Executioner 059 - Crude Kill

by Pendleton, Don

  He ran again, along the sunken gully, hoping to get a better spot with a good field of fire. The Executioner passed near the rail on this surge and for a moment he stopped. He heard a strange sound, a throbbing, a gushing. Bolan ran to a deserted part of the rail and looked overboard. He cursed silently.

  Even in the darkness he could see it—a long, shiny slick extending away from the tanker.

  He could hear it and smell it, a flow of oil being pumped from the tanker, splashing into the sea.

  Lutfi was a man who wanted to leave his mark on the world, even if it was only a 1,000-mile oil slick across some of the most fashionable and expensive beaches in Europe.

  Bolan stood in the pitch darkness at the rail, the automatic rifle hanging toward the deck, his face dark with rage. For a moment he felt totally frustrated, useless. There was nothing he could do to stop the oil spill.

  Through the night air the nearby speaker bellowed out its message.

  "To the Western world. You have broken your promise to me. You have chosen to fight me, to send a combat force on board my ship. They have been met and defeated. All are now dead. My program is on schedule. You must furnish the gold by dawn. Even now I am releasing 10,000 barrels of crude into the sea. You will see it easily by dawn.

  I'm told it should be on the beaches for a thousand miles along this northern rim of the Mediterranean. Congratulations. You have brought this event down on your own stupid heads. It is all your doing. It will be you who must answer. I wait for the gold, and the release of my fellow crusaders. Long live those who struggle against all of our foes!"

  The speaker cut off and Bolan stared at the black sea again, then turned and hurried back into the network of gullies that cut across the huge deck. There was nothing he could do about the oil. But he could make Lutfi pay. And he could stop those choppers from taking off. That was vital.

  Bolan reached for his radio and contacted Grimaldi. "G-Force, your powder dry?"

  "Ready when you are, Sarge."

  "It's a go. Give you five minutes ETA. We have the same two birds still on the aft deck. I'd like you to greet them with some machine-gun fire and prevent them from getting airborne."

  "Full bore? Rockets, the works?"

  "That's a negative, G-Force. Negative. We can't risk damaging the cargo in the choppers. Your machine guns should handle the job. Keep both birds down and dirty."

  "Splash them easy, that's a roger. Keep your ears on."

  "Yeah, and keep 'em flying, G-Force. Out."

  Bolan turned up the volume on the small radio and slid it into a slit pocket on his right shoulder. He could hear it and talk by hitting the send button with his left hand.

  The Executioner ran to the rail and looked over. Now he could hear more pumps working, gushing more crude into the sea. One way or another Lutfi was going to leave his mark. Mack Bolan was dead certain of that, and before this night was over, Lutfi would be the same way. Dead. . . for certain.

  15

  When the Executioner turned to scan the strange, checkerboard deck of the Contessa in sniper style, he saw a figure slipping in and out of the shadows, working toward him.

  Bolan jerked up the AK-47, but before he found the target again, a voice filtered through the soft Mediterranean night.

  "Captain Running here. No sweat, GI. I'm on your side."

  Bolan lowered the weapon. "Thought I'd lost you. What happened?"

  "Doing some recon. I'm using the gullies for hide and seek. I had no idea they'd be so useful! The terrorists have three of the fuel rods loaded in one chopper and one in the next bird. But we can take one last try to knock them down."

  "You know this ship, what's the play?"

  "A fire hose."

  "Fire hose? We tell them to stop shooting while we sprinkle them?"

  "Almost," smiled the captain, keeping his voice low. "We're set up with a complete fire-fighting system, mainly foam cannons that can be aimed from positions every fifty feet along the center walkway. But we've also got a little gadget that has tracks on it, a kind of mobile water cannon. We can hook it up to the high-pressure water. Have you ever been hit by a high-pressure stream of water from a water cannon? It's like getting slugged with a sledgehammer."

  "Against machine guns?" Bolan said.

  If we can surprise them. That way we wash half their defenses down the deck and have a chance to move in on one of the birds. We've never used this mobile fire cannon, but it gets tested regularly. It's a hundred yards back in that little utility barn. We'd have a straight shot at that first chopper."

  The big guy nodded. "Then let's go for it."

  They jogged into the tight jungle of the ship, along deep trenches free of mud or predator, through the complex metal branchwork of pipes and cables that had never seen wild creatures but now knew sniper fire as if the ship was a part of Nam itself. Then they cut toward the distant one-story building that paralleled a mass of unloading pipes and tried the door. Unlocked. Running opened it and they looked at the water cannon rig.

  It was six feet square, covered with a plastic tarp. It had crawler tracks at the side, and a four-inch-wide nozzle mounted in the center, with what looked like stabilizing feet that would prevent the rig from tipping over when the water-shooting started.

  "She has an electric-drive motor, quiet as a cat. We can hook into the high-pressure water line a hundred feet from that first chopper. She's electronically controlled from this portable console. All radio directed, of course."

  "Lead the way," Bolan said.

  Captain Running turned on the device and worked the control panel, guiding the crawler out the door. It moved along, silent on its soft treads, toward the target.

  They detoured around splashes of light from the floods, and three minutes later they were in position. The two men set up near the unloading pipes, just behind a steel walkway. The walkway would give them ample protection.

  The water cannon was a hundred feet from the chopper. Captain Running quickly connected four-inch-wide water hose to the cannon and to the shipboard pressure system.

  He held up his thumb. "Hooked up and ready to go. We've got 100 feet of hose if we need it. That gives us some maneuvering room. It's made to withstand 800 degree heat."

  Bolan had been looking at the control panel. He moved the levers and the small tanklike device crawled ahead, then stopped. They had a straight shot down the deck toward the chopper.

  "Get down and stay ready with that AK-47," Bolan said. "Things are going to heat up in a rush."

  He moved the little tank forward. When the liquid cannon was fifty feet from the chopper, somebody shouted. Bolan nodded at Running who turned the valve, and the water jetted into the hose. The rig stopped, self-activated its stabilization extension feet on all four sides and locked onto the deck.

  A small green light glowed on the Executioner's control module and he flipped a switch. Now he could direct the nozzle. He made some adjustments and hit another switch.

  A powerful jet of water fifty feet long arced toward the chopper.

  Bolan moved the control handle, and the solid shaft of water shifted lower and blasted a terrorist gunner off his feet, sending him sprawling downstream.

  Bolan lifted the stream, pouring it into the open cargo door of the bird. Then he moved on to the front door, blasting the heavy stream at the cockpit.

  He washed down four more guard posts, then aimed the stream back at the cockpit.

  Gunfire erupted, the rounds aimed at the cannon, but there was little of the tank that was vulnerable. The heavy metal turned aside the puny lead rounds.

  The Executioner jetted the water against the aircraft. The rotors began to turn.

  Desperately he aimed the water directly on the rotors, trying to deflect or unbalance them, but it did not work. They turned faster and faster. He put the stream back at the cargo doors, but they had been slammed shut. The cockpit became his target again, then two riflemen. He washed the gunners away, but the glass would not yield.

>   Slowly the big chopper began to inch off the deck, lifting higher over the light standards.

  Captain Running lifted the AK-47 and emptied the magazine into the bird. He jammed another 30-rounder in, but by then the chopper was gone.

  The small-arms fire was coming deathly close. Both men tumbled into the life-saving ravine between the big holds. Bolan scurried down twenty yards and looked over the lip. To his surprise, he saw that the chopper had landed a hundred yards farther aft. The pilot must be waiting for the second craft to be loaded.

  Sudden lights along the rail grabbed Bolan's attention. He looked closely and saw two crewmen with flaming torches. The men threw the torches over the side.

  Captain Running had handed the AK-47 back to Bolan, who now lifted the weapon and sent three quick shots at the half-shadowed fire throwers.

  "The oil," Bolan shouted. "They're trying to set the oil slick on fire."

  In the dim light he could see a crewman emptying a five-gallon can of liquid over the side. Bolan wondered what the liquid was—probably something more volatile than crude oil. Gasoline. Gasoline and the torches would ignite in hell fire.

  Bolan aimed the AK-47 at the terrorist.

  They saw the light blossom like a sudden morning sun over the side of the tanker. It seemed that half of the sea had exploded into fire.

  "My God," Captain Running shouted, and turned toward the bridge. "I've got to move her. I've got to get the Contessa away from those flames, or this could be the biggest bonfire the world has ever seen."

  Backlit by the flames at sea, a figure leaned over the rail. Bolan could hear him laugh. The Executioner aimed the AK-47 and sent a sizzling firetrack of five rounds at the terrorist. The rounds slammed him over the rail. The Executioner heard only the start of the terrorist's death wail as he fell into the inferno.

  Before Bolan could turn, they were in a firefight. Hot lead slammed into the steel covers, bounced off the metal and sang away into the distance. Bolan dived to the deck and pulled Captain Running down. He pointed toward the center of the blackness under the maze of pipes, and they crawled for fifty feet, slid around a corner in the gully and sat up.

  Captain Running held his shoulder. Bolan could see a dark stain on the front where a slug had exited.

  The Executioner examined the wound in the darkness. Even through the torn jacket he could tell it was much more than a simple scratch. Bolan pulled a folded square of bandage from one of his slit pockets and pressed the cloth over the wound inside the captain's shirt.

  "Hold it there, tight. And stay right there. I'll draw them off the other way. They won't have time to come back for you. There are reinforcements coming in any second now. Keep your head down and the pressure on that wound."

  Bolan watched Running for a moment, deciding the captain would stay put. "Where are they holding your crew?" he asked.

  "Third floor in the superstructure," the captain replied. "Locked in. Don't get them killed."

  "We need them to move this island if they can." Bolan gave the captain the captured .38 revolver and retrieved his Beretta. The nightfighter filtered away into the darkness.

  The numbers were falling fast. Grimaldi was on the way. One of the choppers was fully loaded, another one almost.

  Bolan took the AK and his Beretta and bent over as he ran down the gully and back toward the enemy. He fired a 5-round burst, then cut down a side ravine. He leaned over the hold and fired again. The Executioner saw some answering flashes as he worked back toward the birds. They would be expecting him now, but he had to move that way. He looked at the scene of the first burned-out chopper.

  A voice cut into the night.

  "G-Force, looking for Stony Man One."

  Bolan touched the small-transceiver send button through his skintight shirt.

  "Yeah, G-Force. Waiting. What's your ETA?"

  "If you're anywhere near that fireball on the water up there, I'm about thirty seconds out."

  "That's us. You'll see two choppers warming up on deck, back toward the tall tail end of this thing, near the superstructure. It'd be a hell of a big help if you could kill one of them, but no heavy stuff. Both those birds have fuel rods in them already, so play it gently."

  "Roger, I'll take out the first one I see."

  A chattering of automatic rifle fire cut the conversation short as Bolan dived below the lip of the crease. He charged along the safety zone heading toward the stairway in the superstructure. He had to free the crew so that they could move the tanker away from the fire.

  Bolan made one more circular dash, going around a gunman to the stairway door. A heavyset, nervous guard stood there, his rifle up and ready.

  16

  Out of endings come beginnings. It happens, Jack Grimaldi knew. He had seen fresh new leaves struggling out of the black rot of decaying stumps—new generations feeding off ancestors. That was nature's way. With people, nature sometimes needed a boost, someone to grease the skids from ending to beginning.

  In Jack Grimaldi's case the boost was there when needed.

  The old life had ended for Jack Grimaldi in a mob seaplane he had piloted to Puerto Rico, carrying an arch enemy of Grimaldi's employers—and, ostensibly, an enemy of Grimaldi himself—plus an accountant with a bagful of his employers' money.

  That was a whole era ago and that enemy was Mack Bolan, the man called the Executioner, the man who for years had waged knowing war against Grimaldi's Mafia employers.

  There were many things, though, that Mack Bolan did not know. Not then. He did not know that Jack Grimaldi worked for the Mafia only on a contract basis, flying the headcocks around the world in a variety of aircraft. He did not know that Grimaldi had previously flown a hundred thirty-seven combat missions in Vietnam, that he was highly decorated and twice wounded, that he had come home to a country weary of a no-win war and embarrassed by its returning veterans. He did not know that the Mafia flyboy job was the only employment Grimaldi could find that came near to matching his training and capabilities.

  The Executioner did not know that the pilot lived only for flying, that it had been that way since Jack, at sixteen, had built and flown his own plane. He did not know that Grimaldi had begun to hate his life, that he didn't give a damn for the Mafia, didn't give a damn about what it was doing to him and everyone else in the world.

  But Mack Bolan did know that Jack Grimaldi was flying him into a trap.

  The whole episode was a tense, and largely unwritten, piece of modern history...

  As the seaplane had glided on its pontoons toward the trap, Mack Bolan had nestled the Beretta Brigadier he used back then against the flyboy's throat, and said, "End of game, Grimaldi. When the engine dies, you die."

  That was when Grimaldi suddenly did give a damn. He did not want to die. Bolan had it wrong. . . . He wasn't a Mafia headcock, not even a hardman. He wasn't Bolan's enemy. . . .

  And yet he was leading Bolan into a trap. Why? Because there was an enormous reward on the Executioner's head. Grimaldi wanted that reward. It was the pay dirt he'd been looking for all his life.

  Grimaldi never flattered himself that he'd talked Bolan out of pulling that trigger. But Bolan had not pulled it. Twice more, Bolan had had his chance to kill Grimaldi, but did not do so. Was it merely that he needed the pilot's services? Perhaps. Was it more? Had Bolan seen in Grimaldi a potential ally? Had he seen in Grimaldi the aura of sadness that surrounds warriors returning from a useless war?

  Or had Bolan seen something even deeper? Had he known that, by sparing Grimaldi, he was creating a new life, a life of meaning, one in which Jack Grimaldi no longer would not give a damn?

  Whatever the case, Grimaldi knew, it had happened. He left his old life there in Puerto Rico, like a decaying stump. He rose from that stump, like fresh struggling leaves, and became something he'd not even aspired to before.

  He became Mack Bolan's ally. For the next eight years, he fed Bolan information about the Mafia and helped Bolan in a number of raging wars against his emp
loyers. In Texas. In Seattle. In Tennessee. In New Mexico. In Florida. In Baltimore.

  Grimaldi had been there, flying and fighting, during the Executioner's final week of intense warfare against the Mafia. He'd been there at the ending of Mack Bolan's old life and the beginning of his new one.

  And that ending and beginning had made its indelible mark on Jack Grimaldi. He ended yet another phase of his own life.

  He quit the Mafia and lived to tell about it.

  Always new beginnings from old endings.

  It never concerned Jack Grimaldi that he was to be the backup man. If people said he was playing second fiddle to the Striker, hell, he'd love it. Second fiddle to a guy like that was a giant leap forward for any man.

  As for Bolan's intense hatred for Animal Man that preyed on the gentle people of the earth, well, Grimaldi hadn't given it much thought before that day in the seaplane. But in the decade since, he'd given it a lot of thought.

  For Sergeant Mack Bolan it had begun when his father was driven to desperation by Mafia loan-sharks, had killed Bolan's mother and sister, had wounded his kid brother, Johnny, and had taken his own life. But that tragic event alone did not sustain the blitz artist for a whole decade. What sustained him was an awareness that a whole new war was being waged on the home front, that he had the skills to engage in that war, to become that war.

  Now, Bolan, as Colonel John Phoenix, had a new life—he had been made chief of the Sensitive Operations Groups to be known as "Stony Man."

  Slightly miffed that he'd been left out of the colonel's first big battle—in Colombia—Grimaldi had taken off in his rebuilt, refurbished and highly-cherished F86D1 "Saber Dog" Saber jet. Ostensibly, he was going to Costa Rica, where there were rumblings of a new problem involving missing F-104 Starfighters. But the problem could wait. Grimaldi, after marking time, went streaking after Mack Bolan, the colonel, the "Sarge," against all orders.