Bolan was inside the grounds and strolling casually along a beaten path in the snow, the Thompson cradled in his arms.
Someone coughed just ahead. Bolan halted and lit a cigarette, then went on.
A figure materialized in the gloom, a guy with a shotgun, slowly marking time and trying to kick some blood into his feet. Bolan growled, "Hi. Stay with it there, tough."
The sentry coughed again and replied, "What's going on, anyways?"
Bolan told him, "Just keep your eyes open. Joliet Jake and a hundred Loopers are right now standin' just outside."
The guy had obviously wanted to say something else, but Bolan had passed on by without pause. He skirted the brightly lighted portico of the building and went on toward the gate, staying close to the drive. Hardmen were all about the place, leaning against trees, squatting in the snow in groups of four and five and conversing in hushed voices.
Only once was Bolan challenged, by another guy with a chopper who was walking along the drive toward the building.
The hardman said, "Hey, what're you doing up here?"
Bolan pulled the hat lower over his eyes and replied, "Charlie sent me up. He wants to tell you something."
"Charlie Drago?"
"Who else?"
"Well where's he at?"
It sounded very much like the voice that had yanked coffee-loving "Milly" away from Bolan at the fence. Bolan told him, "Just go up to the front door, open it, and look inside. I'll bet that's right where he's at."
The hardman muttered, "Wise guy," and went on toward the building.
Bolan had gone about as far as he wished to go. He was roughly midway between the club and the gate when a pair of headlamps began sweeping in through the arched entranceway. He found a tree with no one lurking about it, got the Thompson ready, and ran his fingers along the radio-detonator box at his waist.
They came in bumper-to-bumper, moving slowly along the oval drive in a leisurely procession. Bolan allowed the lead vehicle to pass his position, then his thumb found the button on the control box.
A hardly noticeable flash from the roadway uprange was accompanied by a muffled popping sound, and Giovanni's was instantly plunged into darkness — club, grounds, everywhere but for that oval drive as illumined by the headlamps of the Vecci vehicles.
The lead car almost stood on its nose in a sudden braking, and the other three plowed into the confused stop at gentle speed but with a horrendous crashing of metal upon metal. Someone over there was cursing with an almost studied precision and all four pairs of headlamps were instantly extinguished.
Bolan cut loose then with the chopper — upon the clubhouse, not upon the procession of vehicles — the heavy weapon sending a withering pattern winging in along the line of cars.
An immediate return fire descended from virtually every direction — not upon Bolan, but upon that stalled lineup of crew wagons.
Car doors were banging and grunting men were flinging themselves this way and that into the snow. Above the roar of gunfire could be heard Jake Vecci's strident screams denouncing the treacherous bastards and exhorting his boys to "kill 'em, goddammit, kill every one of 'em!"
Volleys of gunfire were coming in from the road area now, and men on foot were pounding through the arched gateway and making a run for the little island of marooned vehicles halfway along the clubhouse drive.
Mack Bolan, the life of the party, was quickly fading into the background of action. He had come merely to open the affair, not to conduct it. The Executioner had more important business at hand.
* * *
One of the crew chiefs, a man known as Gussie Tate, had been wheeling the Vecci car as they entered that fateful driveway. Mario Meningbetti sat next to the wheelman; Joliet Jake next to him, at the door; seven soldiers in the two seats to the rear.
Vecci had just repeated his instructions to the wheelman to "Take it slow'n easy now, Gussie. Don't make it look like we're roaring in, see. We're coming gently, on gentle business. You gotta keep psychology in mind when you're working this kind of stuff."
Tate had just replied, "Yessir" — and Meninghetti's worried voice was about to make some comment when suddenly all the lights in the clubhouse were extinguished.
Instead of the comment he was working at, Meninghetti cried, "I knew it! Stop the goddam car, stop it!"
The loyal lieutenant was already shoving his boss toward the floor when Gussie Tate's heavy foot overreacted on the brake pedal. This action greatly aided Meninghetti's protective reaction — to such an extent, in fact, that Jake Vecci was literally flattened against the floorboards of the limousine. And then the other cars came in like so many derailed boxcars, backlashing the crowded and already unsettled occupants of the lead vehicle.
Joliet Jake was just lifting groggily off the floorboards, his eyes dazed and flaring, when the gutteral chops of the Thompson laced the night.
On this note, Vecci needed no instruction. He was out the door and rolling in the snow and screaming bloody murder, and all of his boys were piling out after him. And then all hell started cutting loose. Gussie Tate fell out of the car with a scream of pain and somebody very close to the subcapobegan threshing around and turning the snow red with his blood.
Boys were leaping out of cars all along the line and everybody was shooting up the night, and Jake had to wonder if anyone even knew what the hell they were shooting at — Jake sure didn't, and his own snub .38 was in his fist and roaring. He was yelling, "Get in there and wipe out them double-dealing bastards, I mean it! Kill 'em, dammit, kill every one of 'em!"
Then there was a hell of a racket coming from the street, and Vecci knew that Pops Spanno and the Cream of the Loop had joined the battle. He crept away on hands and knees, moving instinctively away from those cars and toward the smell of blood at that darkened clubhouse up ahead.
Jake Vecci, let God be his witness, was going to end a lifelong association with a one dear friend, and he was going to end it damn quick. With God as his witness, Jake Vecci was going to get hisself a Capo.
15
Wipeout
Don Gio was still talking with Pete the Hauler and four other bosses of the Chicago Council when Larry Turki rapped lightly on the door to the private office and waited for the door-lock release from the inside. The old man's voice came through the intercom instead, with a testy, "What is it now?"
"Larry Turk, Mr. Giovanni. We need a parley, and right now."
The buzzer sounded and Turk let himself in.
Pete Lavallo was glowering from "the hot seat" — a chair placed beside the desk of the big man.
Giovanni told Turk, "We've been giving Pete the bad news and talking over old times, Turk. He agrees completely that a year or two of desert air might do wonders for his sinus. Right, Pete?"
Lavallo growled, "Yeah, that's right" — his eyes not leaving Turk for a moment.
"What I come in to tell you, Mr. Giovanni — this Jake Vecci is outside with about twenty carloads of boys. I told Charlie..."
"I thought you didn't want to smear me up with this dirt, Turk," the old man said quietly.
"Well, no sir, but..."
"But you want me to second your motions, eh?"
Giovanni chuckled and turned to Lavallo. "Is your sinus really all that bad, Pete? Do you really think you need this desert thing?"
Lavallo spluttered, "Well I — if you say — what I mean is..."
"What d'you think, Turk?" Giovanni asked, still chuckling. "Do you think Pete really deserves all that rest?"
"Like I told you, sir," Turk replied, very softly, "I didn't mean that Pete should get hit so hard."
"Yes, so you said." Giovanni was giving Lavallo the hard gaze. Picking his words very carefully, he told him, "I been thinking — and we got a bad thing on our hands here, Pete. If you'd like to help out — you know — give the young men here the benefit of your years of experience — maybe... well, maybe we couldn't spare you for that lazy life on the desert. Huh?"
"Just say t
he word, Gio," Lavallo replied hopefully. "Anything that suits you is going to suit me also."
"Joliet Jake has lost his mind."
"Is that a fact?" Lavallo had, of course, been aware of the excitement in camp. "That's a bad thing, for a man especially in Jake's position."
"That's exactly what we've been thinking, Pete. He needs to be helped out of it. The young men here haven't had too much experience with insanity in the family, Pete. And I think — and I bet you'll back me up on this — I think an old head like Jake would rather get his help from another old head. Like you. You know? Instead of the indignity of, uh, getting it from one of the youngbloods."
"Yes, I back you up on that a hundred percent, Gio," Lavallo said.
The old Capo'seyes moved among the silent group at his desk, taking a wordless poll. Heads nodded and eyes twitched in response to the unspoken question being placed before the council of Jake Vecci's peers. Then Don Gio sighed and told Lavallo, "Well, okay Pete. If you'd like to stay around and give Jake the help he needs... them okay... I guess we'd have to cancel that desert vacation of yours."
"If that's what you want, Don Gio," Pete the Hauler said solemnly.
"That is what we want, Golden Peter," the old man assured him.
That simply, that quietly, was a contract let and accepted. An invisible death certificate had been drawn upon the atmosphere of that quiet room, and Jake Vecci's name was inscribed upon it with a gentle sigh.
"Well, uh..." Lavallo's eyes found Larry Turk. "You say he's outside now?"
"We told him he could bring four cars in," Turk replied. "He might come in, and he might not. Like Mr. Giovanni said, he's lost his marbles. I don't know what he's going to do. But if he tries busting in here with a hundred boys behind him — well, we just can't allow that. There's no telling what he might take it in mind to do."
"No, we couldn't allow that," Lavallo murmured. He got to his feet and told Larry Turk, "I guess I lost my gun back there at that motel. I wonder where I could get one."
Turk produced a small revolver from his pocket and handed it over. "I b'lieve this is yours, Mr. Lavallo," he said.
It was not, but Pete the Hauler replied, "You're right, it is. Thanks. I guess I better go out and look around. I might bump into Jake and maybe talk some sense into him."
Turk moved to the door with the dazed underboss. He called back, "Sorry to bother you, Don Gio, gentlemen. You won't be disturbed again tonight, I promise you that."
"You see that we're not," Giovanni replied. "We've got important business to go over. What, uh, do you hear on this boy Bolan?"
"Not a thing, sir. He's been quiet as a mouse. I wouldn't be surprised if he's halfway out of the country by now."
"Well I guess we'll see, won't we," the Caporeplied.
Lavallo and Turk went out, and the door had hardly closed behind them when Lavallo snarled, "Thanks, Turk. Thanks for nothing!"
The lord high enforcer was grinning delightedly. He said, "Hell, all's well that ends well, right?"
"Who says it's ended well?" Lavallo complained. "I ain't done no contract work in fifteen years or more. And I've known Jake Vecci for one hell of a long time. I don't call it ending well. It never had to start."
Turk's grin faded. He growled, "I'm sorry you feel that way, 'specially since Jake is out to get your boss."
Turk had spun away, and Lavallo was replying, "Well now wait a..." When the lights went out.
Turk froze in his tracks, and grunted, "What th' hell?"
"Lights went out," Lavallo informed him.
"Shit, I know that, but I..."
At that instant the peace of the night was broken by the loud rattling of a submachine gun, and this immediately punctuated by the explosive booms of other weapons.
Turk instinctively whirled back to the door to Giovanni's sanctum, then realized that the electric lock and intercom would also be inoperative. He yelled through the door, "Sit tight, Gio, I'll check it out!"
Pete the Hauler was crashing about in the darkness and swearing and vainly clicking a cigarette lighter which was apparently in need of a refueling. "It's that Bolan!" he was yelling. "I knew it, I knew the bastard would show up here! Half out of the country — bullshit!"
But Larry Turk thought he knew better. It wasn't Bolan. It was Joliet Jake the Madman and his hundred boys. Somehow they'd cut the power lines and Turk guessed that the war was really on now. And it was just as well. Things had been getting unbearably stagnant in this family. It was time for some new blood at — or near — the top. And Turk had plenty of blood.
As Lavallo threshed about in the darkness, trying to find his way outside, Larry Turk quietly felt his way along the wall and toward the rear. He knew, if he was bent on killing himself a Capo, just where he'd be getting set to make his play. And Turk was bent on just the opposite chore. He was going to savea Capoand thereby assure himself a place in the royal court. Yes, Turk thought he knew exactly where the play would be made.
* * *
The human storm had finally arrived, and the thunder and lightning which descended upon the Mafia hardsite was entirely manmade. Rattling volleys, the big booms of shotguns, and the impressive staccatos of big automatic weapons were woven together in a concert of wholesale death that was all too familiar to Bolan's experienced ear.
And this concertmaster was wholly aware of each movement and countermovement, the sounds of command and countercommand, the cries of victory and defeat — and, yes, a very hot war was raging across the holy ground of that blessed thing of theirs. The enemy had engaged itself, and Bolan could think of no better troops to fight this war of liberation; he wished a total victory and a total defeat to each side.
Bolan himself was hardly more than a shadow moving across the field of white, an instinctive creature of the night now, homing on the target of targets for the grand-slam clincher of this mob wipe-out. He gained the rear corner of the building — so carefully noted during his earner pass — and abandoned the snapbrim hat and overcoat in a snowdrift.
The Thompson went across his shoulders and he began the difficult and dangerous hand-over-hand ascent to the roof, using windowsills and cornices and whatever precarious handhold presenting itself.
The weakened shoulder protested and once threatened to quit altogether, but he issued stern inner commands and pressed on — and then the railing of the private sundeck was his and he was up and over and moving swiftly across the wind-drifted snow of that upper porch. The French doors gave quickly and with only a light snapping sound to the sudden pressure of Bolan's boot, and he was moving silently across a small room that smelled of liniments and leather and maybe a trace of human sweat lost without labor.
Suddenly the sounds of murmuring voices were rising to meet him, unreal and ghostly against the louder background of the hell let loose outside, and Bolan realized that he was standing at the head of a short circular stairway. Across a metal railing and just below could be seen the silhouettes of several figures standing carefully at a wall and peering obliquely through a window upon the landscape of swirling action outisde.
Bolan swung the Thompson into ready-mode and tossed a small personnel flare toward the center of that room down there. It sizzled into brilliantly flickering patterns of light — and the Executioner knew at once that he had reached the home stand.
The figures at the window — four of them with that prosperous-cheap look of the street hood become boss of all that moved and breathed — whirled about in that awakening which most men find but once in a lifetime. A personal awareness of death-arrived. A weapon flared down there and a chunk of metal tore through the air close enough for Bolan to feel the passage. Already, though, the deadly Thompson was bucking in his grip and he was sweeping that group with a tightly-locked figure-8 burst that flung the entire bunch into the wall and oozing toward the floor.
Another weapon was unloading on him from across the room, and furious chunks of bi-impact stompers were dislodging plaster from the ceiling just above his
head. Bolan was working the Thompson in a quick sweep toward that challenge when something hard and heavy crashed into his bad shoulder. The arm fell and the big gun with it, then another blow glanced off the base of his neck and he went tumbling headfirst along the short stairway.
Bolan reached the bottom in a sliding sprawl, fighting to get a hand inside the jumpsuit — but too late. A big guy was slowly descending behind him, pinning Bolan in the spot of a powerful flashlight, and a big nasty Colt .45 was peering at him in a way Bolan knew to be entirely professional.
A breathless voice from across the room, brittle with age and breathless with the excitement of the moment, cried, "Save 'im, Turk, save 'im for me!"
"I'm saving him, Don Gio," Larry Turk panted. The .45 was waggling in a silent command that needed no words to back it up. Bolan came groggily to his feet and stood there swaying in the flickering light from the flare, blinded by the powerful spot in his eyes.
"Hands onna head!" the big guy commanded.
Bolan complied, willing his head to be still and his mind to find its place. The war was not over yet, he kept telling himself — he was still alive and functioning.
"Turn around, hands against the wall, feet wide apart!"
Bolan knew the routine. But he also knew that he was not going to give up the Beretta without a murmur. "Go to hell," he snapped.
The old man cackled with delight. "You didn't knock all the fight out of him yet, Turk. Who is that, is that?.."
"Yessir, it's Bolan," Turk said, the voice edged with gloating triumph. "Big bad Bolan. We don't want to knock all the fight out of him at once, do we Gio? A minute at a time, an hour at a time, we'll just drain it out of him slow'n easy." To Bolan, he yelled, "Turn to th' wall, dammit, or do I turn you with a foot in the nuts!"
A new sound of warfare, a somehow different quality of sound, was rising up in the air out beyond that window. An amplified voice was carrying across the grounds and, although Bolan could not make out the words, that official tone of authority was clear and unmistakable. He told Turk, "You'd better make your move, turkeymaker. The cops have joined the party."
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