The lakeshore boundary was nearly as impenetrable, but the defenses here were almost purely human. By day and by night, armed sentries in yachting outfits prowled the boat basin and walked the seawall above the artificial beach. A secondary defense line consisting of two-man patrols walked the manicured grounds from sunset to sunrise, and there were other, less obvious, human emplacements scattered about those sprawling grounds.
There were small watchtowers on the roof of the building, as well as ominous evidence of fortifications inside.
Bolan had estimated the standing force that protected this hardsite at about eighty men, with most of that number going into the outside defenses. Except in emergency situations, the normal duty-watch consisted of twenty-five to thirty men under arms. A house crew of perhaps ten men took care of the housekeeping and doubled as inside guards. Apparently, lower echelon yardmen handled the routine chores of grounds maintenance in conjunction with the security duties. There were no “soft” employees at this joint. It was a hardsite, pure and simple.
The security boss was an old hood who went by the name of Billy Castelano—real name Reggio Caccimomorese—and whose official title was manager of the “club.” Castelano had actually run a nightclub once, fronting it for a ganglord who dealt in murder by wholesale contract. A Senate subcommittee hearing in the fifties linked Castelano with more than fifty “cement contract” executions. He served a brief term in a federal reformatory for perjury and contempt of Congress, and had maintained a low underworld profile since his release.
Second in command was an ex-GI who used the name Michael Morris, nickname Mickey Mouse, real name Michael Tantocci. He’d been an MP in Germany when he was offered a “convenience of the government” discharge. This was in the early sixties, and it was a direct outgrowth of an embarrassing investigation by West German police that turned up inconclusive evidence that Tantocci was a ringleader in black market, prostitution, and extortion activities in the area. Tantocci copped a plea with the military and settled for a discharge without dishonor. He’d had no difficulty whatever adjusting to civilian life under the sponsorship of an old friend of the family, one Charles (Charley Fever) Favorini, the number one hitman of the Detroit mob. It was Charley Fever himself who had given Tantocci his mob name, Michael Morris, and further dubbed him “Mickey Mouse”—this latter due, probably, to the imaginative manner in which his fledgling assistant went about his murder contracts. At the peak of his career under Charley Fever, Mickey Morris was an acknowledged master of “freaky accidental” deaths. He was rotated to garrison duty at the yacht club when one of his “accidents” sent a lieutenant under Sal Vincenti plummeting to his undesired death in a runaway elevator that also carried four totally uninvolved passengers but none of the “transgressors” who had been marked for death.
Another crew chief at SCYC was Joseph Venuchi, a swinging ex-navy bosun’s mate who now fancied himself as commodore of the yacht club—a title that he bore officially—but that, translated, actually meant he was responsible for the security of incoming shipments via water. Such shipments included contraband, narcotics, illegal aliens, bashful visiting VIPs, and the whole wide range of smuggled commodities. Venuchi’s “fleet” ranged far north into Lakes Huron and Superior as well as into the easternmost reaches of Lakes Erie, Ontario, and beyond, via the St. Lawrence Seaway. He had once escorted a ranking Sicilian visitor from Montreal to Detroit and back. A casual duty of “Venuchi’s navy” was to perform deep-water burials of “hot” bodies, usually in solid cement coffins.
Between Venuchi and Mickey Morris, they commanded the bulk of the hard forces that were permanently assigned to the hardsite. The success of Bolan’s penetration attempt was keyed directly to his ability to neutralize a large chunk of that hard force, to send them off into a wild chase that would leave the coastal defenses in a weakened condition.
He had succeeded in this—for the moment, at least.
The problem now was to breach that weakened defense line, to penetrate the inpenetrable security of that very important mob headquarters.
It was a human problem, man against man—with all the odds riding on the defense.
But Mack Bolan was a patient warrior.
He lay suspended for an interval outside of counted time in the purgatory of Lake St. Clair, a half-submerged floater in a wetsuit at the border of hell, moving only as the waters nudged him, finally rolling into the rocks and grasses as a natural extension of the restless waves.
There he became a black rock of the night on an eroding artificial beach, while internal systems found rest, and combat senses flared into that hostile environment to assimilate the situation there.
A sentry with a suicidal need for nicotine was squatting atop the seawall about midway between the boat basin and Bolan’s position—a distance of about fifty yards. He was cupping the cigarette with both hands, but sparks flew into the wind with each drag. Another guy was pacing back and forth along the pier, apparently not looking for anything but merely waiting impatiently—for the returning cruiser, perhaps.
A pair of patrolling sentries paused within ten yards of the human rock, while one of the hardmen relieved his bladder against a tree, then they continued silently upon their appointed rounds.
There were sounds up beyond the house and an occasional flare of lights at the corner of the building—vehicles in motion.
Far away and nearly buried in the silence of the night, a siren was wailing, gradually becoming louder, approaching from the south—evidently along Lake Shore Drive.
Bolan’s numbers were rapidly falling together.
He made his move in a silent scramble for vegetative cover, coming to rest once again in a little hedgerow several yards beyond the waterline, where he opened the flotation bag and began rigging for close combat.
The “head weapon”—an autoloading .44 magnum—went about his waist on military web. The “quiet piece”—a Beretta Brigadier loading 9mm Parabellum hi-shockers—went beneath the left arm in a shoulder-chest rig. He called this weapon “the Belle” and had long ago equipped her with a specially engineered sound suppressor, of Bolan’s own design, which muted its normally explosive report to a rustling sigh.
Utility belts bearing a miscellany of explosives and other items of survival came clipped to the rear of the automag’s waistbelt. He fed these across shoulders and chest in a diagonal crossing arrangement and anchored them just above each hip, then patted each of the various items in a mental inventory that also amounted to a touch-orientation drill. In a moment of combat crisis, a soldier who intended to survive did not fumble about for his weapons—his hands found them by conditioned reflex and used them in the same frame of consciousness.
Finally he touched up the black cosmetic on hands and face and slipped on a pair of dry black sneakers. The flotation bag, empty now except for the Weatherby, went into the bushes, and the Executioner moved silently onto the hellgrounds—a flitting shadow of the night.
He made it halfway to the house before the first obstacle presented itself. A sentry with a light machine pistol suspended across his waist from a neckstrap was standing stiffly with one shoulder against a tree. He was gazing toward the lake, both hands thrust into his pockets—a melancholy figure contemplating the uncertainties of the night.
Bolan could not risk a bypass.
He moved quietly in behind the sentry and buried a nylon garrote in the soft flesh of the guy’s throat, pinning the body to the tree with his own and holding it there until the frantic but totally hopeless struggle spent itself and the body sagged into dead weight. Not a sound had marred the eerie silence of that encounter. He wedged a lifeless arm into a convenient fork of the tree and left the body there, semierect and passably lifelike, except under close inspection.
A murmuring of voices cautioned him as he approached the southeast corner of the building. He went in through the flower beds and knelt there beside a budding bush in a sense-flaring recon.
There was much bustling activi
ty at the rear. Car doors were slamming, engines idling and revving, here and there voices raised in hurried farewells.
No lights were showing now from the upper level of the house, but the lower level was ablaze with light.
A large man in well-tailored threads stood in a shaft of light on a flagstoned walkway at the side, his back to Bolan. Pivoted slightly to one side in three-quarter profile was the skinny presence of Billy Castelano. The house boss was wearing white slacks and a polo shirt, no coat. A snub-nosed pistol rode in fast-break leather, shoulder-suspended over the left hip. He held a small two-way radio and was apparently relaying instructions from the big man to some remote post on the defense perimeter.
The big guy turned suddenly to gaze straight back toward Bolan. It was Charley Fever, and Bolan felt his own hackles rise. He froze and stopped breathing. The big torpedo turned away and went on with whatever he’d been telling Castelano.
Bolan abandoned that spot to move in closer to the two men.
The radio conversation had to do with the departure of a caravan of vehicles that was forming along the “quiet exit” road. As Bolan got it, they were making a big deal of what should have been a routine operation. But apparently Charley Fever had a scent of something ominous overhanging that night, and he was taking no chances with his VIP charges. He was sending them out under convoy, running fast and without lights until they were well clear of the estate. A special force was being sent beyond the north wall to protect that withdrawal and to assure the security in that sector during the time that the gate was open.
Bolan had to give the guys credit. They ran a tight operation. Somehow he had to loosen it up.
He was not after their VIP friends, not this time.
He could take them later if need be, one at a time, at his own pace.
Bolan wanted their damned hardsite. He meant to level the joint, reduce it to rubble, show them what real warfare could be, get them running scared until they were falling all over each other and bringing their own individual houses down in the panic. He wanted to see shockwaves traveling the entire length of this Detroit-based empire, which stretched around the world in every direction and into every country on the globe—an empire that controlled industries, international banks, and business cartels, multinational corporations, and even the politics of small nations. This Detroit mob was a festering sore in every vital organ of mankind. They were motivated by nothing but untempered greed and a psychotic lusting for power over other men’s lives.
No, Bolan did not want their damn VIP “friends.” But … as long as they were here, he might as well use them to whatever advantage he could.
The police sirens had become a steady wail in the night and were now very close.
It was now or never.
Bolan chose now.
He freed a hi-explosive grenade from the utility belt, armed it, and sent it lofting in a loose arc toward the roof of the joint, then immediately grabbed another and baseballed it into the vehicle area.
The transistor radio in Castelano’s custody was just announcing the news from the main gate that “the cops are here. What do we …?”
Fire and thunder from the roof eclipsed that report. Bloodcurdling screams came down immediately, and another voice from that sector yelled, “Attack! Attack!”
Castelano and Charley Fever were a pair of statues cast in frozen surprise. Another explosion, this one at ground level, unstuck their reflexes and sent them scrambling toward the front of the house.
Charley Fever gave the house boss a shove in the opposite direction and yelled at him to “Get that caravan moving!”
That ungentle shove sent the skinny house boss teetering practically into Mack Bolan’s arms, as the other man disappeared into the shadows beside the house.
The bulbous muzzle of a black Beretta, applied directly between the brows, straightened the little man upright, and a steely arm pulled him into the darkness of the rose garden.
A quiet voice of cold precision advised the house boss, “You’ve got ten seconds to convince me you love life.”
Castelano gasped, “God!—what!—who …?”
“Close that escape gate. Five seconds to live, Billy.”
Perhaps Castelano had seen too much friendly blood for one night. Certainly the memory of it was etched into his awareness of the situation, and the screams from the roof could have been having their effect, also. Or perhaps he was simply a man who had become accustomed to taking orders and there was no logical alternative to the demands of the situation. Whatever his thought processes, the voice was controlled and convincing as he thumbed-on the transmitter and passed the word: “Alert countermand! Seal the walls! Nobody leaves!”
He received an excited “Ten four” from both gates, then turned a wavering smile to the big, cold guy in black. “Okay,” he said calmly. “So what does that buy me?”
“A headache,” Bolan replied and conked him with the butt of the Beretta. The little guy crumpled with a grunting sigh. The Executioner dropped a marksman’s medal onto his chest, scooped up the radio, then moved swiftly into the tumultuous confusion of the moment.
He’d penetrated.
The rest was in the hands of the universe.
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About the Author
Don Pendleton (1927–1995) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean War. His first short story was published in 1957, but it was not until 1967, at the age of forty, that he left his career as an aerospace engineer and turned to writing full time. After producing a number of science fiction and mystery novels, in 1969 Pendleton launched his first book in the Executioner saga: War Against the Mafia. The series, starring Vietnam veteran Mack Bolan, was so successful that it inspired a new American literary genre, and Pendleton became known as the father of action-adventure.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author᾿s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1974 by Pinnacle Books, Inc.
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8570-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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