The boss of Nashville was coming around, again. Not exactly jovial—but talkative, anyway. “You’re doing it,” Bolan assured him. “I wouldn’t worry. She’s a class lady. She’ll pick up.”
“Oh sure.”
“You can’t afford to risk a misstep, now.”
“Hell no. I risk nothing.”
Bolan could not nudge it beyond that. He, too, could not afford a misstep; he could not openly pry into the secrets of that barn.
Something else had become nudged loose during the exchange, though. The Mafia boss had relaxed somewhat and he seemed to be rethinking his problem with Crazy Gordy Mazzarelli.
“You think I should try drawing Gordy out, eh?”
“Hey, Nick, forget it. I didn’t come to tell you how to—”
“No, no, come off that. You’re the troubleshooter. How would you handle it?”
Bolan sighed and took a couple more steps toward the barn. He very deliberately produced a cigarillo and lit it while shaded eyes probed the secrets of that interior. Then he turned back to Copa and told him, “I wouldn’t walk straight up and hit him on the mouth, Nick. That could be a costly piece of satisfaction. I’d cool it, and watch him, and wait my chance.”
That other voice was barely audible as it replied, “Do it, then.”
Bolan shifted his gaze about fifteen degrees to the right as he asked just as quietly, “Did I hear your fingers snap, Nick?”
“You did.”
They both knew the meaning of that. The troubleshooter had just received a license to hunt from the Lord of the Hills.
Bolan-Omega said, “You understand—once I start, there’s no calling it back.”
Copa sighed and said, “Just do what you have to do to save the investment. But do it quietly.”
Bolan glanced at his watch as the distant sound of copter blades stole into the moment. Time was up. Grimaldi was nearby.
He casually put a hand into his coatpocket and punched the button on the microradio as he told his host, “My chopper is coming. It’s time to go. But I’ll be around. You’ll give Gordy my message?”
Copa’s lips twisted into a wry smile, but the eyes did not know it. “Cheese for the rat, huh?”
Bolan grinned soberly. “You said that; I didn’t.”
“Yeah but you’ve been working on me to say it ever since you got here. Don’t deny it.”
Bolan-Omega did not deny it. He said, “It’s your territory, Nick.”
“But it’s your game,” Copa said, still smiling wryly.
Bolan hoped that was true.
Yeah. He certainly hoped that it was.
CHAPTER 12
THE GAMESMEN
Grimaldi’s eyes were looking a bit wild as Bolan climbed aboard and said, “Hit it.”
They hit it, moving up and away before Bolan was fully settled into the seat. He put on the headset and told his pilot, “Perfect timing, Jack.”
Grimaldi showed him a shaking hand and said, “I never get used to this.”
“Neither do I,” Bolan admitted.
“How’d it go?”
“Okay, I think. Do we have ground communications?”
“Yeah. I was just talking to them. Switch your headset over to the lefthand position.”
“Got it. Can you hear me?”
“Right. Go ahead. You’re on.”
“Rover, do you read Skyman?”
Tommy Anders’ delighted tones bounced back through the earphone. “Five by, guy. Do it.”
“He bought it. Are you in position?”
“In place and waiting, old buddy. Is the game the same?”
“No changes at this time, Rover. But play it loose.”
“I read the game the same and we play it loose. We gone, bye bye.”
Bolan switched the headset back to intercome and asked Grimaldi, “Did you hear it?”
“I heard it,” the pilot tensely replied. “So now what?”
“So now we wait and watch and hope,” Bolan told him.
“The story of life,” Grimaldi replied, sighing.
Exactly. That was exactly what it was.
“He didn’t stay long,” Mazzarelli nervously observed.
“Not that guy,” Copa said. “He’s not here to fart around. Jeez, he’s an impressive son of a bitch.”
“What, uh, what’s it all about, Nick?”
“Damned if I know yet. Makes no sense to me. You sure you told me all you know about that Leonetti kid?”
“God is my witness, Nick. So what’d the guy say?”
“About what?”
“About anything. Exactly what did he want?”
“Damned if I know for sure. Those guys play it close to the chest. But he’s going to be around awhile, Gordy. I want you to treat him right. That means stay out of his way.”
“If that’s what you want, sure.”
“That’s what I want.”
“What’s he looking for? What does Leonetti have to do with it?”
“I don’t know for sure. He says Leonetti is Clemenza’s man. But you know how these guys are. They don’t say much. But I think he was sent by the sponsors.”
“What made you think that?”
“Well, he’s got a Full House.”
“Yeh, but that comes from …” Mazzarelli nervously lit a cigarette. “I guess I don’t understand how those—who sends those guys? I mean, how are they sent?”
“Hell, Gordy, I could send them.”
“You could?”
“Sure. A year ago, no. Today, yeah. I just call the headshed and tell ’em I need someone. Whatever they send is whatever fits the problem. And whatever fits the sender. Now, see, I don’t think I could draw a Full House, though. I mean, after all, let’s be men, my horsepower isn’t that high yet. Get me?”
“Okay, sure, I get that. You’re saying a Full House means a lot of horsepower sent it.”
“You got it.”
“And you think he was sent by the sponsors?”
“That’s what I think, yeah. Why? Does that make you nervous?”
Mazzarelli sent out a smoke signal from his lungs as he replied, “A little, yeah. I don’t like this kind of stuff behind my back. Neither should you.”
“You want to call the sponsors and put in a complaint, Gordy?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying I don’t like it.”
“Why not? If we’re clean, what’s to worry? Clemenza took a fall. Okay. That’s not my fault. It isn’t even my worry. I didn’t set this thing up. And I’m not going to fall with it. But now of course if the sponsors think there’s a way to pull it out, then sure, that’s okay with me. I got money in this thing, too. If Omega can pull it out, who the hell cares who sent him?”
“Is that what he’s here for?”
“What did I say?”
“You said to pull it out. How the hell can he pull it out?”
“I already said more than I meant to say,” Copa growled. “Forget I said anything. You reading me, Gordy? Forget it.”
“Okay, okay,” Mazzarelli replied, backing off somewhat. “But I still think …”
“Who do you think, Gordy?”
“I think someone should keep an eye on that hotass. We all know what those guys tried to pull off under old man Marinello. I wouldn’t trust them any farther than I can shoot, Nick. I mean that. Listen, something’s funny in town already. Something’s out of whack. While you were out jawing with that guy, I spent my time checking the action in town. Something’s screwy. Certain people are suddenly nowhere. People are—”
“Certain people like who?”
“Certain people like Dolly Clark and Ray Oxley and Jess Higgins. Phones don’t answer, or phones are busy or you get dumb answers. I don’t like it. I think this guy is already taking a big walk through our territory, Nick. And I don’t like it—no, I don’t like it.”
“You think you ought to be in town?”
“I sure do. I at least want to know what the guy is doing.”
Copa turned away to be sure he didn’t tip his hand with an irrepressible smile. He said, “Okay, Gordy. You go on in and safe your town. But you stay out of Omega’s way.”
The guy didn’t even bother to thank him, or to acknowledge the okay—or even to say so long. He just got the hell out of there, moving fast, consumed by the need to protect his own little empire. And the boss of Nashville had to wonder as to the extent of the empire Crazy Gordy had already carved out for himself.
Yeah. The lord of any realm would necessarily wonder about such things. And he would move very quickly, too, to protect his own.
Copa gave Mazzarelli a couple of minutes to get clear before he punched the desk intercom to start his own move.
“Get the cars ready,” he instructed. “We’re going to town.”
Damn right they were going to town.
Omega had been a hundred percent right. And that fucking Mazzarelli was soon going to be 100 percent dead.
“The quail is on the wing, Skyman.”
“How many away?”
“We count two, coming out fast. Five to the flock.”
Which meant, Bolan thought, two vehicles each bearing five men. Mazzarelli with two full crews of headhunters, if the thing was working.
“You’ve wired them?”
“They’re wired.”
“Look for more. And give me a quick hit when they show.”
“Ten-four.”
Bolan explained to Grimaldi: “They’ll all be flying before long. I hope. Hang loose, Jack. I may decide to call an audible.”
The pilot replied, “Right. What’d you find in there?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why the possible audible.”
“Whatever that means,” Grimaldi sighed.
“You still want a hard hand?”
“Whatever you need, Sarge. You know that.”
Bolan gave him a sober wink. “Okay. Just remember you said it.”
“Let it be my epitaph,” Grimaldi replied. “No, I take that back. Let’s not talk about epitaphs.”
They were flying a holding pattern above the hills a few miles east of the Copa estate, well out of visual range of the little drama unfolding down below. A couple of minutes after the first contact report, another came: “Ho ho and away we go! It’s a convoy!”
“How many do you make, Rover?”
“They’re still coming. I make … five … six … that’s it, six and heavy.”
Lord Copa was coming out with a full house of his own.
Bolan replied to Anders, “Okay, they’re all yours. Play it close. I’ll be working another angle.”
“Is this a change in the game?”
“That is affirmative. You’ve got the quail. I’m taking the nest.”
Toby Ranger’s voice swelled in with, “Negative, negative, damnit! Let’s play the call!”
Bolan told her, “You still have the percentage play, babe. Don’t screw it up. I’m gone, bye bye.”
He turned off the radio and said to Grimaldi, “Okay, you’re a hardman. Take us back.”
“Back where?”
“Back there. Back to paydirt.”
“You’re out of your flipping mind,” the pilot said—but already he was altering the pitch of the rotors, biting the atmosphere and lurching into an alignment toward the Copa hideaway.
Toward paydirt, yeah. Which was simply another way of saying hellgrounds.
Grimaldi’s strained tones came through the intercom, “You sure this is what you want to do?”
What he wanted to do? Hell no, it was not what he wanted to do.
Bolan chuckled into the headset as he told his friend, the Mafia pilot, “I thought we were not going to talk about epitaphs, Jack.”
“Who’s talking about epitaphs? I’m talking about headstones,” was the biting reply. “What’s it all about?”
“We’re going back, that’s what it’s all about. But I don’t want anyone to know it. I want you to drop me into that joint clean, quick, and silent.”
“That’s impossible.”
“So,” Bolan replied with a sour smile, “that means you try a little harder. Right?”
“Wrong,” said Grimaldi. “It means you die a lot quicker. But if that’s what you want …”
It was not what Bolan wanted, no.
But it was what he had to do.
CHAPTER 13
TURNABOUT
A soldier who goes into combat with an overriding desire to remain alive is not a good soldier. Bolan knew that. The good soldier is the committed soldier—one in whom the overriding desire is to achieve the objective, whatever the cost to himself.
And this was a war.
Toby Ranger knew it and Tom Anders knew it. Carl Lyons and Smiley Dublin had known it when they committed their own lives to the battle. They were all good soldiers.
So the SOG game in Nashville was not a rescue operation. The goal now was the same as in the beginning; nothing had changed except the circumstances. Bolan knew that Anders and Ranger were as concerned about the well-being of Carl Lyons as was Bolan himself. He also knew that this concern did not strongly affect the gameplan. They were still playing to win. Which is why they had called on Bolan instead of simply calling the game off and laying all over the opposition in a search and rescue mission.
They were good soldiers, yeah. And Bolan could respect them for that. He could also understand why Toby Ranger was so unhappy with him for calling an audible at the latest line of scrimmage. She had been concerned from the beginning that Bolan would play his own game instead of theirs—worried that he would blitz in and destroy an entire connective layer, destroying with it the SOG game of track and trap from street to penthouse.
Though they had been friends and even lovers, and though he knew that she respected his own private war, Bolan knew also that Toby had less faith in his approach than in her own. She regarded him as a local phenomenon, here today and gone tomorrow, a tragically temporary tool in the war on organized crime.
She had told him, once, during one of those rare Edenish moments, “I wish I could bottle you, Captain Courageous. That would be your greatest contribution. Maybe then we could inject a tiny squirt of you into every cop in the country. Not much—just one squirt per cop. Then we’d really see things happen in this clouted land.”
He had replied to that in a playful tone. “Could we save a few squirts just for us?”
Her rebuttal, in typical Rangerese: “Don’t be flip with me, hero. By the time you’re done with yourself, there’ll be nothing left to squirt. You spend it with a fire hose nozzle, not with a hypodermic. When you’re through gushing, we’ll have to bury you with a syringe.”
“Are we talking about love or war?” he’d asked her.
“Both,” she told him. “You approach both like there’s no tomorrow.”
True. There was no tomorrow for Mack Bolan. He knew that. And it was why he did not like the quiet game, the waiting game. He had to do what he could while he could. And there was always just today.
But Toby could save her anxieties about this day. He was not here to kill their game. And he was not so fixated in his own brand of warfare that he could not play the quiet game for awhile. He was here to find Carl Lyons … dead or alive. He hoped to find him alive and well. And he would do all in his power to honor the SOG game. But when it came to the final cut—Lyons or the game—Bolan knew that he would come down on the side of Lyons. Because, really, Mack Bolan was not all that sold on the SOG game. He respected those people and he loved them one and all, but he did not believe that their answer to the Mafia was the best answer. He had seen too many such games played to futility—with all that grand investment of time and dollars and excellent manpower going down the drain while the crime masters of America went on strutting their stuff and thumbing their noses at the American justice system.
And, yeah, Bolan’s answer was best. To those directly exposed to it, it was final. There were no legal maneuverings, no payo
ffs under the table, no judicial breastbeating for those who spat on the Bill of Rights. These guys knew the name of Mack Bolan’s court. They knew also that they came in there naked and went out clothed in the final law of being. They went out dead—sentenced by their own deeds and executed by their own destinies.
I am not their Judge.
I am their Judgment.
I am the Executioner.
Bottle that, Toby. Then put it in an atomizer and spray it in the air that all Americans breathe, and then maybe all the SOGs everywhere could go home and play the quiet games of human love, and happiness, and fulfillment.
It would not happen, of course. One half of one percent of the American community would go on cannibalizing the rest of the body. And the gentle flocks would go on grazing, hardly taking note of the fact that their fellows were disappearing one by one, while harried shepherds patrolled the flanks with nets instead of clubs.
Bolan was no shepherd. He was a sheep, in wolf’s clothing. And he carried the largest damned club he could find.
But okay, Toby—okay. He would keep the club sheathed for as long as possible, this time around. And he would play the SOG game—to a point. But that point was placed several paces to the life side of Carl Lyons’ grave. This was no game of saviours and crosses. It was the game of life and death. For Mack Bolan, it was the only game in town.
“Would you mind telling me what is happening?” Grimaldi hissed through the intercom.
“In ten words or less?” Bolan asked lightly.
“In whatever it takes. This is as far as I go until—I need to know, if I’m going to—”
“You’re right. Okay. As quick as possible, here’s the lay. I believe that Mazzarelli’s ambitions have exceeded his common sense. It looks like he’s trying to pull off some cute game right under his boss’s nose. I had only a small whiff of that before I went in there. But I followed the odor and I believe that I stumbled right into the thing. I still don’t know what it is, for damn sure. But it seems a dead cinch that Leonetti figures in it somewhere. He—”
“HoId it. Leonetti?”
There were some things that Jack Grimaldi did not need to know, for various reasons. “Yeah, he’s the key,” Bolan explained, determined to skirt the truth a bit. “Does the name ring a bell for you?”
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