"No, no!" Johnny screamed. Tears flooded his eyes. He turned Randall on his back and felt for the wound. One was low in his chest and another in his belly. He gently cupped his friend's face and looked toward the moonlit sky, his shoulders racked with dry sobs. He hadn't felt this way since he was fourteen, when he lost his parents.
As he sat there he heard the muffled sound of a motor at sea. The LCVP was coming in.
A fresh burst of firing razored in at them from the left.
"Come on, kill the bastards!" Johnny screamed.
He worked his way along the dune. The boat came no closer; it seemed to be holding offshore. Johnny gave the signal again, three long dashes of light twice. The rifle fire increased. He had one more Armbrust round. One antipersonnel. Should he waste it? No, save it. He would use it to cover the loading of the casualties.
"Grenades!" he shouted, as he sensed the enemy creeping closer in the darkness. A cloud flitted over the moon and he heard the grenades exploding down the line. The boat was coming now, he could tell by the hum of the craft's engine. It would hit the beach almost in the middle of their haphazard formation. Then they would be able to load.
Did the landing craft have a machine gun on it? He could not remember. He hoped to God it had.
In a lull in the firing he moved the bodies almost to the waterline. He was brushing the wetness from his eyes, heading back to the safety of the dunes when a black form leaped up from their side of the dune and fired a 10-round burst at the Americans. Johnny wheeled and held the trigger back on the M-16 until the magazine emptied and the enemy trooper spun in a dance before he sprawled dead into the Mediterranean.
How did he get in that close?
"Watch them!" Johnny shouted. He ran along the line, then stopped when he spotted Astra, lying curled up on her side. She sat up when she saw him.
"Down, it's too dangerous to sit up," he said, and he took her shoulders in his hands to lay her down.
His hands and her shoulders were sticky with warm blood.
Oh, no, not again!
Her eyes flickered and she groaned softly.
"Hurts!" she said.
Johnny eased her down gently on her side, then jammed a fresh magazine in his M-16 and stood up, firing at the winking lights of the enemy gunners in the darkness ahead of him.
"Bastards!" he screamed. "Goddamned bastards!" He was running toward them when one of the SEALs tackled him and pinned him to the ground until he could talk coherently.
"Chief! Chief!" the SEAL said urgently.
Johnny shook his head.
"Chief, the boat is just hitting the sand. We better haul ass out of here. We're ready to load the wounded first, right? Where is your rocket launcher?"
Johnny took a deep breath, looked at Astra's blood still on his hands.
"I'll get it," Johnny said. He shivered, then stared at the enemy fire. Most of it was concentrated in front of a wrecked house and to one side. He could take out most of them with the last round from the Armbrust. A minute later he found the weapon. He shouldered it and fired. The round sprayed the enemy with thousands of shards of metal, silencing the machine-gun nest.
He looked toward the sea. The LCVP's ramp hit the surf with a splash. Three men ran on board, each carrying one wounded, then they headed back for the dead.
Johnny threw down the Armbrust and picked up Astra, holding her bloodied body close to him. Her young brother was beside her now. Johnny ran through the dark sandy beach to the landing craft. He laid Astra on a stretcher and hurried back down the ramp. He found Randall Phillips and carried his dead buddy to the craft. The captain stepped on board and the last man came in.
Johnny counted. Twenty-four human beings: eight dead, three seriously wounded, one Navy captain not functioning to his full capacity, the Lebanese girl and her brother, and every man jack of the rest wounded in some way. He nodded at the coxswain and the ramp swung closed. The boat charged backward, then turned and headed for the mother ship, which had pulled in closer for the pickup.
Johnny Bolan Gray stumbled across the deck to the girl, who was lying on the stretcher with a Navy blanket over her. A corpsman was examining her wounds.
"Damn it to hell!" the medic said as he stood up, his eyes closed. He took a deep breath and let it out, then turned and looked at the man on the next stretcher. "Damn it all to hell!"
3
"What's the matter with Astra?" Johnny asked. The medic turned. He shook his head. He was the same corpsman who had been on the landing with them.
He motioned Johnny to one side and spoke softly. "She's hit bad. I don't know if there'll be time to get her to the ship. She needs blood and a surgeon, right now."
Johnny knelt beside her, brushed dark hair out of Astra's eyes, wiped sweat from her forehead. Her eyes fluttered open and she reached for him.
"Johnny?"
"Yes. I'm here. We're out of Lebanon, we're going to the ship. We'll soon have you in a hospital room and the Navy doctors will make you as good as new."
"No, Johnny. I am badly hurt. I Know I have lost too much blood." She stopped and gasped and a jolt of pain tore through her body. She trembled, her lips pressed tightly together. When the pain subsided she opened her eyes. He dried them of tears.
It was still dark. They would get to the ship before daylight so there could be no more attacks on them of tears.
She clutched his hand. "Johnny?"
"Yes, Astra."
"Did my brother get on board?"
"Yes."
"Please take care of him. He wanted to fight like his fourteen-year-old friends have. We would not let him. Make sure he stays out of Lebanon. If he goes back he will be killed. My mother could never stand that."
"I'll make sure. Is that what your father wants, too?"
"Yes." She trembled again and the pain could not all be held inside this time. She groaned and then screamed. The medic was beside them.
"Astra, do you want some morphine? I could give you a shot and kill the pain."
"No. Then I would be drugged and not be myself. For the time left I want to be myself." She looked at Johnny. "How many men were killed trying to fetch us?"
"I… I don't know."
"How many Americans?"
"Eight, maybe nine."
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Johnny bent and kissed her.
"Astra," he said, "you are a beautiful lady who will live to be eighty years old and have six children. You will lead your country out of the despair of revolution and into peace."
"You are nice, Johnny." She looked deep into his eyes.
Johnny could see the shape of the big ship looming over the small craft.
"You are nice but I know I am going to die. Sometimes a will to live is not enough." She smiled, then shivered. "I'm getting so cold."
Johnny grabbed another blanket and spread it over her.
Her sudden smile was radiant, but gradually he saw it relax. He realized she was dead. He touched the artery at her throat. There was no pulse. Slowly he lowered his head to her shoulder.
Johnny shuddered. He would never be the same. Never again could he look at evil and death and not want to do something to stop it!
He swallowed hard, then lifted his head and moved the top of the blanket upward and over the beautiful face now in repose.
The corpsman looked at him.
"Sorry, sir. There was too much damage, lots of internal injuries, internal bleeding. Nothing could have saved her."
"Yeah," Johnny said. He moved back toward the stern of the landing craft. There he knelt next to the body of the best friend he had in the world.
Randall Phillips stared at the dark sky. Johnny reached out and gently closed the eyelids, brushed the shock of fair hair off Randall's forehead.
Johnny's tears splashed onto his friend's face, and through the blur he saw the craft tie up to the cargo net on the side of the mother ship. The slings were flung overboard to lift the stretchers. The three wounded were
still alive. They would go up first. Johnny was on his feet at once directing the operation.
The captain was hoisted up next in a bos'n's chair. He was too exhausted to climb the netting. In the end, Johnny was the only one left in the LCVP. He waited until the last of the detail was on board, then he shouldered his M-16 and climbed the netting.
Two naval intelligence officers met him on deck and requested that he accompany them for a debriefing.
An hour later Johnny Bolan Gray went down to sick bay where they dug the shrapnel from his shoulder, bandaged up his arm and found another wound in his thigh. Then they bundled him into bed where he would stay four days for observation.
* * *
In those four days Johnny worked out the plan for the rest of his life. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and how he would do it.
He thought once more about the raid to rescue the intel team. The intelligence men said that Johnny and every other member of the landing party were sworn to secrecy. The mission never happened. The dead would be listed as killed in accidents over the next several weeks.
Then they gave him two sheets of paper. The Navy captain who had so nearly died had recommended Johnny for two awards for heroism and had promoted him to chief petty officer in a battlefield situation. The officers shook his hand when it was over, congratulated him on his new rating and for taking over and bringing back the living and the dead.
"Half a dozen U.S. Navy personnel found by the Shiites, dead after a firefight on the beach, would be political dynamite for United States foreign relations right now. You should have had the Congressional Medal of Honor, but that would have meant too many explanations." They shook hands again and left him.
The Navy did not figure in Johnny's new plans. He knew where he was going, and he was anxious to get on with it. He had been thinking a lot about his brother, Mack Bolan. All his life he had wanted to help Mack. Now maybe there was a way that he could. But first he had to become a civilian again.
Johnny thought about the last time he had seen Mack. He had been fourteen and wanted to go with Mack, to drive his War Wagon, to do the cooking and generally help him out. He just wanted to be with his big brother. That had been when Val said she would not marry Jack Gray unless Johnny came along in the deal. Jack had put it to her that way, he wanted both of them, so it was up to Johnny.
That was why he made Leo Turrin take him to St. Louis to talk to Mack. Johnny had packed everything he owned in those two suitcases and lugged them all the way. He was ready to stay, forever.
But Mack had explained to him that it was impossible. The clincher came when Mack said that Johnny would be a gravestone around his neck, dragging him down, and they both would be dead within forty-eight hours. It had been hard to take then, a hero-worshipping kid and a smarter, older brother. But he had gone back to Val and she had married Jack Gray, and they adopted Johnny and added a new name to his old one.
Now it would be different. He had a plan that would not jeopardize either of them, and could be a big help to Mack.
Three more months in the Navy, then he would be out and ready to get his life in gear. He had been working on it a lot these past few days. He had enjoyed San Diego when he took his boot training there. Yes, he would go to San Diego and settle down.
Johnny Bolan leaned back in the hospital bed and closed his eyes. He was twenty-one years old. It was time he got on with his life.
4
Johnny Bolan Gray leaned back in the driver's seat of the battered Volkswagen and stared at the bay along the embarcadero. Beautiful. One leg was poking through the passenger window and his green Nike hung there in the soft breeze. It was springtime in San Diego. Johnny stared across the smooth blue water at Coronado on the far side where a huge U.S. Navy aircraft carrier had docked.
He should have taken the afternoon off and gone out on a half-day fishing trip on the New Seaforth. The bonito were biting, and while they were not much good to eat, the little five- and six-pounders put up a feisty scrap on ten-pound line.
Johnny sighed. It had been two years since he rescued that pretty girl, Astra, and her brother on the Beirut mission and then watched her die. The Navy never did tell him what it was all about. Absolutely nothing came on the news about it. He figured the kids had important parents, who were worried about getting them kidnapped and held for the ransom of a nation.
A lot had happened since that devastating six hours of death and violence on a foreign shore.
Johnny had landed in San Diego with his mustering-out pay and had used up half of it for three months' rent on a bare one-room apartment in the seedier part of town. It was above an empty store on Kettner Boulevard, and he still lived there.
This morning he had seen a news story on the inside page of the morning San Diego Union. The headline had leaped out at breakfast as he drank his orange juice.
"MAFIA NEMESIS STRIKES AGAIN. Is the Executioner back at work or have the reports of the Mafia fighter's style of attacks on underworld bosses been 'copycat' strikes? Police, and probably the Mafia as well, were wondering about that some months ago and again, recently, as two illegal gambling establishments in Miami, Florida, rumored to be run by the Mob, were leveled. The 'manager' of one place with a long criminal record was slain and an Army marksman's medal dropped on his chest.
"Police say the M. O. looks exactly like that of the Executioner, who stormed through the Mafia for several years before evidently being killed in New York's Central Park in a burning vehicle about two years ago.
"The man is described as being more than six feet tall, with dark hair, an olive complexion and icy blue eyes. He wears all black when he strikes and often uses the latest in military weapons.
"If he is the Executioner, there are more than two thousand outstanding murder warrants waiting for him in practically every state in the nation, as well as a dozen foreign countries. The police are not the only ones searching for him. The word in the underworld is that there is a $5,000,000 'contract' out on the Executioner, also known as Mack Bolan. The reward is rumored to be offered by his old foes, the Mafia's La Commissione, the group of 'Family' bosses who rule the nationwide Mob with a 'reasoning together' approach backed up by an iron fist."
Johnny had had to put down the paper to calm his beating heart.
Leo Turrin had told him years ago that Mack had died in that War Wagon in New York City, but Johnny had not believed it. Why would Leo lie to him about something this important? He decided he would call Leo tonight and find out the truth.
Johnny pulled his leg in from the window, watched a sleek thirty-seven-foot sailboat slide by on the noontime breeze and turned his bucket of bolts toward Kettner. The old store below his room had been taken over by the Free Legal Aid Center. He had helped start it and sat on the board of directors. He worked for pay as much as he needed to stay alive; the rest of his time was spent helping the underprivileged who came to the center seeking legal assistance.
Armand Killinger was his boss. Killinger was the best-known criminal lawyer in San Diego. Johnny worked from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. five days a week as a paralegal and legman. Anything Killinger needed doing, Johnny got done, whether it was checking out fake addresses or writing minor motions and other routine work.
He had come out of the Navy determined to be a lawyer. But the reality of seven years of college left him broke just thinking about it. He had used his schooling from the military and attended the University of San Diego, enrolling in their yearlong, full-time, paralegal course. He had learned a lot and now could earn his living by working only part-time, and have energy left for the Free Legal Aid Center.
Maybe he was getting a start at really trying to do some good in the world, but he still thought about that big dream of helping Mack Bolan in his battle against the Mafia. Leo Turrin had tried to dash that dream with his report that Mack had burned to death in a New York explosion.
Now the newspaper stories.
Mack had always been special to Johnny. His brother
had been a hero in Vietnam, and then he came home.
Johnny recalled the homecoming. He never forgot it, but it was not the sort of memory he wanted to dredge up all the time.
He remembered it precisely.
Johnny Bolan was fourteen at the time, on the edge of streetwise and a little brash but not real tough.
His father, Sam Bolan, had been sick with a bad heart for a while and was off work. Bills piled up and the elder Bolan borrowed some money. Then he returned to work but could not perform any of the strenuous duties he had before because of his heart, so they gave him an easier but lower-paying job.
The wages could not keep pace with the bills and the guys he got the loan from started giving him a bad time at work. Johnny had heard his father tell his wife, Elsa, the guys were bloodsuckers and he was going to tell them to go to hell.
The following night Sam Bolan came home with a dislocated arm. They said the next time he missed a payment they would break the arm. Johnny remembered that his mother wanted to call the police but his father told her the goons might take it out on her and the kids. Johnny heard his seventeen-year-old sister, Cindy, crying in her bedroom that night.
Then Johnny did not hear anything concerning the loan sharks for a while. His father said the goons were leaving him alone and he did not know why. But he sure was not going to ask them.
Johnny knew something about the outfit where his dad had borrowed the money — the Triangle Finance Company.
Everybody on the street knew about Triangle. It was one of the slimiest loan-sharking operations in that end of Pittsfield. Sam Bolan probably knew about Triangle too, but thought he could handle it. The loan at first was only for ninety days, and this guy Sam knew said he was a cinch for a job in another thirty days. It did not work out that way and when the first payment was due, Sam paid half, said he would have the rest soon.
The two big goons from Triangle had come to talk to Sam Bolan and Johnny heard some of it. The whole message had been pay up or else. It had been over a year and the interest was more than three times the amount of the loan.
Resurrection Day Page 4