Panic in Philly

by Don Pendleton

  “He’s left,” Bolan said quietly.

  “Go get him back!” Angeletti screamed. “You can do it! I’ll give you anything—I’ll give you everything I got! Just don’t let the kid do that to hisself. No telling what they’ll think! Or do! My God, that guy was a Talifero! Dammit, you run get ’im back!”

  Bolan leaned down and plucked the revolver from limp fingers and thrust it into his waistband.

  “No way, Steven,” he said. “That one was my grand-slammer.”

  There was no way for Stefano Angeletti, either. The yelling fit or the new hopelessness or something had defeated him and he sank back into the cushions of the chair with a rattling sigh, hardly a drop of gas left in his tank.

  “You’ll get yours some day, guy,” the old man promised the Executioner. The eyes were looking yellow now, blazing purest hatred as though all the strength of an abused lifetime had been consolidated into that moment.

  Bolan sighed and said, “Don’t we all,” and turned to leave.

  The house captain came through the doorway about then, attracted probably by the old man’s emotional shouting.

  Stefano spent his last drop of gas to whimper, “Take him, Tony! God, take him!”

  “Take who?” the houseman asked, the face that had suffered the idiosyncrasies of this inner family group for perhaps half a lifetime twisting in patient puzzlement.

  Bolan showed the guy a sad smile and told him, “He thinks I’m Mack Bolan.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” the guy whispered, and backed out of there shaking his head.

  Bolan paused in the doorway for a parting look at success, Mafia-style.

  Don Stefano Angeletti was bent forward on his throne, leathery hands clutching at the mahogany arms.

  “Kill me, you prick!” he wheezed.

  “I already killed you, Steven,” Bolan told the Don, then he went away from there, down to the carport, into the Maserati.

  A familiar figure detached itself from the shadows as he was cranking the engine, and Sammy the yard boss stepped to the side of the vehicle.

  “You checking out, Mr. Cavaretta?” the yardman asked, the voice a trifle uneasy.

  Bolan grinned as he replied, “Right, and you haven’t even learned to call me Johnny.”

  “I guess I never would,” Sammy told him. “Uh … the house captain told me about the Don. Is he … is he …?”

  “He’s alive,” Bolan assured the guy. “Listen, Sammy …”

  The yard boss was giving him an anguished, sorrowful gaze—and Bolan was gazing back but he was seeing instead of Sammy a little tag-man at Las Vegas—Max Keno by name, instant-loyalty by game—and he knew that Max and Sammy were formed from the same mold. Nothing particularly admirable … not especially bad … they were just …

  Guys like this had never been torpedoes or hit-men or squeeze-men; they’d spent their lifetimes in loyal service to a cause they didn’t even understand—and they served a crown, not the man beneath it. Soldiers of the court, spending most of their days and nights just standing around to make some rotten old man feel important and deserving of kisses upon the hand.

  Soldiers of the other side. But soldiers, still.

  Bolan sighed and quit wrestling with himself. For Max, then—and probably for Sammy as well, he told the guy, “The old man is alive and he isn’t, Sammy. You’d better go up and sit with him. The stage is falling in.”

  “What is?”

  “All of it, the whole lousy hall of horrors is tumbling down. Put the old man to bed … then you better round up all your boys and either split or get as hard as you know how, because tomorrow is going to be some kind of hell day around here, believe me.”

  “I—God, I knew something was sour. A crew of your boys just relieved us down at the gate. I guess I knew. …”

  Bolan felt a familiar iciness enveloping his heart. He kept the voice casual, though, as he inquired, “What crew is that, Sammy?”

  “Taliferi. Crew boss is a guy named Chianto. Uh, does this mean that we’re …? Uh, Frank is …?”

  “Frank won’t be coming back,” Bolan muttered. “Neither will Philippa if she has the brains I think she has. Naw. It’s falling, Sammy. Get your boys together, cross your fingers, and sit tight.”

  The guy was obviously confused but he said, “Thanks. I—thanks, Johnny.”

  The Maserati was already in motion, gliding silently along the drive toward the gate.

  So. One of those chance numbers had dropped into the game, and now it was all numbers up for grabs.

  This could be a reaction to the “second front” effort he’d sent to New York with Leo Turrin. If so, then this elite crew of Commissione enforcers had already been on hand, in the background somewhere, hovering, awaiting a signal to join the game in Philadelphia. Maybe they had even come down with the real Johnny Cavaretta. Whatever and however, it was one of those unpredictables which Bolan had been gambling against … and twice in the same night he had pushed his chances one number too many.

  There would be no brazening past these boys … not the Taliferi. Whatever they had come for, they would most likely tumble quickly to the fact that something was very much out of place, and they would certainly not be politely “sirring” Bolan through that gate down there.

  One thing would inevitably lead to another … and maybe another head would go rolling toward Manhattan on this night of nights.

  A crew wagon, one of the big eight-passenger limousines, had been pulled well inside the grounds and was parked on the grass beside the drive.

  A door was open and a guy was sitting in that open doorway, his feet on the ground. He would, Bolan knew, be cuddling either a shotgun or a chopper between his legs.

  Two guys were flanking the vehicle, standing casually at either end, hands on hips.

  Four more were down at the gate, two to each side, arms folded across chests—hands very close to concealed pistol grips.

  So. Seven in plain sight. Another one or two, probably, skulking somewhere in the shadows.

  And the time had come for “combat quick”—frontal assault with all the stops pulled—no cuteness, no finesse, but simple and brutal battlefield-style bust-out.

  He had already sprung the AutoMag from its confinement in the glove compartment. Now he added the Beretta, unmuzzled. The Maserati’s door eased open and Bolan rolled out, the vehicle continuing to creep along the drive, unpiloted.

  The maneuver gave him a one-number edge. For a split second the forty-G shark ran interference and provided a screen between Bolan and the enemy.

  There were warning cries and sprinting men moving in all directions when that screen passed on—then the Executioner was on both feet and moving them in a demonstration of open-field running which would probably have swelled the football heart of his old buddy Wilson Brown.

  The guy who had stayed with the crew wagon was the first target up. He was whirling alongside the limousine, trying to get a Thompson into play across the engine hood.

  The AutoMag roared flame and thunder, and blew point-blank massive death into the guy’s face. The Thompson chattered briefly at the moon as it disappeared behind the vehicle with its dead programmer.

  The other two guys at the car had flung themselves onto the grass. One was still rolling for darkness; the other had come to one knee and was unloading a revolver in quick-fire at a target which just would not hold still. The second sizzling magnum from the silver .44 blasted straight into the guy’s wide-open mouth and punched him over onto his back.

  An instantaneous crack from the Beretta found the rolling man and ended his journey in a grotesque pile-up of arms and legs.

  The four who had been at the gate were commanding attention with a crackling of fire from the wall at either side of the gate. Several missiles plowed simultaneously into the turf in the path of Bolan’s advancing feet and another sang past his ear, carrying a sample of Executioner skin—from the cheek—along with it.

  A rapid-fire retort from both of Bolan’s weapons b
rought quick disorganization down there, plus a groan from one quarter and a cry of “I’m hit!” from another.

  In that same moment, Bolan discerned motion in his side vision and another muzzle-flash from the darkness behind him served as an announcement for the tearing pain that penetrated his left leg and sent him sprawling. The next roar of the .44 sent a screaming sizzler unerringly along the backtrack of fire and found live meat in that darkness, the connection signaled by another agonized cry.

  Someone along the wall had yelped, “He’s down! He’s hit!” and another volley of hand-gun fire tore turf all about him.

  Instinctively Bolan was rolling for shadow and blindly returning fire, very much aware that he was bleeding from two places but also strongly aware that he’d cut the odds down to a much more manageable two-to-one.

  Some men die easily, passively, passing back through the gateway of life with a gentle sigh or despairing moan.

  Some die with great reluctance, angrily, snatching at everything within reach to block that narrow passageway and to seal themselves into the Life side.

  Bolan was one of those latter.

  He reached the shadow of the wall and surged to his feet, shaking off a wave of pain and nausea from the protesting leg, and went on without pause toward his goal.

  He saw the whites of the enemy’s eyes and heard the guy’s shuddering gasps for life mingling with the metallic clicks of a firing pin upon spent cartridges.

  The hammer of the AutoMag itself fell upon an empty chamber; instinctively the left trigger finger closed that fist and the Beretta sent her last charge into shattering flesh and bone—and Bolan was moving past the guy as he fell.

  Then it was just Bolan, the iron gate, and the Maserati which had sputtered to a halt just uprange, and maybe one more gunner directly across the drive—a very silent gunner, at the moment.

  He punched the button to activate the gate at the same instant that he plunged inside the jacket for Cavaretta’s Browning. But the Browning, not too securely leathered for this type of play, had dropped off somewhere back there—and, yeah, there was one more gunner over there.

  In one of those flashing moments of the combat sense the guy had become aware that Bolan’s weapons were empty. He stepped into the gateway, smiling triumphantly, a long-barreled revolver held in both hands and extended at arm’s length, tracking coolly on the big man’s defensive whirl.

  Bolan was not spinning into an escape path, however. He was closing for hand-to-hand combat and the guy misread it, sending his first round into the empty space which Bolan had just vacated.

  Then the big silver auto was whizzing through the gap, airborne and directly on target, and the gunner’s second shot was spoiled as he flinched away from the impact.

  Bolan himself had closed that gap.

  The guy’s revolver went spinning into darkness an instant before he found himself locked into a spine-cracking bearhug.

  The gunner gurgled, “God, wait!”

  But God or the universe had obviously waited long enough, and another Taliferi died instantly in Mack Bolan’s embrace.

  Bolan let the guy fall away and he took a couple of faltering steps toward the Maserati before recognizing the urgency of the frantic signals surging up from his injured limb.

  The battle had been furious, but swift. Mere seconds had elapsed since he’d piled out of that rolling vehicle. Not quite long enough to bleed to death—but quite long enough for shock and weakness to begin settling in through that determined search for Life.

  He dropped to one knee to examine the wound, probing with both hands. It was a flesh hit, luckily—no bone involvement, a tearing wound along the calf—but bleeding like hell. Somehow the scarf he’d taken from Johnny Cavaretta had remained with him. He removed it from his shoulders and used it to tourniquet the bleeding leg.

  Blood was also oozing from the gouge along his right cheek, but this hit was more painful than dangerous. He tore off a corner of the scarf and used it to dab at the face wound, and only then did he discover that the last shot of the battle had not gone completely astray. It had struck the gun-leather beneath his left arm and angled into the flesh to lodge between skin and ribs; Bolan could feel it in there, could trace the outline of the slug with his finger. And, yeah, he was bleeding some there, also.

  He was hobbling toward the Maserati when the other guy appeared, seemingly from nowhere, standing dead-center in the open gateway.

  It was, sure—the young detective.

  How now, big bad Bolan?

  He scowled at the guy, then his chin fell and he showed the cop empty hands and said, “Zero.”

  The guy knelt to scoop something off the pavement, then came over and shoved it into the waistband of Bolan’s trousers. It was the AutoMag.

  The cop was smiling soberly. He said, “Zero, hell,” and helped the Executioner to the waiting forty-grand shark.

  He closed the door on the most wanted man in America and asked him, “Got a light?”

  Bolan wordlessly passed over a packet of matches.

  The cop lit a cigarette, handed it to Bolan, and told him, “Never can remember to bring enough matches for overtime.”

  Bolan took a drag and threw a glance toward the house as he exhaled. He could see men standing at the windows up there.

  The cop was lighting another cigarette. He blew the smoke toward the house and asked, “Is it true a bigshot Mafia Don owns this joint?”

  Bolan grinned sourly and replied, “How the hell should I know? I’ve just been looking for a friend.”

  “Looks like you found him,” the cop said. He pressed a scrap of cloth into Bolan’s hand. “I was saving this, as a war souvenir. Guess it’s not worth much as evidence. You better take it, as a souvenir of Philly. You’re leaking out of your left side, maybe you better use it as a patch.”

  Bolan was inspecting the cloth as the guy spoke. It was a pocket from his black-suit. “Where’d you find this?” he asked.

  “It’s off a soldier of the same side, I guess. How the hell should I know? It was growing out of a tree over there somewhere. You’d better beat it, soldier. You’ll be getting in the law’s way here, most any minute now. Good hunting. Uh, if I were driving this bomb, I’d veer right at the gate and not look back until I was crossing Franklin Bridge.”

  Bolan cranked the engine, thanked the cop with his eyes, and put that place behind him.

  So it was ending on a decent note.

  He was taking more than a torn pocket away as a souvenir of Philadelphia. He was carrying lead and pain and shredded flesh as well—but that was nothing particularly new. The important thing that he was carrying out of Philadelphia was a good feeling, a hell of a good feeling.

  The Executioner’s part of it was finished. But the melody of his visit would linger on—and the panic in Philadelphia, he knew, was getting stronger by the hour.

  A night for miracles? Bolan shook his head and ran a finger along the outline of the bullet at his ribs. Miracles, he knew, could happen anywhere, everywhere—any time the human spirit moved and tried.

  He knew, also, that tomorrow and a whole string of tomorrows were going to be some kind of hellish days for the Angeletti Mafiosi.

  Yeah. He was carrying something precious away from the city of brotherly love.

  He was carrying life, largely lived.

  EPILOGUE

  He’d crossed the Delaware via the Ben Franklin Bridge and made tracks for the New Jersey Turnpike. The forty-G shark was devouring two full miles per minute and not even straining when the news from Philadelphia broke the airwaves to assure the Executioner that all the numbers had come home in the city of brotherly love.

  He listened to the news, smoked a cigarette, and let the Maserati take its own head.

  He had no clear idea of where he was going, nor what he would do if he ever arrived there.

  It seemed a fairly safe bet, though, that somewhere up there in that immediate and uncertain future lay a trail which would lead him to
a guy called Don Cafu and possibly a return bout with the gradigghia on their home turf.

  Sicily, he’d heard, was beautiful this time of year.

  Bolan had everything he’d need for a safari into the enemy’s ancestral jungles.

  He had the bounty he’d collected on a bounty hunter—a hundred and ten big ones—a good car under him, and the name of a guy in New York who provided passports and special travel arrangements for a special fee.

  He also had the name of a medic in the big city who would patch up gunshot damage without qualms or questions.

  He did not need much else. Except his nerve, his numbers, and a willing universe.

  Yeah. Sicily was supposed to be very pretty this time of year. And the hunting, he’d heard, was excellent.

  POLICE BUSINESS

  **RESTRICTED COMMUNIQUE**

  SCRAMBLE CIRCUIT AUTHY #PH105

  FROM PHILA PD/TF 142351L

  TO H BROGNOLA/USDOJ/WASHDC

  **IMMEDIATE ATTN**BOLAN**

  BT

  SUBJECT BELIEVED DEPARTED PHILA

  THIS DATE, DESTINATION UNKNOWN.

  MAFIA DON STEFANO ANGELETTI

  ENTIRE ORG APPEARS IN TOTAL

  DISARRAY, SCORES DEAD, HOSPITALIZED,

  OR UNDER ARREST. REMNANTS

  REPORTED DISPERSING IN PANIC IN

  EXPECTATION OF RETALIATION FROM

  OTHER ORGCRIME ELEMENTS

  ADJACENT AREAS, REASONS UNDISCLOSED

  AT THIS TIME. AGENT PERSICONE

  SUGGESTS POSSIBLE QUOTE BOLAN

  TWIST UNQUOTE SIMILAR TO PALM

  SPRINGS HIT. SUBJECT POSSIBLY

  TRAVELING UNDER IDENTIFICATION

  JOHN J CAVARETTA WITH COMMISSIONE

  CREDENTIALS BUT UNLIKELY TO

  CONTINUE THIS GUISE BEYOND

  IMMEDIATE PHILA AREA. REQUEST

  IMMEDIATE AND OFFICIAL

  CLARIFICATION SICILIAN TERMS