Executioner 028 - Savage Fire

by Pendleton, Don

  It was a damn miracle.

  And, sure, Billy Gino was counting his blessings.

  He'd lost about a dozen boys. Also the flight crew. Also the company plane, although it could maybe be salvaged if they could ever get it dug out of the the damn foam. He had six walking wounded and two more on stretchers who had at least a fifty-fifty chance. The rest of those bodies—in roasted bits and pieces, mostly—belonged to someone else. Billy would not even attempt to estimate their number. Maybe another dozen, maybe more.

  But Billy Gino had been hurt enough, yeah. Half his force was gone. And the others were plenty demoralized.

  The cop, Pappas, had something in his craw he just could not seem to get rid of. Kept strolling around the place double-checking the eyewitness stories and muttering to himself. And Billy Gino had overheard the guy talking to his captain about the "containment."

  "There's no flow over," the cop muttered. "We have only one injured bystander, and he did it to himself leaping through the office window. All these other people are pedigree unknown."

  Pedigree unknown, yeah—the guy had it all, right there. Billy Gino would have given a lot to learn some of those pedigrees. That little shit of a Leo Turrin had evidently imported himself some real hotshots. If the Pittsfield cops didn't know the guys, in a town this size, then...

  And yet ...

  Billy leaned toward his boss and whispered, "Something stinks here. I believe we met two forces out there. I heard a guy yelling from the hangar just before it all went to hell. He was as surprised by those explosions as I was."

  David's eyes still held a haunted look. He replied, "Those explosions saved our asses, Billy. You think about that. Think about where we'd be right now if it hadn't all gone to hell just when it did. They had us, Billy. They really had us wrapped."

  And it was true, of course.

  The big guy, Weatherbee, came over with a full bottle of Schenley's in a paper sack. He handed it over to David as he told him, "Compliments of the city health department. Enjoy. We won't detain you here any longer. But please go straight to your hotel and don't leave the city without getting in touch with me. Can I count on you for that?"

  David graciously accepted the bottle and assured the big cop that he could be counted on to behave responsibly.

  The guy gave him a nice smile and said, "Fine. Your transportation is right outside."

  Boy, it sure wasn't New York City.

  And it was all a bit puzzling. The guy wasn't that dumb. He knew what this "business party" really was. He knew what had really happened out there on that airport service ramp. But there had not been a single embarrassing question.

  Billy Gino had to wonder: did Leo have things nailed down that tight in Pittsfield?

  A thought quivered in his mind as the survivors straggled outside for the ride into town. He plucked delicately at David's tattered coatsleeve and told him, "You know something—this is all kind of weird. This town acts like it's wired. I wonder who's holding the wires?"

  "Whose town is it, Billy?" David asked softly.

  That was it, yeah. It was Leo Turrin's town. That much must be very obvious, now, to anybody with hungry eyes for this most improbable territory.

  "Then there's no doubt about it, is there," he told his boss. "It was Leo who saved us."

  "You're probably right," David replied tiredly. He slid into the car beside his bodycock and added, very quietly, "That's not really the question, Billy. The question is this: Who was trying to have us."

  That was the question, yeah, for damn sure.

  And Billy Gino meant to have an answer to it before the day was totalled up.

  To be sure, Al Weatherbee knew precisely what had happened there that day. Indeed, he'd been expecting some such fireworks for hours.

  Brognola had called him from Washington in the middle of the night and dropped it on him straight from the blue.

  "Mack Bolan is back, Al."

  "Back where?" Weatherbee asked, still half asleep.

  "Back where he started," was the awakening statement.

  "Aw, shit!" Weatherbee muttered and reached for the bed lamp.

  Alice was wide awake and looking at him. "What is it?" she asked, knowing probably from the look on his face that it couldn't be good.

  "Put on some coffee, huh," he whispered to her, then cocked an ear to the open window and told the man in Washington. "You must be mistaken. I don't hear a thing."

  "That's the idea and that's why I'm calling," Brognola replied. "I have a favour to ask, old buddy."

  "If it's about that guy, forget the old buddy routine. I gave Bolan his chance a long time ago, and he told me what to do with it. For old times sake, sorry—but that's the way it is and that's the way it stays. You sponsor the guy if you think you must, but dammit don't ask—"

  "Hey, hey, what kind of talk is that at four o'clock in the morning! You know damn well the guy told me the same thing he told you. There's no sponsorship—and I'm not asking you to do a thing on his behalf. Al, I've got a real difficult problem. My man there is in extreme jeopardy."

  "Your man here is always in extreme jeopardy. He's lucky he escaped Bolan the first time around. I don't see how—"

  "No, wait, please—let me tell it, huh? From go?" Weatherbee sighed and reached for a cigarette. "So tell it," he growled.

  "My man is caught in the middle of a gangland squeeze. We don't know, really, who is after him or why—but we do know that they've already ordered his coffin. I've got to go before the Senate this afternoon and—wait, no, let's skip all that. The point is, we believe the cover is intact and we'd like to keep it that way for bigger things to come. Okay, there's the picture. Now, enter Mack Bolan. A lot has happened since the guy left Pittsfield, Al—you know all about that. And there's a very special friendship—and, I might add, a highly beneficial friendship for us—between Bolan and my man there in Pittsfield. Okay. Now Bolan is aware of what is going down. He is in town right now on a save. That's all it is. He's not there to bust the town again. He's just trying to save it for the man."

  "Little damn consolation there," Weatherbee sniffed. "When that guy moves, shock waves flow out all around him. I don't want him here, Hal. Take your man out and tell Bolan to leave with him."

  "It isn't that simple. The man wants to stay. A lot of years have gone into this operation—you know that. You've always helped us in the past. I'm counting on that help again. Now, dammit, you tell me nay."

  "Nay," Weatherbee said glumly, then swung his feet to the floor with a sigh and took it back. "Okay. How far does my neck stretch this time?"

  "Not far. We are simply asking that you give Bolan some room and allow him to operate quietly. You know what I mean. Put your town on hard, sure—but handle it like any other rumble. Let's not have any screaming headlines about Mack Bolan coming home to do it again. There cannot be the merest hint of a collaboration between my man and Bolan. There's the whole game, see. Bolan isn't autographing a thing, and we are just asking that nobody do it for him. Otherwise my man will be in double jeopardy."

  Weatherbee sighed and said, "Okay, I getcha. I’ll try to play, Hal—but no promises. I don't have your autonomy, you know. I have to answer to—"

  "What autonomy!" Brognola snorted. "I've got the whole damn U.S. Senate sitting on my ass at this very minute!"

  "Good for you," Weatherbee said pleasantly and hung it up.

  He'd gone then into the kitchen and told Alice. He always told Alice. Everything. He involved her in all his conspiracies of justice—because she worried less, that way—and because she'd promised for better or for worse.

  "Im on his side," was all Alice had to say about the new problem in town.

  She'd said it before, of course, speaking of Mack Bolan. She romanticized the guy, as most women tended to do.

  There were those moments when the big tough homicide cop would secretly admit to himself that he did the same damn thing.

  "There's something about the guy you just naturally h
ave to admire," he told his wife, over coffee in the kitchen that morning.

  That was not how he put it to his chief later that morning, however, when he went to work.

  "We have a federal sensitive request," he told the chief. "I don't like it and I don't expect you to like it, either. A brother officer's life is at stake, though, and I recommend we give it a go. A limited go, anyway—at least until we can see some very compelling reason not to do so." And he told the story just the way it had come to him. And, no, the chief did not like it a damned bit—but he did finally agree to a limited go.

  And now, dammit, just look at the unlimited gone!

  Bodies piled up in the morgue!

  Hospital emergency overflowing with butchered flesh!

  An appalling disaster scene at the airport!

  The town crawling with imported hitmen and high-powered big city bosses!

  Autographed or not, this amazing crap had the Bolan print all over it. Where the hell did that goddamn Brognola get off, saying "give the guy some room to operate."

  Even Johnny Pappas, a Bolan fan from the very beginning, was finding it hard to assimilate. He watched the bewildered and bedraggled hoods slink away toward the comforts of the best hotel in town, then turned to his captain with a wink and a sigh.

  "I haven't seen anything like this since Bolan went against old Sergio," he said quietly.

  "You've guessed it," Weatherbee replied sourly.

  "What guess?" the sergeant said. "The guy is back. His marks are all over it. I've double-checked all the eyewitness reports. The gun battle didn't last fifteen seconds. Like pushing a switch, it went on and it went back off again. Yet five automobiles and a gasoline truck were completely demolished, a big jet plane is sitting in ruins, and something like twenty-five men are dead. The count could go higher once we've sifted through all the rubble. But here's the clincher. All the dead and wounded are gunmen The only property that was destroyed belonged to the combatants—except the gas truck, and it was that hit that brought the gun battle to a premature and screeching halt. How many lives were saved—and I mean possibly how many innocent lives—when that gas truck went up? With all this hell breaking loose upon a public place, what sort of fantastic stage management did it take to keep the action confined to just those people and just that property?" The sergeant was arguing with himself. "Naw. Naw. Don't talk coincidence or luck to me. It's the Bolan touch. It's all over the thing."

  "You're reading it as an ambush, then," Weatherbee said, just for the sake of discussion. He'd already come to the same conclusion, himself. "One gang came in here and took over the airport, seized and bound all the employees of the flying service, and waited for that plane to land. Someone else, a third party, was standing by and watching the play. He pre-empted the showdown with one of his own. He had a bazooka or some equivalent, and he just stepped in and took over. He confined his fire to the safe zones, and served it up primarily to alert the gang on the plane as to what they were walking into. Is that what you're saying?"

  "Just about, yeah," Pappas replied, almost defensively, as though half expecting the captain to utterly destroy the logic with his next words.

  "I think you're exactly right," Weatherbee said. "You do?"

  "I do. And I'd like to suggest, youngster, that you have not seen a damn thing yet."

  Pappas gave him a slow, solemn smile and said, "Then you agree all the way? You're saying that Mack is back?"

  "Oh, he's back, he's back," the captain said with a sigh.

  Could anyone doubt it?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Confirming It

  If there had been any official doubts concerning the authorship of that stunning airport hit, they were soon to be dispelled. Weatherbee and Pappas were outside with the lab men, grimly examining the physical evidence, when a uniformed cop came looking for them. He had a teenager in tow. "This young man has a story you'll want to hear, Captain."

  Weatherbee turned tiredly to the boy and said, "I’m listening."

  The kid was fairly bursting with the report—eyes dancing excitedly, breath staggering. "I'm a student pilot. I was practicing touch and goes. I was up there when everything started. I was on the downwind and I saw this missile or rocket. It came out of about one four five, flying low and moving like hell. Then, whizzz, another one—right on the first ones tail.

  "I couldn't see the hits because it was over my shoulder in the blind. But I banked up and saw the fireballs rising up like an atomic attack. No kidding, just like in the movies. That was my first thought—oh God no, it couldn't be. I nearly lost the stick, I was so shook up. I pulled out and started climbing into the upwind. Guess I lost my head for a minute. I broke the pattern completely.

  Then I was coming back around to pick up the pattern. The tower was yelling at me to clear the zone. I was jockeying around up there when the third one let loose—and this time I saw the whole thing It came off that knoll down there across from Johnson's. All of a sudden it just flashed up and there it was, hissing along at about treetop level, I guess. I thought at first it was going right for the tower, but I had a bad angle on it. Boy those things really travel! It whizzed on behind the tower and smacked into the gas truck—ffammm—I mean I had a ringside seat and I saw the whole thing. It hit right on the side of the fuel tank. I could see the exact point where it hit, and the initial flash—and then, wow, what a sight! I was close enough that the shock wave bounced me around and I almost lost control again. When I got stabilized and looked again, everything down here was obscured by flames and smoke."

  Weatherbee had been watching the boy closely throughout that breathless recital. He said quietly, "That's an amazingly well put together report, son. It almost sounds like you've been rehearsing it."

  The kid's eyes crackled at that insinuation. He said, "I've told it about ten times. I guess you could call that rehearsing. I told it like it was. Exactly."

  "Okay, I apologize," Weatherbee said solemnly. "The area was covered with smoke and flames. Go on. What did you do then?"

  "The tower sent me out to a holding pattern until the emergency could be cleared. I had plenty of fuel so it was no sweat. I got back down just a little while ago—and I ran for a cop."

  Weatherbee smiled and said, "Good for you."

  "That throws our bazooka theory to hell," Pappas commented.

  Weatherbee still had eyes for the kid. He asked him, "You say you saw the third missile all the way, and that it came from way down by Johnson's—the hamburger joint? That's nearly half a mile away, isn't it."

  The kid was not intimidated by the policeman's stare, nor was he to be misled. "About fifteen hundred feet sir, on a course of three one zero from the end of the runway. I use it as a marker. The missile flashed up off that knoll to the west."

  "Gould you pinpoint the actual launching site?"

  "Yes, sir, I think I could. I know I could from the air. I fly over that area about fifty times a week."

  "You didn't see the launcher itself?"

  "Well it just sort of flashed out of the trees up there."

  "Out of the trees," Weatherbee murmured. "Yes, sir."

  Pappas let out a loud sigh.

  Weatherbee gave the kid a friendly smile and told him, "I appreciate it. Go back inside and have a coke or something, but don't go away, eh. I'll want you to take us up there in a few minutes. Okay?"

  The kid beamed back at him and said, "Sure. I'll be glad to. I can't fly you, though, I’m still on—"

  "You bet you can't," Weatherbee said, grinning. "We'll have a look at ground level."

  The youngster returned to the terminal. Weatherbee looked at his sergeant and said, "There you go. Flashed up out of the trees, the man said. Now you tell me what the guy was using"

  "Sure wasn't any bazooka I’ve ever seen," Pappas agreed. He sighed again. "You know, I've been following the guy pretty closely ever since he left town. I mean, I have a pretty thorough file on his activities. You'd think the guy would be rather well frazzled o
ut by now, wouldn't you. But no. He gets better and stronger all the time. There have been some rumours ..."

  "Go on," Weatherbee demanded.

  "Well it's never been confirmed, but there has been some official conjecture that the guy has got himself some sort of tank."

  "Some sort of what?"

  "Not exactly a tank—not a military—some kind of vehicle with some pretty crazy firepower. Now these men up here in the tower didn't see anything until just before the moment of impact. They both agreed, though, that it was some sort of missile. As opposed to artillery, or anything that could be thrown by hand. The physical evidence confirms it. Whatever came slamming into here was damned powerful, and it had armour-piercing capability. Now the kid is telling us that it came from a quarter of a mile away. With pinpoint accuracy, yet. Let's go look at that site, Cap."

  "Let's do that," Weatherbee agreed heavily. By all means.

  And if that damn guy had himself a tank, indeed, then he'd already used up all the "limited go" he was going to get in this town.

  "You put a good strong watch on our friends from Long Island, didn't you?" Weatherbee grumped.

  "Yes, sir—we've got a four-unit surveillance on them."

  "You'd better put on four more," the Captain said soberly. "I have a feeling this town hasn't seen anything, yet."

  It was more than a feeling, though.

  It was a screaming certainty.

  Mack the Ripper was home again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  And Getting Warmer

  Bolan had abandoned the firing line immediately after getting strike confirmation, then moved swiftly to a surveillance station at the airport approach. He watched the disorganized withdrawal of the bunch from the hardsite, grimly numbering their remains and taking note of the mental atmosphere there. And, no, it was not a retreat, but the rout of a decimated and demoralized force. They had arrived in five vehicles; they departed in two hastily appropriated from the rental lot behind the flying service building.

  Bolan dismissed them and let them run; he knew where to find them when he wanted them. The chief interest now was with the other force—and they too had suffered grievously. Bolan was there, watching, throughout the emergency response by the city and county—and he was there, still watching, when the last of the survivors took their humiliating departure. Yes, they had suffered. Hardly thirty guns were left—and there were some surprising faces in that collection.