Knockdown

by Don Pendleton

* * *

  Gina and Eric had lived for days at Howard Johnson's. Eric complained every day that their staying in New York was eating up his life's savings and that all they had managed to do was get shot at. Gina watched the news and read the newspapers. She read every detail of the death of Don Luca Barbosa with satisfaction. He was the man who had killed her father.

  "Don't you see?" she said to Eric. "It's all failing apart! The whole deal. The Five Families, their domination of the construction business, everything…"

  "It doesn't have anything to do with us anymore. I mean…"

  "Nothing to do with us? Eric! It's Bolan who's doing it all, and he's in New York because I went out into Connecticut and found him. Not to mention that I shot the hitters who came to New Jersey to kill him."

  "Yeah. Well, he hasn't even called you."

  "He's trying to protect me."

  "So'm I. And the way to do that is go back to California."

  They'd had this argument twenty times. Gina wouldn't leave New York. She was going to be there for the kill, as she put it. And Mack Bolan would contact her when he thought it was safe.

  They had rarely left the hotel during their stay. At first they had eaten only what they ordered from room service. Then they had ventured down to the coffee shop and dining room. And last night they had gone out for dinner.

  It had been a celebration party, at least after they heard of the death of Don Barbosa. Also, that death seemed to make New York a little safer for Gina Claw. Surely now the Barbosa Family was fearful and confused, certainly for a little while. With that idea in mind, they decided to go out again tonight.

  * * *

  Johnny DePrisco wasn't happy. Taking a direct, personal part in a snatch wasn't his idea of the best way to live a long, comfortable life. Guys who got involved in stuff like this had a way of getting hurt or of getting long sentences to uncomfortable places.

  It had been a long time since Alfredo Segesta had reminded him who was don and who was capo, but he'd reminded him this afternoon, in forceful terms.

  Johnny was carrying hardware — a Smith & Wesson 9 mm automatic, a little fellow, easily concealed inside a well-tailored jacket, but packing enough power to do just about any job a man had to do. He had no permit for the weapon, and he didn't like carrying it. But Alfredo had issued the order, so he had no choice. The pistol was tucked into the waistband of his slacks, under his left arm, where it wasn't very comfortable, and every few minutes he checked to be sure it wasn't falling out.

  Plumeri sat in the lobby of the hotel, reading a newspaper, looking old and feeble. He was old but hardly feeble, as Johnny well understood. The Rossi Family had no consiglière, but if Joe had had one, it would have been Plumeri. He, too, was carrying iron, an old-fashioned, snub-nosed, round-grip.38 revolver.

  And sitting beside Johnny in his double-parked Maserati was Carmine Samenza.

  Two old men, Johnny reflected. Two old men, plus him. The two surviving godfathers had handed this job to their top men, not to bonecrushers. The orders were specific. If the woman and her boyfriend didn't come down from their room, then go in and get them.

  * * *

  Eric was annoyed by the amount of time Gina spent in the bathroom. When she came out, he was glad she had taken that time. During the weeks in New York she hadn't been quite the Gina he had fallen in love with. The death of her father and grandfather, the breaking-up of her home and relocating her mother, the experience she'd had with Bolan…all that had marked her. She'd become a haggard, harassed young woman. Now, as she came from the bathroom, she was the girl he loved.

  Gina wore pink lipstick that had a distinctive suggestion of violet, matched by eye shadow of the same shade. Her shiny black hair was brushed down behind her. Her dress was a black mini, with the skirt six inches or more above her knees.

  Eric pulled out a checked jacket. Then they went down in the elevator and out onto the bustling, brightly lighted streets.

  They hadn't noticed the austere old man in the black suit, sitting behind his newspaper in the lobby. They might have been alarmed if they had seen with what alacrity he had left his chair and rushed toward the door after them.

  They didn't recognize the old man as anyone they had ever seen before when he passed them on the sidewalk, walked out fifty feet or so ahead of them, and then began to cough and stagger.

  Natale Plumeri stumbled over the curb and collapsed against a car — a red Maserati.

  "Hey, can we help you?" Eric asked the old man.

  Eric stood agape. The old man he had rushed to help was pointing a revolver at his belly.

  Gina looked first at the face, then at the pistol of the handsome man who had gotten out of the beautiful red sports car. It was odd how much he looked like Mack Bolan.

  "In the car, kid," Bolan's look-alike ordered.

  In the back seat of the car, a third man spoke with pronounced hesitation, as if he had suffered a stroke. "Hands behind your back, Miss Claw," he directed. When she did as ordered, he fastened on a pair of handcuffs.

  Eric sat down on the front seat of the Maserati, driven by the threat of the revolver pointed squarely at him. The old man in the black suit bent over him and handcuffed his hands behind his back.

  The young man came around and took his place behind the wheel. "See ya later, ol' buddy," he said to the old man.

  Natale Plumeri saluted, and Johnny DePrisco pulled away from the curb.

  * * *

  At eleven o'clock the telephone rang in Bolan's room at the Barclay.

  "Belasko."

  "Hal."

  "What's up?"

  "I had a call from a friend of yours this evening," Brognola said grimly. "Gina Claw. She's been kidnapped. And Mack — Dammit, She's so scared that she told them she could get a message to you through a friend — me. And she did. I don't know who's got her, and she doesn't know who's got her."

  Bolan tipped his head back and blew a deep, loud sigh. "Damn. Do you have any idea where?"

  "Hell, no. But I can tell you this — they didn't kidnap Gina because they want Gina. They want you dead, or you lay off. That's what she told me."

  "Lay off… That's what they really want?"

  "Not really," Brognola said. "You know better, big guy."

  Brognola was silent for a moment. "My guess is that sooner or later you're going to find out where she is, one way or another. And that's the trap. They want you to walk into the trap."

  "You put rules on this, Hal?" Bolan asked quietly.

  "No rules. Whatever you need. Do it."

  * * *

  Eric Kruger, no New Yorker, had no idea where he was when they pushed him out of the car. He had recognized the big bridge, thought it was the George Washington Bridge, and after that had been wholly lost.

  In fact DePrisco had driven up the Palisades Parkway to the Rockleigh exit, then north on Rockland Road and Broadway Avenue to a deserted stretch of road, and there they had let him out. By the time Kruger hiked to a house where they would let him use the telephone, the Maserati had sped on for twenty miles.

  DePrisco had driven north a few more miles, crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge into New York and Westchester County, and from there had driven northeast to an airport at Waterford, Connecticut.

  The airport at Waterford was unusual. It had an instrument landing system, but there was no control tower. No one monitored approaching and departing flights. After midnight the field was all but deserted. The runway lights could be switched on from the air by setting the radio to the correct frequency and repeatedly pressing the transmit key on the microphone in the cockpit. A small plane could come in almost unnoticed. It could depart unnoticed — particularly if it didn't approach the ramp and the twenty to fifty planes parked there. A score of planes did, every night.

  The pilot of the high-winged Cessna that had come in an hour earlier and parked a hundred yards from the ramp saw the lights of the Maserati. He checked the heavy automatic under his jacket, then walked toward the ramp an
d the parked airplanes. If it was cops…

  It wasn't. The single security officer on the field sat in his little office and watched a late show on television, as he did every night. Johnny DePrisco walked out on the ramp and identified himself to the pilot. Then he returned to the Maserati and dragged Gina Claw out of the vehicle.

  Her hands remained cuffed behind her. They led her across the dimly lighted airport ramp to a telephone booth. There they took off the handcuffs and she made the call she had told them she could make. Brognola.

  Then they led her to the Cessna. Under the wing of the plane the pilot strapped her into a straitjacket, which rendered her helpless. He had to have DePrisco's help to boost her into the airplane. When she was seated in the right seat, he bound her legs together with a heavy leather belt. Finally he secured her to the seat with the airplane's seat belt and shoulder strap.

  Gina wept.

  "Don't need a gag, do you, honey?" the pilot asked. "Aren't gonna yell and make me nervous?"

  She shook her head and subdued her sobs.

  Five minutes later the runway lights were on for another few minutes — switched by the radio in the Cessna — and the common, forgettable little airplane rushed down the runway and rose into the air.

  DePrisco and Samenza watched the blinking lights until the airplane was all but out of sight. Then they returned to the Maserati, and DePrisco headed for New York.

  * * *

  "The word was out today," Joe Coppolo told Bolan. "I mean, every watch was given the word — find Gina Claw. The official word now is that they had discovered a plot to kidnap her and were trying to set up protection for her."

  "You believe that?"

  "I would if it came from anywhere but McGrory's office. She's in big trouble, and I think we're going to have a tough decision to make. I have a suggestion."

  "Spit it out."

  "She's a hostage. So, we take one of our own, then we trade."

  Bolan shook his head. "I don't want to work that way. Who you have in mind?"

  "I can think of two possibilities. Rossi has a girlfriend and a wife."

  "No way," Bolan stated firmly.

  "Okay. He has a favorite capo, an old-time mafioso named Plumeri."

  "That's more to my liking. Give Alex Campbell a call. Maybe he can give us an address."

  * * *

  Plumeri lived on Woodbine Street, in Brooklyn. Bolan stood across the street, staring at the building he had walked past only a few minutes earlier. The street was quiet. It was odd that an important capo would live without protection, but he hadn't yet detected any. Coppolo had done the preliminary recon, strolling down the street at a leisurely pace, checking every car.

  "Nothing," he pronounced after rejoining the Executioner.

  "Okay. I'll move in. Cover me."

  Bolan crossed the street, careful not to attract attention by looking too purposeful. He walked up the three stone steps to the door of the modest redbrick apartment building.

  It was a typical New York apartment building, with buzz-in doors. The lock could be buzzed open from the third floor — which the bell labels indicated was where "Mr. Plumb" lived — but could not be opened at ground level without a key.

  It was exactly what Bolan and Coppolo had expected.

  They had come prepared. As an agent of Brognola's Sensitive Operations Group, Joe Coppolo's credentials entitled him to access to federal facilities and materiel. The FBI agent who had ultimately issued to him the equipment he'd demanded in the middle of the night had made a telephone call to Washington before he'd accepted either credentials or authority. That done, he was generous with the Bureau's equipment.

  At the rear of the building a fire escape rose to platforms at each of the three floors. It was one of those fire escapes with a bottom ladder that people coming down could lower from ten feet above ground level. Also, obviously, lowering the ladder set off an alarm. Both Joe and Bolan knew how to cope with that.

  They stood below the fire escape for a minute or two to see whether anyone had noticed their intrusion into the service area behind the building. No one had. Any sounds back there would more than likely be taken as the prowling of dogs investigating the overflowing garbage cans. The apartments were dark except for the dim glow of night-lights in two of them. No one expected burglars in this modest neighborhood. The only likely burglars would be kids looking for a few bucks to sustain the habit, and they would look for easier pickings than a buzz-in front entrance and alarm-equipped fire escape.

  Bolan swung the nylon rope and tossed it. The little hook at the end made a secure purchase on the fire escape. He tested it, then climbed briskly, followed by Coppolo. They reached the first platform easily, without pulling down the ladder or tripping the alarm.

  The climb up was easy. They went slowly, pausing every few steps on the grimy, long-disused steps to be sure the faint sounds of their ascent had not wakened anyone.

  There were six apartments in the building. From the location of the buttons at the front door, Bolan had judged that 3B was the right-hand apartment on the third floor. He and Joe crawled on the third-floor fire-escape platform, peering in, trying to gain a clue from anything they could see through the window.

  "Hsst…"

  Bolan responded to Coppolo's signal. The agent pointed through the window of the left-hand apartment, where a night-light burned in the kitchen.

  On the countertops, visible in the glow of the nightlight, they could see bright-colored cartoon characters imprinted on boxes of sugar-coated cereals, plus little mugs with similar characters. Kids' stuff. Not likely the belongings of a seventy-year-old Mafia capo.

  The kitchen in the right-hand apartment was dark. More likely.

  The windows on both apartments were protected by steel grilles. Bolan reached through and tapped the glass gently with a fingertip. No alarm went off. He wrapped the muzzle of the Beretta in a knit stocking, thrust it through the grille and tapped harder. No sound. No alarm.

  Coppolo was already at work. He opened a paper-wrapped package of sticky, puttylike material and began to shape it around one of the bars. Thermagron. He packed all that the package had contained around that one bar, then began to wrap the sticky stuff and the bar in rounds of tape. Around he went until the Thermagron was sealed in half a dozen layers of tape. Last he pushed the tip of a penknife through the tape and inserted a thin nail in the hole.

  He looked at Bolan, who nodded.

  Cupping his hands around the flame, the agent touched the fire from a cigarette lighter to the nail he had pushed through the hole in the tape. It was a magnesium needle. In a moment it flared in a hot, white light, then the fire burned in the hole in the tape and ignited the Thermagron. The tape contained the glare, not perfectly, but well enough. The Thermagron — powdered aluminum and chromium oxide principally — burned for half a minute, and when the hot fire puffed out, the steel bar had been melted through and now hung loose.

  They repeated the process on two more bars.

  Now the glass, which was easy enough. Bolan first attached a large suction cup to the windowpane, then ripped the glass with a cutter. He tapped the cut line until the cut opened, then lifted the glass out. He reached in and unlatched the window.

  Still no alarm.

  They had been working in near-darkness, so their eyes needed no time to adjust to the darkness once they were inside the kitchen. The apartment was utterly quiet. Not the smallest night-light burned anywhere. The kitchen opened onto a spacious room, apparently a combined living and dining room. On the west wall of the big room, doors opened onto what would probably prove to be a bedroom and bathroom.

  They walked through the living-dining room. Light from the street was enough to let them see it was comfortably furnished. A spinet piano rested along the east wall, making Bolan wonder whether they had entered the wrong premises or whether the old mafioso really played. There was a huge television set and an oversized couch. A big glass ashtray on a coffee table overflowed wi
th cigarette and cigar ash.

  While Coppolo stood with his Browning at the ready, Bolan quietly opened the door to the bedroom.

  "Not home," Coppolo whispered.

  Bolan was less cautious with the bathroom door. "Yeah. He's home," he said aloud.

  Natale Plumeri lay in his bathtub. Bolan switched on the lights; it made no difference now. The old man had been soaking in his bath. He was naked, and a cigar lay at hand in an ashtray on the lid of the toilet. He'd been shot three or four times. But before that, he'd been worked over viciously. His face was a mangled mess of broken flesh.

  "How the hell'd somebody get in?" Coppolo asked.

  A horrible thought occurred to Bolan. He rushed into the living room and to the door that opened into the hallway outside the apartment and to the stairs. The door to Apartment 3A stood open.

  The family was dead — parents and a child. What had happened was obvious. Plumeri's killers had entered the building by somehow tricking the family in 3A to buzz them in.

  * * *

  They returned to the Barclay, convinced that Rossi couldn't have ordered the hit. That left Angela Corone.

  "Good morning, sir and madam."

  Alex Campbell had gotten into the elevator behind them. They kept quiet until they reached Bolan's room.

  "I've got news for you," Campbell said. "The New York State Police picked up a guy last night. I think you're going to want to talk to him, and I'm trying to figure out a way to arrange that, since he's gonna have j a twenty-four-hour tail on him."

  "Who?" Bolan asked. Tired, he had dropped into a chair and now sat with his legs stretched out before him.

  "Eric Kruger. They drove him up the west side of the Hudson and dropped him off. The State Police brought him into Manhattan about two this morning, and a bunch of our guys interrogated him for an hour and a half. He's back where he started from, the Howard Johnson's, with two guys assigned to watch him."