Eternal Triangle

by Don Pendleton

  "I'll leave a note for Alice."

  "Tell her you'll be home within the hour."

  "Sure."

  He left the captain standing in the kitchen, scowling, and retreated toward the bedroom. There were preparations to be made before he faced his nameless enemy. He knew the killing ground, surmised the hunter's motive, but he would not have the final answer, right, until he looked his adversary in the eye.

  At midnight.

  * * *

  The call had rattled Weatherbee. He was listed in the telephone directory, unlike a host of other cops who jealously guarded their domestic privacy, but his caller had not found Mack Bolan listed there. Hell, no. The cryptic caller had Weatherbee's number in more ways than one, and it would be enough to rattle anybody.

  In law enforcement, information was a prized commodity. The more you knew about a man, the easier it was to deal with him from strength. If you knew enough, you held his future in your hands. Like now. The caller was a big one-up on Weatherbee, possessed information that could land the former chief of homicide in jail, or worse. It was the alternative to jail that worried him the most.

  If his secret had been discovered somehow by another cop, he would have expected a direct approach. The raiders would descend on his house with riot guns and warrants, or at the very least a former colleague would meet him somewhere after hours, offering sage advice for Weatherbee to put his act in order. Either way, there would have been no cryptic phone calls, no demands to speak with Bolan. If the Feds or the local force were on to Weatherbee, he would be sitting in a cell right now, praying that a second mortgage on the house would cover bail.

  The Mafia would not have talked to him at all. If Tarantella's shooters knew about his guest, they would surround his tract house with steel, and slaughter every living thing inside before the neighbors had a chance to call for help. According to mythology, the mob could reach you anywhere, anytime, and if the legends weren't entirely factual, the truth was close enough.

  So it was not police, and not the mob. That left the wild cards, and Weatherbee didn't even want to think about the implications there. If someone had been stalking Bolan all the way from Hartford and beyond, he might have traced him to the Weatherbees in any one of several ways. He scanned the recent past, trying to discover the error that had placed them all in mortal jeopardy, but came up empty. Bolan had not ventured from the house in fifteen days; there had been no careless conversations on the telephone. Weatherbee was convinced he had acted normally around John Pappas and the other homicide investigators. As for the neighbors, Weatherbee could count his friends on the fingers of one hand, and none had come to call these past two weeks.

  He thought of Alice briefly, knew at once that she would not betray him, consciously or otherwise. She had become accustomed to keeping secrets while he worked in Homicide, and would not have failed him now. Unless…

  His heart was in his throat, immediately threatening to strangle him. If Bolan's enemies had gotten to her somehow, if they had made her talk…

  The sheer illogic of it stopped him cold. The bastards could not have suspected him, could not have turned on Alice, without knowing the soldier's whereabouts beforehand. Likewise, if they knew where Bolan was, they had no need to drag information from Alice. But Weatherbee derived small consolation from the knowledge that his fears were groundless.

  If the enemy had not seized Alice yet, why not tonight, tomorrow? If the plan to lure Bolan was unsuccessful, or if Bolan let a member of the hostile force escape, what form of retribution might they fix on?

  He had to help out the soldier, however much his houseguest might resist. He was no match for Bolan on the firing line, but there must be something he could do, some contribution he could make.

  The answer came to him in bits and pieces, nagging at him, skittering around the corners of his mind while he tried to catch it. A memory, unpleasant in itself, but more significant than he had first imagined. If he could only put his finger on it…

  The Camaro.

  Why was it important?

  Bodywork.

  So what?

  "Sweet Jesus."

  As he stood in the kitchen, an icy chill raced along Weatherbee's spine and raised the short hairs on his neck. He saw Frank Lawrence on the memory's screen, the dark Camaro just behind him, gleaming brightly, the left rear fender oh-so-slightly different from the rest.

  The Executioner had fired on his assailant before being wounded. He had missed the man… but what about the car?

  Frank Lawrence.

  Frank Laurenti.

  Frank Laurenti, Jr.

  "Jesus Christ."

  This time, the captain knew that he was losing it. He didn't like the sergeant, never had. He was letting animosity create illusions in his mind. Frank Lawrence couldn't be any more than thirty-three years old, Weatherbee figured. When Bolan dropped his hammer on the scum at TIF, the sergeant would have been…

  About fifteen.

  Removed from the routine of life around the station, Weatherbee had no way to check the sergeant's movements, but if Lawrence had taken any kind of leave around the time Bolan was in Hartford, there would be a record of it. Weatherbee would have to pull some strings. Glancing at his watch, he knew that time was short. In about four hours the Executioner was scheduled to confront his nemesis, and in the meantime, Weatherbee didn't know if any friends he trusted were working the night shift.

  Still, he had to try.

  If there was any way on earth to prove his theory — or prove it wrong — he had to find the necessary strings and pull them, hard. He only prayed that enough time remained. Enough time for him to rip away the traitor's mask, or prove himself a fool.

  Right or wrong, he wasn't looking forward to the answer. In many ways, it would be better not to know. Except that Bolan would be counting on him, trusting in him, and he could not let the soldier down. Not after letting Bolan touch his life so intimately, changing it, perhaps forever.

  Until he knew for sure, however, he could not afford to share his vague suspicions with the Executioner. It was a dirty job. He would have to do it on his own.

  Tonight.

  Before Mack Bolan laid his life on the line.

  Weatherbee would have to find the answer for himself and he was running out of time. Whichever way it went, the shit was sure to hit the fan. Tonight.

  23

  The shops and offices on Commerce Street were closed by six o'clock. Custodians and overtime personnel were gone by eight. At twenty past eleven, Bolan had the district to himself.

  Almost.

  There would be someone waiting for him, in or near the former offices of Triangle Industrial Finance. Someone with an ax to grind, a grudge that would not go away until it was expunged with blood. The soldier meant to find his faceless adversary here, and soon, to close the old, unfinished chapter of his life.

  He circled twice around the block, eyes scanning darkened offices, shops with lights left on inside to help security patrols. He drove past windows filled with strutting mannequins and displays of furniture, a gun shop with steely shutters that looked like a giant cage. The space once occupied by Triangle Finance was shabby in comparison, the faded signs on door and windows wearily proclaiming that it was available For Sale or Lease.

  The rental car was cramped, but it had been the best available when Weatherbee dropped Bolan at the agency. The soldier didn't mind; the wheels were transportation, nothing more. They would take him where he had to go… if he was still in shape to travel once his business was completed there on Commerce Street. It had been difficult persuading Weatherbee to let him come alone, but he had finally secured a promise that his host would wait at home with Alice. He trusted Weatherbee, but only to a point, so he had not mentioned where the midnight rendezvous was to occur.

  Throughout the crosstown drive, the Executioner had doubled back repeatedly, to avoid being followed. It had cost him precious time, but he had reached the target zone without a tail.


  The district was patrolled sporadically, and Bolan knew that any effort to conceal his vehicle would excite suspicion. Opting for audacity instead, he parked the rental curbside, half a block from the abandoned premises of TIF. The car might belong to anyone: a night clerk working overtime, a customer with engine trouble, a custodian employed by one of several nearby shops where lights had been left on. If anyone was interested enough to check it out, a call downtown would trace it to the rental agency, where Bolan had obtained the wheels with false ID. He would be on about his business with the enemy before the phony driver's license could be double-checked through records in the capital.

  Beneath the trench coat, Bolan was in blacksuit, his military harness buckled into place. He made a point of tuning out the pain where the webbing chafed against his injured shoulder. There might be worse in store, before the night was over. With the Uzi submachine gun loaded and secured in its rigging underneath his arm. the soldier was prepared to make his move.

  He locked the rental, turned away and crossed the empty street without a backward glance. If police were waiting for him later — if he ever came back out — time enough then to face the problem. For now, he was eager to gain entry to the offices of TIF, to seek out the man who had stalked him across two states.

  He had discussed the field of suspects with Al Weatherbee, concurring in the captain's hunch that his assailant might be Frank Laurenti's son. They might be wrong, of course, and it didn't really matter now who the enemy was. They were light-years beyond the point of compromise, and Bolan had no alternatives. He must destroy his enemy or be himself destroyed.

  Once the name of Frank Laurenti had conjured up a seething hatred in the soldier's gut, compelling him to seek revenge against the monsters who had destroyed his family. The hatred had been exorcised by fire — gunfire — and the Executioner had come away from Frank Laurenti's death a different man.

  His act of vengeance, carried out so long ago on Commerce Street, had shown him that the enemy was not a single man or group of men. The evil did not wear a static face, but spread through society like a pervasive cancer, gnawing on the vitals of the body politic. The execution of Laurenti and his gunners had treated the symptoms, rather than striking a blow against the root of the disease. From TIF, the soldier had gone on to making war on the sickness where it lived. Laurenti's death had been an education, the lesson etched in blood.

  For others, for Laurenti's family, the man's death would have seemed a tragic murder, plain and simple. Bolan sometimes thought about the women who were widowed, children who were orphaned by his private war. He sympathized with them, recognized that they were victims — not of his crusade, but of the malignancy he fought against, victims of savages who thought so little of their families that they brought death and misery upon them all. The savage fathers' sins rebounded into future generations, wreaking havoc on the innocent. That was a pity, sure… but it did not weaken his commitment to his cause.

  If Frank Laurenti's son was waiting in the dusty, dark offices for Bolan, he would have to take his chances like the rest. He must know by now what kind of man his father was, and why he'd died. If anger and lust for vengeance overrode his common sense, and if he was driven by a need to even up an ancient score, then Bolan would accommodate him.

  In the narrow alleyway, he found a metal ladder bolted to the wall. Memory told him there had been a skylight on the roof that would provide the perfect means of entry, if it was still there. He shed the trench coat and scrambled up the ladder, ignoring stabs of pain in his shoulder, side and thigh. His still-mending body would perform because it had to. Bolan would accept no failure, brook no compromise.

  His destiny was waiting for him inside the deserted building, and the soldier would not keep it waiting any longer.

  * * *

  Frank Lawrence had been waiting in the dark since nine o'clock. He knew enough of Bolan's tactics, to know the Executioner would show up early, looking for any advantage he could find. He would not be this early, though, and once again the hunter's knowledge of his prey had served him well. Now Lawrence had the high ground, and he meant to use it.

  He did not know from what direction the Executioner would come, but he covered all his bets as far as possible. From his position in the central office that had once been his father's, he would hear any attempts to enter through the doors at front or back. The front was locked, and Lawrence doubted that Bolan would be rash enough to make his entry from the street. The back door, through which Lawrence had gained access hours earlier, was closed, but he had made a point of leaving it unlocked. It was so obvious that the soldier just might try it; if he didn't, Lawrence had the other means of entry covered.

  The frosted glass windows in the rest rooms at the rear were painted shut. If Bolan wasted half the night, he might be able to remove enough rust and paint to open the windows, but the task would be noisy and time-consuming, not his sort of move at all. The skylight above the lobby, where Lawrence's father's secretaries used to sit and type, was another possible, all right. He would have to keep it covered, too, while he waited for his quarry. If the Executioner thought himself to be the first to arrive, he might relax his guard enough for Frank to make it quick and easy, like stepping on an ant.

  But no, he did not want it to be quick and easy. In the nightmares of his youth, Bolan had been slow to die, his end protracted, painful. There was no justice in a bullet whistling through the darkness, snuffing out the bastard's life before he knew who was killing him and why.

  Frank Lawrence cared about justice, however corny or old-fashioned that might sound to some people. His father's murderer deserved to die, but first, he had to realize he was being executed for his crimes. If Bolan died believing his enemy was just another greasy thug from Little Italy, all the time and preparation would have been wasted. The hunter needed to observe a certain ritual, preserve the symbolism of his deed.

  The Colt Commando seemed to weigh a ton. He felt nervous, jumpy, now that he was on the verge of achieving something that had been his goal since he was a child. If anything interfered to rob him of his moment…

  No.

  Defeatist thinking might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In Vietnam and, later, on the streets, he had observed the soldiers and policemen who became their own worst enemies. The moment a soldier lost his confidence, he was as good as dead.

  He would not be cheated of his moment. If the Executioner surrendered, gave up his life without a fight, he would be disappointed. The bastard must not cheat him now, when he had come so far and risked so much.

  With something less than ninety minutes till midnight, he heard the enemy approaching. It was not the wind, did not sound like a rat, although the old, deserted office building had its share of vermin. Standing in the darkness, trembling with anticipation, Lawrence sought to pinpoint the direction of the sound. It had seemed to come from everywhere at once, and for an instant he was terrified that the acoustics of the office building might betray him, rob him of the advantage of surprise.

  The hunter held his breath and waited for the sound to be repeated. Just when his lungs were close to bursting and he knew that he would have to breathe or else lose consciousness, he heard another sound, different from the first, more readily identifiable.

  Someone opening the skylight.

  Lawrence recognized the first sound now, in retrospect; it had been Bolan snapping off an ancient hasp that held the skylight shut. Rusty hinges squealed now, briefly, and Lawrence was already moving toward the lobby, homing on the sounds that had betrayed his enemy and brought the Executioner into his hands.

  The office windows had been painted over, and the lobby was a cavern shrouded in darkness. It took another moment for his eyes to adjust, before he could detect a gleam of starlight through the open portal in the ceiling twelve feet above. Underneath the skylight, the darkness varied in degrees. For just an instant, Lawrence almost thought he could see the secretaries, still typing and erasing at their desks.
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  But there was nothing in the lobby now, of course, not even a stick of furniture. And a rope was snaking downward through the open skylight, stopping a foot or so above the concrete floor.

  He had the rotten bastard now! Let Bolan try to wriggle out of this one. A burst to shatter kneecaps, once the guy was safely through the skylight, and it would be time to let some light in on the subject, sit down with the corpse-to-be and have a chat.

  He flicked the Colt Commando's safety off and brought the rifle to his shoulder, sighting on the skylight. When Bolan's shadow blocked the starlight, he would have seconds to correct his aim, allow for Bolan to descend a yard or so, make doubly sure the bastard couldn't scramble up the rope and out again before the shock of losing both his legs brought him down.

  Atop the roof a shadow shifted, moved. Lawrence watched the stars wink out, eclipsed by Bolan's silhouette as he lowered himself through the opening. Seconds now. The hunter's hands were moist and clammy on his weapon.

  Now!

  He squeezed the trigger, let the flashing muzzle sweep for half an inch from left to right and back again. He heard tumblers smacking into fabric, ripping through and peppering the naked wall beyond. Half blinded by the muzzle-flash, he caught a fleeting image of the soldier as he fell; there was something fluid, almost batlike in the swift descent.

  He listened for the heavy impact of flesh and bone, but heard only a rustle, like tent flaps in the wind. The short hairs on his neck stood up, his finger tightening around the Colt Commando's trigger as he scanned the darkness, desperate to know what the hell was happening.

  Before he moved, the skylight came alive with winking flame. Lawrence had been suckered. Even as the parabellum rounds came slicing in above his head, before he heard the submachine gun's rattle, he was cursing Bolan's ingenuity, his own reckless hunger that had prompted him to waste his first and all-important rounds on a decoy.