He pushed the morbid notion out of mind. No one except Giamba knew what Bolan had in mind, and Artie had a world to lose by throwing any lethal obstacles his way.
Still, the knowledge that he might be wasting time, preparing to invade a private home, gnawed at Bolan, but once again, he pushed the apprehension out of conscious reach. Giamba would gain nothing but a world of trouble by deceiving him about the safe house, and the warrior knew the tip was genuine.
He only hoped that Artie's spotters had been right about the girl.
Bolan set about his preparations with a vengeance now. Beneath his tailored jacket, he was all in black, the nightsuit fitting like a second skin. He buckled on a military web belt, using fingertips to check the holstered AutoMag, the nylon pouches with his extra magazines. The Beretta was snug inside its armpit rig, the custom silencer in place. The pockets of his skinsuit held stilettos, wire garrotes... the other tools of silent death.
And silence was important to Bolan on this probe. He needed stealth to get inside the house, to find the girl before she could be sacrificed by trigger-happy button men, to get her out again and past the neighbors' prying eyes. The silver cannon on his hip would be a last resort, and Bolan knew that any open firefight here would draw police like flies around a dung heap.
But he would not be able to avoid a confrontation with the guns inside, and Bolan reached down deep into his carryall, extracting his "head weapon" for the grim suburban probe. It was an Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun, capable of ripping out 1,250 rounds per minute in its automatic mode, this one especially modified by Bolan to fire a more conservative — and more controllable — 750 rpm. A footlong silencer was threaded on the weapon's stubby muzzle; it would cut the Ingram's chain-saw racket back to something like the sound of ripping cloth, inaudible outside the target house.
If he got inside.
The soldier left his topcoat, exited the rental car and stood in the carport for a moment, scanning back along the street.
He slipped one arm inside a bandolier of Ingram magazines, the pouches slung diagonally across his chest from right to left, positioned so they left his holstered sidearms free and clear in an emergency.
He moved along the carport's shadowed length until he reached a wooden gate that opened on the silent home's enclosed backyard. He reached across to find the latch, alert for any sound that would betray a watchdog, waiting for a taste of this intruder's flesh.
No sound, no movement, and the latch was not secured with a lock of any kind. The soldier slipped inside, at last beyond the reach of any prying eyes.
The car could not be camouflaged, of course, and it ! would be enough to tip the neighbors off that something was amiss... if any of them took the time to look. So far he had encountered nothing that would lead him to believe the local residents cared much for anything beyond their own well-tended property. And for once Bolan offered up a prayer for selfishness.
A narrow grassy pathway led from the carport to the main yard. Bolan followed the path, prepared for any unexpected challenge on the way, and was relieved to find that his initial hunch had been correct. The yard abutted on Scarpato's safe house from the rear, and drooping branches from an overhanging tree would offer him the avenue of silent entry he required.
Across the yard in long, determined strides, and Bolan hit a crouch beneath the common wall of cinder blocks, his Ingram at the ready. After several moments he began to breathe again, and risked a straining glance across the wall, inside Scarpato's bailiwick.
A single gunner was on duty in the yard, and he was plainly not expecting any company. Reclining on a chaise longue, jacket open to accommodate the holstered pistol underneath his arm, he seemed about to doze when Bolan spied him from a distance in the creeping dusk.
The warrior could have taken him from there with a silenced Beretta, but there was still a chance that he might call a warning to the others on the inside as he died.
The Executioner realized he needed a diversion, something to attract the sentry's notice short of causing him to sound a general alarm, and after several seconds Bolan found his answer in a row of empty trash cans ranged along the far perimeter. The nighthitter selected half a dozen decorative pebbles that had been used to line the flower bed in which he stood and slipped them in a pocket of his skinsuit, let the Ingram dangle from one shoulder on its sling as he prepared to scale the wall.
He used the overhanging branches of the tree next door to good advantage, scrambling up the six-foot wall with their support and melding with the leafy shadows there, a gliding dark shape more or less invisible at any distance. Once he found his perch, the Executioner withdrew his little cache of stones, calculating distance to the row of targets on the far side of the yard.
His first pitch missed the nearest trash can by a fraction of an inch, rebounding off the cinder blocks and falling silently into the grass. The second was on target, pinging off the pie-pan lid of number two just loud enough to do the job he had in mind.
The sentry came erect, one hand inside his jacket as he scanned the yard with narrowed eyes. When the metallic noise was not repeated he stood up and moved across the patio in the direction of the trash cans, pausing to inspect the access gate that had been firmly padlocked shut. No one i had breached the gate, no one was anywhere in sight, but something had disturbed him on the brink of slumber, and the guard could not relax until he knew precisely what it was.
The gunner started on a walking circuit of the fence, occasionally pausing, rising on his toes to peer across and into adjacent yards. Both hands were at his sides now, but he would be able to produce the gun and open fire immediately if the need arose. It would be Bolan's task to guarantee that this one never got the chance.
Slowly the gunner made his way to Bolan's tree and hesitated below, working out the stiffness with a yawning stretch that brought both hands above his head. The straining fists were almost in Bolan's face as he lay prone along the limb above his quarry's head. He might have reached down easily and grasped the gunner's wrists, but any move that left the sentry time to shout would be a clumsy brand of suicide.
The wire garrote was in Bolan's hands before a conscious thought had formed inside his mind.
The sentry dropped his arms, relaxed, and he was fishing in his pockets now, perhaps for cigarettes, whatever. He was looking back along the fence, away from Bolan, his back presented to the Executioner as an inviting target in the dusk. It would require split-second timing and precision, but it was not impossible.
The warrior moved. His legs were wrapped around the horizontal branch, his ankles crossed, and he allowed the force of gravity to drag him down, his body suddenly inverted, slothlike, as he let go with his hands. Those hands were snaking downward with the thin piano wire strung between them like a hunting spider's silken snare. He dropped the noose across the sentry's head and brought it tight beneath his chin, the muscles of his arms and shoulders knotting with the strain now as he hoisted his quarry off the ground.
The wire cut through the sentry's larynx, severing the jugular and the carotid artery before it snagged against the bony structure of his neck. He hung suspended in the dusk, treading empty air, his body racked with tremors. A crimson bib fanned out across his shirtfront and the guy was as dead as hell, damn right, before Bolan released the death snare, letting the corpse collapse to the blood-flecked grass below.
One down, and how many left to go?
No matter.
He was committed, and his target, Bonnie Newman, either lay within those walls, or she did not.
Whichever way it went, the Executioner would have to find out for himself. Inside.
He dropped in a combat crouch beside the tree trunk, merging with its shadow, steady eyes upon the house. If anyone inside had seen their comrade's air dance, they would certainly have sounded the alarm by now. When thirty seconds passed without a warning shout or any hostile guns emerging from the house, Bolan knew that he was in the clear.
So far.
> His entry to the house would be another thing entirely, and there was no time to lose. Each second wasted now increased the odds against him, put him closer to the lethal point of no return.
He circled wide along the fence, and gave the open patio a healthy berth. There was no point in barging in on unknown numbers of the enemy, attracting concentrated fire before he had a chance to check the layout of the house. Around the side, a trellis choked with ivy offered access to the second floor. A lighted window, open on the night, beckoned to Bolan as he stood below it, weighing odds and listening to doomsday numbers falling in his mind.
He scrambled up the trellis, trusting it to hold his weight, aware that any neighbor chancing to observe him now, the Ingram slung across his back, would surely telephone police. Another risk, but one that he would have to bear if he was going to see the mission through.
It was a bedroom window, Bolan discovered, when he was close enough to risk a glance above the sill. The furnishings were sparse: a bed, a single armchair, nothing in the way of dressers or a chest of drawers. Directly opposite, two doors were set into the wall a yard apart. One of them, closed, would be the bedroom's entryway; the other, standing open now, revealed a tiny bathroom barely large enough for toilet, sink and shower stall.
The room's two occupants were facing each other near the bed. The man was heavyset, of average height, his shoulder holster worn above a dress shirt with the sleeves roiled up above his hairy forearms. Facing him, a mix of panic and defiance written on her features, was a girl the soldier recognized as Bonnie Newman.
A dinner tray was sitting on the bed, the meal untouched, and from the grim expression on the gunner's face, he didn't relish playing waiter to his unwilling guest. It took a heartbeat for the Executioner to realize that they were speaking, and he strained his ears to catch their words, his face pressed close against the dusty window screen.
"You wanna starve yourself, it's fine with me," Scarpato's man was saying, sweeping one big hand in the direction of the dinner tray. "No skin off my nose, either way."
"I wouldn't touch it," Bonnie Newman said, and there was fear beneath the sharp defiant tone.
The gunner cracked a smile.
"I guess you ain't worked up an appetite today. No exercise or anything like that." The smile became a leer. "Could be you need a little workout, jus' to put you on your feed."
The girl was reading, loud and clear. The sudden terror was an electric spark behind her eyes. "If you touch me..."
The gunner took a step in her direction. "Yeah? Then what? Your daddy gonna prosecute me, bitch? Who says you're ever gonna have a chance to tell him what goes on?"
The lady whimpered softly, backed away. The gunner reached out, a blur of motion as the fingers tangled in the front of Bonnie Newman's blouse, the fabric ripping free to bare one ivory breast.
The Executioner's stiletto whispered across the window screen, its passage softer than the sound of shredding cloth, the muffled sounds of combat from inside. He drew the sagging flap of screen aside and slithered through the open window frame unnoticed, closing in without a sound.
Scarpato's gunner was attempting to subdue his hostage, but the girl was fighting back with grim determination, using fists and knees and elbows in a fierce attempt to save herself. The hardman gave it up and stunned her with a backhand blow that laid her out across the bed, her lip split wide and drooling crimson over blouse and bedding.
Instantly he was upon her, sweaty face inside her open blouse, both hands attacking stubborn Calvin Kleins. The gunner had them open, half way off her slender hips, when Bolan tangled fingers in his greasy hair and cranked his head back at an angle calculated to produce the maximum in pain.
The hardman's eyes rolled up and fastened on the face of death, suspended upside down above his head. He never saw the slim stiletto, never really recognized the source of sudden, numbing pain that traced a path across his naked throat and left it gaping like a second, toothless mouth. The hardman was a lifeless weight in Bolan's grasp, no longer difficult at all to move as Bolan pulled him down onto the floor.
The girl was watching Bolan and her attacker now through frightened and uncomprehending eyes. She drew the tattered blouse together, covering herself, and tried to find her voice.
"What... I... who are..."
"You're going home," he told her simply.
There were tears in Bonnie Newman's eyes as Bolan helped her off the rumpled bed, but they did not prevent her checking out the military hardware that he carried. She was silent for another moment, staring at him fearfully, but when she spoke again the voice was stronger, taking on more life and energy with every word.
"There are another four or five of them downstairs," she warned.
"Okay."
He swung the Ingram up and out, released the safety, double-checked the cocking bolt and satisfied himself the little stutter gun was ready to perform. That done, he stooped beside the flaccid body of the gunner, eased an autoloading pistol from his shoulder rig and handed it, butt first, to Bonnie Newman. "Ever handled one of these before?"
She nodded nervously. "My father's big on self-defense. He takes us to the firing range sometimes for practice."
"Good. Stay well behind me when we hit the stairs, and leave the hammer down unless you need to fire. In that case..."
"Never point a gun at anyone unless you mean to shoot, and always shoot to kill," she answered him. "I know."
Some "kid," damn right. He let her have a smile and led her out of there, the Ingram probing empty corridors ahead of him as they proceeded toward the stairs. From somewhere below, he heard the sound of voices raised in sudden laughter. He tried to count the different voices, stopped at four and started slowly down the stairs.
They would not be expecting death, and that was in his favor now. If they were swift and smooth enough, then he and Bonnie Newman had a chance. If not... well, Bolan did not like to think about the options inside the hostile lines.
He cleared the second-floor landing, moving in a combat crouch, his Ingram sweeping back and forth across the parlor field of fire, with Bonnie Newman bringing up the rear a dozen strides behind. If someone opened fire, the girl would have a chance to break and run, to try the bedroom-window exit route before they finished with him on the stairs.
It was a chance, at any rate. And it was all they had.
Another step. Another... and he saw the gunners now, arrayed around a folding table, concentrating on their beers and on the hand of blackjack they were playing. One of them, a squat gorilla with an ugly scar across his forehead, was about to show his hole card when the warrior called to them across the intervening space.
"I'd fold if I were you."
Four heads were swiveling to face him, hard eyes homing on the source of Bolan's unfamiliar voice. Four hands were reaching out for hardware, grappling with quick-draw holsters, shoulder rigs, the gunners peeling out of there and scattering in a professional reaction that was almost good enough.
Almost.
Bolan held the Ingram's trigger down and swept the weapon's sausage-muzzle in an arc from left to right and back again. He cleared the table with a storm of parabellum manglers, exploding flesh and bone and cans of beer in one fusillade. He watched the startled gunners twisting, sprawling, dying, spattering the walls and carpet with their crimson essence as they fell.
And it was over in two seconds, the ripping-fabric sound of Bolan's stutter gun replaced by a monotonous, infernal dripping from a ventilated beer can lying on the table, and the leading gunner who was sprawled facedown beside it, clutching what could only be the losing hand.
He fed the Ingram another magazine and beckoned to the girl.
"Come on. We're out of time."
She followed him with wooden strides, her eyes fixed firmly on the door, refusing the temptation to observe whatever might be waiting for her in the living room. She had already seen enough death to last a lifetime, and Bonnie Newman had no need of a refresher course.
>
The rental car was close, across a narrow strip of manicured lawn, beyond a prickly hedge, and they were there within a moment, unopposed.
Bolan took the lady's borrowed autoloader and stowed it underneath the driver's seat. He fired the engine, taking them away from death and back toward home.
For Bonnie Newman, anyway.
He wondered if her home, her world, would ever look the same again, and knew the answer even as the question took on conscious form. This woman-child had been irrevocably changed, of course, but only time would tell precisely what the nature of that change might be. With love, a caring family around her for support, the lady would be fine. She would be home.
As for Bolan, he was moving out of danger into even greater peril, carrying the fire back to an enemy who would be waiting for him now, with open arms. There was no home, no haven for the Executioner. His home was in the hellgrounds, now and always, for the grim duration of his everlasting war.
The Executioner was rolling toward the enemy, an appointment with death. And he would not have had it any other way.
20
The Executioner had called ahead from a suburban pay phone, and the Newman home was ablaze with lights now as he parked the rental in front of the house. Before he had a chance to kill the engine, Bonnie Newman had opened the passenger door and was moving at a sprint across the lawn. A flicker at the drapes, and then her anxious parents met her on the doorstep, folding her in a tight embrace that was all tears and loving words of welcome home.
Bolan waited by the car, preferring darkness and allowing them their private moment of reunion. When both the ladies disappeared inside, Chuck Newman ambled down to join him on the street. The prosecutor's face was flushed, and he was wiping his eyes without a trace of embarrassment.
"I don't know what to say," he told the Executioner. "I owe you... everything"
"Forget it."
"Never." And again, with feeling, "Never."
"Are you solid here?" the soldier asked.
"I think so. Now that Bonnie..." Newman hesitated, reading Bolan's face. "I could request protection."
Missouri Deathwatch Page 14