“I told you to fold this town in squarely.”
“listen, sir, there ain’t no folding that bastard in anywhere. I got more than two hundred boys running around this damn town, and that son of a bitch just comes and goes as he pleases. He’s been—”
“What was that about Vito?”
“I don’t know for sure. I didn’t have time to get it all. Had to get this convoy out here to pick you up. Anyway, the guy comes in and talks to Vito. Vito manages to cold-deck him somehow, and the guy leaves.”
Someone made a scoffing sound and someone else said, “Don’t you believe it, Joe. Nobody cold-decks Bolan.”
Stanno said, “Well, I …”
“I guess we should go talk to Vito, eh?” someone said.
Someone else said, “I can’t understand such loose security. There should have been some boys covering this airport, Joe.”
“Well, yessir, there is, but—”
“But not out here on the runways, eh, Joe? Why the hell not?”
Stanno felt the world closing on him. He spat on the ground and flopped one foot out in front of the other and said, “Christ, who would’ve figured the asshole to come out here and attack the damn plane, eh?”
Someone said, “I was under the impression that we were paying somebody to think about things like that.”
Stanno coughed and replied, “Shit, sir, you don’t know what’s been going on around here.”
“I don’t, eh?” said one of the brothers. “Who the hell do you think was belly-flopping along the runway in a shot-up airplane? Huh?”
“I was right in there with you, sir,” Stanno replied humbly. “Honest to Christ, I never felt so terrible about a thing in my life.”
“We flew in here with sixty guns, Joe. We have about forty left, and half of those are bunged up. How many do you figure we’ll be able to get into Vegas with?”
“Listen, don’t worry,” Joe the Monster growled. “That bastard won’t—”
“You say you have a dead boy on your hands?”
“Yessir. We drug him into one of the cars. Don’t worry, we’re quieting it about the shooting.”
A guy limped up, ignored Stanno, and addressed the brother with the cut head. “Okay, I got the walking wounded made,” he reported. “We got eighteen sheet cases and thirteen stretcher cases. The rest are okay.”
“Get them into the cars over there, Charlie,” the boss ordered. “Send someone to the hospital to grease for those thirteen boys, I want them to have the best. But first let’s get those cars loaded. I want to take off before we get tied down with a lot of damned questions.”
The other brother touched Stanno’s arm as the limping man nodded and walked away. He said, “Don’t feel so bad, Joe. You’re not the first to be run over by this Bolan.”
“I’m gonna be the last,” Stanno promised.
Someone chuckled and someone else said, “I wonder where I’ve heard that before.”
That was okay, Joe was thinking. Let the look-alikes snicker. He’d show them who would come up with Bolan’s head in a sack.
They weren’t so goddamn tough. They were making big noises, yeah. But those brothers were shook, man they were shook.
In fact, Joe knew, they were scared outta their goddam gourds.
Harold Brognola stepped into the operations office at Nellis AFB and smilingly accepted the telephone from the duty officer.
“Brognola here,” he announced into the phone. “Who’s this?”
The smile faded and he raised troubled eyes to the duty officer as a crisp voice rattled the telephone receiver.
“He didn’t lose much time, did he?” the man from Washington muttered.
Rapidfire speech poured through the receiver. Brognola listened without interruption, his fingers drumming on the operations counter. Then he said, “Okay, let’s not waste any time. We’re on our way in—helicopters. Keep someone on their tail and meet me in town … say twenty minutes.”
He returned the instrument to the duty officer and asked him, “Did you get a report on a civil crash at McCarran?”
The officer replied, “Yes sir. A private jet wiped-out during its landing roll, just a few minutes ago. Gear collapsed or something. The runways are cleared and open, though.”
Brognola thanked the Air Force officer and went back outside. He gave not a damn whether or not the McCarran runways were open. He did give—though—quite a bit of damn about the guy who was undoubtedly behind it all.
He rejoined his party outside the operations office and told the chief marshal, “That was Bill Miller, FBI district officer. Our friends arrived, okay, but it appears that our eternal warfare expert was on hand at McCarran to welcome them to the city of hope. And from the sound of the report, he disillusioned them right off the bat.”
A smile was wavering at the marshal’s lips. He said, “What a guy. He took them on right there at the airport?”
“Took ’em on, hell. Practically shot them out of the sky. Demolished the plane, killed eighteen, hurt a bunch more. The brothers came out with scratches.…”
“That’s a bit much,” the marshal commented, his lips flattening against his teeth. “The guy is going rocky, Hal.”
The group of lawmen were moving along the flight line to the transport section. Brognola heaved a deep sigh and said, “I don’t know. I’ve never known Bolan to be fast and loose with the civilians. He’s usually pretty careful about that—always, in fact. It may be significant to note that there was absolutely no other traffic—not on the ground, not over the field, not even in the entire control zone.”
“It still sounds rocky. When he starts going after airplanes …”
“What’s so damned sacred about an airplane?” the justice official snapped testily. “A target is a target to the guy, so long as the civilians are clear and safely out of it.”
The marshal grinned and said, “Hell, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Well I do, and I guess it’s no secret. I’ve tried everything to … but orders are orders—and believe me, I’ll put a bullet in his head as fast as not. I just like to keep the perspectives in mind, that’s all.”
“I like the guy myself, Hal. But that can’t change anything.”
“Not a thing,” Brognola agreed.
“We’ll gun the poor S.O.B. down just like we would any lunatic. Right?”
“Right,” Brognola calmly replied, refusing to be baited.
The party had reached the helicopter area. The marshal stepped back to allow the other man to board first. “Even though we know he’ll never return our fire,” he said quietly. “Right?”
“You’d better hope not,” Brognola muttered. He climbed into the aircraft and turned back to add, “I’ve seen the guy’s work. He’s a real classy sharpshooter, make no mistakes. And he goes for the head.”
“I won’t make any mistakes,” the chief marshal replied. “We have a few sharpshooters in our troop too, you know.”
Brognola sighed and dropped into a seat. “That’s the only damn reason you’re here.”
Indeed. It was the “only damn reason” Brognola himself was there. He’d been the guy’s champion. Now, as the official closest to the problem, it was logical—if ironic as hell—that he be given the task of eliminating the problem.
As for Bolan shooting back … Brognola knew damn well that he would not. A more distasteful chore had never arisen during a career often sadly lacking in taste. But … it was the way things were.
He had to get Bolan. He simply had to get him.
11: THE WATCH
The Vegas Strip has a “grapevine” second to none in the world. Despite efforts by both police and underworld to quiet the fact of the Executioner’s presence in town, the word spread among the regular residents with the vigor of an uncontrolled forest fire.
The incident at the airport, together with the executions on the Strip itself and the invasion of Gold Duster earlier that morning, became the chief topic of hushed conversation in
the twenty-four hour city. These inevitably led to a rehashing of the Bolan legend, much of it inaccurate or exaggerated.
“The guy has a CIA license to kill.” This was the favorite story.
As close runner up, “He’s got a thousand faces, and nobody really knows what he looks like.”
“Just watch,” went another attention getter, “when he’s finished, the cops will step in and mop up his leavings.”
The consensus of opinion in the law-abiding community was heavily sympathetic to Bolan. All of the professionals in Vegas knew, of course, which were the mob joints and which were not—this also was a perennial favorite topic of conversation. Most of the “straights” had adopted a live and let-live attitude toward the mob—this was the Vegas tradition. It was no secret, however, that the legitimate casino operators resented the unfair advantage which naturally fell to the kinky businessmen through their connections in high places and a virtually unlimited supply of financial support. So the straight people of Vegas were shedding no tears over the Bolan crusade, except for the fear that it might depress the tourist situation.
Just the same, there was a noticeable apprehension all along the Strip and in the city’s Glitter Gulch—wherever games were played in that valley. Dealers flipped their cards with one eye on the table and the other on the door. Pit bosses nervously scrutinized unfamiliar faces and security personnel strolled about with hands resting on pistol butts.
The city’s visitors, assiduously kept “out of the know” by the regulars, remarked upon the number of police vehicles cruising the Strip and the hordes of foot patrolmen on Fremont Street, particularly in Glitter Gulch. If one were to look carefully he might note that some of these officers were from other areas adjacent to Las Vegas—such as North Las Vegas, East Vegas, Henderson, and even from Boulder City. A person with a practiced eye for concealed weapons could possibly discern the presence also of great numbers of alert guntoters in civilian clothing, although the observer would need a great instinct for separating the good guys from the bad.
And all about Las Vegas—the city of strangers—faces suddenly became highly important, almost an obsession, for those who lived and worked there. Police accosted everyone who seemed to stand out a little from the crowd; frequently they accosted one another. Hardfaced men in tailored silk suits and dark glasses stood in hotel lobbies and prowled the lounges and the casinos, also “accosting” anyone who aroused their suspicious natures and here, also, the frequent mutual stare-downs and violent reactions between accoster and accosted would have been comical, if not so potentially tragic. A minor shoot-out did occur in a Fremont Street tavern between two men who were later identified as “free-lancers,” bounty hunters seeking the pot of gold in Bolan’s head.
In this latter regard, special police details were stationed at the airport and in bus and tram depots to turn back an expected invasion of gunmen, both freelance and otherwise.
The “Bolan Watch” was on, and if the atmosphere in the civilian community was tense, it was downright explosive in the police and underworld segments.
It was leaked in the press, for example, that a special federal “strike force” was in town and that a highly placed official in the Justice Department was coordinating all police efforts in the matter. There were rumors of hard feelings among the local cops, and a wire-press reporter in Carson City, the state capital, charged that state and federal officials had clamped a “news blackout” on the events at Las Vegas.
Rumors of a different nature began flowing from the Gold Duster when Vito Apostinni “didn’t show up for the noon count.” The story that swept along the Strip claimed that “Heart o’ Gold Vito got planted in Skeleton Flats,” this latter a reference to the unofficial graveyard supposedly existing in the desert somewhere along Highway 91, far south of the city.
It was also being said that eastern bigshots had taken over the entire top floor of the Gold Duster Hotel and that the whole place had become an armed camp, with much coming and going on the part of the area’s criminal element. Those “in the know” whispered about an underworld purge in the western crime capital, and the stories became more persistent as the day wore on.
Bolan himself seemed unperturbed by the commotion. He had gone directly from the dawn strike at the airport to his modest tourist-home accomodations on the north side. After a leisurely meal in his room and a shower, he went to bed for a refreshing six-hour sleep.
At two o’clock he was on the move again, dressed casually in modish flair slacks, sport shirt, and bright blue blazer. He walked through Glitter Gulch, the gambling center of the downtown area, and fed slot machines at several of the joints. He kept his ears open and his nose clean, and after an hour of this “scouting,” he invaded the Strip via taxicab and went directly to the hotel where he had met Tommy Anders and the Ranger Girls some hours earlier.
He scouted the parking lot, decided that the watch on his wheels had been lifted, reclaimed his Pontiac and set out on a tour of the neon jungle’s high spots.
The Executioner had, many death-waits ago, learned to blend into a given environment and to become a part of the background of almost any situation.
A “watch” could work in more directions than one.
The watchers themselves were being watched.
12: CRAP OUT
At nightfall, Bolan returned to his room and again changed clothes. He donned the black skinsuit and covered it with the dark silk tailormade threads favored by big time torpedoes, beneath the coat a pastel shirt with flaring collar and oversized tie and—the trusty Beretta in sideleather.
He fussed with his hair to achieve the just right look, then put a band-aid across the bridge of his nose and another just off the chin along the jawline. Purple tinted lenses in gold wire frames and a black rollbrim hat completed the job to his satisfaction.
Then he went directly to the Gold Duster.
A congregation of hoods and uniformed deputies stood outside, eyeing everyone who passed.
The smirking Bolan flipped them a bird as he swaggered through the cluster. One of the men behind him muttered, “Wise ass.”
Bolan jerked around and quietly demanded, “Who said that?”
None responded or even returned the hard stare. He sniggered and proceeded to the lobby.
“Boys” were all over the place, several of them almost identical in appearance to the new arrival. Bandaids sprouted freely, here and there a head-wrap, and a guy going into the lounge was showing a pronounced limp.
Bolan felt right at home.
He went straight to the desk, elbowed an elderly lady out of the way, and commanded the immediate attention of a room clerk.
“Are they still upstairs?” he asked the guy.
The clerk nodded his head uncertainly and replied, “Uh, yes sir, I think so.”
“Check!” Bolan demanded.
“Uh, come to think of it,” the clerk suddenly remembered, “they are. We just sent up dinner.”
The guy started to turn away. Bolan leaned across the desk and grabbed his arm. “Get Hard Mountain for me.”
“Sir?”
“I got a friend out there. Make the call, eh?”
The clerk nervously pulled loose from Bolan’s grasp and said, “Yes sir.” His eyes fled to a corner area of upholstered chairs and mahogany tables. “You can take the call in the telephone lounge, sir. Just pick up the receiver, I’ll have the switchboard put you through.”
Bolan growled, “Thanks,” and threw the guy a fiver.
The light was on when he reached the house phone. He picked it up and said, “Yeah, who’s this?”
“I’m ringing, sir,” the operator reported.
“Oh yeah, okay. When they answer, honey, you get the hell off. This is private.”
“Certainly, sir,” the house operator assured him in an offended tone.
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
A few seconds later she told him, “Go ahead, sir. I’m leaving.”
He snicker
ed into the transmitter and said, “Who’s this?”
A guarded male voice replied, “This is Desert High Ranch. Who’d you want?”
Bolan chuckled and asked, “Been laid lately?”
The guy chuckled back. “At this goddam joint? Hey who’s this?”
“This is Vinton.”
“Who?”
“You know. I came in this morning.” Bolan snickered. “By the skin of my teeth, I mean.”
The guy laughed. “I know what you mean. That bastard hit up here, too, last night.”
“Yeah I heard,” Bolan said chattily. “We’re at the Duster, you knew that.”
“Yeah. Uh, who’d you want?”
“Shit, he didn’t say who I should call, he just said call.”
“Who said? Joe?”
“Yeh. I guess I oughta talk to the head cock-in-charge, eh?”
The guy laughed again and said, “I guess you’re talking to ’im. This’s Red Evans.”
“That don’t sound kosher to me,” Bolan said lightly.
“I guess it’s about as kosher as Vinton, eh?” The guy was obviously enjoying the conversation. “I could give you about a dozen different calling cards, if you wanted ’em all that bad.”
“Listen, I gotta come out there, I guess.”
“Yeah sure, you’re welcome. Bring about a dozen broads too, huh?”
Bolan laughed and said, “I’m looking at a six foot Swede right now. Legs about four feet long, squeeze you until you scream for mercy. I think I’ll lay her ’fore I come out.”
“What’s her name?”
“Shit, who cares?” Bolan snickered. “All ass and tits. Dumbest looking broad I ever saw.”
“Stop it, you’re talking to a fuckin’ monk. I been up here six days straight. Supposed to get rotated back to town today, then this son of a bitch comes roaring into town. Why’re you coming out?”
“That’s what I called about. You’re supposed to go down and find that shipment.”
“What?”
“That heist that wasn’t a heist. It’s still out there.”
“Bullshit,” the guy said calmly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
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