The chief fed had to settle for that.
Miss Dublin seemed delighted to settle for that.
So it was the end of another wild one. Lyons and Anders would be pushing off soon for Hong Kong, even hotter now on the scent of the Chinese connection.
Toby Ranger would spend a few days in the hospital under medical observation, just to make certain that there were no hidden injuries from that plane crash. Then she would drift toward the Far East.
Smiley would be heading that way, also, as soon as her escort assignment was concluded.
As for the chief fed, it was back to Heat Town—and a lot of explaining to the men in the hotter seats back there.
There were times when Brognola wished he could drift away to the next battle line. It could be difficult enough wearing one hat in the rarified higher atmospheres of official Washington—Hal Brognola was trying to juggle two of them, one for the Justice Department and another for the National Security Council.
Sensitive Operations indeed—what a hell of a misnomer.
It had been tough enough trying to overcome a domestic enemy with infinite tentacles trying to eat the country from within. Since it had started sprouting infinite heads, as well—with many of those heads situated outside the country—the task had become next to impossible.
It was a tough world.
Thank God for people like Anders and Lyons, Ranger and Dublin—with a special prayer for the one and only Mack Bolan.
Some kind of guy.
This guy was more than a mere hell bender. He ran the place. And there weren’t many secrets around this guy.
“How many hats are you wearing these days?” he’d ask the chief fed, with one of those knowing smiles.
He knew, sure he knew. Probably knew all about the double-agent role for Smiley Dublin—maybe knew, even, about the sensitive mutual assistance operation between the two governments. Or, at least, sensed it.
“I’ll get your China gal back to you in a few days,” the big guy assured Brognola over that parting handclasp.
There was nothing to be gained by playing dumb—except maybe to save a bit of face. Hal Brognola had given away his face long ago. “Do that,” he replied. “We couldn’t SOG it without her.”
“Neither could I,” Bolan replied, grinning.
And then, with a spin of the foot, he was gone.
It was a lot of bullshit, of course—a concession to Hal Brognola’s missing face. The guy could get along without anybody. He’d been doing it for a hell of a long time. Couldn’t last forever, of course. The guy was damned—and, sure, he knew it. Only a doomed man could do the job this guy was doing.
As Brognola watched the big one stride away, he felt a surge of pride. There went one hell of a man—one excellent hell of a man!
The chief fed felt dignified—perhaps even consecrated—as he watched the hellbender and the “China gal” fade into the blood-red horizon of a Hawaiian sunset.
“Over the hill and far away,” the fed muttered to himself, “… and on to the next hellground. Stay hard, guy, dammit. Stay as hard as you are!”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series
1: FROM THE TOP
Mack Bolan was starting at the top in St. Louis. A couple hours of darkness remained of the night when the wraithlike figure dropped quietly over the wall surrounding a crumbling estate in an exclusive neighborhood on St. Louis’ west side. He was outfitted in night-black combat garb. The chillingly silent Beretta Belle rode head-weapon position beneath his left arm; the impressive .44 AutoMag occupied the thunder spot at the right hip. A ready belt of personal munitions crossed the chest. Nylon garrotes and pencil-diameter stilettos were slit-pocketed onto the outer calf of each leg.
There had been no time for a daylight reconnoiter of the target. He was moving entirely on combat instincts as he silently crossed the fifty yards of rear lawn to the shadows of the three-story house.
The place belonged to Arturo (Little Artie) Giamba, titular head of the St. Louis mob for many years. Giamba was one of the old guard, an aging nickle-and-dimer of little imagination and limited ambitions who had been content to sit atop a crumbling empire and watch it fade away in concert with his own life.
The Giamba Family was a poor cousin in the national alliance of organized crime and was not even represented on the ruling council, La Commissione.
But things were changing.
Bolan needed to discover just how far the change had gone. According to intelligence sources, Jerry Ciglia had been sent down by New York to “revitalize” the territory, bringing an army of torpedoes with him. Shortly thereafter, Giambia had dropped from view. Underworld rumors of his fate covered the full range from execution to genteel exile in a Latin American republic. Ciglia himself had been in rather low profile in the area since his arrival, but it was known that he had set up his headquarters in the old Giamba mansion.
So, yeah, Bolan was starting at the top in St. Louis. If he should luck onto Ciglia clean, he’d take the guy with the first shot of the battle. And it was too bad, Bolan was thinking as he loped across that no man’s land between wall and house, that he hadn’t wasted the guy on that golf green down on the Gulf Coast. Maybe all this would be unnecessary, now. It had been a different game, then, of course. Ciglia had been a mere pawn in that fight. So now he was the king … and that was the way things went in Mack Bolan’s world. It was a war of attrition that paved the highway to hell with broken bodies and mortgaged souls, and yet there never seemed to be any attrition in the ranks of the enemy. Like targets in a shooting gallery, knock one down and another pops up in its place—on and on, endlessly, clear to hell’s gates. So sure, forget the what-ifs; the name of the king meant not a damned thing. If it were not Ciglia then it would be someone else. It was not the man that mattered, it was the office—and Mack Bolan had come to St. Louis to slay an idea, not a man. Men were going to die, for damn sure, but only because there was no other way to get rid of the idea.
But Jerry Ciglia would not take top honors as the first to die in this battle. An indolent shape detached itself from the shadows at the rear of the house as Bolan approached and a lazy, unconcerned voice drawled, “Who’s that?”
The Beretta chugged a pencil of flame in response, but the guy never heard the whispering death that blew across that twenty-foot range to snap him back and punch him over, dead before the fall.
Bolan dropped a medal on the dead soldier’s chest as he stepped across the mess and went on around the side of the house to check out the forward area. He found another yardman there, near the vehicle gate, and dropped him just as quietly, then returned to the building with no lost motion.
Knowing hands found the telephone cable and cut it. Several heartbeats later, he was on the rear service porch—a glassed-in affair with laundry tubs and a hodgepodge of appliances. He located the main power panel there and disabled it.
A quick kick in a vital spot sent the kitchen door creaking inward, and he was inside—pencil flash in hand and moving swiftly.
Just beyond a swinging door lay the dining room, and seated there in the dark over an interrupted game of solitaire was a heavy guy in shirt-sleeves and bulging shoulder holster.
Bolan sent the beam directly into the guy’s eyes and kept on moving.
“What happened to the lights?” the guy grumbled, holding a card to his eyes to shield them from the flashlight beam.
“I put them out,” Bolan replied quietly—then the big silver thundergun was muzzle-up to the guy’s nose and no further explanation was necessary.
“Easy, easy,” the guy croaked. “Anything you say, eh?”
Bolan deposited the flashlight on the table and disarmed the houseman, then he dropped a bull’s-eye cross into the center of the solitaire spread.
The guy groaned and his facial muscles tightened, eyes bulging at the little medal; otherwise he was a marble statue.
Bolan coldly told him, “I guess it’s you and me, baby. You’v
e got about a heartbeat to decide how long it’ll stay that way.”
“Name it,” the houseman replied quickly, no decision necessary.
“Who’s here?”
“Jerry and a broad, master suite, top of the stairs, second floor. His two shadows across the hall. Two boys on outside detail. Another boy on the third floor with the old man. That’s it.”
“So far, so good,” Bolan said in those icy tones reserved for the living dead. “Who’re you?”
The guy’s eyes clouded. At a moment such as this, in a world such as this, identity could be a highly important thing. “I’m Steve Rocco,” he said, sighing.
“Out of Chicago,” Bolan decided.
“Yeah. You, uh, I think met my brother Benny once.”
“Your late brother Benny,” Bolan reminded.
“Yeah, well—you take your paycheck and your own chances, I guess. I ain’t holding no—”
“You’re holding your life in your own hands, Rocco. I hope you’re not a butterfingers.”
“I can be very careful,” the guy said very soberly.
“What’s Ciglia doing to the old man?”
“Starving ’im, I guess. Nothing goes up there but bread and water, and not much of that.”
“Why?”
Rocco shrugged beefy shoulders. “Hell, I’m just one of the troops. They don’t let me in on their secrets.”
Bolan freed a concussion grenade from his ready belt and rolled it into the next room. Rocco’s startled gaze leapt after it, swiveling him about in the chair as he momentarily forgot all else.
It was a short fuse. The explosion shook the room and sent a turret of flame up the stairwell.
Rocco staggered from the chair with a dazed, “Jeez! …”
“Here’s your life. Careful,” Bolan declared coldly. “Something just blew up. We’ve got a fire. They better not chance the stairs. Out the windows, and damn quick.”
The guy nodded understandingly and swallowed a heavy lump which had formed in his throat.
A yell floated down from the upper level as doors opened up there amid a hubbub of confusion. Then Jerry Ciglia’s sleep-thickened bawl: “Stevie! What the hell is—”
“Something blew up!” the houseman screamed back. “The joint’s on fire!”
“The lights!” Ciglia yelled. “What the hell’s wrong with the lights?”
“Everything’s out, boss,” Rocco screamed. “Don’t try them stairs! Get outta there, quick!”
Bolan had rolled another grenade toward the stairs, the explosion coming one beat behind the houseman’s warning and sending another tower of flames and smoke whoofing up the stairwell.
There was no further comment from above. Bolan told his man, “This is the sweetest thing I can do for you, Rocco,” as he conked him with the butt of the AutoMag. He left the guy lying there and swiftly ascended the stairs. Two steps along the dark and smoky upstairs hallway he collided with soft warm flesh and instinctively gathered it in, shutting off a feminine gasp with a quiet warning.
“You!” she exclaimed in a shocked whisper.
“Who else? Where’s your buddy?”
“I believe he just dived out the window. Mack—Mr. Giamba is locked into the attic room. I was just headed—”
“I’ll get him. You beat it down the stairs and straight out the rear. Wait for me on the other side of the wall.”
“Well, wait—no! I’ve got the inside track here! I’m not going to—”
“Toni, dammit, trust me and beat it! Now!”
She moved away from him without another word and Bolan followed the bannister on around and went up the stairs to the floor above. It was no more than a one-room garret with a door set almost into the landing at the top of the stairs.
That door was open, now, and there were no sounds of life within. Bolan chanced the flashlight and found Little Artie Giamba lying face down on the floor halfway between the bed and an open window. A rope-ladder fire escape dangled there. The guard had left the weakened old man to shift for himself.
Some world, Bolan’s was.
He hoisted the pajama-clad figure to his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then made quick tracks out of there.
And, yeah, he was starting at the top in St. Louis. This old man was the mission goal, and it was a first for Mack Bolan. It was a rescue mission … for a capo.
2: THIS OLD MAN
The new boss of St. Louis was hobbling about the darkened and battered interior of his headquarters in his underwear, favoring a painful ankle and checking the damage with a flashlight—and he was mad as hell.
The most incredible part was that more damage had not been done. A couple of windows were blown out, the floor around the stairwell and the lower few steps were badly splintered, paint blistered from walls and scorched woodwork—but that was about the extent of it.
Ciglia promised Nate Palmieri, his chief tagman, “I catch the wise guy threw those firecrackers, I’m going to shove one up his ass and personally light the fuse.”
Palmieri grunted an agreement with that idea, then observed, “It could have been a lot worse, Jerry. Let’s count blessings, for now. I better go out to the gate and tell Jonesy to stay locked up. One of our good neighbors may have called for cops or firemen.”
“Right, we don’t need any of that,” the boss agreed. He turned to the other bodyguard and asked, “How’s Stevie?”
“Coming around,” was the reply.
The unconscious houseman had been carried to a couch and was getting the wet towel treatment from Jake Rio.
“Go see about the lights,” Ciglia ordered brusquely.
A lamp in the dining room came on before the bodyguard could react to that command. Seconds later, a fourth man hurried into the blast zone. This was Homer Gallardo, the upstairs man. He reported, “The main power bus had been pulled. Some smart bastard …”
“He cut the phones, too,” Ciglia growled. “Find it and fix it.”
Gallardo nodded, said, “probably out at the box,” and hurried on toward the front of the house.
Steve Rocco groaned and tried to raise himself upright.
Ciglia limped over there, gave his houseman a penetrating gaze, and said, “Easy, Stevie. You took a bad hit there. Just lay still for a minute. You’re going to have a hell of a headache. What happened here?”
Rocco groaned again and gave his boss a glassy stare. “Hell, I don’t know,” he replied groggily.
“Well, try and think about it. You yelled ‘fire’. There was a couple of explosions, some kind of bombs. Did you see anybody?”
Rocco’s eyes fluttered and closed. “I guess I just panicked, boss. I didn’t see a thing but flames shooting up the stairs.”
“Okay, just lie there and get your head together,” Ciglia growled. “Maybe it’ll come to you.”
The bodyguard coiled the wet towel about Rocco’s face and went into the dining room. He returned quickly, bouncing a small object in the palm of his hand. “You gotta see this, boss,” he announced in a tightening voice, handing the object over for inspection.
Ciglia froze there for a moment in the light from the open doorway, then he spun quickly into the comfort of darkness and commanded, “Kill that light!”
The bodyguard lunged into the dining room and sent the lamp flying off the table and into the wall with a crash. Only a thin sliver of light now shone through the swinging door from the kitchen.
“Where’d you find that goddamned thing?” Ciglia called over in a guarded voice.
“On the table,” Rio replied.
“Have you seen Jonesy or Huck since the blast?”
“No, boss. I just started wondering about that.”
“Well, stop wondering. Get out back and take a look around for Huck. And be careful.”
The tagman moved out without another word.
Steve Rocco groaned something and Ciglia furiously shushed him.
Moments later, cautious steps moved across the front porch, then the door cracked
open and Palmieri’s hushed voice called in, “Jerry? Okay in there?”
“Yeah. Keep down. What’d you find out front?”
“I found a dead soldier, that’s what. Half his head blown away. A marksman’s medal was on the body.”
Ciglia muttered a string of hushed profanities which was interrupted by another quiet report from the kitchen area. “Same back here, boss. Huck never knew what hit ’im. And one of those medals lying on his chest.”
“Here, boss,” the fourth man reported, stepping in quietly behind Palmieri. “I made a quick splice on that phone line. I don’t know if it’ll work or not.”
“Try it! Get Del. Tell him I want his whole crew out here damn quck!”
“Sure, boss.”
Ciglia had a quick change of mind. “Nate, you do it. Homer!”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s the old man?”
“I left him upstairs.”
“Oh hell, that’s great, that’s real wonderful. Probably choked on the smoke—or worse. Get up there and check ’im out. Careful, though. You don’t know what’s up there, eh.”
There was no immediate response nor sound of movement from Homer Gallardo’s general vicinity.
Ciglia growled, “Homer?”
“You, uh, want me to go up there and check ’im out, boss?”
“That’s what I said!”
“Yessir. Uh—wonder maybe someone would like to back me up?”
“Let Homer play with the phones, Jerry,” Palmieri suggested heavily. “I’ll check the upstairs.”
“I want you at my back!” Ciglia fumed. “What is this, all of a sudden, a goddamn caucus? Did I ask anybody for a vote? Homer, move your—wait a minute! Where’s my woman? Nate! Where’s Toni?”
“I didn’t see her since the blast, Jerry.”
“Well goddamn! Goddamn! I have to do everything my own self? You guys just jump out the damn windows and to hell with everything else?”
“It all happened so fast, Jerry,” Palmieri apologized. “I figured you had her under your wing.”
“You take Homer up there and shake this joint down!” Ciglia hissed furiously. “I mean wall to wall and floor by floor! Jake stays with me—this goddamn ankle! That bastard! I want his head, you hear me! I want that boy!”
Hawaiian Hellground Page 15