"Hell, I'm still missing it."
"Maybe someone else is, too," Bolan said quietly.
Yeah. But not Bolan. He'd found his answer.
16: PUSHING IT
The time was midnight. All telephone service at the hotel had been "temporarily lost." Leo Turrin was in the penthouse, collaborating with Harry Attica on the problems of "guest security." Bolan's warwagon was in a private garage two blocks from the hotel. A Canadian Air Force helicopter stood at Bolan's disposal at a pad just minutes away.
The requested "hotline" to Washington had not materialized but a telephone in Bolan's suite—the only working phone in the hotel—was directly connected to an office in the Canadian capital of Ottawa where a joint US—Canadian "task force" headquartered.
Bolan had, also, his file of known or suspected members of Quebecois Francais—and a brief run-through was all that had been required to confirm his reading of the situation in Montreal. Everything was ready for the push.
And so was the pusher.
He'd been to the warwagon and selected the weapons for the night.
The Executioner was combat rigged and ready. He wore the skintight blacksuit and quiet shoes. The silent Beretta was in its customary place shoulder-slung beneath the left arm. The big silver AutoMag, Big Thunder, rode the waist on military web. Slit pockets in the legs of the black-suit held stiletto, garrotes, smoke sticks, flares. He wore special goggles and carried a small infrared flashlight in a special waist-holster which left the hands free for other matters.
The night was ready to claim her own.
Bolan entered "the tree" via the trick panel in his wall and descended quickly to the third-floor level, then crawled along a horizontal branch to the suite of Carmine Pellittrea, head of the Neapolitan delegation to the Montreal Meet.
According to the room chart, Pellittrea slept with a pair of bodyguards. Connecting suits to either side housed the rest of the group from Napoli, for a total of ten men. Not exactly the largest contingent at the congress but certainly among the most influential.
Bolan had not the faintest idea of what Pellittrea looked like but this did not really matter. It had to be a clean sweep, wall to wall.
He lay in the passageway with his ear to the panel for a full five minutes—getting the feel of life and movement inside there. When he did enter, it was with a rather valid understanding of what would be encountered inside that suite.
Entry was via the sitting room. The television was on, murmuring softly, providing the only light to the room.
A guy lay sleeping, fully clothed, on the couch. Another sat slouched in a straight chair, shoes off, feet propped onto another chair, staring sleepily at an old French movie. He wore hardware in a shoulder rig.
The man in black came up quietly from the rear and opened wide those sleepy eyes with a nylon necktie that buried itself in that soft flesh at the throat.
The guard stiffened and threshed around a bit before slumping into final rest but the one on the couch was not at all disturbed. Bolan walked past that one and pushed open the bedroom door. A rather large, distinguished-looking man in pyjamas sat propped on pillows on the bed, reading by a bed lamp.
The guy raised his eyes to stare calmly at the Intruder, and he was still staring without comment when the Beretta put a sighing round between those eyes.
Bolan closed that door and returned to give the sleeper one of the same, then he crossed to the connecting door to the adjoining suite and entered firing.
The first round caught a hawk-nosed skinny torpedo who was digging for a Coke in an ice chest. The next found a wild-eyed little guy in underwear who'd just stepped from the bathroom and tried too late to change his mind. Two other guys, obviously torpedoes, came running in from the other room. Both had apparently been preparing for bed and were partially disrobed, though each still wore a hardware rig and each was trying to get clear of the other in order to launch an effective response. For a panicky microsecond, there, they seemed to be fighting each other—then Bolan resolved that mini-conflict with a Parabellum snorter for each. One of the recipients was unfortunate enough to have caught his a trifle low; the hollownose slug tore in just beneath the chin and popped the guy back through the doorway. He was lying back there whistling through his open throat when Bolan sent him another to the proper place.
It was one of those small, off-number errors which could one day write finis to a perfectionist such as Mack Bolan.
The noise-suppressor for the Beretta was Bolan's very own—devised and built by the man himself—and it was really quite effective. The reports through that silencer were hardly more than a faintly whistling sigh—a soft chooong sound—but it was an audible sound, and it could be heard, especially in confined areas.
Add to that the thump of a heavy body going down under a sloppy hit—and, yeah, a guy behind enemy lines could be in trouble.
Bolan thought for sure he was, when the other four from the final suite came charging in to investigate. There were oohs and aahs and Italian exclamations, and then there were people flinging themselves off into four directions at once and handguns booming—and, hell, that kind of racket was the last thing Bolan had wanted.
A reload for the Beretta was not part of the problem, requiring no more than one second flat to eject the spent clip and chuck in another. But some sensing of the combat mind had already sprung Big Thunder into that strong right hand and—with the fat already in the fire—there was no reluctance to give the big piece its thundering head.
The first sizzling round of .44 magnum caught a guy whirling across toward the window and sent him sprawling head first through the glass and on out the window.
The second, coming like an immediate echo, grabbed another guy by the throat and set him spinning like a dervish with blood spurting everywhere.
A guy on the floor, just under that, jack-knifed away in perfect timing to collect the next big grain bullet in the ear—and the fourth man of the set took his through the upholstered seat of an overturned chair, dead center between the eyes.
Heavy feet were pounding along the hallway and the rising sounds of excited voices were making themselves heard from above and below when Bolan slipped back into the shaft and secured the panel in place..
And, sure, he'd lost his numbers—on the very first hit. Room phones or no, the entire join would be at battle stations within the next few minutes.
The "quiet initiative" would have no chance, now.
The soft war was over—nearly as soon as it had begun.
He was resolved, however, to make as much hay as his waning sun would allow.
The Executioner was climbing fast and furious, headed for the farthest point possible from that zone of alarm.
He would hit the fifteenth floor, and all he could reach there. The penthouse would of course be directly overhead, and most of Joe Staccio's outraged force was probably up there right now.
So okay.
Let hell claim its own.
The Executioner was blitzing.
Larry Attica took a nervous pull at his cigarette and declared : "I don't like it, Mr. Turrin. It ain't natural for all the phones to just go out like that. I mean, all of them?"
"You been in Manhattan lately?" Turrin growled. "You can spend half your time without phones in that town. Relax, Larry. They're just replacing some equipment in the central exchange. We'll be back in by morning."
"I still don't like it," Attica insisted.
"You don't have to like it," the underboss said. You just have to live with it. Did you get your people deployed?"
The crew chief from Syracuse ground out his cigarette and lit another as he replied, "Yessir. I got them on two-section watch—four hours on and four off. Now I put two boys on each floor. One is at the elevators. The other is patrolling the hall. I got ten down in the lobby and another four at the side entrance. Outside, I got one boy watching each side of the building—down on the ground—and I put one on each wall, up here on the roof. Now if the guy
can come through all that, then by God he's some kind of ghost."
"Yeah, it sounds good and tight," Turrin agreed.
"I just wish we had phones. If I knew where to get them, I'd send out for a crate full of walkie-talkies. I don't like this damn communications gap."
The underboss from Pittsfield chuckled and told the worrier from Syracuse : "You got it under control, Larry—stop worrying. The men in New York are going to be hearing some nice things about you, after this. Believe me."
Attica puffed noticeably under that praise. "Like you said, Mr. Turrin—somebody had to take hold. I'm sorry about Joe—I mean, I feel like pulling my hair and yelling every time I think about that—but, God, the world didn't come to an end with Joe Staccio. I mean, this is the meet of the century. It would be terrible, just terrible, if this thing fell all to hell now."
"Augie would be very unhappy about that," Turrin solemnly agreed. "Don't you worry none, he's going to appreciate and remember the way you boys closed in behind Joe and held the thing together. What's Little Al doing, by the way?"
Attica jerked his head toward the bedroom, "He's sitting with the body. Got 'im on ice, in the bathtub."
"That's a terrible thing," Turrin said. He got to his feet and strolled to the window. Terrible sure—but the world sometimes was a terrible place. Joe Staccio had simply collected his own due. The guy had certainly added more than his share of terror to the world. Guys like Staccio deserved no dignity in death. Life, to them, was profane—nothing but a four-letter word. Could their own deaths be anything more?
Attica called over, "I wonder what Mr. Ruggi is doing."
"He's very busy," Turrin replied in a muffled voice. Yeah, sure, Mr. Ruggi must be very busy at this very moment. Turrin wheeled away from that window and took two steps toward the center of the room when the booming report of distant guns momentarily froze him to the spot. His gaze locked with Attica's alarmed leap of eyes and both men made a fast break toward the terrace.
Electrified men were moving energetically about that roof.
Attica yelled, "What is it?"
The sentry at the south wall cupped his hands to call back, "Gunfire below! Someone just fell through a window, down there! Third or fourth floor !"
"Aw shit!" Attica agonized. He ran back into the apartment, where the off-duty security force was quickly grouping. "Half of you to the third floor, half to the fourth !" he yelled. "Know who you're shooting at, but don't take no shit offa nobody!”
Leo Turrin ambled on to the south parapet where he joined the sentry in a cautious observation of the situation below. The gunfire had ended. Indeed—it had come and gone so quickly that a guy could even wonder if his ears had been playing tricks. Turrin knew better than that, though.
Mr. Ruggi was indeed very busy.
And Leo Turrin was even more worried than Worrying Larry Attica. Something more important than the Montreal Meet was at stake here.
Something had evidently gone wrong down there—and a noble life had just committed itself to a battle line—not a profane life, not a four letter-word life, but a magnificently superb one.
And, sure, Leo Turrin was a worried man.
"Hang in there, guy," he muttered to himself.
"Sir ?" asked the parapet guard.
Turrin looked at the guy, and actually saw him for the first time. Hardly more than a kid, early twenties—probably a Vietnam vet with nothing in his bag of life but guns, bucks, and broads.
"I said it's a lousy life," Turrin replied.
The kid grinned engagingly and told the under-boss from Pittsfield, "Just let me get a shot at that bastard, sir, and you won't hear me complaining."
Turrin smiled and walked away.
True, kid, true. Get close enough to Mack Bolan to take a shot at him—and nothing in the whole world would be close enough to hear your final complaint.
The world wasn't lousy—it was just savage. And Leo Turrin was placing his chips on the largest savage of them all.
17: HONORS
The thought had not occurred to Larry Attica that he might die. That was not the worry. The thing so in control of his emotions at this moment was the fear of failure. A third-ranker with a small-town territory did not every day get a shot at the top. The developments in Montreal had come as a gift from heaven—success on a platter—and maybe the one big moment of his life.
A guy had to seize those moments. He had to make them pay. And Larry Attica certainly intended to make this one pay. With Staccio out of the picture and the whole upstate territory open to bids, the man from Syracuse could just see himself going into the game with a pat hand. The great, burdening fear now was that the whole thing was falling apart under him—that he would leave Montreal in disgrace, not in triumph.
He wanted so much to be introduced to Augie Marinello as "the boy who saved the Montreal Meet." God ! Imagine that! And if it could also be said, "This is the boy who brought in Bolan the Bastard's head"—Sweet Jesus!—who or what could stand in Larry Attica's path to the top after that?
Guys like Frank Ruggi would stand in line to shake Larry Attica's hand.
Guys like Leo the Pussy Turrin would have to step back and make room for another candidate to the Council of Kings while those tired old men like Augie Marinello found a new favourite to lean on.
Hell, there was no end to it!
Larry Attica was on a skyrocket ride to the top!
He was going to pull it off, too. If that guy Bolan had really come back--if he was really dumb enough to try them again, now that the hard was on, then by God Larry Attica was going to have Mack Bolan's balls!
The fear, however, remained. So much was at stake. And it was this fear, this trembling realization of moment, which perhaps tipped the scales of destiny and sent Larry Attica down the stairs with a handpicked crew instead of into the elevators with the main force.
He simply had to play all possibilities. The idea was to spot-check each floor on the way down to the trouble area.
And, yes, it proved to be an inspired idea.
It had required perhaps two minutes from the first sound of gunfire below until the Attica counterforce was organized and crowding into the elevators. Georgie Corona and Sam Paoli remained behind with Attica, then followed him down the stairwell for the "floor shake."
He explained the procedure as they hurried down the first flight of stairs. "We'll use the boys on floor duty to help shake it. I'll stick at the stairway door, that'll leave four of you to run along those halls and hit every door. Don't waste time with explanations. Just hit the door and check to see that everything's okay inside."
"Some of these guys don't speak English," Corona panted. "How do we—"
"I said don't waste time. If you get an answer, any answer, it's okay."
They burst through the stairway door at the fifteenth level, and the floor men there immediately came running.
"Door check!" Attica called to them. He gave his other two boys a push as he yelled, "You got a minute Make it quick !"
The checkers ran off in two-man teams, beginning at the middle and working toward the ends, a man to each side of the hall—banging doors and yelling, "Security check !"
Attica nervously lit a cigarette and maintained a tense vigil at the midpoint—shouting reassurances at the startled men who'd come to their doors to find nothing there but pyramiding confusion.
He kept yelling, "It's okay, go back inside—routine check !"
Apparently there did exist a communications problem, however. Excited voices were raised in several languages all along that hallway—and no one seemed to understand what was happening.
A bald-headed guy in a bathrobe must have decided that the building was on fire, and was loudly wondering, in strongly accented French, as to the whereabouts of the fire escape. "Oil estl'escalier de secours?,Ay? Ay? L'escalier?"
Attica was yelling, "No, no, it's okay ! Go back to bed ! Routine—" when a door halfway along the east side banged open and a guy came backpedaling
out of there with a gun in his hand and blasting like crazy at something inside the room.
The crew chief from Syracuse had already begun regretting his hasty approach to the security check—he'd only panicked the whole damn floor and now here was a guy going crazy with a gun. Before that idea was wholly formed in Attica's reeling mind, however, another one leapt in to replace it—and this one needed no time for formation. The head of that crazy guy down there suddenly went off in several directions at once—flinging parts of itself in a spray onto the wall like an overripe melon falling from a truck. And then before that body could hit the deck, another came sliding out of the same room with a gun in it’s hand and a gushing hole where its nose had been.
With all that to occupy his mind, Attica was still able to appreciate the sudden silence in that hallway and to reflect for perhaps one heartbeat upon the effect of gunfire on a panicky crowd.
Every man Jack in that hall was packing hardware, most of them waving their guns around like cheerleaders with pompons.
Two dead men were lying in their own fluids on that hallway floor. Twenty or thirty guys with guns in their hands were just standing there gawking at the mess. Only Georgie Corona and Sam Paoli seemed to have any presence of mind. They were returning from the opposite end of the building, shoving people back through their open doorways and clearing that hall as rapidly as possible.
Elapsed time from the first blood spray : perhaps ten seconds. Attica himself had just found his own voice, calling to the floormen on the east end : "Watch it, boys, watch it. We got something here."
The "guests" on that end were getting the idea also. They were quietly easing back to their rooms and peering through cracked doors to cautiously evaluate the situation.
The floormen had reached the death scene and
were tentatively poking at the bodies with their feet. One of them called to Attica : "I see another one inside, boss. Just like these."
Georgie and Sam joined their boss at the midpoint as Attica was calling instructions to the other two : "Leave 'em be. Stay right there but get back away from that door."
Executioner 024 - Canadian Crisis Page 9
