Robert “Naturals” Gramelli sat at a battered wooden desk, his back to the wall. Naturals was the boss of this side of Buffalo. He was holding court with his two caporegimes, Ben Mazzo and Charley Cantillo. A fourth man sat nervously in the background, smiling at his clasped hands.
Only Gramelli’s head swiveled to the open doorway. His jaw dropped, eyes bulging—and the final image recorded upon those horrified retinas was a tall figure in black occupying that doorway, a silent flame blowing from a long black pistol extended into the room at waist level, and perhaps—in that final instant of heightened awareness—the sizzling little projectile itself which thwacked in between those eyes.
Mazzo and Cantillo hardly had time to appreciate the event, themselves sprawling floorward under an identical impetus. The nervous young man at the back wall smiled on, his gaze traveling from clasped hands to a brief inspection of carnage to Judgment in the doorway.
“Mack Bolan,” he calmly declared, moving nothing but his lower lip.
“Your name Chebleu?” inquired the cold voice from the doorway.
“It is.”
“Let’s go.”
“You have come for me?”
“I didn’t come for them,” replied the man in black, that gaze flicking briefly floorward. He tossed a military marksman’s medal into the room and repeated, “Let’s go.”
Andre Chebleu, survivor—a ghost from the past with name and face that recalled pain and rage for the man in black—quietly got to his feet and followed the Executioner outside.
“You look like her,” Bolan told him.
“With you, I will probably end like her,” the Canadian replied.
“Either way,” Bolan said, sighing. “Your cover is blown here. They were setting you up for the kill. Tonight.”
“How do you know this?”
Bolan directed Georgette Chebleu’s brother to the warwagon and told him, “I’ll show you. Then you’re going to show me something, brother Andy.”
That soft smile passed without a quiver over the crumpled remains of the outside guards as Chebleu hurried to the vehicle.
“What could I show you?” he asked quietly.
“The other side.”
The undercover operative from Canada stepped into the motor home with a quizzical smile playing at the worried eyes. “The other side of what?”
“The other side of hell,” Bolan told him. “That’s where we’re headed.”
“Right now?”
“Right now,” said the Executioner.
2: THE SIDES
The “warwagon” was a cleverly disguised marvel of space-age technology—a rolling battleship, scout car, and base camp—outfitted with the most sophisticated electronic systems and combat capabilities. It housed the man and provided the necessary animal comforts. It kept him informed of enemy movements and even their plots and schemes. It gave him mobility, cover, logistic necessities, and “big punch” capability. More importantly, perhaps, the warwagon gave Mack Bolan a home—and the home certainly fit the man.
Her optic systems provided him with the vision of a hawk by day, an owl by night—even the “sight” of a bat in zero-visibility conditions. In open country, her audio scanners could detect a sniffle at a thousand yards; radio scanners covered the entire UHF/VHF spectrum to provide constant monitoring of combat-zone radio communications—including police radio. Her “surveillance” console had the capability to automatically “trigger” remote listening devices to collect, record, sort, and store intelligence data at millisecond speeds.
Bolan was justly proud of his combat vehicle.
He did not disclose all her secrets to Andre Chebleu but he did “show” the man how he had tumbled to the intrigue in Buffalo, then sat him down to read the intelligence file gathered in that area.
While Chebleu studied the file, Bolan pulled dungarees and a flannel shirt over the combat suit, donned an old fishing hat, and sent the warwagon powering north along the Interstate toward Niagara Falls.
At Tonawanda, Chebleu came forward to drop into the seat opposite the command chair. He gazed thoughtfully at the stoic profile of his host and said, with a soft sigh, “Amazing.”
“What is?” Bolan asked, his gaze remaining on the road ahead.
“All of it. You. This fantastic vehicle. The file. All I was sent here to learn, you possess in that file. I have been here for three months. How long have you?”
Bolan grinned. “Three days. I didn’t design the gear, Andre. I simply use it. You guys could use the same thing.”
The Canadian spread his hands and made a wry face. “It is against the law.”
“So am I,” Bolan said quietly.
“Yes. So you are. And I am the law. So what does that make us?”
“Soldiers of the same side,” Bolan replied. “As long as you want it that way.”
“And suppose I want it differently? When we cross the border?”
Bolan shrugged. “Then you go your way and I go mine. I didn’t kidnap you, guy. I sprung you. Say the word. I’ll stop and let you out.”
Chebleu lit a cigarette and relaxed into the seat, turning his gaze onto the roadway. They drove in silence, the powerful engine pulling the big rig effortlessly along just under the speed limit. The traffic was heavy but moving nicely. Now and then a speeding vehicle would surge past them, Chebleu stiffening with each such instance. The full implications of the night were obviously just beginning to settle onto the guy. After some miles of this, he told Bolan: “Perhaps I owe you my life. Thank you.”
The guy did not like him, though, and Bolan knew it. He fished the AutoMag from its special pocket in the command chair and handed the big silver pistol to his guest. “Thumb off the safety,” he growled. “Now put the snout to my ear.”
The Canadian merely stared at him.
Bolan chuckled and held out his hand. “Give it back, then,” he said. “Now I owe you my life. We’re even.”
Chebleu laughed faintly as he returned the pistol. “How did you know I would not?”
“I didn’t know,” Bolan assured him. “Now I do.”
Both laughed, together, and Chebleu offered his rescuer a cigarette. Bolan accepted it, took a deep drag, then said, “We’re not quite even yet, Chebleu. I think you know what I mean.”
“Georgette,” the guy replied immediately.
“Yeah. Were you given the details?”
Georgette’s brother shook his head solemnly. “Just an unofficial communiqué from your government, expressing sympathy and confirming her death. I have not yet fully accepted—I keep hoping …”
“Stop hoping,” Bolan said quietly.
“Until there is a body, I will not—” Something in Bolan’s tone produced a delayed reaction, shutting the guy down in mid-sentence. He dropped his eyes and said, “Tell me.”
“Just take my word.” The voice was taut, saddened, sympathetic all at once. “Georgette is dead. She lived large and she died large. Now bury her that way.”
“Tell me,” the guy insisted.
Bolan sighed, eased off to the minimum speed, and told the guy. “Crazy Sal sentenced her to fifty days in a turkey doctor’s chamber of horrors.”
“What?” Chebleu croaked.
“You know what a turkey doctor is?”
The guy was shaking his head, obviously hoping that he did not know.
Bolan said, “Think of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and the madmen who played medical games there with human meat. Then think of that sort of mentality transplanted to this time and place, give it the absolute power that is enjoyed by a mob boss, and turn it loose on a cute kid who got too cute with that same boss. You can forget names and identities now, because there’s nothing left but screaming turkey. It must have been about the forty-ninth day when I found Georgette.”
The guy turned very pale, covering his eyes with a hand, fighting for control over his emotions.
Quietly, Bolan said, “I released her, Andre. With that same weapon you were just holding
. I put a 240-grain bullet where her eyes had been. And her soul thanked mine. Bury her, guy. Bury her very, very large.”
It was several quiet minutes later when Chebleu lit another cigarette. He handed it to Bolan and lit another for himself. The voice, when it came, was rock hard. “This was in Detroit?”
“Yeah. On the back porch of hell.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“You had a right to know,” Bolan said.
“So now I know. You left very little in Detroit.”
“I took what I could.”
“So, now … Canada is next.”
Bolan sighed. “That’s right. And if you studied that file closely, then you know …”
Yes, Chebleu knew. The entire province of Quebec had suddenly gone up for grabs. A governmental crisis was brewing up there—a national convulsion being fed by separatist politics, economic woes, fierce nationalism, the spirit of open rebellion. Beneath that cauldron the American Mafia was now building a bonfire. Bolan had been aware of the situation for some time, and had been quietly probing the American side for a likely angle of entry. Andre Chebleu had come as a gift from heaven.
“The mob is getting ready to eat Quebec,” Bolan told him.
The guy grunted at that, then added, “They will find it indigestible.”
“Chewed is chewed,” Bolan pointed out. “They don’t want your problems, friend. They just want your juices.”
“Your heart does not beat for Canada,” the guy said, eyeing his host with a trace of displeasure. “If you seek only a battlefield, seek it elsewhere.”
Bolan checked his rearview, signaled, slowed, and pulled off the road onto the shoulder. He opened the door from the master control and told his guest, “Good-bye. Stay hard.”
“You will need help,” the guy said, grimacing with some inner emotion.
“I’ll find it where I need it,” Bolan told him.
“Close the door,” Chebleu growled. “What is your plan?”
“Very simple,” Bolan replied, as he resumed the vehicle’s forward motion. “I’ll be blitzing Montreal.”
“You will find that not so simple.”
“It never is,” Bolan said.
“You cannot blitz Montreal,” Chebleu insisted.
Bolan shot the guy an oblique glance and told him, “Sit there and watch me try.”
“Montreal will prove to be Detroit times one hundred for you.”
“For them,” Bolan corrected him.
“For you as well, my friend,” the Canadian said, sighing. “For you as well.”
“The question may be academic, anyway,” Bolan replied, his attention at the rearview mirror. “We have a tail.”
Chebleu slowly shifted his gaze rearward. “You are positive?”
“I’m positive. They have one headlamp just slightly off focus. See it?”
“I see it.”
“Been with us since we left Naturals’. When I pulled over, just now, those lights suddenly disappeared. Now they’re back.”
Bolan was busy with the command console. He swung out a small viewscreen and activated the Nitebrite Optics. The screen glowed with a dull reddish light. Bolan adjusted the azimuth control and refined the focus. A vehicle appeared there, in close-up—a heavy limousine, heavily loaded, cruising the warwagon’s backtrack.
“Bingo,” Bolan said quietly. “It’s a crew wagon.”
The Canadian agent’s nervousness was returning.
“You knew that when you ordered me outside,” he declared accusingly.
“I wouldn’t have let you go,” Bolan said with a small smile.
“So what do we do now?”
“They’re tracking us into a hit,” Bolan told him. “Just waiting for a stretch of empty road.”
“So?”
“So we wait them out. And we’ll play their game—but our way.”
“I’ll take that pistol, now,” Chebleu said.
“Not this one. Go aft.” Bolan punched a button on the console. “Armory’s open. Choose your weapon.”
Chebleu was smiling grimly. “So. You knew it all the while.”
“Suspected,” Bolan corrected. “For better or for worse—it’s you and me, Andre, soldiers together.”
“Of the same side,” the Canadian growled, and went aft for his weapon.
3: ENGAGEMENT AT NIAGARA
Tommy Sandini and his Broadway crew were just pulling into the front lot at Naturals’ as the big RV was easing out the other end. One of the boys even made a joke about Gramelli’s business “picking up by the busload.”
Sandini himself had not even stepped out of the car before one of his boys discovered the dead bodies near the back entrance to the club. A quick look inside confirmed the awful suspicions, and a fast calculation of two plus two sent the Sandini crew highballing after that “bus.”
“Those bodies were still warm, boss,” reported tagman Vacchi.
“Still bleeding, he means,” added another.
“Everybody back inside!” Tough Tommy commanded. “Which way’d that bus go?”
“Went up Delaware,” the wheelman muttered. “Everybody just hang on, I’ll be up their ass in two snorts.”
And thus the chase began.
As it turned out, more than a couple of snorts were required before wheelman Roselli could close the distance between the two vehicles. By that time, the chase had turned east along Sheridan Drive.
“They’re headed for the Thruway,” Sandini growled. “Lay back and let ’em go, let’s see where it takes us.”
“We could hit ’em at Sheridan Park,” Vacchi suggested.
“Hit, hit, what hit?” the boss snarled. “We don’t even know who it is. Maybe we ought to be back at Gramelli’s, taking that joint apart.”
“I got an idea, Tommy,” the wheelman said. “That bus ain’t no bus. Know what it is?”
Sandini respected his wheelman, especially in anything concerning automobiles. He growled, “It’s one of those camper things, isn’t it?”
“Right, an RV, so-called recreational vehicle. That one up there is pretty jazzy but it’s still an RV. You know what I heard from a guy was out in Seattle awhile back—you know when? When the fur was flying out there.”
“You mean the Bolan thing.”
“Yeah. This guy says Hardcock Bolan was driving one of them things, an RV.”
“Shit.” Sandini responded, in a sibilant whisper.
“That’s what the guy said, Tommy.”
“Let’s uh, keep a distance. If uh, if what you say …” The boss’s mouth got lost in his mind, and a strained silence descended upon that group.
Presently one of the young hardmen who had discovered the bodies of Gramelli and lieutenants inside the club made a strange sound and touched his boss’s shoulder from the jump seat.
“What is it?” Sandini asked in a subdued voice.
“I picked something up back there. Had blood on it. I just wiped it off and dropped it in my pocket. Didn’t really hit me, boss.”
“What didn’t?”
“What does a marksman’s medal look like?”
“It’s a bull’s-eye cross,” Vacchi said quickly.
“Oh shit,” said the young gunner. “I thought it was a religious medal.”
“Let me see that thing!” Sandini demanded, reaching for it.
A moment later, it all came together—and the Sandini crew from the Broadway territory knew they had a tiger by the tail.
“What’re we going to do?” Vacchi mildly inquired of his boss.
“We’re going to stay on his ass, that’s what we’re going to do,” Sandini snarled back. “Now shut up and let me think about it.”
The wheelman quietly got in his favorite gripe. “We should’ve gone radio-equipped, Tommy, like I been saying. We could get some help out here.”
“Shut up!”
“Sure, Tommy.”
It was a whisper from one of the youngsters in the rear, but it came through loud
and clear. “Shit, there’s six of us. We could take ’im.”
“How many was back there at Naturals’?” Vacchi purred.
“That was different,” replied the anonymous whisper. “He caught them cold. This is diferent.”
“Shut up that fuckin’ whispering back there!” Sandini howled. “What is this? A goddamn hunt club? Shut up back there! That’s a million-dollar baby up there, not no goddamn pigeon tied to a stake!”
“There’s our last chance,” the wheelman reported. “He’s taking the Thruway uh—yeah, yeah, north ramp. We’re headed north.”
“Stay with him!”
“You wanta drop a boy off, boss, before it’s too late? Get to a phone, I mean.”
“Fuck no, forget that! Okay, yeah! Fonti—get out! Call Joe Staccio! Tell ’im what we got here and to goddammit get us some help up here. Get a damn helicopter, get anything, just get some help and quick!”
“Headed toward Niagara?” the kid grunted as he tumbled through the doorway.
“Just tell ’im what you know!” Sandini yelled—and again they were off.
“So what do we do?” Vacchi asked the boss.
“We keep back and give him room to run, that’s what. Not too close, dammit—just run him.”
“This traffic is pretty thick,” the wheelman reported. “I better not give him too much slack.”
“The guy might be headed for the Ontario side,” Vacchi worried. “We ought to hit him before that.”
“There’s plenty of spots between here and there,” said Roselli.
“I’ll tell you when,” Sandini growled. “Let’s give Joe Staccio all the time we can to spring some help this way.”
“I know a perfect spot,” Roselli muttered. “This time of night—if he takes Mose Parkway into the Falls … that’s a perfect spot, boss.”
“I’ll tell you when,” Sandini fretted. It was perhaps the largest moment of his life. He was not about to blow it. “You boys listen to me. This is the big one, the mother lode. We get Mack Bolan’s head in a sack and we can write our own ticket anywhere. You understand me? This is the big one.”
The pep talk was unnecessary. Each man in that fated vehicle knew very well the size of this moment. Riches, reputation, rank, glory—all was represented in that dim glow of taillights running the road to Niagara Falls. And five glazed gazes knew it. The Sandini crew was ready to fulfill its destiny.
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