"Might not be a bad idea. Scarpato's going to be mad as hell about the change of plans. I mean to keep him busy, but it wouldn't hurt to have some backup on the premises in case it falls apart."
Newman frowned. "I didn't hear that, but I wish you luck. Can I do anything to help?"
"Protect your treasures," Bolan told him, smiling, nodding toward the house where draperies were shifting back and forth, the Newman ladies peering out to watch their man in huddled conference with a soldier of the night.
"I will. About Giamba..."
"He's all yours. Scarpato was the mover here, but Artie's guilty as the day is long. If you can bust him, I'd encourage it."
"You haven't got a deal?"
The prosecutor looked confused as Bolan shook his head. "A matter of convenience. He was the lesser of two evils, but he isn't any friend of mine."
"All right."
"You might lay off until tomorrow," the soldier advised. "I wouldn't want your people walking into anything they didn't understand."
"Of course."
Bolan checked his watch beneath a streetlight, saw that it was time to go.
"I'm running late."
"Okay." The prosecutor hesitated, frowning at his shoes. "I wish that there was something I could say..."
"You said it all right there," Bolan told him, nodding toward the stoop where their reunion was enacted moments earlier. "There isn't any more."
"I know."
They shook hands warmly, Newman visibly reluctant to release him for the mortal combat that was coming. And the prosecutor stayed at the curb, watching as the rental pulled away. His figure dwindled in the rearview and was finally lost as Bolan took a left and powered back in the direction of the crosstown expressway.
He was running late for an appointment, the climax of his second visit to St. Louis. He was expected, even if Scarpato didn't know it yet, and Bolan did not want to keep his target waiting any longer than was absolutely necessary.
Pushing memories of Newman and his reunited family away, the soldier concentrated on his coming confrontation with the enemy. They would be waiting for him, organized by Stone and hard as hell inside Scarpato's walled estate. The place would be a fortress, hut that did not relieve him of his duly.
Penetrate.
Destroy.
Annihilate.
It was his duty, sure. And where Scarpato was concerned, the man in black admitted to himself that it would be his pleasure, too.
The warrior had an ancient account to settle, and he was looking forward to the last installment being paid on what had once appeared to be a lifelong debt. From the beginning of his war against the Mafia, he had been fighting with the Marinello family. He had destroyed the family's patriarch, its ranking officers, its Talifero hardarm, and an heir apparent to the throne — but still the malignancy was with him, turning every victory to bitter gall.
Tonight, with any luck at all, he would uproot the family tree, destroy it root and branch. Scarpato was the last ambassador of Augie Marinello's rotten empire, and he had to die for that, if for no other reason in the world. And there were countless other reasons, sure. Enough to keep an Executioner in business for a thousand years.
The Marinello albatross had been a weight around his neck for longer than he cared to realize, and now, with its elimination in his reach, the warrior felt a grim elation mingled with the other battlefield emotions he was long accustomed to.
Whichever way it went, he would be through with this part of it, tonight. He would be rid of all the Marinello family and followers, or they would all be rid of him. Either way, the soldier knew it would be a kind of resolution — hell, a new beginning, sure. For Bolan or the Mafia.
The Man from Blood was grimly, savagely determined that it would not be a fresh beginning for his enemies. Their day had come and gone.
The problem was, they didn't know it yet.
But Bolan planned to teach them, and reinforce the lesson with as much destructive power as was needed to get the point across. Providing that he lived beyond this night, this close encounter with the cannibals.
If not... well, he had done enough already. He had restored a decent family, and he had battered Vince Scarpato's troopers to the point where they were weakened, ready for a fall. If Bolan missed his chance tonight, there would be someone else to give a shove tomorrow. Tom Postum, perhaps. Or Chuck Newman. Even Little Artie.
Giamba was a dinosaur about to face the reality of personal extinction, but he wasn't finished with St. Louis yet. In league with Bob Pattricia, the old fox still had several aces up his sleeve, but when this night was through, he might find out that someone had abruptly changed the rules of play. Giamba wasn't dealing anymore, and come tomorrow, it would be his time to raise the limit, or to fold and fade away.
Whatever happened to Giamba and Pattricia, the soldier's targets for tonight were Vince Scarpato and the Ace called Stone.
It could go either way, Mack Bolan knew, and he was ready now. His mind was totally divorced from fear, from apprehension and misgivings, as he drove his rental toward the killing grounds. Another hour, two at most, and it would be decided, written on the city's face in fire and blood.
The Executioner was moving toward a confrontation with his destiny, and he could only hope that Fate, the Universe... whatever... would be watching, caring how it all turned out.
The soldier would do everything he could, within the limits of his strength and armament, his martial skills, but he was burdened by the knowledge that there is no guarantee of justice overcoming evil in the end. The good guys lose with regularity, and he had seen enough of that to know that nothing could be guaranteed beyond the eventuality of death for everyone.
No matter now.
The Executioner was hunting, and his quarry was in sight. He let the singleness of purpose carry him beyond his doubts, beyond misgivings, and he knew that he would give his best, whichever way it went. Mack Bolan only knew one way to play the game.
For keeps, damn right.
21
Bolan hit the turf and dropped into a combat crouch, his every sense alert and probing at the night, in search of enemies. He strained for any sound, the slightest hint of movement that would tell him he had been detected as he scaled the outer wall.
Nothing.
He was alone amid the shadows, merging with them naturally, as if the darkness was a sentient thing that understood he belonged there, prowling like a nocturnal predator.
The Executioner was rigged for doomsday in the dark. His face and hands were blackened with camou cosmetics, leaving only graveyard eyes untouched, alert within the shadows. The nightsuit's pockets were heavy with stilettos and other strangling gear. The silver AutoMag rested against a muscled thigh in military leather, and the silenced Beretta occupied its usual place, beneath his arm. The combat harness ringed his waist and crossed his chest with extra magazines, grenades, a ten-inch K-Bar fighting knife.
His chosen weapon for the all-or-nothing showdown was an M-16/M-203 configuration, capable of dealing death en masse. The assault rifle, so familiar from Nam and a hundred different battles in his home-front war, was capable of spitting out its 5.56 mm manglers at cyclic rate of some 700 rounds per minute in automatic mode. Attached to the underside of its barrel was a 40 mm, breech-loaded grenade launcher, capable of handling explosive rounds.
It was a lethal combination, sure, and Bolan knew that he would need it all if he intended to survive a head-on clash with Vince Scarpato's private army here tonight. He had reduced their numbers but Scarpato had enough men left to pin him down and finish him, damn right, if Bolan gave them half a chance.
Scarpato — or his watchdog, Stone — had sentries patrolling the grounds for signs of an intruder. Two of them had passed within a yard of him as he was about to scale the outer wall, and he had waited, let them pass, when he could just as easily have taken them apart with silent rounds from the 93-R.
But a premature engagement would alert the host
ile guns and bring them out in force, preventing him from achieving what he had already come so far and risked so much to do.
Three hundred yards to go before he reached the house, with scattered trees and shrubbery for cover on the way. From where he stood, he could see the house, ablaze with floodlights front and back. The gunners would be concentrated there, he knew, but others would still be roving the grounds.
How many?
No matter.
The Executioner had played against long odds before. It was the sort of game he understood, excelled at, in a way few other men could match. The game of life and death, where you could only go for broke or fold, and folding was the same as suicide.
Bolan was a master of the game, because he realized it wasn't any kind of game at all. It was reality, with living, breathing men and women hanging in the balance every time he took the field. He fought for them, and lor the future they would build, given time and half a chance.
His enemies were human, too, of course, but they had forfeited their right to humane treatment by their own abandonment of all humanity. By choice they had become a breed apart: a predatory species that could not be reasoned with on any level higher than the basest gut reaction of the carnivore. They understood rapaciousness and greed. They understood survival of the fittest, right, and Bolan recognized early that he couldn't compete with savages while following the rules of civilized society.
The Executioner was ready to stop these savages. If Bolan had his way, not one of them would leave the grounds alive. And if he failed he would take some cannibals with him, bet your ass. And any who survived him would recall this night with fear and trembling to their dying day.
Like a gliding dark thing, clinging to the night he moved silently in the direction of the house. In the direction of Scarpato, sure, and Stone.
* * *
Scarpato drained his whiskey glass, then pushed it away from him, across the bar. He turned and paced the study floor, fingers entwined behind his back. He might have been a first-time father, walking off his nerves outside the delivery room, but something in his scowl bespoke preoccupation with a darker train of thought — with death instead of newborn life.
The windows of the study had been hastily replaced that afternoon, and now the drapes were drawn, shutting out the night. His soldiers were outside on patrol, but still Scarpato could not shake a certain feeling of uneasiness... almost a premonition of impending doom.
So goddamned much had happened since last night, and none of it had done him any good. One minute he was looking at the finish line, with Art Giamba hanging on the ropes, and then, without a warning, everything was upside down. His world was crumbling around him, and he didn't have the first idea of how to put the brakes on.
Picking up the Newman kid had been an inspiration, certainly that should logically have put Scarpato back on top. Her father had been ready to comply with anything they asked, and by this time tomorrow, Giamba's family should have been a fading memory.
Except that everything went wrong on the snatch. Again. His soldiers had been sitting on the girl, awaiting word from home, and suddenly they all were dead, the bitch was gone.
Scarpato shook his head and cursed under his breath. There had to be an explanation for the sudden turn of fortune. If he only knew...
Of course, there was the Bolan theory, and it made a certain kind of sense. The guy was nuts enough to take on an army and mean enough to make it stick; he had already proved that how many times? And yet...
Scarpato's mind came back to Stone, and once again he felt the burning in his stomach as he thought about the cocky Ace. If he was behind this mess, if he was setting up his capo, then Scarpato had to find out and take action now, before it was too late.
Unless it was too late already.
A rapping at the study door, and Vince Scarpato spun to face it, fairly snarling.
"What is it?"
Stone was in the doorway, smiling at him narrowly, that friggin' smile that made Scarpato want to rearrange his face with something long and sharp.
"Just checking in to let you know everything's cool outside. There anything you need?"
Scarpato snorted.
"I could use Giamba's head, for openers," he snapped, and he was pleased to see Stone lose the smirking little grin. "An' I could use this fuckin' Bolan's head. That is, if he was ever here at all."
Stone paled visibly.
"He'll be here, Vince. Just give it some time. You've got my word."
"I had your goddamn word that we could hold the Newman broad! Half a dozen soldiers thrown away like so much garbage, and the bitch jus' waltzes out like there was nothin' to it."
He was winding up, and it felt good. The Ace stood silent in the face of Vincent's sudden rage.
"So tell me. Stone, how many men we gonna lose tonight? Or are we gonna lose 'em all? You got a word for that?"
"Hey, easy, huh, Vince? You know this Bolan. The guy's a wild card, right? It figures we were gonna take some hits before we pinned him down."
Scarpato felt the color rising in his cheeks.
"It looks to me like we've been takin' hits all day," he growled. "You wanna count the boys he hit so hard they won't be gettin' up again? So when we gonna pin this bastard down? You got a time for me on that? You got a day?"
"He'll be here, Vince. It's like a pattern with the guy, you know? I made a study of this thing."
"What kind of grades you pullin' lately?"
Stone ignored the barb and forged ahead.
"He tried to make us spring the girl, okay? We didn't budge. So now he's got the girl, but this guy still has scores to settle. He'll be coming in here, sure as shit. Tonight."
"You say," Scarpato sneered. "An le's suppose you're right. Then what? You think we've got enough men left to pin Bolan down?"
"I'm sure of it," the Ace replied. "I'd bet my life."
"You have," Scarpato told him. "Yeah, you've done exactly that. Because if this guy doesn't show, or if he shows and we can't whack him out, I'm gonna have your head. You readin' me?"
"I hear you, Vince."
The voice was distant now, no longer nervous, but detached somehow. It made Scarpato queasy when the Black Ace talked that way. He wondered if he ought to take Stone now, before he had a chance to pull some other asshole stunt and fry them all.
"You better hear me, Stone," he snapped. "You better hear me loud an' clear, because..."
The sudden stutter of an automatic weapon erupted from the grounds, the hollow booming of a shotgun on its heels. Scarpato dropped to a crouch instinctively, although the sound of small-arms were still some distance off.
"He's here!" Stone rasped.
"Get out there, dammit! Now!"
Scarpato was already scuttling toward the desk, intent upon the autoloading pistol that he kept there, in the center drawer. He had a brief impression of the Ace in motion, and the door was swinging wide as Stone departed in a rush to join his troops.
Scarpato found the pistol, drew it to him, worked the slide to chamber up a round. Outside, the sounds of firing had intensified, and they were growing closer now. The battle was encroaching on his safety zone.
He would join the action in a moment, but first Scarpato felt the need for one more glass of whiskey. A small one, naturally, to cut the chill and chase the goddamned trembling from his hands.
He would bag himself a wild man, or maybe, if it didn't quite work out that way, he would decide to bag himself an Ace.
And if it did work out, well, sure, he might just bag them both. Two assholes for the price of one, and that would be a bargain any way you sliced it.
The whiskey burned his throat and took away the chill that had been tickling its way along his spine. No time to waste — he had to get a move on now, before the warmth and artificial courage started wearing off. Before he had a chance to realize exactly what his plan entailed.
Two assholes for the price of one.
It sounded right.
He double-checked the pistol's safety, killed the study lights and let himself out through the brand-new sliding doors. Outside, the night was heady with the smell of death, and there was gunsmoke on the air. It smelled like victory.
* * *
Bolan led the running target, stroked the automatic rifle's trigger, and the guy went down, the tumblers slicing through him like a heated knife through cheese. The Executioner swiveled toward the secondary target, counting heads and quickly gauging distance, crouching underneath the angry hornets that were swarming all around him now, dispatched from hostile guns.
Three soldiers, sprinting on a hard collision course, unloaded their revolvers at him in the sort of blind, reflexive fire that seldom gets results. He let them come, and then his finger found the trigger of the launcher mounted underneath the barrel of his M-16. He braced the weapon at his hip, let fly and watched a smoky thunderclap engulf the night.
The pointman simply disappeared. His two compatriots were airborne now, in opposite directions, twisting as they fell and landing in the awkward, crumpled attitudes no living body ever demonstrates.
And it was time to move. The soldier knew it in his bones, and he was gliding out of there, a wraith amid the battle smoke, before another squad of Vince Scarpato's gunners had the chance to pin his new position down. Another fifty yards and he would reach the house...
A bullet cracked beside his ear and Bolan swiveled crouching, his automatic rifle sweeping into target acquisition as a silhouette emerged downrange. The Executioner saw a pistolero taking aim, and then another shape materialized beside him, swinging up a stubby riot gun.
The warrior held the trigger down and swept the rifle's muzzle in a flashing arc, the power flowing through his arms and out the muzzle in a lethal stream. Before his eyes, the shadow gunners were disintegrating, bits and pieces of themselves detaching from the larger whole and spinning into smoky darkness as the lifeless husks were blown away.
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