He was standing at the open window and waiting for them when they came tumbling in—and, at this range, the Beretta Belle could pick the legs off a fly.
He punched three cool whistlers into that human traffic jam at the door and saw it dissolving—saw also the stunned, frightened man standing rooted in his tracks just beyond the doorway.
The door was equipped with an automatic closing device. The first guy in had been spun completely around by a parabellum shocker between the eyes and flung back into the main room. The other two went down in a tangle of limbs, spinning off to the side, weapons blasting reflexively.
The door swung shut before Bolan could get off a round at the guy outside—Quaso, probably, although Bolan could not confirm that. There had been no more than a momentary meeting of eyes, and Bolan had never seen Quaso in the flesh.
He emptied his clip into the closed door to discourage further adventures on that front, then quickly ejected and fed in the reload as he went out the window.
It was a tight ledge, hardly more than a foot wide —but it had gotten him in, it would get him back out. He made his way to the corner where the nylon line awaited him, and went hand over hand to the roof.
From there the daring man in black went even higher, to the top of the air conditioning tower, and there he set off a coloured smoke marker.
Seconds later a helicopter swooped down in a crabbing dive from high altitude to hover briefly above the building. Bolan stepped onto a rope ladder dangling from the bird; then man and machine went straight up like an elevator.
A moment later they were in level flight toward country. Bolan was inside and rubbing chafed hands ; Jack Grimaldi was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“God that was slick!" the pilot crowed. "Did you make contact?”
For reply, Bolan opened the chest pouch and slapped out several packets of the appropriated Mafia Money.
"I guess you did," Grimaldi commented, his eyes trying to estimate the value of the packets. Following a moment of silence, he asked the big man, "Cat got your tongue?"
Bolan replied, "Call it fear. Give me a minute." "Sure." Grimaldi understood. Only a lunatic could live this guy's life and not know fear. The guy looked cold and hard and fearless. Inside, though, he was like any sane man. He was human.
At the moment, the entirely human blitz artist was siphoning off his nerves into an inspection of a leather-bound ledger.
Grimaldi asked, "The black book?"
Bolan growled, "Yeah. And very interesting." "Any surprises?"
Bolan nodded. "A few. But also a lot of confirmation."
"What kind of confirmation?"
"Target confirmation."
The pilot raised an eyebrow and returned full attention to the task of aircraft control. It did not bother his feelings that Bolan did not confide everything in him. Mack Bolan was not an overly talkative guy in the first place. Which was fine. The less Grimaldi knew, the less he could be damned for. He didn't really wish to know anything. Bolan would tell him what Bolan thought he needed to know, and he'd tell him when he needed to know it. And, sure, that was fine.
"Can you get a fast plane?" the man in black asked, sort of offhandedly.
"How fast?”
"Fast enough to range me across this entire state in a single afternoon, with stops here and there. Then back to Dallas by nightfall."
"God. I don't know, Sarge. This is a big state. It would take something like a jet fighter. I don't know how the hell I could get hands on something like that."
"Can you fly one?"
"Has it got wings?"
Bolan chuckled, but it was not exactly a sound of mirth. "Doesn't the military ever surplus-off their old jets?"
"Well ... yeah. Are you serious?"
A flash of blue ice assured Grimaldi that the Executioner was indeed serious.
"Well, yeah. There's an outfit right here in the area that refurbishes surplused war planes. Sells them to small nations. No armaments, though. They're stripped. Even so, I would have to grease a palm, probably, to get one on such short notice."
"Okay. Money's no problem, you know that. The war chest is bulging. Use what you need."
"What, uh—what's the idea?"
"The idea," Bolan replied with a chilling sigh, "is that I need to execute three men this afternoon. One in Austin. One in El Paso. One in Houston. They're big men. I'm hoping for a shock-wave effect. I want to rattle some teeth in this state."
"All in one afternoon?"
"That's the idea, Jack."
Sure. Okay. Grimaldi would get him the hot wings. And sure he understood "the idea." It was psychological warfare. Death in the afternoon. At three widely scattered points, all from the same guy. Sure. Bolan intended to cram their omnipotence right down their greedy throats.
"I'll find you a plane, soldier," Grimaldi said.
Bolan smiled, the gaze softening momentarily then hardening again into a grim contemplation of things ahead. "I was afraid you were going to say that," he muttered.
"It's going to be rough, eh?"
"Double rough. These big men, Jack. You have a right to know. They are not regular mob people." "But involved."
"Up to their ears. Makes it all the worse. More scary. Respected people are very dangerous people when they go bad. And these guys have gone all-the-way rotten. I have to take them out."
"Okay." Grimaldi shrugged and looked away from those hard eyes. "You're the doctor, the surgeon. If they're all that big, though—well, I guess you know. There'll be howls and rage in very high places. Things are liable to get very hot."
"So what's new?" was the icy response.
Sure. Sure. Some guys had to damn themselves. And, yeah, without guys like this, the world itself would be damned.
Jaunty Joe Quaso was not feeling particularly jaunty at the moment. He was, in fact, in the dying stages of a screaming fit.
"What the hell you mean, he got away?" he yelled at the discomfited hard men. "Don't tell me the guy just materialized in my bedroom, hit my safe, poured acid on everything in the God damn place, knocked off half of my house force, and then just goddamn it dematerialized. He's got to be around here some place. He's playing you boys for suckers. Rip out the goddamn walls if you have to, but find that smartass! If that guy walks out of here with my stuff, I swear I'll see every one of you on the carpet. In front of the council itself, I swear. I'll run your lead asses clear out of the country!"
A stocky man who had been assigned to the ground-level lobby cleared his throat with a noisy gargle and told the boss, "I think you're right, Mr. Quaso. Nothing got by me. Not coming in or going out. I was right on that door every minute, I swear."
"Shut up!" Quaso stormed.
"Yes sir."
"Get in there and shake down that bedroom again!" The command was given to no one in particular. None moved.
"He even killed Larry Awful! He killed your own boss, your own amici! You going to let him get away with that shit?"
Someone said, "We're going to miss Larry, Mr. Quaso. And the other boys, too. But we're not going to find that guy around here now. He's gone, sir, long gone. Probably out the window, that's the only way."
"You want to show me how?" Quaso yelled. "You want to demonstrate that little trick for me, Tucker? You want to walk that ledge? Or try climbing down the face of this building? You want to try that?"
The hard man dropped his eyes to the floor and muttered, "I'm not saying just anybody could do it, Mr. Quaso. But that guy . . ."
Silence descended, a silence in which every sigh, every grinding of teeth and shuffling of feet became magnified, oppressively so.
The bedevilled Texas Chief had apparently accepted the unacceptable. He began pacing energetically, as though trying to walk off his frustration, hands clasped behind his back, for all the world a Little Caesar with a truth too terrible to be borne.
The remains of his decimated personal cadre stood in awkward attendance, exchanging troubled gazes and awaiting the next rou
nd of bossly hysterics.
The telephone rang, and it seemed a welcome interruption of the deepening pall in that apartment. Several of the hard men moved to answer the ring. The successful one scooped up the instrument and announced, "Yeah, penthouse."
He listened for a moment, said, "Just a second," and lifted his gaze to the expectant eyes of Jolted Joe Quaso. "Mr. Lileo is at the airport," he announced. "They're getting cars. Coming here, unless you have another suggestion."
The news was a magic wand waved above Quaso's troubled head. His mood immediately reversed. He rubbed his palms together and chortled, "Tell them to get here as quick as they can."
The hard man relayed the "suggestion" and hung up.
Quaso said, "You boys get yourselves a drink. Settle your nerves. Then back to your stations. Not you, Tugboat. You've got the clean-up detail. You've got to stash these bodies somewhere."
"Even, uh, Mr. Stigni?"
"Yeah. Even him. Put them on ice somewhere. We'll see them properly buried when the fur has stopped flying around here."
And the fur would stop very soon, Quaso silently promised himself.
Poor Larry. He even died awful.
But so would someone else. Today, probably. Maybe even this afternoon, a certain someone else was going to die. Very slowly.
11: THRICE DAMNED
At one o'clock in the afternoon on the day of the storm across Texas, a demilitarized jet fighter with undistinguished gray paint landed at the El Paso International Airport. It bore no markings of civil registry and had no radio. On the fuselage below the tandem cockpit was affixed a magnetic decal which read:
AmeriJet Inc.
Ferry Flight Service
The pilot was preceded from the cockpit by a tall man in clean white service coveralls which bore also a pocket decal identifying "AmeriJet Inc."
While the pilot shop-talked with the airport service attendant, the other man went to the base operator's terminal and claimed a rental automobile which had been reserved by telephone and was awaiting his arrival. The rental applicant identified himself as "B. Macklin" and posted a cash deposit in lieu of credit credentials. He requested and received a map of the city and left the airport in a new Chevrolet Impala. The "time out" as recorded on the rental agency's record was 1:05 P.M.
At approximately a quarter after one, a new Chevrolet Impala pulled into the circular drive at the ,home of Brigadier General Nathan R. Spellman, I ISA (Retired). A tall man wearing white, unmarked coveralls interrupted the general at his lunch, on the patio, and was received with apparent good humour by the retired army officer after the caller identified himself as being "sent by Quaso."
It had been a "working lunch" for Spellman. He was dictating some business correspondence to a male secretary, whom he introduced as "my orderly."
The "orderly" was excused but was still within earshot when the tall man told his employer, "You've earned another medal, General."
Curiosity overcame discretion and the secretary looked back to see what the caller had meant by "another medal." The tone of the man's words, or something, had created the impression that some sort of presentation was being made.
According to this eyewitness account, General Spellman was holding something in the palm of his hand and staring at it "as though this man had handed him a rattlesnake."
At this point, the tall man in white coveralls said to Spellman, "As one soldier to another, General, I'm sorry about this."
He produced a black pistol, fired a single shot, and walked stonily past the dumbfounded secretary, returned to his automobile, and departed.
The general had been drilled squarely between the eyes. Death was instantaneous.
The rental car was checked in at the airport at 1:30.
According to the records at El Paso Tower, an aircraft without radio was cleared by telephone for takeoff at 1:35. The tower's logs identified the craft only as "Amerijet Ferry 1." A later investigation failed to turn up any aircraft company called "AmeriJet Inc."
There was little official doubt, however, that "AmeriJet Ferry 1" had been used as a vehicle by Mack Bolan, the man called The Executioner.
Brigadier General Nathan R. Spellman, USA (Retired), died with a military marksman's medal clutched in his fist.
Spellman, who had retired from active duty two years earlier at the age of fifty-four, had been an intelligence officer in the army. He had distinguished himself in the field of electronic counterintelligence.
The general had lately been employed as special security coordinator for Klingman Petro, an independent Texas oil company. He was also listed as a "special consultant" to several state investigative agencies, including the security office for the State Capitol in Austin. He had been active in undisclosed activities associated with the Texas National Guard.
Later investigation also revealed a connection between Spellman and Gerald Whitson, a respected "international financier" with headquarters in Houston. Whitson controlled several Texas-based firms including a brokerage house which specialized in oil investments. He was forty-seven years of age, many times a millionaire, one of the post-war whiz kids who made it big during the state's industrial boom following World War II.
Whitson kept personal offices in one of Houston's new downtown building complexes. He was a bachelor. His office suite included sleep-in and eat-in facilities and was adjacent to a men's athletic club where he habitually put in one full hour each day in a rigid schedule of fitness exercises.
It was less than two hours after the "execution" in El Paso of General Spellman when a tall, clear-eyed young man presented himself at the Whitson suite in Houston, at the opposite side of the state. He was wearing slacks and jacket in "well-coordinated shades of blue," navy blue shirt, white tie. The caller presented "verbal identification" to the receptionist who passed the information to Whitson himself.
The man was admitted immediately and directed to "the lounge"—Whitson's on-premises apartment.
The financier was on a massage table, receiving a post exercise rubdown from an ex-boxer known as Wildcat McQueen.
As reported by McQueen, the "flashy dresser" perched himself atop a stool next to the massage table and the following conversation took place:
WHITSON: Getting a bit warm in Dallas?
STRANGER: You might say that. Other places too, we think.
WHITSON: That why they sent you down? To hold my hand?
STRANGER: Something like that.
WHITSON: Well forget it. I can take care of myself. Besides, you're too obvious, man, just too damned obvious.
STRANGER: Whatever you say. But you ought to know. Spellman is dead.
WHITSON: (alarmed) No! When?
STRANGER: Couple hours ago.
WHITSON: Okay, cool it, cool it. You about done, Wildcat? Wrap it up, eh. Wait—there's a catch under my arm here—the pectoral, I guess. Work that out first. (to the stranger) Uh, heart attack, eh? Spellman?
STRANGER: Something like that. It could happen to you.
WHITSON: No way. I'm as fit as a twenty-year-old. Right, Wildcat?
STRANGER: Not fit enough, Whitson.
WHITSON: What?
STRANGER: You didn't stay fit to live.
Whereupon the tall stranger in coordinated blue pressed a small metallic object into the financier's hand.
Whitson was lying stomach down on the table, his upper trunk raised and supported by his forearms, transfixed by the object in his hand.
He groaned, "Oh God! Wait a minute, now—wait!
We can talk this out!"
McQueen instinctively stepped away from the table.
The other man said, "Too late for talk, Whitson."
He drew a black pistol from inside his jacket and shot the financier once, directly between the eyes.
Then he told Wildcat McQueen, "Don't waste a medic's time. Just call the cops."
The man walked calmly out.
The first police unit arrived on the scene within minutes and promptly sea
led the building. The only man to be seen leaving the building in the preceding few minutes was wearing white coveralls. But the "flashy dresser" was never again seen in Houston.
It was later learned that Gerald Whitson was listed as a director of the Delaware corporation known as International Bankers Holding. He was a member of the Oilmen's Club, a national advisor on petroleum export-import policies, and a behind-the scenes power in Texas politics.
Whitson was also a partner in an Austin firm known as Oilfield Research and Conservation, a registered lobby with influential furrows in both the Texas Legislature and the US Congress.
Pendleton, Don - Executioner 018 - Texas Storm. Page 7