“I see. Which way?”
“West. I, uh, hear they turned onto Airline Highway and dropped in on Jefferson Parish.”
“South on Causeway?”
“Yeah. Or so I hear. River Road’s down that way.”
“So it is,” Bolan said.
“Don’t go.”
“Why not? CID still tracking?”
“Just don’t.”
“May as well. Not much left in the city.”
“You may be right about that. I hear that things are getting so bad down at the morgue that the incoming corpses are being asked to please take a number and have a seat. Sort of amazing, too.”
“What’s amazing?”
“Sudden contagion of head hits. You know, bullets in the ears, in the nose and mouth—all that certain death stuff. Some guy has been very busy in this town tonight.”
“More than one guy, Petro,” Bolan said tiredly. “Nobody retires gracefully from you know where. Marco’s been purging the ranks, thinks he has things nailed down again. He’s pared to the bone now, and I’d say drawing in tight. And, you know, he just might be stronger than ever.”
“I don’t think so,” the cop replied quietly. “Way I’ve been hearing it, the golden empire is buried in the flames of Carnival—and it will not rise from the ashes of Wednesday. Not even forty days of Lent will bring it back.”
“There’s only one way to be sure of that,” Bolan said.
“Your way, huh?”
“Yeah. My way.”
“Don’t go. You were close on that count. One hundred and twenty guns. Now there’s a way. They’ll take care of it for you.”
“For themselves, maybe. It just grows a new head and springs back—and it doesn’t even need ashes to rise from.”
“Guess you’re right,” the cop said. “I can give you this. The books you donated will bury a lot of fat cats, too. In the, uh, you know, so-called legit community. They contribute to the problem, you know. Feed it, then feed themselves from the regurgitation. We’ll nail them.”
“Do that,” Bolan said. “Keep on doing it.”
“Wallbanging, you mean. Sure.”
“Petro, you’re a hell of a guy. Thanks for that.”
“You too. Hang in tight, man—and watch those flanks.”
“With both eyes,” Bolan assured him, and broke away.
Sure, he’d be watching his flanks.
It was time to go for the knockout.
Old Marco wasn’t buried yet.
21: ATTACK!
Sixteen shiny limousines with engines off and lights extinguished were lined bumper to bumper along the River Road fronting the Vannaducci estate. Another two had gone on down the drive to the security gate and were idling there, lights on, engines running.
Bolan read it as a parley—or as an attempt at one.
He sent the warwagon cruising slowly along the parked line of vehicles on River Road, using night-bright optics in a probe of their interiors.
The wheelmen were all there—bored, smoking. Also, in each car, sat one or two other hardmen. All told, maybe thirty to forty guns—but no more than that.
Those numbers did not compute.
Where the hell was the rest of the force?
Vannaducci would never invite that whole damn head party inside his security area—whatever the defensive strategy. Bolan had breached that security area himself, twice, on soft recon missions—and he knew where all the strength lay: on those defense perimeters. The heart of the estate was soft, not hard. No—it did not compute.
The atmosphere in the second floor study was tense, electric. The old man was on his “pacing track”—a small oval rug behind the desk. Frank Ebo sat on a forward corner of the desk, slumped, a telephone at his ear—but conversing with no one.
The only light in the room was coming from a small, muffled lamp on the back wall; much of the study was in semidarkness, as was that entire level of the house.
Algiers boss Harry Scarbo—a chubby little man with a round face and an unlighted cigar perpetually clamped between the teeth, stood at the draped front window with binoculars.
Rocco Lanza was pulling similar duty at a side window.
Zeno, accompanied by Ralph Pepsi and two machine-gun toting defenders of the manse, had gone to the gate for a parley with the New York delegation waiting there.
Vannaducci halted his pacing long enough to inquire of the room in general, “How many cars did you say out there?”
House boss Ebo screwed his head around to quietly reply, “At least fifteen, maybe more.”
“That Bolan wasn’t bullshitting us, was he?” the old man said worriedly, for perhaps the fifth time that evening.
Ebo shook his head and returned it to telephone duty.
“So what’re they doing out there now, Harry?” Vannaducci yelled to Scarbo.
“Finished,” the Algiers boss reported from the window. “Zeno’s headed back. We got something new way out front, too—bus, whattaya call ’em, mobile—motor home.”
“What the hell?” Ebo growled. “They bringing ’em down now by tour buses?”
Vannaducci scowled at his house boss. “Get that guy off the damned pot, will you.”
Ebo shook the phone beside his head as he replied, “They’ve gone to get him, Marco. But it’s going to be the same answer. They’re all scared off. All these important friends—shit—listen, a time like this is when you separate the friends from the goats.”
“We put ’im in office,” Lanza commented, turning from the window to glare at Ebo as though it was all his fault. “He damn well better deliver something.”
“Let’s be realistic about that,” Ebo muttered. “The heat’s on. When the heat goes on, everybody goes indoors to cool off.”
Vannaducci mumbled a string of obscenities and continued pacing.
Lanza was not satisfied. He took a couple of steps toward Ebo and growled, “Look, hang it up. He’s not coming. Don’t look like you’re sitting there begging for crumbs. We’ll return the favor to the smartass when things are different.”
Ebo’s gaze transferred to the capo. “Marco?”
“Yeah, hang it up. Call Florida.”
“Jesus Christ!” Lanza exploded. “What good can Florida do at a time like this! This is Louisiana, Marco—and those are New York hoods down there pounding on the gates!”
“I want some cops out there to clear that fuckin’ street!” the old man roared back. “I pay my damn taxes, don’t I? I give to the damn funds and the damn benefits and the damn campaigns, don’t I? Now I want some damn service out here, and I want it quick!”
“Well, you’re not going to get cops from Florida, Marco.”
“You’d be surprised what I get from Florida, Rocco. Now get off my shoulders! Frank—you call Florida!”
The house boss was already initiating the call.
The despairing Lanza yelled, “Aw, shit, Marco!”
“Aw, shit, yourself!” the old man roared back. “Keep your eyes and ears open, kid, you might learn something around here tonight. What the hell you think moves things around this town—around any town? It’s phone calls, that’s what. A word here and a word there between friends, see. That’s what it’s all about!”
Harry Scarbo called back from his post at the front window, “That motor home is back again. Believe it’s coming along the drive now. I can’t—the damn trees, Marco, why you gotta have so many trees? It’s, uh, a camper, I guess—yeah, a damn camper.”
Eyebrows raised, Ebo commented, “They use those sometimes to—” He dropped his voice suddenly and pitched it into the telephone.
Vannaducci growled, “I don’t care if they got—”
Zeno came puffing through the door to announce, without preliminaries: “That was no parley, Marco—it was an ultimatum. That’s Alfred Damio down there. He says—”
Vannaducci interrupted with an observation of his own. “Sure—New York, by way of my late friend, Freddie Gambella. Well, well. How’s Al?”
“I said an ultimatum, Marco. He’s tough as nails and in no mood for renewing old acquaintances. He’s carrying an invitation from you know where. Inviting you out, that is. Says it’s all over for us here, Marco. Says it’s a solid front in New York and they’ve decided it’s time for the change. Says your replacement is here and waiting. Says—!”
Vannaducci yelled, “Whatta you mean talkin’ to me like that!”
“It’s not me, Marco. It’s them.”
“I mean them! They send a punk messenger boy to say something like that?”
“That’s not all,” the consigliere went doggedly on. “They’re saying we have an hour to clear out. He’s got a plane waiting for you, Marco.”
“A plane? A plane for where?”
“Costa Rica,” Zeno muttered.
“Aw, shit on them! Bunch o’ damn punks—I baptized half o’ them punks!”
A wild-eyed Ralph Pepsi ran in at that moment, sliding to a respectful halt and teetering on tiptoes just inside the door. Ebo dropped the phone to his chest and lifted questioning eyes to the youth. “What now?”
“They’re coming toward the west wall! I sent some boys down to back up—”
“How many coming?”
“Can’t tell! They say maybe twenty or thirty, on foot! I sent Pat’s crew down to shore it up! Should I …?”
Harry Scarbo had turned back to his post. He yelled, “Jesus Christ!” at the same moment that a bright flash illuminated the night out there and a fairly close explosion puffed and rattled the glass of the window.
“What’s that?” Vannaducci screamed.
“A cannon!” the stunned Algiers boss reported. “They got a damn cannon on that thing!”
The term “cannon”—in street parlance—usually refers to a handgun of impressive caliber. But Harry Scarbo had used the word in its literal sense, and he was not far from right.
Bolan’s new warwagon came equipped with a bit more than mere electronic marvels. It was also something of a dreadnought on wheels, a rolling battleship with built-in firepower utilizing the latest and best lightweight armament this side of atomics. A rocket launcher was built into the roof, controlled from the driver’s seat, and could be used while the vehicle was underway. A motorized, swivel-platform with a four-rocket capability retracted into a hatch on the roof for concealment during “soft” periods, rising and locking into firing position on command from a dashboard control.
Targeting was via electronic circuitry tied into the regular optics surveillance system, foot-controlled and fired from a floor-mounted fire control device that Bolan described in his journal as “a rock-and-press trackfire.” A supple ankle and a steady foot were the only human requirements; no hands were needed.
Reloads were another matter. There was no reload capability in the heat of combat. It was a “four-shot system,” and thus not to be used indiscriminately.
The vehicle was not armored, nor were the windows bulletproof. The “command chair” was, however, solid steel beneath the padding, and special protective panels were strategically placed inside the skin of the cab, these features affording a “better than nothing” shield for the driver.
Bolan had scouted the enemy task force and made a run along the front boundary of the Vannaducci estate, using the nightbright optic system. His readings of the situation there were fairly accurate, his attack a “seize the moment” maneuver played entirely by ear.
As his vehicle wheeled slowly onto the tree-lined drive leading to the main gate, it drew interested stares from the tail cars of the caravan but no challenges.
When halfway along that doomsday trail and into the final straightaway, he “enabled” the rocketry, a move that automatically switched the optics over to fire control, superimposing an electronic grid with range marks on the viewplate—confirmation that the launch platform had achieved “raised and locked” position.
It was a narrow drive with barely enough room for ordinary vehicles to meet and pass. With the stately trees standing on either side and partially overhanging, the sensation was that of traversing a long, narrow tunnel.
A small dashboard signal lamp lit up and began flashing green, signaling “Fire Enable.”
He rocked the floor control several degrees left, then corrected the elevation and held the target centered in the range marks as he cruised slowly along the “tunnel.”
Target One was the gate itself, a heavy iron affair with massive sideposts—center-opening, chain-locked, manned by a squad of heavily armed sentries.
The two “delegation” vehicles were pulled neatly right and as far forward as they could get, doors open.
Two guys stood between the vehicles, parleying. The others were inside, apparently preparing to take off. Exhaust smoke from the idling engines was finding limited dispersal into the damp atmosphere of the evening, drifting like thin fog just above the cars.
A buzzer sounded from Bolan’s console, signifying the approach of maximum depression for the roof-mounted rocketry.
Some guy was running toward the gate from inside the walls, and the two boys parleying between the vehicles were now sending their attention Bolan’s way.
The iron gate was dead-centered in the viewplate, Bolan’s ankle stiff and holding it there. At a hundred feet out, he banged his knee with a fist to send the first whizzer streaking on ahead, a rustling tail of flame pushing it straight down the tunnel and whomping into the gate with a thunderous roll of fire.
Both limousines were immediately engulfed in that hell, disappearing behind flame and smoke.
Bolan’s other foot pushed the accelerator to the floorboard; the battleship on wheels leapt forward in eager response, rushing headlong to join that game down there.
And, yeah—it was a bloody, bloody Monday.
22: KNOCKOUT!
He banged in under the cover of hellfire and brimstone, sending the warwagon plunging through the shattered gates and pressing on without letup along the drive and toward the house.
Wild men brandishing guns and shouting from distorted faces rose up in his path and fell tumbling along the backtrack, beneath the wheels, or bouncing off into the darkness, crushed and broken.
Gunfire rattled across the night and from every quarter, angrily sizzling slugs punching into the skin of the charging vehicle or singing hornetlike across its path.
Target Two found its rightful place behind the range marks, dispatching Rocket Two with another shattering, matter-disintegrating explosive storm to rage into the front entrance of the old mansion, tumbling men and weapons and all that stood there into a shattering chaos of screaming and shouting and thundering hell on earth. Anxious flames leapt immediately skyward to eat the visible heart of an empire and to send ghastly shadows dancing like devils on the future gravesite of its emperor—while, to the west, the enemy engaged itself in the last desperate stand for New Orleans. Machine-gun fire chattered across those doomed, damned acres down there—punctuated now and then with shouted commands and an occasional boom of heavier munitions.
The dreadnought on wheels careened on around the circular drive, avoiding the fiery wreckage of the portico to bounce out across the carefully tended lawn, then to wheel about for a lock-on to Target Three—an upper story window at the south corner east. Bolan banged his knee from three hundred feet out, then was out the door and trucking on over to their place by the time the firetailed serpent struck again, this time to dislodge a corner of their place and send it raining earthward, disgorging shrieking men and dismantled bodies in company with shattered furniture and flaming fabrics.
A secondary explosion of uncertain origin—perhaps escaping natural gas mixing with hell’s flames—rumbled through the interior of the old structure and sent more fire and smoke puffing from shattered windows.
Bolan found the upper half of Rocco Lanza face up in a flower bed at the southeast corner. Several feet away lay the broken body of Richard Zeno beside an unidentifiable lump that had probably once been a dumpy little man who carried ar
ound well-chewed but unlit cigars, one of which was still clamped in a death grip between the teeth.
Other bits and pieces of once-living flesh littered the area—but there was no sign of the old man who’d wanted only to be buried here.
Bolan went in through the gaping flame-wreathed hole that had once framed a brass-plated door, and he found Marco Vannaducci halfway to the top of a polished mahogany stairway, hairless head bloodied and blackened but still alive and aware, clinging to the railing and struggling to hoist himself upright.
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the old man muttered.
“That’s right, Marco,” Bolan said. “You’re not.”
He pumped him cleanly between flaring eyes with the thundering .44; the real king of Mardi Gras and everything else in New Orleans died as he had lived—struggling to survive.
Frank Ebo appeared at the head of the stairs, swaying, blind and bleeding and crying out in a dying voice, “Marco! Marco!”
“He’s here, Ebo,” the Executioner said, and he gave the faithful shadow what he’d given the old man. The impact of the hit sent shards of skull exploding and pitched him backwards into the flames.
Bolan grabbed Vannaducci by the foot and pulled him clear of the fast-developing inferno, depositing him on the lawn with a bull’s-eye cross on the chest, then went on seeking other game.
He found it immediately, less than twenty yards down-country, in the rag-a-tag remnants of a once-proud hardforce, six of them, battered and bloodied and disarmed and dragging themselves back toward the ruins of empire.
They came to a flat-footed halt at the sight of the impressive figure in executioner black. One of the guys declared, in a dismal voice. “Oh, shit, it’s you, Bolan.”
“It’s me,” the ice man confirmed. “How’s the battle?”
“Terrible. Cops jumped in down there—shit, I guess all the cops in Louisiana.”
“You’re Johnny Powder?”
“Yeah. Let us go, guy. We’ve had it.”
“So go,” Bolan commanded.
He wheeled around and returned to the war-wagon, fired her up, and wheeled on out along the reverse track, picking his way through the litter of warfare, past the shattered gate and flaming automobiles, up the tunnel and picking up speed fast.
New Orleans Knockout Page 13