Command Strike

by Don Pendleton

  Gun metal flashed in the optics as a snarling hardman produced a revolver. The other slapped it away and sprinted off in pursuit of the fleeing figure.

  Bolan was also launched, in instant reaction. He was out of the Warwagon and into a waiting chase car, a Jaguar sportster, before his intellect could even begin to assess the implications of that startling “spark.”

  The cannibals, yeah, were hard at work—but apparently an intended victim had decided to “reason” with them from outside the boiling pot. That man was running for his life.

  Bolan was running, also—for that same life. The Jag hit full revolutions during the first hundred yards of the charge and did not let off until the headlamps were sweeping the warehouse area in search of the game. He found it several hundred feet downrange from the bad Christina, where two big ugly cannibals were dragging a struggling victim toward the intended feast—and he joined it at full throttle, sending startled torpedoes scrambling for survival with all festive thoughts abandoned.

  They dropped their prisoner with instinctive alacrity, to spin away in their own chosen paths of salvation—playing Bolan’s game Bolan’s way. He easily avoided the fallen prisoner and sent the charging vehicle toward instant intercept of the guy on the dock side. The sleek nose of the Jag made contact with flesh and bone, crumpling it and flinging it cartwheeling into the water with an anguished scream. The other guy had spun off to the side of a warehouse and was bringing hardware to bear on his problem when the Jag stood on her nose and Bolan erupted from there with Big Thunder unleashed. The torpedo’s weapon spoke first but Bolan’s spoke better, the big piece roaring out 240 grains of splattering death, totally eclipsing the lighter report of the other weapon. The Jaguar was moving in reverse even before the reverberations of that sudden encounter could move the length of the pier.

  The third man had not moved from where he’d fallen. He’d been roughed up a bit. A lip was split and bleeding, one eye puffed shut. But that was only the beginning of this man’s problems. Apparently he was also experiencing a heart attack.

  Sounds of alarmed reaction were coming from Christina. There was but one sane move left for Bolan. He scooped the ailing man into his arms, deposited him in the car, and got the hell out of there.

  But the guy was in bad shape, struggling for breath, the open eye plainly aware of the situation and flaring into the knowledge of approaching death.

  Bolan knew a bit about heart resuscitation but he also knew that this man’s best chance lay at the emergency hospital just a few quick blocks away.

  “Don’t fight yourself,” he advised. Try to be calm. You’ll have medical help in a minute.”

  But the guy was trying to tell him something.

  “Don’t talk,” Bolan said firmly.

  The dying man insisted nevertheless, the voice weak and the tortured words all but indistinguishable. “… pro shop … great danger … help her … the girl …”

  Bolan’s first item of business was to get the dying man to the hospital, and he beat his estimated time by about ten seconds. The guy was still gasping the urgent message—even more urgent than his own life itself, apparently—when the Jag powered along the drive to the emergency entrance and pulled onto an ambulance ramp.

  A uniformed cop was standing there.

  “Cardiac!” Bolan snapped at him. “Get some help out here!”

  The cop’s gaze strayed to the victim’s face. He paled, then quickly went inside without a word to Bolan.

  The old man had stopped breathing. Bolan ran around to the passenger door and hauled the guy out, lay him on the ground, and commenced CPR. A couple of orderlies appeared a moment later and smoothly took over. Another guy with a stethoscope dangling from his neck appeared then, and continued the CPR procedure while the others lifted the patient onto a gurney.

  Bolan’s mind was now fixed on the necessity for a quick fadeaway, but the cop was holding the door for their entrance and his concerned comment to the attendants stayed Bolan’s departure another moment.

  “Take good care of the judge, boys.”

  Bolan froze at midstride, torn between the need to fade and the almost equally important need to know. Another moment and the cop would be wanting answers to some questions of his own.

  Too late already. The cop was giving him an expectant look. Bolan fell in behind the procession and went inside.

  People were gathering around, applying oxygen and doing the other usual things as the “judge” was hurried toward a treatment room.

  Someone gasped, “Hell—it’s Judge Daly!”

  The cop was looking Bolan up and down—wondering, maybe, if and where he’d seen that face before.

  The “most wanted” man in the country did not give the guy too much time to wonder about it. “Call it in!” he snapped. “Be sure someone notifies the family!”

  The cop reacted immediately to that voice of quiet authority, spinning on his heel and walking quickly toward the desk.

  It was cut, now; to follow through seemed the only logical action. Bolan followed through. He went into the emergency treatment room and grabbed the intern by the arm. “What’s his chances?” he quietly inquired.

  “How long was he gone before you instituted CPR?”

  “Just a few seconds.”

  “That could be the determining factor,” the intern said. “We’ll get him stabilized and then—”

  “I’m a police officer,” Bolan lied. “I need to talk to him. Now.”

  “That’s impossible,” the guy replied angrily. “The man is barely alive.”

  Perhaps. But the man was conscious and still trying to talk. Bolan brushed past the intern and bent low to catch the labored speech. “… Mel … girl … plot … help …”

  “Where is she?” Bolan asked. “Where is the girl?”

  “Pro … pro …”

  “Right, the pro shop. But where? Where is the pro shop?”

  The judge muttered something that sounded like “pine group.”

  Bolan’s eyes asked the question of the intern.

  “Pine Grove, probably,” the guy told him. “It’s a country club on the west side. Now you’ve simply got to—”

  “Sparks,” Bolan said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Take care of the judge,” Bolan said, and he went out of there.

  The cop was still at the telephone.

  Bolan waved as he went past. He reclaimed his chase car and turned her head westward.

  Sparks, sure. Paydirt. A federal district judge, Mafia torpedoes, a country club, a girl in jeopardy, a plot, great danger. Paydirt for damn sure.

  “Thanks, judge,” Bolan whispered to a brave spirit. “I’ll take it from here.”

  2

  LOCATORS

  The local chamber of commerce liked to think of Ohio’s largest city as “the best location in the nation.” And maybe it was … for many things. Within a five-hundred-mile radius was concentrated more than half of the entire population of both the U.S. and Canada, fifty-five percent of all the country’s manufacturing plants, and more than fifty percent of all retail sales in both countries. One of the busiest ports in the nation, it handled traffic not only from the Great Lakes but from the world at large via the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic and from all the great industrial rivers of the continent via inland waterway to the mighty Ohio.

  Only the cities of New York and Chicago could claim more corporate headquarters than Cleveland—and this proud center of America’s industrial heartland did not mince words in staking its claim, pointing to the biggies like Goodyear and Firestone, Standard Oil of Ohio and Republic Steel, General Tire and TRW. Sherwin-Williams, Addressograph-Multigraph, American Shipbuilding—on and on, count them, forty-one of the top one thousand industrial corporations in the country were headquartered here.

  A good location, sure.

  One of those “top corporations” not mentioned in the Chamber of Commerce brochures was La Cosa Nostra, whose annual gross “product�
�� exceeded that of many small nations. The Mob was not headquartered here, of course, but it maintained a thriving branch office in this industrial heartland of the nation.

  And so what was “going down” in Cleveland?

  What was a veteran legbreaker and contract specialist such as Bad Tony Morello finding in common with so many respected pillars of the business and social communities? Gambling, narcotics, prostitution, pornography—sure, the usual nickel-and-dime operations from which pyramiding fortunes were built—it was common knowledge that Morello was local master of all that.

  But there was more, much more—and Bolan had so far picked up only the vibrations of some ambitious new trust at the innards of American industry. He had followed those vibrations to Cleveland—“the best location in the nation”—and hit a stone wall.

  The developments of this evening—as small as they seemed, on the surface—were the first faint crack in that wall. Bolan had absolutely no “feel” for Judge Edwin Daly. It was nothing new or particularly startling to find a federal judge playing the cozies with a Mafia boss. It was a bit strange, however, to find one running for his life from a couple of legbreakers. All sorts of interesting possibilities were thus presenting themselves to Bolan’s trained and knowing mind as he sought out one of the most exclusive country clubs in this city of corporate exclusiveness.

  He followed Interstate 71 south to an exit just beyond suburban Brook Park, then maintained a due westerly course—occasionally consulting a road map on the seat beside him—until the intersection with Pine Grove Road, a two-lane blacktop bordering the sprawling country club.

  The time was close to three o’clock. The grounds were dark, silent, almost forbidding as he turned into the drive and killed his lights. He sat there for a moment to get the feel and lie of that place and to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then he continued on, climbing slightly for another few hundred yards in a winding approach to the clubhouse.

  The place reeked of class.

  Low, modern lines with a lot of rock and glass—reflecting pools in the front, swimming and other frolicksome facilities fanning off to the side, plenty of trees and sleek lawns, hedgerows, flowers, bowers, flagstone walkways peeling off in all directions.

  A couple of floods lit the front lawn. Faint night-lights glowed at the rear. There were no signs of security guards or night watchmen—indeed, no sign of human presence whatever.

  Bolan pulled his vehicle into a stand of trees at the edge of the parking area and quietly got out to sniff the night. It was then he heard the murmur of distant voices. He quickly stripped down to the black combat outfit which he wore beneath the street clothes and thoughtfully selected his weapons. There was no way to anticipate what may be encountered during the probe. Perhaps nothing more threatening than a steward or janitor. On the other hand …

  When he left the vehicle, the .44 AutoMag head-buster was riding military web at the right hip and the 9mm Beretta Brigadier—silencer equipped—rode shoulder harness beneath the left arm. Spare clips for both pistols were touch-placed at the waist. Special accessories, routine for such missions, occupied slit pockets of the blacksuit. Black sneakers on the feet completed the rig.

  A light probe, yeah. Hopefully. He blended with the night for a quick and silent recon, remaining well clear of the lighted areas, carefully testing the darkness as he homed in on those muted voices.

  The judge had mentioned the pro shop, which should be over toward the golf course. But there was nothing but darkness out there—and there was no need to travel beyond the main clubhouse.

  Those voices were coming from the pool area. Male, two of them, a bit argumentative but seemingly allied in some joint enterprise. Some damn deadly enterprise, yeah.

  “I say we put a bathing suit on her.”

  “Bullshit, go find one then.”

  “I could find one. They got a whole shop full of them in there.”

  “Forget it. This is just as good. She was here alone, see, after everybody left. She decided to have a swim. Why not bare-assed? Who’s to look?”

  “God it’s almost a shame, ain’t it? I’d look at that any day.”

  “Stop, you’re breaking my heart. It’s just another broad, Lenny. A wise broad, at that Now gimme a hand here, dammit. If she tries kicking me in the balls again, I’ll have your ass.”

  “I guess she’s all kicked out. Lookit that, would you? She’s screaming with her eyes. She’s afraid to open her mouth.” The guy chuckled wickedly. “She believed you, Chuck. She really thinks you’ll give her something to chew on.”

  “I’ll give you something to chew on if you don’t stop dicking around. Grab her feet, dammit.”

  Bolan had then in view now.

  The submerged lights inside the pool were providing a rather mellow illumination to the macabre scene at poolside. A beautifully voluptuous and quite naked young lady lay passively on her back at the water’s edge. At this point, Bolan did not have a clear view of her face but he had the impression that she was conscious and aware. Strangled little sobs on the borderline of hysteria provided a strange contrast to the docile manner in which she was accepting an unhappy fate. The two guys were standing waist deep in the pool, preparing to drag the girl in with them.

  A chain-link fence stood across Bolan’s way and the gate was at the far end. He hit that barrier at the run, vaulting over and landing lightly on the other side at almost the precise spot where the girl had been lying. She was now in the water, submerged between the two fully clothed torpedoes, horrified eyes open and—yeah, Lenny—screaming.

  The two savages seemed to be getting some weird kick out of the girl’s suffering. Apparently they had been playing with her for some time, holding her just barely submerged and perhaps even hauling her out at intervals—purely in the interests of game preservation—prolonging the drowning and in the process reducing that fragile mind to a paralyzed lump of passive terror.

  It had been awhile since Mack Bolan had felt such compassionate rage.

  Those bulging blue eyes were staring up at him—and he knew that she saw, six inches of water and mindbusting terror notwithstanding. Bolan knew, too, that she had never lost hope, had never totally surrendered to the terror.

  Lenny’s eyes had caught something also—traveling up from the girl’s feet and slowly lifting into that confrontation with icy outrage.

  “Oh shit,” he muttered.

  They were appropriate last words. The big silver hawgleg thundered its disgust with savage games. A chunk of Lenny’s head skipped off across the water, trailing muck and crimson fluids behind it.

  The other guy turned loose of the girl as though she had suddenly developed great heat, hands rising toward the stars in a silent plea for mercy. Bolan sent the guy all the mercy he could find, a big mushrooming bullet squarely between the eyes. Then he snatched that tormented girl from the muck and delivered her from terror, carrying her tenderly to his breast and murmuring soothing words of reassurance.

  He took her to a sunning board and gently lay her down, manipulating cold arms and abdomen to assist her in expelling unwanted fluids. She spluttered and coughed in cooperation but those terrorized eyes never left his until he got up and went in search of her clothing. He dressed her, slung her bag over his shoulder, then lifted her again into his arms and carried her away from that abominable place.

  He’d come for answers and found only more questions.

  But Mack Bolan was not complaining—and all the new questions could await a better time and place. So could the Executioner. Sparks—yeah, maybe. But it had definitely become a night for Sergeant Mercy.

  And that was okay, too.

  3

  IDENTITIES

  Bolan took the girl to his “safe house” on the West Shore and put her to bed. He was a bit concerned about her condition but—knowing the enemy—he was also reluctant to entrust her safety to others until he learned the full dimensions of her problem. He had seen too many cute kids—or what was left of
them—who’d incurred the wrath of human monsters in the Mob.

  But she had told him nothing whatever, and he was sort of stuck with her for the moment. The physical condition seemed okay. The breathing was a bit rapid but the pulse was good, the eyes looked okay, the body was unmarked except for a couple of small scrapes on the backside. It was her mental condition that was bothering Bolan. At first, she’d acted almost as someone in a waking trance—seemingly conscious and aware yet totally unresponsive to his presence. She’d said not a word, not even with those great eyes which had been so expressive in the knowledge of death. Those eyes closed at some point during the quiet journey. She seemed to be sleeping but Bolan could not be sure of even that.

  Thanks to a driver’s license found in her purse, he knew her name and vital statistics. The only other identifying items were a couple of credit cards, which told him only that she was a good credit risk. Beyond those, nothing. So he’d simply put her to bed and hoped for the best.

  Bolan went to the telephone then, and began the involved procedure toward a “clean” telephone contact with his friend and confidante in the enemy camp—the one and only Leo Turrin, undercover fed extraordinaire. He direct-dialed a New York number and received a sleepy “yeah” on the third ring.

  “La Mancha?” Bolan inquired.

  “You got the wrong number, dammit, at four o’clock in the damn morning!” was the angry response.

  Bolan said, “Go to hell, then,” and hung up.

  He lit a cigarette and went to the kitchen to kill a necessary five minutes before returning to direct-dial another New York number. That good voice at the other end was still a bit thick with sleep but the nature was good. “Don’t you ever sleep?” it asked him.

  “Some day I’m going to,” Bolan soberly promised. “I think I’ve struck a spark here, Leo.”