Barely three hundred yards behind and above him stood the guarded entrance to the armed camp atop the hill, the Vegas “joint” or hardsite, the mob’s desert home away from home and also the collection point for the before-taxes “skim” from a number of casinos down on the flats. A tireless recon had earlier revealed six hardmen armed with Thompsons patrolling those grounds. Another half-dozen or so had been noted prowling about the two levels of the house itself.
A helicopter had landed up there during Bolan’s scouting mission. It carried, according to his reading, a team of accountants and an armed escort for the second leg of the skim transport. But the presence of that chopper had to be taken into Bolan’s assault plan—it could be used as a weapon against him. A jeep, also, stood at the main gate, ready to roll on an instant’s notice. And he had found the tracks of an all-terrain vehicle in the powdered earth on the back tide of the hill.
So, sure, it could be a tricky hit—and it would have to be played by the numbers. Quite possibly he would not have even fifty seconds.
A narrow ribbon of blacktop climbed the mountain on the approach from Vegas, then circled about and dropped into the Lake Mead Recreation Area some miles beyond. The private road to the hardsite hairpinned away from the state road in an abrupt climb, then ran straight and level for about one hundred feet before curving into another near-vertical ascent. It was here that Bolan had staked out his ambush point, on the level straightaway. He was positioned about ten feet above the roadway, commanding the terrain from an embankment which also overlooked the point where the private drive curved away from the main road.
Coming out of the hairpin, his targets would have the benefit of the one hundred feet of level approach to the next pull, and they would be revving out of that hairpin for the direct climb to the hilltop. They would in fact, if Bolan knew Mafia wheelmen, be streaking along that straightaway. But he had to meet them here, on the runway, otherwise he might knock them completely off the mountainside and lose them forever. He had come not to destroy a quarter-million bucks, but to add them to his own war-chest. So, it was here or nowhere … and three hundred short yards from the gate to their fortress.
On the plus side, he had excellent cover and command of the terrain, and his own vehicle was stationed directly below on the main road and poised for the life-or-death withdrawal. A Stoner weapon system—the lightweight fully automatic assault machine-gun which had proven so effective in Vietnam—was suspended by a nylon cord from his shoulders. The drum-fed weapon could deliver 1,000 rounds of 5.56mm ammo per minute. The assault drum carried 150 rounds, certainly enough for this mission, and he carried a standard army .45 Colt on his hip as backup weapon.
Bolan’s big punch, though, was a harmless looking fibreglass tube that lay on a rock beside him. It was a use-and-throwaway light and anti-tank weapon, or LAW, with all the effectiveness of a bazooka at a range of 400 meters. This shooting gallery was a hell of a lot less than 400 meters.
So okay, sure, for a fifty second hit, the Executioner was ready. If it went by the numbers, great. If not … well, Bolan would meet that eventuality in its own time.
And now the moment was approaching, the steady whine of powerful vehicles in laboring ascent assuring him that his intelligence had been accurate and that the skimwagons were right on time.
He pulled the pins to expand the fibreglass tube, then he checked the pop-up sights and hoisted the LAW to his shoulder and lined-up on the runway. And suddenly there they were, a pair of Cadillac limousines glistening in the moonlight and slowing into the hairpin ascent, gearing down for the hard pull into the runway. They were running about a car-length apart as the glow of headlamps swept into the shooting gallery. A muscle in Bolan’s jaw tensed and he bent a cool eye into the sights, lining them up at dead center between the first pair of lights. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his hand tightening into the firing mechanism atop the tube, and the rocket whooshed away on a long tail of flame and smoke.
The potent little missile flew an unerring beeline to the approaching vehicle, impacting just beside the hood ornament and punching through into the engine compartment with a thunderous explosion. The car seemed to lift itself off the ground on a column of fire, then it settled in a grotesque slide, sprawling across the road and hunching down like a huge beast kneeling with a mortal wound, the forward section engulfed in flames.
The reaction inside the closely following second vehicle was instantaneous and not a second too soon to avoid a fiery pileup, the big limousine lurching to a rocking halt and the gears meshing into reverse as a Thompson sub at either side began unloading into the rocks from which the assault had been launched.
Meanwhile Bolan had quit that place and was moving swiftly along the shadows of the embankment, the Stoner in his hands and ready to join the war. Without breaking stride he sent a burst through the windshield of the retreating vehicle. The retreat ended—the car arcing abruptly across the roadbed and coming to rest with its tail planted against the mountainside.
A gunner had leapt clear of the second Cadillac and had rolled to one knee. He was trying to stabilize a chattering Thompson in a firetrack on the charging man in black. He never quite made it. Bolan’s next burst jerked the guy around like a rubber toy, punching him into a deflated heap at road-center.
The other Thompson briefly challenged the assault from the protected side of the stalled car, but a furious fusillade of 1,000 rounds per minute tore through the vehicle at window level and the duel ended in a death shriek with the sound of disintegrating glass.
Bolan was counting beneath his breath—seconds, not bodies—and he was twenty seconds into the hit when the alarms began sounding from the hardsite.
By the numbers. So far, so good.
The second vehicle was secured, with two dead in the front seat, two dead outside and a groaning man in the rear with the money case. Bolan took the mercy and a pistol away from the guy, pressed a marksman’s medal into his hand in exchange, and tossed the money case onto the road.
“Hit the floor and don’t look up,” he coldly advised the wounded survivor. The man readily complied, and Bolan spun to look into the other mess.
A guy was staggering out of the target vehicle with his clothing in flames. Bolan took a step forward then grimaced and quickly sent a mercy burst from the Stoner into the human torch. The guy died quick and clean, liberated from the smouldering chunk of trash that fell to the roadway. Then something tumbled out of a rear door and began twisting about the ground just outside. It was a man, bloodied and still bleeding from a head wound. His hands were tied behind his back and a burnt rope was still coiled about one of his legs. A pantleg was afire, and the guy was feebly trying to smother the blaze with his other leg.
Bolan hurried forward, ripped the burning fabric away from the man and, with hardly a pause, went on beyond him, leaning into the demolished vehicle for a quick look inside.
The two front men were only about half-present, if that much. One had lost his head and a shoulder, the other his chest and adjacent areas, and both corpses were already charred and flaming in the intense heat. Two more bodies were sprawled about the rear section and beginning to ignite.
Bolan wrestled the heated money case clear and quickly backpedalled out of there, aware that the gas tank would go at any moment. The man with the bound hands was groaning with pain and trying to hobble clear on his knees.
Thirty seconds, and the numbers were still in pretty good shape. Excited shouts were just now drifting down from the hardsite and somewhere up there the engine of an automobile coughed into life—the jeep, Bolan guessed.
He grabbed the bound man and dragged him across the road just as the target vehicle erupted into the secondary explosion, sending a towering fireball whoofing into the sky.
The guy was muttering, “Hell, I don’t think I can …” Bolan deposited him on the shoulder of the road and hurried down to take possession of the other case of skim.
Forty seconds. He could hear
the jeep whining down the steep drive, rapidly closing. But the mission had been completed and the Executioner was ready to fade into the night. The scene of the encounter was brightly lighted now and getting brighter by the moment. As his eyes swept the battle site in a final evaluation they collided with the gaze of the kneeling man, and even through the blood-spatterings there was no mistaking the silent plea being sent his way.
Bolan engaged himself in a microsecond of argument, then he growled, “You want to go with me?”
In a voice choked with misery the man told him, “They brought me up here to bury me.”
The guy was in bad shape, and Bolan’s timetable had made no allowance for such an encumbrance. He fidgeted and his eyes flashed to the curve ahead, then back to the kneeling man. Then Bolan stopped counting—the fifty seconds were gone, and all the numbers were cancelled.
He dropped the money beside his latest unrequested responsibility and walked slowly up the road. The jeep would be tearing into the curve any second now. The ammo drum of the Stoner responded to his thumping finger with a discouragingly hollow sound, and Bolan had already written it off anyway. He had elected to go with the precision fire and superior stopping power of the heavy .45 Colt at his side; now the autoloader was up and at full arm extension, and Bolan was sighting into the point where the jeep would make its appearance.
And then there it was, braking into the curve and fighting against the ninety-degree swing, two guys in front and two in back, each of the rear men holding a Thompson muzzle-up in an entirely businesslike fashion and bracing themselves against the wild swerving of the little vehicle.
Bolan noted all this in the same flashing instant that his finger began its tickling of the hair-pull trigger. It was like a still photo, with the sizzling tracks of the big bullets caught there and preserved in the grotesque scene of leaping flames and broken bodies, the bullets themselves showing up as a line of instantly-sprouting holes in the jeep’s windshield and mirrored in the concerned faces behind that glass. He saw the suddenly limp hands release the steering wheel and the wheel itself spinning back to the point of least resistance. Then the front wheels of the vehicle were humping up onto the raised shoulder of the road, the little car becoming airborne and sailing out into the void, disgorging flailing bodies in its flight.
Bolan did not see the jeep touch down again, but he heard it and drew a mental image of an end-over-end tumble down that mountainside as he returned the .45 to its leather and quickly retraced his steps to the hurting man. He hacked the sashcord from the liberated prisoner’s wrists and told him, “We’d better get moving.”
“I don’t think I can walk,” the man groaned.
“Legs broken?” Bolan inquired gruffly.
The guy shook his head. “No. But weak … hell, I’m so weak.”
“It’s walk or die, soldier,” Bolan snapped. He retrieved the money cases and stepped off into the same direction the jeep had taken, down the mountainside. “It’s downhill all the way, if that’s any comfort,” he added, glancing back to see if the guy was following.
He was, but slowly and with difficulty. Bolan scowled and tossed one of the cases down the mountain, then he swung back to wrap an arm about the man’s chest.
“Arm over the neck,” he instructed him. “Come on, dammit, let’s shake it.”
The injured man showed his liberator a twisted smile. “For once we’re walking away together,” he panted, letting Bolan take most of his weight. “You haven’t recognized me, huh?” he mumbled a moment later as they lurched and slid along the steep incline.
“Mud,” Bolan growled.
“What?”
“Your name is mud, soldier, and so is mine if we haven’t cleared this area in another few seconds. So save your breath for what’s important.”
“Not mud,” the guy croaked. “Lyons. I’m Carl Lyons, Bolan.” And with that he passed out and became deadweight in Bolan’s arms.
The tall man in combat black emitted a startled grunt, and let the money case slide away as he hoisted the unconscious figure onto his shoulder.
Someone up there was rolling loaded dice into an executioner’s destiny.
He’d come to this mountainside seeking a contribution to his deflated war-chest. It had been a perfect strike, right on the numbers. Then all of a sudden he had lost interest in war-chests and all the skim the mob could throw at him.
So he was walking away with nothing but a half-dead cop on his hands.
The Executioner had no regrets. Loaded dice or no, it had been an entirely worthwhile fifty seconds.
2: DIRECTIONS TO THE FRONT
Joe “the Monster” Stanno had spent twenty years cultivating an image of ferocity. Naturally endowed for the role, Stanno’s stubby legs and oversized trunk gave him the appearance of a gorilla—and the perpetually scowling face did nothing to soften the threatening strength of massive chest and shoulders. His reputation for savagery and his almost maniacal homicidal tendencies had assured Joe the Monster a respected position in an organization which was built upon intimidation and violence.
In his early years, Stanno had been a blackjack and brass-knuckles man, a muscle-man for shylockers and protection racketeers in Brooklyn and later in Cleveland, “progressing” to roles as hit man, bodyguard, and mob enforcer. An Ohio grand jury of the early ‘60’s heard evidence connecting Stanno to sixteen specific acts of murder, twenty-three instances of conspiracy to commit murder and an almost infinite list of assaults and extortion. The jury failed to act on these charges and Stanno abruptly dropped from view. Some time later Joe the Monster turned up in Las Vegas as “security chief at the Gold Duster, one of the strip’s newest luxury hotels.
Intelligence gleaned by interested federal officials indicated that Stanno’s major role at Vegas was that of an inter-family “enforcer”—and that his line of authority descended directly from La Commissione, or the national ruling council of syndicate bosses. It was known that the mob regarded Las Vegas as an open city, meaning only that no one family exercised territorial jurisdiction over the underworld action there—the field was open to any and all. Joe the Monster’s position was therefore a highly important one; it was his task to see that inter-family rivalries and competitive pursuits were maintained at a peaceful and mutually productive pace. He was, in short, the ruling council’s “man on the scene” and responsible for syndicate discipline throughout the state of Nevada.
None would argue that Joe the Monster Stanno was not the perfect man for the job. His mere presence in any family gathering was enough to calm belligerent moods and soothe aggressive instincts. It had become such a standing joke, in fact, that when disputes arose within the cadre, a peacemaker would warn the belligerents: “You guys knock it off or I’ll call Joe the Monster in here to stare at you.” The jest was not without factual foundation. A mere scowl from Stanno was usually enough to calm the ruffled sensitivities of even high rankholders in the various families.
And now Joe the Monster was standing woodenly in the midst of a disaster area and scowling at the incredible carnage visited upon that mountainside. In the illumination provided by several pairs of vehicle headlamps, a small collection of hardmen from the hilltop retreat prowled the scene with shotguns and Thompson automatics, making a body count, identifying the dead and trying to pull together some understanding of what had transpired there.
A gun-crew chief spun away from the blackened and smoking hulk of a skimwagon and called over, “It was a heist all right, Joe. There ain’t no sign of money. Them boxes was fireproof. And they ain’t here.”
Stanno rumbled, “So where’d it get off to so fast?”
“Jeez I dunno, Joe,” the man called back. “All I know is they sure made a hard hit. I never saw such a mess.”
“Well I want a headcount!” Stunno yelled. “I want every goddam man accounted for, and they better damn sure come up with some straight stories!”
“You don’t think some of our own boys—”
“Sh
ut up what I think! Don’t tell me what I think! Where the hell is Georgie Palazzo and his boys, huh? I don’t like the way they just up and disappear, right when all hell is breaking. I wanta know—”
“Down here!” came a cry from the darkness behind Stanno. “It’s Georgie’s jeep, tore to hell!”
The enforcer jerked a thumb toward the distant voice and commanded the crewchief, “Go check it out!”
The head gunner selected two men to accompany him and the three of them disappeared down the mountainside. Another man hurried over to Stanno and announced, “Sorry, Joe—Tickets just died.”
“You got nothing out of him?” the enforcer rumbled.
The man shook his head. “Not from his mouth. But he had this in his fist.” He handed over a metallic object and stepped back to a respectful distance.
Stanno hefted the object in an open palm and squintingly inspected it in the harsh light. “What the hell is that?” he growled.
“That’s what you call a marksman’s medal,” the hardman replied. “This was a Bolan hit, Joe.”
“Bolan?” Stunno exploded.
The soldier swallowed nervously and took another retreating step. “It sure looks like it, Joe. Those things are his business cards, those medals. He always leaves one. I was down in Miami when—”
“Awright awright!” Stanno roared. He exploded into forward motion and swept the gun soldier out of his way as he descended wrathfully upon the wreckage for a personal inspection.
The other soldiers maintained a discreet distance as Joe the Monster plowed through the remains of his skim convoy. Someone muttered, “Watch it, Joe is pissed.”
Chicago Wipeout Page 15
