Two hundred yards, and Bolan knew they would be waiting for him, right. It was a question of how many men, how many guns, the fear they were willing to endure to bring him down.
He was banking on that fear, and counting on the mercenary guns to flinch from death when it was thrown directly in their faces.
One hundred yards and he could see them now, a clutch of gunners fanning out to block the exit with their bodies, weapons drawn and angling onto target. Bolan spied the gate man in his spit-and-polish uniform, a chrome revolver braced in both hands, in the classic target shooter's stance.
At fifty yards they opened fire, and Bolan ducked beneath the dashboard, keeping pressure on the gas, the steering wheel rock steady in his hands. He heard the hornets smacking into grill and bodywork, the sudden steamy hissing of a punctured radiator and the windshield detonated into pebbled fragments, littering the dash and floorboards.
At twenty yards the hardmen scattered, all but one of them in time to save themselves. The gate man stood his ground dead center in the Caddy's path, still squeezing off in rapid fire, the hammer falling now on empty chambers. Bolan straightened in time for impact, and he met the dead man's eves with less than half a second to spare.
The Cadillac struck man and gates together, forced his body through the wrought-iron grillwork like tomatoes through a kitchen grinder. The force of the collision threw Bolan forward, bruised his chest against the steering wheel, and then the gates gave way, their relatively fragile structure bending, twisting outward underneath the crew wagon's momentum.
Bolan clenched his teeth against the rending, grating sound of ironwork being dragged along the Caddy's length on either side. It threatened to hold him for an instant, finally surrendering to the power of his V-8 mill. Then the tank rammed through and he was free.
For now.
Until a roving traffic cop or spotter for the syndicate got one look at his battered, bullet-punctured wheels.
The Caddy's dashboard was ablaze with warning lights, alerting him to engine damage, shortages of water, oil and gasoline. The radiator was expelling plumes of steam, and he could smell escaping coolant through the open dashboard vents.
The tank was dying on him and he would have to ditch it.
Before Scarpato and his watchdog, Stone, could mount a new pursuit.
Before the wounded Caddy gave up on its own and left him stranded in the open, easy prey for those in pursuit.
There was a chance that he could make it to the "safe" garage where he had stashed the other rental car, but it was just a chance, no more, and he would have to sacrifice the drop.
So be it.
Bolan held the pedal down and concentrated on the road — ahead, behind, to either side.
There was no safety for him now, he knew, in St. Louis, but the thought did not deter him from his chosen course. There was no safety in St. Louis for Scarpato, either. No safe haven for the man called Stone.
Not while the Executioner survived.
He was alive and for the moment, that was all that counted. Bolan's enemies would soon be hearing from him once again.
9
It had been too close for comfort, for damn sure.
The Executioner's precaution, wiring up the Vette for doomsday on the chance that he might need a desperate diversion, was enough to save him... this time. But he could not count on luck to see him through this mission in St. Louis.
Bolan was a cautious warrior, trusting more in strategy and preparation than in chance. He knew the value of reconnaissance and never trusted a simple fortune if he had a choice. He had survived his lonely war so far because he never trusted anything except himself, his weapons and his will to win.
The warrior who began to think himself invincible was quickly and invariably proven wrong, he knew from grim experience. And there were no immortals in the hellgrounds.
Next time out, the Executioner would have to try a different tack to reach Scarpato in his lair. Next time they met, the Man from Blood would not be after information.
He would be coming for Scarpato's head, to crush the serpent's brain beneath his heel and see the final spark of life snuffed out before his eyes. And Bolan knew that nothing less would be required to see the battle for St. Louis through.
He was disturbed by Stone, Scarpato's watchdog, and the ease with which the Ace had seen through his Omega mask. It raised a host of questions, and none of them were meant to put the soldier's mind at ease.
Ii bothered Bolan that Stone had marked his calling card as bogus... not so much because it almost cost the Executioner his life, as that the card, in fact, was genuine. He had retrieved it from the body of a fallen Ace in one of his engagements with the Mafia so long ago, and it had served him well.
Until today.
But Stone's reaction to the card was puzzling, disturbing. There had been something in the laminated pasteboard that had sounded an alarm inside the gunner's head, betrayed Bolan to his enemies.
And so far he had no idea exactly what that "something" was.
The card itself was back inside Scarpato's study, and he did not have another to compare it with. There must have been some change in the design, the calling card itself, that had alerted Stone to Bolan's scheme.
The answer sent a chill along Bolan's spine. New calling cards would mean new Aces. A second coming of the Mafia's gestapo, possibly regrouping in the service of another would-be Boss of Bosses somewhere up the line.
But when had they begun reorganizing?
How?
And why?
The Aces were a breed apart, a law unto themselves within the brotherhood. Conceived as the elite enforcement arm of La Commissione, they had at one time carried the authority to hit a capo on their own initiative, as long as they could justify it later to the ruling board. It was an awesome power in itself, and only one of several that the Aces used to keep themselves on top, the black knights of an evil kingdom, serving the not-so-round table of the nation's ranking mafiosi.
When Bolan had launched his one-man war against the syndicate, the Talifero brothers had been running things at Black Ace Central, taking orders only from the headshed in New York. Identical twins, Pat and Mike had been as ruthless as they came in the underworld jungles, two killing machines devoid of conscience. They ruled the roost by the fear that they inspired, and of the New York bosses only Augie Marinello had had the grit to give them orders on his own.
The Bolan challenge had been a natural for Pat and Mike. They very nearly tagged him in Miami, and again in Vegas, but each time he had left them licking ragged wounds.
It had been Bolan who discovered that the Aces were the brainchild of old Barney Matilda, Marinello's right-hand man from Prohibition days. The Talifero brothers were Matilda's sons, and before the Executioner finished off his second mile against the Mafia, he had made a clean sweep of the family. He took out Marinello for good measure, settling another ancient debt, and he had been convinced that the surviving Aces were a dying breed.
Until recently, that is.
A foul new wind had risen in the East, and Bolan had pursued it to its source, surprised to find the Marinello name ascendant once again around Manhattan. Augie's bastard son had tired of waiting for his father's throne, and he was moving in to take it when the Executioner arrived to spoil his best-laid plans. A dozen dons had fallen in the bloodbath on Long Island, spreading chaos through the underworld, but once again Bolan had been left with a bitter taste in his mouth.
For there had been an Ace named Lazarus at Marinello's side. And Bolan was thinking now of Lazarus. Of Stone.
The Aces chose their street names for effect. Matilda's vicious sons, the Talifero twins, had picked a name that aptly mean "such iron." And Bolan's choice — Omega — spelled the end, for any cannibal who crossed his path.
But Lazarus...
Perversely, members of the Mafia had shown a penchant for extracting codes and cover names from holy writ, as if the lifting of a phrase from scripture could
ensure success for some unholy enterprise. Barney Matilda himself had been code-named Peter.
And what of Lazarus?
The guy had risen from the dead all right, but briefly, and the Executioner had sent him back again to stay.
Now Stone.
Another Peter?
Was the goddamned guy a new foundation for the Mafia's gestapo? Was he more than just an adjunct to Scarpato's orphaned expeditionary force?
Reviewing his encounter with the mafiosi, Bolan thought that Stone displayed a healthy dose of cheek to Vince Scarpato for a simple gunner on the payroll. Not that any Ace was ever "simple," but at the same time, few would ever call their would-be capo stupid to his face. But Stone might be something more than what he seemed, and Bolan could not well afford to underestimate the Ace, especially if he had a resurrected crew of Mafia assassins at his back.
The scattered Aces, drifting randomly like plague bacilli on the wind, were bad enough. Regrouped into a fighting unit once again with leadership in able hands, they would be nothing less than catastrophic.
Revival of the Aces meant negation of a major victory for Bolan in his war against the Mafia. It meant reversal of the inroads he had made against the syndicate, a rude about-face to the bad old days when capos coast to coast had known the power of a swift, efficient army at their beck and call.
It was a grim concession to the enemy that he was not prepared to make.
Not while he lived.
The Executioner had lately risked his life, the lives of friends, to cauterize the Marinello cancer. He had believed that it was finished, finally, in New York... and now he understood that he had only been ensnared by wishful thinking.
It was never finished as long as Bolan's enemies survived, all breeding in the shadows, spreading, a writhing mass of inhumanity.
He would take them as they came, as they revealed themselves and stood to face his righteous wrath. He would erase them, foundations and all, at every opportunity.
Right now he had unfinished business in St. Louis, yeah. It went beyond Giamba and Pattricia, beyond Scarpato, reaching to the very origins, the root of Bolan's private holy war. It was a primal need that drove him now, compelled him to remain and wage relentless war against the cannibals.
Scarpato.
Stone.
He realized that names meant nothing in the final scheme of things. The changing names and faces, the alliances and old antagonisms, were as transient as the shifting desert sands.
The only constant for Bolan was his war.
The need to fight.
Because he could.
And in the last analysis, it mattered not if Vince Scarpato sought to found an empire for himself or for some other don who hid behind the scenes and pulled his strings.
Ernie Marinello was dead, and Scarpato had survived him, carried on his taint, his evil work. Scarpato had become a Marinello, in soul if not in name. Precisely as the gunner, Stone, had now become a Lazarus, a Talifero clone.
The enemy was nameless, faceless. He was timeless, sure, like Bolan's everlasting war.
The enemy was here.
The Executioner could see his duty clearly, and he knew precisely what he had to do.
Wipe out the Marinello taint.
Eradicate the Aces, no matter what their current numbers were.
Keep hammering the Mafia, because it was. Because he owed it to the thousands of forgotten victims. The women, tricked or trapped into a life of hopeless degradation and sold like cattle. The ruined families, whose names the Executioner would never even know.
The warrior owed them all, but not because of anything thai he had done himself. He owed them because he had the raw ability to wreak a fearful vengeance on the cannibals.
The soldier fought for all of those who never found the strength to stand against the common enemy.
It was a thankless war, at times. An everlasting war, for sure.
And Bolan knew that his "second mile" against the Mafia had not been finished on that rainy afternoon in Central Park, when he allowed himself to "die" and was "reborn" again as Colonel John Phoenix. The mafiosi had been with him then, and they were with him still.
Still the same.
Still deadly.
Still the enemy.
His bloody trek through hell would be completed — part of it, at any rate — when he had killed them all. When there were no more new recruits to take their places in the ranks.
It was a damned tall order, but Bolan knew that he was up to it.
Or was he?
Never mind.
He focused on the here and now and let the future fret about itself. He would be living through that future soon enough, providing that he lived at all beyond St. Louis.
Here and now was all that mattered to the Executioner. It was the only grim reality he had.
And it was high time to teach the savages a lesson in the only language they could understand. If he survived, there would be other times and other lessons. Other enemies.
If he did not, then he would take as many of the bastards with him as he could, oh yeah. And they would know that he had been there.
The Executioner would give them something special in the way of a forget-me-not.
Like hell, perhaps.
Delivered to their very doorsteps.
Gift wrapped.
With a blood-red bow.
10
The neighborhood's shady streets were lined with trees and houses set on spacious lots, each home an individual design without the cookie-cutter feel of less expensive tracts. There were no mansions here, but you could fairly smell the subtle elegance that characterized a bastion of the upper crust.
Behind the curtained windows with their burglar bars, the doors with triple dead bolts polished bright like a combat decorations, St. Louis's professionals were safe to carry on their ordered lives. It was a neighborhood of doctors, dentists, lawyers, ranking merchants. Here, a city councilman, perhaps, and there, a captain of police who found the wherewithal to live beyond his salary. In style.
Bolan drove along the quiet boulevards, observing traffic regulations, nodding at the private uniformed patrolman who passed by him in the opposite lane. His rental car would fit the neighborhood — just barely — and any casual observer would dismiss him out of hand. He would be "someone from the office," visiting a business partner or associate to talk about their common problems over brunch.
A casual observer would not make the Beretta autoloader slung beneath his arm, the silver AutoMag beneath the rental's dash in spring-loaded leather. A passerby would not suspect the other military hardware hidden in the trunk — enough of it, in fact, to make the quiet residential street a bleeding war zone if the Executioner desired.
The soldier was not hunting now, but he was searching. Behind his mirrored shades, the narrowed eyes were scanning housefronts, curbs and picking out the numbers. Another block, no more, and he would have the house he sought.
A drive by showed him two cars parked outside, and Bolan had his quarry now. He had already phoned downtown, to be informed by an indignant secretary that his contact would be out today. All day. The house had been a last resort, but it was paying off.
He cut a cautious U-turn in the middle of the block and doubled back to park the rental curbside, out in front. There was no point in looking for an alley or attempting to conceal the car. In such a neighborhood, evasive movements would have drawn attention. The best way to conceal himself, he knew, was to be as obvious as hell and act as if he came here every day.
He had not called ahead this time, preferring to surprise his quarry, catch him with his guard down.
He locked the car and left it, striking off across the broad expanse of lawn to circumvent a winding concrete walkway. He risked a final backward glance along the street and punched the door bell.
Inside the house, melodic chimes were tolling, and he missed the sound of footsteps drawing nearer, muffled by expensive deep shag carpeting. Alerted b
y the racket of the dead bolt, he was ready when the door swung open... but he was not quite prepared for what he saw inside.
Chuck Newman looked as if a dozen years and more had passed since Bolan's last visit to St. Louis. But time alone could not explain the shadows underneath his eyes, the worry lines etched around his mouth. One hand was out of sight behind the door, his other tightly clenched against his side, as if in anger... or to keep the hand from trembling.
He was looking Bolan over with a mixture of suspicion and impatience written on his face. When Newman spoke, his voice was tight and brittle. "Can I help you?" he inquired.
"Could be," the Executioner replied as he removed the mirrored shades. "And then again, there may be something I can do for you."
It was the voice, in combination with the yes, that finally put it all together for him, and the prosecutor let his fist relax, a measure of the tension leaking out of him at last.
"My God."
"Not even close."
The guy remembered where they were and cut a glance over Bolan's shoulder toward the empty street, alert to any sign of prying eyes. When he was satisfied he stepped aside and beckoned Bolan in. The door clicked shut behind him and the dead bolt rattled home with grim finality.
"You caught me by surprise just now," the one-time politician told him, almost managing a sheepish smile. "I never thought..."
He let it trail away, as if completion of the sentence was a pointless waste of energy, and motioned for the Executioner to follow him. A moment later they emerged into a sunken family room and found a woman waiting seated on the couch. At the sight of Bolan she was on her feet, the fingers of her hands entwined and held before her in a desperate, almost prayerful attitude. Bolan recognized the prosecutor's wife, the feverish anxiety they seemed to share like a family trait.
"My wife," Chuck Newman said by way of introduction. As he spoke, he shook his head in a dejected negative and she went limp, almost collapsing back upon the cushions of the couch.
"Who are you, then?"
Her voice was balanced on the edge of tears, and Bolan felt as if he had been dropped into the middle of a conversation. Newman did not speak, but he was watching Bolan now, uncertain what it might be safe to tell his wife about this man, this warrior who had turned up on their doorstep unexpectedly.
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