She had retained that position when the leadership role had been thrust on David at the tender age of twenty-four. She had steered her son and the family business successfully ever since, through senate investigations and takeover tries from rival organizations, but always with herself in the background and the world thinking her son called the shots.
Things had not been going all that well lately between mother and son, however, she reflected, David had always had a streak of rebelliousness in his heart, and this Bolan thing was bringing it out even more. He was restless to run things on his own, but if he did he would make a mess out of them, she was sure of that. But she knew he could be handled and how to get him to do the things she wanted him to do.
"All right," she said softly, coming out from behind the desk. "I'll tell you what to do. Come here."
David stared at her for a long moment, then stepped closer to her.
She stood and walked to where he sat on the corner of the desk. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes.
"Tonight's shipment will go through as planned. But we're going to destroy all the other evidence and concentrate on other things for a while."
"But..."
She put a soft fingertip on his lips, brushing them closed.
"Uh-uh," she said, shaking her head. "I know how lucrative this operation is, but there are plenty of other things we can do to make money. We're going to cover our tracks and lie low until this Bolan business is over."
"What do you mean, cover our tracks?"
"I mean that some of our associates who know too much about... the children... will have to be taken care of."
A light shone in David's eyes when she said that. He moved closer to her, until she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face.
"Owens?"
"Even Randy," Denise answered, no hesitation in her voice.
She had thought about it and had made up her mind already, especially after Randy's disgusting performance in front of Bolan in this house a few hours ago. Owens was fairly dependable in turning out porno films and was a diverting stud in bed, but was certainly not worth jeopardizing anything important for.
"What about Bolan?" David asked.
"Our people are out combing the city looking for him and so are the police. They want him as badly as we do. We have plenty of protection here... now, that is. He won't be able to get near us when we go out to take charge of the operation tonight.'' She reached up to stroke his cheek. "Bolan won't hurt you, Davey. Mama will see to that."
"Yeah, you're right. You're always right."
She pulled him closer, resting his head on her shoulder, patting the back of his head gently with her fingertips.
He would do whatever she said now.
It always worked.
Mama's little boy would do anything for her.
She had started things in motion even before her son had answered her phone summons a half hour ago to return home.
All the loose ends would be tied up before this night was over, and the Executioner would have nowhere to turn, and the Chicago streets would run red with Bolan's blood...
15
The orphanage was on the South Side of Chicago, in a middle-class neighborhood.
The institution occupied an entire block. The administration building was a long, narrow structure that ran along the front of the property, with four dormitories at right angles behind it. At the rear of the complex was a gymnasium.
The orphanage appeared asleep as Bolan parked Lana Garner's Camaro across the street from the offices.
The single-level structure was the only building of the orphanage to exhibit any signs of life: two lighted windows next to the main glass entranceway into the lobby, where night personnel would be on duty, and a single light down at the far end of the building.
Lana, seated beside Bolan, watched him look in the direction of the one lighted window.
"Mr. Wallace often keeps late hours," she said. "That's his office."
"Luck may be on our side for a change," Bolan grunted, cutting the Camaro's engine and lights. "This is where you stay put while I do some recon."
She held up something for his inspection.
"I've got the key to the other way in," she reminded him. "And I don't think Mr. Wallace will try anything violent this close to home. Would he? Whatever he's up to, he still needs his legitimate cover as the kindly head of the orphanage."
Bolan considered that.
Smart lady as well as tough and dedicated, he decided. One of the real good ones.
"You've got a point," he admitted. "Okay, you come along this time, but be careful. Please."
She reacted to that last word by touching her fingertips to his, and something electrical and pleasant passed between them for one instant.
"You, too," she said. "We need you. The kids asleep in that orphanage, the world. We need you, Mack Bolan."
He did not know what to say to that, so he said nothing.
They broke contact and left the car, quickly covering the distance to the side door of the building, huddling in shadows at the opposite end from the lobby entrance and the lighted night duty office.
He unleathered the Beretta when they were out of view of the street, his eyes probing the surrounding compound for any sign of movement, any sign of attack from security Wallace could have posted around here.
Lana used her key to open the door. She stuck her head inside for a quick scrutiny, then motioned to Bolan.
"All clear," she whispered.
He eased into the building, sliding the door shut behind him without a sound, eyeing the hallway that ran the length of the building. The corridor was lined with doors, all closed now except for one at the far end.
Illumination from that doorway matched the placement of the night duty office.
He discerned the low hum of radio music. He and Lana had the hallway to themselves.
She led the way hurriedly to the second door from the main entrance. She turned to silently indicate with a pointing finger that this was Wallace's office.
Bolan crossed to the door, the Beretta held down at his side, and tried the knob.
Unlocked.
He twisted the knob and opened the door, stepping in fast, Lana right behind him.
The office was Spartan, he saw at a glance, as befitted a nonprofit charitable institution: metal desk and matching file cabinets and the like.
Floyd Wallace whirled to face the two intruders. It looked to them as if he was removing some files for transfer to an open briefcase on the desk.
He regarded the woman and the man with the Beretta with startled eyes and a fishbelly-white complexion.
"What's the meaning of this outrage?" he demanded indignantly. "Miss Garner, you're in enough trouble already, I should think, even if the police couldn't find anything to pin on you." Then he got a better look at the man beside her and his countenance went sheet white. "Bolan," he whispered, shocked.
The Executioner cracked an icy grin with no humor in it.
"You know who I am. That tells us something right there."
Lana spoke from Bolan's side.
"The man you claim to be would hardly recognize the Executioner at one glance, would he, Mr. Wallace? Tell us how you know about Mack Bolan."
Wallace's prominent Adam's apple bobbed up and down. He swallowed nervously.
"I don't know what either of you are talking about. I don't know this man, Lana, but since you seem to, I think you'd better tell him that I'm going to have the two of you arrested if you don't leave here immediately."
"Nice try, but it won't wash," Bolan told the guy, the Beretta still held down at his side. "We've already got the outline of this business, Wallace. We know you're stealing kids from the orphanage and sometimes from your day-care centers. You're selling them to the Parellis for prostitution, child pornography, black market adoption scams, God knows what else. You know it, we know it. Let's take it from there."
Wallace's eye
s flicked back and forth from Bolan to Lana. Again he swallowed. He opened his mouth.
Bolan knew the man was ready to crack, to spill everything he knew. He could read it in Wallace's face.
There were footsteps in the hall outside.
All three people in the office heard them at the same time.
Bolan jerked his head at Lana, wordlessly communicating what he wanted her to do.
She stepped away from him, away from the office door.
He grabbed Wallace's arm and all but threw him into the chair behind the desk.
"You can die right now," Bolan rasped. He stood beside the desk and slipped the Beretta into his overcoat pocket. "We don't need you. Remember that."
There was, of course, the possibility that the approaching footsteps would go right on past the office, but Bolan's gut told him that wouldn't happen.
He stood to one side of the desk, Lana to the other.
Wallace remained motionless in his seat.
No one in the room expected what happened next.
The office door opened quickly, and a small object came flying into the room. Then the door slammed and the footfalls echoed in the hallway, running away from there.
The object hit the desk, bounced off and rolled into a corner with a clatter.
All three of the room's occupants recognized it right away.
Grenade!
Wallace leaped from behind the desk with surprising speed and lunged toward the door of the office.
Bolan reached across the desk with a long arm and snagged the collar of Lana's jacket. He dived to the floor behind the desk, taking her with him, shielding her body with his own.
The grenade exploded with a thunderous roar.
Bolan felt the shock of the blast as shrapnel thudded into the desk. Then he lifted his head, ears ringing and hurting, realizing that none of the deadly fragments had penetrated the bulky metal furniture. Lana moved around beneath him, coughing because of the plaster dust that now filled the air.
Bolan pulled himself to his feet, resting one hand on the desk, the front of which was now bent irreparably out of shape.
The fact that the desk was bolted to the floor had kept the explosion from throwing it over on top of Bolan and Lana.
Floyd Wallace had not been nearly as lucky. He had been sprawled against a wall and the exploding shrapnel had turned his body into a shapeless mass of bloody, quivering flesh, barely recognizable as having once been human. There was nothing left of his face, just blood, gristle and bone.
Voices began calling inquisitively in the first seconds of silence after the explosion, as the night-shrouded orphanage began waking up and responding.
Bolan heard retching.
Lana had pulled herself up enough to see the carnage in the room, and now she was back on hands and knees and had emptied her stomach into the debris that littered the floor.
He reached down, took her arm and hauled her to her feet, shaking her roughly, trying to break through her shock.
"Lana, come on! The Parelli family is cleaning house, and Wallace was on their list. We've got to get out of here."
Lana shook her head numbly, carefully averting her eyes from the corpse, then she seemed to come alert and realize something with a gasp. She broke away from him and ran toward the door.
"The children! We have to save the children!"
Hysteria and shock still gripped her, and Bolan hardly blamed her.
This sort of thing was his life.
Most men and women are not accustomed to rooms blowing up around them and to seeing bloodied remains of what a blink earlier had been a living, breathing person.
He started after her, reaching the hallway, when a bullet sang past his ear.
He spun, the Beretta in his hand. He spotted a man with a pistol at the other end of the hall. Bolan triggered off two quick shots.
Both hot 9 mm sizzlers zapped into the gunman's chest. The guy flopped backward against a wall.
Bolan was on his way again before the dead man hit the floor.
Lana was out of sight now.
The lobby, toward which she had been heading, was buzzing with people, including a few kids in their nightclothes, diving for cover at the sounds of gunfire.
He heard automatic weapons fire from outside. He wheeled and charged out through the door by which he and the woman had entered a few short minutes ago. He burst out into the night.
A few yards from him, someone writhed on the ground in agony.
Bolan ran to the figure, saw it was a man and knelt beside him, occasionally glancing around.
"Where are you hit?" Bolan asked sharply, trying to break through the other man's pain.
The guy wore a stethoscope and white smock: one of the institution's medical staff.
The wounded man looked up at Bolan, clearly surprised to see him. His eyes took in the blacksuit underneath the overcoat and the weapon held ready in Bolan's fist.
"Leave... leave the kids alone, damn you!" he gasped.
"I'm not going to hurt the kids," Bolan assured him firmly. "How bad are you hit?"
The medic was grasping his right leg. There was a spreading red stain on his smock.
"Nicked me in the leg and it hurts like hell," he grated. "I ran outside when I heard the explosion, trying to see what was going on. There was someone running away. He had some kind of machine gun." The guy reached up, grasping Bolan's arm. "Were you going after those guys?"
"That's right."
"Then don't waste time with me. I'll be all right."
The intern was obviously not hit bad and, from his concern about the kids, Bolan figured he... like Lana, like most of the personnel here and at Wallace's day-care centers... was innocent, a caring employee duped by Wallace.
The Executioner realized he had to find Lana. And he had to get out of here before the police arrived, which would not be long.
Those responsible for the carnage were only a moment ahead of him.
He clapped the man on the shoulder.
"Hang in there."
He set off at a run toward the front of the administration building, through the shadows between the wings, half expecting to trip over another body, but he encountered no resistance.
The pandemonium from the compound faded behind him.
He came around the corner of the building.
Most of the people in the lobby of the admin building had stayed there, except for one little blond-haired youngster in her pajamas. She was no more than five, a stuffed rabbit dangling from her dimpled little left hand.
Curious, the child had strayed away from the melee in the lobby and her absence had not yet been discovered by those inside.
She was staring off down the street. She turned intelligent eyes at the big man striding toward her.
"Are you with Miss Lana?" she chirped.
Bolan knelt to bring his face level with that of this small girl.
"Have you seen Miss Lana?"
The youngster nodded.
"She used to play with me whenever she came here to work," the girl informed Bolan in a perky voice. "She couldn't play with me tonight. They wouldn't let her."
Bolan heard his own sharp intake of breath.
"Where did they go?"
"They took her away. They were bad men." The child looked off down the street again longingly. "I wish she would come back. I like her. Are you a bad man, too?"
Bolan found his voice.
"Uh, no. Please don't be frightened." He gently took the child by the arm, guided her around and sent her off with a nudge in the direction of the lobby entrance. "You go inside now and don't come back out."
"Okay."
The little girl did as she was told.
Bolan hurried across the lawn toward the parked Camaro. He slid inside the car before anyone emerged from the lobby of the building.
The sounds of chaos echoed from back there and wisps of smoke and settling dust from the exploded grenade still wafted from the shattered windo
w of Floyd Wallace's office.
He gunned Lana Garner's Camaro to life, knowing he had no chance in hell of catching up with whoever had snatched her. He knew the direction taken, thanks to the little girl, but he had no idea of the make of the car.
He knew only one thing with any certainty.
The Parelli family had Lana.
Bolan did not know who had ordered the hit on Floyd Wallace, whether it was David Parelli or his mother, but that did not really matter.
What mattered was that the family was doing its best to cover its trail now that they knew Bolan was after them.
And that told Mack Bolan that there was something in the wind tonight, as his gut had told him from the beginning. And it had to do with children.
It was going down tonight, the whole bloody tangled mess.
The Parellis.
Dutton.
Griff.
And they had Lana.
He steered the Camaro away from there at full speed, leaving the orphanage behind him.
The fuse was growing shorter.
There wasn't much fuse left, not by a damn sight.
And then this night of blood would really burst wide open.
And Chicago would rock to its very foundations, to its very core.
Courtesy of the Executioner.
16
Sheba needed a drink. Badly.
She sat at her desk in the office on the third floor of the massage parlor.
The place had been cleaned up considerably since Bolan had come blitzing through.
The broken glass had been vacuumed, her lifting weights had been put back in order and the blood had been mopped up.
Her jaw still hurt like hell from the guy's punch, though. She nursed the swelling bruise with a hand towel full of ice cubes.
Whatever else you could say about Mack Bolan, that son of a bitch was no damn gentleman, she thought sourly.
Sheba stood and walked over to a bar on the wall between her office area and the weight room.
There was no liquor; she kept the bar well-stocked with carrot juice, wheat germ and the like. She hadn't developed her body to this point just to ruin it by pouring poison into it, she reminded herself, though a drink right now would taste damn good, she had to admit. The free-for-all with Bolan had given her a case of the jitters she seemed unable to get rid of.
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