And three men came inside, wearing rubber animal masks and holding automatic weapons. “Hands where I can see them,” Chiarello growled. “Nobody be a hero—it ain’t worth it.”
Chiarello had expected everybody to be armed. In the old days, they would have been. But only one guy started to reach for a gun in a leather holster at the small of his back. Dario tapped him on the side of the head with the barrel of his Uzi machine pistol, and the guy let his hands go limp. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face as Dario snatched the gun and pocketed it. The rest complained, but kept their hands flat on the table, even as Chiarello scooped their cash into a black plastic garbage bag. Nico and Artie stood back, hands raised, as if they were totally innocent.
“You got any idea whose place this is?” one of the older men asked. He looked vaguely familiar to Chiarello, but barely. Maybe he had known the guy when they were both young, but he couldn’t place him now.
Chiarello, wearing a donkey mask that covered his entire head, just laughed. “Like I give a shit?” he said. “Shut up.”
“You guys are dead,” another one said. “Walking fuckin’ dead men.”
When the table was cleared off, Chiarello decided to take it a step further. “Now your wallets,” he said. “On the table.”
“No way!” one of the poker players protested. This time Massimo lashed out. He was carrying a MAC-10 with a suppressor and a 30-round magazine. He let go with one hand and smashed his fist into the guy’s mouth. The guy spit blood, and a tooth came out.
So did his wallet. Nico and Artie both put theirs on the table, knowing, Chiarello figured, that they’d get them back. Once the other guys had all gone along with it, Dario picked up the wallets and tossed them into the trash bag.
They were about ready to leave when one of the younger men at the table looked at the jewelry on Massimo’s hands. “Ain’t that Ric’s ring?” he asked. “That one with the eagle head. Who the fuck are you?”
Chiarello saw the change come over Massimo. He had been tense, but he suddenly loosened up. He was wearing a rubber rabbit mask, and the thing had a foolish grin. Chiarello thought maybe Massimo’s face matched it at that moment.
“Smart guy,” Massimo said. “Too bad for you.”
At that, a couple of other players tried to dodge the inevitable. But Massimo’s SMG was already in his hands and pointed at them. He squeezed the trigger and raked it across the table. Big .45ACP rounds plowed into skulls, filling the air with the pinkish mist of mixed blood, brains and bone fragments. One guy started to rise, and the rounds stitched down his sternum. Chiarello figured his autopsy would go quickly, since he had already been unzipped. At the last moment Nico and Dario joined in, but by then they were shooting at dead men.
“Don’t waste your bullets!” Chiarello yelled. “Let’s get out of here. We got what we came for.” He was pissed off that it had gone down that way. He had wanted the men left alive, so they could bitch to Nuncio that someone had taken them down. Nuncio would still hear about it, but the slaughter might launch things on a trajectory that was faster and more dangerous than he had planned for.
Cigar and cigarette smoke still drifted in the air, but now it was mingled with the more acrid smell of gunfire and the stench of men who had lost control of bowels and bladders as they died. What had been a messy but jovial poker game had turned into a scene of carnage that could turn the stomach of even the most hardened man. Chiarello knew it was just a beginning, not an end. But it had come too soon and, standing there, smelling it and seeing it, he felt panic niggling at him.
He stepped out the back door, into the yard. The pool was covered, but the scent of chlorine still floated there, cutting the stink from inside. The others followed after a few moments, Massimo last. Chiarello shook the garbage bag. “This is what we came for,” he said. “We got it. Let’s go.”
* * *
MASSIMO DIDN’T THINK he would ever come down from the buzz. It was a good thing Nico was driving, because if he’d had his foot on the accelerator, they would be going 120 miles an hour and climbing. Killing one guy with a knife had been a thrill, but killing eight at once was something else entirely. Another level. The vibration of the submachine gun had traveled up his arm and chest and into his heart, he thought, and it would never end. Watching the way the bullets had torn apart heads, blown through eyeballs and pulverized jaws had been the most incredible thing he’d ever witnessed. He loved sex, especially with Carla, but even that didn’t leave him feeling like this had.
Uncle Dom was angry, that was clear. He had hardly said a thing since they’d left. He would get over it, though. They’d made a pretty fair haul—a few thousand bucks, anyway. And Uncle Dom hadn’t known everybody at the table, but Massimo had. Between him and Nico and Dario and Artie D’Amato throwing in with Uncle Dom, and then the guys Massimo’s father had lost this night, they had put a significant dent in Nuncio’s operation.
That part made him a little sad, that he had betrayed his own father in such a potent way. Fathers and sons always had complicated relationships, he figured, but he might have just thrown a few extra complications into this one.
Whatever. Nothing his father had ever shown him had made him feel the way he did now.
Eight dead men. He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
9
Earlier in the evening, Bolan had climbed up the back of a truck.
Of course, there had been a dozen or so men chasing him then, and the truck had been parked.
This one, however, was racing down the interstate. Wind tore at him, trying to wrench him loose, and the rattling of the truck didn’t help.
There was no way he would be able to climb this one. And if he didn’t do something soon, he would be splattered all over the interstate.
For the moment, anyway, the highway was mostly empty. That, at least, would work in his favor.
If he couldn’t go up and over—and at this speed, he couldn’t get off and run up to the cab—he was left with only one option.
He would have to go through.
He drew the Desert Eagle. A bad ricochet here could kill him, he knew. Hell, the recoil from the big gun could be the final straw that blew him off the truck and onto the pavement. Still, it seemed like his best bet.
The padlock holding the trailer closed wasn’t a good one. Presumably the driver, or the trucking company, figured that nobody would be stupid enough to try to break in. Certainly not at more than sixty miles per hour.
He aimed at the cheap lock, held tightly to a handgrip on the back of the trailer and fired. The gun boomed and tried to leap from his right hand. In the near darkness the muzzle flash seemed exceptionally bright.
The lock shattered like an ice cube hit with a hammer.
Now Bolan’s biggest challenge was shifting his weight so he could roll up the door enough to get inside, without falling off. He picked the remains of the lock off the hasp and let them fall to the roadway. He gave the door a tug, and it didn’t budge. He didn’t have much leverage, since he was pressed up against the door to keep from flying free. But the soldier didn’t give up.
He gave another yank, and this time the door slid up in its tracks, grudgingly, but a little. He pulled again.
The door slid open a couple of feet.
Good enough.
Bolan bent, knowing this moment would be trickiest and most dangerous of all. At the same instant, he released his handhold and pawed for something to grab inside the trailer, pushing off the bumper with his powerful legs. His upper torso went inside, but at the same moment the truck jolted and nearly threw him out. He caught the door with his left arm, slammed his right palm against the wooden floor and stayed in.
From there, he was able to get his legs inside.
Success.
* * *
BOLAN LAY THERE
for a minute, letting his heartbeat and breathing settle. Even as they did, his mind was racing. He would have to call Stony Man and try to have someone retrieve his rental car from the truck stop before law enforcement opened it and found his clothing and weapons. And he had to figure out how to get from the trailer into the tractor, from the inside.
Or did he?
He found his footing. The rear door was still open a couple of feet, but it was quieter inside, free from the constant lashing of the wind. The engine noise and the rumble of wheels on the road were almost soothing.
The trailer was loaded with pallets, wrapped in transparent plastic shrink-wrap. Each row of merchandise was packed tight and cleared just below the trailer ceiling.
Bolan slid the combat knife from its sheath and cut through the shrink-wrap on one of the pallets, several back from the door. He didn’t want to risk anything sliding out of the back, and he needed the door slightly open in order to let ambient light from outside illuminate his task. His flashlight, like most of his other equipment, was in the rental car he had abandoned.
Beneath the wrap were stacks of cardboard boxes. Most of the boxes had logos that Bolan didn’t recognize, so he slashed a few open. As he had suspected, the truck was making deliveries to head shops. The cartons contained growing equipment for pot farmers, cases of incense, pipes and bongs in layers of packing materials and more. Finally he opened a box that contained more boxes, these with the distinctive appearance of Ivory Wave packaging.
That gave him a new idea. He crouched near the open door, and saw that the highway behind them was still empty. Then he returned to the opened pallet and selected a box containing fragile grow lights. He gave it a gentle toss. It hit the trailer floor and then slid through the opening, falling to the road with a crash that Bolan could barely hear over the road noise. He looked out the back and saw the box bouncing along, tearing open, and the lights inside scattering across the highway.
It was a good start, but he had a way to go. Next he threw two boxes out the back. The truck continued barreling along at the same speed, so presumably the driver hadn’t yet noticed.
Looking out the rear, Bolan saw headlights, still well off but moving up fast. Law enforcement? Bolan put together a quick plan. He could hide behind the pallets to dodge the trooper’s first cursory glance. After that, the officer would go to the cab, where likely the driver would be stepping down, unless he had already been ordered to stay put with his hands sticking out the window. During the moments they were on the driver’s side of the truck, Bolan could slip out of the back and go to the other side. Depending on how noisy the more involved search of the back might be, there was a possibility that he’d be able to slip in through the passenger door, and wait in the sleeper until the trooper was gone and the driver was on the road again.
Worst case, he’d be stranded alongside Interstate 80 with no wheels, watching the taillights of the truck as it drew away. He would try to ensure that that wasn’t the case.
But the car hurtling toward them wasn’t law enforcement at all. It was a BMW, a convertible, though with the top up against the still-cool springtime night. Looked like two passengers, though there could have been more. Bolan could make out only silhouettes at this point.
They came on fast, though, blinking headlights and honking like mad. As they pulled close, Bolan could see that the passenger was a buxom blonde. She was wearing a low-cut tank top, but approaching the truck, she yanked it down, exposing heavy, round breasts. She pressed them up against the passenger window, completely unaware that there was anyone in the trailer to see—though not likely to object, had she known. Then they were out of sight, but Bolan could tell by the sound that they were running alongside the cab for a minute or so before pulling away with a final honk. He had thought the honking and flashing had to do with the detritus landing all over the highway, but apparently it was just a sexual game she and the driver played, turning truck drivers into nothing but objects with eyes. Some of them would welcome the diversion, and the view. The road could be a lonely place, and a quick view of female flesh might be better than nothing on a cold night.
Bolan figured the odds were better than even that the driver was more focused on his window, and possibly his mirror, than he had been a few minutes earlier. Just in case, he hurled out three boxes, one right after the next, trying to get them to land to the truck’s left side. They hit and flew apart, shedding their contents all over the highway.
The BMW raced ahead, doubtless looking for the next trucker to flash. Bolan threw another box out. Whether the driver stopped or not, he was taking a certain perverse pleasure out of destroying the head-shop merchandise.
This time, it seemed to have an effect. The trucker hit his air brakes hard enough to nearly knock Bolan off his feet. He flexed his knees and rode the jolt, then, as the truck slowed and pulled over to the shoulder, hazard lights flashing a warning to the empty stretch of highway, he drew the Desert Eagle and moved to the door. When he heard the driver’s door, Bolan dropped to the ground, as silent as a falling feather. He stepped to the far side of the truck and waited.
The driver made it around the corner, boots crunching gravel. He said, “Shit...” and put his hands on the platform, preparatory to climbing into the back.
Bolan stepped into view. “Looks like you dropped something,” he said.
Startled, he turned and saw Bolan. “You...?”
“You ready to continue our conversation?”
“Who the hell are you?”
Bolan showed him the big handgun. “That’s not important. What’s important is that you answer my questions without wasting any more time.”
“I don’t have to—”
Bolan wagged the barrel of the gun. “Yes, you do.”
The guy dropped his hands to his sides. “What?”
“How much do you know about what you’re hauling?” Bolan asked.
“It’s shit for these hippie places. I pick it up at a distribution warehouse and I drive it to the stores. Park in the alley or loading dock if they got one, get it off the truck. Once it’s on the ground, it’s theirs.”
“You know what’s in the boxes?”
“I know how many boxes,” the driver replied. “They’re packed at the warehouse, put up on pallets and wrapped up. Could be piñatas, all I know.”
“Piñatas? You think that’s likely?”
“No, sir, I don’t. Just saying is all.”
Bolan had noticed before how staring into the deep, dark barrel of a Desert Eagle could make people unusually polite. He knew from hard experience that when one was pointed at you, the diameter of that opening looked about the same size as an oil pipeline.
“So what you’re telling me is you never see inside the boxes. You don’t take a look at the bills of lading you have people sign? You don’t ever stop in the store for a while, sample the wares? When you’re up there in that cab, shifting through the gears and resting your hands on the wheel, what goes through your mind? Memorizing Bible verses, that kind of thing?”
“Look, mister, if I knew what the hell you wanted from me, maybe I could help you out. But I don’t. I mean, yes, sometimes if somebody offers me a little weed, I’ll toke up. But not behind the wheel. And I never touch the merch in the truck. I’m responsible for that.”
Bolan jerked a thumb toward the road. A pickup truck was racing past. “You dropped some,” he said.
The driver looked at the dark highway. “You’re gonna get me fired, man.”
“I don’t have to,” Bolan said. “You just quit.”
“What?”
“Give me your driver’s license. Take whatever personal items you absolutely need out of the truck, but leave the paperwork.”
“No way, man. That’s—”
“I’m not asking,” Bolan said. He wagged the Desert Eagle again. “Let�
��s go. Time’s wasting.”
* * *
A FEW MINUTES later, Bolan was behind the wheel of the truck, driving east on the highway. He worked his phone out of his pocket and called Stony Man. After a minute, he had Kurtzman on the line. “You know that truck you’ve been tracking for me?” Bolan asked.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Don’t bother.”
* * *
HAVING DISABLED THE truck’s GPS device, Bolan drove through the night, trying to put miles between him and the trucker—whose name, according to the driver’s license now in Bolan’s pocket, was John Daggett—he had left on the side of the highway.
Daggett had gathered his personal belongings and stuffed most of them into a duffel bag, bundling the rest up in a blanket. Bolan had suggested that he call Vandyke Freightlines and let them know he was quitting after he delivered his current load, but without going into details about why. He warned that if Daggett reported his rig stolen while Bolan was driving it, he would find the trucker and kill him. He flicked the driver’s license a couple of times. “After all,” he said, “now I know where you live.”
“Look, man, I didn’t ask for none of this,” Daggett said. “You’ve got no cause to be threatening me. I need this job.”
“As long as you do the right thing,” Bolan said, “we don’t have a problem. I just want to make sure you believe me when I tell you that we will definitely have a problem if you cross me.”
Daggett held his eyes for a remarkably long time. Bolan knew he could be intimidating; he cultivated it, in fact. Most people backed down much more quickly. “You don’t have to worry about me, Jack. I don’t even want to think about you again.”
“You’ll find work,” Bolan said by way of parting. He got in the truck and keyed the ignition. He believed it, too. Daggett had some spine to him. He was glad he wasn’t involved in Angela’s death and he was pleased that Daggett was no more than a drop-and-go guy. He paused and turned to look at him before he pulled out. “A man named Hal is going to be giving you a call. He’ll set you up with another job. This won’t affect you at all.”
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