Council of Kings te-79

by Don Pendleton

  "Is something wrong?"

  "Charleen has been kidnapped. There was a note on the front door. It said not to go to the police or to tell anyone, and I would be notified in six hours about ransom. We don't have any money!"

  "Mr. Granger, I'm sorry. It's the same people who hurt Charlotte. Stay there. Wait for their call. I'll talk to a friend and get back to you."

  After Johnny hung up, he realized he had no way to contact Mack. A chill darted through him. He had once been involved in a Mafia kidnapping in San Diego, and his lady, Sandy Darlow, had been killed. Who else would want to kidnap Charleen, except the Mafia?

  Johnny hurried to his room. As he waited, he paced up and down, staring at the phone, demanding that it ring.

  Until it did, he could only worry.

  Time and again a terrible scene returned to his mind. It was what he had seen when Sandy Darlow lay on that stainless-steel table in the garage in San Diego.

  What he had seen was turkey meat.

  10

  Bolan powered the Thunderbird from the underground hotel garage and swept out of Portland on Southwest MacAdam Avenue, which turned into Riverside Drive and followed the Willamette River south.

  He drove upstream until he came to Lake Oswego, a town as well as a lake about two and a half miles long, developed as a showplace for luxurious waterfront homes with docks.

  The Executioner was interested in talking to Tony Pagano. He had never met Tall Tony. His intel indicated that in this posh community Pagano now headed a branch office for the Canzonari family.

  It was not nickel-and-dime stuff. Here the trade was for ten to fifty thou. Rich people needed loans more often than the poor, and their credit was usually better. If one of them got in over his head, he went to his old man or his rich girlfriend and tapped them for the cash to prevent a scandal. Loansharking had been here for years.

  Regardless of the affluence of the loan shark's victims in a place like Lake Oswego, Bolan had sworn long ago that he would remove every vestige of the Mob's loansharking operations from the face of the earth. The shark's customers might even resent it, but Mack Bolan's juggernaut of justice, out to avenge his and Johnny's family that had been so savagely victimized in the Vietnam war era, could not be stopped. The place must be hit. And the neighborhood had just better watch out for itself.

  Bolan stopped at a new office building near the east end of the lake, just off State Street. The Lake Oswego Loan and Trust Company, as the name plaque identified it, was a sleek and modern building with an all-glass front, curves instead of corners, a revolving door and modern sculptures outside and in the lobby. The lawn had been manicured within a blade of its life — every green shoot was properly clipped and trimmed. The big man in the beret and black-rimmed glasses paused inside the front door and shook the rain from his raincoat, which covered the hardware he carried.

  He walked to a reception area, sinking halfway to his ankles in red plush carpet, his eyes meeting those of a tall redhead who rose behind her desk and smiled. He stopped in front of her.

  "Good afternoon," she said. "How may I help you?"

  "I understand Mr. Pagano is in today. I don't have an appointment but it's urgent that I see him."

  "That might be difficult." She smiled, lighting her face with a special radiance that seemed to imply she was on his side.

  She sat behind the desk and motioned for him to sit. When he did, she punched a series of buttons on a telephone console.

  She spoke softly, then turned to Bolan.

  "His appointment-secretary wants to know your name and the nature of your business."

  "My name is Mack Scott. My business is old friends. I'm like a member of the family. Tell him we have a mutual acquaintance, Freddie Gambella."

  She turned back to the phone. When her eyes found him again, a touch of surprise was on her pretty face.

  "Marci says you can go right in. Her door is right over there, the second on the left down the main hall."

  "Thanks."

  "A pleasure, Mr. Scott. Anytime."

  Bolan approached the main hall; the carpet below his feet graduated from red to dark blue. He entered the second doorway on the left.

  The office was an interior decorator's dream, with subdued lighting, old-master prints in expensive frames on the walls and a typewriter and computer on the secretary's pedestal desk of glass and plastic.

  The secretary's blond hair was pulled back in a severe bun. Her dress was sleek and tight, highlighting her subtle curves. She wore a lot of makeup and stared vacantly in his direction. "Mr. Pagano is extremely interested in seeing you. He was a friend of Mr. Gambella, as you know. He's busy on the phone at the moment. Can I get you a drink while you wait?"

  "Coffee, please."

  She brought him a cup from a fancy vacuum coffeepot. The brew seared his lips. Before it was cool enough to drink, a door swung open and a tall, thin man appeared. His face was little more than skin and bone. Bolan could not remember seeing deeper-set eyes. Small blue veins showed through the tissue-like parchment covering his features as the deadly black eyes swept over Bolan.

  "You said you were a friend of Freddie Gambella's?" The voice was accusing. It was the sound of death squeezed through a reedy clarinet.

  "Hey, I met him couple of times. Maybe not like a friend. I heard you were in solid out here. Stopped by to pay my respects." Bolan's voice had a touch of Brooklyn and the eastern twang that was pure Mafia-soldier inflection.

  "Come on, Scott. We need to talk." It was a command.

  Bolan left the coffee and followed the walking skeleton.

  Tony Pagano's office was a barren cube.

  Everything within it was white: desk, filing cabinet, pictures, walls, even visitor's chair. In front of the white draperies on the far wall was a white couch, into which Bolan lowered himself as Pagano chose a seat behind the desk.

  "If you knew Freddie, you know he died in a twisted crew wagon in New York State a few years ago. Some bastard cut him down with what the cops figured was a bazooka kind of rocket."

  "Tough. But Freddie always did things with a flair."

  "You connected?"

  "Used to be with Manny the Mover-Marcello."

  "San Diego. Yeah, rough down there recently. You got a letter?"

  "Manny didn't have time to write no letters."

  "True."

  "Hey, I'm just a soldier, wheelman, you know," Bolan said. "Nothing high up."

  The living skeleton pondered this a moment, then nodded. "We're with Gino Canzonari, but my people work directly under me. Mostly loans, classy loans, nothing under ten grand and with plenty of interest. This is fat city out here."

  "That's what I figured," Bolan said, dropping the mobster talk and rising from the couch. "Back away from the desk slowly, Tony."

  The Executioner pulled the silenced Beretta from its shoulder leather.

  Pagano stared. A marksman's medal plopped on the white desk and Pagano trembled.

  "The safe, Tony. Open up. Anybody ask any questions you put them down, or both of you are dead."

  "Okay. Easy with the cannon."

  They went through a second doorway and down a hall to a room at the side of the building. They entered. No one was inside.

  Bolan, locked the door and motioned Pagano ahead. The tall man moved a file cabinet on wheels, to reveal a safe. He fixed his deadly stare on Bolan.

  "Look, we run a clean operation here. High class. Nobody gets hurt. These rich bastards can afford the interest. We ain't broke an arm in over two years."

  "The cash, Tony. Put it on the table in one of those bank bags."

  Pagano obeyed.

  "Fill it up. Hundreds."

  When Pagano was finished, he looked up.

  The Executioner shot him once in the forehead, blasting him against a wall. The deed would spare the guy the pain of the explosion to come. The slime-bucket slumped to the floor, lifeless.

  Working quickly, Bolan pressed one C-4 plastic explosive on t
he inside wall and set the timer for five minutes. He moved into the hall and set another charge there with a five— minute timer.

  He returned with the bank bag to the lobby and the pretty receptionist.

  She saw him and smiled.

  "How many people in the building?" he asked.

  "Five or six, I guess."

  "Notify them immediately that the place is on fire and that they must evacuate at once."

  "But I don't smell any..."

  "Hurry. There isn't much time."

  She made the calls. When she was done, he took her hand. "Now let's head for the sidewalk."

  "But my job..."

  "Your job here is finished."

  He led her outside. They had just reached the edge of the manicured lawn when the first blast shook the building. Two men ran up to her, their eyes wild.

  "What the hell's happening?" one of them asked.

  She shook her head as the next blast sounded and the building sagged.

  Then the upper floor caved into the first in a shower of dust and crashing concrete blocks and timbers. When the smoke cleared, the receptionist turned to the tall handsome man — but he had disappeared.

  11

  Bolan went back to Portland the way he had come: the Willamette River due north toward the junction with the Columbia and on to the Pacific. As he drove, the Executioner reviewed what he knew about the Canzonaris. The big family house was in Washington Heights, an exclusive area. The family owned half a dozen firms, including a trucking outfit, several small legitimate businesses that laundered ill-gotten money, several lumberyards and a sport-fishing fleet that operated out of Astoria, Tillamook and Nehalem Bay. Most of their basic income was in gambling, drugs and girls.

  Gino Canzonari's son Joey was a comer, and he was smart with computers. He lived in the Council Crest section, another exclusive area. Bolan had looked up the address in a roadside phone booth. To Bolan, it was ironic that the creep's address echoed the very slimiest thing about his father, the Don, which was the Council of Kings. Bolan figured a visit might be worthwhile.

  Just after dark, the nightstalker was sitting in his car a few doors down the street from the Joey Canzonari residence.

  The big house was walled, but Bolan noticed no gate or guards or dogs. Joey blended in with his rich neighbors. No need for conspicuous security.

  Except lights. Floodlights bathed the front and sides of the two-story house, and the two Mercedes in the driveway, A half-hour after Bolan arrived, a man in his twenties left the estate in the 380 SL and drove away. Ten minutes later a woman emerged from the house and put the Mercedes 300 Diesel into the garage, opening and closing the door by remote control.

  Twenty minutes later another woman left by the side door, walked to the street, and drove away in an old Chevy. The day help was leaving.

  The rain had stopped. Mack shed his raincoat and sport coat, donned the combat harness over his black long-sleeved jersey, replaced the sport coat.

  Seeing no one on the street, he darted into the yard beside the Canzonari place, ran to the back and leaped the six-foot stone wall. In the Canzonari backyard he moved to the rear of the house and away from the lights. It seemed too easy — the back door was unlocked.

  Bolan went through it into a family room. He heard a television near the front of the house. He was looking for a den or home office.

  Somewhere a baby cried.

  "No! Cindy! Not now!" It was a woman's frustrated cry.

  Hearing the woman walk toward him on the carpet, her slippers slapping against her feet, he slid between a couch and the wall. She went up some stairs. He heard her hushing a child, singing softly for a few minutes. Then she came downstairs.

  "Oh, damn! It's over and I missed the ending age." More sounds came from what he guessed was the living room. A cocktail shaker was rattled and the television channel was changed.

  Bolan edged down the hall until he could see into the living room. A blond woman with a drink in her hand sat on a sofa, looking at the TV. Her dress was open. He moved back through the hall to the stairs and ascended quickly on silent feet.

  He found six rooms: the master bedroom, two other bedrooms, a bathroom, a playroom, a den-office with three computers in it.

  Two of the computers were up and running and connected by modems to the telephone. A printer evidently linked to the computers came to life and chattered out something on tractor-feed paper.

  Bolan carefully turned on the light. He examined the computer setup more fully. He figured it duplicated a system elsewhere, so Joey could work there or at an office.

  What could he take that would not be missed? This was a soft probe, and Bolan wanted to leave no clue that anyone had visited. Stealing software and data disks would be too obvious. What else?

  The wastebasket. He searched it carefully and found a banana peel, several accordion-folded printouts of figures and balance sheets and some scraps of paper with scribbling on them.

  One torn and crumpled sheet bore two words in pencil: Karatsu Maru. He put the paper in his pocket.

  He returned quietly to the computers, looking for something of value. He found it. On one of the pullout boards under the terminal were three sheets with signs, symbols and a list of phrases and numbers that looked like a code.

  Determined to leave no trace of his visit, the Executioner found a blank piece of paper and a pencil and copied down twenty words and phrases and numbers. The two words he wrote at the top of the sheet spelled good news.

  They were: "Access Codes." Finally Bolan copied the phone number on the handset near the modem and put the paper in his pocket.

  Then the baby cried again.

  Bolan snapped off the light as footsteps sounded on the stairs. The woman was muttering, "Second damn show you've ruined, kid."

  She paused outside the den, and Mack ducked behind the big desk.

  The woman took two steps into the room, still muttering. "I thought this door was closed." She shut it solidly and continued down the hall. The Executioner went to the door and listened. Nothing was audible through the solid wood; no hollow doors in this house.

  He waited five minutes, and at last heard faint humming as the woman returned along the hall and, he hoped, downstairs.

  He opened the door slightly and looked out, saw an empty hall. He edged into the hall. Safe so far.

  He was halfway down the stairs when a blond woman, naked but for blue panties, started upward from below. She was carrying a tall glass containing a small amount of clear liquid, and her eyes were only half-open. She saw Bolan and shrugged.

  "Hell, Joey, when did you get home?" She climbed the steps, pecked his cheek and continued upward. "I'm crashed, Joey, smashed and bashed and skunk drunk. Don't you ever tell mom." She stumbled on the top step and slid to the carpet.

  Bolan quickly went downstairs, out the door in the family room and over.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Bolan sank into a chair in his hotel room and called Johnny.

  "Mack! I've been trying to get you all afternoon. Charleen Granger was kidnapped this morning — her husband called me. They said they would phone him, but he hasn't contacted me again."

  "Can you come to my room?"

  "Be right there."

  When he arrived, Johnny told Mack Bolan all he knew about the kidnapping.

  "The only thing I can figure is that somebody spotted Charleen's car when we left that loan agency."

  "Which is bad," the Executioner said. "Call her husband and see if he's heard anything more."

  Johnny did, then shook his head. "The poor guy is still waiting."

  "So we have to wait. In the meantime, see what you can do with these." He handed Johnny the sheet listing the access codes. "Did you bring your portable computer with the built-in modem?"

  "I'll get it. It's in my room."

  Johnny Bolan fetched it, plugged it in and positioned the handset. He dialed the number to Joey Canzonari's home office and made the conne
ction.

  Johnny entered one of the codes, and the screen showed the files and subject listings each contained. Quickly he worked through a mass of bookkeeping data, then came to the intriguing code name, "Jupiter." He punched it up and whistled.

  "Here it is, Mack. Look at this. A ship named the Karatsu Maru is due here about 1330 hours on the thirteenth. That's tomorrow! It's to come in at Terminal One, berth fifteen. She has 9,783 metric tons, and the load is industrial machinery. Owner is listed as Canzonari Lines."

  "Paydirt," Bolan grunted. "Now we have something solid. I'll meet them upstream. But first a couple of unfinished projects. You wait for word from Mr. Granger. I've got a date in back of that gun store."

  * * *

  The Executioner put a quarter of a block of C-4 plastique against the small door of the warehouse behind Northwest Guns, Inc., and set the timer for thirty seconds. It blew the door halfway through the warehouse and started dogs howling for half a mile.

  Bolan threw two smoke grenades into the building and dropped a white phosphorus grenade outside. He sprinted to the phone booth on the street that ran by the vacant lot behind the warehouse. He reported the explosion and fire to the police.

  Bolan watched from the vacant lot. A few minutes later two police cars arrived, followed by a fire truck that pulled up and doused the last flames of the white phosphorus with foam. Then the police and fire inspectors toured the warehouse, and six more squad cars and two unmarked cars arrived. Bolan, deep in the shadows once again, surveyed the distant scene.

  That was one illegal arms dealer out of business for good. And the legitimate gun store would not be damaged by smoke or minor flames, so quick was the fire department's response to his call.

  He moved on to another phone booth and called Johnny. Yes, Granger had phoned. The kidnappers had ordered Granger to bring either a hundred thousand dollars or Bolan the Bastard to a meeting set for midnight, only half an hour away. Johnny gave Mack the exact location and Mack gave Johnny some brotherly advice: stay in the hotel.

  "The kidnappers know about us," Mack Bolan warned. "They made Charleen tell everything she knew about the Executioner. That's why they knew Granger could contact us. So get out of my room and wait for me in yours. Move it!"