What the hell, if the mob didn’t have sense enough to have a Corporal of the Guard, Bolan was only too happy to play the role.
The sentries said nothing but slowly drifted around the corner out of sight. The Executioner stepped immediately onto the veranda and went softly to the line of windows at the big conference room. The drapes were drawn and the faintest light was filtering through. He could hear the murmuring rise and fall of voices and occasionally a word or two would come through clearly, but this was not his chief interest. He stood there in the darkness and laid in enough plastic to blow off the side of the building.
The clear tones of someone, a rather polished voice coming obviously from just the other side of that glass, said something about, “… must be handled with all sensitivity. You gentlemen understand that.”
Bolan nodded his head. All Mafia business was handled with “all sensitivity.” And so was Bolan’s. He set in the detonators and quietly withdrew, then casually joined the three hardmen at the rear of the house.
Two minutes to go. Two minutes. He had to fight to keep his eyes away from his watch, and he told the group, “You boys better kinda hurry that up.”
“Still some in th’ thermos,” the skinny one said, grinning.
“I’m just startin’ to feel my toes again,” another commented. “This sure was nice of you to think of this, uh, uh …”
Bolan swore to himself and said, “Frankie.”
“Oh yeah. Well listen, Frankie, if Freddie treats all of his boys this way, I think I wouldn’t mind making a transfer.”
“He don’t,” the skinny one said. He was giving Bolan the odd look, trying to pierce the anonymity of the night. “And I don’t think I know Frankie.”
Too long, Bolan was thinking. He should have fused it closer. A guy could get away with this sort of masquerade for just so long, and then blooey buddy, the game is over.
The other hardman was saying, “Well if I was you I’d say make friends damn quick.” He swiped at his nose and added, “This Frankie is a gentleman.”
Bolan chuckled and said, “You might not say that if you was in my crew.”
“I think I—”
The skinny soldier cut in with, “What crew is that, Frankie? What territory?”
There it was, the unforgivable breach of etiquette. “If you have to ask,” Bolan replied a bit stiffly, “then you better not.”
The guy shrugged his shoulders, a real dumb-ass soldier, and said, “I just thought I knew all th’ lieutenants.”
Bolan growled, “Who th’ hell said I was a lieutenant?”
The skinny one smiled nervously and replied, “Oh well, I mean …”
They stood there in a strained silence.
Bolan glanced at his watch. Okay, it was okay. He growled, “Finish the coffee and get back on your posts.”
The third man, who had said very little, took a deep breath and declared, “Well that sure hit the spot. Thanks, Frankie. You know we all appreciate it.”
And then it came … a small explosion, not much more than a shotgun blast, rippling through the night. Something flashed near the rear of the main lodge. Immediate darkness descended as all lighting, inside and out, was abruptly extinguished.
The men around Bolan sucked in their breaths. A cup fell to the ground. Bolan growled, “Heyyy.”
“What the hell?” the piping voice of the skinny one declared.
“Power box must’ve shorted out,” Bolan said calmly.
Just then a real rumbler came from the front porch of the lodge, lighting up the yard momentarily with a blinding flash, the harsh thunder ripping across to them behind the flash—and before that one was fully felt the real shocker came, the entire side of the lodge seemed to tear away in a shattering explosion that sent shock waves along the ground beneath Bolan’s feet and battered the air about his ears.
“It’s a hit!” he cried. “Get on down there!”
“We’re supposed to be watching the—”
“Fuck that! Get on down there and cover the bosses! I’ll watch this end. Go on, move move!”
The three moved, silhouetted against the rumbling flames of the lodge, their Thompsons at the ready and all three running full gallop for the scene of the explosion. Others could be heard racing about in the darkness and yelling, inside the lodge and out, and men were spilling out of the bunkhouse, off to Bolan’s left.
He was yelling, “All you soldiers down to the joint! Get a shield up down there, goddammit, and get th’ bosses outta there! Goddammit, move, move!”
Hardmen were moving everywhere, fleeting shadows in the flame-leapt darkness, cursing and yelling, and someone started screaming, “Water! Get some water over here!”
And Bolan was fading back into the blackness around the house, and kicking the door in, and he could see the anxious faces peering at him in the faintly flickering glow of the fires. He grabbed one with each hand and pulled them outside. They fought him momentarily, both of them, pounding at his face and chest with the free hand, until he spoke.
“Hey, hey, this is no time for body therapy. We have to blow this joint.”
Paula heaved a shuddering sigh and moaned, “Thank God, oh thank God.”
And Rachel, sobbing happily and very much of this world, told him, “I knew you’d come. I just knew it.”
18: NIENTE
Bolan steered the girls quickly and quietly toward the wall, then halted about twenty-five yards out and pulled them to the frigid ground. Pandemonium was reaching new heights behind them as men ran shrieking about in thunderous confusion in all directions around the furiously burning building. Bolan checked his watch and murmured, “Just a few seconds now, just—”
And then two more explosions rent the night and compounded the pyramiding confusion. The section of wall just ahead lifted and crumbled, leaving an opening large enough to drive a truck through, while back in the other direction the Stoney Lodge arsenal went up in a towering fireball, and secondary explosions from its stores were providing an impressive monologue of their own as Bolan and his charges ran out of the rapidly lightening scene, through the break in the wall and on into the blessed darkness ahead.
He escorted them as far as the van, then told them, “Stay on the road and keep going double-time, and don’t look back. A couple of friends are waiting for you at the crossroads.”
“You’re not coming?” Paula cried.
“Not just yet. I’m rear-guarding. Go on, get!”
They got, Rachel throwing him a last moist look with humble eyes, Paula smiling bravely and tossing her head into the take-off. Bolan watched them disappear, then he climbed into the vehicle and made a lights-out approach to the break in the wall, where he parked and set up shop.
He opened the side doors, flung off the overcoat and draped a heavy .45 calibre chopper around his neck, then began hastily lugging stuff to the debris piled about the broken wall.
Things down in the compound were getting more frantic, if anything, but he could make out a small group running toward his position. Then two more appeared out of the darkness to his right, charging down along the outside of the wall. He whirled into the challenge and flung both men back with a short burst from the chopper, then spun around to check the progress of the group approaching from the interior.
That group were about halfway between the lodge and the wall, beautifully outlined in the backdrop of leaping flames. Bolan selected his weapon, waited, then raised a grenade launcher to his shoulder, sighted along the short range, and let fly—corrected, flew again, and then again, and the walking line of explosions hurled bodies off at weird angles to the line of advance, and the advance faltered and halted, and some guy down there was groaning, calling for help, and the entire group withdrew with their wounded.
Bolan let them go. He was busy with other things. He was performing the clumsy task of being both loader and gunner for a long, shoulder-fired rocket launcher known as bazooka. And down there in the pandemonium he had noted a cluster of me
n running into the building where Paula and Rachel had been kept; he carefully sighted it in, then punched off, and the armor-piercing missile whooshed off, closing the range with a shattering impact. The building lurched and puffed. Bolan saw no one running back out of there; already he was reloading and pivoting on his knee to line up on the big flaming mess of Stoney Lodge.
Again and again the ornery rockets whizzed down the range, the old structure huffed and puffed and began falling apart faster than it could burn, and men stopped running around down there and began thinking seriously about some way to remain alive.
Bolan knew that they were beginning to get their heads back where they belonged. A heavy returning fire from automatic weapons was feeling for his position, and he was wishing that it was time to begin vacating.
He glanced at his watch and put the bazooka aside in favor of the grenade launcher. Foot soldiers were coming again. He began laying in his pattern, carefully watching his flanks, every few seconds casting a glance toward the sky over the crossroads where MacArthur and Perugia were waiting for the girls.
Finally it came, the pyrotechnic display that told Bolan, “A-OK, man, we got ’em,” and not until then did Bolan heave a sigh of relief and begin his cautious withdrawal.
He stowed his weapons in the van, cast another glance skyward at the final settling cinders of the signal flare, and made a quiet run toward the next firing line.
Freddie Gambella was staggering around outside in his shirtsleeves with not even any damn shoes on wondering Christ what had happened! Talk about 1-2-3, if that rotten shit was behind all this—well of course he was behind it—it didn’t take no mental giant to figure that out! First that little popping sound and all the damn lights going off, then before Freddie could even adjust his eyes to the dark, wham, there goes the goddam front of the house and the whole damn place is already shaking, and then wh-wh-wham, the biggee, the whole goddam side of the house falls in and Freddie is laying over in a corner someplace, practically standing on his head, and the goddam joint is on fire, and he thinks his arm is broke, yeah, sure as hell it’s broke, and Christ how did that sonuvabitch pull that off Freddie wanted to know!
Somebody, he didn’t even know who, was helping him outside, and Freddie was yelling the senator, the senator, save the fuckin’ senator, you asshole!
The guy is telling him, forget the senator, forget ’im, that made son of a bitch is blowed to hell, clean to hell, and Freddie realizes then that this is Augie Marinello saying this.
And Augie has this blood all over his face, it looks like maybe his head is a little bit broke open, but he’s walking around and tellin’ the boys what to do. Some guy is yelling for water, and that would be like pissing on hell, that would almost be funny, the joint is a long ways beyond any water now.
Freddie hears his own voice yelling to forget the water, forget it, get those men out of there, get those goddamn blessed made men out of there, for God’s sake two years work is laying in there, get those men out of there!
And this guy, this lieutenant by the way of Augie Marinello, is giving him this wild eye and telling him that there ain’t nothing left to get out of there—no bosses, nobody, no made men, not nobody—and God knew Freddie and Augie had guardian angels sitting on their shoulders ’cause they were the only ones to get out.
And there’s Augie, staggering around in his own blood, yelling at his boys to get it together. It’s like a nightmare, a crying screaming wall-climbing nightmare. That joint, that beautiful goddam joint, that fuckin’ impregnable beautiful hardsite joint is gone to hell and everybody with it, all those million dollar made men!
And that wasn’t all, Freddie soon learned. More explosions, Christ the goddamn wall, Christ the goddamn powder house! Ka-boom and another ka-boom and lookit that shit fly!
Where was the sonuvabitch doing it from? And what with?
Yeah, Freddie Gambella was staggering around out there in the cold in his shirtsleeves and not even any damn shoes on, watching his world collapse around him.
“Them fuckin’ broads!” he heard himself screeching. “You run and get them fuckin’ broads and drag their asses over here. I’m gonna stand out in the open where he can see me, and I’m going to stick my cock down their throats and choke ’em to death like that—we’ll see what mister smart-ass thinks about that!”
Someone was saying, “Ay, Mr. Gambella, take it easy, you’re in bad shape, here you better sit down.”
And someone else was saying, “Mr. Gambella, he already sprung the broads. I guess that’s the first thing he done.”
Again he was screeching, “Bullshit, don’t tell me no sprung d’broads. You take some boys over there and bring ’em to me!”
The guys were giving each other knowing looks, then one of them shrugs his shoulders and says something dumb, something like, “That was Frankie, I know damn well that was Frankie all the time.” He jogs off toward the little house, and some other boys trot off after him.
Then he hears Augie telling one of his lieutenants, “Get some boys over there and see what that hole was blasted for. And you better send some over the wall up here and let them check it out from the other side. Come on, trot, I think this guy has brought a crew or two with him this time.”
Bullshit, who cared, the goddam fuckin’ made men were dead! Two years of sweat and tears gone up in flames, and Freddie is trying to get this across to Augie, but Augie is just standing there and saying I know, I know, but how about Rocco and Philip and Johnny Satin, your brother bosses, aren’t you feeling just a little sad about them too?
It still didn’t seem real, it just couldn’t be happening, and some guy is kneeling there over him and tying a rag around his arm—a broke arm ought to hurt more than this, shouldn’t it?—then there comes gunfire, that just couldn’t be possible, no gunfire until now? A chopper, a deep growler—Freddie knew that somebody was getting cut up … then more explosions and … Christ what was that?
“What was that? Answer me, you asshole, what was that?”
“This guy is hitting us with something I don’t know what, Mr. Gambella. It’s like guided missiles or something, I don’t know. You just be still now and don’t try to move around none.”
And Augie’s worried voice, “Rick, you gotta go get that guy. He’s not through yet.”
“Geez, it’s suicide, Mr. Marinello. I mean, this is like battlefield type fighting, not street fighting. This guy has got hisself a army out there.”
“Then you got to go against that army, Rick. We can’t just sit here and take this. Get some boys and rush that hole, and do it now.”
“I want them broads! I want them broads brought here! You hear me?”
“You just better shut up about those goddamn fucking broads, Freddie. Or I’m liable to stick my dick down your throat!”
Where did Augie get off talking to Freddie the First that way? Where the hell did he get off saying he was gonna …? “Did you say they’re gone, Augie? He sprung the broads?”
Marinello’s face was no more than a shimmering blob above his and it was patiently telling him, “Now look, Freddie, you’re hurt bad. You’re gonna lose that arm, it’s almost blown clear off. Now shut up and be still or you’ll be losing more than an arm.”
Lose an arm? Freddie Gambella lose an arm? Whoever heard of a one-armed royal highness? I gotta tell you this, your royal highness, your goddamn fuckin’ arm is missing.
Freddie began to laugh. Christ these fuckin’ crazy nightmares. Hey Sam this is Fred. Wake me up, I’m having one of those goddamn nightmares again. You put it down, Sammy boy, you put it down on the streets for me and thee.
And he thought he heard his old buddy Sam telling him, “Sure, Freddie, that’s me. No greater love is there but a guy will put it down for his friend.”
Put it down, Sammy. Christ, Dear God, Reverend Holy Mother, put it down for old Freddie, eh? Wake me up outta this goddamn fuckin’ nightmare, eh?
19: ANIMALS
So they had decided t
hat it was all over, and that it was safe to abandon the sinking ship now. The vehicles were being fired up and brought around in a line on the macadam road, a caravan forming. And, behind them, Stoney Lodge now more stone than lodge, but the flames still roaring high into the sky and lighting up the entire hardsite, even the little buildings were blazing and just about all gone. Yeah, ground to powder, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
The gates opened as the caravan approached. The procession halted there while the two gatemen scurried into waiting vehicles, then the caravan began rolling again. Ten cars, Bolan counted them coolly as each one swung through and onto the road, the headlamps courageously blazing forth, each of them a big sleek limousine that gleamed even in the darkness. And what a terrible darkness.
The Executioner checked his supply of armor-piercing rockets, recalculated the range for the bazooka, and decided that he was satisfied and ready.
He was lying in wait for them atop a knoll barely a quarter-mile from the walls of the remains of Stoney Lodge, a few hundred feet above the roadway where it jogged through a shallow valley, and he urged them, “Come on, boys, close it up, take up that slack.”
He wanted them bunched—bumper to bumper would be ideal—but he wouldn’t be greedy, he would settle for just having them all in the valley at once.
Then they were there, strung out like a railroad train below him, taking it slow and easy on the snowpacked road, and he was sighting down on the lead vehicle.
Whoosh, one away. The missile streaked unerringly down the course, impacted on the forward doorpost, and the gleaming limousine instantly became a twisted mess of flames, stopped dead and skewed across the road in a perfect plug.
Whoosh, two away, and the rear vehicle went to hell in a hurry and all the others were squealing brakes—spinning all over the place like a crazy-quilt derailment of rail cars.
Three away, and four away, and why weren’t they shooting back?—the Executioner wished that frozen lump would move out of his chest. Guys were running around down there and yelling, car doors all standing open, those that were left, guys leaping into snowdrifts trying to run up the other hill, falling all over themselves and tumbling and sliding back down.
Nightmare in New York Page 14