Hard Targets

by Don Pendleton

  There was one Spectre M4 submachine gun with sound suppressor and a stack of casket magazines, each holding fifty rounds of 9 mm Parabellum ammunition; one Beretta 92, same caliber, with a suppressor of its own; a Galco shoulder holster for the pistol and a gym bag for the SMG. A second gym bag was pregnant with grenades, half fragmentation, half flash-bang.

  “Always a pleasure doing business with you,” Reems said.

  Five minutes later, Bolan was en route to the hotel.

  * * *

  IT HAD SEEN better days, no question. The hotel wasn’t a dump, exactly, but its age was showing. Call it half a century, with hit and miss maintenance done the past decade or so. The owners wouldn’t get the hot-sheet trade, so much as seniors waiting out the clock and counting nickels all the way. But there would be at least one younger guest, waiting for a visitor and running down some numbers of his own.

  Bolan’s first move was scouting out the neighborhood, two lazy circuits of the block as if he couldn’t find the address he was looking for. An ambush didn’t always show, but if it was set up in a hurry there was a better chance of someone being obvious: a watcher feigning sleep in a parked car, for instance, or a window-shopper idling too long at a store that hadn’t opened yet; maybe a shadow in an alley, too upright and watchful for a junkie on the nod.

  Worst case scenario, the hunters could already be set up inside the hotel. Depending on their numbers and efficiency, they could have managed it since Bolan got the call and booked his flight, but would they be that patient? If they had the target spotted, why not kick in the door and get it done?

  The soldier hadn’t tried to call since landing, wanted all of the arrangements finalized before he got in touch. When it went down, there’d be no time to waste, no second-guessing or palaver. Making tracks was all that mattered. They could think about the rest of it when they were safe.

  Safer, that was.

  Right now, he couldn’t say that there was any true safe place in Buffalo. The so-called “City of Good Neighbors” could become a free-fire zone.

  It had another name, as well: “City of No Illusions.” Whether that was literally true—or even possible, in modern-day America—he had a feeling that some hard truth was about to hit the streets.

  Hard truth and bodies, right.

  But first, the Executioner was there on a kind of rescue mission. Something had gone wrong in Buffalo. He didn’t have the details yet, but mortal danger had been waiting for him when his flight touched down.

  Same old, same old—but with a special urgency this time.

  He found a place to park the Mercury and spent another precious moment sitting there, eyeing the street. The hotel’s windows stared back at him, glassy-eyed, reflecting early morning light. A hostile watcher might have studied him from every one of them, and Bolan wouldn’t know the difference until he hit the sidewalk, when they sprang the trap.

  He palmed his cell phone, pressed a button to connect and heard it picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Ready to check out?” he inquired.

  “Damn right. Where are you?”

  “Coming up in five,” Bolan stated.

  “No need. I’ll just come down to you.

  “Bear with me, okay? Double the cover.”

  “Sure, okay. Room 315.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  “YOU SURE THIS is the place?” Billy Scars asked.

  “I’m sure this is the place they sent us,” Rick Guarini answered. “If you’re askin’ am I sure the guy’s inside, then hell, no.”

  “Oughta call and double-check the address,” Bobby Luna said from the backseat.

  “You wanna call and tell him we forgot the address, be my guest,” Billy Scars said. “I ain’t about to.”

  “It’s the right address, goddamn it!” Guarini snapped. “Can we just go in and bag his ass, already?”

  Another fifteen seconds were lost while Billy Scars considered it. His real name was Scarducci, and the nickname was a natural, considering the two long scars along his jawline, on the left, inflicted with a razor when he’d been a punk teenager running wild around Canal Street. He didn’t mind the name. In fact, he thought the scars made him resemble Al Capone, minus the flab and the receding hairline.

  A name was one thing, but he still had to prove himself before he moved up any higher in the Family. This night could be his ticket if he pulled it off.

  “All right,” he said. “The both of you ready?”

  As he asked the question, Billy Scars racked a shell into the chamber of his Ithaca 12-gauge, the short Stakeout model. He’d loaded triple-000 buckshot, just for the hell of it, six .36-caliber pellets in each fat red cartridge. If five of those rounds couldn’t do what he’d come for, he still had a Taurus PT 24/7 for backup, in .45-caliber. Give the prick ten rounds of that, and see whether he had some fight left.

  His two friends both had pistols, Luna carrying a big .357 Magnum Desert Eagle, which, Billy Scars surmised, might be some kind of compensation for a little gun downstairs. Guarini carried two handguns: a .45-caliber Heckler & Koch MK23, and for backup, a Charter Arms Bulldog in .44 Special, the piece that made Son of Sam famous.

  One target, five guns, and...how many rounds, before anybody would have to reload?

  Billy Scars gave up on the math and stepped out of the Buick LaCrosse, tucking the shotgun underneath his thigh-length leather jacket. There was no point advertising yet, before they got inside and found their man. If someone called the cops before they nailed him, it was Billy’s ass that would be landing on the griddle.

  They had parked across the street, an easy walk with no traffic in sight. They breezed in through the lobby, no one at reception to observe them on the short hike to the elevator—where a small hand-written sign said Out of Order. Sorry!

  “What kind of dump is this?” Luna asked.

  “Three-fifteen,” Guarini said. “Third floor?”

  “You nailed it, Einstein,” Billy Scars replied, and veered off toward the stairs.

  They reached the third floor, saw a sign in front of them with room numbers and arrows pointing off to either side. The gunners turned right into a musty-smelling hallway, number 315 apparently the next-to-last room down that way. And damned if Billy Scars didn’t see a guy outside the door, hand raised as if to knock.

  “You think that’s him?” Guarini asked, half whispering, as if the tall guy couldn’t see them.

  “He should have a key to his own room,” Luna said.

  What the guy had was some kind of freaking automatic weapon, suddenly appearing in his hands and angling their way, just before all hell broke loose.

  Bolan heard the shooters coming, hoped it wasn’t trouble, but reached underneath his jacket for the Spectre M4, just in case. Next thing he knew, three men were standing halfway down the hall, some forty feet away, guns showing. With his finger on the submachine gun’s trigger, he remembered what had brought him there, and let the muzzle rise enough that when it started stuttering, the muffled shots ripped into ceiling tiles and plaster, well above their heads.

  It was enough to get them moving, back into the stairwell, out of sight. He kicked the door to number 315 and called to its occupant, “Come on! It’s checkout time!”

  The door swung open and a younger man stepped out, a small suitcase in his left hand, a pistol ready in his right. “How many?” he inquired.

  “I saw three,” Bolan said. “There could be more.”

  “I guess you saw, the elevator’s out.”

  Bolan wouldn’t have trusted it in any case, with shooters roaming free in the hotel, maybe an ambush party waiting in the lobby while the others came upstairs. “The stairs are covered,” he observed.

  “Damn it!”

 
“You have a fire escape?”

  “Dream on.”

  “Okay. The stairs, then,” the soldier stated.

  “Listen, if we have to take them out—”

  “I had another thought,” Bolan said, reaching underneath his jacket, where a flash-bang grenade was clipped to his belt.

  It was an M84 from the Picatinny Arsenal, five and a quarter inches long, weighing just over half a pound. Its perforated cast steel body sheathed a thin aluminum case, packed in turn with a pyrotechnic charge of magnesium and ammonium nitrate. Upon detonation, it would produce a blinding flash of light exceeding one million candela, with a thunderclap of sound between 170 and 180 decibels. The net result would be immediate but temporary deafness and flash blindness, with disorienting inner ear disturbance. Safe for use except in close proximity to gasoline or ether fumes, the flash-bang also shouldn’t set the hotel’s carpeting or wallpaper afire.

  “You set?” Bolan inquired.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Bolan pulled the stun grenade’s primary pin, leaving the secondary pin in place but loosened, with a finger tucked through its triangular tab as they moved toward the stairs. Moving stealthily, sure, but the guys in the stairwell had to know they’d be coming. Where else could they go, except back to the room—and then what? Call the cops?

  Not likely.

  The soldier heard voices in the stairwell, down around the nearest landing. He couldn’t catch the words, but reckoned that the shooters had to be working up their nerve to make a rush, or maybe choosing which one of them ought to risk his life peeking around the corner. That could go on indefinitely if he didn’t help them out, and even with the Spectre’s sound suppressor, Bolan couldn’t guarantee some neighbor on the third or fourth floor wasn’t dialing 911 already.

  With a smooth flick of his wrist, he pulled the flash-bang’s secondary pin and lobbed the slim grenade into the stairwell with a sidearm toss. It hit the farther wall, bounced off and vanished from his sight, as he crouched low and ducked his head, eyes shut, ears covered, the younger man dropping beside him as if synchronized.

  Two seconds maximum on the grenade’s M201A1 time-delay fuse prevented any useful defensive reaction from Bolan’s intended targets. He heard a warning shout, or maybe just a bleat, before the blast eclipsed it, spewing dust into the corridor.

  * * *

  “WE CAN’T JUST friggin’ stand here,” Billy Scars was saying, with Luna and Guarini staring at him as if he might be crazy.

  “Did ya notice that he’s packing a machine gun?” Luna asked him, standing with his mismatched pistols crossed over his chest, wide-eyed with something close to panic.

  “I got that,” Billy Scars answered. “And I noticed he’s a lousy shot, to miss all three of us. You pricks wanna run home and tell the boss you had to split because you wet yourself, or can we do this thing?”

  “Friggin’ machine gun,” Luna muttered to himself. Then, louder, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  “Do the bastard,” Guarini said, grinning with his teeth clenched, like some kind of maniac, and jiggling on his feet in some kind of crazy little dance. “Do it!”

  Billy Scars was actually starting up the steps when something black and smaller than a can of soda flew into the stairwell, hit the drab wall to his left and started bouncing down to meet him.

  “Grenade!” he yelped, turning to flee, and maybe took one step before the blast propelled him headfirst down the staircase, airborne, wondering if he was dead already.

  Billy Scars hit a wall and felt his nose go, flattened by the impact. Blood sprayed everywhere, smearing the wall as he slid down it, melted on the floor into a useless puddle. He was blind and couldn’t figure why. There’d been a flash, oh yeah, then he had plowed into the wall. Skull fracture? Optic nerve severed?

  Billy Scars thought that he was cursing, but he couldn’t hear himself. There was a roaring in his ears, like what he had imagined it would be like standing underneath Niagara Falls. Jesus, if he was blind and deaf, he might as well be dead. He thought about ending it right there, but his damned muscles weren’t responding to his thoughts—and anyway, he’d lost his shotgun on the flight downstairs.

  Pistol, he thought, and tried to fumble for it, but the simplest motion nauseated him.

  He tried to focus on the target, but still couldn’t figure why the hump with the machine gun had been knocking on his own hotel room door. Unless—

  Unless what?

  There were two guys, damn it! Had to be. It was the only thing that made a bit of sense to Billy Scars’s scrambled brain. He was delighted he could put that much together, then dejected in another second when he realized it didn’t matter. No way he could redeem himself, share his big revelation with the boss, when he was dead.

  He tried to move. Ghosts did that, didn’t they? Wandered around the places they were killed, sometimes, if you believed the stories on TV and in the movies. Famous people saw ghosts all the time. If they were sober, and they weren’t just lying for publicity, why couldn’t Billy Scars still get a lick in while the rage was hot inside him, burning for the pricks who’d killed him?

  The elevator wasn’t working. That meant they’d have to use the stairs, pass by his broken corpse. But had they passed already, while his mind was churning like a smoke cloud?

  Maybe not.

  He heard footsteps descending. Could be other hotel tenants running for an exit, but he had to take the shot. Roaring, he pushed off from the floor and lunged to meet whoever was approaching.

  * * *

  BOLAN CLEARED THE HAZE of smoke and dust, saw three slack bodies huddled on the landing below him. One had hit the wall head-on and marked it with his blood, potentially a lethal injury, but there was nothing the soldier could do about it now. Only an ID check would put his mind at ease, and they were running dangerously short of time.

  “Something here I want to check,” he told the younger man. “Cover the stairs.”

  “Got it.”

  There were only a couple of places where they could stash ID, if there was any to be found.

  Bolan’s companion stepped around the bodies, angling down to watch for anyone ascending from the lobby. Three men here could mean another one or two below, for backup, maybe on their way after the flash-bang’s blast, or else intent on getting out of there before the cops showed up.

  The cops.

  The soldier bent over the guy who’d smashed his nose and saw that he was blowing crimson bubbles. Still alive, then, for the moment. Muttering, or simply groaning in his semiconscious state? Bolan was reaching toward his open jacket, hoping there would be a wallet in an inside pocket, when the guy gave out a warbling wheeze and lunged at him.

  Sort of.

  It was a feeble, uncoordinated move that got him nowhere. Bolan rapped his temple with the Spectre’s fat suppressor, put his lights out, and went on about his hasty search. The shooter’s wallet was a fancy alligator job, or maybe crocodile. What mattered was the driver’s license Bolan found.

  No badge. Ditto, the other two.

  Whatever finally became of them, he hadn’t killed three cops.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  The hotel’s desk clerk had appeared from hiding by the time they reached the lobby, but he saw them coming, calling out, “I didn’t see a thing!” before he ducked into the back and out of sight.

  No one else was waiting for them as they cleared the lobby and emerged onto the street, tucking their guns away. A taxi passed, its driver briefly glancing at them, rolling on when neither of them tried to flag him down.

  “I’m parked across the street. The Mercury,” Bolan said, as he checked both ways. Still no sign of an ambush or a spotter.

  Had the Buick parked in front of the hotel delivered hi
s assailants? Likely, since it wasn’t sitting there when Bolan had entered. The Executioner guessed the driver had to be one of those he’d dusted with the flash-bang. Otherwise, where was he?

  Crossing, his companion said, “You made good time.”

  “I caught a break,” the soldier answered.

  “Well, thanks for coming, anyway.”

  “It’s what we do, right?”

  “Right. Okay.”

  When they were in the car and rolling, hotel fading in the rearview, Bolan figured it was time to ask the question.

  “All right, spill it. What’s the story, little brother?”

  Chapter 2

  There’d been no time for details on the phone before Bolan had scrambled to arrange his flight. It was enough to know that Johnny was in mortal danger, far from home, with no clear way out of it. Bolan was on the first flight he could manage from Vancouver International to Buffalo, aware only in broad strokes as to what awaited him.

  The Mafia.

  It felt like old home week, except he didn’t have a home.

  Now Johnny told the story while they rolled through Buffalo, watching the day break and the city come alive.

  “So, like I said, I had this job.”

  “In Buffalo?”

  “I know, okay?”

  Johnny was based in Southern California, a beach town, self-employed as a security consultant and private investigator. Buffalo was worlds away.

  “What happened?” Bolan asked.

  “A local came to see me,” Johnny said. “Name’s Zoe Dirks. She lives in San Diego, a financial counselor. Long story short, she heard by word of mouth that I’ve been lucky when it comes to finding missing people.”

  “Oh?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Five, six jobs the last couple of years. Word gets around.”

  “And she had someone missing.”

  “Right. Her brother. He’s in Buffalo—or was, at least. A contractor. Joe Dirks.”