Command Strike

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan blinked at the sudden question. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  “Not my mind, dear heart. My dirty body.”

  “Your body isn’t dirty,” he told her.

  “Inside it is,” she said. “It’s soiled with Mafia dirt. My God, I need a debriefing.”

  With gentle gruffness, Bolan suggested, “Let’s concentrate on the mind for now. The numbers are all falling, Sally. I have to pick some up and run with them.”

  She draped the clothing across her arm and said brightly, “Then I guess I’ll take a shower. If you’re in all that much lather, come in and continue the mental work while I purge the body.”

  “Take your shower,” he growled. “The rest can wait.”

  “Can’t even get you to scrub my back, huh?” she asked pertly. “You’ll be sorry. Wait and see.”

  “One thing usually leads to another, doesn’t it,” he said, smiling. The smile turned to a scowl as he playfully added, “Get outta here before I forget my calling!”

  “You guys are worse than jocks,” she groused, feigning anger. “What’s a girl to do when all the men are at training camp?”

  “She behaves herself,” Bolan suggested. “And waits until time, place, and circumstance combine to provide the proper atmosphere for a proper debriefing.”

  “I’ll hold you to that!” she cried delightedly, and skipped into the bathroom.

  Bolan would not mind being held to that. He watched until she disappeared behind the door; then he sighed with masculine regret and went to the telephone. It was time for a contact. He sent the call to the clean number and lit a cigarette while the combination ran its course. A moment later, the subject of recent conversation came aboard with a guarded, “Yeah, hullo.”

  “It’s getting very hairy,” Bolan told him.

  “Thanks for telling me. Here’s an equal truth. The sun rose this morning.”

  “In the east, yeah.” Bolan chuckled soberly. “Here’s the top of the order, Leo. Barney Matilda is Peter.”

  A moment of silence, then: “That’s curious, isn’t it?”

  “Worse than that. He still has an interest in the Pittsfield kid. A soft one, at the moment, if that’s any comfort. He was on his way to see you when I diverted him a bit. He may still go for it, so get your face ready.”

  “How sure are you about all this?” Turrin wondered.

  “Just say I got it from a solid source. I’m convinced, and it plays pretty well when you put it all together. For now, let’s call the man Peter and keep all the instincts active.”

  “Okay, yeah. Where does he fit, though?”

  “Right where I said. Top of the order. My source is positive that the guy is the Ace of Aces. I think we better play it that way.”

  Turrin sighed loudly. “If that’s true, he sure kept it close. I don’t know a wise guy anywhere who has even suggested such a thing. Old Barney has been more or less out of things for as long as I’ve been in the mob. But, okay, let’s say it’s true. What do you think his intentions are, present situation?”

  “I think he means to stop Eritrea, if he can find a chink to cling to. And I’m giving him all the chinks I can find.”

  “Poor David,” Turrin commented, chuckling. “From the vibes I’ve been getting, though, he’s got some pretty solid support. I guess he’s been working this thing a long time.”

  “Long time, yeah,” Bolan agreed.

  “He’s been selling a program, way I get it. Not himself. Of course, he goes with the program. So what will Barney do? Nothing overt, I’d guess.”

  “Right. Overt is not the name of his game. I think I caught him with his hand near the cookie jar a while ago, though. He was going to a meeting with some Marinello dissidents.”

  “Oh. That was you? How’d you get onto that?”

  “I had one of the guys wired.”

  “Well, good work. It’s the talk of the twenty-seventh floor—probably in the penthouse, too. I guess that was you at the other hits, too.”

  “I’ve kept busy,” Bolan admitted gloomily. “I need a reading on those hits, Leo.”

  “Sure. That’s easy. The reading is that Eritrea is sending Aces around town, moving quickly to tidy up the town for the big council tonight. And there’s a general feeling that the Commissione is sponsoring his show. There’s a lot of nervousness. Switchboard here has been lit up constantly for the past hour. How do you like the reading?”

  “It’s all I could ask for,” Bolan replied. “But there’s a twist to the twist, and I think you ought to be aware of it. Barney and I came eyeball to eyeball, jaw to jaw. He knows who Omega really is. And, of course, the Commissione—certainly not the hard arm—is not sponsoring David’s show. I’m hoping now that Barney will be combining two and two to make five. I’d like for him to think that Eritrea is cozy with Mack Bolan—for whatever reasons he wants to give it.”

  “You mean, Eritrea knows who his pal Omega really is.”

  “Something like that, yeah. Keep in mind, Leo, who Barney really is. Remember Pittsfield and remember Hal Brognola’s hairy problem. Someone high in the mob is wearing government ears. Those ears may as well belong to David Eritrea.”

  The little guy’s voice was strained as he replied, “You’re still angling toward that, eh? Let’s face reality, Sarge. Going in, your chances were about one in ten. If Barney is Peter—and if he is also the secret boss of the hard arm—and if he was the mastermind of the Pittsfield fiasco—then your chances have plummeted to about one in a thousand. I don’t see—”

  “I don’t play odds, Leo,” Bolan said quietly.

  “Sure, sure, I know—you make your own. But I’m right back where I was when they snatched Angelina. If Barney knows …”

  “Obviously he does not,” Bolan said. “Otherwise you’d have already been hit. Look at it, Leo. With all his covert power, Barney still has to depend on others to keep him in the know. I don’t believe he ever got fully on board with the situation at Pittsfield. He knows there was a snatch from a government safe house, okay. He knows the outside facts of the Pittsfield operation. He probably engineered them. But he does not know the inside truths. Nobody walked away from that Pittsfield operation, Leo. No word came out. You weren’t the only guy in Pittsfield when it went down. And you weren’t the only one to walk away smelling clean. I’m figuring Barney Matilda right now for a very troubled and half-blind Ace of Aces. He’s finger-groping in the dark. Okay. Let’s give his fingers something to examine.” “Okay,” Turrin said with a heavy sigh. “It’s your game, guy. I can’t even run much interference for it. Here’s something for you, though. Hal is on his way up from Wonderland. He’ll be at the U.N. Plaza at noon sharp, and you know the combination. Says he’d appreciate a debriefing at this stage of things.”

  “I’ll try to make it,” Bolan said. “I need the parley more than he does.”

  “Okay. Hey. Be careful.”

  Bolan grinned at the telephone. “Hey. What’s careful got to do with it?”

  The contact terminated with a chuckle from both sides. But Bolan was not feeling particularly chuckly. It was all coming together, yeah. In bits and pieces, but coming nevertheless. And things were going to be getting brutal right quick.

  He went to the bathroom to hurry the lady along. The door stood slightly ajar. Water was running in the shower stall. Her robe hung from a wall peg. But there was no lady in that bathroom. Her clothing was gone and the lady was gone. There was no window, no other door, and the vent shaft would barely admit Bolan’s hand. Nobody—nobody—had come through that apartment past Bolan.

  Impossible, sure, but there was coldness in his chest and cotton in his throat as Mack Bolan accepted the unhappy fact that he was alone in that twelfth-floor apartment.

  The debriefing was over. All that remained here for Mack Bolan were the invisible gates of hell itself.

  10

  SECRETS

  It took Bolan only about thirty seconds to find the secret. A concealed latch at t
he top of the built-in medicine chest swung open a section of the bathroom wall. He stepped into an identical but mirror-image bathroom in a duplicate apartment.

  Damned cute, yeah. And entirely worthy of a Ranger Girl. Those ladies missed few tricks. Sally’s “quiet place” evidently served also as an escape port, through which she traveled between her two worlds. And this one was the true quiet place. Bolan found wigs of every color and style, an incredible selection of clothing, and various other tools of a double-agent’s trade.

  He found also, pinned to the apartment door, a small comfort. It was a hastily scrawled note—reading simply, “I told you you’d be sorry!”

  He grinned at that, relieved to learn that she had engineered her own disappearance. But it was a relative relief. He’d wanted to tuck her away some place safe. She’d vetoed that arrangement, with a minimum of fuss and bother, electing to return to the hellgrounds and her own calling.

  So, okay. Bolan could understand that. He could respect it. But he did not have to enjoy it.

  He put the place in order and got out of there. Some things a guy simply had to accept. Bolan accepted Sally Palmer’s right to self-determination.

  He descended to the garage and shook down Barney’s limousine. That vehicle would be red hot the moment it hit the street again. He intended to abandon it a few blocks away. First he wanted a closer look at it.

  Beneath the rear seat he found some coins, a theatre ticket stub, a petrified slice of french fried potato, and a soiled handkerchief.

  A wicked little palm gun, a snubnose .32, loaded and awaiting use, was nestled between some bottles in the console bar. Bolan left it there, jotted down the number of the mobile phone, and got out to check the trunk.

  And he was glad he did that.

  That trunk compartment was crammed with electronics gear. Several of the pieces were portable black boxes—about the size of a cigar box but much heavier—but most of the gear was built into the vehicle and wired in place.

  Intrigued, Bolan returned to the betweenseats console for another look at that citizen’s band radio. The whole front lifted away from the thing, revealing another, much more sophisticated control panel.

  Yeah.

  And the CB antenna was no CB antenna. The inner guts of the thing extended through the trunk lid to a larger housing on the inside surface, containing multiple loading coils.

  That limousine was a rolling command center, damn near as good as Bolan’s own in the war wagon.

  And Bolan knew now what those portable boxes were. They were the top of the art in electronic surveillance, miniature transceivers which—used in conjunction with micro pickups—would record, store, and transmit on command in a few seconds an entire twenty-four hours’ accumulation of eavesdropping.

  Did old Barney have the whole town wired?

  Probably, yeah.

  He had complete and trusting access to everywhere and everybody. The “living legend” could stroll innocently through the homes and offices of bosses and buttonmen alike, strewing his little microbugs like rose petals while the “chauffeur” planted the black boxes somewhere outside—and bingo, a wire was attached.

  So this was how the Aces always managed to know so much about everything and everybody. It was said that an Ace could glance at the lowliest street soldier and reel off a complete make on the guy—how he liked his eggs cooked—even his preferences in sex and the configurations thereof—if he suffered from gas or hemorrhoids or chronic constipation.

  Someone should have guessed long ago.

  Apparently, no one had. Any guy with rank would bleat like hell, with murder in his eye, if he knew that his own mob had wires on him. Not even a buttonman would hold still for that sort of thing. They were all paranoid as hell about police surveillance. What would they do if confronted with …

  Bolan grinned at the mere thought.

  And maybe, yeah—just maybe—there was an angle here. Maybe old Barney had one secret too many.

  A grimly elated Executioner probed deeper into the secrets of that console. And, yeah. Oh, yeah.

  Mack Bolan was not about to abandon this vehicle!

  He moved it to a remote corner of the underground garage and locked it up. Then he went out and hailed a cab. It was time to meet Brognola at the U.N. Plaza. He needed that parley with the chief fed—but even more urgently now, he needed to pass the word about Sally. The girl was in grave jeopardy, self-determination or no. She could end up like Georgette. And Bolan still felt the responsibility, even though she’d so cleverly relieved him of that.

  At least now—thanks entirely to Sally—Bolan had another weapon at his disposal. And, the way things were shaping, he’d be needing every damn weapon he could pull together.

  And so, he reflected darkly, would the Ace of Aces.

  11

  CONFIDENCES

  As was his custom, Bolan was on the scene and scouting thirty minutes ahead of the scheduled meet. Even though Brognola was now a friend of long standing, one whose loyalty and commitment to the cause had been ably demonstrated time and again, a guy in Mack Bolan’s shoes did not casually venture into any prearranged meeting.

  He satisfied himself that the track was clear, then settled into the wait. At precisely twelve o’clock a cab arrived and Hal Brognola stepped out. Had there been a last-minute hitch, the chief fed would have moved directly inside, the meet would “abort,” and Bolan would go on his way. But the pressure man from Wonderland moved along the walk a few feet, then paused to light a cigar. Bolan stepped into view and lit a cigarette. The two then walked toward each other, meeting halfway. They solemnly shook hands. Brognola said, “I never know you. You could have walked right past and I wouldn’t have known. How do you do it?”

  They were moving along the walk toward the corner. Bolan gruffly told his old friend, “Recognition is in the mind, Hal, not in the eyes. I start standing out for instant recognition, I’m a dead man.”

  “Who’re you kidding? You’re a dead man anyway.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says Big Bill Rafferty, chief of the Incorruptibles. Says you’ll never leave town alive.”

  “That’s the organized crime unit?”

  “Yeah. I tried to put in a word for you. Rafferty wants no part of you. His big headache is the funeral and all the possible implications of the power vacuum.”

  “There’s no vacuum,” Bolan reported quietly. “Just the reverse.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “It’s never been in doubt, Hal. Eritrea had the thing locked up long before Augie died. That’s why the old man pulled his Houdini routine and tried to hole up in Pittsfield. I think he became convinced that Eritrea meant to help him die a bit quicker. If I hadn’t happened into it, it’s possible that Augie could have broken the movement. It seems that most of the Commissione executive staff was remaining loyally behind him. That was the only edge he had, but it could have been enough if I hadn’t interfered. Well, I did interfere—and I broke the back of the resistance before I realized what was going down. Eritrea now has a free ticket. And he’s a real Turk. If that guy can get his program inaugurated, look out. He has a lot more brain than muscle, but the brain is where the real power is at. I don’t have to tell you that. He can buy all the muscle he needs, once he’s on the throne.”

  “So your real target here is Eritrea.”

  “He’s the one.”

  Brognola coughed delicately and observed, “Then I’m surprised you haven’t already burned him down.”

  “I’m going for something better than that.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “You want to hear about it?”

  “No. But I guess I better.”

  Bolan chuckled solemnly. “You still have that problem in Washington. Right?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “I promised you a patsy.”

  “That’s right, you did. But I can’t hold you to that.”

  “I’m holding myself to it,”
Bolan said. “Leo is in a great spot now. You’d like to keep him there, wouldn’t you?”

  “Sure I would.”

  “What’s your deadline?”

  “I have to respond to the Senate subpoena by the close of business tomorrow. I’ve thought seriously of resigning instead.”

  Bolan gave his companion a sharp look. “What would that save?”

  “It would save Leo—and maybe the lives of his wife and children.”

  “You’re sure that leak is plugged, Hal?”

  “It’s plugged,” the troubled fed replied sourly. “Plugging leaks is one thing. Frustrating the normal processes of government is quite another. If I produce Leo, he’s damned. If I don’t, there’ll be a governmental crisis for sure. My only option is to resign and take all the heat onto myself.”

  “You really don’t want to do that.”

  “Course not.”

  “Okay,” Bolan said. “So we’ll keep playing the original tune. I’ll give you a stand-in for Leo. Do you want him dead or alive?”

  “I have that choice, eh?”

  “I think so, if my numbers come down in proper sequence. I’m going to give you Eritrea, Hal.”

  The fed didn’t even break stride, but he almost lost his cigar. “You’re the damnedest guy. How do you intend to do that?”

  “If you want him live, he’ll volunteer for the job. Otherwise, I’ll just hand over his carcass and you can write your own scenario. I’d rather deliver him live. It would give me a certain satisfaction. Also, it would cinch the main thrust of my operation here at command.”