“When you get back, get with DiAnglia right away and clue him in. Tell him what we’re doing. He should load the streets and make some noise so there’s no misreading of the signals.”
“Right. I’ll do that.”
They stepped through the doorway and into the sitting room. Billy Gino was just then wheeling in a room service table loaded with coffee and pastries.
“Tell Billy,” Bolan suggested. “Tell him, also, I’ve had an eye on him. Tell him there are good things ahead for him.”
Eritrea beamed and said, “He’s a hell of a good man.”
“He’s Commissione material,” Bolan suggested.
“So is Leo, come to think of it,” Eritrea said proudly.
“That’s an idea,” Bolan said. “Why don’t you try it on him? On your way down, maybe. Feel him out.”
“Right, I’ll do that.”
“I’ll just want to give the poor guy an encouraging word before I go.”
“Good idea,” Eritrea said.
Bolan strolled across the room toward Leo Turrin. Eritrea crossed immediately to Billy Gino.
“What are you doing?” Leo hissed.
“Playing the game,” Bolan said quietly.
“Yeah, but what game?”
“Brokering. I believe the alignment is secure, Leo. Don’t worry about Angelina. She’s going to be okay. So are you. You’re going to the city with Eritrea and company. Play it for all it’s worth.”
“Wait a minute! What are you—?”
“I’ll clean it up here and quietly fade over the horizon. Omega will take a new face and a new name—and nobody will ever be the wiser. Smile, buddy. You’re about to become a commissioner.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Sure I am. So are you. But so are all of them. So what’s the difference? Play the game, Leo. And keep it tucked tight.”
He spun on his toe and walked away from the double-lifer with the hollow tooth and the death pill to fit.
Sure. They were all crazy as loons.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Romancing
The thing was moving entirely to Bolan’s liking, now. He could feel the pace flowing past the quivering war tendrils of his soldier’s mind and he knew—the same as every soldier always knows, when that moment arrives—that the balance between life and death was weighting his every move.
He put in a quick call to Al Weatherbee to ask the cop: “How’s your conscience?”
“Never felt better. The chief has set an emergency meeting to discuss the unsettled conditions here. State will be there and so will county—even a few FBI people, I’m told. He’s going to push for an immediate clampdown to seal this town off tight. But it works both ways, buddy-o.”
“It’s still good news, Al. Thanks.”
The guy sighed as he said, “Play your cards right, maybe it will buy you one more ride around the gravesite. But you still know where you’re headed, don’t you.”
Bolan told him, “We’re all headed there, aren’t we. I just elected to pick my own route. By the way, I have some good news for you, too. The hard luck kids are breaking camp at this moment and calling it quits. I think you should let them pass unchallenged, and good riddance.”
“How do you know they’re leaving?”
“Because someone told Eritrea that’s what he should do and he agreed with the logic. I also told him I’d let you know.”
“I don’t believe it,” Weatherbee sniffed.
“Don’t believe it, then. But Al—let them go.”
“That isn’t what I didn’t believe. I was being cute. Guess I’m too old for cute.”
“You?” Bolan said, chuckling. “Never. Bet you’d never sell that idea to Alice.”
“Oh, she thinks I’m pretty cute. Sometimes. Tonight she’s going to think I’m Rudolf Valentino. Or, better yet, what’s that guy with the round table and the shining armor?”
Bolan hung up chuckling and immediately placed another call. Billy Gino took it. Bolan told him, “It’s me, Billy. Tell David I squared it with Weatherbee. You should be on your way within thirty minutes, though. They’re sealing the town. That’s all the time you’re going to have.”
“Yes sir, okay. Thanks, mister—”
“You call me Omega, Billy.”
“Say, listen, David told me what you said. You’re an okay guy, Omega. From now on, you just tell Billy Gino where and what and when. You know what I mean.”
“I appreciate that, Billy,” the “Ace” replied solemnly and hung up.
Sure, he knew what Billy Gino meant. It was a pledge of fealty to the grave. Bolan shook his head and went to his vehicle, thinking about all the Billy Ginos everywhere. Such a lot of waste for so little a cause. Where would the world be, he wondered, if all that fierce loyalty could be properly harnessed by the right leaders and put to work for something positive in the world?
He set off for the north hills knowing that such an occurrence was not likely in any forseeable future. There were just not those kinds of leaders around. As for the Billy Ginos of the world … Bolan had forever marveled at the curious fact that these guys were really hard core romanticists. They gave devotion and commitment to the grave because the idea fit some deep sense of rightness in their romantic souls. For a similar reason, other men sometimes robbed and killed or committed heinous crimes—romantic souls in rebellion against the humdrum life. The nation’s prisons were full of such men.
All were not savages, Bolan decided then and there. Some had simply seen the fire—and paused there to wonder what it meant, how it worked, and whether they could snatch up a small firebrand and carry it along with them through the darkness.
Yeah, Bolan understood such men. Not that he agreed with them—but he understood.
The ones he would never understand were the David Eritrea types. Their problem was precisely the opposite. They had no romance, no soul—and they had never seen the fire. Savages, yes, in the classic sense. All savages were not criminals, either. They could be found in the shops and mills and corporate offices and police stations and legislatures, as well. Yet they were as savage in their effect upon the world as any gun-crazy hood on any street in the land. The corrupt politicos and bureaucrats, the power-crazy corporate executives and ambitious young climbers of every ilk who felt through dead souls for some symbol of manhood and crushed everything noble before them in their sterile reach for potency without romance, domain without humility, wealth without compassion—there was savagery run rampant, right there.
Yeah. And it made Bolan sick to think about it. Those savages were as clear and present an enemy—however invisible and “legal”—as any Mack Bolan had gone against.
But, hell, Bolan did not fancy himself wearing a cross for the world—the remark to Brognola notwithstanding—and certainly he did not seek to atone for the sins of all through the blood of a few, whatever Weatherbee may have chosen to believe. Too many “saviours” had died for this tired world already. Bolan did not die for the gentle world, dammit. The same as he desired for Leo Turrin he desired for himself. He wanted to live for the world—but to make that life count for something noble and good and—yes, dammit—and romantic.
It was the romantic male, with his basic orientation toward the process called death, who provided joy for the ladies’ bowling league. That was Bolan’s illumination—female lib to hell and back. A man was a man and a woman was something else—yet the one was not a damn thing without the other. And the male with no romance in his soul was not a damn thing to begin with.
The war drums were in Bolan’s pulse, now. The hardsite was just around the next curve. He pushed all else from his mind, tensed into the combat ready, and sallied forth into the fire.
With, yeah, romance in his soul.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Probe
He moved the vehicle smoothly along the gently ascending drive at a steady pace, then picked up speed in the straightaway as he crossed the periphery of the auto-fire zone.
<
br /> It was going to be very tricky, sure.
One hand was at the door as he maneuvered past the shattered area which had once marked the gateway to new empire in America.
And then his corner vision caught the motion as, high above and far away, a tiny flash of light leapt from the background of trees and lifted in brilliance as a long tail of flame and smoke began marking the fiery path of the target track.
Bolan flung himself from the vehicle and sent it careening along without a pilot as he took cover in the earlier wreckage. Four numbers later the paths of rocket and automobile converged at the doomsday point, the rocket screaming overhead and finding its mark with a flash and a roar that sucked at Bolan’s flesh and pummeled the bones inside.
He was up and running for the house even as the fireball continued to expand.
“Hold your fire!” he yelled at the top of his lungs as he reached the front lawn and sprinted for the porch.
A door flew open and Bolan dived through the opening, then lay there panting as energetic others grabbed at him and rolled him over. A foot landed harshly atop his belly, another on his throat, and the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun yawned in his face.
“Breast pocket!” he grunted.
A hand flipped the coat back and hauled out the wallet, another took the Beretta Belle out of the shoulder harness.
Instantly, then, the feet were removed from his body and a concerned voice chuckled, “Hey, that was great, what a hell of a great run that was!”
Helpful hands pulled him to his feet and dusted his five-hundred-dollar threads, then fell respectfully back at a distance.
The one with the chuckly voice returned the Beretta but retained the ID wallet. “No disrespect, sir. That was really great. How the hell did you get out of that?”
The demolished car was no more than a hundred feet downrange. The red glow from the flames that consumed it danced at the windows and sent wild shadows playing on the walls of the great room. Hushed men stood at those windows and marveled at the destructive power unleashed in their presence.
Another guy appeared. A bit shorter than Bolan, a bit heavier, a bit younger—if there was any way to really figure age from one of those frozen faces. “Yes, just how did you get out of that?” Simon inquired in that curiously stilted speech.
“Saw the damn thing coming,” Bolan grunted. “That is one hell of a shocking sight, Simon.”
The guy may have grinned; Bolan could not be sure. “Your eyes are as good as your legs,” he said.
“Pure luck,” Bolan said modestly. “I saw the wreckage at the gate. I was looking around to see why. I saw why.”
“Did you see where it came from?”
“Up in the hills, there, to the west.”
The guy nodded his head and reached for the ID wallet. He glanced at it and turned it back to Bolan. He was outranked. This showed immediately in the new formality. He said, “You have me at a disadvantage.”
Bolan glanced at the fire and grinned. “Call me Lucky,” he said.
The guy grinned back—a real grin, this time. “I’m glad you’re here, but I’m sorry you had so much trouble getting in. We have this little problem, you know.” He turned to Chuckles with a harsh look. “There was no need to rough him up that way. You should have seen the man was running for his life.”
The chuckler apologized.
Bolan said, “It’s okay. I should have called ahead.”
Simon was seething with questions, but the respect for protocol kept them all inside. Instead, he offered refreshments.
Bolan declined, and told him, “Battalion will be a bit delayed.”
The guy’s eyes twitched, but no emotion moved that frozen face. “I hope not for long.”
“Just a bit of rerouting. This territory is suddenly very hot. I’ll need to tell the man.”
The guy gestured toward the stairway. They walked shoulder to shoulder through the big room. Bolan quick-counted about thirty heads in there. The place was pretty much as Leo had described it, though not so “plush” in its revival. Very plain and obviously new furniture was scattered about. The men here wore the grim look of “siege,” and the morale was obviously not high. The chuckler was apparently a crew boss. He was pushing the guys away from the windows and trying to settle them down.
All the doors upstairs stood open, but one. Leo had said “a large suite,” and this had to be it.
Bolan was hoping to find more than “the man” behind that closed door. A wild hunch had prompted this very risky penetration of the new empire; a gut-shaking hunch, however, and there was no alternative but to check it out.
He hoped to find Angelina Turrin behind that door.
Simon requested, “Wait here, please.” He brushed his knuckles against the wood and pushed inside.
Bolan stood casually in the hall, playing it cool, framed in the open doorway and displaying little interest in what lay beyond that doorway until he would be bidden to enter.
But the bid did not come.
Instead, a heavy voice from the interior rumbled, “That’s Mack Bolan! Take him!”
The following few seconds were a dizzying procession of oddly disoriented events, as survival instincts flared with combat-consciousness of instant crisis.
This was where conditioning always met the test.
The Beretta was in Bolan’s hand chugging penciled flame through that doorway, even as his thinking mind clutched at the edges of reality and sent him spinning along that hall and into the only possible route of flight. He hit the window at the end of the hall at full gallop and crashed on through with only the vaguest perception of what lay below.
It was highly fortunate that what lay below was the low sloping roof above the kitchen entrance. Bolan landed there in an instinctive crouch, legs doubled beneath him and flexing into the push-off for the next level below.
He hit the ground in a rolling drop and found his feet without loss of forward motion. A chopper cut loose on him from an upstairs window just as he rounded the corner to temporary safety and opened the stride toward happier turf.
But then from nowhere a shotgun ba-loomed and sent him spinning to the grass on both knees as the charge caught his flapping coat and tore it away from him. He experienced sudden pain but no disability as he twisted on and sent a Parabellum sizzler along the backtrack, targeting purely by instinct. He heard an immediate telltale grunt and saw the shotgun tumbling to earth—and again, somehow, he was on his feet and sprinting past the bungalows, while frenzied gunshots erupted along various quarters of the backtrack.
A vision only half glimpsed and foggily perceived tugged at a corner of his mind as he put the bungalows behind him and hurdled the fence. He was in cover, now, trees and shrubbery, and he knew that it was half made.
Better than that, even.
A voice from the house screamed, “It’s enough! Let ’im go! Nobody crosses the fence!”
A super-cautious force, sure.
Which suited an ex-Black Ace just fine.
He’d tried the cute routine once too often and found a place where it would not take. Why not? Whose voice? Was there something familiar?—something recognizable in that coarse bellow? No. Nothing to bet a life on.
He moved on, slowly now, stuffing breath back in and exploring hurts. A leg was a bit trembly and there was some raw flesh across the back where the coat had been, but he was not bleeding appreciably and he was not dead.
It had been a “great run” at both ends of that trip.
And it was good enough. The probe had paid for itself. He had not seen into that darkened room, and he had not recognized that voice of crisis.
He had, however, come away with what he’d gone in there to get. He’d come away with a vision half glimpsed and foggily perceived—but now, with the crisis ended, suddenly jarringly in focus—a vision of a naked lady huddled miserably against the wall of a bare room in that end bungalow.
Uh huh. He’d found Angelina.
CHAPTER TWENTY<
br />
Scenario
There were no messages on the floater and nothing on the hardsite intercept. So Bolan took a final climb up that pole as the first item of new business. First, he totally disabled the line to the hardsite, isolating them completely from the outside world. Then he initiated a call to Washington and waited impatiently as the clean line ran its tricky combinations.
Brognola came on with a huff. “Forget it, Striker. It’s completely out of reach!”
“Give it to me.”
“Somebody beat me to it. They hit the guy, right on the steps of the Senate office building!”
“It’s okay,” Bolan said.
“The hell it—what do you mean?”
“Get this very carefully, Hal. Every detail is important. It’s a place called Club Taconic in the hills northwest of Pittsfield, on the old Hancock Turnpike. It’s a hardsite now, with probably fifty guns defending it. It’s also, I think, maybe the intended throne for the new empire. The guy is there right now, the guy behind it all, and I have the joint under siege. There’s a hell of a good reason why I can’t just level it and leave it.”
“Angelina?”
“You got it. They’re holding her in one of the bungalows. It’s the one on the south end. Now look, here’s the lay. It’s a big place with lots of open spaces inside the walls, plenty of vegetative cover outside. It’s plenty hard. I doubt that I could get in there again, unless I really pull the cork on them. I guess that’s what I’ll have to do, because—”
“I’ll take it over, Striker.”
“I’d love it, Hal, but there isn’t time. They’re getting reinforcements at field battalion strength. Could be arriving at any moment. I’ll have to just lay all over them and hope for the best. You try sending cops in there and that lady will be the first to die. You know it and I know it so let’s not waste the time arguing. I’m going to spring her if I can. Meanwhile you’d better get a force moving this way. If I don’t make it, then you’ll have to play the lay any way you have left.”
“I understand.”
“Okay, there’s more. I—just a minute.”
“You okay?”
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