhere to deliver him a new face.”

“Do you think he knows?”

Bolan was programming the fire, now, bringing the system on line. “Knows what?”

“That he’s already lost his other FACE. Acronym-wise, that is.”

Bolan growled, “Whether he knows it or not, April, he’s lost all the face he can ever get.”

Glowing rangemarks became superimposed over the image of the patio table. Bolan commanded the Raise and Lock sequence and an instant later the console flashed compliance. He commanded Fire Enable. The console enabled the fire and the rock-press foot control slid into view beside his foot.

April’s lower lip was beginning to tremble.

He warned her, “Get aft, if you’d rather. I’m going to erase a terrible human mistake. Three of them.”

“I’m staying,” she told him. “But it really isn’t necessary, is it? Not now.”

“It’s necessary, yeah,” he assured her.

“But …”

“You told me yesterday that you revere life,” he reminded her, turning to face her squarely. “Let’s get this all settled between us, once and for all.”

“Of course I revere life,” she replied, very agitated. “That is why I … why …”

“Then don’t put such a damned cheap value on it,” he said savagely. “Turn your back on guys like those … turn your guts off, too, and call for a cop then look the other way … for God’s sake, April! These people are eating your world. And they’re eating people by the score. Get hard, damnit! Eat back. Don’t let the damned cannibals swagger away and pick their teeth with your bones! If you revere life, by God you’ll demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and you’ll stare the damned savages back into their holes, even if all the hounds of hell are baying at your heels!”

It was quite an emotional speech, for the likes of Mack Bolan. His face had gone white—and she’d never seen it that way, not under any circumstances. And she’d caught a glimpse of his drummer, yes.

“Get up,” she softly commanded.

“What?”

“I’m taking the con. Show me how to work that gadget.”

His anger was gone, replaced now by wary concern. He told her, “I’m not sure you’re ready for that, April.”

“Don’t tell me when I’m ready,” she said, the voice very soft. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready. I’m ready. Put my hand where your mouth is, Striker. Get up.”

Bolan solemnly swung away from there and yielded the con to his partner. He stood behind her, then, and instructed her in the fine art of getting hard.

“Right foot in the pedal. Keep the plane steady. Rock forward on the toe for vertical depression, backward on the hell for upward correction. The pedal is controlling the image, now. It swivels left and right for horizontal control. Center the rangemarks on your target—that’s it. Hold it there, hold it centered, even after you fire. The bird will travel straight down the visual envelope.”

“How do I fire it?”

“Your fire will equal downward pressure on the pedal. The entire plane of the foot must travel together. If the toe dips a bit, so will your trajectory. So keep the foot stiff when you’re ready to fire, ankle directly below the knee. Then just pound the knee.”

“Pound it?”

“Sharply, yeah, with the ball of the fist.” He sighed. “Are you sure this is what you want, April?”

For reply she raised the tiny balled fist high and viciously pounded the knee.

The firebird rustled away from its rooftop nest and flashed overhead on a tail of flame and smoke.

The security people over there had already become curious about the presence of the motor home and were now running in full alarm toward the house.

But the men on the patio had other things on the mind.

World-eating things.

The scope changed colors rapidly as the missile closed on the target, then the optics flared out bright white as one hundred and seventy yards away a mansion-by-the-sea’s patio did suddenly “fly up to the clouds without wings”—carrying all that had been there with it.

April’s face was white and taut, but she was already “correcting right” and acquiring a new target: the house itself. Again she drove the knee home and again a firebird rustled away in its “ministry of death.”

“Eat that, damn you,” she said to the scope in a shaky voice. And, to Bolan, “Is that hard enough for you, partner?”

That house over there had just gone to hell.

“Give me another target, damnit!”

He said, “Enough, April.”

“I’ll give them, by God, two board feet to stand on!”

She was sobbing and going to hell fast, herself.

Bolan dragged her out of the con and clasped her close for a brief moment—a very close moment—then set her gently in the other seat. He took the con and took them away from there in a sedate withdrawal.

Tuesday, thank God, was done.

But April Rose, by God, was just getting started.

EPILOGUE

Bolan sent his report to Brognola and arranged for a midnight rendezvous with the transport plane.

Then he called Leo Turrin and assured the undercover fed that all loose ends had been neatly snipped.

Tomorrow would find another hellground—and another lap along that bloody second mile.

Tonight was for tonight.

He pulled the cruiser onto a deserted stretch of beach and parked in the shadow of a sheer rock wall and took his love to bed.

And, yes, that girl was just getting started.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series

CHAPTER ONE

INTO HELL

The familiar odor met him at the doorway—and it almost stopped him from going in. The one thing Mack Bolan did not need at this moment was another living nightmare. And there was no mistaking that smell, once it had been experienced. But then the nightmare groaned, and there was also no way to turn away from that.

He sent 200 pounds of enraged kick into the flimsy door and stepped quickly inside with the same motion. The thing on the table at room center was far beyond any awareness of that entry. And the ghoul who was bending over it was too engrossed in his art to take note of anything else. But a guy at the far window looked around with a sick grin and immediately elevated both hands in quick surrender to the imposing figure at the door. Some things simply cannot be surrendered. The big silver pistol thundered from the doorway to send 240 grains of howling death splattering through that sick grin.

Another guy ran in from a back room just in time to catch the next round in the jugular. Most of his throat sprayed away with the hit, but the guy just stood there on the back porch of hell for a frozen moment while the brain tried to understand the message. Another quick round plowed in between unbelieving eyes to correct the sloppy hit and verify the unhappy message.

And Bolan now had the full attention of the maniac in the blood-spattered vinyl smock. The guy was about fifty, tall and spare of frame, handsome with a touch of distinguishing gray at the temples, and very nicely dressed beneath the protective Vinyl. “I can explain,” declared the turkeymaster. It was not the voice one would expect from a maniac, but calm, cultured—almost detached from the horror at hand.

Bolan replied, “Good for you,” and blew away the devil’s elbow.

The guy screamed and grabbed for a tourniquet that lay on the table beside his victim. The next round from the AutoMag blew his wrist away and another quickly followed to the knee.

The turkeymaster hit the floor, squawling and writhing for a comfort that was not going to be found. He lay there jerking around in his own blood, for a change, screaming for a mercy he had never accorded others.

A turkeymaster Mack Bolan was not. He’d never hit for pain or punishment—and the shock of those massive hits would not, he knew, produce anything near the mind-cracking agony and helpless horror that this guy had been systematically dealing out to others. Just the same, the guy was hurting like hell and the sounds of that suffering were getting to Bolan’s belly. But maybe the guy needed to take to hell with him some small appreciation of what he’d been handing out so freely to others—and someone else was first in line for Sergeant Mercy.

The thing on the table was only marginally alive and blessedly unconscious. Doc Turkey had apparently been trying to bring that shredded mind back into conscious focus. There was no way to know at a glance whether it had been male or female—or, for that matter, black or white, human or otherwise. It was simply a thing—torched, carved, scraped and hacked into a mutilated and shapeless lump—that had been kept alive and, no doubt, aware throughout most of its ordeal.

There was no way to reverse that nightmare or to even salvage anything from it. Bolan muttered, “Go find peace,” and put a bullet where an ear had been. Then he turned to the squawling monster on the floor and sent him the same mercy.

Bolan found another gruesome turkey when he checked the back room. This one had been dead for some time—hours, perhaps.

Bolan was shaking the joint down for intelligence when Jack Grimaldi moved inside, a short shotgun cradled at the chest.

“Jesus Christ!” the pilot muttered and quickly went back outside.

“Is it cool?” Bolan called to him through the open doorway.

“It’s cool, yeah,” was the strained reply. “What is that in there?”

Bolan went on with his search as he called back, “It’s a turkey shack.”

“Aw, shit,” Grimaldi groaned. “Really? Aw, no. I thought that was just a myth. Hey, I didn’t know I was bringing those poor bastards to—I really didn’t know!”

“It’s no myth,” Bolan growled. “And you couldn’t have changed a thing, Jack. Did you check out the vehicle?”

“Yeah. Clean. Keys in the ignition. It’s from Alamogordo.”

Bolan went to the doorway and leaned tiredly against the jamb. “Okay. Thanks again, buddy. I’m releasing you. I’ll take the car into town.”

“It’s your game,” the pilot quietly replied. “But, you know, you can fly me anywhere. I can think of lots of places better for you right now than Alamogordo. Almost anywhere, in fact.”

They’d been good friends since the Caribbean adventure, and more than that. As a mob pilot, Grimaldi had been a steady source of reliable intelligence and he’d risked a lot—he’d risked everything—as a Bolan convert and ally.

The Executioner smiled at his friend the Mafia pilot as he told him, “Thanks for the thought. Save the worry for yourself.” He inclined his head toward the nightmare behind him. “That’s what they do to their friends, guy.”

Grimaldi shivered and turned his gaze elsewhere. “Sunrise soon,” he said.

Bolan said, “Soon, yeah. You’d best move it out. Now.”

“You’re mad as hell, aren’t you?”

The tall man in the doorway smiled tightly as he replied, “I can handle it.”

“Listen … I’ll fly on over to Alamogordo and tie down there for the day. I’ll leave my hotel address with the base operator. If you should need some quick wings …”

Bolan said, “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Grimaldi hesitated for a moment then asked, sotto voce, “Who were the turkeys?”

“You don’t really want to know.”

“I guess not, no. Okay. Well, I’ll be around.” The pilot turned away and strode off across the wastelands.

Sunrise soon, yeah. Already the black of night had deteriorated to a dirty gray. Bolan watched his friend disappear into that grayness, then he went back inside the shack and resumed the search. He loaded a tape recorder and several used tapes into the vehicle parked just outside, then threw in a collection of wallets and other personal items gathered during the shakedown.

Ten minutes after Grimaldi had set off on his solo return trek to the plane, the nightmare shack was in flames and Mack Bolan was beginning his journey into another nightmare in the appropriated Mafia wheels.

Grimaldi flew over the burning shack and dipped his wings in a silent farewell. Bolan responded with a flash of headlights and quickly put that scene behind him.

The physical scene, that is.

The images would remain with him to the grave. Worse yet, he’d have to listen to those abominable tapes—the record of two souls descending into hell itself. The turkey techniques made brainwashing a genteel social affair by comparison. It was not brainwashing, but soul bursting. Interspersed with all the shrieks and desperate pleas would be the babblings of a life record in quick and selective playback—containing every sin imagined or otherwise, along with everything else a desperate soul could devise to please its tormentor, so as to shut off that which was already recognized as irreversible.

Yeah, Bolan would have to listen to all that.

And yes, Jack, he was already mad as hell. Not so much because of who they were, but simply because they were.

Bolan had no particular sense of compassion for the likes of Charlie Rickert and Jack Lamamafria, the latter also known lately as Jack Lambert.

But nobody deserved to die that way. Not even with the fate of the entire civilized world hanging in the balance. Did that sound melodramatic? Too bad, then. Because that was precisely the point of this latest game in the troubled life of Mack Bolan: the fate of the entire civilized world.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SWIRL

Bolan heard enough from the tapes during the hour’s drive into Alamogordo to confirm his guess that the movements in New Mexico were directly related to the recent developments he had just left behind in California. Rickert and Lamamafria had been charged with the security of that West Coast operation, which had been ripped asunder by Bolan’s Day Two mop-up of the area. There were overtones of punishment for a responsibility poorly met during the interrogations, but the main thrust had obviously been total recall in an outrageously inhuman “debriefing” of the two Mafia lieutenants. Which merely underscored the importance with which the higher bosses regarded the events of yesterday in California—and especially as they were related to the New Mexico thing.

It was not exactly standard form to so punish an honest failure; in fact, Bolan had never heard of such an occurrence in the past. Such treatment was traditionally reserved for traitors or enemies with important secrets. It was beyond doubt, though, that these tapes constituted a debriefing of friendly personnel carried to unusual extremes.

Something very big was developing, for sure.

Muted rumblings of that something had been emanating from the area for some time. In fact, Bolan had followed the tremors from his recent blast into Arizona and had been tentatively scouting the New Mexico question when the urgent summons from the East sent him airlifting into Tennessee. All he’d found during that brief probe had been whispers and echoes of some quiet underworld activity in the wastelands. Now here he was again, same scene, probably the same situation, except that now the whispers had become shrieks of agony.

But a pattern was developing, for sure.

The flash from Leo Turrin had warned of a “large event” going down in New Mexico—related somehow to the California disaster—with various “important men” hastily dispatched to that area.

As another item in the weave, Charlie Rickert and Lamamafria were the only ranking local members of the California conspiracy to survive Bolan’s rampage in Los Angeles. Bolan had last seen Lamamafria, a.k.a. Jack Lambert, lying unconscious on the floor of his Sunset District office. Rickert, the renegade cop, had been turned over to local authorities after assuring Bolan that he would cooperate.

According to Leo Turrin, who had not been in a position to get it all, Someone had “moved heaven and earth to spring a certain VIP prisoner from the L.A. county jail”—and this was somehow related to the thing in New Mexico.

Big Tim Braddock, a recent convert to the Bolan cause and now deputy chief of the L.A. cops, was all but frothing at the mouth as he confirmed Bolan’s suspicion that Charlie Rickert’s release had, indeed, been quietly engineered, mere hours following his arrest.

Then Jack Grimaldi had provided the cinching element with his report of “ferrying a burial party” from Santa Monica to a lonely spot in the New Mexico wastelands.

“Two pigeons,” Grimaldi reported to his old friend, “with two keepers. They had ‘em doped and hooded all the way so I don’t know who the poor bastards are. There was a car waiting for them, in the middle of nowhere. I had to land on a dirt road in the dark, without lights if you can imagine that.”

Bolan had imagined that, yeah. And he’d asked his friend, the Mafia pilot, to repeat the performance. Now it seemed that Leo’s fears had been right on target. Something big was going down, for sure. It was directly related to the California thing. Maybe it was an action-reaction sequence. That would explain all the urgent parleys in New York while the Los Angeles thing was falling apart.

Yeah, maybe so.

It was now very obvious that the council of bosses—weak though their coalition might be at the moment—had not been all that concerned about outsider Bill McCullough and his ambitious stretch toward a West Coast takeover. The vaunted “California Concept” had probably been at their fingertips the whole while, awaiting nothing more than the proper moment for the cannibals to step in and make it their own. Until Bolan happened onto it. But they’d not been concerned about McCullough. They’d had Rickert and Lamamafria inside that operation right at the top.

And it was guys like McCullough who kept the mob fat, happy, and immortal—even at a moment when you’d think they were going down for the final count.

Mack Bolan should have remembered that.

And he should have remembered the litany of the Mafia:

If you can’t steal it, extort it;

If you can’t extort it, join it;

If you can’t join it, corrupt it;

If you can’t corrupt it, hit it;

If you can’t hit it, buy it;

After you’ve got it, eat it.

And if you can’t get it, eat it on the run.

Yeah. You could say what you like about the Italian brotherhood—whatever else, they were the most persistent and successful cannibals of them all—and people in Bill McCullough’s league should have learned that long ago.

People like Hal Brognola and Mack Bolan should not have forgotten it. The American mob was not down for the count. They’d bounced back with amazing resiliency. If Bolan could not stop them here, quickly and resoundingly, then he might as well forget the briefly ignited hopes for an end to this damnable war. It would go on for as long as Mack Bolan lived. Which, of course, could mean for only another hour or two … all things considered.

CHAPTER THREE

IMAGES

The turkeyman was using the name Philip Jordan and his spanking new driver’s license gave the address of a modern apartment complex in Alamogordo. Bolan drove past the place in a slow pass to a small shopping center a few blocks beyond. The day was still quite young, though, and none of the stores were open, but he found a public telephone at the edge of the parking lot and made three quick long distance calls. He spoke briefly to contacts in Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York, then went on to a small, all-night grocery and made a few purchases.

It was nearing eight o’clock when he returned to the apartment building. The place was now stirring with life—since it was the time of day when most people were beginning their daily work routine. Bolan remained in the car for several minutes, getting the feel of the place. Two men and three women, all young, entered the parking area during that period, got into cars, and went their separate ways. That and other quiet clues combined to present the picture of an abode for singles. The general layout was of three moderatesized buildings, grouped around a small swimming pool and patio, with tennis courts at the rear and parking for about fifty cars. That parking lot now held no more than a dozen vehicles; apparently most of the tenants were off about their daily business.

Bolan lit a cigarette and studied the layout until he was pretty well oriented, then he gathered his stuff and went directly to Jordan’s apartment. It was at patio level, opposite the pool. A quick glance at the lock provided the clue to the proper key from Jordan’s own key ring. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, with the air of a man who owned the joint.

Small, studio style. One room encompassed living, dining, and kitchen areas—a single small bedroom and bath. But nice enough. Neat and clean. The refrigerator contained milk, eggs, some vegetables and nothing else. Canned soups and vegetables in the cupboard. Brown bread, packaged rice. No cigarettes, no booze, no meats. The guy was an ascetic.

A small table by the couch held a neat stack of magazines. No Playboys or Hustlers, though. Scientific American, Psychology Today, Commentary and several others of that caliber, all current. And all had been forwarded via the mails to Dr. Philip Jordan from a Maryland address. Uh huh.

Wastebaskets were empty and clean—even in the bathroom. The trash compactor in the kitchen area held a fresh bag with nothing in it.

Bolan was beginning to wonder if anyone actually lived there.

But there was a neat array of toilet articles, partially used tubes and bottles, occupying the bathroom chest. A laundry hamper in the bedroom closet contained two barely soiled towels, two pairs of socks, two sets of underwear, two white shirts. Clean suits, shirts, and an assortment of subdued ties hung neatly in the closet.

Neat and clean, yeah. Bolan was remembering that calm look, the cultured voice, the careful attire. And he was projecting that image into this apartment, developing an insight into the man who had called this place home—a well-educated, handsome man in his forties or early fifties, unmarried or at least living alone at the moment, fussily tidy, practically ascetic and almost antiseptic in lifestyle, perhaps a vegetarian and almost certainly an intellectual. Doctor Philip Jordan. Doctor of what? Besides turkeys.

Bolan returned to the stack of magazines and went through them carefully. He scored four hits in the area of human psychology. Okay. Maybe it fit.

Bolan carried his stuff into the bathroom, started a fresh tape in the recorder, and began transforming himself into a reasonable facsimile of Dr. Philip Jordan. He listened intently to the tonal inflections of the only calm voice on that tape while he shaved and prepared the physical image. There was no thought toward a precise duplication—nor would that have been possible. Bolan was going for the role image—which, he hoped, should be enough. Jordan did not appear to be the sort of man with close personal ties. He obviously had not been living in the area for very long. And he was certainly not the type of guy you’d find cozying up to the earthy Mafia people. Aloof to the point of haughtiness, stiff, formal—or that was the way Bolan was reading the guy.

And, yes, if it were a true reading then perhaps the role image would be enough to turn the trick.

If not … well, everybody dies somewhere.

He rubbed in a bit of cosmetic shadow to emphasize the cheekbones and darken the eyes a bit, formed a collodion wrinkle between the brows, restyled the hair and combed in some white at the temples. Then he watched the image in the mirror and found the facial feel of a haughty intellectual, who felt just a bit above everyone around him.

He turned off the tape recorder, having heard too damned much already. But he had the voice. It would be a cinch.

He was getting into a suit of the guy’s clothes and finding the fit when the first telephone call came. It was the Dallas connection.

“Okay, I’ve got your man,” the worried tones of Hal Brognola told him. “I’ve checked out your line there. It’s clean. But I’m not so sure I want to give you this stuff. We’d all a lot rather you just leave New Mexico to us. I can get you a jet airlift out of there within thirty minutes. That would put you in Dallas in plenty of time to—”

“Save it, Hal,” Bolan tiredly broke in. “Dallas will keep. This will not. What do you have?”

He could hear the guy breathing unhappy fumes for a moment before that agitated voice sighed in capitulation. “The name’s for real. He’s been living in a suburb of Washington until recently.”

Bolan lit a cigarette and asked his friend, the fed, “What’s he a doctor of?”

“Foul play.”

“What?”

“He’s got a Ph.D. from Georgetown but he’s no philosopher, friend. The defense department canned him two years ago. He was a psych war specialist.”

It fit, yeah. “Why’d they fire him?” Bolan wondered aloud.

“Rank insubordination, says here. Which probably means he was out of control. Sensitive employee status … think tanks.”

Bolan said, “Uh huh. Okay. What aren’t you telling me?”

Brognola sighed heavily into the connection. Presently he replied, “For some reason the CIA picked right up on the guy. He was on their payroll until a few weeks ago.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m still awaiting that answer,” Brognola replied.

“Why’d they let him go?”

“I’m awaiting that, too.”

“That tight, eh?”

“Yeah.”

Bolan said, “The guy’s a turkey doctor, Hal.”

A long silence occupied the line, then: “You’re sure of that?”

“Caught ‘im with red hands,” Bolan replied drily. “I suppose you can guess who the prime turkey was.”

Brognola growled, “Rickert, huh?”

“That’s the one.”

“I don’t get that. Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out, Hal.”

“Dammit.” Another silent pause, then: “Well there goes our Los Angeles key.”

“Maybe not,” Bolan said. “I’m, uh, working the problem, Hal. I’ll want some distant support.”

“Name it.”

“A computer search, I guess. Anything anomalous in the southwestern region. Installations, personnel, all of it.”

“What, uh, the hell are you …? Even computers have—”

“Sorry,” Bolan said quickly. “My mind is working faster than my mouth. I think of New Mexico and I wonder where the hell is the picnic—and all I get back is top secret stamps. White Sands. Los Alamos. Could it relate to our Los Angeles problem. You know the routine?”

Brognola growled, “I guess I do, yeah. We’ll give the computers a shake and see what falls out.”

“Okay. I’ll try to get back to you in a couple of hours. Would that give you time enough?”

“I guess it all depends,” Brognola replied. “We’ll give it a fit, though. And you watch your ass, buddy. Keep it forever in sight. I don’t want to lose you this close to the gate.”

Bolan chuckled solemnly as he told his old friend, “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“You want me to dispatch your battleship? The lady is pacing holes in the floor. I don’t know if I can …”

“I don’t want her here just yet,” Bolan replied quietly. The lady referred to was, of course, the one and only April Rose. She had the warwagon in custody … along with Mack Bolan’s heart. And he could understand her anxiety. But, no, he certainly did not wish to have her mixing into this thing—not at this stage, especially. “Send the cruiser to El Paso for now. That puts it within quick call.”

“Okay. I’ll have it at Fort Bliss before noon. Hit her floater as soon as you can, though. You know what I mean.”

Bolan knew what Brognola meant, yeah. April was not exactly predisposed to sitting and waiting for things to happen. Especially if she was worried about her man. Bolan sighed and told the fed, “Keep her busy, Hal. Let her understand the importance of this computer run. And turn her loose on it. She’s damn good at that.”

“Among other things,” Brognola added drily. “Okay. Are we clear for now?”

“Almost. What about this turkey doctor? Does he have any medical background?”

Brognola said no, then changed his mind. “Wait—yeah, a little. Nearly two years of medical school before he switched to psychology. I guess you could call that a background.”

Yes, Bolan guessed that you could. He said, “Later,” and hung up.

And just in time.

The phone rang again almost immediately and a harsh voice at the other side growled, “We been waitin’ for you to call.”

Bolan pitched his response cool and aloof. “Your wait would have been rewarded had you awaited another minute.”

“We been waitin’ all night, Doc. Did you get it or didn’t you?”

“I have it,” replied Bolan, the turkey doctor.

“So what’re you waiting for? Bring it over. We’ll expect you in ten minutes.”

“Absolutely not,” Bolan said coolly. “I’ll meet you halfway. Name the place.”

The man at the other end chuckled as he replied, “You CIA guys kill me. Okay. Would Stan’s Drive-In suit you? Say five minutes?”

“Say fifteen,” Bolan replied coldly and hung up. But he was feeling a bit troubled as he strapped on the Beretta shoulder rig, and finished dressing. Had he blundered into a CIA covert operation? Surely not. But he remembered a couple of CIA types he’d known at Saigon, and …

But … a turkey doctor?

Brognola did not yet have a complete file on the guy. Which meant he’d have to penetrate a few security interlocks to complete the file, no simple task for even an official in Brognola’s position.

Leo Turrin had never heard of the guy, either. Which meant not a hell of a lot in a positive sense, but at least was negatively encouraging.

It was going to be a crap shoot, for sure.

Bolan was betting everything he had on nothing more than a gut feeling that Philip Jordan was not well-known by his Mafia playmates. A guy with Jordan’s background would be cagey and careful. Personal meetings with known criminals would therefore be conducted furtively, quickly—in places like dark bars or parked cars, where lighting was bad and vision minimal.

Yeah, he was betting his life on that. And on the naturally poor perceptual capabilities of most people.

The dead man’s clothing was not a perfect fit, either, but it would have to be close enough. Bolan gave both the image and the voice a final checkout, then picked up the tapes and went out of there.

Hell, it was the only move he had.

Buy Wednesday’s Wrath Now!

About the Author

Don Pendleton (1927-1995) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean War. His first short story was published in 1957, but it was not until 1967, at the age of forty, that he left his career as an aerospace engineer and turned to writing full time. After producing a number of science fiction and mystery novels, in 1969 Pendleton launched his first book in the Executioner saga: War Against the Mafia. The series, starring Vietnam veteran Mack Bolan, was so successful that it inspired a new American literary genre, and Pendleton became known as the father of action-adventure.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 1979 by Don Pendleton Cover design by Mauricio Diaz ISBN: 978-1-4976-8586-4

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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