Pendleton, Don - Executioner 17 - Jersey Guns Page 4

  They had moved on to the rear of the truck. Bruno was unlocking the tool compartment and ogling Bolan's black suit, apparently having just taken note of it.

  "Where'd you get that?" he asked.

  "Sara made it," Bolan told him. "Quite a gal."

  "You'll never know," Bruno said admiringly. "Sara has talents she hasn't even discovered yet."

  Bolan could have told the big Romanian that his sister had discovered one or two that very day. Instead he said, "We had an incident, Bruno. Pretty unnerving for Sara. I had to shoot a couple of guys off her back. They're over behind your equipment shed, with their car. I'll be moving it away from here when it gets dark."

  The big guy merely blinked his eyes at Bolan and began removing tools from the compartment. Then he got down to the part that counted, and Bolan began taking delivery of his new arsenal, checking it piece by piece as it came forth, grunting now and then with satisfaction over a particular item.

  It required ten minutes to transfer the stuff to the shed. When they finally got into the house, Sara had coffee waiting, and the three of them sat at a small table near a window that provided an excellent view onto the roadway out front.

  Bolan reminded his host about the "other message," and Bruno hastily whipped out a small notebook and began flipping the pages while the man in black quietly loaded clips with big ugly rounds of .44 magnum ammunition.

  "Yeah, here it is," Bruno announced. "You'd never make it out. I better read it for you."

  The message was from Leo Turrin, Bolan's secret comrade since almost the beginning of this war on the Mafia. Turrin was an under boss in a Massachusetts arm of the mob. He also was an undercover federal agent. Bolan scratched Leo's back, and he scratched Bolan's—in every way possible, and always at fantastic jeopardy to the man with the double life. It seemed as though it had been just days ago that the two of them had collaborated on Bolan's hazardous assignment in Philly. And then Leo had come in when Bolan needed his cooperation to accomplish the job in Sicily.

  Stumbling as he deciphered his own notes, Bruno reported his conversation with Leo Turrin thus:

  "He says you should lie low, don't move, don't even breathe hard. Federal marshals and state troopers are watching every highway and all public transportation facilities. Uh, and, yeah, he says to avoid all urban areas like the plague, especially, uh, the Jersey City and Newark areas. Cruise, uh .. . oh, he must have said crews . . . crews are coming down from all around the Northeast to plug Jersey solidly. They smell your blood. Know you're wounded and grounded somewhere. They're moving in for the kill. Says if you have to move, then move toward the sea. Long Beach, Asbury Park, that area. But even there you should count every grain of sand before you trust your foot to it. Uh . . . Marinello? Is that . . . ? Marinello is personally running the show. He takes it very personal what you did in Philly, as well as Sicily."

  The big guy raised quizzical eyes to Bolan. "Who is Marinello?"

  "Boss of all the bosses," Bolan said quietly.

  Bruno shivered and took a quick sip of coffee before resuming the reading.

  "He's got rolling command posts all over the area. Radio-equipped, with the smartest enforcers in his outfit personally directing the operations. Mike, uh, Talifero? . . . is also out somewhere in Jersey with a, uh, posse of head-hunters, swearing to get you, or else he's not ever coming back."

  Bolan chuckled at that, a chilling sound which momentarily clouded Sara's eyes.

  "He says to give yourself a 'well done' for Philadelphia. The whole Angeletti family has fallen apart, or else at each other's throats, or else running clear out of the state. But he says to stay clear of Philly for now. The feds are looking for you to fall back in that direction, and they're primed and waiting for you to show."

  Bolan lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into his hands.

  "Also he said be sure to give you this report on Frank the Kid. Who's Frank the Kid, Sarge?"

  "The heir to old man Angeletti's throne," Bolan explained.

  "Well, not anymore. Here's what your guy said. Tell the Sarge that Frank the Kid was executed less than one hour after his arrival in New York. He got there with the wrong head."

  The wondering eyes came up again to lock onto Bolan's expressionless gaze. "What does that mean? The wrong head?"

  "He thought he had mine," Bolan said

  "Oh."

  Sara quietly excused herself and hurried out of the room.

  Bruno nervously shuffled the pages of his notebook and said, "That's it."

  "Thanks," Bolan said, "Bruno, you're a hell of a guy."

  "Forget Bruno," the Romanian replied in a very subdued voice. "What are you? How can you sit there all calm like that? Don't you know what I've just been telling you?"

  "I know."

  "You haven't a chance. Not a chance in a million."

  "Guess have to make one, Bruno."

  "I . . . I know you can if anyone can, but . . ." Bolan sighed, squeezed the big man's shoulder, and went to find Sara.

  She was on the porch, arms folded across her bosom, staring morosely at the spot in the drive where she had been a close bystander to sudden and violent death.

  He came up behind her and put his arms about her. "Don't let it bug you," he said, speaking softly with his lips at her ear.

  "Why not?" she replied with a strangled little sigh. "That was no message. It was a sentence of death."

  "I've had them before," he pointed out. "And I’m still here."

  "Just barely." She sniffed.

  His voice had a lilt to it as he reminded her, "That's not what you told me this afternoon."

  She was very quietly and very unemotionally weeping. "Don't die, Mack," she said in a tiny voice. "Please, please don't die. Go back to the loft. We can keep you safe."

  "No you can't. Each hour I spend here now is another fifty guns I'll have to face sooner or later."

  "You don't have to—"

  "Yes I do. You said something about a sentence of death. That sentence was pronounced a long time a go, Sara. The only way I avoid it is by shoving it back through their teeth. The minute I start trying to duck it, then I'm a dead man for sure. besides . . ."

  "Yes," she said in a tightening voice. "Finish it. Besides what? You love it, don't you? You're just aching to get back out there and . . . and—how did you say it?—shove it back in their teeth."

  "Wish me well, Sara," he requested humbly.

  "Oh . . . God!" she cried, twisting about and owing her arms around him.

  Yes, Him too, he thought bleakly. Whatever and wherever You are, God, wish me well.

  And suffer the young widows their solace.

  5 COUNTERPOISE

  He was in full combat rig.

  The black suit that Sara had designed and built was a better fit than any he'd worn. It was made of an expanding, tough material that moved with him like his own skin; even the pockets hugged close until they were filled with something.

  The Beretta Belle occupied her usual position of honor—shoulder-slung beneath the left arm. The AutoMag, fully armed and backed up, now rode heavy military web at his right hip.

  A compact, folding-stock auto pistol dangled free from a strap about his neck to ride loosely across his belly.

  A miscellany of carefully selected munitions dangled from utility belts or lay snugly in the elastic pockets of the skin suit. These included small fragmentation grenades, percussion pods, incendiaries, chemical smoke compressors, even a couple of small transistorized explosives.

  Spare clips for the guns, a stiletto, and several small tools completed the ensemble.

  Bruno looked the warrior over and commented, "You must be carrying a hundred pounds over your own weight."

  "About that," Bolan agreed.

  "Does the leg know it yet?"

  "A little. But it'll get used to the idea."

  "Just watch it," the worried Romanian cautioned in a curiously flattened voice, "Damnit, don't let them ..." His voice broke. He spun about
and marched stiffly toward the house.

  Bolan stopped him with a quiet call, but the big guy did not turn all the way around.

  "Bruno. You're a hell of a guy."

  "Thanks. You too. Watch those tocks, eh." "Name of the game," Bolan replied, chuckling. Bruno went on, then, and Bolan stepped over to the vehicle.

  He had carefully stowed the rest of his arsenal in the back-seat area and covered it with some empty ked sacks.

  The two corpses remained in the trunk compartment.

  A lovely young lady occupied a small portion of the front seat.

  In a tinkly voice she asked him, "Are we ready to go?"

  Gruffly he replied, "We, hell."

  "I can run as fast as you."

  "I'm not running, love," he quietly informed her.

  "Well …"

  Bruno burst back upon the scene at that moment, trotting from the rear of the house and waving a heavy money belt above his head.

  "You forgot the war chest, Sarge!"

  Bolan accepted the fat belt, stared at it for a momentt, then shoved it back into Bruno's hands. Hang on to it for me," he requested.

  "You crazy? There's nearly a hundred thousand—"

  "I took what I'll be needing for now. And if I don't make it through . . . well, can't take it with you, Bruno."

  "Hey, Sarge, I can't—"

  "Sure you can," the Executioner replied brusquely. He pulled the girl out of the car, slapped her lightly on the bottom, and told her, "All ashore." She gasped, "Mack, I—"

  He stopped her with a kiss, holding her deliciously close despite the interfering hardware.

  When they came out of it, Bruno had disappeared.

  Their eyes locked together, and a very special message quietly had its say there.

  Then the girl's eyes fled that moment, and she told Bolan, “I-I’ll always remember."

  "Remember, too, what I told you this morning." "I will," she whispered. He slid into the car and closed the door.

  "How did your husband die, Sara?" he gently asked her, through the window.

  "I . . . they just said 'killed in action.' "

  "Then he died living," the man in black told her. "I intend to do the same thing. But—damnit, Sara —you are a very special item. Promise me you won't live dying."

  "Promise," she whispered. She wiped the moisture from her cheeks then, and told him, "The, uh, clothing you wore in here. It's all patched and pressed and hanging in the back window."

  "Thanks, I noticed," he said, and then he kicked. the war wagon to life and quickly put that paradise behind him . . . and he did not look back.

  The girl ran down the drive and stood there a pathetic figure with slumped shoulders and I dulled eyes—until the glow of his headlamps disappeared finally into the night.

  She was walking dispiritedly toward the house when Bruno's truck lumbered around from the rear and gunned along the drive beside her.

  She cried out, "Bruno! What are you . . ?" The truck rumbled on past and turned onto the road in Mack Bolan's wake.

  Sara's hands went to her face, and she held that pose while tormenting thoughts and pictures spilled across her reeling consciousness.

  Die living. Live dying. Kill, be killed. Fight, struggle, die, die, die, a million times die—what sort of world . . . ?

  Remember what I told you this morning!

  Yes, Sara, remember always.

  "The universe must love you very much, Sara. Because you're a woman. And the female of every species is the universe in miniature, the living plasma of creation. She's the positive, uplifting force, the collector, the preserver, the nest-builder. You're the bridge of the generations, Sara. It's up to you to preserve what we men would destroy... without you."

  Okay, sure, she could understand that kind of talk. Even from a relentless war machine like Mack Bolan. And he was more than that, of course. Much more. Yes. He was some kind of man.

  She straightened her shoulders and turned back toward the house.

  Okay, Mother Sara, preserver of the races and wife of the universe. Get in there and start nesting.

  She went inside, turned on all the lights, put the Tijuana Brass on the hi-fi, found her sketchpad, and began designing herself a new summer wardrobe.

  6 DRAW PLAY

  What you got, Hugger?"

  "A suspicious. Just off Thirty-three by the fair- rounds. I don't wanta go down in there with just me 'n' the kid. Some guy's camping down there, fire and everything."

  "Where'd you say that is?"

  "A box canyon on this little road just east of the fairgrounds, by that new interstate."

  "Our sectionals don't show no box canyon around there , Hugger."

  "Well, damnit, you better look again! I'm telling you . . . Whuup! Change that, it's no suspicious! It's him, it's the guy! You get me some help here damn quick!"

  "Boss says damnit you sit tight! Don't try nothing on your own. We're on the way!"

  "I'm sittin'! But you shag ass!"

  Bolan smiled a smile that was not a smile and I thumbed off the microphone. All he had to do now was to wait. And he'd learned, long ago, to wait.

  He had travelled not east from the Tassily farm, but west—clear to the approaches of Trenton; and he’d found his battle site near a place called Mercerville, not far from the state fairgrounds.

  The terrain here was not the most ideal, but he had desired to get as far west as feasible, hoping to draw the hounds away from the trails he planned to travel later that evening.

  And he'd found a pretty decent site for a fire trap—more or less remote, a bit of woods, some open area with a bit of high ground overlooking it ... . and an escape path to the rear.

  He had covered the area thoroughly in a walking recon, in the dark; then he'd built a small campfire at dead centre, dumped his cargo of cold meat and carefully laid it out just so, then moved the vehicle to the elevated land overlooking the scene.

  The target range would be about fifty yards. It would be a hellish lay for those foolish enough to be caught down there.

  Before summoning the foolish ones, he carefully investigated the back way out, found it passable in the vehicle, then returned immediately to the fire trap and began setting up.

  He positioned infrared floods and took rangefinder readings from three different locations on the ridge, then set up a couple of LAWs (light antitank weapons) and made them ready, put some heavy grenades out, checked his personal weapons . . . and went to the radio to spread some blood for the shark pack.

  At this range the LAW would do about anything a bazooka could do, and Bolan had a couple of special missions in mind for those deadly dudes.

  He also had a honey of a new night-time sniper piece which had come from the William Meyer & Company "munitions-at-a-price" supermarket in Manhattan—and at a very dear price.

  Meyer was more than an illicit arms dealer. He was also a physically shattered survivor of Vietnam, a skilled armourer like Bolan, and a genius at modifying old arms to newfangled kill specifications.

  A lifetime victim of warfare, Meyer had found a way to make the human proclivity for destruction pay off in a particularly ironic and profitable fashion . . . or so he'd told Bolan at the height of the nightmare in New York. Meyer had discovered that munitions makers do not take sides in small wars; they merely build destruction to specification for whatever damn fools want to come along and set it loose upon the world.

  Hinting, of course that Bolan was one of the damn fools.

  Bolan had never argued with the man. Damn fool or not, he had a job that needed doing, and there seemed to be no one else around who was ready, able, or willing to take it on. It just happened that Bolan had all three of those qualifications; and here he was—damn fool, maybe—but here nevertheless, on a Jersey hillside in the dead of night, waiting his chance to let loose quite a ration of destruction upon the world of damn fools.

  And the foolish ones came, recklessly, straining at the bit like so many excited bloodhounds with
scent strong in their nostrils, tearing along that lonely road down there like the hounds of hell had done since the beginning of life.

  Two vehicles, then a third, and finally a streamlined van sort of thing--one of those houses on wheels which gentler people used to get back to nature without really suffering. And now Bolan knew what the boys were utilizing for their "rolling command posts."