He certainly was no rookie — and even granted a bit of clumsiness and momentary inattention as he reached for the handcuffs, there was simply no intellectual explanation for the way the big junglefighter turned things upside down on him.
All Phillips knew was that suddenly the Beretta phutted, from the hip, then again and again. All the while Bolan was all over him, manhandling him into a sprawl to the ground, and the Beretta was coughing on in an uninterrupted song of whispering slugs and sighing death.
His own gun was lying at his fingertips and numbly Phillips realized that the zinging little missiles were not tearing into his own flesh, but were seeking more distant game.
Bodies were toppling out there somewhere, in the misty smoke, and the grunts and muffled shrieks of the dying and the grievously wounded served only as a postscript to the booming of opposing weapons as the return fire chewed the turf and whistled screaming tracks in the air above their heads.
The kaleidoscope cleared abruptly. Bill Phillips was back in Vietnam again and his team leader was once again dragging him out of a life and death situation. As he disentangled himself and reclaimed his own weapon, he knew that enemy pursuit had caught them in an open firefight, with a wall at their backs and a regrouped army pressing in from all other sides. Sergeant Bolan was giving 'em hell, throwing everything at them but his own fingers and toes, and giving the rest of the squad a chance to break for cover.
Phillips mumbled, "I'm on you, Barge." Bolan grunted, "About time. Watch that left!" The big silver gun was in Bolan's hand now and the thing was tearing up Phillips' eardrums and totally eclipsing the reports of his own weapon. It served to return him to present time and place, however... and, really, the situation was little different than it had been so many times before. Bolan yelled, "Garage roof! Go! You, then me!" The Brushfire cop reacted instinctively to the command, as he had done to that same voice so many times in the past and with such memorable results. That voice had brought him through Vietnam in one whole piece. He threw a round into a shadowy running figure off to the left, then he flung himself in a wild roll toward the corner of the garage.
Bolan was on one knee and firing the silver hawgleg like an automatic repeater, the big sounds booming, rolling and echoing around the confined area, and guys were still screaming and flopping about out there.
Hot little things zipped through the air about him but Phillips gained the roof in one mad fling, and he found reason to be thankful for all those morning workouts in the police gym. Before his mind even fully appreciated what it was he was trying to accomplish, he was up there at the edge of that roof and throwing a rapid fire into the receding smokescreen, and suddenly Bolan was there beside him and panting, "And a Wang Dang Doo to you too. Let's blow!"
The two ex-partners from another time and another war scrambled to the rear and leaped over the fence into the adjoining grounds.
A moment later they were in good cover and with no visible pursuit from the other side. They lay there for a moment, breathing on each other and chuckling as they'd done so many times before, and presently the cop let out a deep breath and declared, "Well, I damn near got your ass shot up again."
Bolan said, "Do tell."
"If you'd just asked, I could've told you. Rivoli had a stacked deck on you. I mean he had troops all over this damned hill."
"I believe you," Bolan panted. "But I was just about home clean when you jumped in."
"I'm sorry, Mack. They brainwash you in those police academies. A guy gets all hung up on..."
"Forget it. You're right and I'm wrong. Hell, I'm as wrong as a guy ever got."
"Not quite," the cop reminded him. "You didn't throw down on me, brother." He laughed nervously.
"Although, for a minute there, Sergeant, I sure thought you had."
Bolan was breathing raggedly through his mouth and forcing some big ornery-looking bullets into the clip of the silver hawgleg. "You'll have to take me in dead, Bill," he declared quietly.
"Shit I'm not taking you anywhere," Phillips replied. "My gun's empty and I guess I'm at your mercy."
Bolan chuckled.
The Sergeant said, "Did you know that Gadgets Schwartz and the Politician are living here now?"
Bolan's head snapped to attention and he asked, "In San Francisco?"
"Yeah. You haven't been in touch, eh?"
"Hell no. Last thing in the world those guys need now is my touch of death. They holed up?"
"In a manner of speaking, yeah. They've got new names. Gadgets is doing electronics work for a guy down on the marina. Politician is doing something at the Boy's Club. He was always good with kids, you know."
Bolan said, "Yeah." He sighed. "They okay?"
"Yeah, they're great. Worry about you a lot. Keep track of your banzai war, you know."
"They have any money problems?"
"Not that I know about."
Bolan gave his old friend the cold stare and asked him, "You keeping track of my war, Bill?"
The cop said, "Sure."
"It was no accident that you showed up at DeMarco's"
"Course not. I've been sitting there waiting for you to show since three o'clock this morning."
Bolan grinned suddenly and said, "You're the spade cop out at the gate awhile ago."
Phillips showed him a baffled smile. "Where were you?"
"I was around. So... you came gunning for me."
The Sergeant dropped his eyes in embarrassment. He changed the subject. "Hell, I can't get used to looking at that face, Mack. What was wrong with the old one?"
Bolan shrugged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess it doesn't matter which face I'm buried with."
The dark face of the law clouded with an unhappy thought as Phillips said, "This is just a temporary truce, Mack. We'll probably meet again, if you ever come back to San Francisco. And I can't... I mean, you know. So don't come back."
Bolan reminded him, "I haven't left yet. I'll be around awhile."
"God, don't. Get out. Blow this town, man. It's hot. Captain Matchison wants your ass with a burning passion."
"Brushfire," Bolan commented thoughtfully.
"How'd you know?"
"I hear. Are you with Brushfire, Bill?"
"Yeah."
Bolan said, "Well, good luck. Everything okay with your life?"
"Until today, yeah."
"These tough Frisco cops didn't give you a hard time?"
The black man snorted, "Hell, I'm a tough Frisco cop myself."
Bolan agreed, "That you are." He got to his feet, squeezed the other man's shoulder affectionately, and told him, "Blow, cop, before we get into another Wang Dang Doo."
They shook hands and Phillips said, "That was a hell of a place, wasn't it."
"It was," Bolan agreed.
"So is this place, Mack. It's Wang Dang Doo times ten. Believe that."
A muscle rippled in the Executioner's jaw and he replied, "I believe it."
"Get out."
"I can't."
"The mission that important?"
Bolan sighed. "I think so."
"End of truce," the cop said. "Goodbye, soldier. Next time we meet, it's Wang Dang Doo." He glanced at his watch. "You might still have about thirty seconds to beat the grid. That's what we call the containment network. Thirty seconds, if you're lucky."
He turned his back and walked away.
Bolan faded quietly into the opposite direction.
Every second counted now. And he wasn't about to scrub this mission even if it was Wang Dang Doo times a thousand.
It was, yeah, a damned important mission.
10
Able Team
Wang Dang Doo, and Hanoi too.
It had been one of those private jokes of a handful of scared-out-of-their-skull warriors known as Penetration Team Able. Bolan was the ranking non-com, the team leader. The entire team actually existed as a tactical support unit for the special skills of their leader — Executioner Bolan.
May
be there really was a Wang Dang Doo somewhere, Bolan never knew. Some of the places they hit over there didn't have a name. Some didn't even have a permanent geographical existence. The enemy in Vietnam had been a highly mobile force. Sometimes Able Team had been required to track a Charlie command post halfway across the deltas before they could set up a strike.
Under Bolan, Able Team had ranged up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail. They'd made a few quiet excursions through the DMZ and into the strongholds of the Northmen. Several times they'd found themselves tracking deep into Laos or Cambodia.
There had been no sanctuaries from Able Team. And none, incidentally, for them when they were on a mission.
There had been dozens of Wang Dang Doos. The term, reduced to its utter simplicity, simply meant a rub-out. A wipe-out. A slaughter.
That had been Bolan's specialty.
Sniper, yes. Stiletto man, yes. Garroter, bone-crusher, spine-cracker — yes, all of these were in Bolan's bag of tricks. And he had not been the only specialist in Vietnam. But for the specialty of specialties, Able Team was always the pick of the list. They always got the gory ones. And they got the tough ones because they did the job better.
Able Team had the Executioner.
This was not an item of pride for Mack Bolan. He accepted the medals, the decorations, the special scrolls from grateful villages — but he put them quietly away in a box and forgot them.
Killing people had never meant anything more to Bolan than a distasteful chore which had to be done. He recognized the fact that he had developed a high proficiency in the art of killing, and he recognized also that this proficiency obligated him to a special responsibility. A war needed winning — or, at least, it needed to be contained and controlled. Bolan had the tools, the abilities, and the toughness of soul required for the proper discharge of particularly grisly responsibilities.
He recognized this, but he had taken no special pride in that recognition.
Wang Dang Doo, and Hanoi too.
Yeah, there had been a lot of Bills and Bobs and Toms and Dicks. Kids, most of them, scared out of their skulls — forever wondering why they'd volunteered for this hellfire team. At least Bolan had Korea behind him. He hadn't come into the war with storybook ideas of what it was all about.
Bill Phillips was not the first of the PenTeam graduates Bolan had run into during this new war. He'd even thought once that he could pull together an American civilian version of the old death squads, and he'd actually pulled one together... briefly. The results were tragic; enough so to convince Bolan that it could never work over here.
Herman "Gadgets" Schwartz and Rosario "Politician" Blancanales were the sole survivors of that experiment. They'd squared their account with the law, but they'd have the mob on their asses forever — that much was certain. They were marked men... marked for death.
No more. Not ever again. Bolan would never involve another human being in his private war, not as an ally.
This was a specialty war. A Wang Dang Doo in the real sense, and a job for a loner, without support, a guy who knew every way and every wile, a guy who could stride through rivers of blood to kill again and again... and be willing to take his lumps in that final judgement of the universe.
Yeah. And there it was, of course. Mack Bolan was not a religious man. Not in the ordinary sense of praying and going to church and that sort of thing. But he knew that the universe did not run itself. It wasn't a damn machine which just suddenly sprang into being and then began running down. There was a purpose to the whole thing... somewhere beyond the fragmented understanding of ordinary mortals there was a good reason for the existence of the universe.
If feeling one's self a contributing particle of that universe could be regarded as a religion, then Bolan was a religious man.
In this world of order and purpose, a self-aware particle called Mack Bolan had received some manner of special endowments. He had developed skills, and he had grown into a uniqueness of personal destiny which somehow seemed to have some importance.
Yes, this was a hell of an important mission.
Bolan's war with the Mafia was of some definite importance to the universal order of things.
He was obligated to an exercise of a special responsibility.
He was a Wang Dang Doo type of guy, face it, and he could turn away from his responsibilities no more than he could turn away from life itself.
And, in this hot old town of San Francisco, the star performer of Able Team had again drawn the tough one, the gory one.
This time it would be Wang Dang Doo, and Mr. King too.
And there would be no sanctuaries — neither of geography, nor of social rank, nor of family background-there would be no sanctuaries from this Wang Dang Doo.
The Executioner was tracking the hit.
11
Detente
The decals were off and the warwagon was slowly cruising the periphery of the DeMarco neighborhood.
Bolan knew something about containment networks; he himself had set up one or two in years gone by — and there were certain telltale signs a savvy prey could look for... to give him that extra few seconds of pre-reaction before he found himself bouncing off the net.
The idea was to avoid touching the net. It was like a spring trap... one touch and you're caught.
Bolan had re-assumed his role camouflage, this time with a blue denim jacket instead of the white wind-breaker and lightly tinted purple lenses over the eyes in lieu of the bushy mustache. The effect was about the same — a subtle shift of image that wasn't overly noticeable, not clown-like, simply innocuous. A busy wad of chewing gum kept his jaws in wobbling motion, adding a further distortion to the basic image.
He was about three blocks from the DeMarco mansion when he spotted the first trap car. It was parked at the curb on the corner of Hyde and Pacific, an ordinary street cruiser with engine idling, two uniformed men in front and two plainclothesmen in the rear. The barrel of a sawed-off shotgun was visible above the back seat and a teargas gun lay on the rear deck.
One block beyond that was a neatly concealed roadblock. They were making it look like a minor traffic mishap, with two cars pulled together in a T-formation just outside the intersection, a wrecker visible in the background, one narrow lane of traffic open and being slowly moved along by a uniformed officer.
Most vehicles would be passed on through without too much delay. Certain ones would be maneuvered through the block and into a special "inspection pool" immediately beyond the set-up... probably over behind the wrecker. It was cute, very cute, and once a guy committed himself to that scene there would be no way out.
Bolan was not about to commit himself.
He pulled alongside the plug cruiser and stopped, then slid across the seat and rolled down the window. He said, "Hey man," and popped his gum at the guy.
The uniformed cop at the wheel of the cruiser gave him a scowl and nothing else.
Bolan scowled back and asked him, "What happened to Lombard? It was right here yesterday."
The cop growled, "Beat it."
"Don't freak out, man. I just want to know where Lombard Street is."
"Get that crate out of here, you're blocking our view."
"Well you could at least..."
"Go ask a service station! Move on, right now!"
Bolan said, "Amen man." He blew a bubble with the gum, casually raised the window, slid back behind the wheel, and sent the van creaking around the comer and away from the blockade.
His recently abandoned "drop" — the old apartment building — was two short blocks dead ahead. Under the circumstances, the apartment now seemed to represent the lesser of two possible evils. Obviously he had not "beat the grid" — and, just as obviously, he would not do so in any sort of running play. That hill was crawling with cops equipped with cute games and full riot gear.
One of the more important strategies of warfare was in knowing when to use your weapons, when to use your feet, and when to use your tail. Bight now seeme
d an appropriate occasion to use the tail.
Bolan parked the warwagon a half-block from his building, locked it securely, and went the rest of the way on foot. He used the front entrance and the regular stairway, and he arrived at his own door on the third floor without incident.
The smell of fresh coffee struck him as he pushed into the apartment. The Beretta met his hand halfway and led him around the corner into the kitchen.
The China doll, wearing the same clothing and an entirely unsurprised smile, glanced at the Beretta Belle and cheerily announced, "Coffee's ready."
'It was ready hours ago," he reminded her.
"I threw that out. This is new."
Bolan went on past her and shook the place down. It was clean. He returned to the entrance hall and closed the door, then he went into the living room to gaze glumly out the window. The police had finally closed on the DeMarco place, and blue uniforms were moving vigorously all around those distant grounds.
The girl came up behind him and carefully halted several paces to the rear. She asked him, "Were those your fireworks I heard awhile ago?"
He returned the Beretta to the sideleather, dropped tiredly into an overstuffed chair, and told the China doll, "Yeah. Special celebration, no charge to spectators."
In a small voice she informed him, "I came in through the window."
Bolan said, "Great. You can go out the same way."
Instead she went into the kitchen and returned a moment later with two steaming mugs of coffee. "How do you take it?" she asked.
"Strong, black, and not drugged."
She laughed and pushed a mug at him. "You've seen too many movies."
He accepted the coffee. "I haven't seen a movie in four years."
She wrinkled her nose and sat down opposite him, daintily holding the oversized mug with both hands. "You haven't missed much. Skin is in, drama is out, comedy is sick, and sick is relevant."
Bolan chuckled. He put down the coffee to light a cigarette, savored the invigorating smoke briefly, and expelled it in a tired whoosh. Then he asked the girl, "Why'd you come back?"
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