"That make you nervous, Abe?" Spinoza asked, toying with him now.
Bernstein shook his snowy head.
"I'm old," he said. "I don't get nervous, Frank. I just get tired."
"Well, save your strength, old man. I'm gonna need you here to man the fort until this thing blows over."
There was weary resignation in his voice as Bernstein answered.
"Anything you say, Frank."
"Good."
"What should I tell our guests? Where are they going to go?"
"I don't care what you tell them. Use your own imagination — union problems, broken plumbing... anything. Just get them out. I'm calling in some markers on the Strip to get the rooms we need. We'll have it covered by the time you get them packed."
"The transportation..."
"Is no problem, Abe," Spinoza interrupted him, and he was getting irritated now. The game was over. "They don't have wheels, we'll run the limos, stick 'em on the damn bus — who cares? Don't make a problem out of nothing."
"Right."
"We're set, then?"
"Set." The old man nodded confirmation.
"Okay, get on it."
Abe Bernstein let himself out of the private office, and Spinoza was left alone. At once the mafioso put him out of mind, already moving on to other more important things. The old man would do what he was told — or he would rue the consequences of his failure.
In the coming hours Frank Spinoza would command an army, finally get his chance to move against the common enemy. A tardy move, no question there, but not too late.
Not yet.
The troops had been reluctantly provided subsequent to his last conversation with The Man.
New York was still opposed to open warfare in the city, but as long as it was unavoidable, as long as someone else had started it, at least they meant to win.
His own accounting of the sniper raid and Julio DePalma's grisly end had turned the trick.
Spinoza was convinced of it. The old oratorical gift coming through for him again as it always had in the past.
He had sensed that many different ears were listening to him as he laid it out — the whole Five Families — and he had spared them nothing on the scrambled line. He let them see poor Julio — the bastard, coming at Spinoza that way — splattered on the walls and leaking out his life into the deep-shag carpet. And the others, flopping, dying.... When he had finished, New York asked him what he needed. No more waiting, no more arguments, no stalling. Just a blank check with a single string attached.
He had to make it good and make it fast.
If he should fumble somehow No.
Spinoza put the thought out of his mind. Defeat was out of the question. He had a chance to show the powers that be another side of Frank Spinoza here tonight. And let them see that he could hold his own in battle, not just in the peace negotiations afterward.
If — no — when he pulled it off, he would be in a position to dictate some rather different terms. Perhaps to cut himself a hefty slice of the pie. Spinoza eased the Browning from his belt and set it on the desk in front of him, its muzzle pointed at the office door. He was looking forward to the opportunity of using it. Tonight, perhaps. Tomorrow for certain. If the campaign lasted any longer.
Spinoza smiled to himself, his mind at ease now.
Seiji Kuwahara had already missed his chance.
Pearl Harbor, hell. It would be frigging Hiroshima and Nagasaki all rolled into one before he finished with the little yellow bastard.
And he meant to plant him personally.
The future capo of Las Vegas owed it to himself.
12
The white phone caught Brognola halfway out the office door. He thought about ignoring it but habit and a sense of duty drew him back. He did not bother turning on the lights. The big Fed knew his office like he knew the inside of his home, and he navigated around the lurking obstacles to reach the desk, lifting the receiver on the fifth ring.
It was a private line reserved for use by agents in the field. The SOG line, every bit as vital to Bolan as the other one that terminated in the Oval Office. Each line without the other formed a broken circuit. Brognola was the link between them, joining them into a working whole — and that meant he was constantly on call.
"I ran into a friend of ours out here tonight," the caller told him. He recognized the voice of Tommy Anders instantly. "Out here" was Vegas, naturally. "As for the rest of it..."
"We don't have any friends out there," he answered gruffly.
"Well, maybe one," the comic amended.
"I don't follow you, Joker." The big Fed felt a familiar sour burning in his stomach. Hell, he thought he had that cured. He was lying to the operative, sure... and to himself. He had been getting bulletins from Vegas through the day, and now Brognola knew exactly who the "friend out there" must be.
Mack Bolan, right.
The hellfire guy was out there, living on the edge as always, cutting through the bureaucratic bull in his search for essence. And Brognola could envy him that, his dramatic successes, even as he mourned a sense of loss inside himself.
The comic's voice demanded his attention, small and far away.
"Maybe you can follow this, then." Anders sounded irritated, shifting into flat-out anger. "Our boy's between a hammer and the anvil here. Could be two hammers, if his latest hunch pans out." A moment's hesitation, and the angry voice was somewhat softer when it spoke again. "He could use some help, man."
"Sorry, he's not our boy anymore."
There was something in Brognola's throat all of a sudden, threatening to choke him, and he put a hand across the mouthpiece, coughing hard to clear it.
"Dammit, Hal!"
"Dammit, nothing," Brognola snapped back. "Striker... made his choice. He'll have to live with it."
"Or die with it?"
"He knows the risks, Joker. Hell, he wrote the book."
"It could be someone's tacking on a whole new chapter while he isn't looking."
Brognola frowned. He did not want to hear this, but he could not shut the comic off without allowing him to finish his report. He would just have to take the information for whatever it was worth, divorce himself from Bolan's side of it entirely.
If he could.
If not.
"So, let me have it, Joker."
"The name of Bernstein ring a bell?
"You don't mean Leonard?"
"Let's try Abe, for starters."
"That's old business."
"Maybe... maybe not."
Brognola did not like the feeling that was creeping up his spine and sliding icy tendrils out along his scalp.
"What's the rumble?"
Anders cleared his throat and started fresh.
"Striker thinks the old-boy network may be working out some kind of end run on the families out here."
"Where does Tokyo come into it?" Brognola asked him.
"Could be a wild card, a diversion — take your pick. Whatever hassles Frank Spinoza and the rest of them is good for business, right? Our guy's not sure on that point yet."
"He's not..."
"Our guy," the comic finished for him. "Sure. All right, already. You can't blame a guy for trying."
"No, I can't at that."
"So how about it?"
"What?" Brognola knew what Anders wanted from him, but he stubbornly refused to openly acknowledge it.
"You know what. When can we expect the cavalry?"
"No cavalry on this one, Joker. I had too much explaining to do the last time I helped him. Not to mention the cost in personal suffering." Brognola grimaced as the burning pain lanced his stomach. "You're observing, and that's all. If anybody tries some independent action...."
"Then we leave him hanging out there on his own. That it?"
"That's it," Brognola told him leadenly. "He knew the game plan when he bought his ticket."
Stony silence on the other end and Hal Brognola lasted all of ninety seconds with the frost
bite gnawing at his ear.
"Okay, I'll make some calls, goddammit. See what I can do. Don't count on anything."
"I never do. But thanks."
The line went dead and Brognola hung it up at his end. He pulled a cigar from the inside pocket of his coat and fired the stogie up, drawing acrid smoke deep down into his lungs.
The doctors had been telling him to cut down on his smokes, or give them up entirely, but sometimes they were the only thing that helped him to relax, to think a problem through.
Like now.
Mack Bolan was in Vegas. Naturally.
There was trouble in Nevada, with a Mob war brewing. And where else would the hellfire warrior be but right there in the middle of it all. Nowhere else.
Brognola missed the guy and grieved for him as if the Executioner was dead already. He had slipped beyond the pale when he bailed out of the official Phoenix program. When it came down to offering assistance to an outlaw. Like the old days. When Bolan was the world's most wanted fugitive with a price on his head from both sides of the law.
Small world, for damned sure, and it just kept turning, bringing everything around full circle in the end. Sometimes it seemed to Brognola that the past few years had never happened, that he was right back where he started from the first time that he heard Mack Bolan's name. But that was wrong, and when the momentary anger passed he realized the error in his thinking.
They were long miles down the road from where they had started out together, and they had scored some touchdowns for the right side on the way. The world might not be different to the naked eye, but if you strained your vision, underneath the smog bank were some clean spots, which Brognola and the Executioner had scrubbed free of their slime.
The cleanser they had used was every bit as old as man himself. Fire and blood, in equal mixture, with a lot of elbow grease thrown in to make it bite down hard and deep.
They had made changes and scored some victories that no one could deny — albeit largely classified and buried in some filing cabinet somewhere.
They had been good together and the remnants of the Phoenix Project stood as a memorial to their achievement.
Not that Hal was patting himself on the back, hell no. He did not have the interest or, at almost midnight on a Friday, the energy. He was convincing himself, applying the fine art of interior persuasion. Psyching himself up to do what he knew must be done in spite of all the orders and regulations to the contrary.
He meant to help Mack Bolan if he could.
And that was far from certain given his surroundings, the hour... a whole host of variables beyond his control.
But he would try.
Because he had to.
The Executioner was out there. Still living large. Still fighting. Their fight.
And so what if he was not "our guy" anymore?
He would be Hal Brognola's guy as long as the big Fed could draw breath and stand up on his own size thirteen's.
Brognola settled down behind his desk with weary resignation, dragged the telephone across to him and started making calls.
* * *
Tommy Anders sat on the edge of his hotel bed, staring at the silent telephone. He tried to think of someone he could call, of something he could say — and every time it wound up in a ghastly gallows-humor parody.
Hello, Clark County Sheriff?
FBI? Whoever? This is Tommy Anders calling from the Sultan's Lounge. That's right.
Well, since you ask, I'm calling to report a gang war. Oh, you heard? Well, does the name Mack Bolan ring a bell?
He shook his head disgustedly. Brognola would do everything he could, the comic knew that, but it might not be enough. And he was rankled by the Fed's reluctance to assist a man who had done so much for the cause.
If there was only something... Of course there was.
Bolan had entrusted him with Lucy Bernstein and he could keep her safe and sound until the storm blew over. He could take that load off Bolan's shoulders, right — and in the process, he could try to get some information out of her.
Anders was not sure he followed Bolan's logic on that business with the old-boy network. Anything was possible, of course, but it was hard to visualize a bunch of grizzled old-timers taking on the new breed of the Mafia. At first glance it was like the plot of some peculiar cops-and-robbers sitcom — "The Revenge of the Over-the-Hill Gang," dammit.
Except that Bolan was not laughing when he spelled it out for Tommy Anders.
He was deadly serious and that was good enough to wipe the smile off Tommy's face for starters. Whether anybody else was buying it or not the comic was convinced that Bolan's theory merited a closer scrutiny.
And if his hunch was anywhere near being on the money.
Then what?
What if old Abe Bernstein and his cronies were committed to a course of putting heat on Frank Spinoza and the rest of them through media exposure?
Anders frowned. There would be more, much more to it than that, he knew.
The geriatric crowd had never hatched a single altruistic thought among themselves — and likely never would.
If they were going up against the Mafia now — in headlines, in the streets, whatever — they would have a motive more or less commensurate with risk. And he was back at the initial question once again. What motive?
Good old everyday revenge would do for openers. The Mafia had looted Bernstein's castle, relegated him to puppet status, and the same had happened to a number of his close confederates.
Revenge, if he read it right. Still, it was not enough.
The Mafia had made its move on Bernstein and the others nearly thirty years ago.
If they were going to make a move... He gave it up. The sterile exercise was getting him nowhere... and he was wasting time.
The woman with the answers — some of them at any rate — was waiting for him just beyond the bedroom door.
He had required some privacy for his communication with Brognola, but the time had come to see exactly what she knew.
If anything.
And Tommy Anders knew exactly how to go about it. He was an expert. Wit and charm would do the trick.
"Well, now..." He froze in the open bedroom doorway, instantly forgetting everything he planned to say. He would not need it now.
There was nobody left to say it to.
The woman had slipped out on him while he was on the line to Wonderland.
"Goddammit!"
He had kissed off his one and only chance to tend a hand in Bolan's desert war. His chance was gone, the woman was gone... and only open-ended questions lingered on.
Where had she gone?
And why?
If it was lack of trust in Anders, Lucy's urge to find a haven of her own, they had no problem. But if she had run to grandpa, say, or to Jack Goldblume, telling tales...
She knew who Bolan was; the comic felt it in his gut although no words had passed between them in his presence that would make it firm. He got it from the way she looked at Bolan, listened to him as if she was trying to remember every word for future reference.
She could be trouble, no doubt about it. Even if she went directly to the law or to her Wang terminal with the story, rather than to Grandpa Abe, she could be signing Bolan's death certificate."
"Dammit!" And again, with feeling. "Damn it!"
Tommy Anders did not like the helpless feeling, but he knew that he had played his only ace already.
If Hal Brognola and his troops could not help Bolan, there was nothing that a stand-up comic could accomplish on his own.
The greatest solitary player of them all was out there on the streets already, carrying the fire for all of those who had to stand by watching helplessly. With any luck at all, his martial skills and sheer audacity would be enough.
America's ethnician reached the bar in three long strides and found himself a fifth of rye. He had already called in "sick" for the remainder of the evening and his replacement would be well into the second s
how by now. As for Tommy Anders, he was settling down to have a drink or two — or ten — and keeping watch along the home front.
He only hoped it would not be a death watch for the Executioner.
13
"Come on, we haven't got much time," Abe Bernstein said agitatedly. "Let's wrap it up."
The three of them were meeting in his office at the Gold Rush. It was risky, but his two companions were familiar faces in the hotel and casino. They could pass unnoticed in the mounting chaos going on outside his door, and it was safer now to have them visit him in person than to talk their business on the phones, which Frank Spinoza would no doubt be monitoring.
They were relatively safe for the moment, but Abe Bernstein still felt a sense of urgency. He had delegated much of his responsibility in clearing out the Gold Rush to his underlings, but he would have to let himself be seen around the premises or run the risk of bringing down suspicion on himself.
And that, at this precarious stage, could be disastrous.
Across the desk from Bernstein, his companions had the air of generals on the eve of an invasion — confident, but with a sort of tension, an expectancy about them that was thinly veiled. Jack Goldblume, patriarch of the Las Vegas Daily Beacon and a friend for over forty years, was slender, seventy, and looking fit from daily workouts in his private gym. And, Bernstein knew, from private workouts with a sleek succession of young would-be show girls in his bedroom. Decades after they were separated in a widely celebrated falling-out, old Jack was still his good right hand, still handling the press whenever Bernstein needed a kind word-or a gaff delivered to his enemies.
The media would play a crucial role across the next few hours and days as all the pieces fell into their designated slots. Abe Bernstein meant his version of the story to be first out on the wire; whatever followed would be running second best.
On Goldblume's right sat Harry Thorson, bearing strong resemblance to a troll decked out in Western gear, with patterned sequins on his jacket and a snakeskin band encircling his roll-brim Stetson. His face was deeply tanned, like ancient saddle leather, with a paler knife scar staggering from the corner of his right eye to the jowl, now flabby and gone soft with time.
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