Hemmed in front and back, two sides wanting his hide, good and bad guys, the soldier tapped the brakes, swinging onto the shoulder. Slowing, he searched the forested hills, something telling him the Bell JetRanger was in the area, and that the occupants were responsible for tagging his vehicle, sticking the law up his tailpipe. Lights and sirens bearing down on his rear, Bolan reached over the seat and hauled in both M-16/M-203 and the HK subgun.
“No matter what happens,” Bolan told Marelli, “do not leave the car.”
“Ain’t the cops I’m worried about, pal. You think Cabriano and boys give a rat’s ass about a few smokies gettin’ in their way? Oh, yeah, I’ll sit tight, unless you get yourself cut to ribbons and blown off the planet.”
Bolan opened the door.
“ARE YOU INSANE, Cabriano? We can’t just kill policemen, not out on a public highway, not unless we want the full wrath of—”
“Why not, José? You do it all the time in your country. Judges, lawyers, cops, you wipe out bloodlines of whole families what I hear. Silver or lead, isn’t that what you people say in Colombia?”
“That is different! This is hardly the same situation.”
“The hell it isn’t. I’m passing the order on to my guys, so shit or get off the pot! But you decide to sit out the fight, I’ll remember it, believe you me!”
Cabriano left the Colombian to flail and fume, punching in the numbers to Frankie’s line. He took in the situation ahead. The Colombian goons up front were throwing evil eyes all around, Cabriano thinking that big shotgun in the hands of the wild-eyed hardman in the passenger seat was inching up his way. He spotted three smokies in all, with two cruisers down the highway, blocking any southbound escape, one sliding in behind the big nameless bastard who had somehow bagged Marelli. That alone stirred up another hornet’s nest of maddening questions. What had happened to Peary and his shooters? Who was this one-man juggernaut? What did he want? What the hell was his game? For one thing, no Fed he’d ever heard of was granted the full blessing of the law to run amok, burn, blast and slaughter at will. Last time he looked this wasn’t a Third World hellhole run by some dictator who could march out kill squads at whim to wipe out malcontents, rebels and such. Then there were constitutional rights, whether a man was accused of crimes or not. He was owed his day in court, whatever the government thought they had on him. They couldn’t cut loose their own hired gun on him and his people, if that’s what happened back in Brooklyn.
It occurred then to Cabriano the troopers could have radioed for backup, meaning the dread possibility of roadblocks all the way to New York. But Cabriano saw the future going up in flames if he didn’t act out in wild desperation to hold up the crumbling walls. If they lost here, the future didn’t matter.
The Tube growled on the line. Cabriano told him what to do, and if he had any problems following those orders…
“Understood, boss. I’ll pass it on.”
But Cabriano wasn’t so sure he understood at all. Frankie sounded gun-shy to him.
“Get your driver to hang back, José, in fact, pull off to the side of the road,” Cabriano snarled as the narcomiddleman bared teeth, shaking his head. “There’s no time to dick around here! In or out? I’ll go it alone, me and my guys, I have to. You understand it’s your ass and the asses of the whole goddamn Quintero Cartel if I don’t get that disk? Know this, too. That big bastard you seen sitting on Marelli? He’s responsible for either blasting up or taking about twenty million hard-earned dollars that were supposed to go to your people!” That, Cabriano found, grabbed Hildago’s undivided attention.
“Why, may I ask, are you just telling me this now, when we have been riding together for more than two hours?” Hildago looked dangerously angry.
“Because I’ve been looking for a way to save the whole game before we lose everything, that’s why.”
Hildago laughed. “Really?”
The first words out of Hildago’s mouth to his wheelman were in Spanish. Cabriano barked, “English, goddammit! I wanna know if you’re on board or gonna stab me in the back!”
“DROP THE WEAPONS!”
Bolan was unfolding, halfway out the door, M-16 leading his rise, when he knew it was beyond hope.
“Do it! Now!”
The soldier held out the Justice Department credentials for the trooper to inspect, though he was grimly aware he had to have appeared to be exactly what the man suspected he was. It was crystal clear to Bolan in the lawman’s tone and stance he was a moment away from opening up with his Glock.
“I’m Cooper, Justice Department,” Bolan shouted back, as the Towncar blew by the trooper. The soldier felt his gut coiling, four sets of potential doom tearing his vigilance, front and rear.
“I know who you are!” the trooper roared, but his own angry stand, partly shielded as he was in the gap of his door, became distracted, eyes darting from the Towncar on the fly past his roost to the vehicles jerking to a stop on his rear.
“Those men behind you are coming to kill me and my federal witness! Forget what you might think you know about me, get in your car and get the hell out of here!”
The trooper was half turned to Bolan when four hardmen burst out the door of the Towncar on his bumper. A mixed bag of shotguns, pistols and submachine guns filling their hands, they opened fire on the lawman without warning.
FRANKIE TRIED to focus his thoughts on the insane order he was about to carry out. Other than the odd 12-gauge pump shotgun in the hands of Vinnie Caputo behind him, Ingram MAC-10s were the cop killer of choice. He wished he was anywhere right then but roaring down a public highway toward two state troopers who were already waving pistols at them, hollering, it looked, to get out of the way, pull over. The notion that Cabriano had sent them on to waste two state troopers put something as close to the fear of God in him as he’d probably known in the six years he’d been a top lieutenant in the Family. It was one thing to shake down local bookies and dealers, beating them with fists or tire irons until they were a blubbering crimson worm willing to pay all kinds of tribute to the Family. One thing, also, to gun down rival wise guys, or even on occasion forced to execute a Family member who either stole from the till or was turning rat, like The Butcher.
But killing cops? They gave the needle to cop killers in New York, and he had a wife and four kids to think about. The other wise guys could play the mistress shenanigans, hang out at the Fireball all night if they wanted, but he stayed with Cabriano out of necessity—to pay the bills and put food on the table, not to indulge a playboy lifestyle, risk hearth and home, carousing, every day a party. Hell, he even kind of liked his wife. Not like the other wise guys, always bellyaching about this and that, never happy, no matter what, the grass always greener in some other broad’s bed. Lately he’d been thinking he wanted out. Just walk away before it was too late, he was too old, or in prison or dead. But with a grade-ten education, where else was he going to make the kind of money Cabriano doled out? No, he couldn’t quite see himself flipping burgers, pushing a mop, playing squeegee bum in rush-hour traffic….
Stuck, then. At least for now.
A glance at their wheelman, a look over his shoulder at the others, and he could tell by the grim set to their features they were more than up for wasting cops. Like this would be some badge of honor. He could hear the bragging already when they were clubbing, getting loaded, embellishing their own roles, no doubt. Hell, he wouldn’t put it past any of them to take the shields, guns, hats, some trophy from the kill, for impressing the broads and other wise guys. Which, together with them running their mouths, was sure to bring heat.
Man, when this was over, when they were back in New York, he was going to grant Babs her wish, quit this gangster nonsense. Go find a real honest job. Be a man instead of a bum. His heart wasn’t in it anymore. At the moment, he couldn’t agree more with her, thinking of the shame, how much she would loathe what he was about to become if she could see him now. What would she, the kids, do, him spending his last few years
on death row?
He felt the Towncar lurching to a halt, the image of Babs in tirade vanishing. With tinted windows, the troopers couldn’t see in, he knew, but something had to have raised the alarm in their heads as one of them broke from his barricade, marching out into the open, barking at them to get out of the car.
Frankie hung back a moment, aware he had no choice but to follow through. The others were bursting out their doors, going for it. The thunderous explosion of their weapons jolted him into the terrible reality of no return, his hand shuddering out to open the door. The troopers were returning fire, glass spiderwebbing before his eyes as it took a round or two. Frankie glimpsed the big holes spurting blood across the troopers’ chests and figured they were already dead on their feet. He decided he had to at least make a show of it, heaving his three-hundred-plus pounds into the murderous fray, Ingram up, tracking the trooper already absorbing hits behind his cruiser. He was holding back on the trigger, the first few rounds stuttering loose, when the chopper seemed to drop in out of nowhere. Frankie thought he heard Ralino or one of the others shouting, their weapons roaring on, but it was impossible to home in on any sound other than the piercing whine of rotor blades, the squall of rotor wash. Frankie squinted against the wind, firing on both troopers now toppling. The chopper swung around, hovering behind the cruisers. Frankie looked up, glimpsed the white metal skin sparking a second or two, aware Ralino and the others were tattooing the whirlybird, insane with bloodlust. Frankie stole a heartbeat’s view of a figure in a black helmet, visor hiding his face, hunched behind what looked to him like some kind of cannon. He counted five, maybe six barrels, wondered briefly who the new arrival was and did it matter, when the cylinder began spinning, smoking and blasting.
Frankie knew the others were taking hits, their screams whipped away by the roaring monster above. He was bringing his Ingram on target, his face slashed by flying glass, metal shards and hot blood, when the doomsday gun swung his way.
BOLAN KNEW THERE WAS nothing he could do but save himself and Marelli while savaging the enemy. Figure the opposition was desperate enough to the point of insanity, gunning down lawmen in broad daylight on a public road, telling Bolan they would go to any extremes to capture or slay Marelli. The addition of the chopper, clearly custom-built to turn it into a gunship, was a lethal problem the soldier knew he’d have to deal with in short order. There was nothing he could do for any of the troopers. Cabriano’s goons mowed down the lawmen without hesitation. But payback for the cold-blooded murder was instant. The Gatlin gun ripped through the mobsters’ ranks in two shakes. That beast of firepower was capable of pounding out thousands of rounds, devouring flesh in great chunks of exploding gore. The Towncar was all but lost, sheared apart in the barrage. Discount that helmeted shooter on the Gatling as Justice or FBI, and Bolan had to believe more spooks from some No Name Agency were on-hand to heap more misery into someone’s life.
Bolan had serious problems of his own to contend with.
Judging from the swarthy faces and fancy threads of the four shooters who took out the lone trooper, then catching a word or two of snarled Spanish, Bolan had to figure them for cartel thugs. Come to help Cabriano with his Marelli situation, collect money, hammer out their deal. He intended to send them on their way to hell like the crime boss and the spooks.
The trooper was down, nerve spasms capping off two rounds from his pistol, when the Executioner tapped the M-203’s trigger. Coasting past the cruiser, the warhead detonated on the grille of the lead Towncar. The blast proving a great equalizer, the fireball kicked four mauled screamers in all directions.
Eight down. Reckon four to a vehicle, and the odds were close to cut in half.
Marching ahead, dumping another 40 mm frag bomb down the launcher’s gullet, the soldier veered into the space between his Crown Vic and the cruiser. Wreckage banked the Cadillac next in line, howling gunmen bobbing and weaving. Their dance steps through the flotsam gave Bolan all the edge he needed to begin dispensing autofire. They were flailing under his M-16 bombardment, wild shotgun blasts and subgun fire peppering the Caddie, when Bolan felt the gunship blowing rotor wash up his back.
The Executioner hit the deck as the air was lanced by the heavy metal thunder of the Gatling gun.
8
John Rollins feared the future, saw the shortening tomorrows like a comet flaming out, crashing to Earth, pictured himself squashed beneath the rock. At the moment, he couldn’t decide if he felt more intimidated by the portraits of the attorney general and President of the United States hung on the wall behind the director’s desk, or the former Marine gunnery sergeant appearing to him like a grim picture of fire and brimstone in the burning flesh. All seemed to bore dagger eyes into his soul, in search of hidden dark truths, the eyes glaring without blinking as Rollins sat in the leather chair, waiting for the director to get off the phone. Whoever Worthy was speaking to only seemed to darken his mood. The director’s stare was feeling to Rollins as if the man was on the edge of learning what would most certainly lead to prison bars slamming shut on his backside.
Rollins heard, “And you are? And you come by this information how? Or are you just guessing, maybe have your own agenda, lady?”
Rollins didn’t like the sound of that, not one damn bit. The director’s knuckles were popping as if he wanted to crush the phone into dust in a fist he imagined could crush a grown man’s entire skull and face. There were stories about Worthy, tales from Gulf I, still circulating in the halls of Justice. The younger bucks practically bowed down and kissed the ground before this crew-cut bulldog who paced more muscle than a young Arnold. The Medal of Honor winner was a devout Catholic, a family man and no-nonsense by the book.
Rollins felt his blood pressure rise, pulsing in his eardrums.
Two stiff belts before leaving for the office, and getting bogged down in traffic hadn’t done much to calm the storm inside Rollins. The initial crime scene reports in his lap perused, he had just learned from FBI agents at the lodge that all eight men assigned to guard Marelli were dead. Peary and his killing band had apparently been slain themselves in the woods, not far from the lodge. There were also three unidentified victims strewed in the massacre at the lodge, apparently having engaged in a firefight with suspect or suspects undetermined, but blown to smithereens by ordnance that was not part and parcel of Justice Department operations. The mystery compounded, but Rollins had a good idea who was behind all the mayhem, which was why he’d put out an APB on SAC Matt Cooper. Cutting the red tape to dump the man on the FBI’s Most Wanted list might prove a tough sell, but he’d been pondering the problem all night, certain his litany of rationales would pan out. He would sway the director to have Cooper hunted down like a wild animal. Then there was the gnawing fear—no, terror—that Brognola would pull through, point the blame in his direction. It would be easy enough to add two and two on that score, since he was responsible for marching the man into the ambush in the first place.
The day held nothing but the promise of unending dread and anxiety. Future? What future?
Worthy put down the phone. Rollins looked at the man, hoping he’d fill him in on what was clearly a disturbing call.
“Who was that?” Rollins asked, aware of the sudden outbreak of sweat on his forehead.
Instead of answering, Worthy, peering, sniffed the air. “Have you been drinking?”
Rollins fidgeted, silently cursing the man for pursuing what, in his mind, was a snare to make his day yet more miserable, or an excuse to send him packing off the investigation. He hoped to God he hid the simmering resentment in look and tone, as he told him, “I, uh, well, uh…yes, sir. Considering the gravity…well, what with the murders…”
“Spare me all that lame bullshit. I need everyone’s head in the game, clean and sober. I need all my people sharp, hungry, alive. We’re looking at the mother of AFUs, and I don’t have the first goddamn clue, the first answer as to how, why, or who blew this shitstorm in our faces.”
Before Rollins could jump-start his battery of theories, truths, half-truths and good old-fashioned bullshit, the former gunnery sergeant hauled open a desk drawer, produce a fifth of Wild Turkey and slammed it on his desktop.
“See that, Assistant Director Rollins?”
Did he ever. Half-empty, by his reckoning, he was thinking the man would offer him a shot, an olive branch before the real ass-reaming started, a softening of the blow.
“Your point is noted, sir.”
“I don’t think so, Rollins. That’s my personal stash, the one indulgence I allow myself,” he gruffed, then fired up a cigar, taking his time, working up a nice fat cloud to blow across the desk. “I do two, no more, no less, each day, end of day, when the day’s business is concluded. Then I go home to my wife and children. Spend quality time with them, help with dinner, homework and so forth. Make love to my wife three, sometimes four times a week still after fifteen years of being married to the same woman. Go to sleep for a few hours, get up well before the sun, jog, pump some iron, bone up on the day’s agenda, get my ass to work. No matter how tough the coming day, I go get it, shoulders squared, no hinky alterations in routine. Whining and weakness are for guys on the way out. That in mind, do I need to spell out your tomorrow if I smell whiskey on your breath again?”
“No, sir. I understand.”
The bottle disappeared, Rollins thinking the man flashed him a dubious scowl.
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