Ivory Wave

by Don Pendleton

  * * *

  THROUGH A DOORWAY behind the reception counter was the internal stairway that led down into the garage and up into the bowels of the building. Bolan sent six men up those stairs, to be joined at some point by the two coming up from the garage. He led the remaining nine, which included Massimo and Nico, up the grand staircase. Artie D’Amato had stayed behind with Chiarello.

  “Remember the drill,” he said. “Up here we’ll probably find some resistance, as well as another staircase leading up. Finish off everybody on this floor, then go up and a couple of you peel off on each floor. When you’ve cleared one, move up to the next. I’ll head up to the top and see if I can find Nuncio, then work down until I find you again.”

  At the top of the stairs he stopped, crouched low and showed the barrel of his MP5 before he showed his head. Nobody shot at either one. He peered over the uppermost stair. The mezzanine had a kind of loft-balcony area where people could sit and look out over the lobby, but from the untrammeled thickness of the carpeting it didn’t look as if it got a lot of use.

  Past that were a pair of frosted glass doors. Bolan guessed there were conference rooms behind those, but since he could smell a faint aroma of cooked food and stale coffee, it was also possible that there was a kitchen or lunchroom or even some offices. He couldn’t see any motion through the glass, but they were mostly opaque.

  One thing was certain, though—when he approached them, he would have the chandelier at his back, an easy target.

  Bolan paused, unzipped the leather bag against his hip and withdrew a grenade. “Massimo,” he whispered, “go over there beside the door and yank it open on my count.”

  Massimo moved immediately, keeping to the side of the glass so he wouldn’t be silhouetted against it. He waited for Bolan to count down with his fingers, the soldier pulling the pin with his teeth as he did. On one, Massimo grabbed the big steel handle and pulled the door open. Gunfire came from inside, shattering the glass but soaring over the heads of the men on the stairs. As soon as the doors were parted, Bolan threw the grenade.

  It hit, bounced, rolled.

  Then it blew.

  When it did, Bolan charged, strafing the far side of the doors with 9 mm rounds from his MP5. Massimo spun around the ruined doors and joined him, and others followed.

  Through the doors they found a short corridor, with a glass-walled conference room on one side and a couple of doorways beyond that. Two guys were in the conference room, one lying next to the long table with a sixteen-inch shard of glass from the wall embedded in his upper chest, another slumped against a wall with blood running from his nose, mouth and ears. Bolan and Massimo went to the first door, flanked it, then entered, Bolan going low and Massimo high. It was, as he had thought, a kitchen. A couple of guys had taken refuge inside, and they fired semiautomatic pistols from behind a refrigerator and a tipped-over table. One round thunked into the doorjamb, showering Massimo with splinters, and another missed entirely and cored into the wall.

  Both men returned fire with quick bursts from the SMGs. Bolan’s tore through the tabletop, and the guy behind it flailed his arms as he flopped backward, a rooster tail of blood spraying from his skull. Massimo destroyed the fridge and the man using it for cover.

  Bolan’s gun clicked on an empty chamber. He ejected the magazine, slammed home a new one and tossed aside the spent. He could hear gunfire in other parts of the building now, a constant presence.

  Other men had cleared the room behind the second doorway, which Bolan saw as he passed contained vending machines, a TV and more tables and chairs. Beyond that the hallway ended in a T-shaped niche, with an elevator on one side and a stairwell door opposite. The other stairwell was on the far side of the building, not accessible from the mezzanine level, so this was the one that no one had ventured into yet.

  The soldier yanked open the door and waved some of his men through. Gunfire rang out from above, echoing down the stairs, and one of the men fell right away as machine-gun fire cut stitches down his torso. The second one tried to reverse course, but a round caught him in the thigh. His leg buckled and then more slugs hammered into him. He danced on the floor, like a marionette worked by a spastic puppeteer, until death took him.

  Bolan ducked into the staircase and sprayed lead upward. He was joined by Massimo and another guy Bolan recognized as Micelli. A cry came from above, and a body went over the rail, dropped to their level and landed in a heap. An answering burst came from somewhere overhead, but the men moved forward, finding better angles, and fired again. This time a gun clattered down the stairs, followed by the sound of a person sliding down.

  The Executioner took the lead, going up, stepping over the weapon. When he reached the man on the stairs, he saw the guy was clutching another little .38 revolver in quivering hands. Blood was bubbling over his lips and his eyelids were fluttering. He was as good as dead, but a reflexive contraction could still injure or kill one of Bolan’s men. He started to raise his gun, to administer a coup de grâce, then decided he wouldn’t waste a bullet. He passed the man and continued on.

  At the next landing was a heavy steel door with a “3” stenciled on it. When other men arrived on the landing, Bolan drew it open and waved a couple inside. The rest saw what he had done, and they knew their orders. Bolan ran on up, passing the next couple of doors, his mind on his ultimate target.

  24

  Marco Cosimo turned away from the window and saw Gino standing there with the Glock in his hands. For an instant his skin went pale, but then he nodded. “Good idea,” he said, crossing to a wardrobe standing against one wall. “Sounds like we’ll need that, and then some.” He took a pump-action shotgun from the cabinet, a wicked-looking thing, matte-black and sinister. He pumped a shell into the chamber and handed the weapon to Gino, who tucked the Glock back into its holster. Marco got out a second shotgun, for himself.

  “There was a time,” Cosimo said, “that I would have killed for your father, or died for him. But he wanted to turn his back on that life, on that ethic. So you know what? Fuck him. Whatever doom is out there, he brought down on himself. I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way, but I’ll be damned if I’m dying for him. If you’re smart, you’ll do the same. Get out of this building and never look back.”

  Cosimo started for the doorway. When Gino spoke, he could barely find his voice; the first word came out as an awkward squeak. “Mr. Cosimo, what’d you say about my father?”

  Cosimo stopped at the door and began to turn back toward Gino. “I said, fuck h—”

  Gino pulled the trigger. From less than six feet away, the shotgun’s blast ripped through the older man’s midsection and blew out as a thick red mist from his back. Gino looked away, trying to rush from the office without seeing any more than he just had or stepping in the stringy mess on the floor. He threw the shotgun away from him and burst through the door just as Gordon Hawkins reached it. “Gino?”

  “He’s dead,” Gino said. “Marco. I—”

  He was about to explain when three men came in from the stairwell. He had seen one of them before—a tall, skinny guy with a black crewcut, one of Artie D’Amato’s thugs. The other two were new to him.

  Hawkins swore, and Gino realized he should draw the Glock at the same instant that all three men pulled their triggers, and it was the last thought either of them ever had.

  * * *

  BOLAN PAUSED FOR a three-count behind the steel door with the white “6” on it, letting his heartbeat and breathing steady after the dash up the stairs. He heard gunfire from what seemed like every floor but this one. He didn’t for a moment believe that this floor would be undefended, but he had wanted to come up alone because from this point forward, his mission was different from everybody else’s. He’d needed them only to help him get into the building, but now they would just be in the way.

  He eased the door open a crac
k and peered through. Nobody in sight. Across the hall was the elevator, its door closed; presumably it was trapped in the garage, though he had no way of knowing for sure that had happened. He opened the door wider and slipped through.

  At the corner, he stayed close to the wall and slid his Tanto combat knife from its ballistic nylon sheath. He crouched low and held the knife so its blade protruded past the wall, checking the image reflected in the steel. It was no mirror, but it was good enough. He didn’t see any movement, or anything that looked human. Still at a crouch, he moved so that just enough of his head showed past the wall to see with his right eye.

  Three doors down the right side of the hallway, one on the left. The hall was short and ended in a spacious area, kind of a cul-de-sac, with a reception desk in its center. Bolan judged that there would be one more door there, to the left but out of sight from here, and it would lead to an office that commanded the best views from the building, out toward Lake Erie. That—unless he had already fled—was where Bolan expected to find Nuncio Chiarello.

  Four doors to get past first.

  They would know he was here when the first shot was fired, so the element of surprise wouldn’t serve him for long. He reached into his zippered bag and pulled out the last grenade, this one an M-18 smoke canister. Better than nothing. He pulled the pin and hurled the canister down the hall. It landed with a thunk and rolled toward the open area, thick smoke billowing from its emission holes.

  From at least two of the doorways—through the smoke, Bolan couldn’t be certain of the number—people fired automatic weapons into the hall, wasting ammunition on a grenade instead of spotting their target.

  It didn’t tell him much, but it confirmed his suspicion.

  He stayed put a few seconds longer, waiting. Sure enough, a man came to one of the doorways and stepped out, looking first in the direction the grenade had rolled, then turning to see where it had come from.

  Bolan didn’t let him finish the turn.

  He fired a short burst from the MP5, catching the man center mass, picking him up off the floor briefly and then dropping him with a liquid slapping sound.

  More rounds flew into the hallway, pocking the walls. This time Bolan was able to isolate which doors they had come from. Two on the right and the one on the left. The doors were staggered slightly, so no one could look into an office from the one across the hall.

  Still, soldiers who knew what they were doing could catch him in a cross fire as he tried to pass. Some on this floor had displayed an amateurish eagerness to pull their triggers, but he couldn’t count on that continuing. Nuncio could have hired people with just as much experience as the ones Dominic had found.

  Bolan had no more grenades, and his last magazine was already in the MP5. Once that was done, he was down to the Desert Eagle on his belt and the Beretta 93-R under his arm, and of course the combat knife.

  He decided speed was his best ally, aided by the smoke to mask his movements. The soldier broke into a sprint, racing past the first door. At the second he caught a glimpse of movement and opened up with the MP5, blasting whatever had moved into the wallpaper. By the time he reached the third, rounds were streaking out the door and across the hall, chest high, so he hit the ground and slid like a desperate ballplayer trying for an extra base, firing through the doorway until the magazine was empty.

  And then someone swung out the last door holding a Striker-12, the shotgun known as the street sweeper, with its 12-round capacity.

  Bolan was still on the ground, rolling to his feet. He came up out of his crouch ready to throw the empty SMG, then to cover the distance between him and the gunman and engage him in hand-to-hand. But he heard the flat crack of a pistol, and the front of the shotgun-wielder’s head exploded. He tumbled toward Bolan, revealing a man standing behind him holding a Beretta 92A1. The newcomer looked young, but partly that was due to his unkempt red hair and the spray of freckles across his nose.

  “I was told to expect the unexpected,” he said. “I guess you’re it.”

  “You must be the Fed I heard about,” Bolan replied. “Guess you’re in pretty deep. Sorry if I’m spoiling anything.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the agent said. “The more of them you take out, the fewer times I’ll have to testify in court. I’ve already got plenty of detail to put in my report, so it’s all good.”

  “The one I’m looking for is Nuncio Chiarello.”

  The agent jerked a thumb over his left shoulder, indicating the open area. “The big office,” he said. “Help yourself. I’m gonna go see if there’s anybody left to arrest on the fifth floor. I wouldn’t mind seeing Marco Cosimo in a cell.”

  He headed for the stairs. Bolan drew his Desert Eagle, and as he stepped into the open circular area, one more assailant showed himself. He had been hiding behind the reception desk with a 9 mm handgun. He appeared confident, aiming with a steady hand, showing little of his head while he did. Bolan dropped, a sudden, surprising move that left him flat on the floor with his arms extended before him. The man behind the desk rose slightly to see where his target had gone, which was when Bolan fired two shots in quick succession. The .44-caliber slugs sheared off the left quarter of the man’s skull, and he fell across the reception desk, blood gushing from the wound.

  The last door was exactly where Bolan had expected it to be. It was a solid oak door, closed and locked. Since the only other way in was through the windows, six stories above the ground and with no ledge—and Bolan with no climbing gear—he fired a couple of shots into the locking mechanism, then kicked the door right beside the knob. Wood chips flew and the door swung open.

  The office could have been an emperor’s suite, with fine artwork, expensive rugs and rich-looking furnishings. But the emperor sat in his desk chair, seeming very small and alone. Nuncio Chiarello looked even older than his older brother Dominic. His hair was white and fine, his neck wattled, the skin on his face appearing to be paper-thin, with blue tracery of veins beneath it. His hands were mottled, knuckles enlarged, fingers slender and trembling. A .45 automatic lay on the desk before him, but he made no move toward it.

  “You’re Nuncio,” Bolan said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I’ve been right here.”

  “I only had one piece of information at a time. But the trail eventually led straight to you.”

  “What trail is that?” Nuncio asked.

  “One made of phony bath salts and littered with the bodies of children. A trail of Ivory Wave.”

  Nuncio made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. “Spare me the cheap moralizing. How many did you kill to get in here?”

  “Fair point,” Bolan said. “I never claimed to be pure. But the ones I killed were killers themselves, or they were trying to kill me. Or both.”

  “I’m no killer,” Nuncio said. “I turned my back on that path years ago. I’m a businessman, like any other.”

  “You’re the worst kind of killer,” Bolan countered. “The way I heard it, you did all your face-to-face killing when you were a young man. Then you decided there was greater profit to be earned by killing people you would never see, and from a distance. We know the secrets in Ivory Wave now. I’m going to put the whole thing out of business for good.”

  Nuncio sneered at him. “You’re crazy!”

  “Are you going to deny running the Ivory Wave business in the Midwest?”

  “No! Okay? That what you wanted to hear? I guess you’ll do whatever you’re going to do, no matter what I say. So do it, already.”

  “Your son told me it was your baby, start to finish. You learned about the stuff and saw the potential, so you set up a factory and built a distribution network.”

  “I’m a capitalist. You got something against that?” Nuncio asked.


  “Only when your product is poison.”

  “How’s that saying go? One man’s poison...”

  “‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison,’” Bolan quoted, walking deeper into the large office. “I don’t think that applies here.”

  “What do we do now?” Nuncio asked. “You going to talk me to death?”

  “I just needed to hear you say it,” Bolan told him. He crossed to the big windows and looked out at the buildings standing between here and the waterfront. Moonlight glimmered on the surface of the lake. “Now I have to decide whether to kill you or turn you over to the FBI agent who’s been infiltrating your operation.”

  He had to wait two or three seconds longer than he had expected before he heard the rustle of fabric from the desk, the clunk of the gun being snatched up. When he did, he whirled and fired the Desert Eagle, all in the same motion. Nuncio stared at him, his surprise amplified by the third eye between and slightly above his first two. Blood trickled from it. The gun fell from limp fingers, and then Nuncio began a slow-motion slide from his desk chair.

  Bolan holstered his weapon and started for the door, only to see Massimo step in front of it, blocking his exit. “You killed him,” Massimo said.

  “Isn’t that what this was all about?”

  “Not for you. I heard what you said. At the end, there.”

  “I didn’t start this war,” Bolan said. “But I’m happy to finish it.”

  “He’s my father,” Massimo said. His voice was strangely flat, free of any emotion at all.

  “That’s right.” His task done, Bolan was suddenly conscious of the passage of time. By now the Cleveland police had to be on their way, maybe with full riot gear. Big-city police forces these days fielded tactical squads almost military in their training and equipment. He put his right hand against the plane of the big man’s chest, giving him a gentle shove. “If it wasn’t me, your uncle would have done it. You knew he wouldn’t survive this. Let’s go, Massimo.”