The Killing Urge

by Don Pendleton

  He went half to his knees before recovering and straightening. All over his face and arms were cuts from broken glass. He put a hand to his cheek, bringing the fingers to his eyes to stare in fascination at his own blood. Then, without warning, he charged, screaming like a banshee.

  Meredith turned away, meeting his force with a braced elbow, then twirled around and followed through with a left to the nose. He grunted, then slammed her with a hard right hand to the chin, knocking her backward to trip over a broken chair and fall to the floor.

  Blood flowed freely from the biker's nose, running all over his face and chest as he threw himself at her. Meredith twisted away. He landed hard beside her. She cracked the side of his head with her other elbow, scrambled to her feet and grabbed the chair she had fallen over.

  She raised the chair, bringing it down with all her strength over his back as he tried to rise. He was driven to one knee, but the chair had not been heavy enough to do serious damage.

  He came up making animal sounds, his face twisted in a maniacal leer. His hand lashed out, grabbing her arm and slinging her against the wall.

  "Aaahh!" She hit hard. Strength drained from her.

  He hobbled forward. "Now, bitch," he murmured in triumph. "Now!" He threw himself at her. Meredith responded with a last desperate kick to the groin.

  She hit him just right. He doubled over and gagged. She grabbed him by the hair and raised her knee, brought his face down hard onto the knee. She could hear his teeth and nose breaking as the skinhead sank to the floor.

  She fell on top of him, breathing hard. Instinctively she reached for a large shard of glass amid the rubble.

  "Bitch!" he groaned. "Goddamn whore!"

  She didn't know how many women this man had caused pain to in his life, but she knew there had been plenty and that he'd never do it again. She raised the glass, even as the punk began struggling against her again, and plunged it into his throat, tearing.

  With his remaining strength, the man bucked her off and tried to stand. Instead he lurched sideways and collapsed to finally bleed to death in the plaster dust that covered the floor.

  She looked up. Benny Young was standing at the edge of the dining room, his face scratched and bleeding, his shirt ripped from his body. His .38 was clutched in his hand, its butt dripping thick globs of blood. The hoodlum he'd been struggling with had just lost his last battle.

  He nodded to Joan and, reassured she was okay, moved into the next room.

  In the kitchen, meanwhile, three more members of Larry's motorcycle gang ran in from the patio, firing as they came. They drove Bolan back through the archway to the living room. The Sheetrock walk collapsed under the withering machine gun fire.

  After the first volley, the Executioner spun around with Big Thunder on automatic, just as Carver aimed the .45 over the breakfast bar. They pounded away unmercifully, tearing up the first two men, who danced a jerky mazurka as they fell, the flesh ripped from their bodies.

  The third man turned and ran, jumping back through the patio door. Bolan gave chase. He arrived outside as the punk was firing a motorcycle.

  Bolan raised Big Thunder and fired, the hammer falling on an empty chamber as the cycle started to roared away. Looking down, Bolan spied Roy's ladder half in, half out of the patio door. He picked it up and threw it. The ladder hit the front wheel of the bike and knocked it sideways, throwing the rider off.

  He picked himself up and ran across the back lawn toward the pier, with Bolan close behind.

  The man charged the length of the small dock, jumping into the boat and untying it. As Bolan reached the dock, the punk shoved hard and the boat floated gently out into the lake.

  Bolan, still carrying Big Thunder, ran to the end of the pier. The enemy was already ten feet out, too far for Bolan to make a jump for it.

  The punk pulled the starter rope, the outboard motor kicking over on the second try.

  Bolan popped the clip out of the AutoMag and dug down in his webbing for another as the mercenary laughed loudly and sped off in a wild cascade of water.

  Bolan shoved the new clip into the automatic and advanced a round into the chamber.

  The punk was fifty feet away now, his shrill laughter echoing across the water.

  With stiff arms Bolan extended Big Thunder, sighting along the high, arcing wake created by the powerful engine as the boat moved quickly into the darkness. The Executioner fired on single shot, one after another, recalculating speed and position with every squeeze of the trigger. Slowly and methodically he emptied the entire clip.

  The sound of the engine changed slightly then, revved higher. Bolan dropped the clip from the AutoMag and reached for another, while his eyes searched the blackness of the lake for any sight of the boat.

  Then he heard it coming back, its whine louder, closer. He shoved in the new clip and raised the gun again. The boat was making a large circle, dipping in about thirty feet from the pier. It looped once, twice, then suddenly straightened course and came right at Bolan.

  The Executioner aimed Big Thunder again, watching in fascination as the boat bore down on him at high speed. Then he realized that the boat wasn't coming toward him at all, that it was going to miss the pier completely.

  At last he understood. He lowered his gun. The speedboat screamed in, a dead man at the wheel. It rushed past the pier, spraying water that soaked Bolan where he stood.

  Then it hit the seawall at the end of the lawn, and disintegrated on impact. The body of Coolie Powell was thrown out of the boat, flew gracefully across the lawn and finally landed with a loud plop on the flat roof of the house.

  Bolan turned and looked at the house. Smoke poured through the windows, and the flames of small fires flickered. But there were no more gunshots, no explosions. He heard sirens in the background, neighbors apparently having called in the police.

  He moved back across the lawn, surprised to feel a soreness in his right leg that he hadn't noticed before. He stopped by the door from the patio to the kitchen, where the dead man sprawled half off the roof. Bolan reached up and pulled his queue, and the body toppled off the roof, to land like a sack of garbage on the patio.

  Roy Carver was walking around in the smoky kitchen, checking bodies, his left arm hanging limp at his side, his clothes soaked in blood.

  "You okay?" Bolan asked.

  He nodded grimly. "Nothing a few stitches won't fix up." He pointed to the tough ox who lay dead under the motorcycle. "I think this is one of the ones who killed Neal and Carol."

  Bolan pulled some wood debris off the body and looked at it, nodding. "We've got another one out on the patio," he said. "You sit down and take it easy. We'll get you to a hospital."

  "Hey, listen. I'm fine, I..."

  "Just do what I tell you," Bolan said, moving out of the kitchen and into the living room.

  The place was a shambles, sofas overturned, their stuffing floating in the air like snow. A small fire was burning in the wreckage of the Harley that had crashed onto the bar, most of it contained thanks to the broken water pipe. A blue-suited policeman ran into the room with a fire extinguisher, ignoring Bolan to hurry to the bar.

  Benny Young stood talking to several policemen, showing identification all around, a job that Bolan was more than happy to let him handle himself. The way bodies were piled up around the front door area, Benny and Joan had done a hell of a job.

  Joan Meredith sat on a three-legged stool near the entrance to the dining room as a white-jacketed ambulance attendant applied antiseptic to a small gash on her face. Several other attendants in white coats moved among the bodies, checking for any signs of life.

  Bolan walked up to Joan. She reached up to take his hand. "We've got a man down in the kitchen," he told the attendant just as he was about to apply a bandage to Joan's cheek. "Get someone to take care of him."

  The man nodded, accepting Bolan's tone of authority. He put down sterile gauze and tape and turned away to give orders to the stretcher bearers. Joan got up from
the stool.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  She nodded. Her face was streaked with plaster, soot and blood. Bolan figured he probably looked the same. "I think I got Burnett in there," she said, inclining her head toward the dining room.

  Bolan walked in there, grunting when he saw from all the wreckage how fierce the fighting in the dining room had been. He knelt beside the body with the slashed throat, knowing right away it was Burnett. After rolling the body over he fished through the pockets, coming out with a wad of bills torn in half and a key ring. He tossed the money down and took the keys.

  He went back to Meredith, who was sitting down again and wearing a large bandage on her cheek. Though her face was still pale, she seemed to be in pretty good shape. "Find an open phone," he told her. "Get Hal on the line... now."

  Without a question, she walked off, obviously pleased to have been given a job to do. Bolan passed a couple more policemen going in the house as he came out.

  There were several more fires on the lawn, caused by motorcycle crashes and pieces from the outside of the house. Several more bodies lay strewed around the scene of destruction. The arrival of the police had drawn a group of neighbors, who gathered outside the gate to gawk and offer theories.

  Bolan picked his way through the twisted wreckage of the gate, glaring at any neighbors who were bold enough to approach him. He approached the white Cadillac parked on the street, heading straight for the trunk, which he opened with a key from Burnett's ring.

  A Colorado highway patrolman walked up as he rooted through the duffel bag containing shotgun and ammo.

  "I don't know who the hell you are," he said as Bolan dropped the duffel bag and reached for the valise jammed far in the back, "but you've done us quite a favor. The damned Rogues have been a thorn in our sides for years."

  Bolan looked up, met the man's eyes, nodded once and resumed his search. He unzipped the valise, dumping the contents into the trunk.

  Banded stacks of money fell from the suitcase, a lot of money. Ignoring it, he picked up the manila envelope in the middle of the pile. It contained a list of addresses for Vito Perezzi, Stinky Barberi and Mario Ottoni, and photos of all three. That was it. Old Sam wasn't even on this dude's list.

  Puzzled by this turn of events, he tossed the envelope back into the trunk and closed it. As he walked slowly back to the house, he met ambulance attendants carrying Roy Carver across the front lawn on a stretcher.

  "Good work, Roy," he said, stopping the attendants for a moment. "You'll make a great agent."

  The man smiled weakly, the morphine they'd given him for the pain already working. "Had a good teacher," he whispered, taking Bolan's hand. "Thanks."

  Bolan smiled. "Get better," he said.

  Joan Meredith was waiting for him in the house when he walked in. "I've got Hal on the kitchen phone," she said. "He's anxious to talk with you."

  "Good." He made his way through the evergrowing crowds of police and medics. As he picked up the phone in the kitchen, he wondered idly if Meredith had charged the call to Ottoni or put it on the government number. It seemed to him that Ottoni should pay for something. And where the hell was Ottoni?

  "Yeah, Hal," he said.

  "I hear it got rough," Brognola said. "Is everybody on the team okay?"

  "Just minor injuries," Bolan replied, "cuts and bruises. No harm done."

  "How about Ottoni?"

  "He went off to hide somewhere," Bolan answered. "I was just wondering about him."

  "Did any of them get away?" the Fed asked.

  "I don't think so. We got the three who killed Lomax and Niven. I found out from a cop outside that they recruited a local biker gang to help them on this one."

  "Then you got all of them?" Brognola asked.

  "All that we know about," Bolan qualified. "That doesn't mean..."

  "Then let's shut the door on this son of a bitch and call it a day. You did a great job, Mack."

  Bolan ran a hand across his forehead, his fingers coming away streaked with black. "It's not that simple, Hal," he said. "There's something more going on. Who hired these punks? Why haven't they hit Old Sam yet?"

  "Don't worry about it," Brognola replied. "I don't get you. From minute one you haven't wanted anything to do with this project. Now that I'm giving you an out, a free pass away, you don't want to take it."

  "I just can't leave the job unfinished after all that's happened," Bolan explained. "There's more to this than meets the eye and we need to figure out why."

  "What are you telling me?"

  "I'm going back to Oklahoma to get to the bottom of this."

  "Leave it alone, Mack." There was more than a little exasperation in Brognola's voice. "They're not that happy with you at Old Sam's house — you did punch out his kid — and as far as I can see up here, the thing's a wrap. Why not just forget it?"

  "You know what I think, Hal? I think you're afraid Old Sam is somehow mixed up in this himself and you don't want me screwing up your grand jury indictments over it."

  "That's not true," Brognola said quietly.

  "All right then," Bolan countered. "If Old Sam isn't tied up in it, then his life is still in danger. I found a suitcase full of money in Burnett's trunk, and whoever had that kind of money to pay off a punk like that will have a lot more to hire other punks."

  The line was quiet a minute. Bolan watched three cops pull the motorcycle off the big guy on the floor so the attendants could get a stretcher under him. Finally Brognola spoke. "You win," he said. "Take a couple of more days down there... take Joanie with you if she wants to go. But if nothing is happening, don't make a career out of it."

  "Don't worry. I won't spend any more time with the Giancarlo family than I absolutely have to. Talk to you later."

  Bolan hung up the phone and walked back toward the living room where Benny was still busy with the police, making statements and showing credentials. He met Joan as she came downstairs, a puzzled expression on her face.

  "Is something wrong up there?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure," she replied. "It's Ottoni. I can't find him anywhere. The bathroom door is locked, but nobody answers when I knock."

  "Let's take a look." Bolan followed the woman up the stairs, noticing that this part of the house was relatively untouched.

  "It's off the master bedroom," she said over her shoulder as she led the way down the narrow, carpeted hall.

  They turned into a large bedroom, furnished with light-colored woods and decorated in earth tones. Joan knocked loudly on the bathroom door. "Mr. Ottoni?" she called. "Are you in there?"

  No answer.

  She tried again. Still no answer. The niceties out of the way, Bolan stepped up, lifted his foot and kicked at the door, then again, until it shattered at the frame and came open.

  They entered the bathroom and looked down. Ottoni lay on the floor, eyes open wide, arms outstretched in the martyr's pose. Great gashes in his wrists gaped open, blood all over the white tile floor. A razor blade lay at the edge of the pool of blood.

  Suicide.

  11

  Ken Chasen sat in the car for several minutes at the Nashville gas station before getting out. He just didn't know what to do. There was no time now — no time to think, to plan. Everything, including his head, was moving at double time. He was weak, he knew that, and would have to eat sometime. People were after him, he knew that, too. But his most immediate concern was he was out of gas again and had to figure out some way of getting some without any money.

  He opened the tight-fitting women's coat and looked at himself in the harsh yellow light of the combination self-service gas bar and convenience store. The T-shirt tied around his gut was no more than a dark, soaked rag, though he thought the bleeding had stopped, leaving behind a throbbing pain that just got worse and worse. Why had Yvette shot him? If only she had listened, he could have explained to her the situation he was in. He'd been wrestling with this question all night, over and over, to the exclusion of everything else
, as he continued his headlong flight across a country that had turned dark and sinister to him.

  Maybe she hadn't really shot him. Maybe the gun had gone off accidentally when he grabbed for her. Maybe she had been scared herself and hadn't known what to do. If only she had stayed around, he could have explained to her that together they could accomplish anything. He could still reach her. It wasn't too late. All he had to do was find her friends and explain it to them. They were professionals; they'd understand and be able to deal with this sort of thing. He could go to work for them. Surely a sharp legal mind like his with an understanding of the Justice Department would come in handy. Sure. That was it. What was he worrying about?

  Gas. Gas was what he was worried about. He needed gas and he needed food. At the last gas stop he had ferreted around in the car and found enough in a toll booth can in the glove compartment to fill the tank. But now that was gone. He had to fill the tank again. It was a matter of life-and-death. Surely anyone working at a place like this would understand. But if they didn't understand, where would he be? He'd just have to take what he needed and hope they'd understand later. That was it. It was the right thing, the only thing, to do. None of this was his fault. None of it.

  He climbed out of the car, wrapped the coat around himself and managed to button it, though the sleeves came up nearly to his elbows. He moved around to the pump, setting the handle in the automatic notch after sticking the nozzle in the tank.

  The entrance to the convenience store was about twenty feet from the pumps. He walked casually toward it, making sure no one else was lurking around watching.

  "Howdy," the man behind the counter said. He was a man in his late fifties wearing bib overalls and a checked flannel shirt, and reading the morning paper while puffing on a big briar pipe.

  "Morning," Chasen mumbled, sizing the man up. He was small and old and the only person around. This would work out just fine.

  Chasen moved into the guts of the place. A Moe Bandy song was playing on the radio at the counter. He turned down the junk food aisle, immediately filling his pockets with cupcakes, chips and cookies. He wasn't hungry, hadn't been for days, but he knew he had to eat. A deep pain was gnawing away at his gut and food would relieve it. For Ken Chasen life had become an elemental game of survival.