Chicago Wipeout

by Don Pendleton

  The crewchief and his small party reappeared on the roadway and crossed grimly to the other side to make their unhappy report to the boss. Stanno’s huge shoulders flexed restlessly as he listened, then he tossed his head back like a jungle ape and bawled, “Awright, back to th’ joint!” He flung himself away from the wreckage and moved quickly up the road toward his vehicle.

  “Don’t fuck around with this junk! Shove that stuff off the road and get these dead boys up to the house!” He spun about in mid-stride to jab a quivering finger toward the crewchief. “Get on the radio and tell that chopper to come on back. That guy is either long gone or he’s just hanging around waiting to throw us another punch. But get everybody back to the joint. We’re going hard.”

  “Going hard!” simply meant a withdrawal into heavy defenses. Joe the Monster had not survived twenty years violence on ferocity alone. He had learned, also, when to pull in his horns and retrench.

  And for one split-second there, on that macabre mountain road, he had shown a face to his boys which they had never before seen atop Joe Stanno’s beefy shoulders—a face filled with fear and anxiety. Perhaps the old adage is true, the one which suggests that at the heart of every thug lurks an inherent weakness and fear … and perhaps even cowardice. Or maybe Joe the Monster was simply a realist with an instinctive respect for the imcomprehensible.

  One thing seemed certain.

  Not even Joe Stanno was willing to blunder about out there at the edge of oblivion with Mack the Bastard on the warpath. Besides, the Talifero brothers—Stanno’s direct superiors on La Commissiane—had a national alert out for this guy. They were demanding immediate notification of any contact with Bolan,

  Stanno was only following orders.

  Even for a monster man, it seemed the sensible thing to do.

  Carl Lyons had first crossed paths with Bolan during the latter’s strikes against the Los Angeles based family of Julian DiGeorge, when the young sergeant of detectives was assigned to the special “get Bolan” detail, code-named Hardcase. They had come together in one of those electrifying nose-to-nose encounters at the height of a Bolan hit, and found themselves staring at each other over a pair of hot and ready weapons.

  Some hours prior to that confrontation, Bolan had made something of an ass of the young cop during a high speed chase along the Los Angeles freeways, and Lyons had been fairly itching to get another crack at the illusive man in black. And then when the opportunity had come, this tough up-and-coming L.A. cop had simply stood there in frozen amazement and watched the audacious blitz artist sheath his weapon, turn his back, and calmly walk away—after announcing, “You’re not the enemy.”

  The worst part, from the detective’s point of view, was that he had allowed the most wanted man in Los Angeles to do just that … walk away. Their lives became a bit more interwoven after that night, though reluctantly so for Lyons, and this tense “friendship” had contributed heavily to Bolan’s Southern California victory over the mob. It was also directly responsible for the fact that Bolan exited breathing from that battleground, and that was not the tort of debt a man shrugged away. Not a man like Mack Bolan, at any rate.

  He deposited his burden on a makeshift bunk in the rear of the “warwagon”—a Ford Econoline van which Bolan had purchased and outfitted during the New York battles—and which now was backed into the shadows of a narrow blind canyon just off the state road. Lyons regained consciousness as Bolan eased him onto the bunk, and he exerted a feeble resistance until his rescuer commanded, “Knock it off, Sergeant!”

  “What … what’s the situation!” the L.A. cop asked, sinking weakly back. “That you, Bolan?”

  “Yeah.” It was pitch dark in the little van. Bolan’s fingers were delicately probing the other man for wounds. “Where are you hurt?” he asked gruffly.

  “Just from top to bottom,” the cop replied faintly. “They’ve been working on me all day.”

  “Carefully, I’d say,” Bolan told him. “You seem to bo all here.”

  “Yeah. I think they’ve knocked something loose inside of me, though. I … if I don’t make it, Bolan …”

  “You feel that bad?” growled the man in black.

  “Yeah. I feel that bad,” Lyons groaned.

  Bolan had determined that the cop’s head wound was no more than a superficial scalp laceration. “You must be wearing Mafia blood,” he concluded. “You couldn’t have bled all that from this wound.”

  Lyons grunted. “It was gushing at me from every direction. Damn, what a hit.” He groaned again and twisted about in a strong paroxysm of pain. “Listen to me,” he hissed. “My cover name is Autry … James Autry. I’m on loan to the Nevada authorities. You’ve got to protect that cover, no matter what. Get me? Don’t let—”

  Bolan brushed aside the plea with a gruff, “Don’t worry. We’ll sweat it through. You strong enough to handle a weapon?”

  “I guess so. Where are we?”

  “Less than a mile from the hardsite,” Bolan replied. “We’re going to make a soft run for it. We just might make it clean if they don’t have that chopper up there spotting for them.”

  “Listen … if it goes sour … contact Pete O’Brien in Carson City. Tell him I stuck to the cover story and the thing is still secure from my end. Tell him, Bolan.”

  “Sure, I’ll tell him,” Bolan promised. “You think you’re bleeding inside?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Listen, tell him it’s the California carousel. Remember that. California carousel.”

  “Okay. Pete O’Brien, Carson City, California carousel—I’ve got it.” Bolan was twisting the top from a canteen. He lifted the weakened policeman’s head and touched the canteen to his lips. “Just wet your mouth,” he cautioned. “Swish it around and spit it out.”

  Lyons did so, and a moment later declared, “I—I’m okay.”

  Bolan fed a fresh clip into his .45 and pressed the gun into Lyons’ hand. “She’s ready to roar,” he warned him. “I’m going up front now. We could get into a firefight yet. If you hear someone whistling Yankee Doodle, that’s the one you don’t shoot at.”

  Lyons chuckled weakly and said, “You’re always thinking.”

  “Until I die,” Bolan assured him, and hurried forward to send the vehicle on its way.

  Yeah, Bolan was thinking. He was thinking that all the rotten carcasses on that mountain were not worth one of the gutsy cop’s fingers. He’d had his sights on San Francisco, and had stopped off at funnytown only to get in on the skim action and appropriate a few bucks for his flattened warchest.

  But now he was getting the impression that a lot more was transpiring behind the glitter of Vegas than a bit of lighthanded juggling of casino profits.

  As soon as he could get Carl Lyons into competent hands, the Executioner intended to take a look behind that tinsel curtain.

  Yeah, the dice were rolling—and from on high, it seemed.

  Bolan was not a warrior to disregard directions from offstage.

  And, in his combat-conditioned mind, the tussle for tinsel-town was already underway. The Executioner was closing on Vegas.

  3: SOLAN’S BLOOD

  For ten minutes the warwagon ran without lights, nosing quietly along a network of dirt roads and precarious trails, often coasting without power in the descents, halting frequently for a quivering recon of the surrounding terrain.

  Not until they had completely quit the heights and rejoined the state road was Bolan satisfied that there was no pursuit. Puzzling over this conclusion, he set a direct course for Vegas and announced to his passenger: “Looks like we’re clear.”

  A feeble acknowledgement of the situation came from the rear of the van.

  “You okay?” Bolan asked.

  “Guess I’ll live. And … Bolan …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  Bolan smiled and said, “Sure.”

  There was no need for thanks. Bolan knew that. And Lyons knew it. Bolan would have hauled the weakened man
out of that mess even if he’d been a total stranger—even if he’d been a Mafioso. There was no easy intellectual explanation for this facet of the Executioner’s character. As a man given to deep introspection, he often puzzled over this seeming inconsistency of his survival instincts. And he understood only that sometimes—even sometimes in the heat of a firefight—an inner command would cause him to spare a particular life rather than take it. Bolan had long ago learned to trust his instincts, and normally he followed those inner urgings, as he had done back there on that mountain road, even though, at that moment, he had been entertaining the possibility that the prisoner was simply another Mafioso being “disciplined” by his own family. Even though, at that moment, Bolan’s longshot for survival was pinned to a very precise game of numbers.

  So once again he had followed inner direction, and again it had proved out right. But … would it always be so? Could this “inner command” be nothing more than an inherent and growing weakness, a flaw in the combat character which would eventually destroy him? Could it represent a deeply stirring rebellion against the hell and “thunderation” which had so characterized his life these past few years? A shrinking from his own fate? … A whimpering reach for sweetness, mercy and absolution?

  Bolan grunted and flung away the idea. Introspection, a review of one’s deeper motivations, was a good thing up to a point. But too much questioning of one’s self could send a finely tuned mind into disarray, also—and what greater flaw could there be than that? Hell, he had known what he was getting into when he declared this lousy war … he was no greenhorn in this business of impossible warfare, and he’d known that he was renouncing all the good and simple things that made life worthwhile.

  He had not, of course, expected to survive this long. He had overestimated the enemy and underestimated his own life expectancy. His last mile, he’d called it—and what a long, grim and bloody trail that last mile had become. What a lonely one. Yeah, that was the worst part—the enforced aloneness, the total isolation from the things that made life good.

  He had learned to live with blood and thunder, with constant jeopardy and the ever-present specter of sudden and violent death. If he should live that long, would he ever become accustomed to the role of total outcast? Of course not. And, he realized, he had no right to even expect it. This was part of the price he’d accepted, and this was the “life” that he would push to the absolute outer limit, to the last staggering step of that final bloody mile.

  The life? Wasn’t every strike against the enemy a lifetime of its own? Sure. Sure it was. The Executioner had certainly lived more lives than one. And, as part of the tab, he had died many deaths. His first death had been back there in Pittsfield; he’d died first with Mama and Pop and Cindy. He had died again with Chopper and Flower Child, Whispering Death Zitka and Bloodbrother Loudelk and Boom-Boom and Gunsmoke and Deadeye Washington—that fantastic Los Angeles death squad—and he’d lived to die again with Doc Brantzen at Palm Village, with the little soldada in Miami and the cute kid who’d become a Mafia turkey in New York. Deaths, yes, very real deaths for some very real and dear people, and deaths of the soul, also, for Mack Bolan. And how many deaths could the soul survive?

  And how about those others—the symbolic deaths—those very real lives which Bolan dared not approach again for fear of carrying his plague to them? Johnny Bolan and Val and all the one-life friends he’d picked up and hastily dropped off along that bloody mile of survival—one-lifers who must forever remain in the shadows of Bolan’s multi-life form of existence.

  Even Lyons … even a tough cop like Carl Lyons … Lyons had a multi-life existence of his own to worry about.

  Bolan sighed and lit a cigarette.

  “You want a smoke, Sergeant?” he called back.

  “I quit,” came the weak response. “Haven’t you heard that it’s hazardous to your health?”

  Bolan chuckled. His “guest” was sounding more like his old self. It would take more than a bit of pummeling around to put down a cop like Carl Lyons. He took a deep drag from the cigarette and sent the smoke toward the rear of the van. “Lots of things are hazardous to health,” he commented.

  Sure, lots of things. War, for example. And trying to cram too many lifetimes into a final, bloody mile of dying.

  The enemy blood did not bother Bolan. He lived for their blood, and for nothing else. Hell, he was dying for it. Intellectualism aside, there was but one way to beat the Mafia, and that was to play their game—their way. Up to a point, of course. The game changed only in those rare moments such as Bolan had experienced back on that mountainside when, during an orgy of bloodletting, he had abandoned his battle plan to drag a dying human back into the ranks of the living.

  Uh-huh, and there was the intellectual explanation. It was the name of the game. Beat them with their own methods … but don’t join them. In Bolan’s mind, this was the sole differential between himself and his enemies. He was still a human being. How long, he wondered, could he remain so—and continue to play the game? How many more deaths could his rotting soul survive? There would, of course, be one final death … the one written in his own blood. But … would the man himself die in the interim? Would his soul depart, somewhere in there, from the onslaught of repeated interim deaths, leaving behind a deranged and half-human jungle beast to prey indiscriminately in an unrestrained exercise of the Mafia game?

  Bolan chewed the idea and knew that this was one price he was not willing to pay for his war. Why replace one evil with another? Better to have it end now, tonight, and let his blood and his soul flow out together.

  As though sensing his rescuer’s thoughts, Carl Lyons spoke up from the darkness of the van and told him, “You’ve grown a lot since our first meeting, Bolan. But even with the face job I knew it was you at first glimpse. Or should I say at first blast. How the hell do you keep it going?”

  “It becomes a way of life,” Bolan muttered. Sure. Just commit yourself to unending warfare, then kill quicker and run faster than the other guy. He smiled and asked the cop, “What do you mean, I’ve grown?”

  Lyons was gingerly sliding into the seat beside Bolan. “I mean you’re not the same wild-ass warrior I faced in L.A. More class, or something.”

  Bolan sighed and replied, “Well, we keep learning, don’t we? You feeling that good, to be sitting up here?”

  The policeman winced and shifted about, seeking a more comfortable position. “Not really,” he said. “But there’s some things I guess I have to tell you before you drop me off.”

  Bolan nodded his head. “Fair exchange,” he said.

  “You remember the Washington wheel in the Pointer Operation?”

  “Harold Brognola,” Bolan replied unemotionally.

  “Yeah. He told me he talked to you at Miami. Listen. Washington has an interest in this operation I’m on now. Brognola again. We discussed you briefly during our last contact. He said you made too many waves in New York. And Chicago was the final straw. A congressman from Illinois is really laying the pressure on the Justice Department. A couple of others, too, with plenty of clout. They’re saying the FBI is dragging its heels on this deal, that they could’ve brought you in months ago if they’d really been trying.”

  Mildly, Bolan said, “You’re not telling me anything new, and it’s costing you too much. Go on back and lie down.”

  “No, listen,” Lyons went on raggedly. “The mob is in high gear, too. They’ve got a Bolan watch on, nationwide—hell, worldwide I guess. Just waiting for you to pop up somewhere. Well, you’ve popped. This town will be crawling with headhunters before dawn, bet on it.”

  “I’d already bet on it,” Bolan told him.

  “Double the bets then. The Taliferos are personally leading the head parties.”

  “We’ve met before,” Bolan pointed out.

  “You’re not the only guy who’s learning, you know,” the cop replied. “Those guys have been sieving through every step of ground you’ve covered, and licking their own woun
ds all the way. By now they probably know you better than you know yourself. And they want your blood, Bolan.”

  “They’ll have to take their place in line,” Bolan replied, scowling.

  “Not these guys,” the cop insisted. “Even a Capo walks lightly around the Talifero brothers.”

  Bolan’s scowl became a faint smile and he said, “Okay, I’ll walk lightly too. Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

  “No. Brognola says you can forget his offer.”

  “I forgot it a long time ago.”

  “The point is, Bolan, he can’t even offer you a prayer now. The heat is on and all pots are boiling. Brognola says it’s go for broke now, get Bolan. Forget personal feelings and past debts, just get Bolan.”

  “Is that what you’re doing in Vegas?” the Executioner calmly inquired.

  “Well no. I’m on something entirely different. But … Brognola said.…”

  Bolan crushed out his cigarette and said, “Yeah?”

  Lyons coughed and clutched at his belly, then said, “The feds are springing with the Taliferos.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They figure the mob’s Bolan watch is better than theirs, and they’re keying on the Talifero brothers, constant surveillance, phone taps, the whole bit. So when the world rolls over on you, Bolan, your nation’s government will be right there stomping the mutilated carcass.”

  The man in black shrugged his shoulders and absently reached for another cigarette. “I’ve not been expecting exactly the medal of honor,” he said quietly.

  “Well … you watch it. When the national enforcers hit the scene, the feds will be right behind them—or amongst them. I wanted you to know that. Also, I.…”

  Bolan lit his cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. “Also what?”

  “Brognola said something else. This, uh, is pretty rotten, Mack. He said—if our paths should cross—I should tell you thanks for past favors. And then I should gun you down.”

  Bolan’s eyes flicked to his passenger. “You’ve got the weapon,” he observed coldly.