Resurrection Day

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan returned to his rental vehicle in the pay lot where he had parked it and circled the block once. The black limo was still there. It should be worth the wait. The Executioner eased his car slowly along the busy street on his second circuit of the block and saw a Firebird pulling out from the curb three rigs ahead. He roared up and slid into the parking spot.

  Bolan had a good position, four cars behind the crew wagon, and with time to look over his weapons case on the passenger's seat beside him.

  He dug out Big Thunder and laid it between his legs, with the Beretta 93-R close to his right thigh. When he looked up at the Caddy, two men were walking rapidly toward it. One held the door and the Executioner saw Jake Spanno slide into the rear seat.

  Spanno would be fine. The wheelman gunned the Caddy out of the slot and Bolan pushed the rented Tempo out after it.

  Bolan had been following the limo for only three blocks when he saw a worried face in the rear window and a sudden burst of speed, as the quarry knew he was being followed. The Caddy took evasive action, but in the square-cut blocks the Tempo had no trouble riding the Caddy's tail.

  The driver of the other rig knew it too, and soon the black car headed for a freeway on ramp. They passed through a light industrial section and Bolan pushed Big Thunder's snout out the window and triggered two rounds through the Caddy's rear windshield. The first 240-grain lead slug burned through the heavy rear window as if it was thin plastic, shattering the glass.

  Bolan knew the second round had scored a direct hit when he saw the Caddy crew wagon begin to drift. The black limo slewed sideways, bounced off the guardrail and came to rest with two wheels off the edge of the soft shoulder, the car's nose pointing downward into the ditch.

  Bolan stopped forty feet behind the Mafia wagon. The far side door opened and someone crawled out. A handgun blazed three times from the shattered rear window.

  Another round from the.44 cannon thundered through the crew wagon's window, smashing into the neck of the hardman, severing the spinal column.

  Bolan lunged out the passenger door of the Ford and peered over the fender. Someone moved beyond the Caddy. Then Jake Spanno jumped up and ran toward the ditch twenty feet away.

  The Executioner bared his teeth as he gained target acquisition, squeezed off another round from the.44 and watched Spanno take the round in his back, heart high. The tremendous force of the riflelike round drove Spanno another dozen feet forward, dragging his bloody face along the concrete. Jake Spanno died instantly of massive heart damage.

  Bolan saw no more movement in the car. From far off he heard the sound of a siren. He charged the crew wagon and looked through the driver's window. The wheelman slumped over the seat, blood streaming through his hand held to his head. He moaned. When he saw Bolan jerk open the door, he fumbled with the other hand for his.357 Magnum.

  "Freeze, asshole, or you're dead!" the Executioner snapped.

  The driver turned his eyes toward the big warrior.

  "Tell Don Spanno he's next," Bolan growled.

  The sirens came closer.

  Bolan ran back to his car, gunned the engine and merged with the freeway traffic heading out of Chicago.

  The Executioner knew there was no need to leave his metal calling card. The wheelman would make out as if he was a hero just to stay alive, but Don Spanno, one of the Chicago Godfathers, would get the message. His son, the drug boss, was dead and now he was targeted to die as well.

  While the Spanno Family was going to the mattress, Bolan would make another hit. Mario Montessi, the drug boss who was part of the Dibartelo Family, would be a good target. Let them sweat a while, at least until tonight.

  12

  Angela Marcello stood in her bedroom clutching a robe and staring at her nude form in the full-length mirror. She turned from side to side, then sucked in her breath and patted her stomach. She threw her shoulders back and made a face at herself.

  Not bad. But she was developing a tiny little belly. She decided she'd have to watch what she ate for a couple of weeks.

  For a moment she thought about that guy today. Johnny, he said his name was. Something about him nagged at her. He was more cute than handsome, but he was so smooth, as if he understood what she was going to say or do before she did it. It gave her a little tingle even now, just thinking about him. She tried to picture herself in bed with him. What would it be like? She laughed and shook her head. She had more important projects right now.

  Later she might call him and take him out to lunch. Maybe a picnic along the beach somewhere, a deserted stretch… For a moment she let her imagination race, then laughed and put on the robe.

  The bigger problem was her father. She had picked today for the showdown. She had been back from school for two months now, and still her father had not given her anything to do.

  She flounced from her bedroom into her suite's sitting room. Angela had kicked and screamed five years ago until her father converted some of the rooms in his mansion on the slopes of La Jolla. Now she had a three-room apartment all her own. She could hole up here for days at a time if she wanted to, have her meals sent up or even do her own cooking in the tiny kitchen.

  She sat at a small escritoire and frowned, drumming her fingers impatiently on the writing desk.

  "Damn," she said, wondering when her father would begin to treat her as an adult. She was twenty-five and she had an M. B. A. from the Stanford School of Business. She knew more about running a business than ninety percent of her father's top management people in any of his firms.

  He had to listen to her. She would give him a clear and concise business proposition.

  She sighed. She had known since the fifth grade who her father was and what his «business» was. Another girl had spit the words out at her when she was still in public school. She had come home in tears. The next day she was enrolled in a private school.

  Her father was Manny Marcello, or as he was known at first, Manny the Mover. Now everyone called him Don Marcello. He was the Godfather of the San Diego Mafia. She had no argument with that. Things were the way things were. She could not change her father's spots. Nor did she want to.

  Angela moved to an easy chair so she could look out the window at the green of La Jolla and the bright blue of the Pacific Ocean in the distance.

  She knew most of what her father did. She knew as much about the Mob as anyone not actually in day-to-day operations. Yes, people got killed. Yes, men went to jail. Some of the happy, friendly men she had known as a little girl were in prison now.

  Angela had never seen anyone killed, never even seen a dead body, except at a funeral once.

  She grinned. But she could learn, she would learn all of it.

  Angela walked to the kitchenette, opened the door of the small refrigerator and took out a cold bottle of Coors. She had decided to go to Stanford to get her M. B. A. because her father wanted her out from under his feet. Now she was considering the economics of the situation.

  Mafia Family organizations are often handed down from father to son, if the kid has the guts and the ability. Angela's older brother, Nick, would have been in line, but he was killed in a car wreck. The California Highway Patrol said they chased him in his new Ferrari on the freeway at 130 miles per hour. They decided later that it was a malfunction in the steering mechanism of the expensive Italian sports car that caused the crash on the freeway along the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton.

  Now there was just Angela left to inherit the operation.

  A few years ago her father was taking in, personally, over thirty million a year. Now it had to be more with the price of cocaine the way it was. Angela smiled. She had done her homework. San Diego First Corporation alone controlled more than twenty multimillion-dollar corporations. There were other holding companies, the three hundred highway tractors in Marcello Trucking, a huge bowling alley, the luxury hotel in Mission Valley, the shipbuilding firm in town that was the largest on the West Coast, the international construction company and even a st
ring of twenty-six exclusive women's wear shops.

  Manny Marcello controlled an empire, and it could be all hers!

  But she knew exactly what her father would say.

  She should be ashamed of herself. A good Italian girl did not think about such things. She should get married and have children. There would be no need for her to work, daddy would provide everything. Angela snorted. Sure, her father was wealthy, but he was a dinosaur, adhering to old-fashioned values that were stifling her.

  Angela had tried to get her father to take her into one of the businesses when she first got out of college at twenty-two. He had sent her to Europe to play and learn about Italian men for a year. She talked to him again when she came home. He sent her off to New York to become a fashion model. She failed miserably because she did not attend any of her casting calls.

  That's when she told him she wanted to go to Stanford for her M. B. A.

  Now she had more than a simple argument to use on her father. She would work out a plan of action that would leave him angry and surprised. Direct action was all these Mafia Dons understood. So she would give him some.

  She dressed in a tight T-shirt, no bra and short shorts, and then changed her mind and put on a blouse and pants. When her father came home today she would fire the first shot. She was tired of waiting. Today was the day!

  Angela went to the first floor and checked the front door. A man was sitting there in a chair. Her mother always said he was the doorman, but long ago Angela realized he was a "soldier," the front guard. There were two more in the back, where their property behind the eight-foot fence dropped off into a sharp ravine. The man in the small gate house had two guns; she had seen them once.

  These Mafia soldiers did not dress like the ones in the movies. They did not all wear suits. In fact none of them wore suits unless they were accompanying her father somewhere. Most of them around the house wore Hawaiian sport shirts, slacks and expensive shoes.

  Angela's mother was out attending some kind of a committee meeting. Angela almost gagged at the thought. She did not want to wind up going the volunteer route, or the community betterment committees or even the social committees that her mother favored. Well, none of that for her. She wanted the Marcello empire!

  Don Marcello came home at 4:30 p.m. He arrived at a different time every day so no one could establish a pattern on his movements. The dark blue Lincoln limo had been customized up the highway in Costa Mesa. It was bullet- and bomb-proof, with heavy plates under the engine and passenger compartments. More steel plates were in the side panels. The rear window had been reduced in size and two-inch thick bulletproof glass installed all around the vehicle.

  It was a rolling tank with built-in TV set, bar, refrigerator and small microwave.

  The rig came through the gate, down a drive and swung into a six-car garage at the rear of the house. There was no chance for a sniper to get a shot at Manny from the street.

  Manny Marcello fell into a pattern once he got home. First he had a shower, then a massage, and finally he spent twenty minutes in the indoor pool. The swimming area had been fully considered before it was built. What use, Manny had said, was it to fortify the premises with high security, then fall prey to a marksman in a prowling chopper. After his swim, he had a martini and read the New York Times.

  Manny was fifty-one years old and had built his power base on Marcello Trucking, which his father had started in 1939 and had developed into one of the largest in the nation. Manny stood an inch under six feet and kept himself trim in spite of his love for starchy food. He had a natural nervous drive that used up calories even when he sat still.

  At that moment, he was sitting at his desk, reading. He looked up when Angela came in. At once he put down the paper and stood up, his arms held wide.

  "How did I ever sire such a beautiful creature as you? Angie, bambina, you are a picture. Maybe I should buy a Hollywood studio and make you a movie star."

  Angela hugged her father and stepped back. "No, daddy, I don't want to be a movie star. I'm a businesswoman and a damn good one. Right now we need to talk." She walked around and sat in the visitor's chair and faced her father.

  "Don Marcello, I have a business proposition for you. Will you listen to it carefully?"

  "Sweetheart…"

  "No. I am here as any other of your associates would be. I want you to listen to my proposal and decide on its merits. Right now I am an outsider."

  "Angelina…"

  "No!" She stared at him until the boss of the whole San Diego area lost his smile, put on his business face and sat down in his big chair. He took out a cigar, lit it and nodded.

  Angela frowned. She had seen him do this dozens of times, and that had been when she was quickly ushered out of the room.

  "Okay, okay. I knew this was coming. Happens about once a year. What now?"

  "I am twenty-five years old. I have had an extensive background of travel and education in several countries. I have just earned my M. B. A. from Stanford University. The degree is what any worthwhile company worth its salt is looking for these days.

  "You have a big and complicated business empire. I am ready to join your organization. I can be of value to the Family."

  "How? So I need somebody roughed up on the docks, I send you out to beat his head in or break an arm?"

  "Of course not. My talents are in other areas. You don't send your bookkeepers to do those jobs. You don't send your business managers to be hoodlums. You use people's talents where they fit."

  Manny chuckled. "Looks like you did learn something at that fancy school." He shot her a sudden questioning glance. "Just how much do you know about my, uh, business empire?"

  "Almost everything. You were just coming up in the 1950s when Senator Kefauver had his big investigating committee, but you were brash enough to attract attention and get called to testify. It didn't hurt you any, but the way you stood up to them on the stand helped you with the Mob. Then you moved to San Diego and went in with grandpa in Marcello Trucking."

  Manny held up his hand. "Save it. I know my own history." He paused and blew out a large smoke ring. "You have it all the way up to the present?"

  "I know you have twenty or thirty large companies, that about half of them are entirely legitimate and some of them are used to launder money from loan sharking and prostitution, from the protection and drug business where most of the Family's profit is made. I also know you have a personal income of around thirty-five million a year.

  "And I know your 'business' is worth between two and three hundred million dollars."

  Manny shook his head. "And all these years I thought you figured I was just a trucking company owner."

  "Hey, I'm not stupid. Look who my old man is!"

  Don Marcello nodded. "Yeah. If you'd been a boy you'd be my right arm by now. Damn it, why in hell did that brother of yours have to go and get himself smashed up in a car?"

  Manny stood and went to the window. It was shielded so there was no spot on the slope below where a triggerman could get a shot. Still he stepped back quickly.

  "Baby girl. There is just no way I can do it. La Cosa Nostra is an organization of men. The Men of Honor. If I even try to bring you in on some small piece of work, I got a revolution in my own Family."

  "Daddy, I'm not asking to be a boss! All I want is a piece of one of the legitimate companies. What about the Leisure Lady shops? Surely they aren't used in any other way. Let me take over the corporation that runs them!"

  "I've got a good man doing that job, princess. He's been there ten years, and doing good work."

  "Daddy, I know all the modern methods. I can move into that group and jump the profits by ten percent the first year. I need something to do! I can't sit home all day, or walk the streets or keep on going to school. And I'd go crazy in six months if I had to go to those damn committee meetings with mother. Give me a job!"

  Don Marcello beat back tears as he went around the desk and put his arms around his only remaining chil
d. He kissed both her cheeks and held her tenderly.

  "Cara mia, you are so important to me. I will protect you from harm with my life. And I'll give you anything you ask. But this… this feminist thing. A good Italian woman does not go around wearing pants and being a boss in a business! A good Italian woman finds a good Italian man and gets pregnant the first month she's married and has ten grandsons for her father!"

  Angela had expected it, but it was still a shock. She stiffened in his arms and pushed away. She knew her face was white with anger. Somehow she did not cry.

  "Don Marcello. I am not a goddamn brood mare just panting to give you a dozen little Mafia soldiers! I hate that whole idea of thinking of a woman as a bitch in heat! I'm a person, but just because I don't have balls you kick me out of the fraternity and tell me to go get into bed with some slob and get knocked up!"

  "Angie, Angie. I didn't mean all that. Every father wants to have some grandchildren. I don't see why you want to work. You have money, a car, clothes, travel. Most people work their entire lives and never own a thing."

  Don Marcello shook his head and sat down in his big chair. Slowly he looked up at his daughter. "I'm sorry, but I don't think the Family is ready for you yet. The guidelines are strictly drawn. There is nothing I can do. The commission would call me to task in a moment if they heard…"

  "Daddy, Leisure Lady is not a front. Let me run it. At least give me a chance!"

  Don Marcello stood. "No. This talk is over. I don't want to hear anything more about it."

  Angela spun around and marched out the door. Downstairs she had one of the guards bring her car around. She stepped into the brand-new blue Mercedes 380SL. It still had the "new car" smell in it.

  She checked her purse to make sure she had some money, then she drove away. The gate opened automatically and she charged through, barely missing a car as she headed for the shore. She figured Sunset Cliffs would be the best spot.

  Twenty minutes later she found the place. She smiled grimly, drove over the curb and onto the sandstone cliffs along the Ocean Beach section of San Diego. Angela left the car in neutral, stepped out and closed the door. Through the open window she pushed the gear lever into Drive and let off the hand brake.