Eternal Triangle

by Don Pendleton

  It would not have had the Bolan touch.

  The shooter waited for his boss to fall in step. They moved out together, marching north until they reached an alleyway that flanked the Pleasure Chest. The hunter could have taken them at any time, but he was in no hurry now. He knew where they were going, and he could afford to wait.

  The alley was a dead-end box, providing access to a tiny parking lot behind the Pleasure Chest. Surrounded on all sides by buildings, like an asphalt afterthought, the lot was big enough for Ingenito's Cadillac and the vehicles of two or three employees. Anyone who parked in the protected lot had to leave as he had entered, through the narrow alley fronting on the hunter's rooftop vantage point.

  And he could wait for Manny Ingenito.

  He watched the tandem figures disappear into the alley, lost in shadow for a time. He could not hear the Caddy's engine turning over, but he saw the headlights when the driver turned them on, and he was ready, waiting, when the target rumbled into view. With a bit of caution, the big car could squeeze through the narrow alley, but once it entered the alley, the Caddy's doors could not be opened far enough for either man to wriggle free. The hunter had them boxed — provided he could stall the tank, for openers.

  He zeroed on the grill. His finger tightened around the trigger as he drew a breath and held it, swallowed to lock the air inside his lungs. Precision timing was required; if he muffed the shot, they would be away before he could correct his error. Calling on the hours of practice, years of waiting for this moment, concentrating on his target to the exclusion of the whole damned world outside, he said a silent prayer and squeezed.

  The Marlin bucked against his shoulder, bruising, but the slug was on its way before he felt the recoil, slamming in on target through the Caddy's unprotected grill, releasing radiator steam and oily smoke that told him he had cracked the engine block. Another round for safety's sake. Smoke poured out from under the hood, partially obscuring his view.

  Below him, people on the sidewalks were reacting to the gunfire, a few seeking cover with the instincts of embattled veterans, the rest still gawking skyward, searching for the source of man-made thunder. He ignored them all and concentrated on his targets in the Cadillac, while he could see them through the smoke.

  The wheelman had a pistol in his hand, although he had to know it wouldn't do him any good while he was stuck inside the car. Instinctively the guy tried the driver's door and banged it hard against the brickwork on his left, apparently surprised the ancient wall was there. The shooter slammed his open palm against the steering wheel and cursed. The hunter might have read his lips through the twenty-power, had he taken the time.

  Instead he blew the guy away, 240 grains of death exploding through the windshield, flattened by the impact, tumbling already when the slug struck his face. The scowling head snapped back, one side disintegrating before the hunter's eyes. Blood and mutilated flesh sprayed directly in Manny Ingenito's face.

  Manny seemed to go insane. Before the hunter could react, his secondary target rose and rolled, feet braced against the dashboard, wallowing across the seat and disappearing down in back. Still sane enough to think in terms of dollars, Manny took the leather briefcase with him. Natch.

  No matter. If he couldn't drill the pig, then he would roast him where he sat. The hunter spent a precious moment reloading the Marlin's tubular magazine. He scanned the street below him for any sign of police response to the shooting. There was none, which vindicated his selection of this neighborhood. Its regulars would rather burn in hell than call the law, and casual visitors, out slumming, would have no idea where to turn for help.

  He sighted through the twenty-power scope again, the cross hairs centered on the Caddy's smoking hood. He tried to estimate the carburetor's placement beneath the flimsy sheet of metal, finally zeroing in on an imaginary circle.

  All right.

  Methodically the hunter emptied the rifle's magazine, striving for precision rather than speed. His third round made the hot spot, but he used up the others to make sure. Before he lifted off, the Cadillac was burning brightly, tongues of flame licking along the underbelly, searching out the gas tank.

  When the gas blew, the hunter thought he might have heard a strangled scream from Ingenito, caught up in all that fire and twisted steel, but he was never sure. It didn't matter either way. The bastard was a statistic now. They would have to cut him out of there with torches, and the syndicate could kiss that cash goodbye.

  The hunter was almost finished. Moving swiftly now, he stowed the Marlin in the duffel bag, depositing the extra ammunition from his pocket in a zippered outer pouch. He straightened, the stench of burning oil and rubber in his nostrils, fished inside a different pocket for the marksman's medal, left it on the parapet. Together with the Marlin cartridges and the choice of target, Homicide would be sure to find the Bolan signature on Manny Ingenito's smoky exit.

  Let them doubt the soldier's presence in their city now. The mob would never doubt it, that was certain. They would have gunners on the street before the night was out. The police could not ignore them, as they had ignored the Executioner before, allowing him to trample roughshod over law and order, murdering at will. The widows of his war, their orphaned children, would have justice, finally. And if it came too late for some, at least the rest would know and understand.

  He met no interference on the stairs. If occupants of the cheap hotel had heard the shooting, seen or heard the explosions on the street, they had already taken their curiosity outside. Most tenants would have been drunk or drugged by midnight, anyway, too far gone to recognize an alien invasion if the UFOs crash landed through their open bedroom windows. Once again, the hunter's preparations had paid off.

  He used the back door, avoiding the hotel lobby where the night clerk would be dry enough to make his face, the bag he carried. The route was shorter this way, too. Two more minutes saw the hunter safely to his car, the Marlin stowed inside the trunk.

  He had performed a service for the city here tonight. Two services, in fact. He had eliminated Manny Ingenito, cauterizing one of several open sores on the inner city's face, and he had sounded the alarm to Bolan's presence in Pittsfield. They would be forced to listen now — the lawmen, politicians, prosecutors, journalists who had been negligent before. They would be watching for the bastard now.

  They would be watching when he died.

  The Executioner would have an audience to cheer him on his way, and they would thank the hunter in the end. For saving them. For seeing justice done.

  For evening the score.

  It was a good night's work, all right, and he was satisfied. For now.

  The hunter drove directly home, and was asleep within the hour. He did not dream.

  14

  The neighborhood was posh, by Pittsfield standards. South Hills would never pose a challenge to Rodeo Drive, but stately homes sat square on roomy lots, serene behind rolling lawns and security fences. Primarily professionals, the residents took precautions against theft, but thought vice and violent crime occurred in another world altogether. Narcotics? Prostitution? Child pornography? They were the problems of a blighted inner city, far removed from the routine of country clubs and cocktail parties that the better half enjoyed. Few, if any. South Hill residents would recognize the predators among their own neighbors… but predators were among them, all the same.

  The Executioner came seeking predators in South Hill on his second night in Pittsfield. The previous day he had leased a base of operations, paying the first and last months' rent although he didn't plan to be in town past Friday morning. With the drop secure, he had gone to ground for twenty-four hours and waited — for Girrardi's troops to make a move, for something, anything, to happen.

  He had not had long to wait.

  By sunrise on Bolan's second day in Pittsfield, press reports were naming him as the sniper who had taken out the local "vice lord." Homicide detectives had found a marksman's medal and a dozen cartridges from a Marlin
.444 at the scene of the shooting. They had put two and two together… but their math was wrong.

  The Ingenito strike had been a smoke screen and a frame. No one knew it yet, except for Bolan and the man — or men — behind the Marlin. For now he was satisfied to let detectives pursue their empty leads, but that did not mean he was going to let it rest.

  The Ingenito shooting and Bolan's interrogation of Girrardi had started the pot boiling, but now the soldier needed to turn the heat up higher. Someone meant to force his hand, and Bolan was happy to oblige. That someone did not — could not — know where he would appear next, and from the fireworks at the Pleasure Chest, his adversary was expecting Bolan to begin his cleanup in the gutter. Cruising slowly through the tree-lined streets of South Hill, Bolan wondered what would happen to his adversary's plans if he began to rattle cages at the top.

  He passed Girrardi's minimansion, marked the soldier's on the gate and kept on driving. Gino had a white flag, for the moment. He would be working overtime to finger the demented idiot who planned a reenactment of the Bolan blitz in Pittsfield. Gino's job, and possibly his life, were on the line, and Bolan trusted him to leave no stone unturned.

  He trusted Gino as far as he could drop-kick City Hall.

  Though he was convinced Girrardi knew nothing about the violence in Connecticut, or the lure back to Pittsfield, Bolan still could not rule out a syndicate involvement. Someone in the ranks might view the Executioner's return as a heaven-sent chance to winnow out the chaff, create some vacancies for rising young executives. There might be treachery within Girrardi's camp or from some rival family. With the shifting ethnic makeup of the underworld these days, the adversary might not be a bloodline mafioso, after all. The Executioner would have to wait and see.

  And while he waited, he could rattle cages. Remind his ancient enemies that psychological warfare was a two-edged sword that could cut both ways.

  His target for the evening was Girrardi's number two, a recently promoted veteran shooter named Ernie "Spider" Tarantella. Like his namesake in the insect world, he was a hairy brute who spoke and moved with slow deliberation until the time was ripe to strike against his enemies. In combat — on the streets of Brooklyn as a youth, and later from behind a desk, with soldiers of his own — the Spider could be swift, decisive, deadly when the need arose.

  People messed around with Ernie Tarantella at their peril. His assorted rap sheets listed two-score unsolved homicides in which he was suspected as the trigger or the guiding hand. In Pittsfield, Tarantella was the field commander of Girrardi's occupation force, but he had been restrained, so far, by Gino's disinclination to launch a bloodbath in the streets. With Manny Ingenito cooling in a drawer downtown, the Spider would now be gearing up for action.

  As Bolan turned his rental toward the Tarantella homestead, he was looking forward to the meeting on Tarantella's home turf. It was too long since he had crushed a spider underneath his heel.

  The Tarantella spread was old New England, with a dash of Modern Paranoid added by the latest tenant. The broken bottles mounted on the decorative wall were new, as were the TV cameras mounted at the gate. A human silhouette drifted in and out of sight behind the wrought-iron scrollwork of the gate, patrolling, and there would be others, Bolan knew.

  After circling Tarantella's property — a corner lot with a narrow alleyway in back — Bolan parked the rental half a block beyond. He shed the slacks and jacket covering his blacksuit, buckled on his military webbing with the AutoMag, grenades and canvas pouches holding extra magazines. He slipped an Uzi submachine gun from its hiding place beneath the driver's seat and double-checked the load, then slipped the strap across his shoulder, ready to go EVA.

  It would be simple to get over the wall, but he would have to be alert for roving sentries. From the vehicles in Tarantella's drive, the Executioner knew that Ernie had called his top lieutenants to a summit conference, doubtless laying out their strategy for dealing with a Bolan siege. The soldier smiled in sweet anticipation of providing Tarantella's shooters with a lesson in survival on the firing line. It was a lesson, Bolan thought, that some of them might not, in fact, survive.

  The darkness swallowed him and carried him along toward confrontation with the enemy.

  * * *

  Al Weatherbee decided he would pack it in at midnight. He was getting too damned old for cruising aimlessly around darkened streets in search of trouble, and he wasn't even getting paid for gas this time around. But in spite of the irritation and embarrassment, the former chief of homicide was running on his instinct, trusting a hunch.

  He knew that Bolan was in town, as surely as he knew the soldier hadn't wasted Manny Ingenito. Pappas had summoned Weatherbee to the Pleasure Chest the night before, all scowls and sour temperament, predicting doomsday if the war expanded any further. Weatherbee had checked out the scene, examined Ingenito's Caddy and the rooftop sniper's nest. Something didn't ring true. He couldn't put his finger on it, couldn't sell John Pappas on his theory, but the ex-detective would have bet his life that Bolan had no part in smoking Manny or his pet gorilla.

  Granted, it was Bolan's trademark, Bolan's weapon. It was almost Bolan's style. Almost. When he thought about it more, Weatherbee decided the timing made the difference. Bolan — or whoever — would have had to be in place before his targets left the Pleasure Chest. He would have had them squarely in his sights throughout their short walk to the alleyway that led to where Ingenito parked his Cadillac. Bolan would have taken them outside, on foot, Weatherbee was certain, although it was a feeling that he could never "prove" except by reference to past experience.

  From the beginning, when he hit Frank Laurenti's crew at Triangle Finance, Bolan had preferred to execute his targets publicly. No stats were available, of course, but Weatherbee was betting that a count of Bolan's victims would reveal that a lion's share had met their maker on the streets. If the Executioner had been watching Manny Ingenito through a telescopic sight, with no one standing in the way, he would have popped the bastard in front of the Pleasure Chest, not waited for the target to stroll half a block and crawl inside a tank that might be armored fore and aft.

  The technique the shooter actually used raised several possibilities. He might be short on experience with heavy weapons, fearing he might only wing a man on foot, or miss entirely, bag a passerby. Or the sniper might have had ample time — days, weeks — to study Ingenito and his operation, familiarize himself with the greasy thug's routine, make sure there would be no armor plating on the Cadillac.

  If the gunner had been scoping Manny over several days or weeks, then the gunner wasn't Bolan. Q.E.D., you bet your ass. If the soldier had come to town one morning, studied Manny Ingenito in the afternoon and rubbed him out that night, he wouldn't have done it the way it had been done. No, it wouldn't play, no matter how you tried to make the pieces fit, and Pappas should have seen through all the bullshit, trappings right up front.

  Of course the current homicide chief was under heavy pressure to produce. The very rumor of a Bolan blitz had raised the roof on City Hall; Pappas would be feeling heat around the clock until the Executioner was in the ground or out of town. Unfortunately, pressure could sometimes blur the professional detective's senses, blinding him to subtle clues that might prove vital in the long run. Weatherbee, outside the pressure cooker, had a different perspective, tempered by his past experience with Bolan.

  The ex-detective captain was under pressure of a sort, however, too. Alice, plainly disappointed by his eagerness to join the hunt, had treated him to stony silence after Pappas had called last night. The silence had continued over breakfast, thawing out toward lunch, returning with a vengeance when he mentioned going out tonight, just driving, nowhere in particular. He had said she was welcome to accompany him, but she had recognized the lie.

  Of course he could not have her with him in the darkness, as he prowled in search of… what? Was he pursuing Bolan in the night, or was he chasing after youth, attempting to recapture m
oments that had passed him by forever?

  In many ways, Mack Bolan was his past. The soldier's private war had made Al Weatherbee the premier "Bolan expert." His failure to collar the Executioner had ended his career. Never mind the platitudes mouthed by ranking officers to cover their embarrassment, Al Weatherbee was pressured to retire because he was a walking monument to failure. He was The Man Who Let Mack Bolan Get Away.

  Beneath the dash, Weatherbee's scanner had been hissing out a string of routine calls, dispatching squad cars to investigate complaints about noisy parties, domestic squabbles, break-ins or suspected prowlers. Uninterested in the routine, he consciously listened to the radio only when the young dispatcher's voice took on an urgent, breathless tone.

  "All South Hill units. Shots fired, the vicinity of 1327 Elmwood. See the woman. South Hill units. Shots fired, 1327 Elmwood Avenue."

  Weatherbee heard the unit drivers acknowledging the run. He had no need of the city map in the glove compartment. He had learned the city as a young patrolman, had kept pace with its expansion as a homicide detective; the streets were indelibly emblazoned on his brain. He knew the South Hill district, where the houses were far beyond his means… and he was well aware of who resided just next door to 1327. Sure. It was a name and address that a former chief of homicide was damned unlikely to forget.

  He cut a tight, illegal U-turn in the middle of the street, arresting traffic in both directions. Horns blared righteous anger in his ears, as he stood on the accelerator, daring any rookie traffic cop to pull him over.

  He wouldn't have much time if there had been reports of gunfire on the property already. Ernie Tarantella had a small platoon of guns in residence around the clock — all duly licensed, strictly legal. Whoever planned to fumigate the Spider, whether Bolan or the slick imposter who had wasted Manny Ingenito, he was biting off a mouthful. Would it please him, he wondered, if the Executioner bit off more than he could chew, and choked to death on Tarantella's gunners? Would it make his day or ruin it?