Vegas Vendetta

by Don Pendleton

  “Awright, kill it and get out of here!”

  “Sir?”

  “There’s a rumble, can’t you hear? Get your broads outta here, I don’t want ’em caught in nothing like this!”

  “You mean … just leave? Just leave it?”

  “You can’t take it with you can you, you jerk?” Bolan yelled. “Get those dames outta here!”

  It was apparently the final straw for a business-methods freak already pushed beyond the strain-point. The guy spun about and walked stiffly to the door. “Get them out yourself,” he called over his shoulder, and out he went.

  Bolan yelled, “Leave them doors open! Out, girls, get the hell out!”

  He was grabbing and shoving, and Max was lending a hand to a scene of confusion and pyramiding chaos.

  Above the feminine hubbub, Bolan told Max, “Take ’em out, and make sure they get clear.”

  “Sure boss,” said instant loyalty.

  And then there was just Bolan and the inside guard. Bolan gave him a hard stare and said, “Well, are you going down with the bucks?”

  The guy said, “No sir,” and went out.

  Bolan went over to the new money, obviously the stuff from the vault, and riffled through the stacks. There were packets of denominations ranging from fifties to thousands. He picked up a packet of the largest denomination and thrust it into his inside coat pocket.

  Next he found the fire station and disabled the automatic sprinklers.

  And then he went to the door, bent down, produced an incendiary stick he’d been carrying in a leg strap, removed the cap, and tossed the firebomb onto the center table.

  It spit and popped and began showering the place with white-hot chemicals, and Bolan got out of there.

  The mob was so wild about hot money, he’d give them some. Skim that, he muttered.

  He banged the door, ran the combination and commanded the hallway guard, “Nobody goes in!”

  “No sir.”

  “Not Christ himself! The joint is sealed!”

  “I got you, sir.”

  He went on through to the casino floor and repeated the command to the two guards there. The guys were nervous and obviously torn up. One of them asked him, “Did someone try a heist, Mr. Vinton?”

  Bolan said, “Yeh, but don’t you worry about the action out front. Just do your job here.”

  The guard unholstered his pistol and assured the boss that he would do just that.

  Bolan went on around the corner and came out on the main floor. The last of the women were just then disappearing into the dining room.

  Max Keno was returning, skirting warily around the scene of the shooting.

  Two guys were laid out on the promenade, bleeding and not moving.

  It was hard to tell from the angle of vision, but one of them looked like a Talifero.

  Keno yelled, “Lookout boss! Joe is—”

  A gun roared from somewhere in the tables and the little tagman took a dive.

  Bolan did likewise, slapping leather in the process, and he came up against a gaming table with the Beretta up and ready.

  A bunch of guys ran in from the lobby. Bolan yelled to them, “Out, get outta here!”

  A gun roared again, a bullet splattered into the door moulding, and the guys dodged back to safety.

  But Bolan spotted Joe Stanno on that round. He tired along the floor, beneath the tables, the Beretta phutting twice and cutting Stanno’s legs from under him.

  The monster man went down with a thud and a sigh.

  And then the place was being invaded. People were dodging in from both doorways, hard people packing hardware and sprinting for cover wherever cover could be found.

  Bolan had but one way to go, and that was toward Joe Stanno. He snaked along the floor beneath the tables where the big guy was lying on his side and watching him come.

  Stanno was sieved. He was bleeding from numerous punctures in the chest and one in the gut, a trickle of blood was oozing from the corner of his mouth, and his pants legs were turning red from Bolan’s hits.

  His gun was lying on the floor, under his nose. He raised his head off the floor and asked Bolan, “Hey, tough, which one did I get? Was it Pat or Mike?”

  “I think you got them both, Joe,” came the reply in Bolan’s natural voice.

  Joe he Monster smiled and coughed up blood and said, “I know they wasn’t so tough,” and then he lay his head back down beneath the crap table and died.

  A volley of fire hit the table at that precise moment, and Bolan rolled on. From somewhere on his flank he heard Max Keno missing, “Boss, whit’s going on?”

  “Bets are off, Max,” he called back. “You’re on yourself.”

  Such a situation had apparently never arisen for the little bagman. After a lifetime of forever being “on” someone else, there was absolutely no mental concept of being “on himself.”

  He snaked and rolled to Bolan’s outside flank and gasped, “Out the kitchen, boss, that’s the best way.”

  A Taliferi was running down the stairway from the upstairs joint, mother guy one step behind. Bolan heard him shouting, “That’s Bolan! Don’t let him get out!”

  Bolan snapped a Parabellum toward the staircase and he saw the fabric of the Taliferi’s suit pop and recoil, and the guy took a nose-dive down the steps.

  Someone yelled, “He hit the boss!”

  Bolan had lost his purple lenses during the scramble, and now Max Keno was staring into his unshuttered eyes with the heady revelation of truth crackling between them. And obviously the truth had no bearing on the matter. The boss was the boss, whatever else he might be. The little guy grinned and chirped, “Follow me, boss.”

  There was no immediate alternative, and Bolan’s numbers were running out. He rolled and slid and crawled through the jungle of mahogany and green felt until it began to seem like an eternal trek—and then Max was grunting, “Go on, straight ahead, I’ll cover you.”

  Bolan sprang toward a curtained doorway, no more than two table-lengths away. Guns roared and spat—angry little hornets of destruction in hot pursuit, and they were zipping the air all about him, thwacking into the wall beyond and plowing into tables to either side of his backtrack. Behind him he could hear Max’s methodical response, the air suddenly cleared and the roar of weapons died off.

  Also behind him a loud voice was proclaiming, “We are federal officers! All of you stop firing and throw down your weapons!”

  And then Bolan was through the curtains and running along a short hallway and toward a swinging door to the kitchen.

  The door swung open and Bolan skidded to an abrupt Halt.

  Harold Brognola stood there, blocking the way with a sawed-off shotgun raised and ready.

  The sad-faced lawman hesitated for perhaps a heartbeat.

  And, in that heartbeat, Bolan was aware of a small figure swinging in around him.

  Time froze, and Bolan’s thoughts raced on, stretching the moment into an infinity of ideas, and he knew that Max Keno, the career tagman, was acting out a subliminal reflex as deeply-rooted as Bolan’s own rage for survival, that he was moving his own life into the breach between certain death and “the boss’s” precious body—and little Max Keno died like the true tagman he’d always been.

  He took the shotgun charge full in the chest, his pistol firing in reflex, and he was swept back by the blast and flung into the corner of the hallway.

  The shotgun clattered to the floor and Brognola sank down with a Keno bullet in the thigh.

  Their eyes met and locked momentarily. Bolan threw a regretful and silent farewell to the remains of little Max, and he patted Borgnola’s shoulder and went on.

  Numbers. Never people, just the goddamned numbers.

  It was beginning to look like a day for lost numbers, however, and the idea was reinforced in Bolan’s mind as he swept on into the kitchen. A pile of guys in silk suits were just then pushing in from the dining room, through a doorway at the far side of the kitchen.


  A familiar voice behind Bolan cried, “Lookout!”

  Bolan was throwing a fresh clip into the Beretta, a split-second operation when the chips are down, and he was also throwing himself off the target line in another of those frozen-moment experiences.

  The blonde—the Ranger Girl, Miss Badmouth herself—was the owner of the familiar voice, and his side vision was catching her in a mind-jarring and timefreezing expose of slow-motion action frames. She was wearing the same wispy outfit he’d first caught her in and a little nickle-plated revolver was daintily spitting flame from her outstretched hand.

  In the front view, the guys at the doorway were wheeling into a rapid reverse and falling back into the dining room, aided and abetted by the volley of small calibre slugs whizzing into their midst.

  Bolan tossed three quick rounds their way to punctuate the withdrawal, and he snared the girl’s hand and pulled her along with Him to the rear door. The kitchen help were all headed in that direction already—with alacrity—and Bolan merely followed the crowd.

  They broke into the fresh air and the girl urgently whispered, “The desert is your only chance!”

  “Not quite,” he muttered, and left her standing there beside a cook in a high white hat as he ran to the corner of the building and started the hand-over-hand climb up the metal ladder to the roof.

  The time was 8:59.

  Despite everything, right on the numbers.

  He thought he could hear the chugging of a rotarywing craft somewhere in the distance as he gained the roof of the casino.

  The girl was coming up the ladder behind him.

  He took a moment to tell her, “Bug off, dammit!”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she panted. “Give a girl a hand?”

  A commotion on the ground just below made the decision for Bolan. He grabbed her arm and yanked her over the parapet and, in the same motion, sent three rounds phutting down the reverse course.

  A pained voice below screamed, “Oh shit!” and a volley of fire tore into the parapet.

  The roof was flat, in typical desert style, and broken only by the small superstructure of “Vito’s joint,” which had been so painstakingly emplaced there by a man of caution, about halfway to the street end of the building. The rest of the roof was open range and plenty large enough for a whirly-bird to nest upon.

  Someone was standing in a darkened window of the adjacent hotel, at about the third floor level and just across the roof- from Bolan’s position. Two, three, someones. Bolan was trying to keep an eye on them, protect his rear at the ladder, and watch for the helicopter all at once.

  He told the girl, “Thanks for the assist, but I wish—”

  She swung in behind him and Bolan heard her little pistol biting on empty chambers. He whirled and put a nine-millimeter marker on the forehead of a guy peering up over the roof parapet. The guy disappeared with a grunt.

  Toby gasped, “Do I hear a helicopter?”

  He muttered, “I sure hope you do.”

  And then the little hummingbird swung in out of the darkness and reflected the neon glare from the strip. The guys at the hotel window had spotted it also, and they’d spotted the pair on the roof, as well. People were shifting around over there, and Bolan caught the glint of a rifle barrel emerging from the window. He unloaded the Beretta in a rapidfire at the window just as the little bird came to a hover above him.

  A rope ladder tumbled down. Bolan grabbed it and, pulled the girl over and told her, “Go!”

  She shook her head and said, “This is where I bug off. Good luck, swinger. We’ll cross again.”

  He took a second away from his precious numbers to give her a stare, and then he knew.

  He said, “It’s your dice, honey,” and he quickly ascended the rope ladder.

  “Move it!” he yelled when he was halfway up, reinforcing the command with a wave of his hand.

  And then they were going straight up and slipping away over the desert, and the glare of the neon jungle was falling off and diminishing, and it all looked so small and insignificant now.

  And, of course, it was.

  EPILOGUE

  “You said nine o’clock,” the pilot reminded him, yelling to be heard above the racket of the rotors. “Was that close enough?”

  “It was plenty close enough,” Bolan yelled back.

  Yeah. Plenty close enough.

  It had been quite a fling at Vegas.

  Carl Lyons, he hoped, would be alive and well because of that fling.

  A bit of rot, here and there, had been surgically removed from the American swing scene. It would, of course, grow right back … but a guy had to keep trying.

  He’d met some nice people along the way. And left some.

  He hoped that Hal Brognola wouldn’t feel too badly over his failure, and somehow, Bolan knew that he would not.

  He’d gained a new insight into the lesser men behind the guns. Lesser? No. Bolan would never forget little Max Keno.

  As far as the Taliferi … he hoped they’d found enough blood to wash their hands with … but he did not particularly care one way or the other. It was their vendetta, not his. He would not go so far as to scratch them out of his combat book … he’d thought them dead before and been proven wrong.

  Tommy Anders, the hottest ethnologist in the land, now there was a guy. Bolan hoped that he would not retire from the soul biz of America.

  As for the blonde … Bolan was feeling a bit upset over that item. All the while she’d been.… What? Where did she fit? Fed? Was she working with Lyons? Was Anders part of the game?

  He sighed over the memory of her, knowing that she was a gal who could care for herself … but he had to wonder what she was really like. She’d been playing a role. Probably as much a role as Bolan’s Vinton routine. Would they cross trails again?

  It figured that they would. Official people had a way of popping in and out at irregular intervals along Bolan’s wipe-out trail. It was a small combat world.

  And now … where was he headed? Where did the trail lead from here?

  He inspected the uneasy face of the accountant, huddled in the rear seat with his bags of bucks.

  “San Juan?” Bolan yelled at him.

  The guy blinked his eyes and gave Bolan a scared nod.

  “That’s great,” Bolan yelled, “because I’m riding shotgun all the way!”

  The guy nodded again and looked away.

  Bolan relaxed and settled into his seat.

  Vegas was nothing now but a glow across the horizon. They were running low, skimming beneath any possible radar search. The little air buggy did not have much range, but Bolan knew there would be another wing waiting somewhere out there, warmed and ready to lift them on to the merry-go-round in the Caribbean. There were times when Bolan could appreciate the mob’s efficiency.

  And he was looking forward to that ride. Bolan had never grabbed a brass ring … the Caribbean carousel sounded like a good place to try.

  No brass rings at Vegas, but … if nothing else, he’d done something that probably a million guys had dreamed of doing all their lives. He’d gone to Vegas, beat the house at their own game, and cleaned out the bank. Ashes to ashes and dust to. …

  He grinned, remembering.

  Destiny’s Dice had turned out to be loaded … against the house, for a change. And the wipe-out trail was growing longer by the moment, wasn’t it? There just might be a hot reception awaiting him at the end of this particular segment.

  He lit a cigarette, and slowly blew out the smoke, examined his soul, and found it intact. “San Juan,” he murmured, “here we come.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series

  1: COLLISION COURSE

  They circled low over the breakwater and dropped smoothly onto the glasslike surface of Bahia de Vidria, the pontoons taking a gentle bite and skimming along the water runway toward the beach. The pilot had cut back on the power and they were idling slowly in a soft glide for th
e seaplane dock, a hundred yards or so downrange, when the Beretta slid into Bolan’s fist and muzzled into the guy’s throat.

  “End of game, Grimaldi,” the Executioner announced coldly.

  The pilot swallowed hard past the outside pressure of cool steel and muttered, “I don’t get you, Mr. Vinton.”

  “Sure you do,” Bolan told him. “When the engine dies, you die.”

  He divided his attention to lift the binoculars into a close scan of the shoreline. A signboard on the pier loomed into the vision-field:

  GLASS BAY RESORT PRIVATE

  Beyond the pier lay neatly landscaped grounds and a rambling structure resembling an oversized plantation house—a two-story job with verandas at top and bottom levels. Colorful cabanas lined the beach. People in bathing suits sprawled about here and there in the sand—all male-type people, Bolan wryly noted. Others strolled casually about the grounds or lounged at the railings of the verandas. Say, thirty people in plain sight. Two guys in white ducks and sneakers waited on the pier to dock the plane.

  It all would seem perfectly innocuous, to the casual observer.

  Mack Bolan was not observing casually.

  Not a native Puerto Rican was in sight. No females, no relaxed frivolity, no fun or games anywhere in evidence. It was a set stage, sloppily done—no doubt, Bolan mused, the result of haste. They hadn’t had time to get all the props out. Something inside a beach cabana was giving off telltale flashes as it reflected the strong rays of the midday tropical sun—a telescopic lens, maybe. The beach towels of the “bathers” revealed oblong lumps of just about the proper size and shape to suggest concealed rifles or shotguns.

  As the plane steadily closed the distance, clumps of men on the lower verenda of the house began drifting down the steps and disappearing into the vegetation.

  Yeah, Glass Bay was the hardsite. And it was primed and waiting for a gate-crasher in masquerade.

  It was, of course, time for the official unmasking. Bolan had known in his bones, for several hours now, that his little game was over. And now the time had come to pay the fare for that wild-ass exit from Vegas.

  By the numbers, now, very carefully. A single moment would decide life or death for Mack Bolan—a very precise moment in psychological time.