St. Louis Showdown

by Don Pendleton

  These were not your typical Mafia street soldiers whose primary designs on life were as illegal entrepreneurs—“business” men who lived by their own rules and used force only as an adjunct to their money-making activities. These “boys” were professional guns. The guns they lived by were their business and their only claim to usefulness to an organization which existed for the sole purpose of acquiring riches.

  “It’s about time we started using station wagons,” someone groused from the rear, with a sigh of discomfort.

  The wheelman glanced into the rearview mirror for eye contact with the speaker. “That’s when I quit,” he declared calmly.

  “They don’t make Cadillac station wagons,” explained another disgruntled voice from the rear. “Spider wouldn’t get caught dead in anything so low class.”

  “That’s not it,” the wheelman protested amiably. “Class is not something you wear outside, especially. Not in a car, anyway. See, they—”

  “It’s easy to feel classy when you got a whole seat to yourself,” said the first complainer. “Wonder how he’d like it with his knees jammed into his chest.”

  “Knock it off,” Napoli growled.

  “Sorry, Hooker,” the wheelman apologized from the side of his mouth.

  “Chit chat makes me nervous,” the crew chief said. “You want to talk, okay, you got something you don’t understand about the job, okay, but none of this jawing back and forth.”

  “Sure, Hooker.”

  Monaco, a new recruit, leaned forward from the jump seat and said, “It makes me nervous, too, Hooker. I don’t like cruising around in broad daylight with all this hardware. We go through a stoplight, even, and we’re in deep shit right away.”

  Napoli nodded his head and replied, “Okay, that’s a legitimate worry. And it’s job-connected. You want to talk about it?”

  “I just did, Hooker. That’s all I got to say.”

  The crew chief grunted and cleared his throat. “This is your first hit, that’s why. Tell ’im, Spider, what we do in a case like that.”

  “We don’t accept no damn tickets,” the wheelman explained with a glance into the mirror.

  Napoli growled, “What d’you think all this damn hardware is for?”

  Someone sneered from the rear, “Dead traffic cops don’t write tickets.”

  Monaco relaxed against his backrest and stroked the stock of his shotgun. “Okay. Now I know.”

  “You’d get the honors,” the crew chief said, with a sober wink at Monaco. “You and your partner there. Boom ba-boom. No deep shit at all, see.”

  The shotgunner grinned sourly and glanced at the man beside him.

  “How would you like that?” Napoli prodded, ignoring his own injunction against “jawing.”

  “What? Take out a cop?” Monaco shrugged. “Makes no difference to me. A head is a head.”

  Napoli was grinning hugely. “I knew I had me a boy,” he said proudly. “You other boys hear that? A head is a head. This boy just got himself a name. From now on, you call him Heads.”

  Spider Fischetti chuckled at that. “Know what we call a head in the navy?”

  The newly christened shotgunner muttered, “You better cut that shit out, Spider.”

  The wheelman hastily apologized. It was a serious breach of etiquette in this curious world to make jokes about a “made” name.

  Perhaps to change the subject, as much as for any other reason, Fischetti became very busy at his rearview mirror. “That, uh, old clunker back there, Hooker. About a block back? See ’im? Been hanging in there awhile now. You notice?”

  “We passed him back there a ways,” Napoli replied, flicking an unconcerned glance through the back window.

  “Yeah, we did. But he’s pacing us now.”

  One of the rear men said, “I been checking him. Keeps pulling up and falling back. Nervous driver. Lots of guys do that. We can’t all be wheelmen like Spider.”

  Fischetti chuckled at that. A moment later, he asked his boss, “Want me to fake ’im out, Hooker?”

  “Forget it,” Napoli replied. “Can’t get paranoid about every damn car on the road. We’re not here to worry about our tails.”

  “What are we doing way back here?” Monaco grumbled. “It’ll all be over by the time we get there.”

  “You got an itchy boy there,” Fischetti commented to the crew chief.

  Napoli said, “That’s the idea, Heads. We’re like the second wave. With a guy like Bolan around, you can’t be too careful. Don’t worry, Del knows what he’s doing.”

  Fischetti asked, “You think Bolan might really horn in up there?”

  “I can’t think of any reason why he should,” Napoli replied. “But Dell says we make a sandwich, so dammit we make a sandwich.”

  “That’s the guy gives me the shivers,” said a pistoleer from the far back. “That Bolan, I mean. You think he’s here on serious business, Hooker?”

  “Who knows?” the crew chief replied with a shrug. “We can only take ’em one at a time. Right? Right now we’re taking Vino Jules. We’ll worry about Bolan when his turn comes.”

  The mention of Bolan seemed to have had a dampening effect on the occupants of that vehicle. The grim atmosphere of edgy silence settled in once again.

  Presently, one of the men in the rear quietly offered, “He’s just one guy. You know how these reputations get blown up. Like Heads said … a head is a head.”

  “Not that one, though,” Fischetti commented soberly. “It’s worth a million greens.”

  “I’ll take a piece of that,” Monaco growled.

  Napoli and Fischetti exchanged knowing glances.

  “Yeah, I think I got me a boy,” the crew chief declared.

  Bolan had the sandwich car “made” and he was pacing it into an appropriate attack zone. He wanted to make his run in an open area, preferably along a straightaway where he could be assured of a proper “safe zone” free of complicating factors and devoid of uninvolved bystanders. He had to confine his war to the proper places. He could not subject innocent people to the dangers of open warfare.

  And he found his place some little distance north of the Merchants Bridge approach, in an industrial zone where the city seemed to have not yet awakened to the new day.

  He had made good use of the intervening time, assuring himself via the warwagon’s tracking systems that there was adequate separation between the two halves of the “sandwich” so that the sounds of warfare in the one sector would not alert those in the other.

  And now, all conditions having been met, he was ready to make his move. He sent the “junker” surging ahead as he touched the mike button to advise his own troops, “Commencing run. Backboard out.”

  The target vehicle was moving sedately along, remaining well below the posted speed limit. Bolan’s hot heap closed the gap without effort, and he was swinging around them in the pass before that sullen bunch in there awakened to the maneuver.

  The wheelman was the first to notice, evidently catching the reflected motion in his side-mounted mirror—and Bolan saw the guy stiffen and yell something.

  His front bumper was even with their rear when he let off on the gas and pumped the brake pedal to ease alongside, fully abreast now, pacing them down the straightaway.

  No other traffic was in view, front or rear.

  Both sides of the road were clear of structures.

  This was nowhere.

  The wheelman in the target car was tossing Bolan quick, angry glances and guys were moving around over there.

  Bolan saw the snout of a tommy gun coming up off the front floorboards on the far side.

  The rear window on the inside began smoothly lowering under powered control, the gaping twin muzzle of a sawed-off double-barrel riding the glass down—and this was precisely what Bolan had been awaiting.

  He backhanded a heavy HE grenade through that lowering gunport and immediately tromped his brakes, hard, the front end of his vehicle nosing down in the squealing breakaway—and
he had but a glimpse of the sudden panic erupting in that crowded vehicle as the shotgun ba-loomed harmlessly into the pavement which he had occupied one heartbeat earlier.

  Timing, yeah—that was the clincher in any life-or-death exercise, and Bolan had been crowding his to the outer limit.

  He’d put a five-second fuse on that grenade, and he was still squealing and bucking around in their backwash when the thing blew.

  The shattering blast, contained and intensified by those close quarters, filled the interior of that screeching vehicle with an expansive ball of flame, formed a concave bulge in the roof, sent both rear doors springing outward to disgorge smoking human forms—and, finally, as an aftereffect, sent the doomed crew wagon plunging off the road and settling on its side in flaming wreckage.

  There could not have been much left alive in there but Bolan halted the Saint Louie Junker at a safe distance and climbed out with a chatter gun for the mop-up. It was not blood lust that sent the man out there but compassion. To kill quick and clean was one thing. To die slowly in shrieking agony quite another.

  He sprayed the wreckage with a full clip of thirty-calibre steeljackets, dropped a medal on the ground beside it, and walked back to check the guys who’d been blasted clear.

  The first one he reached was obviously dead, his face a pulp, clothing in flames.

  The other was twisted around a shotgun—big guy, tough-looking, but hardly more than a kid.

  And he was alive … momentarily. Bolan could not figure out why. Half his chest was missing and the cavity was awash with bubbling blood; he could even see the heart pumping. One eye only was open, and that eye was watching Mack Bolan.

  He said, “Sorry, kid,” and extended the chattergun in a one-hand hold.

  Somewhere the kid found a voice although it did not sound much like one—not a human one.

  “A head … is not … a head. Give … me … chance.”

  “Chances are all used up, kid.” Bolan pumped a short burst from the fresh clip into that head, hastening the inevitable process already set in motion.

  He dropped a bull’s-eye cross atop that tragedy and muttered, “It was a hard world, kid. You can go home now. Better luck next time out.”

  He returned quickly to the junker, stowed his weapon, and grabbed the radio mike.

  “This is Backboard,” he announced tiredly. “I’m coming in.”

  “Just in time,” was the immediate response. “We are engaged.”

  8: GOING DOWN

  What was it Bolan had said? Something about the difference between cops and soldiers?

  Well—what the hell?

  These men were not cops—certainly not command cops—and these were not police methods being discussed here. These guys, dammit, were soldiers—and what was happening here could only be described as a combat briefing.

  Throw the damned stereotypes away and forget everything you ever heard about a big-city cop. These are the facts, ma’am. The skipper there is barely beyond thirty years old. Median age for the whole group could not be much more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight—which put Tom Postum squarely on the median.

  Trim, athletic, rugged—these were combat troops, not cops. No beer bellies, here—no cigar-chomping, aspirin-gulping, whiskey-guzzling fatcats continually on the make for freebies and feelies—these guys, dammit, were impressive!

  And this was what the big-city problems had built, in a single generation—from the cop on the beat, with a nightstick and a revolver which was rarely if ever used, to combat troops: grim, hard-eyed young men with tense jawlines and hardrock bellies, Buck Rogers weapons, and every conceivable technological advantage this modern age could offer a threatened society. And still it was not enough.

  Something was “going down” out on those streets at this very moment, something really big, and all they could do about it was sit there and stare holes into one another until somebody actually fired a weapon or created a disturbance.

  Postum left his stool and went to the window. The skipper watched him for a moment, then said, “Tom … great work.”

  “Thanks,” Postum replied with a feeble smile. “Not great enough, though, is it?”

  A unit head said, “What do you want, Postum? Instant control?”

  “Yes. That’s what I want,” Postum said.

  The Skipper told him, “They’ll make their move—the wrong move. Then we’ll make ours. Action, reaction. Name of the game. Right? Instant control, you’ve got it.”

  The intelligence chief turned back to the group at the table. “What bothers me …”

  “Let’s hear it,” the skipper said, sighing.

  “There’s a guy running around out there with some sort of exotic equipment. He knows what they’re doing. He knows where they started and where they’re headed. He knows who they are and where they are.”

  “So?”

  “So why the hell don’t we know? What makes a guy like Bolan so … so …”

  “Omniscient is your word,” the skipper said heavily. “But he’s not that. And he’s not really the present problem. Part of it, sure, but we had the problem, remember, before we had Bolan. He’s just brought things to a head. And I can’t really say I mind that.”

  “What are you going to do about him?” Postum asked quietly.

  “Bolan? What else? We’re going to shoot him down, just like the order says.”

  “On sight.”

  “You’ve got it”

  The intelligence chief’s gaze wavered and fell. Bitter words welled into his throat but he was saved from the embarrassment of those by the flash that boomed in on the hotline.

  “Explosions and gunfire in Sector Four. Citizen’s report. Patrol units responding. We have a pinpoint.”

  The room was already emptying.

  Postum remained behind to assist the skipper with zone assignments.

  “There you go, gangbuster,” he muttered to the wall. “It’s a matter of action and reaction. There’s no difference between a cop and a soldier.”

  The wooden signboard marking the narrow road which angled off toward the river had once said something about “auto salvage” but the lettering was weathered and barely discernible now. A decaying wooden fence bounded the property, shielding the metal graveyard within from public view. Small-arms fire was volleying around in there when Bolan hit the scene. The warwagon was parked atop a small mound of earth a few hundred feet on along the main road, opposite the back corner of the fenced enclosure. He pulled the junker alongside and quickly went in for an eyeball conference.

  Schwarz was manning the base and advised him, “The police tactical channels are buzzing. Sounds like they’re scrambling some heavy stuff—I’d say SWAT teams—probably headed this way if I read their signals correctly.”

  “They’re tracking my hit on the sandwich,” Bolan suggested. “I was expecting it. They’ll be ranging this way quick enough, though. Where’s Pol?”

  “He suited up and went in. Maybe a minute ago.”

  “Is he wired?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bolan punched a digital timer on the console. “There’s your mark. Give me two minutes precisely, then drop that fence, over there, right at the corner. Tell Pol. It’s all the time we’re going to get. Tell him to give me room—I’m punching in. Soon as you drop the fence, roll it and pick us up on your down pass.”

  He was out the door and running before Schwarz could acknowledge the instructions, delaying at the junker long enough only to hurriedly drape a satchel charge from the hood ornament. Then he was powering into a screaming circle-back and careening into the turn-off to the junk yard.

  The gates stood wide open, one lone guy with a shotgun the only thing presuming to bar entry.

  The sentry’s attention had been going to the developments inside those gates. It was too late for him when he saw that charging vehicle bearing down on him. He was trying to scramble clear and get a charge off at the same time, and he succeeded in neither.

  A front
fender caught the guy in mid-pirouette with a grazing blow that sent him spinning crazily into the cemetery of dead cars, the shotgun blasting ineffectually into the ground.

  The continuing charge sent Bolan’s vehicle whining along a circular path between heaps of skeletonized vehicles, and it was not until the final wild curve that he was aware of the ultimate destination of that charge: a dilapidated office-warehouse of wood and stone set into a sea of waste. The three big limousines were pulled up there in a crescent arrangement about fifty feet from the building, and guys were running around behind them waving hardware and making a lot of noise while another group at the end of the building was systematically spreading gasoline and firing the old structure. Already flames were licking high over there—and considering the shape that building was in—the whole thing would be an inferno in a matter of seconds.

  All this Bolan assimilated in a flashing microsecond of awareness as that squealing, motorized bomb completed the turn and plunged on toward the congregation of crew wagons. He jammed the gears into neutral and sent the junker into free roll as he bailed out and rolled to cover, with less than a hundred feet of separation between himself and the impact zone.

  There was an immediate reaction down there, with guys whirling and yelling and firing reflexively at the driverless car, but it was a classic exercise in futility.

  The junker rolled on home to slam broadside into the center crew wagon. The impact charge shook the area and blew a rolling cloud of flame puffing out to engulf vehicles and men and all within a fifty-foot radius, reaching back even to uncomfortably heat the ground-hugging cause of it all.

  Guys were screaming and writhing around down there even before the munitions stored in the junker’s trunk began unloading in secondary explosions.

  Bolan stayed where he lay, pressed to the ground as blast upon blast flailed the atmospheres and welded those four groaning vehicles into a solid ball of fire. Then the gas tanks started, with turreting streamers of liquid fire arcing high in brilliant patterns and raining blazing droplets of rain from hell throughout that tortured zone.