Death List

by Don Pendleton

  “Understood,” Price said

  “Do you have an address for me?” Bolan asked.

  “We traced all of the repeat locations in the GPS,” Price told him. “Most are strip clubs, bars and so on. One is an address owned by a holding company that belongs to the Toretto crime family, if indirectly. We figure that’s Morelli’s house, given that he stops there almost every night. The only other repeat address is an isolated estate in a wealthy suburb of the city. We can’t get a solid lead on its ownership, but it correlates with some database traffic from the Organized Crime Task Force.” She recited the address. Bolan repeated it a few times silently to himself.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “That’s it. Your Torettos are there.”

  “Understood.” Bolan closed the connection and put the phone away. Then he repeated the address.

  “Really?” Pierce asked. “Nicer neighborhood than I would have thought. I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you got that information from a few pictures of Mike’s Road Pal 3000.”

  “No.”

  “You’re consistent, Harmon. I’ll give you that.”

  * * *

  “THE VALET HUT THERE,” Pierce said. “It’s not visible from the house, not there at the end of that circular drive. Good cover on either end of the driveway thanks to those dumb swans.”

  The swans were sculpted shrubbery. Bolan had to admit that Pierce’s tactical sensibilities were sound. He made yet another note in his mental file for the man.

  “So what would you do?” Bolan asked after they had surveilled the place for half an hour.

  “We’ve seen several cars go in and out. The valets work as a pair, with one to man the gate while the other drives the car up and around the circle to park it with the others. The guests take that walkway.” He pointed. “We go up that walkway, and they could cut us apart. But the cars the valet parks...those end up just a stone’s throw from the side of the house.”

  “No entrance on that side,” Bolan observed. “We’ll have to make one.”

  “I like where this is going.”

  They withdrew from their vantage on a small hillock overlooking the estate. The entire development had that planned, homogenized feel, with lots of artificially rolling green areas to block the neighbors’ views of one another’s property. Impeccably manicured grass, the golf course type that drank water like a sponge and required dedicated, built-in sprinkler systems, covered everything. The place smelled like money.

  Working their way back to the turnaround where Pierce had left his old Lincoln, Bolan and the enforcer loaded up from Pierce’s trunk again.

  “Do me a favor,” Pierce said, “and take that same AK, the one with the dark brown fore grip. Dump it somewhere in there when you’re done with it. They’re cheap, and I try not to haul too many hot guns around once I’ve used them. I’m going to find homes for the others we’ve used so far.”

  “I’m going to hang on to the 93-R I found,” Bolan said.

  “Your call. Hey, free gun.”

  Armed with the AK and spare magazines in addition to his other weapons, Bolan let Pierce lead the way back to the shrubbery on the side closest to the valet hut. The Torettos were obviously having some kind of gathering. The stream of cars was picking up. The occupants were dressed for a cocktail party. There were plenty of women in fashionable dresses and guys in blazers and gold chains.

  Mack Bolan was going to crash their party.

  A Jaguar sedan rolled to the valet hut. One of the two young men took the car up the circular drive while the other practically bowed and scraped while showing the couple to the walkway. Once the couple was out of range, the kid in the red valet jacket was alone and vulnerable.

  Pierce reached into his pocket and Bolan tensed, wondering if the enforcer intended draw a knife and stab the young man. While it was possible the two kids were family members of the Toretto Mob, they were hardly Mafia hardmen. Bolan couldn’t see murdering them in cold blood...and he couldn’t allow Pierce to do it.

  He needn’t have worried. Pierce produced from his pocket what looked like a coin purse sap—a heavy, leather, blackjack-style weapon typically filled with loose change. The enforcer snuck up behind the valet as he stood silhouetted in the open doorway of the hut. In a single, fluid move, he clouted the kid in the back of the head. The valet dropped like a felled tree.

  Pierce caught his victim and eased him to the ground. He dragged the kid out of sight inside the hut and motioned for Bolan to follow him inside.

  “Quick,” he whispered. “Before the other one walks back here.”

  Bolan nodded and took up a lookout, crouching behind the doorway. He placed his AK against the wall with Pierce’s shotgun. The enforcer, meanwhile, pulled the unconscious valet’s jacket off and shrugged into it.

  Bolan grinned.

  “What?” Pierce asked. He raised an arm to point. “You—” He stopped. The sleeve of the jacket hung off his hand, flopping like an elephant’s trunk.

  “He’s a little taller than you,” Bolan said.

  “Everybody is,” Pierce grumbled. “Look out, I think I hear the other one coming back.”

  Bolan held out his hand and Pierce gave him the sap.

  The other valet, oblivious, walked through the doorway. “Pete, man, what are you—?”

  Bolan hit him, driving him to the floor. He lost consciousness and went slack.

  A stereo was plugged into the wall of the valet hut. Bolan snapped open his knife, yanked the power cord from the wall and cut it free from the stereo, then sliced it in two.

  “Give me Pete’s socks,” Bolan ordered. “We’ll gag them, and I’ll tie their hands and feet together, back-to-back.”

  “Harmon,” Pierce said, “that’s just...wrong, man. At least let me take one sock from both. Pete’s buddy shouldn’t have to breathe his partner’s sock.”

  “Whatever. Let’s get it done.”

  They finished squaring away the two valets just as a car rolled up. It was a tiny BMW two-seater.

  “No good,” Bolan said.

  Pierce sighed. With his sleeves rolled up, he did his best to play the part as he ushered the car’s occupants toward the path to the house. Then he drove the BMW up the circular drive.

  Another car approached the valet hut. This one was a Cadillac SUV—big, heavy and powerful. Bolan hadn’t tried to don the other valet jacket, but in his Harmon costume, he had to have at least looked like a Toretto functionary. He took the keys, gestured toward the walkway and watched the guests make their way to the house. Then he threw the long guns into the Caddy, fired it up and took off up the circular drive.

  He met Pierce on the way up. “Get in,” he told the shorter man. “We’re on our way.”

  Pierce shrugged out of the valet jacket, made a point of stepping on it, and scrambled up into the big SUV. “Make a stepladder joke and I’ll shoot you and bury you,” he said. “You didn’t even try to put on the other kid’s jacket.”

  “I did not,” Bolan acknowledged.

  “Starting to hate you, Harmon.”

  “Yeah. That happens.” He pressed his foot down on the accelerator. The SUV’s engine roared and the big truck surged forward. Bolan took them around the winding drive and then back across it, cutting the corners to make a straight line as he beelined the house.

  “Put your seat belt on,” Bolan instructed, reaching to secure his own.

  “I suddenly hate this plan,” Pierce said, yanking his seat belt into place over his chest. “And I blame you for that, Harmon.”

  Bolan nodded. “Yeah. Got it.” He pressed the accelerator to the floor while Harmon whispered something under his breath.

  “Are you praying? Bolan asked as the big vehicle bounced up over the curb that lined the drive.

  �
��Why do you think—?” he started to say.

  The SUV smashed into the wall of the house.

  The impact set off both airbags and ripped off the side mirrors. The windshield spider-webbed and the dash shifted, lurching forward. The airbag cushioned the crash, burning Bolan’s forearms in the process. He would escape major injury, but it still felt like he’d been kicked by a mule. He managed to guide the careening Caddy to a stop. It wasn’t difficult, in fact, as debris from the wall was trapped in the SUV’s undercarriage. At least two of the vehicle’s tires were flat.

  The engine was racing, the front of the SUV crushed by the impact. Bolan switched the key to the off position.

  The SUV had smashed through the wall into a long dining room. Some of the tables set for dinner were now crushed, the centerpieces and dinner service brokenly scattered. The set of ornate double doors at the far end of the long hall was closed.

  “How the other half lives,” Pierce commented.

  “Crime pays, right?” Bolan asked rhetorically.

  “If they come down on us before we’re ready, this is all over,” Pierce whispered.

  Bolan nodded. “I’m fine.” He took the cell phone jammer out of his pocket and switched it on. “Come on. We’d better hurry. I suspect we’ll have police presence here before we want it.” He grabbed his AK. Pierce took up his shotgun.

  “Do you hear that?” Pierce asked.

  “Running footsteps.”

  The doors at the end of the long hall slammed open and the gunfire started.

  6

  Bullets thudded against the crippled hulk of the SUV. The two men started to edge to either side of the wreck—Bolan toward the tail, Pierce toward the front. The engine was the only true cover provided by the SUV, as the power plant could deflect bullets. The tail end of the truck was much flimsier. Bolan also didn’t like the fact that he could smell gasoline. They had either ripped something loose tearing into the mansion or bullets had found the gas tank.

  “I smell gas,” Pierce said. “Do you smell gas?”

  “Try not to think about it, and give me some cover fire,” Bolan said. “I’ve got some work to do.” He fired out his 30-round magazine while crouched by his side of the truck, then dropped the heavy steel mag and slammed home a fresh one, locking it in with practiced ease.

  Pierce began laying down a withering 00 Buck fusillade with his 12-gauge. The Toretto gunmen—Bolan assumed they were family soldiers, guarding the estate on behalf of patriarch Paul Toretto—were firing back using the door frames as cover

  Bolan lined up the iron sights on the AK-47. The Kalashnikov was nothing to write home about when used as a sniper weapon, but at this range, that wouldn’t matter. The Executioner had spent as many hours behind an AK over the years as he had the rest of the world’s most popular battle rifles. Firing any rifle was as natural to Mack Bolan as breathing.

  He drew in a breath, let out half of it and held the rest.

  Gunfire continued to strike the SUV. The gasoline smell grew stronger. They didn’t have much time. He and Pierce would need to move out quickly.

  Bolan pressed the trigger.

  One of the Toretto gunmen gasped as blood and brains suddenly coated the side of his face. Next to him, the shooter Bolan had targeted had a crater where his forehead had been. The 7.62 mm bullets fired by the Kalashnikov weren’t the most powerful round out there, but they did a number on the human body. Bolan took advantage of the startled gunman’s moment of paralysis to punch a round through his throat.

  The deaths spurred the Toretto shooters to redouble their efforts. They poured whatever they had left into the SUV. Something beneath the truck sparked. A flame caught. Soon the underside of the truck was glowing yellow with fire.

  “Time to move,” Bolan called to Pierce.

  “You said it. I’ll cover you again.”

  “Right.” Bolan waited for a moment to give Pierce time to lay down more buckshot. Then he was up and running through the bullet-riddled dining area, rolling over a table as he met strong resistance from the doors. He continued his roll, somehow snagging the tablecloth and snatching it off the table. China and flatware rained down on him, but the fake floral centerpiece remained on the tabletop.

  Bolan fired from his awkward position, taking out one gunner then another. His AK cycled dry and he drew his Berettas, firing with both hands, blasting away with brutal precision. The slide in the pistol in his left hand locked back, followed by the one in his right. He dropped both weapons and smoothly drew the 93-R from his belt. The 20-round box magazine emptied quickly as he fired in 3-round-burst mode.

  He got all of the Toretto hardmen but one.

  As he was reaching for a spare magazine, Bolan caught movement in his peripheral vision. One of the gunners had come around to flank him. Somehow, Pierce had missed the man. Now Bolan was in the shooter’s sights.

  “I don’t know who you are, pal,” the gunman growled, finger on the trigger of his .44 Magnum pistol, “but you don’t have long enough for me to find out.”

  The shotgun blast that took the Mob thug in the chest hit at the same time Bolan’s knife—well, Harmon’s expensive OTF blade—embedded itself in the gunman’s throat. He toppled to the floor.

  Pierce was suddenly there, his shotgun smoking. “Had to work my way around from the other side to get a bead on that one,” he said. “Did you...? Harmon, did you seriously throw a knife into the guy’s neck?”

  “I appreciate the assist,” Bolan said.

  “That is some serious ninja crap right there. I don’t think in all the years I’ve worked for the Corinos I’ve ever seen a guy throw a knife in a fight and have it...well, and have it work.”

  “First time for everything.” Bolan retrieved his weapons, reloaded them. Once more upright and with the AK-47 at his shoulder, he gestured toward the double doors.

  “I figure we’ve got maybe to the end of the hallway beyond before we find them waiting for us,” Pierce said. “That’s what I’d do. This lot was supposed to get us, but if they didn’t, or there was a whole team of us out here instead of two crazy yahoos, there’ll be a bunch more at a fallback position ready to ambush us.”

  “Yeah,” said Bolan. “I figure it that way, too.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Bolan looked back at the burning SUV. “We get out of here damned fast.”

  “I heard that.”

  In the hall beyond the double doorways, they dragged the bodies out of the way and closed the heavy wood doors. At the end of the corridor there was another barrier; this time, steel fire doors. There was no doubt in Bolan’s mind that there would be trigger men behind those doors.

  A fire alarm sounded. Sprinklers in the ceiling began to spray water. Pierce looked up at the flood and then down at the shotgun in his hands. Water began to run down the barrel and drizzle onto the floor.

  “Well, this is awesome,” he commented.

  Bolan spotted a stairway at the opposite end of the hallway. “Let’s take the high road. We know what’s behind Door Number One down here. Let’s take our chances with Door Number Two.”

  “Right,” Pierce agreed.

  The two men made their way up the stairs. They could hear people moving around the house in adjacent rooms. There were some yells and the slamming of doors—telltale signs the occupants were battening down the hatches and preparing to withstand an onslaught. They had no way of knowing that Bolan and Pierce were the only attackers.

  “Right now,” Bolan said as they made their way down the hall, “they’re wondering why they can’t use their cells to call for help. The guests are freaking out, but if they start leaving, that will mean traffic moving out of the estate.”

  “They’ll do a lockdown until they can assess the threat,” Pierce said. “It’s what I’d do.” He looked back the
way they’d come, then ahead to the locked security doors that faced them on this level. “Man, I wish I knew what their plan was—”

  “Stop!” Bolan yelled. He grabbed Pierce by the shoulder and shoved him back. The enforcer stumbled and dropped to one knee, looking up at Bolan.

  “What the hell, Harmon?” Then he looked back down at the floor. From his new position he caught a glint of the overhead lights on the fish-line-thin tripwire on the floor. “Holy...is that what I think it is?”

  “Yeah,” Bolan said. “It is.”

  A series of claymore mines had been set at the end of the hallway, and all of them seemed to be jury-rigged, with tripwires married to the firing system’s detonators.

  “Those bastards,” Pierce swore. “As soon as the dining room went boom, they must have run the lines, hid themselves behind the doors and stuck their fingers in their ears.”

  “Why would the Torettos be this prepared for an all-out assault?” Bolan asked. He knelt and began to carefully disengage the tripwires without setting off the mines. “Do they normally run security this tight?”

  “Probably not usually, no. They’ve never been buddy-buddy with the Corinos, but Paul Toretto spoke openly against this plan they’ve cooked up to take out people who are making the syndicate’s life more difficult. Toretto’s old school, like me. He figured that was borrowing trouble. He may be a miserable waste of air like all the Torettos, but he wasn’t wrong about that. He must have felt that someone would make a move on him.”

  “But you’re backing the Corinos’ play.”

  “Of course,” Pierce said. “I work for them. What else am I going to do?”

  Bolan let that go. He stood when he finished the second row of mines, then started picking up each of them. Soon, he had an armful. “Help me with these,” he said.

  “Yeah, I smell smoke, and that means the fire is spreading.”

  “That, too. I’m more worried about cops and rescue personnel. We don’t want to get mixed up with them.” Bolan began wedging the claymores into the gap between the security doors and the locked crash bars on the doors. Then he started reinserting detonator pins and running the wire lines to the hinges of the doors. “Come on. We’d better move back.”