War Against the Mafia

by Don Pendleton

  “That’s a good question. It’s like trying to outguess the quarterback on a third-down play. Tell the truth, I don’t envy this Mafia bunch. They have to sit and wait for him to make his hit before they will know how to react and where. It’s like waiting for the beginning of an atomic attack, with this Bolan, anyway.”

  Pappas was grinning. “Well, it’s a new role for the Mafia, isn’t it. The tables are turned, so to speak.”

  “Yeah. What time is it?”

  “Three-forty.”

  “See, I told you it would be a damn long night. You want a sandwich?”

  Pappas shook his head emphatically. “I couldn’t eat a belly dancer’s navel right now.”

  “Nervous?”

  “You could say that, yeah. I’ve been on plenty of stake-outs before, but this one …”

  “But this one, you’re rooting for the other side, is that it?”

  Pappas shifted about uncomfortably and lit a cigarette.

  “Isn’t that it?”

  “Well, shit, so what? I kind of admire the guy.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed, Johnny—so do I. I’m just hoping he won’t try to shoot his way through a police line, that’s all.”

  “So why do you think I’m butterflies?” Pappas announced, laughing.

  “We can’t afford to let sentiment ride the trigger finger, Johnny.”

  “Hell, I know that.”

  “A sentimental cop is a dead cop.”

  “Hell, I know that.”

  “The order is shoot to kill.”

  “Well, goddamn it, I know that!”

  Weatherbee smiled grimly. “Just don’t forget it,” he said quietly.

  8 — The Big Kill

  The Executioner made a final check of the weaponry and did a mental rehearsal of the sequence of events, then returned to the range finder to study once again the layout on the opposite hillside. For thirty minutes, now, that bunch had been going through the exact same motions, as evidenced by the shadows on the large window. Either they were having a prayer service, or some sort of elaborate rite, or else …

  He kept his eye to the range finder and moved his watch close alongside and began a timing. Mark—the guy at the head of the table lifts an arm at the exact instant the third guy from the end leans over … mark—three seconds, and somebody walks past in the background … mark—five seconds, and the arm comes down, the other guy straightens … mark—three seconds, and a guy walks past in the opposite direction … mark—five seconds, and …

  Bolan studied the shadow-movements for a full five minutes, then grinned and moved on to other things. Pretty cute, he had to admit, pretty damn cute—but now, where really was the pack congregating? There were very few lights showing. Of this few, all were at the lower levels, with the sole exception of the dim rectangle of light at the large window on level two.

  He could make out one corner of the parking lot, and as he watched, a car moved rapidly through the narrow vision-field allowed by the telescopic lens; he followed it, saw the headlamps flare into brilliance, and the car careening along the drive. He wondered about it, but only briefly, returning to the inspection of the house itself. He could see nothing whatever of the roof, no more than a faint outline against the black. He swung back to the ground level, and picked up the figure of a man standing on the patio, near a waist-level wall, partly concealed in shadows. The man moved then, and rubbed something against one shoulder. A pistol—he was scratching his shoulder with the barrel of a pistol. Some idiot. What did they have down there—idiots? The range finder tracked along the wall, seeking other evidence of human habitation. A door flashed open, bright light spilling onto the flagstones for a split second, then was hastily closed. He held the spot and saw the door open again, this time without accompanying light-spillage, and two men scurried out the door and ran up some steps at the corner of the building. Bolan grinned. They were learning—but too slowly. He lost the men in the upper darkness, his wonderment growing with respect to the darkened roof area.

  Bolan glanced at his watch, and waited. He had a timed sequence planned, and he preferred a firm jump-off time. Just a few minutes more. He allowed his thoughts to wander to Valentina, to Mom and Pop, to Johnny, the kid he’d barely known and now probably would never know, to Cindy whom he had known better than any living soul and yet had not known at alt.

  One minute to jump-off. He’d promised Val that he’d be back. An empty promise, one that he’d never expected to keep. Bolan was a soldier—he knew a soldier’s odds, he knew the chances of walking off this hillside alive. Cops were all over the place; maybe they’d even bring in dogs. If the Mafia didn’t get him, the cops would. Sweet Val. Tender little, passionate little, sweet little Val—a girl who had saved her love only to hand it over to a doomed man. There was a sadness; yes, there was a sadness.

  He pushed aside the sadness and moved over to the long tubelike object positioned alongside the range finder, final-checked the azimuth calculations, and began the ten-second countdown. The tube belched and hissed and the projectile roared down the range. The Big Kill was on.

  “Jesus Christ!” Pappas yelped. “What was that? Where’d it come from?”

  “Rocket of some kind!” Weatherbee yelled.

  The streaking glow had roared through the night air at dazzling speed, impacting on the lower corner of the mansion in a thunderous explosion. All lights had winked out and only the dull, licking flames at the devastated corner were providing illumination. A man was screaming in obvious agony, and the excited, raised voices of other men could be heard calling to one another.

  Weatherbee and Pappas were on their feet outside the squad car at the perimeter of the property, looking down on the house from about 300 feet. “Where’d the damn thing come from?” Pappas repeated excitedly.

  “Those hills over there,” Weatherbee snapped. “Hand me those binoculars!”

  “Think we oughta go down there, maybe give ’em a hand?”

  “You outta your mind? They’d shoot us as quick as they’d shoot Bolan. Besides, he isn’t finished with them, bet your ass on that.”

  “Good Mary, Mother of God!” Plasky cried. “He’s bombing us!”

  “Shut up, shut up, and get your head down, you idiot” Seymour snapped. “F’Christ’s sake, that was just the first shot!”

  “Shot? Shot? You call that a shot? Where’s Sergio? What the hell is Sergio doing?”

  “Everybody keep down and stay calm,” Sergio’s voice intoned loudly, floating down from the higher level. “Did anybody see where it came from?”

  A chorus of excited voices all tried to report at once.

  “Outta the sky!” yelled one.

  “Th’ south corner!” came another intelligible response.

  “It came right outta th’ fuckin’ moon,” reported a voice close to Seymour.

  “Aw shit, shit!” Sergio cried. “Keep your eyes open now! Look for a flash, anything, a bit of smoke, just keep your eyes open!”

  “Heads up, pip, pip, and all that shit,” Seymour muttered to himself.

  The Executioner was completing another countdown. He hit Zero and the flare gun at the same instant, then smiled and picked up the Marlin, peering through the scope. Seconds later the flare shell opened in the sky directly above the Frenchi mansion and floated gently groundward in startling brilliance, lighting the area like a personal sun. Bolan’s scope was already seeking the Frenchi roof when the shell burst into brilliance, a dazed, upturned face raised to the white hot sun loomed into the vision-field and Bolan’s educated finger took spontaneous action. The big gun roared and bucked against him; he fought it steady, hanging grimly to the eyepiece and saw his target go down, hands digging at the belly. Bolan nodded in confirmation of his correction; from chin to belly was about 15 inches. He swung slightly left and picked up another target; another squeeze and buck; a few more degrees left, another target, again a squeeze; and another, and another, and he had counted off but five seconds. He laid down the Mar
lin and bent his eye to the range finder for a broader view. That roof was full of men, some still standing and staring stupidly into the brilliance, others seemingly frozen with surprise and fear, one was trying to support a bloody and obviously dead body; but most were at least partially concealed behind the low parapet at the edge of the roof. Obviously nobody had spotted his muzzle-flashes; there was no return fire.

  Bolan shook his head sadly, muttered, “Who’s the amateur?” and went into another countdown.

  “There’s four dead and one wounded up here” an excited voice called down.

  “Sergio! Sergio? What do we do?”

  “How long do those damn things burn?”

  “Down, down, everybody keep down and eyes open!” It was Sergio, huffing with excitement. “Pete! Barney! Start raking that hillside!”

  The abrupt chatter of a machine gun broke the deadening pall, then another, and nobody really cared if there were a target to shoot at or not. Just the sound of firepower, coming from their camp, was a comfort in itself. Then another light streaked in from the darkness.

  “Christ, lookit, another whizzer!”

  The rocket slammed into the roof with a heart-stopping thunder of sound and flame, just as the flare burned out, dislodging men, stone, and mortar alike to rain onto the patio below. Screams of terror and groans of agony rose up in its wake, and then there was nothing but the frightening blackness of the night. A machine gun resumed its chatter, firing sporadically, but there was little cheer to its impotent message. Men were running blindly through the darkness. Muffled curses, labored breathing, and exclamations of pain and horror told the story of untrained would-be combatants; and still it was not the ending, but only the beginning. The walking explosions began then, in a pattern of terror that left no stone of the Frenchi mansion untouched or unshaken. And even the machine guns ceased their useless chatter, and the exodus of The Family was in full sway.

  “He’s shelling them with mortar fire,” Weatherbee announced grimly. “My God, that must be sheer hell down there.”

  “Where’d that guy get that kind of stuff?” Pappas wondered, in an awed voice.

  “That’s not the point. The point is, he knows how to use it. Hell, this is full-scale warfare. One-sided, yeah, but hell, this is the side I was feeling sorry for. Jesus Christ!”

  The vibrations of warfare were being felt even from their vantage point, and a chunk of shrapnel whizzed into the door of the squad car, missing Pappas by inches. “Hit-the-fuckin’-dirt,” he said calmly, and fell to a prone position alongside the car.

  “I think I’ve spotted him,” Weatherbee declared. “Near the top of the hill, almost directly across from the house. You can’t see anything from these mortar launchings, but if he shoots another of these rockets—well, just keep your eyes peeled thataway.”

  The sergeant’s eyes were peeled another way, however, onto the horror of sound, vibration, and powder flashes below; then another flare lit up the sky, and the sergeant shielded his eyes from the brilliance and peered dutifully toward the distant hill. “What a guy,” he said softly. “What a hell of a guy.”

  The hell of a guy was having troubling second thoughts of his own. It had gone entirely too easily. The enemy was in full rout and not one threat, not one, had come his way. Either he had grossly overestimated them, or else.… He put his eye to the Marlin’s scope and rapid-fired five rounds into an automobile that was swerving along the looping driveway. The car left the drive, curved about, and bounced back onto it and toppled onto its side like a toy, then burst into flames. Another car, which had been following closely behind, plowed into the wreckage, and moments later there was another explosion. The scene revealed beneath the glare of the second flare was a tribute to carnage and destruction. The house was all but levelled, two of its walls standing grotesquely in a pall of dust and smoke. Many of the cars in the parking area were buried beneath debris; broken windows and damaged bodies of others showed the marks of concussion and flying objects. Human bodies were strewn everywhere.

  “They should have a big punch somewhere,” Bolan murmured. “Surely, surely.” He fired off another flare and began searching the rubble through the range finder; then he heard a familiar sound, one he had not heard at such close range since Vietnam; it was a chopper, a helicopter, and it was close, damn close. Cops? he wondered. Or The Family’s big punch?

  Bolan hastily selected a flare with a short-time fuse, reset the azimuth on the flare gun, and let it fly. It flashed into brilliance almost immediately, lighting the sky at high altitude above the canyon floor and catching the chopper in bright illumination. It was so close that Bolan could see the pilot throw a protecting arm across his eyes, and the startled face of a white-haired man showed clearly in the window. The settling flare also illuminated Bolan’s position; the chopper heeled rapidly over into darkness as Bolan reached for the Marlin. He could hear it swooping close in a tight circle, then it edged back into the flare’s circle of light and began spitting fire at him from the rear deck as an automatic weapon began unloading on him. The range finder skittered away, propelled by a steel-jacketed slug, and Bolan rolled away, fighting the Marlin to his shoulder, fighting also an impulse to fire from the hip, and then the chopper was gone again. Bolan rolled over to a tree stump and sat placidly, waiting, sighting along the side of the scope toward the sound of the windmill.

  Suddenly it was back, heeling in from the other direction, and Bolan’s eye slid over onto the eyepiece and his trained finger waited for a target. A white-maned head appeared in the vision-field, clear enough for Bolan to read the bubbling excitement in the heavy-browed eyes, and then his finger did its part, the big gun bucked, and the excitement went out of white-head’s eyes as the chatter of the machine gun once again took up the challenge.

  “I can see him!” Pappas said excitedly. “They see him too. Hey! They’ve got a machine gun in that chopper!”

  “Gimme those damn glasses!” Weatherbee commanded.

  “Here—hell—don’t even need glasses! Hell—this is like the TV reports on the Vietnam fighting.”

  “This ain’t Vietnam, kiddo,” Weatherbee murmured.

  “Hell, who’d know it?”

  “That son of a bitch. How about that son of a bitch?”

  The heavy cra-ack of the Marlin came loud and clear above the other sounds, then the heavier staccato of the machine gun, punctuated thrice more by the Marlin’s reply. The thump-whump of the whirling blades seemed to take on a different sound and the helicopter lurched and wheeled crazily, plainly visible in the light from the still-high flare.

  “Well, Goddamn, I believe he hit ’em,” Weatherbee breathed.

  “Damn right, that chopper is falling!”

  “The Executioner,” Weatherbee said flatly, “has come through Armageddon.”

  The Executioner would not have been so quick to agree with Lieutenant Weatherbee’s assessment of the battle. His shoulder wound had reopened and the blood was soaking his left side. He watched the chopper disappear into the trees, waited for the explosion and grunted when it came, then limped back over to his drop and fumbled about for the first-aid box. He’d done something to his ankle during that final skirmish, and now he could hear sounds above him, somewhere in the woods. He hastily folded in a gauze compress over the shoulder wound and limped into the shadow of a tree, leaving the Marlin behind and wishing the damn flare would hurry and burn itself out.

  Someone was coming down the hillside, obviously trying to be both quiet and quick, and the twain would never meet, not in these woods. A rock the size of a baseball was dislodged and came bounding down the slope to crash into a tree several feet from where Bolan stood. Moments later Leo Turrin hove into view, panting with exertion and tension, the cords of his neck standing out plainly above the V-necked polo shirt.

  “Bolan?” he called softly. “Bolan, are you there?”

  Bolan shook his head sorrowfully. “Will you never learn, Leo?” he asked, stepping out from behind the tree, t
he .45 out and ready.

  “Goddamn I’m glad you’re all right,” Turrin declared fervently. “I came over to tell you about the helicopter, but damnit I couldn’t find you.”

  “Who the hell you trying to kid?” Bolan asked, his tone clearly one of disgusted amazement.

  Turrin held his hands straight out in front of his body and carefully sat on the ground. “Shit, I gotta give up cigarettes,” he said. “I can hardly breathe.”

  “You gotta give up more than cigarettes, kid,” Bolan told him.

  “Can I take off one shoe?”

  Bolan’s shoulder was beginning to burn maddeningly. “Is that your last request?” he asked impatiently.

  “Yeah, yeah, call it my last request. Can I take it off?”

  The flare was growing dim and was beginning to disappear over the horizon of trees. Bolan moved closer and dropped to one knee, the .45 held grimly forward. “If you’ve been trying to delay me into darkness, you can forget it already,” he said.

  Turrin had the shoe off and was peeling out the insole. He withdrew a small plasticized rectangle and proffered it to Bolan. “Look at this first, will you?” he asked quietly.

  Bolan studied the small card in the dying light of the flare, trying to keep one eye on his captive while doing so. Then he chuckled and returned the card. “You know how close you’ve been to being a dead undercover man?” he said.

  “Shit, I’ve said so many prayers I’m about to get religion again,” Turrin replied, smiling broadly.

  “You not interested in arresting me?” Bolan asked whimsically. His fingers moved to the wound and pressed hard against the compress. The .45 remained steady in the weakening arm.

  “I have no jurisdiction on this side of the canyon,” Turrin said, still smiling. “God, did you unload on those bastards! Is there anything left for the law?”

  “I doubt it,” Bolan said. Another thought was forming in his mind. “About my sister, Leo …”

  “I’m guilty,” Turrin said matter-of-factly. “It’s part of my cover, of course. God, I feel like hell about those kids, kids like your sister. I tried to make it easy on them—you know—steer them into good dates their first few times out, but—well—I’ve been a lot of years into this case, Sarge. There are more important things than individual haywire kids. I just hope you can understand that.”