Before Bolan could reply to that, another engine roared to life somewhere in that seaside village and squealing tires dug pavement in a fast take-off. Bolan decided that the vehicle was far up Granite Street, to the north.
Figarone laughed nervously and said, “See, they were waiting for us. Here they come.”
Sure, here they came, but in too damned big a hurry.
Bolan had his window down and the Beretta nuzzled into the opening when the other headlamps flashed into view and swept down on their position.
He kicked his own lights into a rapid high-low sequence with the dimmer switch, as a recognition signal.
The other vehicle slowed, then squealed to a halt just uprange. The headlamps were on hi-beam and very nearly blinding, but Bolan saw a door quickly open and close—then the big car lunged forward again and roared down on them.
It swept by fast and accelerating with every horse at its command, but not so fast that Bolan and his nervous companion could not catch the shouted message left behind.
“So handle it!”
One of those frozen eternities elapsed, during which the Executioner’s mind was freed from the dimensions of space and time to dissect and analyze and study over and over the implications of that heart-stopping moment—then his heart beat on, lurching somewhat in the certain knowledge of what he would find up there where that other car had paused so briefly.
A lump of something was lying at the side of the road up there, a something which did not move with life or even rustle in the stiff ocean breeze.
He eased the car forward until that bundle was directly under the headlamps, then he leadenly got out and went up for a close inspection.
The bundle smelled of long-dead sealife and something else—it was wrapped in foul and darkly stained rags and tied with a rough hemp rope.
He already knew what was inside that package, but he steeled himself and cut the rope off and peeled away the rags.
What he uncovered there was enough to send some men into insanity.
There was the headless body of an adolescent boy.
Both hands were missing, as were both feet
There was not much blood, due probably to the method of dismemberment—and the unmistakable odor of seared flesh and burned blood lent testimony to that method. The remaining ragged stumps of neck, ankles, and wrists were blackened and cauterized.
The devils had performed the dismemberment with a cutting torch.
Entertwined with that mutilated body was another one in similar condition.
This one had once been a lovely young woman.
And it bore deeper indignities.
The breasts had been charred completely away.
Obscene words were burned into the torso, and the pubic mound was all but incinerated.
Bolan straightened abruptly from the inspection. A sound like a groan from hell passed through clenched teeth and he moved stiffly to the other side of the vehicle.
He opened the door and pulled Figarone outside, then shoved him to the front.
“There’s your deal,” the death voice intoned, only now it was death times ten. “Not even stiff yet.”
Figarone took one horrified look and whirled quickly away from the grisly confrontation with Mafia methods.
“God’s sake, Bolan,” he gasped, “I had nothing to do with that, you know that.”
“You do now,” the iceberg tones informed him. “You stay with them. Get the cops out here, get a wagon. And you stay with them. If you don’t, I’ll be looking for you.”
He was moving toward the driver’s side of the car as he spoke.
The lawyer cried, “Don’t leave me here! How will I—”
“You stay!” Bolan commanded.
He swung in behind the wheel and sent the car whining into reverse, then he whipped around and headed for the high ground of the cliff road.
A man could die a lot inside in just sixty seconds. And that was all it had been … sixty frozen seconds.
An automobile, however, could travel just so far in one minute. And from the high ground, Bolan could see those distant headlamps sweeping along the south coastal highway, the alternate route back to Gloucester—and he knew where he could intercept them, if he could get there in time.
He sent the powerful vehicle roaring into the pursuit, and as he settled into the grim business of piloting the hurtling car it was as though something inside of him separated into two parts—one already dead, the other raging to live and to kill.
Strange sounds were tearing up from the depths of him and he found his vision becoming clouded with unexplained moisture.
Then, in that curious division of consciousness, he realized that some submerged part of him was weeping—and the other part was saying, “That’s okay, it’s okay, sometimes a man has a right to cry.”
Yet all the while he knew that the only thing commanding him at the present moment was the rage to kill.
Seldom had his war been waged in an attitude of anger or rage.
He was a methodical soldier, cooly dispassionate, doing a distasteful job, sure, but doing it just the same because it needed doing.
But now he was going to kill in anger, and he knew it, and he cared not a damn.
This was no longer a war.
It was not even a kill mission.
This was not the Executioner, moving methodically against an enemy.
This was Mack Bolan, brother of Johnny, lover of Val … and he was simply going to strike back at the rotten bastards who had done that to them.
Call it madness, okay, maybe that’s what this weird double-consciousness amounted to … call it madness, call it anything, but Mack Bolan was going to get himself a monster.
And he was going to kill with pleasure.
11: The Reckoning
Angelo Scarpatta was wheeling, and he was in no great sweat now as they completed the loop around Cape Ann and straightened into the run along the south shore toward Gloucester.
George Ignanni was slouched in the seat beside him, guffawing with the delicious memory of what they’d pulled off.
Scarpatta growled, “Laugh, idiot. You’ll cry tomorrow.”
The older man chuckled and wiped at the moisture on his cheeks. “I can’t help it,” he wheezed. “I just wish I could’ve seen old Books’ face when he unwrapped our little package.”
Yeah, that had to be some scene, all right. Scarpatta would have enjoyed that himself. He felt himself loosening up, and he grinned and told his companion, “The counselor probably came unglued. He’s probably sitting back there on the curb right now puking his guts out.”
The other man howled at that and strangled on an aborted reply.
Scarpatta chucklingly added more fuel to the other’s seizure. “Hell, he said he wanted to handle it, didn’t he?”
Ignanni clutched his belly and tried to straighten himself up. Tears were coursing down his cheeks and he was quivering all over. “The poor dumb shit!” he gasped. “What would he call that, Angelo? A corpus delecti?”
The wheelman laughed with his companion for another moment, then he sobered up and told him, “There’s the golf course. We’ll be off this rock pretty quick now.”
“You ain’t worried about Books chasin’ us down, I hope!” the older man howled.
Soberly, Scarpatta replied, “Naw, he’s probably flipping through his law books already, trying to see where he stands.”
“Stop it,” the other gasped. “I’m gonna get a heart attack.”
“You ain’t got no heart, George,” Scarpatta told him, grinning.
“That’s what she said!” Ignanni sputtered, exploding into another hilarious seizure.
Scarpatta really did not see anything all that funny. Books Figarone was no dumb shit. The guy was nobody to cross, not even when you enjoyed the protection of Harold the Skipper.
And this old sadist sitting next to him here … that sonuvabitch was sick, that’s all. It was easy to see why Skip had warned him about that
guy.
“George is an okay guy,” the boss had told Scarpatta. “You’d never want a better disposal man. But you got to watch him, Angelo. You watch him until I give the word it’s okay.”
Sure, George was a crackerjack disposal man. But he was a jerk, too. He’d be laughing this one up for a long time, and Harold the Skipper ought to know how dangerous that could be. Not that Angelo gave a damn about what he’d done, that wasn’t it. But Books was no guy to casually cross. Scarpatta didn’t exactly like the idea of George the Geek laughing this one around. Not with the name of Angelo Scarpatta as part of the story.
He shrugged away the uneasy feeling and concentrated on the driving. Bass Rocks was just ahead. Should he cut up to 127 or should he take the dogleg on through to Interchange 9?
He was still wondering when the intersection warning marker came up. His foot lightly touched the brake, then he made his decision and again tromped on the accelerator.
An instant later the headlamps revealed a big sedan pulled across that intersection down there, lights out, just sitting there blocking the road.
Quick reflexes sent his foot again stabbing for the brakes as he yelled to his spluttering companion, “Watch it!”
Ignanni snapped out of his fit and was bracing himself with both big hands pushing against the padded dash as the heavy car laid a squealing trail of rubber toward an almost certain impact … and then something far more electrifying than a possible collision loomed up out of that darkness down there.
It was a guy, he was standing just a little to the side of the road, and he was dressed all in black.
One arm was up and extended at shoulder level and the biggest handgun Angelo Scarpatta had ever seen was suspended out there at the end of that arm and the goddam thing was blowing fire directly at him.
Even as the big rolling booms of that weapon were entering his peaking consciousness, Scarpatta was aware that his headlamps were shattering and going dead, that the front wheels were going into a wallowing rumble, that he was losing control in a sideways skid.
Ignanni screamed, “Lookout, we …”
Hell, didn’t he know it, they were going to flip. Scarpatta leaned into the wheel with everything he had and prevented the careening vehicle from going into that roll, but then they were sliding around the front of the other car and going into a spin the other way.
Still that big pistol was booming and glass was shattering all around, showering the interior with flying splinters, and other slugs were ripping into the side of the car with loud thumps like somebody pounding it with a baseball bat.
Ignanni screamed and grabbed for his head, and then he became a displaced object as that swerving metal coffin heeled over to the driver’s side, caught and hung on something, and then—like slow motion—gently overturned. The big guy was flopping all over the wheel for a moment, then the car just kept on going over and Ignanni was flung back the other way.
Scarpatta was held in check by his seat belt, and he sat there with both hands gripping the useless steering wheel as the vehicle completed a full roll and came to a shuddering rest.
Miraculously, it seemed, they were both still alive.
George the Geek was bleeding from a head wound and from numerous cuts about his face. Also, the flinging about must have broken or dislocated a shoulder, judging by the curious way he was sitting. The big guy was groaning and feeling of his head with one hand.
Scarpatta himself was not in bad shape, except that something had pushed in from the engine compartment or somewhere and had his legs pinned—he couldn’t move them—also there was a helluva pain in his chest—from the steering wheel, probably.
The engine was still running but they weren’t going anywhere. They were nosed into the embankment. The hood had popped loose and was skewed around, half off. Something flashed and sizzled up there, and Scarpatta had the presence of mind to quickly turn off the ignition.
He was a moment too late, however—already flames were licking up from the engine.
In a shaken voice, he told the other man, “George, that was Bolan I think! Snap out of it!”
But George was just holding his head and moaning, and Scarpatta couldn’t move his legs. There was nothing wrong with his arms, though, and he was clawing for hardware even as he spoke.
Again, however, not soon enough.
The big tall bastard in black was standing there beside the shattered window, a huge silver pistol looking in on Angelo Scarpatta, and the Mafia murder specialist knew that something, somehow, had gone terribly, terribly sour.
He was gripped in some weirdly congealed state of consciousness and he knew it—that was the weird part, he knew it—but it was as though the human, feeling part of himself had received some sort of local anesthesic—it was like getting a shot of Novocain in the jaw, and knowing that you had a jaw but were unable to experience anything in that area.
The part of Mack Bolan that felt, that loved and hated, that grieved and rejoiced—that part was somehow mercifully anesthetized. He knew it, and he was glad.
In that part of him which was left in a sentient state, Bolan had known that he would overtake that other vehicle. He knew it because he would entertain no ideas to the contrary. With grim singleness of purpose he had hurtled along the inland route toward Gloucester, totally unopposed by traffic or other hindrances, and then he’d roared down to intersect the south coastal road just below Bass Rocks.
His route had been at least two miles and several minutes shorter than the torturous loop around Cape Ann. Even with their headstart, Bolan knew that he had them.
He’d beaten them by a full minute, with plenty of time to set the trap, and he had calmly stood there beside that windswept coastal highway and awaited the arrival of the prey.
He knew it was them the instant he spotted their lights. He watched the heavy crew wagon hunch down slightly as it slowed for the intersection, and he noted the quick decision and the sudden new acceleration as the wheelman decided to blow on through.
He knew the precise moment the guy saw the trap car—he knew by the sudden faltering of the forward motion of that speeding vehicle, and he noted with grim approval the desperate manner in which those brakes were applied and the big car started burning rubber.
And then it was AutoMag time. He raised the big .44 magnum and sent a pair of 240-grain messengers into the headlamps, following immediately with another pair into the front wheels.
That was all it would have taken, but he emptied the clip into them as they careened on past his position and went into the cartwheeling slide for the far side of the road.
He had but a flashing glimpse of something adrift and being flung around inside there as the mortally wounded vehicle screeched past the front bumper of his car and teetered into a roll.
Bolan coolly tracked the wreckage. He was standing less than ten feet distant when the slow roll ended and the crew wagon came to rest with all four wheels to the ground.
He snapped a fresh clip of heartstoppers into the AutoMag and closed immediately. The shattered vehicle was still rocking in the aftershock when he moved alongside and took a cool look inside.
It was a somewhat disappointing view.
He had expected to find Harold the Skipper in there.
Instead there was just a grizzled old hood with blood all over his face and a new-day’s torpedo behind the wheel.
The wheelman was trying to haul out some hardware.
Bolan eased the AutoMag through the shattered window and lightly touched the heated muzzle to the guy’s throat.
“Huh-uh,” he commanded, the voice coming from some far-distant compartment of hell.
The guy’s eyes rolled and he muttered, “Oh shit.”
Flames were licking out of the engine compartment.
Bolan growled, “Where’s Sicilia?”
“Sicilia who?” the guy asked in a strangled voice.
Bolan jammed the AutoMag harder against the throat and took a snubbed .32 away from the guy. “I
got your package,” he said. “Now I want the guy who sent it.”
“Oh shit,” Scarpatta again muttered. He was flinching away from the heated muzzle which was pressed into his throat, and his eyes were beginning to bulge. “Let me get out, huh?” he whined.
“Sicilia!” Bolan prodded.
“I don’t know anything about any package!” The guy was coming unglued. “This thing is catching on fire! Help me get out!”
“Sicilia!” the Executioner insisted.
“Christ he went back to Chelsea, I think! Hey, my feet are getting hot, the damn thing’s on fire!”
The big man at the far side was beginning to be aware of Bolan’s presence. His eyes were glazed, almost crazed, gleaming like an animal’s in the darkened interior of the wreckage. In a pained wheezing, he asked, “Is that the kid’s brother, is that him?”
“Shut up!” Scarpatta gurgled.
The big man was struggling to get a hand inside his coat. He was saying, “Look, guy, you got the wrong—” when the AutoMag slid along the front of the younger man’s neck and roared with an ear-shattering report, amplified even beyond its normal thunder by the enclosed space.
Scarpatta’s head jerked back as though it had been spring-loaded and his eyes nearly lunged from their sockets. The big hollow-nose bullet was not intended for him, however; it smashed into the ear of George Ignanni and blasted on through and out the other side, carrying with it a collapsing skull and a frothy mixture of blood and brains.
Blood was flowing from Scarpatta’s nose and he was doing odd things with his lower jaw, working it up and down and side to side. The thunderous recoil of the big pistol, in such close proximity to the Mafioso’s head, had evidently jarred things loose up front as well as rupturing the eardrums.
The guy was probably blind and deaf, and he was screaming piteously as he told Bolan, “It’s burning, get me out, I’m on fire!”
“So burn,” Bolan growled, remembering two others who had died hideously by the flame.
He was stepping back and quitting that place when the gasoline vapors ignited and flames whoofed along the entire length of the vehicle.
Boston Blitz Page 9