Savage Fire

by Don Pendleton

  Savage Fire

  The Executioner, Book Twenty-eight

  Don Pendleton

  For my son, Derek,

  on the occasion of his 13th birthday.

  The fire, my son,

  awaits every young man.

  Be there.

  dp

  The civilized man is a more

  experienced and wiser savage.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  Has any man ever attained to

  inner harmony by pondering the

  experience of others? Not since

  the world began! He must pass

  through the fire.

  —Norman Douglas

  Savages do not move themselves

  to the fire. I will bring the

  fire to them. Then we shall see

  whether they grow or burn.

  —Mack Bolan, the Executioner

  PROLOGUE

  The big man stood in darkness and stared at darkness while thinking of home.

  The night was wet and the small cemetery, bathed in a driving rain, seemed set in a world apart.

  It was.

  The single headstone marking the family plot spoke to another time and another place; it spoke of home and all that word had once implied to the tall, still man in the dripping poncho. It spoke, yes, of pride and simple dignity, love and human warmth—care and sympathy and understanding. It spoke of home, yes, but the word was now no more than the dying echo of an irretrievable past; worst, it was an almost unbearable taunt at the horizon of a hopeless future.

  A world apart, sure.

  Mack Bolan had lived wholly in the Now for an eternity, it seemed. There was no Now in this burial ground; there were but the Past and the Future. Both were present here, patiently awaiting the homecoming of the warrior.

  Yeah. There lay Mack Bolan’s home.

  Perfectly fitting, too, it seemed. He had consciously chosen the course which had brought him inevitably deeper into this melancholy realm of the dead. Knowingly and deliberately, he had renounced the light for the darkness.

  Why?

  He did not know why. He knew only that he had responded to his understanding of duty. Duty. Such an ambiguous word. Was it a man’s duty to damn himself to the dark and savage Now? And how much damnation could the human soul endure? Mack Bolan was more than thrice damned. The man was a walking damnation—or such was his understanding. How many hundreds of graves such as this had he filled with the results of his duty in the Now? Thousands, probably. Long ago he had passed beyond feeling that there was any meaning to the count. It was a war of attrition, sure. One did not count the dead in such a war. One counted only the living—and Bolan had ceased even that meaningless endeavor. The living enemy was infinite; there was no meaning to their numbers.

  Could there, then, be a meaning to his war?

  Perhaps. Perhaps.

  The chiseled, expressionless face moved suddenly in recognition of an altered quality of the night. The utter blackness was relieved only now and then by occasional flashes of distant lightning. The rain was heavy and all pervasive, producing the only sounds of this stygian moment. But the big guy had become aware of another presence in the Now. He moved almost imperceptibly, bringing the black snout of the Beretta Belle to a slit in the poncho as a stealthy figure materialized in the wet atmosphere.

  A quiet voice which remained one of the few living echoes of the past announced, “It’s me, Sarge.”

  Meaning, yeah—there was meaning enough.

  Bolan’s taut figure relaxed as the two stood toe to toe in the downpour, smiling grimly at each other through the universal solvent.

  “I was getting worried about you, Leo,” the big man said—the voice at once warm and cold, glad and sad.

  “Sorry. I had to break a trail.” The underboss of western Massachusetts grimaced as he added, “The jungle is closing fast.”

  “I noticed,” Bolan agreed. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Augie, I think.”

  Bolan pursed his lips for a faint whistle. “That bad, eh?”

  “In spades, yeah. It’s going down big, everywhere. Not just here. I just happened to get caught in the ringer. There’s no figuring the safe zones, Sarge.”

  “There are none,” Bolan replied grimly, adding, “… in this world.” He sighed. “So what are you reading, Leo?”

  The little guy spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. “End of the trail,” he muttered. “I guess Hal was right. There’s no game without a sponsor. The game is over.”

  “Get a new sponsor,” Bolan quietly suggested.

  The Mafia chieftain shook his head. “Against Augie? No way. Not in this part of the world. That’s the entire idea behind the purge. Naw. It’s over. Anyway, thanks for coming.” His eyes swept the burial plot. “Sorry to bring you back to all this pain for nothing. It’s a hell of a homecoming, isn’t it. You’d better get out while you can, buddy. This whole territory will be closed by daybreak.”

  “What will you do, Leo?”

  “Play Hal’s game, I guess. Damned shame. I was expecting an installation on La Commissione within another few months. But …”

  Bolan asked, “What is Hal’s game?”

  “Hal” was Harold Brognola, an upper echelon official in the U.S. Department of Justice—Leo Turrin’s secret boss.

  “I’ll come out of the closet,” the undercover cop explained. “It’s too soon, sure—but it’s the only game left.”

  Bolan shook his head. “Won’t work, Leo. Soon as Augie discovers you’re a talking head, he’ll collect it. He’ll have your make the instant you step out of the closet. You know that and Hal knows that.”

  The little guy tried to smile, and almost made it. “He’ll have to find it first, won’t he.”

  “Don’t talk like a junior G-man,” Bolan quietly scolded him. “That old man will call in every tab in the country. He’ll have senators and congressmen doubling as hitmen if that’s what it takes. Hal doesn’t even know which of his own people he can trust. You don’t seriously believe that Augie Marinello is going to sit serenely and watch his empire get dismantled brick by brick in a courtroom.”

  “That’s the hell of it,” Turrin groused. “We aren’t even sure we can do it. And it could take ten years of legal maneuvering. By that time …”

  “You won’t be in the game for ten minutes,” Bolan assured him.

  Turrin’s face mirrored the truth of those words as he replied, “It’s the only game we have, Sarge. We’ll just have to risk it.”

  “It isn’t a matter of risk,” Bolan argued. “It’s a dead certainty.”

  “Sure, sure,” the undercover fed muttered, tiring of the argument.

  “Where’s Angelina and the kids?”

  “They’re covered.”

  “Only while you are,” Bolan pointed out.

  “They’re safed,” Turrin growled.

  “Nothing is safed. You know that better than anybody.”

  “I—I don’t know, Sarge. I just don’t know. What the hell else can I—?”

  “Dig a hole in that closet, Leo. I’ll find you another sponsor.”

  The guy chuckled nervously. “I respect you more than any man I’ve ever known, Sarge. But, well, there are limits to everything. It’s too much. And it’s time to call the game—my game, not yours. What’s the profit if we both go down on this count?”

  That sense of “respect” worked both ways. Leo Turrin was among the toughest and the most courageous men in Bolan’s experience—and there had been many as models for comparison. It was, sure, a hard game—a hell of a hard game, from any point of view. The guy had been poised at the edge of a knife for years, playing the double game in the largest league there was. Maybe he was tiring, though. Maybe he
was actually glad that the game was ending.

  “What do you want, Leo? Would you like to save the game?”

  “Sure I would. What kind of question is that?”

  “Okay,” Bolan said tiredly. “You owe me, buddy.”

  “Granted. I owe you plenty. That’s why I say—”

  “I want your life, Leo. Not your death.”

  The two solemnly regarded each other through a long silence broken only by the distant rumbling of the heavens and the unbroken tattoo of falling raindrops. Presently, Turrin chuckled and broke contact with those glowing eyes. “Okay,” he said lightly. “Okay.”

  “How much longer can you hold out?”

  The little guy shrugged and pulled his raincoat tighter. “I told you. Daybreak, if I’m lucky.”

  “Let’s talk again at daybreak, then.”

  “Don’t, uh, try anything crazy. Not on my account, friend.”

  “Don’t start talking sanity to me, Leo.”

  Turrin laughed again. A lightning flash briefly illumined the grave marker at his friend’s side, the name BOLAN seemingly wreathed in a halo of fire for that electric instant. “You’re right,” he muttered. “It’s too late, now, for sanity. Okay. What do you have in mind?”

  Bolan shrugged and displayed a grim smile. “I’ll try to buy you some more time in that closet, mafioso. We’ll play the ear from there.”

  Turrin smiled back as he tiredly commented, “You just don’t know how to say quit, do you. Okay. Daybreak it is. Standard routine?”

  Bolan nodded. “Hit my floater at five past every hour until we connect.”

  Turrin reached out with both hands. Bolan gripped them tightly. “Stay hard, Leo,” he said gruffly.

  “Way to go, man,” the undercover cop replied. He broke the hand grip and faded into the rainy night.

  Bolan leaned against the family headstone and watched the blackness devour that lone vestige of the past.

  A true friend.

  Yeah, and Bolan had once been sworn to the death of that friend. Talk about sanity! And, no, in the present circumstances, Mack Bolan did not know how to say quit.

  It was a lousy homecoming, sure. But quite in keeping with the realities of the place. It had begun here. It would, inevitably, end here. But not with Bolan’s willing cooperation.

  “Wait a while longer,” he said quietly to the grave.

  In his own way, it was a sort of prayer. The closest, perhaps, that this man could come to prayer. Mack Samuel Bolan; whose name was already carved into that headstone, was not yet quite ready to return home. There remained a very important job to be done, in the eternal Now—which, in the personal understanding of the man, was simply another name for Hell.

  In effect, Mack Bolan was already home.

  The man who prowled the territories of hell was himself but an echo of the past.

  The man who challenged hell was the Executioner. And, no, he did not know how to say quit.

  Oh yeah, oh yeah. There was meaning to this war.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bolan’s Game

  Numbers, yes—the numbers had meaning again as the big man in executioner black, practically invisible in the rainy night, made the quiet reconnaissance into no-man’s-land. The time was a few minutes past ten o’clock. Here and there, throughout that suburban neighborhood, muffled light showed behind draped windows, but there was very little stirring about—an occasional automobile venturing cautiously along the rainswept streets, a dog barking nervously in the distance, now and then a light appearing at an upstairs window as the residents prepared for bed.

  There was more, though, than that.

  There was a vehicle with two solemn men inside parked inconspicuously at the curb a few hundred feet north of the Turrin home, another at the first intersection to the south.

  They were not cops, and they were not locals.

  Bolan knew who they were. They were the hounds of hell, staked out along the game trails, patiently awaiting the appearance of prey. Both cars were radio equipped. Both were lightly manned. And, yeah, Bolan had their numbers.

  He quietly withdrew, returning to his own vehicle which had been discreetly stashed well clear of the stakeout zone, and drove back along the game trail—making his approach from the south in a sedate run which carried him past the stakeout vehicle there and on along the street to Leo Turrin’s deserted residence.

  He pulled into the drive and killed the lights, then stepped outside and moved quickly to the rear entrance. It had to look natural, of course—unsuspecting. He found the key where he knew it would be and let himself in, turning on a single light downstairs and moving immediately to the second floor where he also illuminated the master bedroom and bath. He wasted not a single motion or moment, moving quickly downstairs and through the rear to the outside, blending into the wet night for a quick quit of that place.

  The hounds would already have performed their function.

  Very soon, the headhunters would be on the scene.

  And, sure, it was a game for which Mack Bolan had written the rulebook.

  The Executioner, also, would be there. He circled on foot to the south intersection and approached the stakeout vehicle from the rear. He opened the back door and slid onto the seat, the silent Beretta leading the way. Two startled faces turned to the quiet intrusion and each immediately received a Parabellum boneshredder from the sighing Belle, dead center between flaring eyes.

  Bolan reached over the seat and started the engine, turned on the parking lights, then left them there and completed the circle on foot. He scratched the other pair of hounds with the same quiet dispatch, retreating immediately to the darkness opposite the Turrin residence and settling into a patient vigil.

  The wait was not long. Less than ten minutes after the lights had first appeared at Leo Tuirin’s windows, a big crew wagon eased in from the north—a Cadillac limousine with jumpseats, and crammed with personnel. It paused momentarily beside the stakeout car, then went on without lights to halt just short of the Turrin drive.

  The vision was terrible in the constant downpour from the black skies, and even sounds were muffled and uncertain in the background of steady raindrops, but Bolan was aware of an energetic exodus from that big crew wagon as the head party descended upon its target. He caught a glimpse of two figures moving swiftly through the dim glow of light at the side of the house—then two more, close behind. The driver remained with the car—and that put four guns at the rear of the house, four at the front.

  It came, then—two guys charging the front door with sawed-off shotguns at chest level, a quick kick at the door—and they were inside, briefly visible and identifiable in the sudden light before disappearing into the interior.

  Real professionals, yeah—these guys knew what they were doing.

  The other two remained at the front lawn—shadows, mostly, raised shotguns silhouetted against the light from the upstairs windows—waiting coolly for something to show at one of those windows.

  Bolan waited, also, respectful of that professionalism, and thankful that Leo Turrin was nowhere near.

  Again, the wait was not long. He moved closer as four gunners moved through that doorway and down the stairs to the lawn. Others drifted into that little knot at the front of the house. Bolan was close enough now to overhear the angered words of that conference.

  “Nothing’s in there, Mario.”

  “Nothing came out the back way,” reported another.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Run ask Shorty Joe what the hell this is, Eddy.”

  One of the glistening shadows detached itself from the group at the steps and ran up the street to the stakeout car.

  Bolan saw the interior light flash on as the guy jerked the door open—then the door was hurriedly slammed shut and the guy came loping back.

  From ten yards out, he gaspingly reported, “They got their damn heads blowed off, Mario!”

  A thick voice from the knot immediately snapped, “
Move ’em!”

  The knot abruptly dissolved and flowed toward the street. Two figures moved quickly on to the death car while the others hastily piled into the crew wagon. Engines revved, lights flashed, and both vehicles sped away.

  Bolan went to his car in the Turrin driveway and moved out behind them, his own headlamps extinguished. The procession paused briefly at the first intersection as the head party made its second grim discovery. That vehicle quickly joined the lineup. Bolan fell back, giving them plenty of running room. For now, all he wanted was tracks—a game trail of his own. And, yes, the numbers suddenly had meaning again—in a tactical sense—and the Executioner was taking their count.

  “Twenty headhunters,” was the word in town. “Ten from Boston, ten from Albany. The meanest around.”

  Lucky, yes, for Leo Turrin that his ears were perceptive and his instincts active. Otherwise he and his entire family would be so much slaughtered meat at this moment, scattered in bloody little chunks about that house back there.

  And, as Mack Bolan tracked that head party toward the rest of its numbers, his mind sought a logic to the lunacy.

  Why, for God’s sake, Pittsfield? Why here?

  Leo Turrin’s little Pittsfield arm could not field twenty hard men even if all had remained to fight. It was a nickel-and-dime mob, Turrin’s was—pimps and bookies, policy men and juice merchants, grease and graft crews—hardly a dozen hard men among them. Pittsfield’s only claim to fame—in mob circles—was Turrin himself. Bolan had broken the rest of it beyond repair, in the battle that had opened this eternal war—oh hell, how many eternities ago!—the battle that had smashed the Sergio Frenchi empire and left western Massachusetts an open territory.

  Turrin had been the sole ranking survivor of that initial battle of Mack Bolan’s war against the Mafia. The savage old men in new York had then looked at the territory, dismissed it, written it off as a viable property, and suffered Leo Turrin’s self-elevation to underboss status in the town nobody wanted.

  An underboss was not a boss. Only La Commissione could make a boss, and that regal council had not yet seen fit to recognize the territorial claims of Leo Turrin. Pittsfield had thus functioned as a colonial arm of the national empire, without representation at the council tables, answerable to the whims and politics of the bunch in New York.