The soldier fed another HE round into the 40 mm launcher, breaking for the house before the sentries there had time to get a fix on his position from his muzzle flash. Another forty yards and he would make it or he wouldn't, but either way, he meant to give it all he had.
The Executioner was coming in, and he was carrying the fire.
* * *
The telephone roused Postum from the edge of sleep. He snared the receiver on the second ring and fumbled for the bedside lamp as he strained toward recognition of the small, familiar voice that was demanding his attention now.
"I hear you... yeah... and when was this?" Awake now, every trace of sleep stripped from him in an instant. I'm on my way. Roll out a SWAT team, will you, Ed?"
He dropped the telephone receiver in its cradle, moving toward the closet with determined strides. He was on a blood roll now, and all that mattered was the speed with which he could respond.
The goddamned guy was doing it, for heaven's sake. He had engaged Scarpato's troops right in the mafioso's own backyard and he was kicking ass, according to the frightened neighbors who were calling in reports about a war in progress. He would probably be dead before the SWAT team had a chance to get there.
Tom Postum was well acquainted with the hellfire warrior's awesome durability. The guy had walked away from certain death a hundred times, and the opposition hadn't put a finger on him yet.
The Executioner was not invincible, he knew, but, hell, the guy was good at what he did.
The captain sobered, realized that he was smiling now, and wiped it off his face. What Bolan did, what he was good at, right, was killing people in the streets. And never mind that those he killed were little more than chancres on the face of civilized society. The mother-raping scum were human beings — on the books, at any rate — and it was Postum's job to keep them safe until he found a chance to lock them up.
It was a crazy world, for sure.
A decent man was out there in the night, risking everything he had to keep the savages at bay. That made him Postum's enemy, although the captain's oath committed him to something similar... within the narrow guidelines of established law.
And Postum wondered if all the rules and trappings had that much to do with civilized society. It seemed that something had been lost between the cave and courthouse. Something fundamental, like protection of the weak and helpless from the predators who prowled on every side.
Protection was Tom Postum's business, and if he had to save Scarpato's neck tonight by taking out the damndest guy he had ever known, then he would do exactly that.
Nobody ever said he had to like the job. Hell, no.
Nobody ever said he had to do his duty with enthusiasm when he handled scum and was compelled to call it "sir."
But there was something wrong, goddammit, and the man from homicide was scowling as he closed the door behind him, holstering his .38 and heading for his car.
Nobody ever said he had to be on time to save the vermin from extermination.
This time Tom Postum hoped he would be late.
22
Bolan hit the study windows with an HE round and followed through before the shock waves had subsided, dodging a rain of plaster from the shattered ceiling. A rapid scan through dust and smoke revealed that he was alone in there. Scarpato had evacuated, and the Executioner would have to seek him out, inside the house or somewhere on the rambling grounds.
But surrounded by the hostile guns, with riot officers undoubtedly en route by now, he did not have the time to search each nook and cranny of Scarpato's palace for the mafioso.
But he did have time to burn it down.
The soldier primed his 40 mm launcher with a thermite round, proceeding toward the study's exit and the corridor beyond. If he could smoke out Scarpato and his sidekick, Stone, then all of this would not have been in vain.
He reached the door and threw it wide, went through low and fast to flatten against the opposite wall. A pistol barked uprange, and bullets burrowed through the wail above his head with angry smacking sounds. The soldier loosed a burst in that direction, instantly rewarded by a scream. Then he moved down the corridor in the direction of Scarpato's sunken living room.
The house was full of frightened voices, shouting everywhere around him, barking orders, questions, curses. Bolan followed them until the hallway ended, opening upon a living room which could have easily contained a small tract house with room to spare. At center stage, a dozen guns were milling aimlessly about, berating one another, hugging weapons to their chests like blue-steel talismans. Above them, shouting in an effort to be heard, the Black Ace, Stone, stood flanked by two more carbon copies of himself.
And Bolan knew that he had found the heart of Vince Scarpato's army, sure. If he could crush that heart, then he would only have to find the brain to make his sweep complete.
"Shut up, goddammit!" Stone was shouting at his troopers. "Will you just shut up?"
The Ace on his left raised a .45 and triggered two quick shots at the ceiling fixtures, finally obtaining full attention from the gunners below. Scowling, Stone leaned across the banister and jabbed a finger at them.
"We don't have time for all this bullshit runaround," he bellowed at them. "We've got inbound hostiles on the property, and one or more of them may be inside the house right now."
"You got that right," Bolan muttered to himself, and he raised the over-under combo, angling the launcher into easy target acquisition as the Black Ace spoke.
"Get back to your positions now, goddammit, and go through it like we planned. I mean, right now!"
But there would be no more right now for the assembled troopers, not in this life, anyway. Bolan rode the launcher's heavy recoil, screwing up his eyes against the sudden glare of the incendiary shell's explosion directly in the middle of the milling crowd.
A white-hot ball of fire rolled up, expelling coals of phosphorous that burned through flesh, furniture and plaster walls with fine impartiality, igniting secondary fires wherever they touched down. He had another fireball up the launcher's spout and angling toward target when the Aces on the staircase spotted him through the haze of smoke and plaster dust.
Stone pointed at him, mouthing something that the soldier could hear above the screams of burning, dying men, and then the Ace was digging for a pistol underneath his arm. His flankers had their weapons out already, braced in double-handed grips and spitting fire toward Bolan's corner of the room. The hostile rounds were close for starters, getting closer all the time.
He hit a flying shoulder roll and came up in a crouch some twenty feet away from his original position, firing from the hip. It took the Aces a moment to react, and it was still too long to save them from a blazing figure eight of tumblers that impaled them, crucified them against the crimson-spattered wall. Bolan had a glimpse of Stone, his rag-doll figure slithering across the banister and down into the leaping flames, before the launcher bucked again and lit a second conflagration on the stairway proper, sealing off the upper floor.
If anyone was up there now, they would be leaving by the windows, right, or frying where they sat. The carpeting and drapes, the furnishings and walls were burning briskly now, the smoke of their destruction filling the room and making it impossible to breathe.
The soldier pulled back to race along the corridor. If Vince Scarpato was behind him, he was dead already, or he would be soon. But if he had escaped somehow, if he was now outside the house...
And Bolan could not put his trust in chance. He had to find Scarpato and see him dead before he quit the scene. Until he saw the body for himself, there was no way that he could leave. If one of Vincent's soldiers found him in the meantime, well, they say you never hear the shot that kills you.
But Bolan kept his ears wide open, just the same.
* * *
Art Giamba leaned across the driver's seat and punched his wheelman in the shoulder, snarling at him as the guy began to brake.
"What the hell you stoppin' for?" the little mafio
so snapped.
"The gates are locked," the driver told Giamba almost desperately. "We can't break through."
"The fuck we can't!" Giamba snarled. "You don't know how to drive this thing, then you move your ass an' let me take the wheel!"
The driver swallowed hard, but he obeyed his capo, standing on the gas and steadying the limo as he screeched ahead on a collision course with tall wrought iron. Behind the gates, Giamba caught a fleeting glimpse of Scarpato's gate man, scrambling for cover as the juggernaut bore down upon him, other high-beam headlights blazing in its wake.
Giamba had collected every gun he had and piled them into everything on wheels that he could gather in an hour's time. The raid on Scarpato's was a hasty move, but that was how he knew it would succeed. He had the impact of surprise behind him now, and Vinnie would not be expecting him this way.
It was a masterstroke, and Artie owed it all to Bolan. The guy had run Scarpato ragged all that afternoon, and he was out there drawing off more hostile fire even as they crashed the gates and barreled on through darkness toward the house.
Except that Vince Scarpato's house was all ablaze with floodlights as if he were expecting company. There were gunners running back and forth out front, some of them pausing long enough to fire a burst at the surrounding shadows, dodging, weaving, moving on.
And what was that smoke pouring from the windows of the upper story. Was Vinnie's goddamned house on fire? Was Artie driving smack into the middle of a frigging firefight now?
The little capo felt his stomach turning over, threatening to empty its contents in a rush. The limo was already taking hits, and now the driver brought it to a sliding halt, still thirty yards from Vinnie's house. The other cars were braking, pulling in to form a rough defensive ring, and all of them were taking hits from the defenders racing back and forth across the floodlit drive.
"Get out! Get out, goddammit!
Artie shoved the gunner on his left with sudden, desperate violence, scrambling behind him through the open limo door. A bullet cracked against the window frame, bare inches from his face, and stinging fragments opened up the mafioso's cheek. He stumbled, scraped his knees against the pavement of the drive, then found his feet again and scrambled back around the limo, seeking cover from the hostile fire.
It was a frigging setup, Giamba thought, and he had been so damned hungry for revenge that he was suckered into it like some greenhorn. They were surrounded now, he knew that much from all the muzzle-flashes winking in the darkness on their flanks, and it would be a miracle if anyone got out of this alive.
Giamba had a pistol in his hand, but he could not select a target from the winking darkness, any more than he could hope to bag a star by firing at the heavens overhead. His men were firing, but Artie's mind was turning toward survival now. Escape. And never mind that some would call his move desertion under fire.
He broke from cover suddenly, the old legs pistoning, propelling him along the drive toward the broken gates. He heard the bullets reaching for him, felt them tugging at this clothes. They grazed him, staggered him, and still he ran, refusing to collapse. Ahead of him headlights were approaching fast, and Artie ran to meet them now, his arms outstretched, unmindful of the weapon in his fist. If he could only reach those friendly lights, if he could hide behind them, make himself invisible, he had a chance.
Giamba ran as if his very life depended on it.
Because it did.
* * *
Tom Postum, riding in the lead car, recognized Giamba at a range of forty yards. The mobster came directly at their headlights, staggering and reeling like a drunkard, arms outstretched, and Postum's driver was already braking when they saw the little autoloading pistol in the mafioso's hand.
"Lookout!"
The captain thrust his head and gun arm through the open window, night wind whipping at his face now as he sighted down the four-inch Python's vented rib. Giamba wasn't shooting at them, but he wasn't stopping, either, and the strike-force chief was squeezing off in rapid fire. He saw the mobster's jacket pop with the impact of his Magnum rounds, the fragile body twisting, going down...
The cruiser jounced across Giamba, shuddering and losing traction for a moment, instantly recovering and roaring on along the drive. Postum banged his head against the window frame and cursed, eliciting a breathless "Sorry" from the driver at his side.
He put Giamba out of mind, ignoring what the other cruisers and the SWAT team's van were doing to him in the lead car's wake. The captain concentrated on their destination, and the hell that had already broken loose some thirty yards from Vince Scarpato's doorstep.
Men were running everywhere and firing weapons in the darkness, seemingly without a target as their muzzle-flashes lit the night. A ring of cars had formed in the driveway, blocking off all access to the house, their headlights stabbing toward the mansion. And he saw that Vinnie's house was burning now, long tongues of flame protruding from the upper windows, licking at the shingles on the roof. The smell of burning, mingled with a very different stench of gunsmoke, hung above the lawn and driveway like a pall.
The cruiser fishtailed to a stop, and Postum wrenched the 12-gauge pump gun from its dashboard mounts, already bailing out of there before the flashing lights and sirens had a chance to register with the combatants of the other side. A few of them were turning their attention to the new arrivals now, some breaking for the trees and other swiveling their guns around to bring the lawmen under fire, but most of them were too damned busy firing at each other or the shadows to be bothered.
Postum braced the riot gun across a fender of the unmarked car and pumped a round into the firing chamber, sighting down the barrel at a line of human silhouettes. Behind him, members of the SWAT team were deploying all along the firing line, their unit leader barking orders for surrender through a bullhorn — and he might as well have been conversing with a wall.
In front of Postum, muzzle-flashes started lancing toward the new arrivals, peppering the squad cars with a burst of automatic fire. He stroked the shotgun's trigger, rode the recoil, watching as a tattered rag-doll figure toppled, sprawling to the pavement in the shadow of a limousine. He worked the slide, picked out another target, fired, and now his men were firing all along the line, their weapons battering the night.
He caught a glimpse of Bob Pattricia, hunched down between two cars and fumbling with his weapon, but before he could react, a burst of automatic fire had ventilated Art Giamba's underboss and dumped him in a lifeless sprawl across the blacktop. Cursing, Postum sought another target now, unmindful of the ringing in his ears, the rage that gripped him like a white-hot fist around his heart.
And Bolan was forgotten for the moment as the captain fought a primal battle of his own. It was survival of the fittest and, if he thought about the Man from Blood at all, Postum would have wished him well. Whatever sparked the shoot-out at Scarpato's, it was Postum's battle now, and he was in it all the way. When it was over, if he was among the living, he would find the time to sort the jumbled pieces and put them in their places.
And Postum hoped with all his heart that Bolan would not be among those pieces when the smoke began to lift. He owed the soldier that, at least, and if he could not help the Executioner, at least Tom Postum would not hinder him.
The goddamned guy was on his own.
* * *
Outside the air was cleaner, but it still retained the smell of smoke and violent death. A dozen guns were hammering at once, and as he stepped outside the study's shattered window frame, Mack Bolan saw that other troops had joined the free-for-all. Giamba's men, most likely, looking for a weak spot in Scarpato's armor while the Executioner distracted their opponent, pinned him down.
So be it.
Bolan had no quarrel with Giamba's troops, but he could not afford to let them block him from his prime objective, either. If they got Scarpato, fine, but he would need the confirmation of his own two eyes before he took it as the gospel truth.
More cars, now, r
oaring in along the drive, and this time there were sirens, flashing lights, to readily identify the players as they took the field. A panel truck was hastily disgorging black-clad officers — the SWAT team, sure — and they were falling in along a ragged firing line, one of them shouting through a megaphone before the hostile weapons answered him and everyone got down to the priority of fighting for his life.
From his position at the corner of the house, the Executioner was able to survey the squad cars, ranged behind a line of dark sedans and bullet-punctured limousines which seemed to be the focal point of Vince Scarpato's troopers in their brutal counterpush. He fed an HE can into the launcher, raised it to the level of his waist and let it rip.
A Lincoln reared up on its haunches at the center of Giamba's caravan, the shock wave dropping gunners in their tracks for yards around. Another heartbeat, and the gas tank weighed in with a secondary blast that set adjacent cars and men on fire, the glowing human torches scattering like animated embers in the night.
He turned away, ready to concede that Vince Scarpato must be out there somewhere, in the middle of it all, when Bolan sensed a furtive movement on his flank. Instinctively he knew that his opponent was behind him, leveling a weapon at him from a range of maybe fifteen yards.
"You're dead," Scarpato told the warrior as he turned around, the muzzle of his M-16 directed toward the ground.
"That's two of us, I guess," Mack Bolan said.
"So guess again. I'm gonna walk away from this, you bastard. And you're not going anywhere."
"I don't have anywhere to go," the warrior told him levelly. "I'm where I need to be."
And when he moved, Bolan seemed to melt away, his body twisting in a sideways shoulder roll that brought him to his knees some twenty feet from where he had been standing seconds earlier. Scarpato fired too late, his angry bullets slicing through empty air.
Missouri Deathwatch Page 16