Executioner 023 - St Louis Showdown Page 14

  From the RV, then: "Cong high east and centring." From the Chicano: "Cong low south but moving." From Bolan himself: "Cong low west and rising.

  Close it in! Fold it!"

  The skipper fumed, "What's this cong high, cong low stuff? Tom? What is it?"

  Postum silently shook his head. It was an echo from Vietnam, sure, but an echo which only certain specialties would understand. Fun games, no. It was the grim game.

  "ADF fix!" the commtech excitedly reported. The wall was lighting up. The alarms were going down. Men Were running.

  Tom Postum sighed, went to his office, and began gathering his stuff for the long vacation ahead.

  Hell.

  These damn cops didn't stand a chance against those soldiers.

  They were coming in, and they were coming hard, and that was good. It was precisely what Bolan had banked on. He had not underestimated Jerry Ciglia. A quiet word in an alert ear was all it took in this business. It had been enough for Ciglia. No beating the bushes for this one, no sending out scouts—no furtive actions whatever which may tip the hand and flush the pigeons from the sure-thing slaughter pen.

  Ciglia was coming for heads, and he meant to have them.

  Five crews had transferred to two swift power launches and were moving upriver to seal off any possible river escape.

  Another five were rolling inland and coming in across the delta while the other five rolled in across the top in a pincers movement.

  The big overkill.

  But a perfect set for the Cong High game.

  Bolan had been patrolling the inland approaches in the Corvette. He'd made the quiet contact, tracked the play into the kill zone, then stashed the little car and closed on foot for the grand finale.

  Blancanales was out there on the levee, just lying out there, about a hundred meters off center.

  Schwarz was in the warwagon and cruising the flanks, confirming the readings, preparing to come in finally as the big-punch sealant.

  And "the camp" was ready for victims.

  The old triple-decker had been dolled up just a bit in that brief time allotted for the "set." Kerosene lanterns were, strung along the open decks at strategic points, others glowing feebly behind cabin windows on the two main cabin decks. The windows of the salon had been draped in black and a congregation of lanterns placed in there.

  Schwarz's special touch added the final notes of realism—a collection of small cassette recorders loaded with tapes of actual bugged conversations and strewn around into various cabins on continuous playback.

  Quiet music was coming from the salon and the muted buzz of quiet conversations issued from all over that old hulk.

  Yeah . . . a perfect set for the Cong High kill.

  And they were slipping in higher and higher by each suspenseful moment. The two big launches were laying-off out there in the darkness, engines idling and barely audible even to Bolan's expert ear. The cars had been ditched somewhere in the background and the gunners were making the final overland approach on foot—coming in from every angle.

  From Bolan's quiet drop in the bushes, he spotted a group of three in a running crouch moving quietly across the cement levee to the south, then another three at the other end—all disappearing into the shadow of the Jubilee—reappearing a moment later clambering hand over hand up the side to the top deck.

  An engine on the river revved slightly—and Bolan knew what was going down out there, also.

  His thumb was poised above the ignition button on the black box as he waited them all in—but there was, of course, a moment of diminishing returns of which he must remain cognizant. If those early boarders should tumble to the setup and give the alarm, the whole thing could fall to hell quicker than a remote button could trigger a Cong High party.

  The stealthy movements on the river side were becoming more and more prominent and the levee boarders seemed to be without end.

  These boys were greedy.

  As greedy as Bolan—and they were playing as quiet a game—getting all the headmen on board and stealthily placed throughout the old cruise boat before making the final move.

  Bolan was rewarded for his patience when he caught a movement on the upper deck, a figure moving awkwardly out of the shadow of the pilot house—moving awkwardly because of a "turned ankle" and limping along with a cane.

  The moment had arrived. The "chairman" would be among the last to board. Those who were left out were meant to be left out—and the Cong High plan took that sort of caution into account.

  Regret punched that button—regret not for the actors upon that stage but for the stage itself, for the final end to a romantic past—regret for the last gallant fling of the gaudy lady.

  She blew in a series of trumpeting explosions, beginning below-deck and working upward in a wave motion that scattered blowtorch flames and flying firebrands in a panoramic sweep of the entire kill zone.

  Human figures hurtled outward and crumpled to the levee or plunged into the big muddy. Startled screams and agonized shrieks superimposed themselves upon the thundering tumult of high explosives in sudden destruct.

  But the gaudy lady went without a groan of her own—her decks quietly folding and falling, her bulkheads powdering and scattering into the eternal flow of old man river, her once comfortable cabins puffing into quiet flames and releasing themselves to the atmospheres for the quiet trek back to a romantic past.

  And down upon the levee, the levee so low, a sturdy Cong High veteran with a combat-ready machine gun was blowing a staccato accompaniment to the old girl's swan song, catching the "low congs" in their startled desire for disengagement.

  A flaming motor launch drifted into Bolan's line of sight while another roared away in a power surge to nowhere.

  "Nowhere" because that was where the flaming arrow from "somewhere" hurtled across those tortured skies to intercept and discourage any further independent movement. One moment the launch was there and powering into a classy turnaround, the next it was not.

  Frightened men were scurrying across the delta, shouting words of comfort back and forth—headed not to the front but to the rear—but there were not many of these, and Bolan let them go. This particular kill needed witnesses for maximum mission effect.

  The physical effect was certainly there, in all its grim reality.

  As the tall man in black strode along the levee toward his partner, he snatched the black box from his belt, spat on it, and hurled it into the grave of the St. Louis Corporation.

  "There you go," he muttered. "All you crazy bastards. Welcome out of my world."

  An "idea" had found its natural end.

  And now, this old man was rolling home.

  EPILOGUE

  Able Group plus One were all in the warwagon and rolling silently along the levee in a quiet tactical withdrawal long before the grim young men of the police tactical squads reached the astounding scene of action.

  "Anything to debrief?" Schwarz asked, peering owlishly back at the group just before the farewells were due.

  "Nothing here," Bolan reported. He was slumped tiredly in the ready seat, making notes in a leather-covered black book. "Oh, except . . . be sure to take your cut from the Stonehenge bank. Throw a fourth of the net into the war chest. Take the rest."

  "That's too much," Pol argued. "We're here on fees, anyway."

  "That guy couldn't pay you enough for that job," Bolan insisted. "Take the money. It just weights me down." He raised a steady gaze to the sturdy fellow. "I couldn't pay you enough, either," he added solemnly.

  "Don't embarrass me, Sarge."

  Bolan was still staring at him. "Talk to your man yet?"

  "Yeah." Pol grinned sourly. "He's delighted. And the lady is even more delighted that he's retiring from politics."

  "That's sine-logic for you," Schwartz commented sorrowfully.

  "Aw, shut up, dammit," Pol said softly with a grin at Bolan.

  "Where do you go from here, Mack?" Toni asked, with just a bit of high color i
n her cheeks.

  "Home," he said quietly.

  "Oh. I guess I'd forgotten you had one."

  "So had I. I got reminded. Toni . . . it's been great seeing you again. It's never long enough, is it. We'll uh, connect again. Somewhere. Won't we?"

  "I have a feeling we will," she replied, sighing.

  They made the switch at the Gateway Arch. The farewells were tough and quick, almost brutal—then three of Bolan's favorite people were fading away into the night.

  He drove on to the airport motel, put the big bus in a ready-out park, showered, donned fresh clothes, and rejoined that other world for a brief respite from hell.

  He ran into Leo Turrin in the lobby. The little guy was pacing tracks in the carpet and viciously chomping a cigar. He reacted to the sight of Bolan with a relieved scowl and hurried to intercept him.

  "I got a seat on the nine-thirty plane," he announced with some agitation. "Johnny's in the room, watching TV. I was wondering if you were coming straight back."

  "You mean if at all, don't you?" Bolan corrected him.

  "Okay, so I worry a little," Turrin replied with a sour smile.

  "Why the hot jump home, Leo? I told you I might take twenty-four hours."

  "I found out different. That's why the hot jump. My boss got called to New York for a hot council, and no one's home tending the territory. Seems they got some disturbing news, about a half-hour ago. They're saying that Little Artie whacked out Jerry Ciglia and all his legions. That was stunning news, I guess."

  Bolan just stared at him.

  "Well, dammit?"

  "Well, dammit," Bolan said soberly, "you better hurry if you expect to catch that plane."

  "You're not going to tell me, are you! You're just going to let me stew about it all the way home!"

  Bolan said, "It's true, Leo. Ciglia went storming out to an old boat called the Jubilee to collect some heads. I guess you never heard of the Jubilee. Me either. Anyway, Ciglia got collected, instead."

  "And? So?"

  "Read about it in the papers, guy. I have no time for stories from hell. I have to go watch a kid become a man."

  He winked at his best friend in any world, spun on his toe, and went to keep that date in paradise.

  It would, he knew, be his very last.

  The End