He left the room, noiselessly retracing his way out of the house, briefly recalling that he had wondered, after his first visit with Dutton at that fund-raising dinner earlier tonight, if he was not going soft when he had let the senator off the hook. But then, Bolan realized now, he had been in the process of putting the picture puzzle together.
No, the Executioner was not going soft.
He took as much satisfaction as ever in eliminating lice like Senator Mark Dutton.
He felt sorry for the senator's wife and daughter having to find the body in the morning. They were victims of the rottenness of Dutton's soul. But so were the children Bolan had to rescue before David Parelli and his mother sent them off to whatever unspeakable fate awaited this shipment of helpless human cargo. These were the victims whose welfare drove Bolan. The children.
And the puzzle of a cop named Griff, a man tormented by inner devils, who figured into this somehow.
And, of course, the woman.
Lana.
Where was she?
Griff's and Lana's whereabouts were the only puzzles left on this night of sudden death.
Bolan returned to the Camaro and gunned it away from the curb, U-turning to head west, toward the next suburb over, Skokie, and the address Dutton had given him.
It was time for the children to be saved and the Parellis to pay for their sins, past and present.
And time had almost run out for those kids being shipped from that Skokie trucking company at midnight.
Bolan wondered about a cop who could be friend or foe.
A kidnapped woman, in danger.
Missing children.
The time bomb that had been ticking beneath Chicago was about to explode with awesome fury.
Retribution time, yeah.
The Executioner only hoped he would be in time.
19
Aaron Kurtzman practically jumped out of his skin when the phone rang.
The phone.
The one unlisted even in top classified government circles; the line connecting the Stony Man Farm command center computer room with a scrambler and relay system outside the standard loops of even such ultrasecret government agencies as the CIA or the FBI.
There were such sensitive lines in and out of the Farm, to be sure, but this was the line over which Bolan and only a very select few others made contact.
Kurtzman had been doing his best, as he went about his duties in the computer room, trying not to think about a guy named Bolan in a city named Chicago.
Not that there weren't enough things for him to worry about. Able Team and Phoenix Force were both out on dangerous missions at the moment, and that was plenty to occupy a guy like Kurtzman who took it almost personally any time another mission came up for the fighting men of the Farm. The difference of course was that Able Team and Phoenix Force were a bona fide part of that team.
Mack Bolan had elected to sever ties with Stony Man, to walk alone through the fields of fire.
Kurtzman did not have any new information for the big guy, except some surface background on Lana Garner, but it was just that Kurtzman wanted more than anything at that moment to know that his friend Bolan was okay.
The odds against the Executioner increased with each new campaign he decided to undertake, and Kurtzman had an uneasy hunch that tonight in Chicago could be the chanciest blitz since the Executioner had gone back into the cold.
The odds had never been higher.
Kurtzman answered the phone.
A gruff voice he immediately recognized said, "Bear, this is Hal."
He tried to conceal his disappointment.
Harold Brognola was the Farm's White House liaison. He had been the man to bring Bolan his assignments when the Executioner had worked for the government. Brognola had long been a close friend and supporter of Bolan and his cause, and he continued to be one of the key supporters... off the record... of the one-man wars waged by Bolan against the forces of evil.
'"Lo, Hal."
"Any word from our man?" asked Brognola.
"Afraid not. I was hoping this might be him."
"I'll get off the line to keep it clear in that case," Brognola grunted. "I'm worried about him this time, Bear."
"You and me both, buddy," Kurtzman growled. "One guy taking on the whole damn Chicago Mafia would be bad enough odds, but with the police and so many intangibles..."
"I know," Hal said grimly, "and the word out of Chi is that holy hell is busting loose. The streets are running red with blood."
"Let's just hope it's not our guy's."
"Yeah, let's."
"Phone me the minute you hear anything."
"Likewise, Hal."
"Will do."
They broke the connection.
Kurtzman replaced the receiver and leaned back in his wheelchair, watching the phone as if that might get Bolan to call in faster. But he knew that the situation in Chicago would prevent Bolan from phoning in.
"Give 'em hell, big guy," Kurtzman said to the silent instrument.
There was a large-living spirit on the loose in Chicago this night, delivering justice and retribution to those who had escaped them for far too long.
Bolan.
The eternal warrior, thought Kurtzman.
Ever on guard.
Ever vigilant.
Weary of war.
But unable to stop because there was always a task at hand.
Kurtzman wondered what Mack Bolan was doing at this moment...
* * *
Mack Bolan bellied beneath thorny berry bushes that were frozen solid.
Stray fragments of moonlight shone on the icy terrain.
How quickly a suburban industrial park with its vast complexes and fenced-in perimeters became a hell-ground, he thought.
He had shed the overcoat and was combat-ready in blacksuit again, his face smeared with camouflage cosmetic. The NVD goggles were in place, and Big Thunder rode low on his right hip. The Beretta nestled in shoulder leather beneath his left arm, military webbing with ammo, grenades and the like draped across his chest, the MAC-10 looped from its strap beneath his right arm.
The Parelli-owned trucking and shipping company was separated from other similar concerns by open acreage across which Bolan had jogged until he came to within thirty feet of the perimeter.
Lamp standards inside the property cast circles of illumination here and there, but there were still plenty of patches of relative gloom and it was toward one of these that he made his way.
He reached the fence.
He used a set of tiny but effective wire cutters to clip a hole large enough for him to squeeze through.
He came erect and darted forward, crouching next to a wall of a warehouse that sat next to the one-story office building.
Tractor trailer trucks were parked everywhere like dozing metal beasts.
The low rumble of one truck's engine, idling somewhere on the other side of the warehouse, drifted through the still night air to his ears.
As did the scrape of shoe leather of someone approaching.
A sentry. Bolan hit the ground, then rolled into the legs of the guard who now came around a corner of the building.
Bolan jerked the guy's legs out from under him with his left hand.
The man fell next to Bolan, and before he had time to cry out, a pair of fists, fingers intertwined, slammed into the base of his skull.
The rifle-toting man went limp.
Bolan waited a few more seconds to be sure the man was patrolling alone, then he stood up and looked around.
This was the place, all right.
He had expected guards, but he did not think they would be expecting him. They would not know yet that the senator was dead at Bolan's hand... that the senator had talked... and would think the well-kept secret of this terrible operation had died with Floyd Wallace and Randy Owens.
Bolan went back to the corner of the warehouse where he could get a better view of the compound next door.
A high chain link fence topped by several strands of barbed wire ran all the way around the truck yard.
Inside were a dozen more tractor trailer trucks, parked in two neat rows near another building with a high door. The door was closed at the moment, but Bolan guessed that this building was used for truck maintenance.
The warehouse that interested him the most was the one with a truck, its idling engine the one he'd heard, backed up to the loading dock.
He glanced at his watch.
Ten minutes to midnight.
He'd made it in time, but not by much.
He saw movement inside the warehouse through the open door. Taking a small pair of compact binoculars from a slit pocket of the blacksuit, he unfolded the instrument and put it to his eyes.
The scene inside the warehouse leaped into focus.
He felt the rage inside him burn more than ever. The kids were there, all right.
He could not tell how many of them because his field of vision was restricted, but he could see at least half a dozen... a variety of races, frightened, scared, crying... being marched toward the truck by two hardmen carrying shotguns.
One of the children, a little girl about nine, lagged behind too much to suit a guard.
The slob reached out and gave her a shove that staggered the child.
She tried to catch her balance, failed and fell to the concrete floor.
The guard reached down, grabbed her arm and hauled her roughly to her feet. His mouth worked, and though Bolan could not hear from his position, he could guess at the filthy language that the guy was heaping on the little unfortunate.
Bolan's first impulse was to unleather Big Thunder and go in shooting, but a cooler part of his mind, the part that belonged to the savvy combat specialist, told him firmly to wait.
Charging in like that would not accomplish anything except to get some or all of those kids killed in a cross fire.
He needed a distraction.
He faded away from the corner of the warehouse.
Three minutes later, there was movement in the shadows to the rear of the truck yard.
Several mercury vapor lamps cast a high-intensity glow over the front part of the compound, but the spill of light did not reach to every corner here in the back, where Bolan found a small gate in the rear fence.
Two sentries with Uzis had been positioned nearby.
Bolan was not interested in that gate. He would go in another way. The sentries had to be neutralized, though, and the way the two guys were standing under that light, he could not take them down with the Beretta. Someone else was liable to see them fall.
He moved to the fence in a patch of almost total darkness and reached out to rattle the chain link.
One of the guards stiffened and looked around as he heard the sound.
"You hear that?" the guy grumbled to his companion, his words barely audible to Bolan.
The other guard shook his head.
"I didn't hear anything."
"Yeah, well, I did. I'm gonna go check it out."
Carrying the subgun ready in his fists, the punk started walking slowly down the fence line while the other guy shook his head and muttered to himself.
Bolan stood stock-still until the man was about five feet away, then shot him in the throat with the Beretta.
The guy dropped his Uzi and grabbed for his neck, trying futilely to stop the sudden spurting with his hands, his knees buckling underneath him. He slumped to the ground, twitching once or twice before lying still.
The other sentry heard the clatter of the falling subgun and the silenced whisper of the Beretta that was not loud enough to be identifiable at that distance in the open air. He tensed, pointing the muzzle of his own weapon at the shadows into which his partner had disappeared.
"Jerry!" he called softly. "Jerry, what are you doing down there?"
Jerry didn't answer.
The guard waited another moment, then nervously started toward Bolan.
Bolan watched him come but did not move or make a sound.
The guard spotted the body of his buddy then and froze in place, sweeping the Uzi from side to side as he looked for something to shoot at. Seeing nothing, he knelt beside Jerry's sprawled form.
The guard hardly felt the bullet that smacked into the top of his head, splintering his skull and ripping through his brain. His body hit the fence and bounced off.
Bolan looked around.
No one seemed to have heard the commotion in this back corner of the lot, or at least no one was sounding the alarm or rushing to investigate, and that would have to do.
Most of the activity on the trucking company property remained centered at the loading dock on the far side of the center warehouse.
Bolan turned back to the body of the first guard, the one called Jerry.
The corpse was wearing an overcoat and had a cap perched on his head, the kind with fur flaps that folded down over the ears and fastened under the neck.
Bolan had the coat and the headgear off the dead body in a matter of seconds. He shrugged into the coat and settled the cap on his head.
He strode out of the shadows, heading for the trucks across the open space like a man who did not have a care in the world.
He was three-fourths of the way there when another sentry broke away from the building and trotted toward him.
"Hey, Jerry," the guy called. "What's wrong? Where's Ted?"
Bolan jerked a thumb over his shoulder back toward the fence and kept walking.
"Back there. He got sick."
The other guard fell into step beside him.
"Sick? What the hell's wrong with him?"
Bolan shrugged and kept walking.
The shadows cast by the huge trucks were only a few feet away now.
The guard caught at his arm.
"Don't you think we'd better go see what's wrong with him?"
"Suit yourself."
Bolan stepped into the shadows, the other guy still beside him.
The concealment was all Bolan had been waiting for. It could only have been a matter of seconds before this guy tumbled to his impersonation anyway.
He spun, his right fist flashing out in a sidearm slash, the hard edge of his hand crashing into the guard's throat, crushing his larynx.
The man staggered, sputtered, tried to bring his own subgun up into firing position.
Bolan did not give him a chance to do that. He lifted the MAC-10 and raked the barrel across the punk's face, opening a ragged slash. Then he drove the weapon in a fierce blow up into the guy's jaw, snapped his head back.
There was a sharp crack as the man's neck broke. The sentry slipped to the ground.
Bolan waited, the MAC-10 ready to spray death from his hands, until he was satisfied that no one else was coming to check on him, at least not right at this moment.
He doffed the cap and overcoat, slung the Ingram back to its place beneath his right shoulder. He crouched so that he could slip underneath one of the massive eighteen-wheelers.
He opened the small plastic bag containers attached to his belt and went to work, molding a plastique charge against the gas tank of the truck, setting the timer for four minutes.
With the children already being loaded up on one of those other trucks across the property, he could not allow himself any longer than that.
Staying beneath the trucks, he moved on, skipping the next two trucks but rigging a charge on the one after that, setting the timer to go off at the same time as the first one.
By the time he was finished, he had the gas tanks of four of the trucks rigged to blow in two and a half minutes.
Now to save the children.
So far he had seen no sign of the Parellis or Lana Garner.
He felt sure that they were all here somewhere, but finding them might have to wait until after his diversion commenced.
He knelt next to a wheel of the last truck and got ready to sprint toward cover of the warehouse wall.
What he saw in
the next few seconds changed his plan.
A smaller door next to the big loading dock entrance opened.
Four people emerged, going down the short flight of concrete steps to the ground, starting across toward the low office building.
David Parelli was in the lead.
His mother, looking as elegantly dressed as she had been half naked the last time Bolan saw her, kept pace at her son's side.
Bringing up the rear were Lana Garner and a Mafia street soldier who held her arm. He was dragging her along roughly, just as Bolan had seen the little child dragged to the truck minutes ago.
Bolan waited, the numbers ticking away in his head, until the four of them disappeared into the office building, then he headed for the office at a dead run, not caring anymore if his presence was detected now.
A light burned behind a shade-covered window in the office building, but whoever had pulled down the shade had left a small gap at the bottom.
Bolan paused long enough to steal a glance through the tiny opening.
He saw Mrs. Parelli sitting behind a metal desk.
Her son stood in front of the desk and they both looked on as the gunman slammed Lana Garner down in a straight-backed kitchen chair placed in front of the desk.
Bolan left the window, covered the distance to the door in two long, pumping strides, slinging the Ingram MAC-10 around into his right fist while he cross-drew Big Thunder into his left hand.
He hit the door with his shoulder, slamming on through into the room, the AutoMag and the MAC-10 coming up in automatic target acquisition as the door flew off its hinges.
The gunman spun around in Bolan's direction, trying to lift the shotgun he carried, the woman forgotten.
Bolan squeezed the trigger of the SMG, the lethal burst stitching the guy's chest.
Blood and flesh mushroomed from the man's back as the slugs drove him against the office wall, the shotgun flying from nerveless fingers. He bounced off the wall to pitch, quivering in death throes, facedown onto the linoleum floor.
Denise Parelli shot out of her chair, a look of total surprise twisting her expression into something ugly.
Lana Garner lifted her eyes to Bolan, stray strands of dark hair falling across her face but not masking her relief.
Save the Children te-94 Page 17