Command Strike

by Don Pendleton

  “Close the door,” Bolan said, when they were all inside. He removed the seal from the bourbon and told no one in particular, “Get some glasses.”

  It was the earlier spokesman who finally made the move. He went to the bar, filled a tray with glasses, brought them to the desk.

  The silence in there was thick enough to cut, as Bolan poured doubles into each glass. He set the bottle down and held a hand, palm down, over the tray. “First let’s see your marks,” he quietly commanded.

  Slowly, one by one, the plasticized cards slid across the desk. Five reds and a black. Orion’s was the last to come. Bolan scooped them into a stack, then, one by one, scrutinized them. Then he set the stack in front of him and said, “Relax. It’s a celebration. The new deal gets a new deck. All black. You get the honors, Orion. Let’s have some new marks for these gentlemen.”

  The guy grinned. Then he laughed outright, but in a very restrained way, and playfully slapped the guy next to him on the butt as he wheeled about and went to the bookcase.

  It was all smiles now, all around that desk, as Orion carried over a heavy volume and carefully placed it on the desk in front of Bolan.

  “No, no,” Bolan told him. “I said it’s all yours.”

  Orion was delighted. The book was actually a box, cleverly disguised in leather binding. Inside was a small mechanical gadget, a press for embossments, and several stacks of playing cards or reasonable facsimiles thereof. He plugged the machine into an electrical outlet and took five cards from a black stack.

  “Clubs—right?” he said to Bolan.

  “Clubs it is. And pull a spade for yourself.”

  The guy could hardly believe it. Bolan’s earlier guess had undoubtedly been accurate. This one had not been black for long. Sure he was delighted. He was enjoying a meteoric rise into the heady realms of raw power. An Ace of Spades was the top of the deck.

  Bolan explained, “It’s your club, Orion. Tomorrow all of you will get new faces, new names. Tomorrow you’re going to need them.”

  That was both a threat and a promise, and all who heard understood it well. The smiles immediately became tempered with sudden recognition of new and perhaps awesome responsibilities—and the rest of the celebration was conducted in a solemn manner.

  The gentlemen got their new cards and their congratulatory drinks without once questioning the authority which conferred it all. This was a world in which few questions were asked. Authority was self-evident, and Bolan had refined that game to a sharp hone many, many campaigns ago. He had been using their necessarily furtive and insanely secretive modes against them almost from the beginning.

  And there was no questioning those final instructions from the man in the central office. Did they think that perhaps Bolan was Peter? If not, then surely Peter’s personal stand-in, a Lieutenant-Ace of all the aces.

  “I want you to cool it out of here right now. Talk to nobody, listen to nobody. Go out through the main lobby, hail a cab, take it to Long Island.” Bolan scribbled an address, tore it off the pad, handed it to Orion. “That’s the place. Whoever is there, throw them out. I mean, whoever. You’re taking it over. Nobody gets in without my personal okay.”

  “This is Barney Matilda’s place,” the new ace said, staring at the scrap of paper.

  “That’s what it is.”

  “How long do we hold it?”

  “You hold it until I say you don’t.”

  The men were exchanging awed glances among themselves.

  “What’s old Barney up to?” Orion wondered aloud.

  “He’s up to his ears in shit, that’s what,” Bolan replied gruffly. “That’s all; you better get moving.”

  “Uh, what do we call you, sir?”

  “You call me Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix?”

  “That’s the firebird,” Bolan explained. “He rose from his own ashes.”

  “Oh, sure, I get you. Uh, we’re the only ones left around here. You going to be okay, sir? I mean—with all this going down?”

  “You were the only ones,” Bolan said. “Go on. You gentlemen have the hot job.”

  Bolan solemnly shook hands all around and escorted the new aces to the door. Then he closed and locked it, went through and locked the other offices from the inside, and returned to his briefcase.

  He had to get this show on the road, and damn quick. He took a light grease gun from the briefcase and assembled it, shoving in a long clip for maximum firepower, attaching a neck cord. Next came the. harness and nylon line. Crazy, maybe, sure—he’d never tested the rig but he’d used similar ones for similar occasions—but then it was a crazy world, wasn’t it?

  A rap came at the door. He stashed the stuff in a drawer of the desk and went to see who was calling.

  It was Leo—with Billy Gino in tow.

  Mystification was peering from Leo’s long-suffering eyes. “Orion and crew just bailed out,” he said. “Where’d you send them?”

  Bolan tossed a glance at Gino as he replied, “I sent them to Long Island. Come on in.”

  Billy Gino had evidently never seen the inside of this office. He was clearly impressed, and he was clearly looking at Bolan-Omega with a new understanding.

  The tray of used whiskey glasses still occupied the desk. The Head Cock noted that, also. He was obviously counting the glasses with his eyes. “Looks like a celebration,” he murmured, forgetting protocol for the moment.

  “We toasted the new deal,” Bolan solemnly explained. “Your turn will come, Billy. I’ve decided to give your boss one more turn around the paddock. Just one, that’s all. You want to try the guy one more time?”

  “If you say so, sure,” Gino replied, openly nervous now.

  “Okay. Here’s what you do. Put Julio on this door. Nobody comes through. Right? Nobody. Leave his crew here. Take the rest of your boys down to the East Room. You’ll seal that door. No coming and no going. Right? None! No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, that room stays sealed.”

  “Whatever you say, sir, you got it.”

  “I know that, Billy,” Bolan said warmly. “Okay. What’s the situation down there?”

  “It’s quietened down a lot. They sent out for wine and five glasses. I guess they’re getting it together. David came to the door and told me to cool it. He seemed to be feeling fine. And it’s still a closed door. Nobody’s going in.”

  “What’s old Barney doing?”

  “Barney?” The question puzzled Billy Gino. “He’s just sitting there at the door, waiting and stewing like the rest of them.”

  “Barney and who else?”

  “You want names? It’s a dozen or more. The underbosses and all the tagmen.”

  “I make it about twenty,” Leo put in quietly.

  “Yeah, maybe so,” Gino admitted. “They’re milling around a lot. Kind of hard to get a count.”

  “Let’s split them up,” Bolan suggested. “Send the underbosses and their boys up here, Billy. Tell them they should get comfortable; it’ll be a long wait. You won’t budge those other tagmen, so just leave them. Go ahead, you better get moving.”

  “Right.” The Head Cock went to the door. “I’ll put Julio and his crew right here. Nobody will come through.”

  Bolan went for his gear the instant that door clicked shut.

  “What are you doing?” Leo asked nervously.

  “There’s only one hand to play,” Bolan told him. “You still game?”

  That good face was tense, uneasy, but the voice was definitely game. “We’ve come this far. Why not?”

  Bolan was threading nylon line through a small pulley and adjusting the rig. “Okay. We’re going to put the noose on friend David for good and all. I figured the guy to land on his feet. He didn’t get this far by weeping in the dark, did he?”

  “You had it planned this way all along, didn’t you?” Leo said, watching the preparations.

  Bolan grinned tautly as he replied to that. “Even to play it by ear, Leo, you have to bring along a
few instruments. Give me a fix on that East Room, huh?”

  Turrin went to the window, cranked it open, leaned out. He pulled back inside with a worried frown to report, “One down, two south. It looks tricky. You want me to feed?”

  “This rig doesn’t need a feeder,” Bolan replied. “It’s a closed system. All I need is a good anchor, something to pay the line through without binding it up. Here’s what I want you to do. Go straight to the twenty-sixth floor. Soon as you get there, start evacuating the east side. Get everybody out of there.”

  “That’s easy,” Turrin said. “It’s practically deserted already. The time-clockers are on holiday ’til after the funeral.”

  “See how the ear plays?” Bolan observed, pleased with that. “That’s great. I’ll need an open window below the East Room.”

  “You’ll have one,” Turrin promised. “Then what?”

  “Then you hot it up to the twenty-seventh and join the stew line outside the East Room. Make sure you’re seen there. Get with Billy Gino and tell him there’s a new word. This is the word: He’s to rally ’round the new Boss of New York and protect him at all costs. All costs. Make sure he gets that word.”

  “He’ll get it,” Turrin again promised. “But what does it mean? Who is the new boss?”

  “David, Leo, is the new boss.”

  “Ah, hell, I’m lost; I thought you were hanging a death rap on the guy.”

  “I am. The less you know about the how, the better.”

  “Did you really send that band of aces out to Long Island?”

  “I really did, yeah. To Barney’s joint.”

  “God, it’s getting deviouser,” Turrin commented, scowling. “It’s hard just trying to find a place to stand in all this. What do I—”

  “Time to go, Leo. Just play it by ear and look for cues. Try to hang around the twenty-seventh near the elevators. I’ll be getting back with you.”

  “Aw, hell, no, Sarge. Don’t come back up here. Hit and run, dammit!”

  “I have to come back, Leo. We still have a game to play. Now you move it.”

  “I don’t like it,” the little guy insisted.

  “Neither do I,” Bolan admitted. “But I’m going to do it.”

  “Because you must!”

  “Right. Because I must.”

  They embraced briefly; then Leo moved away. He paused at the door—said, quietly, “I’m watching you, guy”—then pulled the door gently shut.

  Bolan immediately stripped to the black suit and stuffed his outer clothing into the briefcase, attached the briefcase to the harness, went to the window.

  It was time, yeah, for Omega’s other image to present itself at the New York table.

  The time had come to crown a king.

  And let the devil himself pick up the pieces.

  16

  BROKEN MIRROR

  King David had never felt better. After all was said and done, maybe Omega had made all the right moves. David had come in here prepared to deny all responsibility for those morning hits, to fix the blame squarely where it belonged, to cut that fucking Omega to pieces and to hold him as an example of misplaced power gone awry. It would serve as the first step toward a total disbanding of those arrogant bastards. And David had been rubbing his hands in anticipation of the showdown.

  But then he’d seen the fear in these guys’ eyes, raw and undisguised, when David came busting into that secret table. DiAnglia actually apologized, right out, right in front of the others. Gustini tried to alibi his presence at that table, while both Fortuna and Pelotti just sat there and sweated in their own juices.

  So David had not denied anything. He simply sat down and took over the meeting. They went over the New York question once again, reaffirming everything that had been agreed earlier. They talked about the funeral, about the arrangements made for the visiting bosses and their cadres, and they talked a little about David’s plans for the future of the corporation. They talked about cops, about the late developments in Washington, about the Mack Bolan problem—and finally they talked about Augie.

  “I didn’t want anybody to know,” David told them. “The old man had gone senile, along with everything else. He was hanging to life by a thread those past few months. But the mind was already gone. He would be as normal as any of you one minute, completely flipped out the next. You can see I had to keep that under wraps. No telling what it would have done to the corporation—if it got out, I mean. I was protecting Augie, sure—his image and his memory, more than anything else—but I was also protecting you gentlemen, and I was protecting this thing of ours.”

  “There’s no question about that, David,” DiAnglia smoothly assured him. “We aren’t listening to all these wild stories floating around.”

  “I want it in the record, just the same,” David insisted. “Somebody with personal plans of his own was trying to make a mark from Augie’s misfortune. As God is my witness, I swear that Augie was in his own bed in his own home when the trouble started in Pittsfield. When I got back—and I mean I damned near did not get back—Augie was gone. You all know the rest. We found his ashes at Pittsfield. Anybody wants to make something of that with me, has just got to be insane.”

  “Or senile, too,” DiAnglia sniffed.

  “Meaning who?” David immediately wanted to know.

  “You just kicked him out of here,” Fortuna growled. “He’s the one called us together, David. You need to talk to that old man. I think maybe Augie’s death has had too much effect on him. They were pretty close, you know, since the world was made.”

  “Barney called you guys up here?”

  The response was unanimous, with a lot of uncomfortable fidgeting and downcast eyes.

  “He was even hinting at something between you and Mack Bolan,” DiAnglia said in a muffled voice. “I think you hit it, David. Senile.”

  “Or worse,” King David commented in a frosted voice. “Was Barney in town yesterday? Anyone see him around?”

  There was no immediate response to that. After a moment, Fortuna said, “Maybe that’s fishing a bit too deep, David. The old man is just … he’s just …”

  “Overdue for a full retirement,” DiAnglia suggested.

  “What do you do with these old guys?” Pelotti wondered.

  “Our turn will come,” Fortuna said, laughing, maybe trying to lighten things up a bit.

  “They say the good die young,” Gustini observed, joining the light movement. “That means our turn will come, damn sure, all of us.”

  But he was wrong. None of those bosses assembled there—except maybe for King David, boss aspirant—would ever have to worry about creeping old age.

  Something dark and terrible swooped from the sky, at that very moment, to land on the ledge just outside that twenty-seventh floor window.

  All became equally aware at the same jarring instant—all, perhaps, as stunned as David by that incredible apparition in black which was glaring silently at them through the big window. It was the death look, coming from behind a wicked little machine gun, balanced gracefully on the side of that tall building, giving them a couple of ticks to see what had come for them.

  All of them had come unstuck and were trying to find frozen feet when death began that chattering speech. It was like a nightmare—from eerie silence to the clap of doom in one swift movement. The window shattered as flame wreathed the stuttering muzzle of that little gun and death swept in. One whole side of the table went with the first blazing sweep—Gustini and Fortuna, picked up and carried backwards in a wave of exploding flesh and crashing into the wall like so much discarded garbage. Pelotti was lunging toward the window in a suicidal reaction and DiAnglia had flopped over backwards in his chair when David’s side of the table joined the death march. David sat there frozen, aghast, and watched Pelotti get ripped right down the middle and sprout open like an overstuffed dummy under a sharp blade. David saw lungs and bones and all as the guy stood there and died, and he saw little DiAnglia swimming frantically on his bac
k in Pelotti’s juices when he suddenly sprouted punctures, also, and curled into a little ball, very still and obviously very dead.

  It was as if there were two Davids—one just sitting there and waiting his turn, frozen in his chair, watching all the things reel through his collapsing mind just like he’d always heard—the other standing off to one side, looking at what had happened to the New York table, wondering why and how.

  “Congratulations,” said the cold voice from the ledge. “It’s all yours now.”

  Was that a familiar voice? Did the guy look—

  “You!” David gasped.

  A hell of a commotion had erupted beyond the door, a lot of pounding and yelling. David’s attention was diverted to that point for just a split second—and in that split second, the apparition at the window disappeared.

  David still could not move.

  He sat there, frozen to his chair, as the boys outside kicked down the door and a wall of flesh poured into that room. Someone groaned, “God sake, Mr. Eritrea! My God!”

  And David mumbled, “It was Omega. It was. I saw him. Only it was Bolan. He came in through the window. Only he—”

  Someone screamed, “They’re all dead! All the bosses are dead!”

  People were scampering all around, yelling and moaning, cursing, and a couple were even crying.

  David’s fogged vision cleared, and he saw Billy Gino standing at the window, a little machine gun held daintily by two fingers. “This is what did it,” Billy growled. “It’s still hot.”

  “Came in the window,” David insisted, still mumbling.

  “Get him out of here!” someone urgently suggested. It sounded like Leo Turrin. “For God’s sake, get him out before those guys upstairs find out!”

  The detached side of David Eritrea calmly watched as Billy Gino stashed the little gun beneath his coat and turned a troubled face from the shattered window.

  “It could have happened that way,” Billy said, the voice sounding as though it came from far away.

  Someone else snarled, “Yeah, bullshit too. Get ’im out of here, I said.”