Day of Mourning te-62

by Don Pendleton

  Everyone casually looked around at Bolan's entrance.

  Then not so casually as he strode through the room toward a hallway that led off the parlor to the private rooms.

  "This is a raid," Bolan barked gruffly, throwing a thumb over his shoulder at the way he'd come in. "Everybody out."

  There was a mad scramble as half-dressed ladies of the night and flustered Johns poured out, looking for any available avenue of flight.

  Bolan stalked into the hallway. He confronted two heavyset white men who appeared to be in charge, drawn by the commotion in the parlor.

  Bouncers.

  Digging for pistols.

  With the edge of his flattened palm, Bolan hammered one guy at the base of the neck. The man slipped into unconsciousness.

  The second man pulled out his gun.

  Bolan executed a flying judo kick.

  The pistol flew from the man's grip. He started to turn.

  Bolan stepped after the guy, grabbing the bouncer by the collar. The Stony warrior flung him back into the wall with such force that the man's knees buckled and he collapsed.

  Bolan knelt and grabbed the chucker's longish hair.

  "Grover Jones. Where is he?"

  The guy's eyes were glazed orbs. He pointed toward the back of the house.

  "Number twelve."

  "Thanks."

  Bolan popped the back of the guy's head against the wall hard enough to knock him out.

  He unholstered the Beretta and followed the instructions to the only door that was latched shut, around a bend in the hallway. All of the other doorways to the crib rooms yawned open from the haste in which the house had been vacated after the raid warning raised by Bolan.

  Bolan stood back and to the side from the closed door. He raised a foot and propelled two hundred-odd pounds of kick force, slamming the door inward off its frame.

  The Executioner entered the dark room in a forward roll at the same instant that gunfire spit at him from a corner of the room.

  Bolan came to his feet, tracking up with the Beretta, when the gunman made the mistake of trying for a better position. He moved across an unshaded window with enough streetlight outside to silhouette the ambusher.

  Bolan tripped the guy, then slashed down with a well-aimed chop at the falling figure. There was a grunt of pain. A gun clattered to the floor.

  Bolan took a second to step back and flick on the light switch. A bulb blazed overhead, revealing Grover Jones half sitting on the floor where Bolan dropped him.

  Damu Abdul Ali glared up at the man with the Beretta. His right hand sported a heavy bandage where Bolan had shot off some of his fingers a few hours before.

  "Who the — "

  Bolan stood over him.

  "That's what I want to know, Grover."

  "The name's Damu Abdul, you mother."

  The guy was trying to protect his bandaged hand by slipping it under his right thigh. Bolan grabbed Ali's forearm and stepped on the bandage, grinding it hard against the floor.

  Jones let out an unearthly scream and thrashed onto his back.

  "Your name is mud," said Bolan, aiming the Beretta at the man's black forehead. "That job tonight. You had Sam and Jimmy Lee follow those Company men until I showed up, then they hit me. Who told you where to sic them onto the CIA? That's Company business."

  "I — I don't know," squealed Grover Jones. "Th-they'll kill me if I tell you!"

  Bolan stepped down harder on the bandaged hand. Jones squealed louder, tears running down his face. Blood soaked the bandage.

  "Okay, okay, please don't! The guy you want is Miller. Al Miller. He's got a place in Potomac!"

  "More."

  "That's all I know, I swear."

  Bolan lifted his foot threateningly

  "He... he's got some kinda troops out there... the guy's a merc... I knew him in the service... he fed me the shit on you and set it up."

  Bolan stepped back, releasing the bloody hand.

  Jones stared up at the snout of the Beretta that did not waver its bead between his eyes. The pain was suddenly forgotten.

  "Wh-what now?" he asked.

  "The payback," said the Executioner.

  He blew Grover Jones's brains out all over the room.

  The score is evening up, Andrzej.

  Al Miller.

  He stalked out of the house.

  Back into the night.

  Closing in.

  14

  Bolan cruised west on MacArthur Boulevard, then left the business artery to head for the grassy, hilly outer reaches of Maryland. He was looking for the county road listed under Al Miller's name in the Potomac telephone directory.

  A stop at a twenty-four-hour convenience store gave him the directions he needed to find the Miller place.

  The drive to locate the place consumed a half hour; thirty minutes Bolan knew he could not afford to waste.

  It was not groundless paranoia that made Bolan think the world of Colonel John Phoenix was suddenly closing in on him, about to explode, taking everything with it.

  Bolan realized that in the past twelve hours, his and John Phoenix's life had flashed past his eyes, not in some inner metaphysical sense but in actual flesh-and-blood reality.

  Especially blood. During his search to find someone named Miller, the next link in tonight's blood-drenched chain, the Executioner had time to consider the strange, violent odyssey of this day and night.

  In the beginning, it was like any of the other missions in this government-sanctioned new war against world terrorism: Mack Bolan, The Executioner, racing toward another confrontation with dark forces.

  The Atlantic.

  Terrorists.

  The Dragon.

  But this was only the beginning.

  The stepping stone from then to now.

  An odyssey to stun anyone's senses.

  From an Oval Office briefing with the president to the cathouse depths of sewer city.

  And between those two points?

  The Mafia.

  An old enemy, growing stronger again, probably overdue for attention from John Phoenix. If there would be a John Phoenix in the future.

  Tonight, a lapse into automatic behavioral patterns from that past war against the Mafia: a Black Ace appeared from nowhere and right now the commissione in New York would be madder than hell, shaking up everyone on the scene for an explanation of why a headcock named Pepsi Giancola got capped along with some street soldiers when it was Pepsi who was supposed to be snuffing out Armenian jerks.

  It was almost like the old days when Bolan was alive. Yeah, exactly like an Executioner hit. But of course, Bolan is dead.

  Armenians.

  The CIA and the CFB and Lee Farnsworth and a murky world of clandestine espionage operations that Bolan never felt comfortable with.

  Farnsworth was right, in a way.

  Bolan was a soldier.

  A combat specialist.

  His place was on the front lines, like he'd told the president.

  Striking at the enemies of the Phoenix war.

  Tonight, the war came home.

  At this moment, top priority continued to be who!

  Who was Bolan's real enemy this night?

  Somewhere in or around this city of lies, double dealing and treachery, a killer sat smug, thinking he was safe, that his trail was covered, that he could go on with whatever else he had planned for the Stony Man operation, tonight and anytime in the future. Someone who knew all the workings of the U.S. intelligence system from top to bottom.

  This someone was Konzaki's killer and the true saboteur of Stony Man Farm as sure as Grover Jones and Miller and whatever other hired hands, hired death, were doing his bidding.

  This was the one Bolan wanted more than any of these vermin. The one who pulled the strings and bartered in souls and sent people to their deaths when the whim moved him, hiding it all behind a cloak of influence.

  This someone was evil moving among the good, indistinguishable, making him
that much more dangerous.

  But The Executioner was in town.

  And that made all the difference in the world.

  15

  Bolan found the county road he wanted and began an initial recon to set the terrain of this action firmly in his mind.

  At first glance the property owned by Al Miller was not unlike any number of similar ones in the area.

  This was horse-estate country.

  Miller had to be doing all right for himself, whatever his scam was.

  Or he had solid backing.

  Bolan guessed the latter.

  The millionaire set liked its privacy. Formidable brick walls about ten feet tall surrounded many of these estates. There were huge expanses of uninhabited acreage in between.

  Miller's guise of respectability lasted no longer than a closer visual as Bolan's rental vehicle glided past. The Executioner hoped that those inside viewed it as just another car passing in the night.

  The main entrance to the grounds was set midway in the face of the walled perimeter that bordered the paved road.

  A brick guardhouse sat behind an iron gate.

  Bolan saw two sentries; they wore side arms and there was undoubtedly heavier artillery, out of sight but close at hand.

  When he reached the far end of the property line, Bolan continued to drive another quarter mile until the looming walls of the estate were blocked from view by a mild dip in the undulating Maryland terrain.

  Bolan parked his car well off the blacktop, concealed from casual glances by a cluster of stately oak trees.

  He strapped on Big Thunder.

  This would be a hard hit.

  He jogged back toward the walled property of Al Miller. He stayed off the road, approaching the side wall that connected with the one fronting the county road.

  He was not ideally togged or rigged for a night hit. His dark sweater and slacks helped him blend into the night but his black combat grease had been lost when Sam Datcher and Jimmy Lee Brown blew up his rented Mustang at the Interstate Loan shoot-out.

  Bolan hoped the moon would not break through the heavy clouds overhead, but that did not seem likely.

  The Beretta 93-R rode ready in its shoulder holster and the AutoMag was fast-draw ready. Heavy artillery, sure, but it would be no heavier than the arsenal on the other side of those walls. His other instruments of death, such as the stilettos, garrotes and high-explosive grenades, so important on an assault like this, had also been destroyed in tonight's car blast.

  The hell with risks.

  The Executioner was blitzing.

  He negotiated the wall with ease, landing on the other side without a sound.

  He palmed the silenced Beretta.

  He hoped Big Thunder would not be needed at all or only as a last resort to blast his way out.

  He remained in a crouch, the 93-R ready. He scanned the darkness, his icy gaze encompassing the deserted grounds of the estate.

  He saw no one.

  Several lights illuminated a massive main house about eighteen hundred meters across a rolling, gradual incline.

  Bolan padded cautiously toward the main house. The nightfighter kept to the shadows of the evergreens trees that dotted the landscape.

  The Executioner met no interference.

  Miller's place was guarded tonight by only a skeleton crew for some special reason. Or the man had nothing to hide and the gate sentries were only for show to grant the guy his privacy.

  Perhaps this was another false lead like those Armenians. But Bolan didn't think so.

  The night warrior moved on a course roughly parallel to the long, curved gravel driveway. He reached the edge of a tree line that yielded to a clearing surrounding the main house and another building. He paused for further recon.

  Grover Jones's instructions had brought Mack Bolan to an expansive Colonial-style mansion. A huge courtyard was dominated by a large fountain now artistically illuminated by multicolored floodlights.

  The other building was a more modern, strictly functional one-story prefab job, twenty meters from the main house.

  Barracks, thought Bolan.

  There was no sign of human activity.

  The area was graveyard quiet.

  Bolan remembered the armed guards at the gate.

  And the lighted windows in the main house.

  There was a roofed porch on the south side of the house, across an expanse of sloping lawn from Bolan's position. The stretch of lawn was bathed in faint glow from the floodlit fountain.

  Bolan decided to chance it.

  He left the tree line. He made it to the porch and holstered the Beretta. He pulled himself up onto the roof. Then he palmed the 93-R again and stretched out a leg to gain balance closer to the nearest second-floor lighted window.

  The window was open against the warm night. Wispy drapes offered no privacy this close up. But there was nothing to see. An empty bedroom. A light someone had forgotten to turn off.

  Bolan heard the unmistakable mutter of male voices. Then a female voice, coming from the next window down, also lighted.

  A foot-wide ledge ran around the white stone mansion between its two levels. Bolan got a firm footing and edged himself toward the window from which he heard the voices coming.

  He chanced a peek inside.

  Another open window. A good view through lace drapes into another bedroom.

  This one was occupied.

  Three men and a woman.

  The woman was clothed, but not doing too well otherwise.

  She was tied to a straight-back chair in the middle of the bedroom, bound hand and foot and body with rubberized clothesline.

  Bolan recognized the woman.

  Tonight was an unraveling tapestry of this warrior's life. That's what throbbed and tried to close in and race past him at the same time, unbidden, but there just the same. His back pages and his destiny colliding on a warm spring night in Washington, when Death walked and his name was Bolan.

  Her name was Susan Landry, investigative reporter.

  Bolan would always remember Landry from his assault on the Mafia's Cleveland Pipeline during the Executioner's war against the Mob.

  Landry was a woman no man would ever forget. Especially as a lover, as Bolan had been before he blasted Susan's father out of existence for his unholy alliance with the cannibals Bolan fought.

  A lifetime ago, to John Phoenix.

  The three hard-eyed men in the bedroom stood around Susan. One wore a shoulder-holstered .357. The other two had shotguns that now rested upright against a wall of the bedroom while they took a closer look at the beauty tied to the chair.

  Her shoulder-length raven hair was mussed, and she wore a bruise on her right temple that had turned purple. But Susan was just as foxy as Bolan remembered from that long-ago Cleveland action.

  Susan's eyes darted rebelliously between the two men in front of her. Then she tried to glance over her shoulder at the guy behind, but she was too damn tough inside to show these creeps any fear.

  One of the men reached over and stroked her face, then his hand drifted lower as he squeezed her breast roughly. He laughed when she didn't cry out.

  Bolan saw red.

  The man sneered, "A tough baby. I like 'em tough."

  "Miller will skin you bastards alive when he gets back and sees what you've done," she snarled in his face.

  "Maybe Miller ain't coming back," grunted the other man who faced Susan. He reached over as he spoke and idly flicked her skirt up around her waist, revealing smooth, panty-hosed legs that became beauty-queen thighs and sheer panties. "And if Miller comes back, maybe we'll be gone."

  The hood behind her guffawed and started unbuckling his trousers.

  "After we have some fun with you, bitch."

  "I give you nothing," hissed Susan Landry.

  Planting her feet firmly, she leaned forward in the chair, lifting its two back legs off the floor. Then she plunged backward. The chair landed with bone snapping impact upon the feet
of the jerk who'd been so anxious to take his pants off.

  "Oh, shit," he howled as he stumbled back, hopping about the room on one foot.

  The other two started to laugh at their friend's misfortune.

  Bolan aimed through the wispy bedroom curtains. The laughter was suddenly cut off as the Beretta whispered once. A 9mm slug drilled through the laughing mouth of one would-be rapist, creating a cavity that no dentist could ever fill. The man had not even begun to fall when the 93-R spit fire again, and the two hardmen toppled to the floor.

  Susan Landry's eyes opened wide at the tall, icy-eyed man who suddenly appeared in the room.

  The third hood forgot about his bruised toes and his unbuckled pants. He drew his .357 Magnum and had time to trigger off a shot at the darting figure who broke from the open window. The explosion reverberated like a nuclear blast in the close confines of the bedroom. The projectile whistled wide past Bolan's right ear.

  The Executioner triggered another round from the Beretta, and the third punk joined his deceased friends in the corner.

  "Holy Mother!" exclaimed Susan Landry. From her awkward position tied to the chair, she could not escape the drifting stench of burned cordite that stung her nostrils. She looked around at the three dead men who an instant ago had been about to harm her.

  The big man chuckled as he holstered the 93-R and bent to yank loose the knots of the clothesline that bound her. "The name is John Phoenix, Ms Landry."

  She stood up when she was untied and briefly rubbed wrists chafed raw from trying to break free. She did not take her eyes off this stranger, studying him intently.

  "How do you know who I am?"

  "Call me a regular reader of your newspaper columns," Bolan replied truthfully. He snapped a fresh clip into the Beretta and held the pistol out to her. "Can you handle one of these?"

  She nodded and took the pistol in a practiced grip.

  "Thank you, John Phoenix. I have a car downstairs. I drove into my own trap, you see. We can drive out of here."

  She did not recognize Phoenix as Mack Bolan. There was no reason for her to. Plastic surgery had altered Bolan's appearance.