There were easily a dozen men aboard that craft, which meant that most of the hard force were now chasing an empty boat out across the wide reaches of Lake St. Clair.
Which was, of course, precisely what the Executioner had hoped for.
He hooked an arm into the flotation bag, oriented himself to the big joint on the shore, and continued on.
The real target of the night lay at the end of a five-minute swim.
The assault on Fortress Detroit was underway.
2
Bloodied
The place on Grosse Pointe Shores had once been the lakeside estate of a pioneer auto magnate. It had been purchased by the Combination some years back, remodeled a bit, and christened "The Sons of Columbus Yacht Club." There was not, of course, a genuine yachtsman on the roster. The original idea had been to provide a genteel and exclusive resort for the families of the lower echelon mafiosi of the area, a sort of club for employees. The new charter also provided an excellent conduit for the washing of black money, and served as a nice cover for secret meetings and various illicit activities such as gambling, prostitution, smuggling, and so on — so much so that most of the members stopped bringing their families around, in deference to the other, more meaningful, activities. Eventually the SCYC was placed off-limits to the sons and daughters and wives, and was operated strictly as a mob headquarters.
Now the Combination entertained their friends and future friends here, consummated business deals, and held "family" councils and other secret rites, such as initiations and executions.
The location could not have been more convenient, nor, certainly, more exclusive from a social standpoint. Most everybody who was anybody in metropolitan Detroit lived within a ten-minute drive to the "club" — and, indeed, the entire ruling council of the Detroit Combination lived within walking distance. Even a special visitor from Windsor could hot it across the Ambassador Bridge and zoom out the Edsel Ford Freeway in less than a thirty-minute trip. For those who felt a bit shy about presenting themselves through U.S. Customs, there was always the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair — with an innocent and entirely legitimate yacht club ready to receive these special visitors at all hours.
On this particular evening, the SCYC was the chosen site for an "area conference." Important men from both sides of the border had been invited to attend. A few had flown in from as far away as Toronto and Buffalo.
It was to be an important meeting. First of all, of course, was the issue that was on everyone's mind these days: the "energy crunch" and how it could be turned to the best interests of the Detroit Combination. Of almost equal interest were the unsettling developments down Texas way. Many millions of Detroit-area dollars had been invested in the Flag Seven gamble, and the dust was just beginning to settle around Texas in the wake of that Bolan bastard. The question on everyone's mind, of course, was how much had been lost and how much could they reasonably expect to recoup.
With regard to this latter problem, nothing had been said beyond the usual condolences directed to Anthony Quaso, who had lost his kid brother in Solan's latest blitz.
Quaso was high in the administration of Salvatore (Crazy Sal) Vincenti, one of the top bosses in Detroit. They had just buried young Joe Quaso a few days earlier, and this meeting was the first opportunity for many of those present to personally express their sympathy.
The talk had then inevitably turned to the "BoIan problem." A nervous industrialist from Toronto had voiced the fear that the "direct Quaso link to Texas" would magnetically attract Mack Bolan to the Detroit operations.
Sal Vincenti had scoffed at that suggestion, assuring one and all that "the guy wouldn't dare show his tail around here."
And then the house chief of security had come in to quietly advise Mr. Vincenti of the presence of a strange boat anchored just offshore.
"Send someone over to check it out," Vincenti instructed the house boss. Then he'd tried to get the conference back into the mainstream discussion, but somehow nothing really jelled after that. And this made Charley Fever nervous.
Charley Fever (born Favorini) was Sal Vincenti's chief torpedo — the one Vincenti himself often referred to as "my good third arm." That good arm had been seated directly behind his boss throughout the meeting, more like a brooding ghost who was there but not really, present for the proceedings but really not part of them. Vincenti was the only boss in the Combination who could get away with bringing his personal triggerman into the conference rooms — primarily because Crazy Sal was the uncrowned but actual boss of the works, partly also because the other bosses genuinely respected and trusted Charley Fever — more so than they trusted Crazy Sal.
Vincenti was given to ungovernable rages, sometimes over trifling or imagined offenses. Charley Fever was a godsend at such times. He had a special knack for calming his boss and defusing the emotional tizzies — or heading them off.
At this particular point in the evening's proceedings, Charley had moved to the edge of his chair and was watching the old man like a hawk. All it took to get a collection of "friends" nervous and jumpy was to mention the name Bolan. And when the friends got jumpy, someone might say the wrong thing to Sal Vincenti, and then look out. Charley Fever was already looking out.
Then the shooting started. Everyone stood up and stared solemnly at the shuttered windows. Without a word, Charley glided over and took Vincenti by the arm, and they walked together to the "strong room" — a specially fortified chamber that was designed for just such emergencies. The others followed in single file, quietly, no pushing or shoving, as meek as schoolchildren going through the rote of a fire drill.
Charley Fever left them there and quickly went downstairs, extinguishing lights en route and calling out instructions to the house guard.
A breathless messenger met him at the first landing and reported the happenings outside. Charley sent the guy on up to carry the news to the top, then he descended to the glass-littered mess below.
Some nut in a boat... getting his jollies with a high-powered rifle. That was how it sounded. It wouldn't be Black Johnson's niggers... not this way. But it was no time for snap judgments, and the security of a joint such as this one was not based on that kind of thinking.
Actually, Charley Fever had no direct interest in the security at SCYC. The joint ran itself, with its own force and its own honchos; but Charley Fever was responsible for the skin of old man Vincenti, and there was no way to restrict the authority of that position. He found the housekeeper and gave him instructions for the staff, then he went through the clubroom and across the darkened threshold to the porch.
The shooting had stopped. The house boss, a skinny veteran named Billy Castelano, was standing stiffly near the steps, peering down at something in the darkness below.
Charley Fever stepped into something slippery and nearly lost his footing — then the odor hit him, and he knew that he was standing in human blood. Only then did he notice the crumpled form lying off to the side, less than a pace away.
"What the hell... !" he exclaimed.
"It's Tommy Noble and Harry the Gook," Castelano explained through stiffened lips. "Don't look, Mr. Fever. Most of their head is gone."
"They got it in the head?" Charley Fever muttered. "Both of them?"
"Yessir. Whoever it was sure knows how to shoot. And he must know it. To go for the head, from way out there..."
"How far out there, Billy?"
"Far enough that these boys never knew what hit them. They was dead before the sound got here."
"I didn't know anybody had got hit," the chief torpedo said, his voice subdued. "I thought it was just..." The voice got lost in the machinery of thought, then returned with "... in the head, uh?"
At that moment the yard boss materialized from the shadows of the lawn to call up, "Maybe you better go back inside! We don't know what the hell is going on here, yet!"
Castelano jerked about and retreated across the porch, but Fever held his position to call back, "What's it look like, Mick
ey?"
"Hell, I dunno," the yard chief replied. "All the incoming was from a boat." He moved a couple of paces closer to add, "They turned tail and ran before we even got set. Joe and his boys are chasing them out on the lake. Don't worry, nothing can outrun the Chris Columbus. He'll catch the bastards."
"How many bastards you figure?"
"God, I don't know that, Mr. Fever. They only fired about seven or eight rounds. Some of those were at the gig. Sunk it. Tony Dollar and Pete Dominic were on their way out when the shooting started. They're okay, I guess. I saw Joe stop and pick them up."
"How many dead men we got around here, then?" Charley Fever wondered aloud.
"Three, sir. I guess you saw Tom and Harry. Also this new guy from the old country, this Roccobello kid."
"He get it in the head?" Charley Fever asked quietly.
"Yessir. They all did."
"Yeah, they all did," the boss torpedo echoed, his voice soft and curiously flattened. He joined Castelano at the door and pulled him inside. "Go upstairs and tell Sal I said he should stay in the strong room until he, hears from me. Also, he should call his legal eagles, get them out here quick. Cops'll be swarming in here soon, you can bet on that, and maybe even those fancy feds will take the excuse to horn in."
"Hell, we're a legit security outfit, sir," Castelano protested. "We got a right to defend the joint."
"Sure you have," Charley Fever replied smoothly. "But the cops also have a legit right to investigate any shootings, so you scoot and tell Sal. We don't want the bosses and their friends subjected to that crap, do we?"
"Right. I'll get the cars over on the quiet exit, too. Some of these amid won't want to be around here when the bulls arrive. Check, sir, I'll take care of the details."
"Do that," Charley Fever said with a thin smile. He watched the house boss hustle away, then he turned to his own thoughts.
Charley Fever had heard every one of those incoming shots. They all came from the same gun, and a hell of a big one. But one gun. That meant one gunner. And three good boys shot squarely through the head — dead before the bodies dropped — dead before they even heard the shot that killed them.
That took some damned good shooting.
At nighttime, yet.
Sure, it sounded just like...
He lit a cigar, then stared thoughtfully at the dying match as lights began coming back on throughout the house. Joe Venuchi was going to be coming back with his goddamn hot cruiser crew pretty soon, empty-handed and sheepish. Charley Fever knew that, and he didn't need to look into any crystal balls for an answer like that.
"Well, shit," he said softly.
Then Sal Vincenti's good third arm retraced his steps across the messy porch and went down to the lawn to wipe the blood from his shoes.
This was first blood, he was thinking.
But a hell of a long ways, bet on that, from the last.
For damn sure, deadeye Bolan had been here tonight. Yeah. And the hell was just starting.
3
Penetrated
Mack Bolan's war philosophy could be summed up in three rhyming words:
Locate...
Penetrate...
Eliminate!
Minutes into his first battle for Detroit, he was well along with that second stage of endeavor. He had been scouting this site for several days, studying it by day and by night — from land, water, and air. He had obtained building plans, landscape sketches, coastal surveys — everything that could add to his understanding of the problem. He had also studied old newspaper files, mug shots, police bulletins, and various items of quiet intelligence. He knew this enemy, and he knew their turf. He knew, also, the immensity of his task. This was no wild, amateurish adventuring into certain death. It was a carefully planned and flawlessly executed penetration of an enemy stronghold by a professional combatman. And, yes, the Executioner knew precisely where he was and what had to be done.
Except for the lakeshore side, all boundaries of the property were protected by a ten-foot rock and mortar wall. It was constantly patrolled by armed "security police" in uniform. The only landward entrance to the estate was via an interlocking system that Bolan called "the chute" — two heavily manned electronic gates positioned in a tandem arrangement fifty feet apart, with high walls and catwalks above joining the two gatehouses. A third gate was designed for exit only. It was cleverly concealed in the north wall and could be opened only by a special system of interlocks from within.
The lakeshore boundary was nearly as impenetrable, but the defenses here were almost purely human. By day and by night, armed sentries in yachting outfits prowled the boat basin and walked the seawall above the artificial beach. A secondary defense line consisting of two-man patrols walked the manicured grounds from sunset to sunrise, and there were other, less obvious, human emplacements scattered about those sprawling grounds.
There were small watchtowers on the roof of the building, as well as ominous evidence of fortifications inside.
Bolan had estimated the standing force that protected this hardsite at about eighty men, with most of that number going into the outside defenses. Except in emergency situations, the normal duty-watch consisted of twenty-five to thirty men under arms. A house crew of perhaps ten men took care of the housekeeping and doubled as inside guards. Apparently, lower echelon yardmen handled the routine chores of grounds maintenance in conjunction with the security duties. There were no "soft" employees at this joint. It was a hardsite, pure and simple.
The security boss was an old hood who went by the name of Billy Castelano — real name Reggio Caccimomorese — and whose official title was manager of the "club." Castelano had actually run a nightclub once, fronting it for a ganglord who dealt in murder by wholesale contract. A Senate subcommittee hearing in the fifties linked Castelano with more than fifty "cement contract" executions. He served a brief term in a federal reformatory for perjury and contempt of Congress, and had maintained a low underworld profile since his release.
Second in command was an ex-GI who used the name Michael Morris, nickname Mickey Mouse, real name Michael Tantocci. He'd been an MP in Germany when he was offered a "convenience of the government" discharge. This was in the early sixties, and it was a direct outgrowth of an embarrassing investigation by West German police that turned up inconclusive evidence that Tantocci was a ringleader in black market, prostitution, and extortion activities in the area. Tantocci copped a plea with the military and settled for a discharge without dishonor. He'd had no difficulty whatever adjusting to civilian life under the sponsorship of an old friend of the family, one Charles (Charley Fever) Favorini, the number one hitman of the Detroit mob. It was Charley Fever himself who had given Tantocci his mob name, Michael Morris, and further dubbed him "Mickey Mouse" — this latter due, probably, to the imaginative manner in which his fledgling assistant went about his murder contracts. At the peak of his career under Charley Fever, Mickey Morris was an acknowledged master of "freaky accidental" deaths. He was rotated to garrison duty at the yacht club when one of his "accidents" sent a lieutenant under Sal Vincenti plummeting to his undesired death in a runaway elevator that also carried four totally uninvolved passengers but none of the "transgressors" who had been marked for death.
Another crew chief at SCYC was Joseph Venuchi, a swinging ex-navy bosun's mate who now fancied himself as commodore of the yacht club — a title that he bore officially — but that, translated, actually meant he was responsible for the security of incoming shipments via water. Such shipments included contraband, narcotics, illegal aliens, bashful visiting VIPs, and the whole wide range of smuggled commodities. Venuchi's "fleet" ranged far north into Lakes Huron and Superior as well as into the easternmost reaches of Lakes Erie, Ontario, and beyond, via the St. Lawrence Seaway. He had once escorted a ranking Sicilian visitor from Montreal to Detroit and back. A casual duty of "Venuchi's navy" was to perform deep-water burials of "hot" bodies, usually in solid cement coffins.
Between Venuchi and Mick
ey Morris, they commanded the bulk of the hard forces that were permanently assigned to the hardsite. The success of Bolan's penetration attempt was keyed directly to his ability to neutralize a large chunk of that hard force, to send them off into a wild chase that would leave the coastal defenses in a weakened condition.
He had succeeded in this — for the moment, at least.
The problem now was to breach that weakened defense line, to penetrate the inpenetrable security of that very important mob headquarters.
It was a human problem, man against man — with all the odds riding on the defense.
But Mack Bolan was a patient warrior.
He lay suspended for an interval outside of counted time in the purgatory of Lake St. Clair, a half-submerged floater in a wetsuit at the border of hell, moving only as the waters nudged him, finally rolling into the rocks and grasses as a natural extension of the restless waves.
There he became a black rock of the night on an eroding artificial beach, while internal systems found rest, and combat senses flared into that hostile environment to assimilate the situation there.
A. sentry with a suicidal need for nicotine was squatting atop the seawall about midway between the boat basin and Bolan's position — a distance of about fifty yards. He was cupping the cigarette with both hands, but sparks flew into the wind with each drag. Another guy was pacing back and forth along the pier, apparently not looking for anything but merely waiting impatiently — for the returning cruiser, perhaps.
A pair of patrolling sentries paused within ten yards of the human rock, while one of the hardmen relieved his bladder against a tree, then they continued silently upon their appointed rounds.
There were sounds up beyond the house and an occasional flare of lights at the corner of the building — vehicles in motion.
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