“I better be.”
“Huh?”
“I said, I better be. There’s a hundred grand on your head, Mack. Big guy back there offered to cut me in.”
“Yeah?”
A momentary silence; then: “Yeah. A hundred grand. They sure must love you.”
“You wouldn’t finger me for the Mafia, Zit,” Bolan observed quietly. “Not for money. For fun, maybe, yeah—but not for money.”
“It’d be a hell of a game, wouldn’t it?” Zitka mused.
“What would?”
“If I decided to try collecting that hundred grand. I wonder which one of us would wind up dead.”
“You would,” Bolan replied unemotionally.
“Think so?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to kill you, Zit. But I would. If I had to.”
“I guess you would. It’d still be a hell of a game.”
“I guess so.”
Zitka chuckled merrily. “A real grand slammer. Don’t take me serious, Mack.”
“If you’re looking for some fun—the odds are a lot farther out on my side. Don’t even count the cops. They’re gentlemen. Just count the junkies, the punks, hoods, goons, and gunsels, the amateurs and the pro’s and just any guy with a sudden hungering for a large chunk of greens. Back them up with the Mafia, the best-organized crime syndicate in the world, and every contractor in the business. There’s odds, Zit. If it’s fun you want …”
“I said don’t take me serious,” Zitka protested. “Hell, I had my chance to throw in with them, and I turned ’em down flat.”
“We work good together, Zit.”
Zitka sighed. “Let’s go somewhere and get a drink.”
“Sorry. Bars are off-limits to me now, Zit. One little rhubarb and I’m behind bars. How about some coffee?”
“Naw. Let’s just drive and talk. I think we got something to talk out.”
“Okay.”
“What’s your plans?”
“I thought I’d look up Jim Brantzen.”
“Doc Brantzen?”
“Yeah. He’s out now and in civilian practice. Cosmetic surgery, he calls it. Remember that raid at Dak To? He’s always figured he owes me something for that. I figure maybe I’ll see if he still feels that way.”
“Gonna get your face changed, eh?”
Bolan grinned. “I hate to part with it, but I guess it’s the only thing to do. I can’t go on jumping at every shadow that rears up in my path.”
“So you’re running from the Mafia.”
“I didn’t say that. I just need a camouflage job, that’s all. I’m not calling off the war.”
Zitka sighed again. “In that case, then—are enlistments open?”
Bolan threw him a fast scrutiny. “You want to join up?”
“I guess I already have.”
“Yeah. I guess you have. You’ll be on their list now for sure. For damn sure.”
“I been thinking, too,” Zitka announced.
“About what?”
“You figure the Mafia is in a fat-cat position around here?”
“I figure that.”
“You figure I could be of any use to you?”
Bolan snickered. “Whispering Death Zitka? Hey, buddy, I’ve been there, remember? Quang So, Hwa Tring, Chak Dong—yeah, I figure you could be of some use.”
“You need some reinforcements, Mack.”
“Yeah, I’ll buy that.”
“Well, I been thinking. Lot of guys come back from Vietnam and find it hard blending back into the tedium of civilian life. Like me. And like Boom-Boom Hoffower.”
Bolan raised his eyebrows and flashed a sidewise glance at his companion. “You’ve been in touch with Boom-Boom?”
“Yeah, he has a pad out in Laurel Canyon, dying of boredom. His wife run off with some actor, and he didn’t even get excited about that. Best damn demolition man this side of the China Sea, Mack—just sitting around bored to death.”
“Are you saying I could get some troops like Boom-Boom to join my war?” Bolan asked quietly.
“If you made it interesting enough.”
“Mercenaries,” Bolan said.
“Sure. Why not? You’re fighting a bunch of mercenaries, aren’t you? Fight fire with fire. I imagine you could figure some way to make this war profitable. How much did you pay for this little bomb?”
“It can be profitable,” Bolan assured him. “The Mafia transacts a lot of cash business. There’s always a pile of green wherever they may be. I’ve had my hands in it.”
“Well, there you are,” Zitka said, sighing. “Me, I’d do it just for the hell of it. But like any game, it’s more interesting with some cash on the table. And think of what a troop of jungle professionals could add to your odds, Mack. I bet we could get—”
“Okay, I’m thinking about it,” Bolan snapped. “Be quiet now and let me think.”
“So think,” Zitka growled.
Bolan smiled and drove on in silence. They passed through Manhattan Beach and continued on at a leisurely pace. Zitka sighed several times and drummed his fingers on the seat. Bolan was coming to a fateful decision. Presently he lit a cigarette, slowly exhaled the smoke, and said, “Okay.”
“Okay what?” Zitka sniffed.
“Ten of us. That’s all. Tight, effective, mobile—and every man a specialist. At least two more sharpshooters. Two scouts, as good as you. Boom-Boom or an equal. Two heavy-weapons men. A good technician. That’s it.”
“Ten isn’t very many,” Zitka complained.
“It’s enough. I don’t want a damn army. A squad. A death squad, that’s it. It gets too big, it gets unmanageable. I rule. I say shit, they squat and ask what color. I say when to hit, what to hit, how to hit.”
“Has to be that way.”
Bolan nodded his head soberly. “First man steps out of line or turns renegade gets shot on the spot. They’ll have to understand that. We live under combat rules at all times.”
“It’ll work,” Zitka said. “They’ll accept that.”
“They’ll have to, or it’s no game, Zit. And they’ll have to understand they’ll be playing long odds—mighty long odds. It will be a death game, Zit.”
“That’s the only kind would be worthwhile for the kind of guys I’m thinking of.” He showed Bolan a faint smile. “I been playing the death game most of my adult life. Haven’t you?”
Bolan nodded curtly. “The name of the game will be Hit the Mafia. We’ll hit them so fast, so often, and from so many directions they’ll think hell fell in on them. We steal ’em blind, see. We kill and we terrorize and we take every goddamned thing they have—and then we’ll see how powerful and well organized they are.”
Zitka shot his friend an appraising stare. A nerve ticked in his cheek, and a small thrill chased down his spine. It seemed ridiculous, but he felt a flicker of pity for the Mafia. He had worked with The Executioner before, many times, in the jungles of Vietnam. Now the jungles were moving to Mafialand.
“Well, what do you say?” Bolan asked tersely.
“I say, on to the games, James,” Zitka replied quietly. “Turn this bomb around. I’ll show you how to get to Laurel Canyon.”
Bolan swung into a roadside park and back onto the highway, reversing his direction. His foot grew heavy on the accelerator. “The game is on,” he murmured.
Chapter Two
THE DEATH SQUAD
Bill (Boom-Boom) Hoffower, the demolitions expert, was pulled away from a five-day drunk, sobered up, and recruited with a two-minute pitch. The twenty-six-year-old ex-Quaker from Pennsylvania, a blond and blue-eyed six footer, found the proposition immediately intriguing. He had only slightly known Bolan in Vietnam and had heard nothing whatever of The Executioner’s recent exploits in the East. The Mafia he had always regarded as an American fantasy (“You telling me there really is a Mafia?”). His decision to join the death squad had nothing to do with friendship or idealism. Until recently he had been employed by an oil company in offshore drill
ing operations. He had deserted the job shortly after his wife deserted him and had not worked “for a couple of months.”
Hoffower demonstrated to Bolan his expertise with explosives by “disarming” his own home. “The mortgage people are coming out Tuesday to take it back,” he confided. “I got it rigged to blow it up in their goddamn faces.”
Bolan was impressed with Hoffower’s knowhow and was, of course, cognizant of the demolition expert’s Vietnam reputation. Not only did he possess a golden touch with explosives, but he had also proved himself as a coolly capable combat infantryman. Hoffower was left sober, a thousand dollars wealthier, and with “forty-hours, delay in reporting” to settle his personal affairs.
Tom (Bloodbrother) Loudelk was recruited by telephone from the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana. He had worked with both Bolan and Zitka in various military operations, and he agreed to the proposition with only the sketchiest of information, even before he was told of the thousand-dollar “enlistment bonus.” He promised to be in Los Angeles “as soon as I can sell three cows and clean the manure outta my fingernails.”
Loudelk had been released to the dubious joys of the reservation only two months earlier. He had been the most fantastically effective advance scout in Bolan’s memory, surpassing even Zitka in nerveless efficiency. In Vietnam Loudelk had personally accounted for sixty-seven enemy dead, yet had fired not a single shot. He was an expert with a knife and had developed to a fine art the technique of snapping a human neck with one swift movement of bare hands.
They found Angelo (Chopper) Fontenelli in a topless pizza parlor and bar in Santa Monica, where he had been employed as a combination doorman, bouncer, and maitre d’. The twenty-four-year-old native of New Jersey, though only slightly more than five and a half feet tall, was not often a party to casual disputes. Powerfully built from the ground up, with mammoth chest and shoulders, thick and squat, the tough little Italian ranked high in Bolan’s respect.
Chopper was so called because of his expertise with heavy automatic weapons. One year earlier he had covered the withdrawal after one of Bolan’s sniping missions, single handedly plugging a battalion-strength pursuit by the enemy for nearly an hour before being reinforced by helicopter gunships. He listened attentively to the recruiting pitch, wet his lips nervously each time the word “Mafia” was spoken, then accepted the stack of crisp twenties from Bolan with the simple comment: “Jesus—never thought it could happen, but I’m so sick o’ titties I could puke.”
Fontenelli came into the Death Squad complete with his own weaponry: a fifty-caliber water-cooled machine gun; one of the new gatling-type superguns salvaged from a crashed Magic Dragon gunship; and a complete arsenal of miscellaneous light automatics representing the best from both sides of the Vietnam conflict. How he had acquired this private collection and transported it to the United States was Fontenelli’s own secret; he pointedly avoided any discussion of the subject but gladly “rented” his arsenal to the Death Squad.
Juan (Flower Child) Andromede was rehabilitated from a reality cult in the North Hollywood hills where he had become known as “Fra Juanito” eleven short months after his recognition as “the Butcher of Tanh Vin.” Also a heavy-weapons man, Andromede was a poetry-spouting mass-death expert who used a field mortar like a six-gun. He was also highly proficient with various other types of light artillery and had been widely respected in the delta for his uncanny ability to operate independently of spotters and other fire-control techniques. An unusual product of New York’s ghettos, the mild-mannered Puerto Rican signaled his acceptance of Bolan’s recruiting efforts with the quiet statement: “Only the dead can accept heaven. Hell is for the living. A thousand bills advance money, eh? Okay. I accept hell.”
Andromede was twenty-three, lightly built, deceptively delicate appearing. He brought out the mother instinct in women and inspired middle-aged men to call him “son.” He verbally deplored violence, wore peace beads day and night, and stoutly denied that he had ever killed. “I didn’t kill those people I liberated them. Death is the liberation of the entity.” In Vietnam, he had “liberated” several hundred entities.
Herman (Gadgets) Schwarz was plucked from a technical school on the east side of Los Angeles, where he had been taking a course designed to equip him with an FCC license in radio electronics. Schwarz was one of those rare individuals who know more instinctively than their instructors know deliberately. He strongly resented living in a world that was more impressed by academic exercises than by demonstrated ability. “No license, no job,” had been the message from his society, so Schwarz had reluctantly submitted to the indignities of classroom formality. After five months of “esoteric nonsense,” the electronics genius was altogether ready for Bolan’s proposition. He had been a counterintelligence advisor in Vietnam and had once “bugged” a VC command bunker to gain intelligence from a Bolan-Zitka sniper-team operation. Bolan had been deeply impressed by Schwarz’s cool and painstaking methodology and was particularly elated to number him in the Death Squad. Once, according to official record, Schwarz had lain for six days in high grass at the edge of a VC stronghold, gathering intelligence with a directional microphone and a pocket recorder. Bolan regarded him as a formidable weapon in his war against the Mafia.
Jim (Gunsmoke) Harrington was flushed from a suburban Los Angeles amusement park, where he was employed as a “gunfighter.” One of the few men to Bolan’s knowledge who had been allowed to carry personal weapons into battle, Harrington had brought the image of the old West into the firefights of Vietnam, with two six-guns worn in quick-draw fashion. It had not been all image—his Colts were equipped with specially designed hair triggers. This youngster from an Idaho sheep ranch could draw both guns and hit a fast-moving target at a hundred feet more quickly than most men could think about it. He had been Bolan’s flank man on a score of sniping missions and had repeatedly demonstrated his value in the sudden eyeball encounters with the enemy that were so common on the deep-penetration strikes. With .44-caliber ammunition worse than scarce in the combat theater, Bolan had endeared himself to Harrington by helping him set up a makeshift armory in which he could make his own ammo.
Harrington was also a deadly sharpshooter with a rifle, preferring the light semiautomatic carbine, and had proved especially effective in a quick-firing, running fight.
For fourteen months he had staged sixteen “gunfights” daily, six days per week, at the amusement park. He had been fully and anxiously aware of the executioner’s trouble at Pittsfield. Bolan had no opportunity whatever to deliver his offer of “employment.” Harrington recognized him immediately, even through the comouflage of bleached hair and dark glasses. “Thank God,” the twenty-two-year-old ex-sheepherder declared happily. “I thought you’d never get here. You need my gun, don’t you? Thank God. Come on, let’s get outta this frigged-up funnyland. I been firing blanks for fourteen months. Thank God—thank God you’re here!”
Mark (Deadeye) Washington certainly had no integrated blood in his veins, unless it was a fusion of the darkest African tribes. He was the blackest black man Bolan had ever known—and certainly the most dangerous. Washington’s specialty was the big high-powered distance rifle with the twenty-power sniperscope. Like Bolan, he had been a sniper specialist. Bolan had only once witnessed Washington’s craft—Mark had dropped three running targets from five hundred yards out, and the feat ruled out any possibility of luck or chance. Bolan knew that one does not luck onto three scurrying men a third of a mile away; once was enough to assure Deadeye Washington a chunk of Bolan’s respect.
The big Negro came from a unpainted three-room shack on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast—and it had not been necessary to draft Mark Washington from the environment. He had joined the army on his eighteenth birthday, several weeks before his scheduled graduation from the dismal little Negro high school, and he had never gone back—not even to pick up his diploma. He had voluntarily extended his duty tour twice, for a total of thirty-three months of combat duty. Then he’
d decided to come home and find out what the Black Power business was all about. Less than five weeks later, The Executioner traced him to a one-room echo of Mississippi in a place called Watts. Bolan quietly stated his proposition, and again no draft was necessary. Mark Washington had always known what “black power” was. It was the same as any other kind of human power. It was, simply, manhood. Manhood’s highest expression, for Mark Washington, had been found with a big gun and a twenty-power scope.
Rosario Blancanales had started his Vietnam adventure as a member of the special forces. He had understood the Vietnamese, perhaps simply because he’d wanted to understand them, and he had learned their language and their ways. He had proved himself highly effective in the pacification program, was known throughout the delta as, simply, Politician, and had been an invaluable guide on several of Bolan’s penetration missions. He was a pretty fair medic and a gifted mechanic, and he could hold his own in a firefight.
Bolan wanted Blancanales primarily because of the man’s chameleonlike ability to blend into any environment. He respected the thirty-four-year-old’s natural gift for organization and administration, and he had imagined that some day the Blancanales charm would find an outlet in U.S. politics. He found him, instead, working as an orderly in a veterans’ hospital.
“You caught me just in time,” Blancanales told Bolan. “I was going down tomorrow to reenlist.” The Politician had found an environment he could not blend into. He leaped at Bolan’s offer of a new one.
Blancanales took over the remains of Bolan’s “purse,” some several thousand dollars remaining from the spoils of the Pittsfield battle, and attended to the immediate problems of logistics support. He rented a large and comfortable beach house in a lonely area north of Santa Monica and stocked it with foodstuffs and other necessities. The “first formation” of the Death Squad was accomplished on the afternoon of September 24, with all members reporting into the beachside “base camp.” Blancanales had already seen to billeting assignments. Schwarz immediately set about developing an electronic-security system. Hoffower undertook a terrain inspection, with an eye to the emplacement of personnel mines and other defensive devices. Zitka and Loudelk began a thorough recon of the entire area, toward the establishment of forward defense positions. Harrington and Andromede began work on the armory. Fontenelli and Washington repaired to the beach to set up a target range in the shadow of the cliffs. Bolan and Blancanales went to San Bernardino to ferret out a contact for the procurement of arms and munitions.
Death Squad Page 2