Turrin himself, however, had grown steadily in terms of national prominence and prestige—thanks mostly to his status as a “Bolan expert.” Good things had lately been brewing for the guy. Augie Marinello himself, de facto boss of all the bosses, had taken a shine to the brash “kid” from Pittsfield and had apparently been grooming him for some exalted position in the international structure.
So what had gone sour? Why had the tables suddenly been turned? Why the big purge? And why was Leo Turrin coming down on the wrong side of the cut? It was not a personal vendetta—Bolan was sure of that. This “purge” was of a more or less national scope. The movements were being felt everywhere, not just here in Pittsfield. What the hell was happening?
It did not have to make sense. Bolan realized that. Not in this savage world of Mafia. Here, “sense” was usually only what the bosses wanted.
Right now, it seemed, what they wanted was Leo Turrin’s head—and they had dispatched twenty hard men to collect it. That act in itself seemed to be saying something about the total question. The numbers did not compute. This was not the usual way. It was too many guns for what should have been a routine hit. Someone evidently felt a strong need to get to Leo Turrin hard and quick. Who? Why?
Those were secondary questions, of course. At the moment, it was purely a game of numbers. Four were down. Nine more were in the gunsights. Another seven needed to be accounted for.
Then, the universe willing, Pittsfield would send back twenty soft men.
Maybe, then, the old savages would send her forty more—and Pittsfield would need to soften and return those numbers also.
Would eighty then follow?
Bolan shook the question away. It needed to go to the end of the line—behind who and why.
At the moment, right now, Mack Bolan was playing the only game he had. It was one which he knew and understood, perhaps better than any other man alive.
It was, yeah, the death game.
CHAPTER TWO
Body Count
They were quartered at a rundown old motel just off the Berkshire Trail, east of the city—a dozen or so small cabins scattered at the edge of a wood.
The head party seemed to be occupying the entire place. A “No Vacancy” sign along the roadway was illuminated. When Bolan made the scene, only the office cabin was darkened. All others were alight and alive. People were standing around in the rain, exchanging guarded greetings with those in the returning vehicles. A partially clad woman stood framed in the light of an open cabin; another, wearing nothing but panties, was wandering about in the downpour, giggling and singing her greeting. There were perhaps a dozen others in evidence, as well.
A second crew wagon and several other head vehicles were scattered about, parked at the various cabins.
If there was any base security, none was evident. These guys had obviously expected no “trouble” with this assignment. They’d been partying, not warring.
One guy stood out from all the others—a big, mean-looking guy with a Mr. America physique and granite jaw—and, yeah, Bolan knew the guy. His mental file clicked to an immediate make. Joe Romani was the name, headwhacking was the game—a contract hitman from Boston. He stood now beside the Cadillac, barefoot and clad only in undershirt and trousers, arms folded at the massive chest, conversing loudly with the other crew chief.
“What’re you saying, Mario?” Romani rumbled.
“I’m saying your boys pulled me into a suck off, that’s what I’m saying,” came the taut reply from inside the vehicle.
“How bad are we hurt?”
“Not we, Joe. You. I brought you two hearses.”
Romani stepped back with an angered exclamation and splashed toward an investigation of those “hearses.”
The mild excitement of the greeting took a sudden turn toward heated outrage as the base camp revelers began to realize that the hit had gone sour. The dead had friends, yeah, and the friends were mad as hell.
They had been done wrong, sure. Bolan would never cease to marvel at the curious one-way direction in which thought traveled through the Mafia world. That “Turrin bastard” was supposed to meekly hand over his own head to the collectors; maybe he should even thank them for the honor of being executed by his own amici. Where the hell did that guy get off, pulling this kind of treacherous shit? The contract was written the other way, dammit. And, yeah—what they would do to Leo the Pussy Turrin for this infamy! He would die by the organ, one of them at a time. He would first drink his own urine and eat his own genitals. Then he would scream and plead for the privilege of dying while his gleeful amici taunted and degraded him to the final shuddering breath.
Yeah. Bolan had heard it all before, so many times. It was the logic of savages—and it worked equally well among them all. Today they would together avenge the treachery to their “friends,” even though one treachery had begat the other. Tomorrow they could well be the official avengees rather than the avengers—but that all went together with the logic.
That logic was at the heart of the bundle which made Mack Bolan’s task so clear-cut. One did not sit down with cannibals and reason with them—not beside their pots, at any rate. He had known from the beginning the truth of that rationale. He had known always that there would be a single resolution to the Mafia problem. He had known forever that his would be a terminal war of attrition—a war of absolute obliteration. Death was the only answer these people would ever accept—because it was the only answer they understood.
Mack Bolan was not a cold-blooded man. Nor even an essentially violent one. He could be gentle, if he lived in a gentle world. It was not, however, such a world. Bolan’s world was a savage one—and the meek could never hope to inherit such an earth. Not unless the inheritance could be claimed from within a cannibal’s bowels.
No. The man was a realist. He knew that the world was doomed to suffer forever in brutality unless the savages could be controlled. He was idealist enough, though, to respect the moral dreams of his society—even though he could not pursue them himself and remain true to his own moral sense. He was thinker enough, also, to wonder if his “own moral sense” was uncomfortably close to the savage logic which he so abhorred.
It was, of course. Close, sure, but not the same. There was a difference—even if the man himself was, in fact, the only difference. Bolan had probably never heard of Elbert Hubbard, an American writer and lecturer who had died before he was born, but who could have been illustrating the “moral sense” of this twentieth-century American warrior when he proclaimed: “God will not look you over for medals, diplomas, and degrees—but for scars.”
If “scars” were what God looked for, then He should have tremendous respect for a man like Mack Bolan.
Bolan himself did not pursue the thought quite that far. In his own mind he knew only that he did what he must do. He knew that he was uniquely equipped to respond to the Mafia challenge to the nobler world—and he knew that he must respond, with his strongest suit. If he picked up scars on the soul along the way—then okay, that was the way it had to be. All of which is not to say that the man never wearied of his burden, never questioned his cause, never wondered whether his response was “wrong,” or futile, or both. Bolan was not, in any sense, a superman. He was simply a superb man, with all the dimensions of character that implied.
Right now, yes, he was a wearied and troubled man. The campaign in Georgia—barely twenty-four hours into the past—had been demanding and exhausting. It had been at the height of that campaign that he had discovered the rumbles of “purge” emanating from New York and learned of Leo Turrin’s personal jeopardy. He had quickly moved Georgia to an acceptable conclusion and sped forthwith to Pittsfield to find Turrin throwing in the towel and heading for certain destruction—with the directions from Washington so obviously miscalculated to insure that destruction. It was unlike Hal Brognola, the nation’s Number One official crimefighter, to be guilty of such erroneous thinking. Bolan had to suspect that the guy was being pressure
d from somewhere above. If that was true, then the entire Pittsfield stand could already be a futile exercise in the impossible.
Brognola was supposed to be the only man in Washington to know the true identity of “Sticker”—Leo Turrin’s code name in the undercover ranks. If that cover had been blown in the political malaise that was Washington—then, hell, Leo’s game was doomed for sure. And Mack Bolan was therefore engaged in a bloody campaign which could have no meaning whatever in the final tally of things accomplished.
There was no bloodlust in Mack Bolan’s makeup.
He did not kill for thrills nor did he make war through any concept of “revenge.” He killed because it was the only way to beat the savages—and he made war because, dammit, the savages were winning.
With Leo’s life at stake there were, of course, personal considerations—strong enough in themselves to make the battle worthwhile. But there was a larger reason for the Pittsfield stand—and that larger reason bore directly on the overall war effort. Leo Turrin was a highly valuable player in this grim game between the worlds. And, yes, every move mattered. Every good man mattered. Bolan was not being melodramatically cute when he told the Sticker, “I want your life, Leo—not your death.”
The savages themselves mattered not a damn to Mack Bolan—except in their numbers of dead. He would, sure, kill a million of them if that was what it took to keep one Leo Turrin in the game.
The task was not quite that large, though—at the moment. The task now was to kill but sixteen of the savages.
And they were making it easy for him.
“Get those broads out of here!” Romani yelled, at the top of his voice. “I want a council in ten minutes, my cabin! Jake!—Bobby!—you boys get out front and keep the eyes open! Mario!—you come with me right now! I want a complete rundown on this crap!”
“Mario” was obviously the crew boss from Albany. He stepped from his vehicle and angrily slammed the door. “Where do you get off, Joe?” he growled. “Where does it say Boston is running this contract?”
Romani took a menacing step forward and jabbed a stiff finger in the air to punctuate his words as he growled back, “Four dead boys say so, Mario! You want to discuss that?”
Albany was not backing down to Boston. The guy thrust his chin forward and sneered, “Yeah, I want to discuss that! It was a suck off! I want to know who was sucking!”
“My four dead boys, maybe,” Romani spat disgustedly.
“We both know what staked meat is, Joe! And we both know who staked those boys. They called us into that suck—they called it! Maybe we were just closer and got there quicker than anybody expected. Huh?”
Romani preened himself in the falling rain and roared back: “Are you crazy, Mario? Are you clear out of your skull screaming crazy? You saying I set you up for a suck off? To who, dammit?”
“To the cops, maybe,” Albany raged. “To Leo the Pussy, maybe. How the hell do I know? I just know that I damn near got sucked!”
To that, Romani coldly replied, “If I’d wanted you sucked, guy, you wouldn’t be here now complaining about it. Let’s go inside and put this thing together. Come on.” He turned his back on the Albany leader and went to his cabin.
Mario passed hand-signal instructions to his crew and slowly followed the man from Boston.
The women were being unceremoniously rounded up and ejected from the base camp. They straggled toward several vehicles which were parked at the front of the compound and made their departure without apparent complaint. Professional women, sure—and not locals. The boys would not be that stupid. The women had brought themselves and they were taking themselves away, in their own small caravan.
As the cars departed, one of the guys yelled, “Keep it warm, Marie.”
A bare arm waved panties from an open window as the reply sang back: “You’ll know where to find it.”
The caravan hit the main road and headed east, toward Boston.
Bolan circled immediately to the hastily established forward post and quietly ended the game for the two sentries there—“Bobby” and “Jake,” he presumed. He dragged their bodies from the vehicle and deposited them in high weeds alongside the drive, then returned to his own vehicle and prepared for open combat.
He removed his poncho and put it in the trunk of the car, cinched on a readybelt with chest loops, pat-checked the positioning of the various items of ordnance accommodated there, then selected an Uzi submachine gun from his mobile arsenal and slung on a belt of spare clips.
He hoped he would not be required to use the explosives—or any other weaponry except the Uzi. This was not supposed to bear the marks of an Executioner hit. If he could catch them cold—then okay, yeah, maybe the Uzi would be enough. He had not intended to give them time to settle in, to begin comparing notes and laying reaction plans. The entire camp would almost certainly go “hard” as the first step in that direction. At the moment, the advantage was all his. Within minutes, those odds would begin weighing the other way.
He strode straight along the access road and into the camp. A graves detail was worrying with the corpses of the early dead, moving somberly about in the steady rain and tongue-clucking the unpleasant task as they stacked their dead on a cabin porch. Others stood in small, nervous groups on the porches of other cabins, Boston to the left and Albany to the right, smoking and conversing tensely about the uncertainties of the night.
Bolan was ready to dispel the uncertainties.
He stepped into the open ground between the cabins and found a friendly shadow as he readied the Uzi and called out: “Joe! Joe Romani!”
It was time to count bodies, in the opening stand at Pittsfield.
It was no good this way, this tension between the amici—and Romani was trying to make that point to the angry shark from Albany, Mario Conti. “It’s your contract, Mario,” he’d just reminded the guy. “I’m not telling you what to do, or how to do it I’m just saying that something is haywire. They sent me over here to kiss the guy for you. Okay, I kissed him. The rest is up to you. I just don’t like it that four of my boys went down with the kiss. I especially don’t like it when you start making dumb noises about a suck off. Something’s haywire, that’s all.”
“Haywire is right,” Conti growled. “I was assured it was all set up. I was told it would be a romp. Now I don’t know, Joe. I just don’t know. I think I want to talk to Albany before anything else. I want to verify the contract.”
“That’s dumb, Mario,” Romani was saying, just as someone outside started yelling his name.
Conti snarled, “What’s the matter with those goddamn guys!”
Romani replied, “Ahhh, they can’t shit without …” He did not finish the sarcasm. Something was wrong outside, definitely wrong.
“Kill that light!” he growled as one of his boys outside replied to the loud summons.
“Who the hell is that?”
“I have a message for Joe from Leo the Pussy!”
Every one knew the meaning of that. Conti’s eyes blanched and skittered away from Romani’s startled gaze. The Boston chief leapt to his feet, hit the light switch in one swift motion, and whirled on to the window for a look outside. His boys were all frozen in clutch groups, staring uneasily at something in the darkness beyond the cabins.
Someone nearby yelled, “Joe! Mario! Somebody’s here!”
“Stay put!” Romani yelled back. He carefully opened the window and shouted, more loudly: “Who’s there? Come into the light and show yourselves!”
Conti had just leapt to the door and cracked it open when a rattling burst from a submachine gun told the tale all had dreaded to hear—and, suddenly, Joe Romani’s world fell in on him. That first burst of automatic fire came spiraling into the cabin, punching through the flimsy walls as though no walls existed, disintegrating glass and shredding furniture in an absolutely withering hail that left no cubic volume of air untraveled—and Joe knew that it was all over, right there, in that first stark instant of awareness.
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br /> Conti hit the floor with a groan and a bubbling sound at about the same moment that something ripped into Romani’s gun arm and spun him around and sent him staggering across the cabin. He fell onto the bed and pulled the shattered arm into his lap, feeling frantically for a pressure point to shut off the flow of blood that was gushing all over him.
His consciousness divided, part of it leaping outside to assess the situation there. It did not sound good out there. The amici were returning fire but it sounded disorganized and frantic. Guys were yelling and cussing and running around but the chatter of that chopper went on and on as other guys screamed and called to Jesus in profane prayers.
And suddenly it was over. Impossibly, unbelievably, it was over. He checked an impulse to cry out for help, unsure of just what that sudden silence meant. A moment later he was glad that he’d checked the impulse. The chopper again. Short bursts, widely separated, moving about the yard out there. Romani knew what that meant. It was a clean-up. The chopper was moving among the dying, hastening the process. He shuddered and waited, knowing that his time would come, too weak from shock and pain and bleeding to make a move to save himself.
He heard a movement on the porch, then the door creaked on its hinges and the lights came back on.
The guy was standing outside. He had only reached through the open doorway to switch on the lights. Romani could not see the guy, but he could see the ugly snout of that chopper as fire leapt from it and Mario Conti’s bubbling corpse shuddered under the new onslought.
Romani called out, weakly, “Hey! No! Please!”
He was looking up the bore of that chopper—and it was all he could see.
A cold voice said to him from the porch, “Take a message back where you came from, Joe.”
“Sure, I’ll take the message,” Romani groaned hopefully. “Who is that?”
Savage Fire Page 2