The massive front doors opened, and a houseman sidled out to meet Bolan as he reached the marble steps. The gunner's jacket was unbuttoned, and he kept one hand pressed flat against his abdomen as if enduring a bout of heartburn, watching Bolan with a hunter's eyes, alert for any move that would provide him with a cause for hauling out the hardware.
The death card was in Bolan's hand before he reached the doorman, its solitary spade resembling a fat black widow spider perched upon his fingertips. The houseman took one look at it and lost his heartburn, gun hand sliding down until it rested limply against his thigh.
"We weren't expecting you," he said.
"That's right."
The gunner hesitated, finally dredging up his voice from somewhere deep inside.
"This way, sir."
Bolan followed through a lavish entryway, with sunken parlors opening off either side, along a corridor decked out with tapestries and stylish reproduction prints. The gunner led him to a well-stocked library and left him with the promise that Scarpato would be down to join him shortly.
He was in, and that was half the battle. The other half was getting out alive — but not until he had accomplished his objective. He had come here to assess the enemy and leave a little something of himself behind.
Like doubt.
Disunity.
Dissenion.
Already bloodied in their first engagement, Bolan's enemies were ripe for some subversion from within.
Bolan took a look around the library while he waited, scanning shelves of leather-bound volumes that extended to the ceiling. Strategically positioned chairs were all mahogany and leather, placed to take advantage of the light from massive windows that comprised the western wall.
The door behind him opened softly, and he turned to face his host. A decade older than his latest mug shot, Vince Scarpato had been softening around the middle, but nothing of the softness showed through in his eyes. He looked the new arrival over, frowning, and did not extend his hand.
"I don't know you," the mafioso said.
"No reason that you should."
A flicker, deep behind the eyes, of something dark and dangerous.
"The doorman didn't catch your name."
"I didn't throw it, Vince. You can call me Omega."
"Uh-huh." Suspicion simmered in his voice. "What brings you out this way?"
"We heard you had some trouble on your hands."
"That right? Who's we?"'
The Executioner ignored his question pointedly, continuing as if the mobster had not spoken.
"Could be you made a bad mistake last night."
Scarpato raised an eyebrow, feigning ignorance.
"I guess I just don't follow you," he said.
"That move on Little Artie, Vince. You nearly blew it."
"Yeah?" Defiance was competing now with curiosity, and running second best. "So how's he doin', eh? He coulda come an' told me that himself."
"He's busy, Vince. Been on the phone all morning. You know how it is."
Defiance stumbled, lost on the inside curve.
"I didn't know he had so many friends," Scarpato said.
"You'd be surprised. A lotta people still remember how it used to be. The good old days, ya know? A lotta people hate to see times change."
"That kinda thinking killed the dinosaurs."
"Could be this dinosaur's still got some life left in him, Vince. Could be he's not alone."
"You say."
"I haven't said a thing," the Executioner replied. "If it comes down to that, I haven't even been here, Vince."
"Okay. So what about those calls?"
"Long distance, man. You've heard of that. They've got a phone line now goes all the way back east." Scarpato smoldered, but he held his tongue as Bolan forged ahead. "I hear some people in New York were getting wake-up calls today."
"So what's that mean to me?"
"The phone lines run both ways, Vince. Airplanes, too."
"I got a lotta friends around New York," Scarpato said, his tone defensive now despite his brave facade.
"That so? Well, shit, no problem then. I guess I just misunderstood about the changes that were going on back east. I mean, they woulda told you all about it, right?"
"I guess."
"I guess. Who'd want a piece of your ass, anyway? I mean, they all must know how loyal you were to Ernie, right?"
No answer, but the mafioso's face had paled beneath the sunlamp tan, and he was thinking fast now, toting up his friends and enemies inside his skull.
"I guess I had it all ass-backward, Vince," the Executioner went on. "I mean, it just makes sense that any friend of Marinello's is a friend of yours."
And Vince was thinking that one through, racking his brain for the name of a friend in New York and coming up empty, when the door behind him opened unexpectedly. The mobster jumped involuntarily, eyes narrowed as he turned to face the new arrival.
He was tall and lean, well-groomed, athletic looking in his flashy suit. Gray eyes swept past Scarpato, locking on the mirrored pools of Bolan's shades.
"What is it, Stone?"
The new arrival closed the door behind him, took another stride into the room.
"I heard we had some company. A vip. Just thought I'd say hello."
The tone was almost condescending, and Scarpato glowered, first at the intruder, then at Bolan, finally turning back to face the man called Stone.
"You prob'ly know him as it is," Scarpato growled. "He's one of yours."
"That so?"
Stone cocked an eyebrow, took another casual stride toward Bolan, and alarms were going off inside the soldier's head now, raising gooseflesh on his arms and urging him to get the hell away from there.
"They call me Stone," the gray-eyed gunner told him through a plastic smile. "And you're..."
"Omega."
The hardman's frown was contemplative as he tried to remember the name.
"Can't say I've heard of you, but what the hell..." His tone was frosted with a thin veneer of ice. "I guess you wouldn't mind me checking out your hole card."
Bolan had a heartbeat to decide if he should bolt or play the gunner's game. The laminated ace was in his hand before his thoughts had time to take on conscious form. The gunner scrutinized it closely, finally turned to pin Scarpato with a glare.
"You look at this?"
The New York mobster shook his head suspiciously.
"They cleared him at the gate."
The gunner handed Bolan's calling card to Vince Scarpato, turning back to face the Executioner directly.
"Bullshit, Vince. It's bogus as the day is long. You've got a ringer on your hands, you poor dumb..."
Bolan did not let him finish. From a standing start he threw himself at Stone, the heel of one hand slamming into the gunner's chin. It was a killing blow, but Stone had seen it coming soon enough to save himself, step backward slightly, and instead of suffering a broken neck, the guy was lifted off his feet, propelled directly into jarring contact with his capo.
Stone and Scarpato sprawled together on the floor, all thrashing arms and kicking legs. The soldier could have taken them, right there, but he was in survival mode and focused on escape, intact, from what had suddenly become a most unhealthy atmosphere. And for every heartbeat he delayed his exit now, the odds against survival lengthened geometrically.
The warrior left his adversaries wrestling with one another, cursing, kicking, as he sprinted for the west wall with its bank of windows. It was chancy but at the moment it was all he had.
And Bolan leaped, eyes closed, arms up and crossed to shield his face from the explosive impact as he hit the glass dead center, plunging on and through.
He hit the flagstones in a fetal curl and kept on rolling, shattered glass cascading down around him. It snagged his clothing, cut him, but the soldier closed his mind to pain, his focus on the grim totality of life and death.
Behind him in the study, Stone and Scarpato were already on their
feet, the Black Ace hauling hardware out from undercover, sighting in on Bolan's wobbling, rolling form. A bullet pocked the flagstone inches from his face, and now he had the sleek Beretta in his fist, already pivoting and coming upright in a combat crouch, returning fire.
The gunner, Stone, had seen it coming, and he dodged behind a leather-covered easy chair, his parting shot so high and wild that Bolan didn't even have to duck. The soldier picked out Scarpato, already scrambling out of sight and out of range before he fixed the target in his mind, and Bolan began to move, his destination the Corvette.
Inside Scarpato's rented house, the gunners would be scrambling. Some of them would be in the study now, as Bolan cleared a corner of the house and started pounding toward the driveway.
How many guns?
How many cannibals arrayed against him here on hostile turf?
He realized that numbers did not matter now. It would only take one lucky shot to bring him down and end it all. And all the odds were on Scarpato's side this time.
A shout behind him, dangerously close, and he was twisting, going over in a diving shoulder roll before he heard the gunshots. Angry hornets sliced the air above him as he flattened on the ground, bringing the Beretta up and into target acquisition.
Two men, out of breath from unaccustomed running, and he caught them both flat-footed now, their weapons still directed toward the point where he had been a heartbeat earlier. Before his swift evasive move could register, he was already sighting down the autoloader's slide, squeezing off a deadly double punch at less than twenty yards.
The taller of the two gunners staggered, sat down hard, his stainless .45 forgotten as he brought both hands up to his throat. A ragged vent had opened there, spraying frothy blood across his white dress shirt. From fifty feet the Executioner could hear him wheezing, struggling for breath and losing it, the life light burning out behind his eyes as he collapsed back on the grass.
His partner tried a sidestep and he almost made it. Almost. The second parabellum sizzler drilled his cheekbone underneath an eye, and kept on reaming through to make explosive exit just behind the other ear. The guy was staggering another pace or two while his muscles took their last commands from dying brain cells.
Bolan did not wait to see the walking zombie fall. The warrior was already up and moving, still homing on the flame-red shark that was his one last hope of clearing the Scarpato grounds alive.
He made the final corner, running free and clear, the hot breath scalding lungs and larynx as he pushed himself beyond the limit. Another eighty yards and he would reach the sportster, slide behind the wheel...
And they had reached the red Corvette before him.
8
A squad of hardmen, two or three with shotguns in their hands, circled the sports car, bending to peer through tinted windows, tugging at the doors in vain. As Bolan pulled up short another clutch of gunners exited the house, two of them moving toward the Vette, the others peeling off to either side at double time, intent on circling the house to search him out.
It took perhaps a heartbeat for the nearest hood to spot him, shout a warning to the others as he swung an M-l carbine up and onto target with instinctive speed. And Bolan knew that it was over even as he stroked the sleek Beretta's trigger, dropping the rifleman before he had a chance to fire a shot.
The other guns had seen him now, and it was now-or-never time.
Already prone as they began unloading on him, the soldier slid one hand inside his jacket, found the little detonator clipped inside his belt, above one hip. He keyed the single button, held his breath and hugged the lawn as doomsday came among them with a vengeance.
At a range of eighty yards the sportster reared, its front tires rising, followed by the rear, and it was levitating on an oily ball of flame. It took another fraction of a second for the thunderclap to reach him, and Bolan rode it out with eyes closed and face nuzzling the turf.
A secondary blast destroyed the Vette before it settled back to earth. The air was thick with shrapnel — twisted steel, splintered glass, and the shattered fiberglass. A ghastly rain was falling over Bolan now, the heavens drizzling shredded flesh and weeping crimson for the hardmen who had stood too near the sportster when she blew.
The Executioner was on his feet and moving, scanning for survivors, as the sanguinary shower died away. He glanced in the direction of the house where windows had been shattered by the blast, and he found the open doorway momentarily empty. They were lying low in there, still trying to decipher what in hell was going on, or else the other troops had found themselves in a different exit, fanning out across the grounds to search for him in other quarters.
Either way, the blast would bring them running soon, and Bolan had no time to spare. He heard the doomsday numbers falling in his mind, and he was looking for an alternative escape route when a flaming scarecrow lurched erect beside the ruins of the Vette, his arms a smoking windmill as he screamed his life away through blistered vocal chords. A silent mercy round reached out to clip the dancing puppet's strings, and he collapsed beside the crackling skeleton of Bolan's wheels.
Around him other dazed survivors were beginning to recover something of their wits. The nearest of them was already on his feet, shaking his head and dabbing at the blood from ragged scalp wounds dripping into his eyes. When vision cleared he saw the smoking ruin of the Vette, half turned, and found the Executioner regarding him from less than twenty paces out.
The gunner's first reaction was professional and smooth, considering the circumstances. Digging for his gun, the minor wounds forgotten now, he reached his belly holster in a single fluid motion... and he found it empty.
Realizing he had had the weapon in his hand before the world fell in, the gunner cast around in desperation, searching for it at his feet. The eyes that locked with Bolan's were afraid and angry at once. They registered the bitter knowledge of defeat. And Bolan sealed that knowledge for eternity with an explosive round between those eyes.
Another pair of guns were on their feet to Bolan's left now, and he swiveled to confront them. Both had clung to weapons when the shock waves mowed them down, and they were clinging to them now, the deadly muzzles winking flame and tracking onto target acquisition.
Bolan never let them get there. Squeezing off in rapid fire, he caught the nearest gunner with a double punch through heart and lung, the impact blowing him away. Then Bolan swiveled to concentrate on the dying hardman's comrade, the Beretta chugging in his fist.
And number two was staggering, the life already running out of him through twin holes in his chest. He made a gurgling sound, expelled a crimson bubble from his throat and toppled slowly forward to the blood-stained grass.
The Executioner was running overtime, his numbers gone. He spied the line of Caddies still in place, the closest to his shattered Vette already smoldering, and sprinted for them as a shouted warning from the porch alerted him to new arrivals on the scene.
He gambled that Scarpato's men would feel secure enough inside the grounds to let their guard down, kiss off some of the security precautions that are second nature to a full-time warrior. Ducking behind the nearest Cadillac, he found the driver's door and wrenched it open, slid behind the wheel and found the key still dangling from the ignition.
He cranked it over, careful not to flood the engine as he worked the pedal with his foot, aware of soldiers closing on his flank, already plinking at the car. The Cadillac was taking hits, a Magnum round exploding through the small side window at his back, but now he had the engine revving and he dropped the monster into gear, releasing the brake and smoking rubber in reverse.
Behind him, gunners scattered as the tank bore down upon them, veering in a wicked fishtail skid that caught one pistolero unaware. Before the hardguy had a chance to avoid the hurtling tank, the fender caught him square and dropped him in his tracks, his torso half beneath the rolling juggernaut.
Bolan felt the Caddy lurch, ignored it as he ripped the lever into Drive and jammed
the pedal to the floor. His tires lost traction briefly, spinning in the human stew, and then they found the pavement once again, screeching out of there with force enough to jam the warrior back against his seat.
A dazed survivor of the Corvette blast staggered into Bolan's path, the Diamondback revolver anything but steady in his bloody hands. There was no time for evasive action as the Caddy hurtled toward him, accelerating into lethal impact, lifting him and rolling him across the broad expanse of hood. Screaming face met windshield glass with stunning force, a crimson spiderweb of cracks erupting from the point of impact, and the gunner clung there for a moment, staring lifelessly at Bolan through the fractured glass, before he slipped away and disappeared across the fender.
Concentrated pistol fire followed the Caddy, peppering its tail and shattering the broad rear window, spending lethal force inside the trunk or in the cushions of the deep back seat. The warrior risked a backward glance and saw the dwindling gunners as they scrambled for remaining cars, intent on giving chase.
And he was watching in the rearview mirror as it went to hell.
The burning Cadillac exploded, spewing gasoline and oil in fiery streamers, touching off a dozen secondary fires among the other cars in line. The gunners scattered, dodging shrapnel, beating at their clothing where the flames had taken hold.
There would be no pursuit in those machines, but Bolan could not take a chance that Vince Scarpato had other wheels at his disposal. The warrior was still inside the dragon's turf, outnumbered and outgunned. No time for letting down his guard or easing off on the accelerator yet, not with the hounds still baying at his wheels.
It was becoming something of a habit, borrowing the opposition's wheels for an impromptu getaway. A risky habit, one that he would have to break if he intended to pursue his everlasting war by means of anything resembling coherent strategy.
The time for playing it by ear was past, and he would need a more dynamic plan of action to carry off the action in St. Louis.
If he was able to escape from Vince Scarpato's armed estate intact.
If he did not encounter fatal opposition at the gates, which were his only means of exit now.
Missouri Deathwatch Page 5