“The thanks you have coming, kid, will be a bullet up the nose if they find me here. You just can’t know—”
“If you mean those hoods, they’ve already been here twice. We had you hidden in the brooder house all through last night.”
“They’ll be back,” he argued. “Those guys don’t know the meaning of quit. Now, you go get my clothes while I get the cobwebs out of my brain.”
The girl ran from the room, and he heard her outside a moment later, calling for her brother.
Bolan made another try for the floor, and reached it, then sat there on the edge of the bed and examined himself.
The guy had done a good job with the chest wound. Very little soreness, obviously no infection. Nylon thread for stitches. He grinned wryly and pulled the injured leg up for a look-see.
Inflamed, yeah, swollen … and hurting like hell. The ten-mile stroll through that creek bed had not helped it at all. Some sort of evil-smelling poultice was taped over the wound. Bolan removed it and bent down for a closer look. He just hoped that Bruno had cleaned it out thoroughly before he sewed it up. He was still inspecting the mess when Bruno himself came huffing into the house.
The guy was not as old as he looked, Bolan was betting.
Looked fifty.
If he was the kid’s brother, though, then he was probably somewhere under forty—certainly no more than that.
He was standing there in the doorway and filling it, a real ox of a man, giving Bolan the concerned gaze.
Bolan showed the guy a scowl and told him, “You’re a good medic, Bruno. Thanks. Will you get me my pants?”
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” Bruno asked quietly.
Bolan looked him over more closely, then replied, “Should I?”
“I guess not,” the guy said. “We met only once, and you were in quite a hurry that time, too.”
Bolan was giving him a quizzical smile.
“Dien Huc,” the guy explained. “The field hospital. I was on duty there the time you brought that column of kids in. You know, those kids from—”
“Small world, Bruno,” Bolan said tautly. “That was Doc Brantzen’s headquarters.”
“Right. I was one of his medics, surgical assistant.”
“And now you’re raising chickens.”
“Right, now I’m raising chickens.”
“Brantzen’s dead. I got ’im killed. I’ll get you killed, too, Bruno. You and that beautiful kid, both of you. Now, get me my pants and point me toward the coast.”
“No way,” the guy told him. “You’d never make it. Not on that leg. You could lose it yet.”
“Just how bad is it?”
“Bad enough. No vital tissues lost. Everything will rebuild if you’ll give it a decent chance. And if you don’t lose it to infection. I’ve got you on antibiotics.” The big guy grinned. “Same stuff I give my chickens. If you don’t start crowing, I guess you’ll survive it.”
Bolan said, “The leg. What about it?”
“Use it too soon, and you’ll lose it. Give it a couple days, anyway.”
“You know I can’t,” Bolan growled. “The headhunters, Bruno. You know what those guys are. They won’t stop with mine. They’ll take yours and the kid’s, just to keep in practice.”
The girl stepped through the doorway and said, “Stop calling me ‘the kid.’ The name is Sara, no h. And I’m no kid.”
“That’s right, she’s not,” Bruno told Bolan in a matter-of-fact tone. “She lost her man in ’Nam. She’s a widow already.”
Bolan was reminded that hot wars make many young widows, but this was ridiculous. He’d pegged her age at about sixteen.
She caught his look, and repeated, “I am no kid. And we didn’t pull you out of the brook to make an amputee out of you. So get back in that bed and stop acting silly.”
Bolan glared at her for a moment; then his gaze flicked to the man. “How long,” he solemnly asked him, “do you think it will take the headhunters to put together a make on two ex-GI’s—one wounded and needing medical attention, the other a surgical nurse who just happens to live in the search zone?”
“I figure it may take them another couple of days,” the guy replied soberly. He spread his hands and added, “Look, man. What choice do you have?”
What choice? Bolan already knew the answer to that. It was coming from his head, in spinning circles of dizziness, and from that swollen leg, on cresting waves of pain and nausea.
“Okay,” he replied weakly.
He lay back down and closed his eyes, returning very quickly to flowing rivers and eternal warfare, and to a new twist in skin-crawling nightmares—a chicken ranch overnight becoming a “turkey” farm.
Yeah. It was the grand-slammer, Doc Brantzen special. Brantzen had been the first turkey on Mack Bolan’s soul. But a hell of a long way from the last one.
3 THE HEALING
They were nice people, both Sara and her brother; but during the next forty-eight hours of around-the-clock nursing, feeding, and constant attention, Bolan got to know quite a bit more about his tenders than they of him—or so he thought.
Both of these people had, in effect, already retired from the problems of life—in so many ways.
Sara, as it turned out, had just a few weeks earlier quietly marked her twenty-second birthday. She still looked sixteen to Bolan, but that was just surface stuff. Down in there where she really lived, Sara Henderson was a resigned old lady in a rocking chair, quietly filling in her days the best she could until death overcame her.
She had married David Henderson, her college sweetheart, at the age of nineteen. Two weeks later David kissed her good-bye and went to war. He did not survive. And neither did Sara. She came home—to the chicken ranch—and watched her father die of cancer. The mother had been dead for some time.
Mother and Father Tassily had emigrated from Romania just in time to get in on America’s big Depression. Bruno and Sara were their only offspring—their only living kin in America—and now Bruno and Sara were all that was.
Sara ran the farm on her own until big brother Bruno came home from Vietnam; and he returned a maimed man, but not in body.
Bruno had helped the field surgeons hack off too many shattered arms and legs from despairing young men. He had seen too many savageries, too much inhumanity, and far too much senseless death and suffering. He had gone to Vietnam as a conscientious objector on medical assignment. He returned a confirmed athiest in need of considerable medical attention himself.
These were the people who were laying their lives on Bolan’s line. Somehow, without actually saying so, they conveyed the idea that they did not regard the event as any sort of sacrifice, but as some weird atonement for nameless sins.
Bolan appreciated what they were doing, of course. But he was appalled by the unspoken implications that he had come along merely to collect their tithes of atonement.
During one of those quiet moments with Bruno, he had told the big Romanian, “The master clock of life doesn’t beat just to the ticks, you know. It needs the tocks, as well.”
And he’d told Sara, in the still hours of one of those endless nights, “When I sleep, I dream. And when I dream, I think I’m more awake than at any other time. Life is like that, Sara. Paradoxical. Every hurt carries the seed of some great joy. And every great moment has but one place to go from there, and that’s back down to the valley of despair. But we live in neither place, you know. We live in the middle, and we visit the other places from time to time. Try living in the extremes—either one, Sara—and you’re resigning from life.”
Bolan was no preacher man. He didn’t even know whether or not the things he felt made sense to anyone else, but he did feel them very strongly, and he quietly got in his points with Sara and Bruno whenever he could.
To an outside observer, it may have seemed as though Mack Bolan had been “sent” to the Tassilys. As he mended, so too did they—in so many subtle ways.
By the third day, Bruno had becom
e much more talkative, less solemn and brooding, even humorous and playful at times.
Sara had definitely become aware of Bolan as a man. She’d taken to doing things with her hair, wearing a hint of makeup, and she’d even abandoned the blue jeans in favor of a couple of bright little fashions which she’d whipped out on her sewing machine while Bolan slept.
On that third day, also, Bruno took his chicken truck off to Manhattan on an urgent errand for his star boarder. He left at daybreak, promising to return by nightfall—otherwise, “ring the bells and say a prayer for the rummy Romanian.”
Bolan was not overly worried about the safety of the mission. Bruno frequently took his own birds to market. This trip into the city would appear to be routine, in case anyone was keeping watch over the comings and goings at that farm. And he was sending the guy to a trusted friend.
They had moved Bolan back to a loft in the brooder house, which now was alive with thousands of cheeping baby chicks—the move being made at Bolan’s insistence. He also took along the remainders of his war armaments—the empty Beretta, the nearly empty AutoMag, and the Talifero revolver with three live chambers.
Bruno had built him a hideaway bunk in the loft above the chicks and padded it down with clean straw covered with a couple of heavy quilts. It was very comfortable. His medications were out there, as was a variety of high-protein “nibblings”—cheeses, boiled eggs, and so on. In addition to that, Sara came out every couple of hours and poked a ration of hot food into him.
On the morning which saw Bruno off to Manhattan, Sara came to the loft at eight o’clock with tape measure, pad, and pencil in hand.
“What’s that for?” Bolan had growled at her.
“To see where you’re at, with what,” she’d replied, twinkling, and took his measurements at every conceivable point and angle.
A couple of times during that operation their eyes locked for overlong periods, and it seemed that things were getting a bit out of hand.
She’d gone out of there without another word, though, and at ten o’clock she was back, with a very close copy of his favored combat outfit—a black, skin-tight two-piecer with all the handy pockets in the right places.
Bolan was deeply impressed.
“How’d you do that?” he marveled.
“Just a little something I whipped up,” the girl replied, trying to conceal her pride in the production. “It wasn’t all that hard.”
She handed him a folded sheet of heavy paper. He recognized it immediately as coming from the large writing tablet which he’d seen in her possession so often. Obviously the tablet was an artist’s sketchpad, and she had very artistically sketched Bolan, probably as he lay sleeping in her presence, but as she’d imagined him to look in full combat regalia. All of it was there—the weapons, the utility belts, the gadgets—and she’d captured a catlike poise in that rangy body as well as a savagely snarling face which somehow still had a somewhat saintly cast to it.
Very quietly he asked her, “Is that the way I look to you?”
“Yes,” she replied, just as quietly.
“How’d you get the combat rig?” he asked.
She shrugged daintily. “Lifted it. I guess you’ve been sketched by every police artist in the country. I’ve seen it many times, in the papers.”
He said, “I see.”
“Try it on. The suit.”
“Later,” he told her, sighing.
“I’ve seen your pinky toes before, plenty of times.”
“Later, just the same,” he murmured.
“Mack Bolan, I believe you’re a hopeless prude,” she told him. She leaned across the bunk and pulled the sheet away from him, all the way, fastidiously folding it at his feet.
This, Bolan was thinking, was where he’d come in.
Except that now there was not even a towel to protect his sense of modesty.
This was, however, very obviously no time for modesty.
Sara was removing her dress, carefully folding it with the same studied movements with which she’d handled the bedsheet. She laid the dress atop the packing crate that Bolan was using as a night stand, then went to the window for a quick peek outside.
“Am I ready for this?” he asked her, feeling silly with the words even as they left his mouth.
“I don’t know about you,” she replied, turning to him with a solemn smile. “But I sure am.”
“Well, hell …”
Sara was removing her bra as she retraced the path to Bolan’s bunk. It was odd, he was thinking, how clothing made some girls look so underdeveloped when in fact they were not … like this one. She was beautifully put together. The breasts were on the delicate side, but perfectly formed, stiffish, and tightly packed—incredibly glossy.
She put the bra with the dress, then hooked both thumbs into the waistband of her panties and just stood there gazing at him with those limpid eyes.
She seemed frozen there, suddenly, the panties ever so slightly lowered, a statue in glowing flesh tones.
Bolan noticed, then, that those hands were trembling. He took one in his and told her, “Be sure you know what you’re doing. This is very probably your last chance to back out.”
“You’re not helping a bit,” she protested faintly in a wobbly voice. “I rehearsed and rehearsed. Had it all figured out—what I’d say, what you’d say—and you’re not doing it.”
He said, “No rehearsals needed, Sara. Not if this is what you truly want.”
She cried, “Oh, God, I do!” And with that she broke down completely, hiding her face in her hands and bawling her heart out.
He pulled her on down with him, and gently made room for her, and consoled her with loving touches and reassuring words, and she very quickly became fully a woman in his arms as each to their own need they found that special healing which somehow seems to justify the pains of the world.
And, some time later, Bolan admiringly told her, “You were right, Sara. You’re sure no kid.”
They lay in slack embrace and talked of various things for quite a while—serious things, silly things, man-woman things—and after they’d run out of words they simply clung to each other in a silent communion outside of time.
Later he donned the black suit for her pleased inspection, then left it on as they snuggled into another quiet mood.
Somewhere along toward early afternoon, Bolan fell into a deep sleep. It was probably his most peaceful rest in weeks, and he did not know when Sarah left.
He awoke with a start, alone, with the sun low in the sky and perfectly framed in his window—and with some animal comprehension of danger.
There had been an outcry from down by the house—a human cry or shout or something—coming in right at the edge of his consciousness, but weakly commanding attention.
He carried the AutoMag to the window and gazed down upon the familiar scene, normally so tranquil.
This time, though, the view sent combat hormones leaping into his bloodstream and coursing immediately to every reach of his system.
A strange vehicle was parked in the drive, near the house. Two guys in fancy silk threads were down there in open view, standing beside the car. One of them was holding a door open, and the other was trying to force a grimly struggling Sara Henderson into the vehicle.
It was one of those sudden-confrontation situations that allow for no combat brief, no tactical planning, no exercise of the intellect whatsoever. And it was sheer conditioned reflex of the combat sense that sent the AutoMag crashing through that flimsy pane of glass, that lined up those doomsday sights, that squeezed the fist that closed the switch that sent 240 grains of screaming death sizzling across that forty-yard range to the target.
The big magnum bullet tore past within inches of that lovely face he’d kissed so tenderly such a short while ago and thwacked home between two startled eyes with what Sara would later describe as “a horrible sucking sound.”
Even as that first round was impacting target, the big silver hogleg was roaring anot
her angry bellow, and missile number two was annihilating another firetrack; the dude at the car door found himself with an inexplicably exploding throat, and the two of them died hardly a gasp apart.
Sara had collapsed onto her knees. She was kneeling there in the gore surrounding her, hands clasped in her lap, looking up at him and screaming something unintelligible.
She had quieted down somewhat by the time he reached her, but she was still kneeling there between those two citations of sudden death, and her first anguished words for the Executioner were: “No, Mack, God, no, you shouldn’t have! Now they’ve found you!”
He plucked her out of there and steered her toward the house as he replied to that.
“They have,” he said icily. “The hard way.”
Buy Jersey Guns Now!
About the Author
Don Pendleton (1927–1995) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean War. His first short story was published in 1957, but it was not until 1967, at the age of forty, that he left his career as an aerospace engineer and turned to writing full time. After producing a number of science fiction and mystery novels, in 1969 Pendleton launched his first book in the Executioner saga: War Against the Mafia. The series, starring Vietnam veteran Mack Bolan, was so successful that it inspired a new American literary genre, and Pendleton became known as the father of action-adventure.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1973 by Pinnacle Books, Inc.
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8568-0
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