Eternal Triangle

by Don Pendleton

  The brass had waited too damned long to pull the plug on Weatherbee. Now that he was out, the idiots were sniffing after him again, soliciting opinions from the failure who had shamed them to begin with. It was stupid, suicidal. But the brass had not requested Lawrence's opinion — and they wouldn't, not while he was wearing sergeant's stripes.

  When all the bullshit had been swept away, it would be Sergeant Lawrence who stopped the Executioner, brought him down and put an end to his private war. Lawrence owed it to the citizens who paid his salary, and to the stupid bastards at the top who wouldn't listen when they had the chance. Most of all, he owed it to himself.

  To Frank Laurenti, Jr.

  He changed his name before he joined the Corps, for reasons of security. A friend of young Francesco's father had a way with documents, and was sympathetic to the boy's predicament. A military background couldn't hurt, no matter what the young man's goal in life, but paperwork — birth certificate, driver's license, this and that — could ruin him before he got a decent start. It took a member of the brotherhood to understand how vindictive some members of the government and media could be. If they were looking into Frank Laurenti's business dealings, they would soon be looking at his family, examining their lives under a microscope in search of any blemish.

  Francesco's mother had been through a lot, but when the old man had bought it, right out there in public, she had reached her limit. The light behind her eyes had flickered, died. For the final eighteen months she had walked in a kind of dreamworld, never really there at all. Sometimes she would sit and stare at nothing, trembling, whispering to herself. The cabbie swore she was talking to herself the afternoon she wandered in front of his cab in heavy midtown traffic. Frank believed him, and let the cabbie live.

  The Corps had taught young Laurenti to kill in a hundred different ways, and had given him the opportunity to practice what he'd learned in Vietnam. Newborn at seventeen, the phony signatures of missing parents scarcely dry on his enlistment papers, Frankie Lawrence took to combat as a fish to water, savoring the sights and sounds and smells of violent death like a necrophiliac gourmet. The young man recognized that he was passing through a phase, eradicating some of the aggression and frustration that had dogged him since his father's death, but at the same time he was learning, preparing for the mission of his life.

  He meant to kill Mack Bolan. Not because his father was innocent — he'd known the truth by then — but rather as a debt of honor to his family…but there was more. He had to stop the Executioner because the man's existence was an affront to justice. Every day that Bolan lived, law and order were injured and humiliated. The failure of law enforcement agencies to bring him down was a disgrace.

  Frank Lawrence didn't even want to think about the rumors that his quarry had been working for the government, a licensed killer in the service of his country. Such things happened, certainly… but Bolan? It was preposterous. The man had murdered thousands, and if none of them had been precisely pure at heart, what difference did it make? The man had set himself above the law, above society. He had become a rogue. A menace to be hunted down, eradicated.

  In the hunter's own good time.

  Before they brought him home from Vietnam, Frank Lawrence knew what he had to do. He needed work, a job where he could be useful, while simultaneously keeping track of Bolan, waiting for the time when he could make his move and bring the curtain down. With his experience, he settled easily on a career in law enforcement, drawn by the paramilitary trappings of the job, the opportunities to strike a blow for justice while he bided his time. The Pittsfield force maintained an open file on Bolan, adding evidence from here and there as it became available. The file became Lawrence's bible. He memorized it, front to back, ingesting every detail of the soldier's life. Sometimes he thought he knew Mack Bolan better than the bastard knew himself.

  He knew enough, for instance, to realize he would never trap the soldier through routine. The Executioner was unpredictable, appearing yesterday in Florida, today in Washington, tomorrow in Timbuktu. The failure of police and mafiosi, Lawrence knew, had been a failure of technique. Both sides had dogged Bolan's footsteps here and there around the globe; they were always just behind him, crashing in the front door as their prey slipped out the back. Yet despite repeated failures, they had never changed their methods. Lawrence knew it would take an accident for either group to bring the soldier down.

  You couldn't stalk a man like Bolan; it was a waste of time. Instead, you had to manufacture situations that the man could not resist, put out your lures and wait for the Executioner to come to you. It might take years — it had taken years — but in the end, a patient hunter would be rewarded for his persistence.

  Throughout the years of Bolan's private war, Frank Lawrence had collected clippings, law enforcement circulars and rumors from the underground. When Bolan "died" in Central Park, the fledgling homicide detective had been stricken, suddenly deprived of purpose. He had taken sick leave, driven to New York and started an investigation of his own. The Pittsfield badge had opened doors and files that would otherwise have been closed to Lawrence, and he had emerged with a conviction that the Executioner was still alive.

  He kept the theory to himself. There were times in the next few years when Lawrence thought he was going crazy, playing mind games, keeping his longtime enemy alive to give his own life some meaning. But there were other times when Lawrence knew that he was right, his vision corroborated by events abroad: the execution of a ranking terrorist, frustration of a plan to slaughter some minority, a strike against scattered remnants of the Mafia. And in the end, with Bolan's sudden and mysterious return from nowhere, Lawrence had been proved right.

  Beyond a certain academic interest, Lawrence didn't care where Bolan had been hiding. He was back, beyond the shadow of a doubt, and that was good enough. More years might pass before the hunter could perfect his plans, but Lawrence had the strength and will to wait. He had his hate to keep him warm.

  Lawrence hated Bolan for many reasons. First, for murdering his father, though the crime was understandable in terms of the vendetta, the repaying of a debt that sprang from blood. The men of Triangle Finance had brought destruction on themselves, but just as Bolan had avenged the deaths of his father, mother, sister, so Lawrence felt compelled to do the same.

  For he hated Bolan for the murder of his mother, also. Never mind the talk about an accident, the cabbie's sworn description of a demented woman who had missed the crosswalk by fifty feet. Cecile Laurenti had begun to die the moment she heard the news from Commerce Street, and Bolan might as well have made it six for six. It took a while for her to die, but she was one of his victims, all the same.

  Above all else, he hated Bolan for compelling him, while still a child, to face the truth about his father's "business," Frank Laurenti's crimes and underworld connections. How long might Lawrence have lived in blissful ignorance, before the old man was indicted or some hungry journalist got wind of something rotten down at TIF? If he had been allowed to cherish some illusions through adolescence, to worship his father as a young man should, instead of being forced to hide his face in shame, how different his life would have been.

  The Executioner had robbed Lawrence of his family name, his birthright. This was the loss, above all others, that Lawrence would never forgive. He could have looked the other way as Bolan kicked the shit out of the brotherhood, terrorists… but he could never forget, never forgive, the crime against himself, his family honor.

  After years of planning, years of waiting, the opportunity had opened up in Hartford. Bolan had been close, in Jersey, mopping up what was left of the Marinello empire; a shooting war so close would be irresistible to him. And so it had been. Bolan showed himself in Hartford, took the hunter's bait and followed him to Pittsfield.

  The first surprise, for Lawrence, had been Bolan's disappearance from the lawn on Fisher Drive. He had seen with his own eyes that the guy was hit. No doubt about the range, the blood, the way
he had collapsed on impact, loose and tumbling like a shattered mannequin. The cruisers should have found him lying there, but had found nothing.

  Wounded as he must have been, the Executioner had disappeared. It made no difference to the hunter that he had left his rental car behind. In fact, if Bolan had escaped on foot, the mystery was even deeper. He should have left a bloody trail that any child could follow. His corpse should have been found by now, stretched out beneath some hedgerow.

  Except they hadn't found him yet…which meant he had been assisted from the scene. The bastard had an ally somewhere, who had taken pity on him — or who might have been there waiting for him all along.

  How thoroughly had Homicide checked out the Bolan family connections in the early days? Was there a second cousin stashed away somewhere in the vicinity, prepared to offer aid and comfort in the soldier's time of need? A friend, perhaps, who still remembered Bolan's parents from the good old days?

  The bastard had a brother who had disappeared, Frank Lawrence knew. There was speculation that the younger Bolan helped his brother to escape a guarded courtroom out in Texas. Still, there were a hundred different stories coming out of Texas, and the sheriff had been less than helpful when it came to spelling out what had happened in his one-horse town.

  If Bolan's brother was alive and kicking, someone ought to know about it. If he was in Pittsfield, someone could discover him and rout him out. The hunter really didn't think he was dealing with a pair of Bolans now, but he could not afford to leave any stone unturned.

  Whatever Lawrence had to do, whatever sacrifice he had to make, he was prepared to go the limit. Bolan had eluded him this time, but Lawrence would never rest until he stood above the soldier's broken body, took the bastard's pulse himself and verified his death. It was all that he had lived for, everything he cared about in life.

  If calling out Al Weatherbee could help — or if it just gave Lawrence breathing room, away from Pappas and his watchful eye — then it was worth the aggravation. Maybe the old man could teach him something, after all. If nothing else, he might be useful as a bad example; Lawrence could avoid the same old, tired mistakes that Weatherbee's investigations made. It might even be fun to watch the has-been go through his paces, frowning down his nose and acting like God's gift to law enforcement.

  Just as long as Weatherbee did not intrude upon the hunter's mission, try to block him from achieving his lifelong goal. If the old man became an obstacle, then he would have to be removed, effectively, permanently.

  Nothing could stand in Frank Lawrence's way now. His honor and his life were on the line. He had to find Mack Bolan now, before some other cop lucked in with the collar of a lifetime. It was his destiny.

  20

  Bolan took the push-ups slowly, favoring his injured shoulder at the outset, gradually picking up the pace until he reached the limits of endurance. Teeth clenched tight against the pain, his torso slick with sweat, Bolan pushed those limits, forced the tender muscles to respond on cue. When he began to weaken, he changed positions, rolled over on his back and started doing sit-ups to improve the tone of the muscles on his injured side.

  Ten days had passed since Bolan awoke in Weatherbee's spare bedroom, three days since Alice Weatherbee removed his stitches. The process had been painful, and the woman had faltered early on, when Bolan's leg wound started bleeding. When he'd offered to complete the job himself, she'd got angry with him. Impatiently, she had pushed his hands away, finishing the process with grim determination. When all his dressings had been changed and she'd prepared to leave, the soldier was surprised to see a cautious smile on her face. But she was stern in her demand that he rest and give the tender flesh some time to heal.

  He had begun to exercise next morning, knowing she would be annoyed if she knew, knowing also that he was running short of time. He could not shelter with the Weatherbees forever. His war was waiting for him in the streets; his enemy was waiting for the Executioner to show himself.

  Al Weatherbee had saved his life. The soldier cherished no illusions that he could have survived the Tarantella ambush on his own. If Weatherbee had not arrived, Bolan's options would have been reduced to death or prison, which both came out the same. He would have been a dead man; his enemies would have won.

  He had been granted a reprieve, no more, no less. His mission had not changed. The hunter who had stalked him from Connecticut to Pittsfield was still out there, watching for the prey to show himself. In Bolan's gut, he knew the hunter would be waiting for him if he stayed in hiding for a year, a decade. Instinct told him that his nemesis was motivated not by greed or simple anger, but by something much more vital, much more personal.

  The hunter was conducting a vendetta, and he probably was acting on his own. The kind of slick, precision planning that the Executioner had witnessed up to now was rarely achieved by groups. If a dozen men were chosen for a mission, their commander faced a dozen opportunities for error. But a single, dedicated man could work apparent miracles if he had done his homework, gathered the necessary equipment.

  That was the secret of the Executioner's success, and the method should work just as well for his determined adversary. The enemy was one man, dedicated to his mission, motivated by some inner rage that Bolan could appreciate from his own experience.

  At first he had believed the gunner in the dark Camaro must be one of Tarantella's men, a mobile sentry running the perimeter, but Bolan had revised his thinking lately. If the hunter had been able to predict Bolan's moves in Hartford, wire his safe house with explosives, direct the soldier to a different battlefield, then he should be equally capable of dogging Bolan's tracks in Pittsfield. As he recuperated swiftly, Bolan had become convinced that his brush with death was engineered not by a lowly Tarantella gunsel, but by that same mysterious antagonist.

  It all made sense. Manny Ingenito, hit by a slick imposter who wanted Bolan's. name in headlines and on APBs before he made his final move. The gunner had parked on the track of Bolan's retreat from Tarantella's shooting gallery, ready to take him down as soon as he showed himself.

  The hunter wanted Bolan dead, for sure. But more important, he wanted Bolan dead in Pittsfield, for symbolic reasons or to exorcise some private demons of his own. Somehow it all tied in to TIF, but there were still some pieces missing from the puzzle.

  The soldier had not seen his guns since waking from a fever dream ten days before. He knew he had been armed when Weatherbee found him, and there had been backup weapons in his rental car. By now detectives surely would have used the car to try to identify the driver. In time, he would be forced to ask Weatherbee about his guns.

  In time.

  The sit-ups had exhausted Bolan. He realized painfully how far he had to go before he would be ready to confront his enemy. The hunter would be waiting for him, as would Homicide investigators, patrolmen, Girrardi's soldiers, maybe mob reinforcements out of Boston or New York. An army against one man. And he would take those odds, because he had no choice.

  In time.

  But not today. Not yet.

  A sound of footsteps, muffled by the carpeting outside the door. Bolan lay immobile, listening. It would be Weatherbee or Alice, listening to find out if he was up and working out. Despite the recent thaw, some cracks in her facade of disapproval, Bolan knew the woman would be glad to see him go. As for Al Weatherbee… he did not have a fix on that one yet.

  Determined not to let them find him slacking, Bolan began another set of sit-ups, grimacing against the pain. The healing flesh was holding, and he knew that it would see him through.

  He would survive until they killed him, right. Bolan almost laughed aloud at the irony of his condition. He was being nursed to health by strangers, in the certain knowledge that he would be going out to risk his life again as soon as he was able. Bolan was reminded of the medical attention lavished on some death row prisoners, maintaining them in perfect health for their date with the executioner.

  It would be Bolan's turn to face his
judgment soon, and he intended to be fit for the appointment. If he fumbled, failed, it would not be through careless lack of preparation. If he lost it all, he would have done his best.

  In his heart, he was already looking forward to his final confrontation with the hunter. He was eager for the one-on-one that would resolve their private war.

  In time.

  When he was ready.

  Soon.

  * * *

  Outside the bedroom door, Al Weatherbee stood listening. He heard the soldier's heavy breathing, knew that he was working out to regain the strength and stamina sapped by days in bed. Bolan would soon be ready to continue his war. Weatherbee could feel his injured houseguest chafing at the bit to avenge himself against the enemy who had come so close to killing him.

  The sounds of strenuous exertion ceased. Weatherbee moved on along the corridor, embarrassed at having overheard. It was his house, after all… But Bolan raised a wall of privacy around himself, despite the extraordinary circumstances, and attempts to penetrate that wall made Weatherbee feel he was encroaching on the warrior's soul.

  There had been time for conversation in the past few days, between naps and meals and bouts of exercise. In Tommy's room. The former homicide detective knew that some of his confused feelings came from having that room occupied again, however briefly. It was almost tempting to pretend that Tommy had returned, that he had walked away from that barrage of mortar fire outside Pleiku. But Tommy wasn't ever coming home, and it was foolish to use Mack Bolan as a surrogate.