Eternal Triangle

by Don Pendleton

  There was no doubt that Frenchi knew about Triangle Industrial Finance. The loan sharks were a major source of income for his Family, and he had delegated the overseeing of shylock operations to a trusted aide. The capo never knew Sam Bolan, never heard about the heart attack that kept him home from work that January, while the bills piled up, unpaid. It was an old, familiar story; illness eats away at family savings; incapacitated workers cannot raise collateral for a regular loan; hungry shylock offers "easy" terms. The customer needs no real estate, stocks or bonds. His body is the best collateral in town, and when the crunch comes down, he will do anything to keep that collateral intact.

  Except that Samuel Bolan wouldn't crawl. He kept up his payments, until the rising vigorish made that impossible. When the collectors came to call, he bore his wounds in silence, struggling to keep the secret from his family. When, at last, the collectors stayed away, Sam Bolan thought he had beaten them, that justice had prevailed.

  In his wildest nightmares, Sam could not have guessed at the arrangement that his daughter, Cindy, had accepted from TIF. Her father's health was everything to Cindy Bolan. If she could end his suffering by sacrificing a little of her pride, then the deal was cheap at half the price, and never mind the pawing hands, the sweating bodies of the men who paid to use her for an hour. Cindy Bolan's vigorish was paid in tender flesh, and Don Sergio was undoubtedly unaware that she existed.

  If he watched TV or read the papers, Pittsfield's capo might have caught the Bolan name in August, when a tragic string of circumstances nearly wiped the family out. According to police and media reports, Sam Bolan, 48, had "gone berserk" without apparent provocation, gunning down his wife, his teenage son and daughter, then himself. The son alone survived, emerging from near-comatose condition after three days in intensive care. His story shed no light upon the incident, and homicide detectives were relieved to file the case away.

  Until another Bolan surfaced on the streets of Pittsfield, looking for some answers of his own, attempting to make sense of the catastrophe that had destroyed his family.

  On leave from Vietnam, Mack Bolan was allowed to see his brother, Johnny, and the grieving kid had poured out details never shared with homicide investigators. That steamy summer he had guessed the deal that sister Cindy had accepted from the ghouls of Triangle Finance. Some legwork proved his theory; he had tailed her to a cheap motel, observed the men who came and went in shifts, at last confronted her with evidence that she could not refute. Her answer had been tearful, but determined. She would save their father if she could, and never mind the kind of morality that allowed a decent man to suffer endlessly while thieves and savages grew fat at his expense.

  In desperation, Johnny Bolan had finally approached his father, searching painfully for words to explain the situation with a minimum of damage to the family. He broke the news as gently as he could — and was completely unprepared for the explosion that ensued. In retrospect, it was possible that Sam had known subconsciously of Cindy's sacrifice, suspecting what he could never bring himself to face directly. When the proof was laid before his eyes, when there was nowhere left to hide inside his mind, the man exploded like a human bomb and took his family with him.

  All but Johnny.

  All but Mack.

  Confronted with evidence of the criminal manipulation that had led to the destruction of his family, Mack Bolan had a choice between two grim alternatives. He could allow detectives to pursue the case, despite their frank admission that there was no case against the Mob, or he could move against the savages himself. No matter that one man could never hope to slay the dragon of La Cosa Nostra. Never mind that it was clearly suicide to stand against the syndicate, its armies of the night. A lone, determined warrior could extract some measure of revenge for loved ones lost, and if his action inconvenienced the Mob at large, so much the better. Knowing from the start that the situation was hopeless, Mack Bolan could not turn away and let it rest. He could not leave the debt unpaid.

  A holy war must have some point of origin; for the Executioner, that point was Triangle Industrial Finance. Within a week of coming home, he knew the officers in charge, their muscle, the accountants and attorneys who were skilled at moving cash, manipulating laws. All were untouchable from every legal standpoint, but the soldier had decided on another course of action. He had recognized the enemy, a stalking predator no different, really, from the "liberators" he had gone to war against in Vietnam. They spoke one language, understood one method of communication, and it was a method that the Executioner had mastered in the Asian hellgrounds.

  Frank Laurenti was the OIC — the officer in charge at TIF. His private guns were Tommy Erwin and a hulk named Vinnie Janus. Pete Rodriguez kept the books — both sets — and Eddie Brokaw "handled things" around the office, sending out collectors when the vigorish was overdue. There were others farther up the ladder, lending their support and counsel to the operation, but those five would do to start.

  The soldier took them all on August 22 in a searing fusillade of rifle fire that changed the course of gangland history forever. Five rounds from a Marlin .444 and it was over for the cannibals of TIF. But it had only just begun for Bolan.

  The rest was history. In the weeks to come, Don Sergio, the world at large, had come to know Mack Bolan's name. His infiltration and annihilation of the Pittsfield Family had kindled sparks across America, reminding thousands, millions, that involuntary servitude had been illegal for a century and more. It would take time before the message found its way to Washington, and in the meantime Bolan would be rolling out across the countryside, intent on carrying the fire.

  He had survived that first engagement in the face of overwhelming odds; every day since Pittsfield, since the death of Don Sergio, had been another day constructed out of borrowed time. The soldier knew that death was coming, realized that he could not postpone the end indefinitely, but it was not in his nature to lie down and wait. If death was looking for him, it would find him on the firing line, still challenging his enemies and scourging them with every means at his disposal. He would hit the savages with everything he had, and when he had no more, when it was hand-to-hand, the struggle would begin in earnest.

  The entire course of Bolan's life since then had flowed from Commerce Street in Pittsfield, from the bloodstained sidewalk outside TIF. Whatever else had happened, from the campaign with his Death Squad in Los Angeles, on through the death of April Rose and everything that followed, everything had begun with Bolan's summary execution of the Triangle five. Their faces were emblazoned in his memory, and he could call them up at will. Sometimes they came to him unbidden in his dreams.

  From time to time, Bolan wondered what his life might have become if there had been no TIF, no heart attack to spoil his father's health, no call to stand at graveside while his family was laid to rest. If he had stayed in Vietnam, would disillusionment have sapped his strength, his will to stand against the predators?

  Religion played no major part in Bolan's thinking. He was not an unbeliever, but he had observed firsthand how righteous causes could be subverted by unrighteous men, the doctrines of a loving church perverted into something hideous and deadly in the name of "liberation," "justice," even "peace." In Bolan's eyes, predestination was a poor excuse for apathy, employed by men who lacked the courage to oppose domestic predators.

  And yet, if there was no predestination, that did not preclude the notion of some higher destiny. Some men were marked for greatness, some for sacrifice… and some were simply branded as the cannibals they were. It was a warrior's duty, his eternal destiny, to stand against the cannibals and beat them back or die in the attempt. From ancient times, the man of arms had borne no duty more significant, more noble, than defense of tribe and family against predators outside.

  Except that the predators were inside now. They moved with easy grace in the upper echelons of society, accepted by politicians and philanthropists, by ministers and civic fathers. They were taken at face value while th
e money flowed. Few people were inclined to lift the mask, observe the rotting flesh beneath.

  It took a dedicated renegade to buck the odds and strip those masks away, to lift the rocks and search out maggots underneath. It took an Executioner to carry out the self-inflicted judgment of the savages. Subverted from within, society had abrogated its responsibility to deal with the savages, but Bolan took his duty as it came and never flinched.

  Duty had called him to Connecticut. He had been mopping up some unfinished business in New Jersey when the Giulianno-Petrosina feud erupted. As long as he was in the neighborhood, the Executioner could not let pass the opportunity to strike a blow against some splinter of the mob while it was still in its infancy. If he could prevent its roots from taking hold and digging deep, he would be spared the need to do it all another day, against increasing odds.

  Connecticut had been a natural… until the tail appeared on Bolan's flight from Giulianno's warehouse. Now the soldier asked himself two questions: Who knew about his campaign in Hartford? What, if any, was that person's link to Triangle Industrial Finance and Pittsfield, all those bloody years ago?

  The business card was no coincidence. His fusillade on Commerce Street had closed down Triangle Finance forever; any cards or other stationery from the shylock outfit were out-of-date collector's items now. And yet, for anyone to push that button so precisely, he had to know the Executioner's identity and whereabouts. It set alarm bells ringing in the soldier's mind, this sudden knowledge that he had been watched by unknown eyes. Worse still, it angered him that he had not spotted the tail until he chose to show himself.

  As far as Bolan knew, there was no link between the Giulianno Mob and TIF. The would-be capo was a streetwise punk from Brooklyn, lately harboring delusions of godfatherhood. The mental mug file indicated that he had no relatives in Massachusetts and, indeed, had never visited the state except for two excursions to Boston as a third-rate errand boy for Augie Marinello's Family. Attrition above had propelled him up the ladder, but he was now just what he had been in New York, what he would always be: a third-rate hoodlum, long on mouth and short on brains.

  Augie's adversary, Tommy Petrosina, was another New York product; although he had a cousin with the syndicate in Boston, nothing suggested a Pittsfield tie-in. Tommy might have welcomed Bolan's intervention against Giulianno, but he could not afford a blitz against both camps. His troops were thin and lacked the finesse required to track the Executioner.

  Bolan thought about the business card. It bore no person's name, but clearly it had been preserved by someone with a link to TIF. The five who died on Commerce Street that August afternoon had all been Family men, with brothers, cousins, in-laws by the score. There had been others who survived Triangle's fall — the office staff, "collectors" who had been absorbed by other branches of the Frenchi family before it all fell out in Bolan's final blitz. Among them, there might be some who cherished thoughts of sweet revenge.

  Timing was a problem. It was years since Bolan had crouched atop a roof on Commerce Street and framed his first domestic targets in the Marlin's telescopic sight. In Bolan's experience, mafiosi were not prone to delayed reactions, preferring to strike with swift and ruthless violence while the iron was hot.

  And yet there could be no denying the connection. Someone with a link to TIF had tracked him to Connecticut, observed him as he moved against the Giulianno forces and laid a skillful trap. He wasn't ready yet to ponder why the trap had not been sprung. The Executioner had been a prime target inside that cul-de-sac, the hunter armed and close at hand. A single well-placed round would have ended it there… and still he lived. For reasons yet unknown, his adversary had elected to prolong the game.

  Bolan was gripped by an unaccustomed sense of vulnerability. The odds had been against him from day one, but this was different, infinitely worse. His advantages in the never-ending war — mobility, surprise — were being stripped away. If some anonymous assailant had the capability to track him, put him through his paces like a laboratory rat, then he was doomed. Connecticut would be the end of everything, unless he snapped the leash and put himself at liberty again.

  First, he must cut his losses. He would go to ground, take stock of any errors he might have made since driving in from Jersey. If he failed to establish a connection there, he would look further back, retracing every step along the road from Newark and beyond. The Giulianno-Petrosina feud would have to evolve without him for the moment, while he found a way to shake the lethal shadow that was dogging him.

  And if he failed… His adversary might not let another opportunity slip, might not postpone the taste of Bolan's blood another day. He must be hungry after all this time. Bolan understood that hunger well enough, he had experienced it himself from time to time, along the hellfire trail.

  It was an emptiness that could be filled with death and violence, but only temporarily. In time, if it was not controlled, it must consume its victim, eat him up alive.

  This time, he knew, the Executioner was on the menu.

  4

  The business card had been a stroke of genius. Never mind false modesty, it had been brilliant; the hunter only wished he had been able to observe the Executioner's reaction.

  That was impossible, of course. He couldn't take the chance of Bolan spotting him — or, worse, risk an encounter with police if they found him sprinting from the scene when they arrived. The better part of valor was to save your ass, and he would have another opportunity to feast his eyes on Bolan soon enough.

  So far, his plan was working like a charm. The Giulianno warehouse fire had been a bonus, and he had been pleased to grant the target time in which to finish the job. After all, it was he who had kicked off the Giulianno-Petrosina feud in the first place. Nothing difficult, some random potshots here and there, a touch of TNT, and the bastards had been off and rolling, turning on one another, wasting lives.

  He had known that Bolan would not — could not — turn away from an impending gang war. If the bastard's history had taught him anything, it was his compulsion for one-on-one involvement. Bolan took things personally. He never missed a chance to drive a wedge between his enemies, assisting their fratricidal violence when and where he could.

  The timing of the Hartford outbreak had not been coincidental. If the Executioner had surfaced first in California, say, the hunter would have waited patiently, as he had waited oh, so many years. His time was precious, his mobility limited, and in the interests of his cover, he had been prepared to wait once more. The bastard would come east eventually, as he always had before, returning to the scene of his initial crimes. When he did, the hunter would be ready for him. Waiting.

  He had elevated waiting to an art form, picking up his early lessons in the military, learning that the soldier who could watch and wait in silence was the soldier who survived the endless night. In later years, he had refined the talent, acquiring skills that would prepare him for the contest of his life. He could sit motionless for hours at a time, ignoring the insistence of his bladder, stiffness in his limbs. He could attain an almost trancelike state in which his mind remained alert, his eyes and ears missed nothing. He had trained himself to wait as if his very life depended on it… which it might, before he finished with the Executioner.

  The hunter had no thought of failure. If he failed, then he would die; it was a simple formula with only one solution. If he failed, if Bolan lived, then all his life had been an empty waste, the futile preparation of a fool. He was not ready yet to face that judgment — not while everything was going according to plan.

  The hunter knew his quarry inside out, had studied every move the bastard made since his initial strike in Pittsfield. Bolan counted on mobility, on unpredictability, on surprise, but put his movements under a microscope, and the guy was perfectly predictable. You might not know where he was going next, what guise he might assume, but over time you came to know the kinds of situations that attracted Bolan like a magnet. With forethought, skill, you could manipula
te his movements, make up the soldier's mind for him by creating the circumstances, offering the bait that he had never yet refused.

  In other circumstances, Giulianno might have been ignored, some other human bait selected for the hunter's purpose. It would have served as well to stage an incident in Boston, Concord, even Albany, so long as the logistics had not become prohibitive. The hunter recognized his limitations, knew that if he planned to tag the Executioner and make it stick, he must do it on his own home turf.

  He would not have had it any other way.

  It would be poetic justice, the execution of the Executioner, conducted where he had first spilled blood. It would have pleased the hunter to manipulate its timing, stage the payback on an anniversary perhaps, but that was wishful thinking. He could manage just so much, and if he tried to push his luck beyond that point, the whole damned scheme would blow up in his face.

  Practicality and realism were the hunter's chief virtues, after patience. He could distinguish between a working plan and an idle pipe dream at a glance. He could follow through, map out the necessary details logically, effectively. He could predict how Bolan would react when he discovered the business card from TIF. He would be ahead of his quarry all the way, prepared to cut him off if he tried to bolt.

  It was not in Bolan's makeup to run without a fight, but this time he was facing different odds, a different kind of threat, and anything might happen. The hunter would be prepared at every turn: if Bolan took the bait, if he tried to improvise, if he decided to cut and run. Whichever way it played, the hunter would be waiting for him, ready to head him off before his famous lightning moves could spoil the plan.