"Mr. President."
"Good evening, Colonel... no, I guess it isn't Colonel Phoenix, is it? Well, good evening, in any case."
Outside, the shadows had begun to lengthen among the trees, but there was still an hour or more of daylight left. Inside Mack Bolan's head, the doomsday clock was ticking, and he longed to be about his business in the capital.
The President seemed ill at ease, uncomfortable in Bolan's presence, and the soldier sympathized. But he had called the meet, and he would have to carry it from here.
"I understand that you've been busy since... the last time we talked."
"Yes, sir."
"I wanted to inform you, for the record, that we weren't behind that business down in Texas."
"I'm aware of that, sir."
"You're aware that I've already spoken to your friend about his family."
Bolan nodded, waiting.
"This is a disgusting business. Women, children placed at risk. I've offered full assistance in recovering the hostages."
"Too risky," Bolan told him. "It's a one-man job."
The presidential frown showed more concern than irritation. "So I've been informed, and I accept the judgment of professionals. But you must realize my options are severely limited." The frown was growing deeper, cutting furrows in the famous face. "Considering the other circumstances, evidence of impropriety..."
"A frame-up, sir."
"I understand your feelings, and your loyalty does you credit. Blind faith is a luxury that I'm unable to afford."
"I've got my eyes wide open," Bolan told him, "and my vision's fine. It doesn't take an analyst to see the circumstances are related."
"I agree. But in the absence of supporting evidence on Hal... your friend's behalf..."
"You'll have the evidence you need. What I need now is time."
"And there's the rub." The President was looking past him, through the tinted windows, studying the trees. "I would anticipate that your solution to the problem may involve... extraordinary incidents?"
"It's possible."
"Extraordinary incidents produce extraordinary coverage by the media. Demands for action, for results. A public outcry, condemnation of police officials."
Bolan spread his hands. "I couldn't rule it out."
"That kind of bad publicity could be disastrous for your friend. It wouldn't do to clear him of corruption charges and convict him of consorting with a fugitive."
It was the soldier's turn to frown. "I only know one way to play the game and get results," he said. "I haven't got a lot of time to spare right now, and anything I do is going to happen fast. You've set a Monday deadline?"
"I've done nothing of the sort. Officially, I haven't spoken to your friend, and I most certainly have not been here with you today. If everything is status quo when he returns from holiday on Tuesday morning, fine. If not..."
"Whichever way it goes, it shouldn't take that long," the warrior said.
And in his heart he knew it must not take that long. Once he began to rattle cages in the capital, the enemy's reaction would be virtually immediate. Whichever way it went it should all be settled by this time tomorrow. Any effort to prolong the siege would only jeopardize the hostages, increase the odds against their safe return. Those odds were long enough already, Bolan realized, becoming impatient.
"I'm on a schedule," he informed the President, "so if there's nothing else..."
"Just one more thing." The voice was solemn, soft, almost a whisper now. "For some time now, I've wanted to express my personal condolences about... what happened in Virginia."
''That isn't necessary, sir.''
"I think it is. I feel a sense of shared responsibility for... everything. The lapses in security..."
"Were not your ultimate responsibility," the soldier finished for him.
"Dammit, I reject that categorically. The ultimate responsibility will always rest with me, my office. I make no attempt to shirk that burden."
"Fine, if that's the way you want it." Bolan felt his irritation creeping closer to the surface.
"I believe you should reconsider coming back to Phoenix."
He had been expecting it from the beginning, and he didn't have to think about his answer. "That's impossible."
"I understand your feelings, but..."
"No, sir," the soldier cut him off, "I don't believe you do."
"All right, I had that coming. But I also have a reason for suggesting that you reconsider your decision at this time."
"There's nothing that would change my mind."
"Not even if I told you I have reason to believe that some of Farnsworth's friends are still among us? Still at the CIA?"
The warrior stiffened, one hand on the door handle. Lee Farnsworth was the ranking Agency official who had set the wheels in motion for the strike on Stony Man. He was — had been — responsible for April's death, for all the others, and upon identifying Farnsworth as his enemy, the warrior had eliminated him without compunction. After handing in his resignation from the Phoenix Program, he had executed Farnsworth in the Oval Office, with the President and Hal Brognola looking on.
"Who are they?"
"No names yet, unfortunately, but if you were back in-house..."
"That's negative. I've got a job to do already."
"Well, if you should change your mind, the option's open — but distinctly limited in terms of time."
He got the message loud and clear. If Bolan chose to spurn the offer of another governmental sanction, he could not expect a free ride over and above the business with Brognola. Fair enough. He had been warned, and it was more than he had any right to expect in the circumstances. Bolan recognized the President's dilemma, knew that he could not appear to countenance a wild-assed vigilante tearing up the streets of Washington and sniping at the CIA. Once he had settled with Brognola's enemies, if he was still alive, it would be open season on Mack Bolan once again.
"Good day, sir."
There was something close to anguish in the eyes that met and held his own. "You think about it, son. Don't throw your life away for nothing."
"Sir, it never crossed my mind."
The Secret Service agents watched him closely as he climbed out of the limousine, their shades incongruous in the descending dusk. They let him pass, but Bolan cleared the trees before he began to relax completely, part of him expecting lethal rounds to slam between his shoulder blades at any instant.
He was clear for now, but in his heart and mind the Executioner was far from being free. The mention of Lee Farnsworth and his friends at the CIA, had opened wounds and stirred old ghosts to life again. Those spirits traveled with the soldier, reaching out to touch him, whispering their message as he cleared the park.
Their message of revenge.
And there was suddenly a great deal more at stake in Wonderland than Hal Brognola's family, his twenty years at Justice. Suddenly, the memories of Stony Man, of April Rose, Konzaki and the rest were back full-force. He could not shake them off, and there was only one way that he knew of to appease their hunger.
They would need an offering of blood, and once he had secured Helen, seen Brognola's children safely home — God willing — he would turn his full attention to the hunt for Farnsworth's cronies in the Agency.
10
There is another Washington concealed behind the spit and polish of the nation's capital. In place of monuments to presidents and heroes, shabby houses testify to broken dreams; children run the streets by day and night, collecting into gangs for self-protection, striking out in anger at society's indifference. The alternate reality of Washington is rich in violence, boasting crime rates that have placed the seat of government among the ten most lethal cities in America. From time to time the mayhem overflows its teeming reservoir and laps against the steps of Congress, leaving bloody stains on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The "other Washington" does not appear in tourist guidebooks or society reviews. It may be found more often on the local
nightly news in living color: scenes of savagery and desperation broadcast into stately homes ten blocks — and worlds — away. But for the most part, it is locked away behind the television screen, securely penned inside the magic box. Its horrors are transitory, simply and efficiently eradicated with a touch of the remote control.
Mack Bolan's blitz began within that other Washington. He nosed the rental Ford through streets where garish neon scarcely seemed to touch the shadows, hostile faces swiveling to watch him pass. A decade earlier, the faces would have been predominantly black, but there were Hispanics sprinkled in among them now, and Orientals, cast-off exiles from the island states of the Caribbean. A ghetto still, the other Washington had lost its ethnic unanimity, and with the change had come another rise in violent crime.
One thing about the ghetto had not changed. Its vice was still controlled by absentees who pulled the vital strings on gambling, narcotics, prostitution and pornography. The masters of corruption still went home at night to Georgetown, Arlington, Bethesda, leaving ethnic underlings to bear the heat of periodic crackdowns by police. It was a one-way street as far as profits went, the money flowing out and fattening the coffers of the syndicate. The ghetto was a major source of gangland income, and the Executioner had opted to begin his blitz by striking his opponents where it counted. Directly in the pocketbook.
The numbers bank was one flight up, above a pool hall christened Whitey's by some long-forgotten wit. Bolan drove around the block and parked the car in an alley, underneath the pool hall's rusty fire escape. No passersby had taken notice of him yet, and Bolan planned to have his business finished well before the vagrant street waifs could search out and strip the car.
He spent a moment double-checking armament before he locked and left the car. The silenced Beretta was primed and ready, nestled in fast-draw leather under Bolan's arm. The silver .44 AutoMag, Big Thunder, rode his hip on military webbing, canvas pouches stuffed with extra magazines for both guns circling his waist. He was in blacksuit, having shed his street clothes prior to strapping on the pistol belt, and hidden pockets held stilettos and garrotes, the tools of an assassin's trade.
The soldier was anticipating trouble, counting on it, but he meant to choose the time, the killing ground. There would be lookouts in the pool hall proper, ready to blow the whistle if a strange white face appeared. They would immediately realize that he was not from Gianelli's stable, and while Bolan was secure in his ability to handle sentries, he was hunting bigger game this evening. A firefight in the pool hall would delay him long enough for his primary targets to escape, and so the Executioner was opting for an alternate approach.
The fire escape was fitted with an access ladder, hinged to let it fold up underneath the bottom landing, but the rust of years had covered everything, and Bolan could not risk the screeching noise the ladder would produce on being lowered into place. Instead, he scrambled atop the rental's trunk and leaped to catch the platform overhead, suspended momentarily in space before he found the railing with his fingers, pulling up and over with the agile movements of a jungle cat. The hardest part behind him now, he knew the only other problem would be getting out alive.
Secure from prying eyes until he reached the lighted window that he had selected as his point of entry, Bolan took the metal steps by twos, the lethal 93-R in his hand, prepared to meet all challengers. When he was halfway up, the soldier hesitated, scanned the alley one more time in search of errant witnesses, found none and forged ahead.
The target window stood half-open to the night, and Bolan watched the men inside, taking stock and catching fragments of their conversation. They were four in all — three black, one white — and there could be no doubt as to the man in charge. Without a second glance, the warrior knew that Whitey's was precisely what the name implied, regardless of the clientele downstairs.
A burly mobster sat behind the battered desk, counting stacks of money, riffling the bills between his fingers, thick lips moving as he verbally kept track. His shirtsleeves were rolled up around his elbows, baring massive forearms bristling with hair and mottled with tattoos. His sport coat had been draped across the back of a chair, and he wore a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 beneath his arm.
His three companions lounged in straight-backed chairs and watched the count with hungry eyes, unspeaking. They were dressed like sideshow hucksters: velvet coats and wide-brimmed hats, pegged trousers tapered at the ankles over pointy patent-leather shoes. Draped in chains of gold, the black trio fairly sparkled in the light from naked ceiling fixtures, their fingers glittering with diamonds in a tribute to conspicuous consumption. On the streets they would be viewed with awe as masters of the brute survival game, the men to watch and emulate, but they had come to see their master here, and they kept silent as the mafioso struggled to laboriously count his tribute.
Bolan crouched to take advantage of the partly open window, bracing his Beretta in a double-handed grip and sighting down the slide. Four targets, but he meant for one of them to live and carry word of his encounter with the Executioner. It mattered little to him which one of the runners should survive. But Bolan had already taken stock of who should die.
The hood behind the desk was his immediate concern, the holstered .38 most easily accessible of all the weapons in the room. His runners would be armed, but they would have to fumble under jackets, their reactions hampered by the Executioner's advantage of surprise. And Bolan had another reason for selecting their superior as first to die: it would be doubly galling for a thug like Gianelli to receive the news of his impoverishment from a subordinate outside the Family.
The Executioner's finger tightened on the trigger. The Beretta sneezed, and he was tracking on in search of other targets, wasting no time on assessment of the shot. Round one impacted on the mafioso's upper lip and punched on through, the fleshy face imploding like a rotten gourd, a spout of blood erupting from the wound.
The runners recoiled, scrambling from their chairs and digging under velvet coats for hardware. One of them had spotted Bolan in the window, pointing dumbly, struggling to voice a warning. Round two exploded in his face and pitched him backward, long legs flailing as his wide-brimmed hat took flight.
The second runner had a weapon in his hand, but no time left to use it. Bolan shot him twice, in the chest and throat, before the guy could bring his gun to bear. He saw the life wink out behind dull eyes, the lanky carcass folding in upon itself, and he was tracking onto number three before the second runner's legs gave way.
The final target had already opted for retreat, no longer trying for his side arm as he pounded toward the door. A parabellum round behind the knee was all it took to break his stride, but the momentum sent him into crushing impact with the door. The guy rebounded, leaving bloody traces of himself behind as he collapsed onto the threadbare carpet.
Before he could recover, Bolan entered through the window, crossed the office to unlatch the door and peer outside. A murky stairwell granted access to the billiard parlor below, and he could hear the voices of the regulars, their laughter floating up the stairs. No sign of any scouts attempting to investigate the noise upstairs, no indication that the troops had heard a thing.
He closed the door again, relieved the sole survivor of his .38 and backtracked toward the desk. Between the leaking mafioso's feet he found an empty satchel and began to fill it with the greenbacks from the desktop. He was nearly finished when the wounded runner groaned, a signal that the guy was wrestling his way to consciousness.
The soldier knelt beside him, waiting for his eyes to focus on the face of death. The runner's eyes crossed as the Beretta's muzzle came to rest upon his nose.
"I'm back," the warrior told the trembling thug. "Somebody has the merchandise I want. Somebody should deliver while they can."
"Hey, man, I swear to God..."
"Shut up and listen!" Bolan punctuated the command with his 93-R, tapping it against the guy's forehead. "Your job is to spread the word. You start with Gianelli, and
you tell it straight. Somebody should deliver while they have a chance."
"I got it, man, I swear." The beads of sweat were standing up like marbles on his forehead now. "I'll tell 'im."
Bolan left as he had entered, scrambling down the fire escape until he reached the bottom landing, swinging out across the rail and dangling a moment prior to letting go. He stowed the satchel in the rented car's trunk and locked it down, secure as it could be while he was on the warpath.
There was something like a quarter-million dollars in the satchel, no big thing to Gianelli, but still substantial when considered on its own. The capo could afford it, Bolan knew; what he could not afford would be the loss of face, the sheer indignity of being ripped off. The insult would be worse than any loss of income, any loss of life. And Gianelli would receive his message, the Executioner was sure of it.
The would-be boss of Wonderland would read him loud and clear.
* * *
Francesco Scopitone had not answered to his given name in twenty years. His friends, acquaintances, police detectives and the like all knew him more familiarly as Frankie Scopes. And sometimes when he wasn't listening, the more courageous or foolhardy called him Frankie Scars.
The nickname was a natural, but its careless use could lead to fatal accidents. No matter that the history of Frankie Scopes's disfigurement was common knowledge. He preferred to act as if the scars did not exist, and his associates who planned on staying alive had grasped the wisdom of incurring temporary blindness in his presence.
Frankie Scars had been a handsome boy in childhood and on through adolescence, but like countless other boys his age, he had been drawn to the fraternity of street gangs, petty crime that sometimes escalated into brutal warfare. On the evening of his eighteenth birthday, Frankie's clique, the Gladiators, had collided with the Saracens — a rival gang — in mortal combat. Three boys died before police arrived, and Frankie had been slashed across the face, bone deep from ear to ear, emerging with a grisly, twisted smile that wrapped halfway around his skull.
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