The 9:55 flight arrived ten minutes late.
Johnny Bolan Gray marched down the ramp wearing a tie and jacket and carrying a briefcase. These two Bolans, one half the age of the other, both branded by the same vigilante cause, were now together in the middle of the heat, dead center in the limelight as the local media brought the Executioner story right up to date. Mack Bolan decided to risk it nevertheless. He knew that role camouflage could serve as well defensively as offensively, and he put that into play. Right now he was just a guy in Portland, Oregon, who was meeting his brother. Maybe some business deal, or just family business. Nothing of note.
Johnny glanced at his brother without recognizing him, looked away, then looked back and smiled. The Executioner showed the kid the front of the morning paper.
"Sounds as if you've been busy," Johnny said. "Shall we go to your hotel? I've got a bundle of material for you."
At the hotel, Johnny took a room on the same floor, then showed Mack what he had brought.
"The LEA report on the gunrunners came over the computer late last night." He handed Mack a sheaf of printouts. "I've got a printout from Justice on the Portland Organized Crime Task Force. They list the Canzonari family and all of its businesses. There's some information about a gun store that seems so clean and legal and aboveboard they think it must be dealing in illegal arms somehow. That's about it."
Bolan turned to an inside page of the morning newspaper and folded it back.
He looked at the picture of the black girl and another of the battered roof of a Datsun in a parking lot.
"Last night this woman jumped from a fourteenth-floor window. Her sister's quoted as saying that the girl was in financial trouble, may have been involved with loan sharks." Bolan glanced briefly at Johnny as he spoke.
Johnny nodded slowly. "I'll look into it."
Bolan examined the LEA reports on the guns. The texts boiled down to one grisly truth: a huge shipment of arms was heading for the West Coast, possibly camouflaged as industrial machinery.
It was thought to be arriving between the twelfth and the fourteenth. Today was the tenth.
It was believed that a ship, of Japanese registry, would be carrying small arms of all kinds, machine guns and submachine guns, small mortars, hand grenades and LAW rockets and launchers — enough of an arsenal to wage a small war.
The LEA spokesman feared the guns would be handled by one of the West Coast families, making available fully automatic rifles and submachine guns to every Mafia soldier in America. The rest of the weaponry might go to Terrorists training somewhere in the continental United States.
"Let's get moving. You try to find this woman in the paper, the sister of the dead girl, and I'll check out that gun store."
* * *
An hour later Bolan was standing outside a gun shop on the east side near the approaches to Ross Island Bridge. The sign over the door said NORTHWIEST GUNS, INC., and in smaller lettering, Firearms of all types, Loading Equipment, Camping Gear, Surplus. It was the kind of store Mack Bolan could get lost in. It displayed a dizzying assortment of weapons: air guns, fancy target pistols, Uzis, Ingrams and others that he hadn't even heard of. He talked to a clerk and moved on. Nowhere did he detect any kind of weapon or even a round that was not legal.
In the back corner he found an armorer repairing guns and rifles. The man had a small machine shop and could make parts.
The only problem with the store as a whole was proportion. It was built inside a warehouse. When Bolan went outside, he realized the exterior was almost twice as large as the shop within. That left one hell of a lot of room for storage. He would check that out later.
The Executioner drove past one of the brothels on the list. He watched two cars turn into a parking lot in the back. Bolan parked in the street. Nobody could see the customers entering through the front. Another car rolled into the lot. If the brothel had this much business in an afternoon, it must be roaring at night.
Bolan found a phone and called the Portland Central Police Station. He reached Lieutenant Dunbar.
"Dunbar, I just drove past a whorehouse. It's still in operation. Why?"
"Hey, guy, we got other things to do besides bust hookers. Like a girl who took a leap out of a fourteenth-story window. Besides, we closed down three houses last night. Any idea what it does to booking when we bring in fifteen girls and about twenty johns? It raises hell with the whole operation."
"So you want me to raise hell in this town? Work on it, guy." Bolan hung up and drove away. As he neared the hotel, he wondered about the gun shipments. How could you fool the port customs officials that guns were really industrial machinery? They must have a system. Big bucks under the table? It would be interesting to find out.
6
A Cadillac limo swept uphill through Washington Park, curved along Southwest Fairview Boulevard and turned into a large estate overlooking the park and two-thirds of Portland.
Don Gino Canzonari's personal bulletproof crew wagon swung to the rear of the house and the four-car garage. The driver bailed out quickly and opened the rear door for a tall muscular man.
He was clean shaven, with dark, piercing eyes, and moved like an athlete.
He was a Black Ace, the only man Don Canzonari had ever known who carried a hit specialist from La Commissione's elite corps.
Vince Carboni stepped out of the Caddy and looked at the backyard of the Canzonari-family headquarters. Three acres of lawns and gardens trailed slightly upward toward a mass of evergreen trees. Carboni didn't care that he couldn't tell one tree from another. He was a city boy born and bred, and he was proud of it. He straightened the jacket of his seven-hundred-dollar suit and stepped along the sidewalk in his two-hundred-dollar Italian imported shoes.
Everything was so green he could not believe it.
Carboni ignored the beauty, the strangeness.
He was there on business.
"Where?" he asked curtly.
"Right this way, Mr. Carboni. Mr. Canzonari is waiting for you."
Carboni swept past the driver, who held the door, adjusting the Colt Commander under his jacket.
The house was palatial, even the rear entrance, but Carboni did not notice. He would not have appreciated the cherry-wood paneling in the vestibule as he marched along, a snarl slowly taking over his face. Gino Canzonari sat on a screened-in porch in the far wing, indulging in a breakfast of fresh orange juice and prunes.
It was a little after eight in the morning.
Canzonari rose from the chair, grunting as he hoisted the 250 pounds on his five foot five frame.
"Vince! Good to see you!"
Don Canzonari had met Carboni before, and knew his reputation for being disrespectful. But he was a good hit man, the best contract specialist the Commissione had. No one was better suited to take out the Executioner.
Canzonari responded to Vince Carboni's silence by saying, "The guy left a marksman's medal at the loan office where he gunned down three of my boys from a sniper spot."
"Must have used a high-powered rifle," muttered the visitor. "What else?"
"He whacked out Leo the Fish in a bar in Leo's home turf with fifty people around. Nobody knew anything had happened, thought old Fish was sleeping. Silencer, I'd guess. Took Leo's roll and his loan cards. My people are getting nervous."
"Tell them to relax. Vince Carboni is here and the Executioner has forty-eight hours to live."
"I've heard that before, Vince. Last night this madman pulls my loans director out of his own house, takes him to the company office, drills him twice, steals I don't know what and blasts the office into junk. He ruined every loan record on the premises. The bastard has cost me over a million already, and he ain't been in town for twenty-four hours."
Carboni removed his jacket, hung it over a chair and sat at the small table.
"Don Canzonari, I want a crew wagon with plenty of firepower inside. You have any automatic submachine guns?"
"One MP-40. I had it out once and it."
Carboni held up his hand and continued.
"I need five hundred rounds and two good men. A driver and one for backup. I want your best gunner. I want him here now."
The Don nodded, made a phone call. When he hung up he made an impatient gesture.
"His name is Rocco. Damn good man."
"I'll need three .45 autos and lots of magazines. After that I'll let you know what happens."
"Right. I've got a room for you here and a hotel room downtown. You can use either or both."
An hour later Carboni had settled into his room in the Canzonari mansion.
He watched a Mexican maid unpack his bags. When she was done he field-stripped and offed the MP-40, a weapon he had not seen for a while.
This one was in good shape; like most of them it probably fired high and to the left. But he would not need to sight it in. He would just spray the target. Once he'd checked out the weapons, had met his wheelman and inspected the car, he returned to the Portland Don.
"Where's Rocco?"
"He got hung up, but he'll be here in half an hour. Now what is the procedure?"
"The Executioner is my job. The minute he shows his nose, I want your people to call you before they take a breath. I want to know where he is. He's slippery, but with a fast-working crew we can track him down. Then he's my meat."
"I've offered five thousand dollars for the man who first spots him and reports in. What about the head money, the million the Commission put up?"
"It's still waiting to, be collected," Carboni said.
"You eligible?"
"Damn right." He shrugged. "And now I find myself waiting for this great gunman, Rocco. When he gets here, keep both him and the driver in the limo. If we get a call, I want them there and the damn engine warmed up."
Canzonari returned to his desk and called his loan operators, commanding them once again to contact him immediately if they even suspected the Executioner was around.
He called in his consigliere, and they discussed the problem of who to put in charge of the loan and prostitution operations.
It was hard to believe that Also Capezio was gone. He'd been slow to develop, but he had a good future. Now they must pick a new lieutenant.
The Don stared beyond his screened porch at the pool and acres of carefully tended lawns. He tried to enjoy the sun while he could. His was a high-risk occupation. He ought to live the good moments for all they were worth. He had lost five good men in the past few hours.
Vince Carboni must be an expert. Anybody the Commissione sent would be top drawer. But was he good enough to take out Mack Bolan? Five men whacked out and not a clue for the cops or his "rectifiers." He phoned Joey to meet them in the study with the computer evaluations on the top men.
Don Canzonari lumbered to his feet and waddled up to his office.
Joey was there when he arrived. The consigliere, Joseph Morello, went to his own office for some files and returned a few minutes later.
Joey grinned at his father and slapped down computer printouts. Joey was twenty-six, a graduate of the University of Oregon at Eugene and a bona-fide computer whiz. He had set up the programs and the hardware for the entire system. Now he could call up facts and figures on any of the family businesses, legitimate or otherwise. He'd even rigged his office so that anyone sitting in a certain chair could be videotaped from one of three cameras.
"Okay, business. Who do we have with leadership qualities who isn't already assigned?" the elder Canzonari asked.
""Leadership"? We aren't exactly overwhelmed with top candidates." Joey picked up a printout and flipped through the pages. "Best man for the job is Frank Genaro. He's been with the family for seven years. Has served well in half a dozen shoot-outs. Wounded once. Called to testify in a court case and said all the right things for the family."
Gino looked at his lawyer, who nodded. "I didn't think of Frank, but he could do well. How much education?"
"He graduated from high school," Joey said, reading from the printout.
"Morello, you talk to him. Tell him he's got to get the whole thing together again quick. We're losing too much in interest payments. And warn him that the Executioner probably knows about every one of our outlets."
The consigliere nodded and left.
Gino Canzonari turned to his son. "Now what about Jupiter? Is everything on schedule?"
Joey examined another printout and smiled. "Looks like it. My latest data show that the ship should be here the morning of the thirteenth, less than three days from now. The night before, we're having a little gathering of about thirty family people from up and down the coast and as far inland as the plains states. They all want to see what we have for sale."
"I don't want that hardware around any longer than necessary."
"Don't worry, dad. I figure none of the illegal stuff will be in our warehouse for more than twenty-four hours. We'll have twenty delivery trucks standing by for loading and immediate dispatch."
"And the Japanese crewmen and officers are all getting double pay for this run?"
"All taken care of. Envelopes with their cash will be in my briefcase, along with a million in cash for the man from Rome who put the shipment together. The balance we pay through our bank by computer, sending the cash to their account in Rome."
"Not a check?"
"No. Electronic banking will make the flow of money impossible to trace."
* * *
Joey left his father's office and went to the second floor, where he opened a double-locked door. He entered his computer room and settled behind his favorite machine. Then he punched up a category he had not used since creating it a year earlier.
"Mack Bolan," he requested. The screen filled with references to items in the computer's memory. He inspected the material. It all had come from a central computer in New York on a series of eight-inch disks.
Joey kept reading, astonished at what this man now threatening the Canzonaris had done in the past.
7
Mack Bolan pulled the Thunderbird to the curb.
He wanted to return to the gun store and look inside, but that was nighttime work.
He made a U-turn and drove back toward the store, circled the block and looked for an alley. There was none, but he found a vacant lot that gave him a distant but good view of the back of the store.
From his vantage point he could see the loading dock and the wide roll-up door. Then he slid down in the seat, stretched out his legs and played a waiting game. A pickup pulled up to the dock, loaded with two crates. Bolan figured they could be legitimate goods bound for a gun club or a shooting range. The driver did not enter the building.
There was a small hut attached to the warehouse, where a man filled out papers and serviced clients.
One more truck used the dock in the next hour.
Bolan drove to a nearby phone booth and tried Johnny's room at the hotel. There was no answer. He did not leave a message, but returned to the vacant lot.
Big signs at the retail gun store listed its hours as eight to five, and Bolan hoped that covered the warehouse section. At 5:15 P.M., he locked the Thunderbird and walked through the deserted lot, across a dirt track and toward the rear of Northwest Guns, Inc.
Fifty feet from the back door he paused behind some brush. A blacktop circled the building and became a parking lot, probably for employees and delivery trucks. No rigs were in the lot.
Clouds had been darkening overhead all day, and as he moved forward again, rain came down in a steady drizzle. Bolan ran for the small shed by the loading dock and checked the hut. Empty.
He tried the small door beside the roll-up: locked. There were no windows.
He dug out his lock picks and worked over the tumblers for a minute. Then he tried it and the latch slipped free. The Executioner eased the door open slowly. It was dark inside. He slid in, turning the knob on the night latch so the lock engaged as he closed the door.
He took out his pencil flash and flicked it on.
He was in a warehouse with twelve-foot shelves only partly filled.
He checked the first series of shelves and found a box with four Uzi submachine guns. They were fully automatic, with overhung bolts and 32-round magazines.
The next rack showed a pair of familiar M-16 rifles. They were fully automatic, not the semiautos civilians can legally own.
So the store was a front; the big money was in the back shop, where the Mafia stored illegal arms it could sell to whoever had cash to buy them.
Bolan heard a door creak open, and he dodged behind a stack of crates just as a pair of overhead floodlights came on. It was not the full set of lights, for which Bolan was thankful. Crouching low, he saw a night watchman with a key box in his belt. Bolan relaxed. The guard was making his rounds.
The watchman strolled to both sides of the dimly lit warehouse and evidently used keys there, then returned to the door through which he had entered. He extinguished the fights and continued into another section of the building.
The Executioner had seen what he wanted to.
He picked up one of the Uzis, put four loaded 32-round magazines inside his shirt and headed for the back door. He might as well restock his own arsenal while he was there. The nightstalker slid out the rear door, heard the lock snap into place and walked in the rain to his Thunderbird. There was no one around to observe the drenched figure in the twilight.
It was time to chat with Lieutenant Dunbar about the arms shipment. As one of the Law Enforcement Agencies that received briefings, the PPD might have some late information to share. Bolan stopped at a phone booth in a filling station and called Dunbar.
The detective answered.
Bolan did not identify himself, just asked a question.
"What do you know about a large shipment of illegal weapons headed for the West Coast right now?"
Dunbar knew the voice. "Nothing. Are the arms coming in here?"
"What I heard. Don't your people read their LEA notices?"
"I never see them."
Mack hung up, suddenly tired. He drove to his hotel on the west side, flopped on the bed and did not hear the phone when it rang four times about midnight.
Council of Kings te-79 Page 3