Vegas Vendetta

by Don Pendleton

  Vegas Vendetta

  The Executioner, Book Nine

  Don Pendleton

  For Jabbo Jones Junior,

  and many cherished childhood memories.

  Carpe diem—finis coronat opus!

  For he who lives more lives than one

  More deaths than one must die.

  —Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

  The word is out that the Taliferos are coming after my head. So sure, I’m worried. The brothers know their business. But they are going to have to get in line. I can die only one death at a time.

  —Mack Bolan, THE EXECUTIONER

  PROLOGUE

  On a late summer’s day in the eastern city of Pittsfield, a bemedalled army sniper fresh from the hells of Vietnam stood at the window of an unoccupied office on an upper floor of a downtown building and fired five rounds from a hi-powered rifle onto the street below. Five shots, five frozen seconds, and five men lay suddenly very dead in front of a loan office on that Pittsfield street.

  But this was hardly the action of a berserk war veteran who was running amuck at home. On the evening preceding the slayings, the young soldier had penned this note in his personal journal:

  It’s a perfect drop. I ran my triangulations last night and again this evening. It will be like picking rats out of a barrel. The setup sort of reminds me of the site at Nha Tran. The targets will not have any place to go but down—to the ground. And that’s just where I want them … I timed out at six seconds on the dry run tonight and that was figuring them to scatter in all directions after the first round. I think I will better that time tomorrow because I do not believe these troops have been under fire before. I will probably be half done before the reaction even begins. Well, we will see. We will see, Pop.

  “Pop” was Sam Bolan, deceased, until very recently an aging steelworker, a man who had labored with his hands all his life to provide for his family: beloved wife Elsa, elder son Mack, 17-year-old Cindy, younger son Johnny, age 14.

  “Elder son Mack” had a few days earlier been granted emergency leave to journey home from Vietnam and bury Pop, Mama, and Cindy. Young Johnny lay critically injured from gunshot wounds in a Pittsfield hospital—and it was from his kid brother that Mack Bolan learned the true circumstances of this family tragedy. It was an old, old story, told many times in the big cities of America.

  Sam Bolan had been ailing, had lost considerable time on the job, and had never been returned to full duty. The direct result, of course, was a greatly reduced income. And Sam had bills to pay, one of these a relatively modest personal note to a local loan company. But this was not an ordinary loan company and its methods of collection had nothing to do with legal claims and court action. One does not go into court to collect “vigorish”—the term denoting astronomical and illegal interest rates. Instead, one lies in wait in a dark alley with a baseball bat and smashes the delinquent borrower’s shoulder or elbow, or breaks a nose and dislodges several teeth in transmitting the demand for payment. One may also threaten members of the immediate family with bodily harm, urge wives and daughters into prostitution or pressure the borrower into committing theft. All these approaches failing, an astute loanshark might feel driven to a simple act of murder—as an object lesson to others who might be similarly inclined toward an evasion of payment.

  Perhaps this is why concerned young Cindy Bolan allowed a local vice figure to “make dates” for her in a motel room in Pittsfield. For some time earlier, Cindy had been secretly turning over her entire paycheck—a meager $35 per week from a part-time job in a dime store—to retire the loan. But it developed that this amount was barely covering the “vigorish” and had not begun to dissolve the principle plus past-accumulation of vigorish. So, according to Johnny Bolan, “She started working for those guys, Mack. She was … sellin’ her ass. Don’t look at me like that, she was.” The kid brother was shocked and angered by this discovery, even while understanding her reasons, and his only thought was to “tell Pop,” so that he would “straighten Cindy out.”

  Pop straightened Cindy out. This was the final straw for a proud man already humbled, humiliated and pressured to the breaking point. Sam Bolan picked up a pistol and killed his daughter, his wife, and himself.

  Six days before the sniper-slayings on the Pittsfield street, Mack Bolan wrote in his journal: “Cindy did only what she thought had to be done. In his own mixed-up way, I guess Pop did the same. Can I do any less?”

  A journal entry dated one day later reads: “It looks like I have been fighting the wrong enemy. Why defend a front line 8,000 miles away when the real enemy is chewing up everything you love back home?”

  Four days later, the following entry appears: “Okay, I have located and identified the first bunch and I am ready … The law can’t touch them—but the Executioner can.”

  And he did. Five ticks of a clock, five roars of a heavy rifle, five dead bodies lying in a Pittsfield street. And that was only the beginning. The only possible ending would be written in Bolan’s blood. This he became quickly aware of, learning that his victims were part of the international crime syndicate known as La Cosa Nostra.

  His buddies in Vietnam had called him “the Executioner” in tribute to his proficiency as a jungle fighter, infiltrator and sniper. He had become a specialist in “seek and destroy” missions of a personal nature, his nerveless efficiency and cool contempt of death staying with him through numerous penetrations of hostile territories and accounting for more than ninety official kills of enemy bigwigs during his two tours of combat duty in Southeast Asia.

  So now this government-trained war machine was on a different kind of combat tour—but the ground-rules remained the same. Seek out and destroy the enemy—one by one, two by two or fifty by fifty, the numbers did not matter. The important thing was to carry the war to the enemy, to put up at least some show of resistance to the creeping inroads of organized crime. They had evidently found the laws of a free society particularly suited to their own manipulation—so Bolan placed himself also above the restrictions of American justice. “I am not their judge. I am their judgment. I am their executioner.” So saying, he set out to prove it and to bring a taste of jungle hell to these enemies at home.

  Thunder and lightning became the trademarks of this stunning one-man army, stealth and cunning and combat ingenuity were his modus operandi; the only law, the only goal, his only reason for living was now to destroy the enemy. This he did, swiftly and efficiently, in the initial confrontation in his home town of Pittsfield. Along the way he picked up a friend or two and many thousands of enemies. Now sought by the police and hotly pursued by an omniscient and omnipresent enemy, Bolan very quickly learned that this was a war of no ordinary dimensions. The battlefield lay everywhere, the enemy was—potentially—everybody. He was hopelessly outnumbered, and the only certain event in his future seemed to be a bloody death.

  But this was a “jungle” which Bolan was quickly beginning to understand … and to master. If he was indeed in his last mile of life, then he was determined to make every step of the way count for something positive in his war on syndicated evil. Adopting the hit-and-fade tactics of the trained jungle fighter, Bolan abruptly faded from the Pittsfield battleground and immediately turned up on the far side of the continent for a blitzkrieg challenge to the DiGeorge Family of Southern California—and this battle raged from the exclusive neighborhoods of Beverly Hills to the rugged coastline of Balboa, spilling across the hot desert sands, into spas and citrus fields until “the enemy” was reeling in shock and walking with great respect around the shadows and pathways of this inspired warrior.

  International death contracts were let, the price on Bolan’s head passed the $100,000 figure, and bounty hunters from every stre
et corner in the nation prowled the Executioner’s jungle of survival. At the height of this frenetic activity, our man popped up at Miami Beach in the midst of a Costa Nostra summit meeting to show the Capos (bosses) themselves what this business of unending warfare was all about.

  Meanwhile Bolan had become an unofficial national hero, and his war was closely followed in the press and other media. That hunted and haunted face became as familiar to the average American in the street as was any movie or television idol—and equally familiar to every police establishment in the nation. In the eyes of the law, this young crusader was a mass murderer and the nation’s “most wanted” man. Many individual policemen were secretly sympathetic to the impossible war being waged by this lone warrior, but the official position throughout the country was “Get Bolan!”

  Moving cautiously through the no-man’s-land between the police and the mob, Bolan one day found himself unwillingly aboard a Paris-bound jet, and the Executioner became an international police problem. He also quickly became a matter of considerable distress to the international arms of the syndicate, and his sweeps through France and England showed that Bolan’s war was not a geographically limited one—his jungle and his war accompanied him wherever he went.

  Back home again, he took on the combined families of New York City, disrupted an organization movement referred to as Costa di tutti Cosi (Thing of Things—or Big Thing) and he left a mark on the New York mob which could never be forgotten.

  The next confrontation was at Chicago, Mob City USA, which Bolan saw as the model city for the Mafia’s national intentions. He very effectively demonstrated to the syndicate that they could not get away with it even in their Town of Towns.

  In the aftermath of Chicago, the Mafia—or La Costa Nostra—has come to the grim realization that Mack Bolan is considerably more than a mere thorn in their side. This once-considered-simple soldier boy has grown into his destiny and is actually threatening to accomplish what the collective police efforts of the nation have failed to do—he is actually destroying the organization—piece by piece, arm by arm, family by family. He walks among them seemingly at will, undetected until he chooses otherwise and with apparent impunity. He sits down with them at their councils, participates in their planning, insidiously pits family against family and arm against arm; he destroys, disrupts, and demoralizes this previously omnipotent kingdom of evil wherever his attention is focused upon it.

  As this present chapter of the Bolan story opens, the organized crime syndicate is attempting to martial its forces for a massive counterblow to end the Bolan menace once and for all. Enraged and embarrassed by the memories of New York and Chicago, the full resources of this power combine, which has been called “the invisible second government of America,” are being focused into the big blow to “squash this Bolan!”

  For many members of the organization, also, “getting Bolan” has become a personal obsession that transcends any ordinary sense of dedication or loyalty to the brotherhood. For two men in particular, “getting Bolan” has become more important than life itself. The Talifero brothers, Pat and Mike, have made this vow to each other: “We will have no happiness, no rest, and no life until we have washed our hands in Bolan’s blood.”

  This is a vow to the death, Sicilian style. It is the Big Vendetta, and its partners are the two most feared men inside La Cosa Nostra; they are the lord high enforcers of the national governing council, La Commissione. They have met Bolan once, and failed ignominiously. It is not their intention to fail again, and fate has set their course for the Vegas Vendetta.

  Mack Bolan, on the other hand …

  1: FIFTY SECONDS

  The task was simple, and yet tinglingly complex. All he had to do was to halt two powerful vehicles, overcome the natural resistance of at least ten heavily-armed Mafia gunners, liberate an awesome shipment of illicit gambling profits, and withdraw along a narrow route of retreat before the base camp reserves could get into the act.

  And he had to do it in fifty seconds.

  The tall man in the midnight combat suit was Mack Bolan, also known as Mack the Bastard, the Black Blitz, the Executioner, and more often—in one particular segment of American society—“that fuckin’ Bolan!”

  He was kneeling in a tumble of rocks on a mountainside between Las Vegas and Lake Mead. Directly ahead of him, but many miles away, the nighttime glow of the fabulous gambling city lent a faint illumination to the western horizon. Overhead a bright desert moon presided over the stillness and draped its soft radiance in patterns of light and shadows across the rugged uplifts of rocky terrain. Bolan was himself a part of that pattern, a black-clad three-dimensional shadow—or perhaps, more correctly, a foreshadowing—of death and destruction and uncompromising warfare.

  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 intell
igence 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.