That lobby was packed with frantic humanity, the forward edge all but crushed by the insistent packing from the rear—and still they were backed up into the stairwell and halfway up the first flight of stairs. Through the glass transom above the stairwell door, Bolan had an excellent view from the second-floor landing—across the herd and through the windows out front, onto the street. Police vehicles were out there en masse, including armored riot vehicles, paddy wagons, the whole smear. A PA system was blaring announcements in three languages, monotonously alternating the message of the night: REMAIN CALM. THERE IS NO DANGER. THIS BUILDING IS QUARANTINED.
Bolan had to grin at that. A quarantine, sure, against the deadliest disease of mankind: organized crime.
Those guys in the lobby were not buying that bit about “no danger.” The place was on fire, wasn’t it? The damn fire trucks were sitting out there, weren’t they? A maniac was running wild somewhere in there, wasn’t he, shooting people down, on sight, like wild dogs in the streets.
The sizing of the situation was accomplished with one flash of the combat eyes. The next flash sent thunder and lightning into that crowd on the stairs. A fat guy with a bald head was the first to lend himself to the accentuation of panic, flinging his life forces onto the surrounding crowd. A guy standing in the splatter zone was the next to go. He saw the apparition in black and raised a hand to ward off his call but the messenger splattered on through that flimsy shield and took the guy in the ear.
There was not even room down there for the victims to lie down in death. They hung in the crowd, grisly heads testifying to the “danger” in that place as those about them lunged and plunged to escape a similar fate.
The Man from Death stood calmly at that landing and continued the challenge, hurling word after thundering word into the howling pack, placing his rounds with care for maximum effect—through the transom, under it, around it. Handguns were exploding down there but their bullets had no sense of direction nor even any recognition between friend and foe.
The truth of the matter was that those guys down there had not a friend left in the world.
They were now a frenzied herd of animals stampeding in the face of death.
The windows at the front gave and the spillover into the street became a fact of the night. The animals were waving their weapons and shooting at anything—and the retort from the street, true to Bolan’s guess, was immediate and withering.
He sheathed his weapons and withdrew.
The Montreal Meet would go down as the grisliest of memories for the international brotherhood of savages.
And Mack Bolan had no regrets in that regard, none whatever. He knew that as long as he lived, it would take a hell of lot of arm twisting to engineer another international meet.
He had no apologies at all to offer his victims.
“Let them eat themselves,” he muttered, and made his way to the roof.
It was not over yet. A matter of tactical disengagement remained, and he was hoping that the option was still open.
She was waiting for him at the top of the shaft, a mere waif in a soldier’s suit huddled on the little platform at the topmost branch of the tree.
“I was getting worried,” she whispered. “The gunfire keeps getting louder and louder.”
“That’s coming from the street,” he told her. “It’s a perfect cover. Let’s go.”
Bolan led the way outside and held the trick door for his flanker. “Stay one pace behind and to my left,” he quietly instructed her. “Fire at my command only and call your shots. Understand?”
The girl nodded her understanding of the instructions and moved into position.
Bolan stepped away from the wall and moved cautiously across the garden terrace, senses alert for some sign of Leo Turrin.
He found, first, Joe Staccio.
The body was laid out naked on the artifical lawn with a small mountain of ice cubes covering the body. His flanker gasped at the sight of that but there was no need to shush her.
Standing off about six paces, beside a potted tree, was Leo.
The muzzle of a Colt was at the back of his head, and behind the gun stood Little Al DeCristi.
It was one of those sudden confrontations, an eyeball meet from out of nowhere—and the moment congealed outside of space and time.
The entire world seemed encapsulated in that frozen moment. It finally, always, came down to a moment such as this—and Bolan had learned to expect them although there was simply no way in the world of space and time to prepare for them.
DeCristi began cackling like a crazy man.
Leo said, “Don’t let him suck you, Sarge. Blow him out.”
Translated: I’m a dead man anyway and so are you if you play his game.
Bolan knew the game.
And he knew guys like Little Al DeCristi. Faithful servants to the end, a life in the shadow of a life—the true meaning of fealty. For guys like DeCristi, Bolan had always felt a twinge of something approaching respect—even though they deserved it no more than a bird deserved respect for flying.
Bolan moved only his lips to instruct his flanker. “Put a burst into the ice,” he commanded.
No sooner said than done. The hot little burper sent ice flying everywhere and the body beneath it quivered with the impact of steel-jacketed slugs at high velocity.
DeCristi’s horrified attention flew there for one fatal instant—an instant outside of space and time—and then Leo Turrin was on the deck and rolling and the .44 was saying goodbye to fealty.
The hit flipped the little guy around like a rag doll and deposited him alongside ice mountain.
“Slick, slick,” Turrin growled as he rolled to his feet. He cast a quick glance at the lady with the chattergun and the question was there in the eyes but there was no time to voice it.
Several boys were running over from the south wall, all that remained of the roof crew. They had been watching the massacre on the street, and it was a wonder that they even heard the rooftop gunfire in the background of all that. But they had, and they were coming to investigate.
Turrin told Bolan, “There’s only three. That’s one apiece. Let’s take them.”
“We’ll take them,” Bolan replied, indicating the girl with a flash of his eyes. “You get that chopper up here.”
Turrin nodded and moved clear, digging into his pocket for the radio.
The Executioner’s icy eyes gave his flanker a glint of confidence as he explained her fire assignment. “I’ll be moving center and right. You take whatever pops on my left flank.”
She was scared, sure, but it was the fear of the novice—the green soldier—more afraid of herself and her own reactions than of any enemy.
Bolan’s fear was a professional one. He knew that all of life was lived on the heartbeat, and he knew how frail was that beat. One stagger, one moment of indecision or one heartbeat of error—no matter who the enemy—could mean the end of war.
The final answer, always, is death.
This girl had to learn that—if only in the way Bolan had.
He moved across the steps of the penthouse terrace and went down to meet the enemy, his petite flanker and apprentice-at-war moving quietly in his shadow.
These boys were playing it cagey. They’d split up and were moving stealthily now along three converging lines of approach.
Bolan found his position and pushed the girl into the shadow of a potted tree. “Wait them to the wall,” he whispered.
She nodded understanding and crouched over her weapon.
Bolan grinned at her and she smiled back, though it was a quick one.
The first one to show himself was in her fire zone. The guy slithered over the wall and was down in the shadow of it in a twinkling. Bolan saw it, and he saw Betsy’s muzzle lunge toward that target but a heartbeat too late. She stayed her trigger finger and Bolan said to himself, good girl.
The other two followed almost immediately. First, one up over the right flank then another at de
ad center—the latter hefting a short shotgun and moving a bit less gracefully over that low wall.
Bolan hit the guy on the right with a thunder round as he was dropping toward the shadow. It was a sloppy hit. The guy fell with a gurgle and was thrashing around in the darkness. The second round from the thundering .44 gouged the wall where the shotgunner had been a heartbeat earlier.
Both survivors were, crouched in the two-foot shadow where wall met roof, utterly without cover except for the darkness, undoubtedly very much aware of their unhappy situation but with no place to go but forward.
Bolan swiveled his head but not his eyes as he growled to his flanker, “Spot them?”
“More or less,” she replied in a quavery whisper.
“Take them,” he said.
He sensed her hesitation and repeated it, more commandingly, “Take them!”
The burper erupted immediately, figure-eighting the left flank and leaping right. The guy with the shotgun jumped up as the burst from the chattergun swept toward him, the weapon at his shoulder in a desperate bid for survival.
The AutoMag roared out a double thunder roll, eclipsing momentarily the chatter from the left. The shotgun blast went toward the moon as the guy was flung back against the wall—and, at that same instant, the fast tattoo from Betsy Gordon’s automatic ripped into the guy and held him there for a moment, pinned to the wall, the life forces exploding out of him in a dozen rivers of death.
Bolan went forward to verify the hits. He had to put another round into the first one down. The guy at the center had died on his feet. The one on the left was alive but choking on his own blood.
Betsy had crumpled to one knee, the muzzle of her weapon resting on the cement of the garden patio in the same spot from which she’d been firing.
Bolan trudged back to her position and coldly told her, “Clean it up.”
“Wh-what?”
“Your man is suffering. Finish it.”
She shrank from that chore.
He lifted her by the arm and guided her to the place. The dying man’s eyes were open and pleading as he weakly fought and kept losing to the blood in his throat—the breathing bubbly, lips flecked with red foam.
“Do it!” Bolan commanded.
She could not.
The AutoMag leapt to the task, giving instance to a lingering certainty, then Bolan curled an arm around the girl and led her to the open area beyond the patio wall.
There were no words for the aftermath of this “lesson” in “answers.” They waited quietly until Leo Turrin rejoined them.
“On the way,” the little guy reported. He was giving the girl a curious inspection. “How far is the lady going?”
“As far as she wants to go,” Bolan replied quietly.
“I recommend very, very far,” Turrin said. “There’s been a slaughter below. The cops are entering the building now.”
A question remained unspoken in Betsy’s eyes.
Bolan asked it for her. “Any word of another battle?”
The underboss shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“So there’s no word, yet,” Bolan said, for the girl’s benefit. To Turrin, he explained, “The battle for Quebec. Chebleu is leading a force against the Mafia Quebeçois.”
“Hell, I hadn’t heard of that,” Turrin replied.
“You will,” Bolan assured him.
Familiar windmill rhythms were approaching through the air from the south.
Turrin said, “Stay hard, Sarge.”
“You’re not coming?”
The largest little guy shook his head at that. “Wouldn’t look right, would it? Naw. I’ll wait for the cops in the penthouse.” He grinned. “My lawyers will have me sprung from this rap before the cell door closes. Think of all the wild stories I can tell when I get to New York.”
Bolan grinned solemnly and clasped the little guy in a bear hug. “Give my best to Hal,” he said gruffly.
“Will do. I guess he’ll need it. Probably has his tit in a wringer, right now.” Eyes flashed to the lady. “Sorry, ma’am.”
She’d not even heard. Glistening eyes were on that wall back there.
The chopper was settling in.
The three strolled casually to the touchdown spot. Handshakes all around, a word to the pilot from Leo Turrin, then the little guy was out and clear and the chopper was lifting away from the Tree of Montreal.
The girl collapsed entirely into Bolan’s embrace, nuzzling the cold little face onto his shoulder.
She moved moist lips to his ear and whispered, “It’s a nightmare.”
Sure, Bolan thought, relaxing into his own weary soul. An eternal nightmare.
But also, it was war.
EPILOGUE
The helicopter set them down within a two-minute jog of the warwagon. They lost no time claiming the battle cruiser and quitting that area.
Bolan was in bluejeans and flannel shirt, the battered fishing hat, all weapons stowed.
Betsy wore one of Bolan’s shirts and nothing else but the effect was little different than that of a mini.
He activated the radio scans and set course for Bois des Filion.
Betsy was awed by the warwagon but as interested in the living accommodations as in the warfare capabilities.
She perched on the seat at Bolan’s side and listened to the swirl of intelligence coming through the radio monitors. She had snapped back quickly from that horror on the roof. The color was back in her cheeks and those lovely eyes were finding their proper depths again.
She asked, “Where are we going?”
He told her, “I’m headed to the next combat zone. How about you?”
She showed him a self-conscious smile. “Thanks, no. I think there must be a better way. For me.”
He assured her that there was, then said, “I guess I’ll stay north of the border until the fur settles a bit. Couple of days in the woods, maybe. A little fishing, a lot of sleeping.”
She smiled at that. “A little hunting?”
He rolled his eyes as he replied, “No way. What are your plans? Immediate plans, I mean.”
The girl turned up her palms and inspected them. “Gosh, I don’t know. I suppose I should try to get back to Andre.”
“You can forget that,” Bolan told her, lapsing back to the sober mood. “There will be no revolution in Quebec.”
She replied, small-voiced, “I know that.”
“You knew about Andre—his many lives?”
She nodded. “I knew that he was acting doubly. I guess I’ve always known that he would one day make the choice one way or the other. I kept hoping it would be our way.” She spread her hands and tried on a bright smile. “Actually, I guess, every way is our way. Some ways just take longer.”
“And last longer,” Bolan added.
“Right, right—I guess you’re right.”
“Want to go fishing with me?”
She giggled, the kid forever. “Sure. Why not?”
Bolan reached over to squeeze her arm and said, “Welcome aboard.”
“You, uh, mentioned something else on the program, other than fishing.”
“I did?”
“You, uh, said … a little fishing, and …”
He gave her a sidewise glance and said, “Questions, questions.”
She giggled. Hell, he liked that giggle.
“I’ll bet you have an answer for that, too,” she told him.
“I have my answer,” he said, smiling.
“I’ll settle for that,” the ex-guerilla softly told him.
So would Bolan. For a while.
But there were many other questions prowling the landscapes of humanity, savage questions, and the Executioner knew the answers.
A little fishing, a lot of life with a grown-up kid who had a lot of that to share, then back to the wars.
Mack Bolan could live with his answers, and it therefore mattered not a damn that he would one day die with them.
Co
uld any man ask for any more?
Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series
1: SHOW OF ARMS
The Colorado bloodbath erupted at about dusk, on the eastern slope of the Rockies between Golden and Boulder.
A few minutes earlier, Bolan had left the main highway to slowly cruise Golden, out past the School of Mines, and onto the two-lane blacktop which links the two college towns.
It was, he knew, an invitation to combat—that maneuver.
They had been tracking him all the way from Denver, just hanging loose and awaiting an opportunity to close for the kill. The twenty-seven-foot GMC motor home was not a difficult target to follow, and Bolan had no illusions as to his ability to shake the pursuers—nor, indeed, did he wish to.
Leo Turrin’s worried caution rippled the surface of his mind as he left the outskirts of Golden behind him: “It’s a supersoft operation out there, Sarge. All I can get is odors, no intel at all. If you go, for God’s sake hold your ass with both hands.”
But, no, the man from blood did not wish to shake his pursuers. He had, in fact, taken particular pains to reveal his presence in the midst of that “supersoft” operation. Ten patient days of quiet probing had yielded nothing of significance to add to Leo’s “odors,” so Bolan had used the only option available.
He’d allowed them to see him.
An open probe of Denver’s “strip,” Colfax avenue—a few indiscreet questions, here and there—and yeah, like clockwork, there were the hounds of hell sniffing cautiously along his backtrack.
So okay. It was what he wanted. And he’d led them deliberately away from the urban sprawl of Denver and into an area with combat stretch. Not that Bolan was simply spoiling for a fight with this mile-high arm of the mob; he was still seeking intelligence, an angle into the “supersoft.”
Now, though, he was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of that strategy. It had been a discreet tail, all the way to Golden. Then, suddenly, all discretion had gone to hell. The warwagon’s radio scans had locked onto a military frequency in the VHF spectrum, and the console monitors were rattling continually with a barrage of urgent instructions issuing from some central “command” for the deployment of “killers.”
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