They swept on past the human ruins, robbed of their surprise advantage now, knowing that they might run into anything beyond the pantry door. What Toro had not quite expected was the sumptuous living room, complete with curving staircase leading to the upper floor and bedrooms. Everything was hardwood, dark, crushed velvet, carpet deep enough to hide in if you bellied down.
A shotgun boomed its greeting from the stairs, and Toro's squad scattered, going to ground behind the ornate pieces of furniture. Mano was slow, and the second shotgun blast caught him in midstride, lifting him off his feet and spinning him around before dumping him facedown on the carpeting. He was dead before he hit the floor, and from his place of bare concealment, Toro could already see the small soldado's lifeblood soaking down into the nylon shag.
Above them and across the room, the shotgunner was getting overconfident. He showed himself, looking for another target. It was his last mistake. Toro raised the .45 he carried, sighting quickly down the slide and squeezing off a double punch, even as Juanito stroked a burst out of his lethal Uzi from the other side of the room.
The shotgunner was crucified to the wall, leaving long streaked traces of himself as he slid away, finally coming down head over heels, landing in an untidy heap at the foot of the staircase.
Toro and his survivors took the stairs in a rush, mounting them swiftly. They were alert to danger, but the final gunner took them by surprise, looming around the corner of the second-story landing, banging away almost in their faces with the nickel-plated revolver that he carried.
Juanito took a round between the eyes, another in the Adam's apple, dead before his trigger finger clenched, unloading the Uzi's magazine in one last, long ragged burst. He took the gunner with him, riddling the man right where he stood and sweeping him away. His job completed, little Juanito collapsed facedown on the risers, his Uzi trapped beneath his lifeless body as he fell.
They took the bedrooms one by one, crashing each in turn until they reached what was clearly the master's room. Toro gave the door a flying kick and they edged back from the open portal, waiting for a burst of fire that never came.
The room was empty, rumpled bed and scattered nightclothes bearing testimony to the fact that their quarry had been there only moments earlier. Without speaking, El Toro began a rapid search of the room, looking under the bed, into the adjoining marble bath, moving out onto the veranda that overlooked a swimming pool in back.
Nothing.
The Cuban commando was frowning as he reentered the bedroom, but his expression changed at once when he beheld the folding closet doors. Moving swiftly across to stand in front of the closet, he raised the .45 autoloader, braced it in both hands and pumped three rounds waist high across the double doors.
It was a gamble, but his aim was true. A strangled little cry from inside the depths of the closet rewarded him, and Toro closed the gap, flinging the door wide, no longer afraid that Ornelas would pose any physical threat to his men.
The traitor was crouched in a corner of the closet, hidden in among perhaps fifty expensive-looking suits. And Toro did not have to ask himself where the money for these clothes, this house, had come from. Ornelas had sold his people and his honor, sold himself to the highest bidder like a puta on the street... and it was time for him to begin paying his dues.
Toro leaned inside the closet, grabbed a handful of his quarry's hair and dragged him out into the middle of the room. Ornelas was sniveling, crying now, a man afraid of death when it came calling at his door. He looked from one face to the other, always coming back to Toro, still afraid to speak although he plainly longed to beg for mercy.
Toro did the talking for him.
"Stand up, Raoul," he snapped. "It's time to meet your people."
22
Don Phillip Sacco shifted restlessly in the back seat of the silver Rolls. Sacco wanted a cigar, but he was afraid his hands would shake if he tried to light one. He would do anything to stifle the urge rather than let his soldiers see his nervousness on the eve of battle. So he settled down to wait for the word that would propel him into combat like some kind of junior hit man.
There were six guns with him in the Rolls: one on either side of him in the back, a pair on the jump seats, and a couple more in the front. All of them were armed to the teeth, their hands held close to holstered hardware, itching for a chance to use it. They were primed to kill, damn right, and wanting it so bad that they could taste it.
They were good boys, these amici. Some of them were younger than he might have liked, but all the seasoned guns were gone or out to pasture these days. Soldiering was actually a young man's business, anyhow, he thought, although an old horse like himself could still teach them a thing or two when it came to kicking ass.
The coal-black Lincoln Continentals parked on either side of Sacco's Rolls contained identical contingents of his hardmen — eighteen guns in all. It was the core of his strike force, and they had been waiting in the parking lot outside an all-night supermarket now for the better part of ninety minutes, looking for word from one of the point cars as soon as that first crucial contact with the enemy was made.
Sacco was the general this time out, and he would not be hiding somewhere behind the lines, no way. He was intent on leading his troops into battle, closing the bottleneck with his enemies trapped inside.
It was an easy stand, there being only three main routes approaching Rickenbacker Causeway. And no matter which direction the Cuban gunners came from, they would have to choose one of the routes that Sacco had already picketed with lookouts at strategic locations.
Any way they came he had them, and his own central location made it feasible for him to instantly respond to any contact point within moments of the initial sighting.
The plan was simple, and that was why he liked it.
Sacco did not fully understand what Tommy Drake had been doing with his Cuban contacts, and at the moment he did not really give a damn. The time had come to square accounts, for damn sure.
Time to save some face and put his house in order, right, and regain some of his slipping prestige with the commission.
When he had finished whipping ass today there would be time enough to look around and see how far the treason had spread within his family. Time enough, perhaps, to show a certain smart-assed Ace of Spades how the old pros handled revolutions in the ranks.
A walkie-talkie crackled into life between the front-seat gunners. Sacco snapped his fingers, reaching for the radio and taking it from the driver's hand.
"This is Digger, calling home base. You there, Chief?"
Sacco recognized it as his scout on Brickell Avenue.
"I'm listening," he snapped. "What is it?"
"Four vans headed your way, Cubans driving."
"Slow 'em down the best you can. We're coming in."
"You got it, boss."
Sacco held the transmission button down, calling in the other point cars, knowing that he would need every gun he had.
"All cars, form up on number three's position. North on Brickell. Move it!"
He did not wait for their responses. His driver was already peeling out of the parking lot. The gunners all around him were unlimbering their weapons, checking loads.
The capo reached under his jacket and slipped the stainless .45 AMT Hardballer out of side leather. He drew back the slide to chamber a live one, easing the hammer down with the ball of his thumb.
It had been years since he had fired a shot in anger, but he had not lost the touch, hell no. He'd teach these kids a thing or two, starting now.
There was virtually no traffic on Brickell Avenue as the three-car caravan pushed north, the Rolls leading, and it only took them moments to reach their destination. Sacco had no trouble picking out the target zone from three long blocks away.
The Digger's Caddy crew wagon was parked diagonally across two lanes, the gunners crouched behind it, already firing over hood and trunk in the direction of some stationary vans. One of the troops was
stretched out dead on the asphalt, a blood slick expanding gradually around him.
Beyond the Caddy three trucks were stalled in the middle of the street, with Cubans spilling out, deploying under fire. A fourth truck was parked at an angle that indicated it had tried to swing around the Caddy, but the shattered windshield and leaking radiator bore mute testimony to the fury of the fusillade that stopped it dead.
Phil Sacco's caravan screeched to a halt behind the Cadillac, the reinforcements piling out, already under fire from the enemy as they moved into position. Sacco's aging bones protested as he ran, trying to keep his head down and out of the line of fire.
He reached the sanctuary of the Cadillac and found a place beside the crew chief, Digger Fontenelli. Sacco risked a glance over the roof of the limo, almost losing his nose as a bullet caromed off the bodywork inches from his face. After that, he was more circumspect in seeking an angle on the fray.
The Caddy was taking repeated hits, rocking to the tempo of the incoming automatic fire. There seemed to be a hundred guns against them, and Sacco was already having second thoughts about the wisdom of his plan, engaging the hostiles this way in broad daylight, where the cops or Feds or anybody might drop in at any moment.
To hell with it. They were in the middle of it now, and there was only one way out: directly through the enemy, right on.
The Digger straightened up, angling for a shot with his stubby riot shotgun, and a sniper picked him off, putting a parabellum round right through his left eye socket, taking out the whole back of his skull in a soggy crimson spray. His body tumbled backward, hitting the asphalt with a sound of grim finality.
Sacco reacted quickly, the age-old reflexes taking over as he rose to his full height, the stainless .45 seeking a target. He spied the rifleman who dropped the Digger, and Sacco squeezed off a single booming round that picked the Cuban off his feet and slammed him back against the fender of the nearest moving van.
More incoming rounds drove the capo back under cover, but his pulse was racing now. He was excited by the proximity of death, the high-altitude rush of having spilled blood.
Another gunner toppled to his right, draped across the Caddy's hood, his pistol clattering on the pavement. Sacco saw his own chauffeur go down, blood pumping from a ragged throat wound, gasping out his life while those around him went about their business, killing and being killed in turn.
And suddenly, the adrenaline high was turning into fear. The capo saw that they were hopelessly outnumbered, losing ground. There was no way in hell that they could hope to take the Cubans out and get away intact.
A tire exploded on the Caddy, then another, and Sacco crouched lower for protection. He listened to the bullets drumming into the bodywork now like rain on a tin roof, threatening to break through and find him on the other side at any moment.
He fought down an urge to cut and run for the safety of his armored Rolls. He had no driver now, could not be heard above the din of gunfire, and it suddenly occurred to him that he could no longer call off the battle even if he wanted to.
And he did want to, more than he could comprehend through the panic fogging his mind.
He half rose from his combat crouch, prepared to order anyone within earshot to retreat and make for the other cars, but before he could speak, a big gun opened up from the sidelines, filling the air with its thunder.
Sacco actually saw its projectile strike the rearmost moving van and suddenly the truck erupted, disintegrating at the seams and shooting everything inside into a towering inferno. Smoke, flames and shrapnel were heavenbound and bodies were flying, some of them flattened by the concussion.
Shock waves rocked the Caddy and Sacco stumbled, sprawling on his face. The stainless .45 spun out of his hand, and before he could recover it, there was another sharp explosion, and another, seeming to walk along the line of moving vans, closing in on his own exposed position.
Someone close to him was screaming, a sound of blind, unreasoning panic in the midst of hell on earth. And it took the capo of Miami several endless heartbeats to realize that the shrieking voice was his own.
* * *
Mack Bolan was flying the skywatch with Grimaldi, circling high above the Rickenbacker Causeway in their Bell executive whirlybird, heading inland. Their radio was set to eavesdrop on the frequency employed by Phillip Sacco's walkie-talkies, waiting for the word that would confirm some contact with the enemy.
Riding shotgun beside Grimaldi, Bolan was rigged for hellfire. He was dressed in tiger-stripe fatigues, outfitted in military webbing with the sleek Beretta underneath his left arm and the silver AutoMag in place on his right hip. He held the XM-18 40mm grenade launcher in his lap; the bandoliers crossing his chest were filled with alternating HE, smoke and antipersonnel rounds, touch-coordinated for easy access in the heat of combat.
They were skimming in across the long deserted beach when the radio hissed into life.
"This is Digger, calling home base. You there, chief?"
"I'm listening. What is it?"
"Four vans headed your way, Cubans driving."
"Slow 'em down the best you can. We're coming in."
"You got it, boss."
A brief hesitation, and when the commanding voice resumed, there was no mistaking Sacco's intonation.
"All cars, form up on number three's position. North on Brickell. Move it!"
Bolan glanced over quickly at Grimaldi and the pilot nodded, banking the chopper, homing in on Brickell Avenue and following its course along the shoreline. Within moments they had sighted the little convoy, the silver Rolls leading two Lincolns. Way back, just joining the parade but moving fast to make up time, two other crew wagons were trailing, pulling in the flanks.
Forty gunners, Bolan guessed, maybe more if they were packed in like sardines. The Executioner wondered how many Cubans it would take to fill three moving vans, leaving the fourth one empty except for its lethal cargo of explosives. Any way he counted it, the totals came up spelling bloodbath.
They skimmed over the skirmish lines where a black Caddy had the four trucks blocked and troops had already engaged each other on the street. Grimaldi swung wide, looking for a clean LZ, finally bringing Bolan in from behind a little shopping mall that fronted the street.
The ace flier hovered five or six feet above the flat roof of a Laundromat and Bolan flashed a thumbs-up prior to jumping. He landed on the run, ducking beneath the rotor wash to take up his position at the front edge of the roof, overlooking the battlefield some fifty yards away.
After discharging his passenger, Grimaldi lifted off and took position in the rafters, out of small-arms range. At need, he could get in touch with Bolan by means of a tiny transceiver headpiece that the warrior had included in his battle dress.
The reinforcements had arrived as Bolan reached his lookout post, and now gunners were spilling out of the assorted crew wagons, the Rolls and carbon-copy Continentals, trading fire with the scattered Cubans. From where he stood, Mack Bolan could make out the bobbing, weaving figure of Phil Sacco as he looked for cover down behind the makeshift roadblock formed by the bullet-punctured Cadillac.
He let them get to know each other for moment, watching troopers fall on either side, looking for the best angle of attack for himself. Finally, he decided that the Cubans would most likely have their explosives stashed in the rearmost van, for safety's sake, and also making it easier to shut down the causeway behind the three troop carriers.
He raised the XM-18 launcher and announced his entry to the battle with an HE round that impacted on the rearmost moving van. A secondary blast tore the early-morning scene apart. It was a thunderous explosion, shattering windows for half a mile along the boulevard, leveling every upright body on the battlefield with a massive shock wave that rocked the other vans and vehicles, deafening the participants and leaving them shaken, stunned.
The small arms fire below him dried out completely for a moment following the blast, and Bolan moved into the breach, his project
ile launcher belching fire and smoke as he picked out new targets, walking the HE rounds along the line of makeshift troop vehicles. The vans were going up like a string of giant firecrackers, scattering their occupants in bits and pieces, driving the survivors in a frantic scramble-search for any cover that might save them from the rain of fire.
He pivoted and dropped another high-explosive can directly onto Sacco's silver Rolls, consuming it in fire and smoke that quickly spread to take the Caddy out as well. Below him all was chaos now, the gunners on both sides unloading aimlessly, none of them apparently pinpointing the source of their sudden disaster.
Bolan's HE rounds were spent, but he kept on firing, scattering the shaken, stunned survivors with round after punishing round of buckshot, blowing ragged holes in the disintegrating ranks, ripping flesh and fabric at the limit of his howitzer's effective range. There was no answering fire, and by the time he exhausted his first drum it was apparent to the soldier that none would be forthcoming.
The tiny earpiece of his radio was crackling at him, and Jack Grimaldi's familiar voice seemed to emanate from somewhere inside his ringing skull. Bolan eased back on the launcher's trigger, cupping a hand over his other ear to screen out the screams of the wounded and dying from below.
"Time to go, Striker. Cavalry's coming."
Bolan grinned and shook his head. He knew better, yeah.
The cavalry had already arrived.
And in the distance now, he could hear the converging sirens. That would be Bob Wilson, leading in the SWAT teams on a mop-up mission. Bolan backed off, leaving the remains to Wilson and his troops.
The Executioner's mind was already racing away from the smoky killing ground toward the final stop along his hellfire journey through Miami.
The soldier had some final business to transact with Toro yet, before he called it quits and started looking for another hellground.
Toro was waiting for him, right, and Mack Bolan could not afford to be late. The fate of his mission could be hanging in the balance, still undecided, and the soldier never left a job unfinished.
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