Jersey Guns

by Don Pendleton

  Actions under the stress of combat are more often than not purely reactive things, a flexing of the survival instincts along a pathway of strongly conditioned (trained) responses.

  The actions before a battle are usually the foretelling of the tale.

  Combat—in the organized sense—is a uniquely human pastime, despite the outraged cries from humanitarians down through the ages that combat is bestial, inhuman. It is, literally, intensely human.

  The art of combat was perhaps the first art ever devised by the human mind, and the high development of this “art” made man supreme over the other beasts. It is uniquely his accomplishment, even if also his damnation.

  The first tools ever developed by the hands of men were very probably tools of combat, and to this day the greatest excellence of technology is usually directed into or produced by this same class of tool-making.

  The very intellect of man was fashioned both by and for the grim necessity to do battle, to survive through combat, and many of the most stirring moments of human history were productions of the combat intellect.

  To dismiss “soldiers,” then, as something less in the human order than artisans and philosophers and prophets is to degrade the very foundations of humanity.

  Without the soldiers, the “combat intellectuals,” there would be no artisans and philosophers and prophets; nor would the mind of man have ever descended from the trees to survive the brutalities of life on the jungle floor, and on the plains and plateaus of a natural world which knows no natural peace.

  There is an intellectual excellence inherent in any victory of man over the elements; and man himself, of course, is an “element” of the natural world. Let the “intellectuals” boo and hiss at the military mind as they may, and do—there is a human excellence and an intellectual brilliance present in the finely tuned organized combat sense. Each boo and hiss sent up from the others has been paid for, made possible by, this older and more refined and superbly excellent exercise of the human intellect … and paid in blood.

  This does not, of course, mean that combat is necessarily good. At its best, it usually represents the lesser of two evils. But it is, always has been, and—so long as man is man—will probably remain necessarily necessary.

  In any human necessity, we usually find instances of human excellence, high achievement, sincere dedication, genius.

  Bolan the warrior was a personification of these very human attributes.

  There are those, of course, who follow an innate combative instinct, a raw and untempered yearning for unearned riches and for arrogant power over their fellow humans.

  For the gentle folk of the world, then, it is fortunate that men of high human ethics and excellence have applied their energies and intellects to the problems of survival in a brutal world. It is this circumstance, and this alone, which has saved the finer minds from the savages among us.

  As Mack Bolan pointed out to Sara Henderson, a lone psychopath with a knife can dominate a hundred gentle people.

  By that same token, one finely tuned intellect with a disciplined combat sense can overcome a hundred untrained savages.

  Mack Bolan was living proof of that.

  It seems a pity, a very human pity, that so many fine minds do shrink from the responsibilities, the everyday dirty and mucky responsibilities of maintaining the world in the face of constant savagery.

  And this little detour through the back roads of the World of Bolan is not intended as an apology for the man or his methods.

  It is an apology for those who boo and hiss.

  20 THE SET

  In every sense of the word, the joint was a hardsite. Its defenses had been thoughtfully devised and painstakingly erected, and they were being carefully maintained.

  The obvious defense perimeter was an oblong encirclement of the small knoll upon which sat the clubhouse and its outbuildings, the line running about one hundred yards from front and rear, extending one hundred and fifty or so yards to each side.

  This was a fire line, with “set” teams of two men each emplaced at intervals of ten yards. These guys were simply chunked out there, entirely visible and with no physical protection whatever, sitting or lying or standing around, talking freely from set to set, trying to while away a long wait in a longer night.

  Pistols, mostly. Here and there a shotgun.

  This was the dumb line. Bolan had seen them before. So much live meat staked in the jungle to attract the lion. And the poor bastards didn’t even know it.

  On the rooftops and concealed within the out-buildings were the primary defenses, the “trap sets.”

  There were marksmen with rifles on those roofs.

  Automatic-weapons experts with choppers large and small prowled the shadows of the main building and lurked in the recesses of other buildings.

  Undoubtedly, more troops would be found in and around the parking area at the side of the clubhouse, where many vehicles of various types reposed in the quiet wait.

  The outer defenses were no more than an early-warning attempt—a combination of solitary set-men scattered widely in no clear pattern and roving patrols of two men each.

  Miniature radios and shotguns.

  Bolan had counted one hundred and eighteen enemy heads, and he was satisfied that this took care of most of the numbers. There would be others inside the clubhouse, certainly, a “palace-guard” last ditch for the ranking big shots.

  Sara’s “photographic-mind” sketch of the property had omitted one more or less insignificant detail. Perhaps it was one of those repressions of the psyche which so troubled intelligence-seekers. She had “forgotten” the kennels yard, the place where the hounds were kept, the hounds that chase “adorable little foxes.”

  It was one of those chain-link affairs with a wire-mesh top, featuring a private run and individual shelter for each dog.

  And the dogs were present, about twenty by Bolan’s long-distance count—nervous, and pacing, with some primeval sensing of the portents in that night.

  If there were horses in the stables, he could find no such evidence. Bolan had thought that clubs such as these probably boarded members’ horses, but the question seemed to have no relevance to the night, and he dismissed it.

  He knew that it was impossible to account for every conceivable defense that an enemy may have “up the sleeve.”

  But he was satisfied that he had collected their prime numbers, and this had been the objective of the probe. He knew enough about them now to give himself, at the least, a practical angle of attack, a numbered approach which more than likely could bring him into the destruct zone with most of his firepower intact.

  The primary question remaining was: the destruction of whom and which?

  That, of course, was one of the variables of warfare. In the final analysis, every act of war was a gamble—a gamble with the universe in which all the odds were concealed, hidden away somewhere in that “universal maze of cause and effect.”

  The most a guy like Bolan could do would be to introduce the “cause” in his most skillful and persuasive form of argument.

  The rest would be up to the court—that Supreme Needs Court of universal law—and the combatants would have to abide by that final “judgment in the wind.”

  Mack Bolan, in his own mind, was a living instrument of the universe—a sensory extension into that which was—as were, he believed, all living things.

  He could only hope that the winds blowing across central Jersey in this time and circumstance were winds of justice and high purpose.

  In any other context, the Executioner was indeed involved in a damn-fool exercise.

  21 IN THE WINDS

  It was drawing onto two o’clock, and the previously sharp edge of the night was beginning to writhe in anticlimax.

  Mike Talifero paced the small office of Boots and Bugle and squeezed his palms together behind his back.

  Augie Marinello, the Invisible Second President of the United States, occupied the nearest approximation o
f a throne available, a luxuriously padded executive chair at the desk.

  His two trusted “tagmen” (chief bodyguards) of long standing went right on standing, in his shadow, revolvers nervously exposed through the opened coats of two-hundred-dollar suits.

  “Why doesn’t he hit?” Talifero muttered, the tone of voice strongly belying the set smile of that face.

  Marinello removed a long cigar from his teeth to observe calmly, “The guy comes at his convenience, Mike, not ours. You should’ve learned that by now.”

  “I was just talking to rattle my tongue,” the gestapo chief said. “I know what the guy is doing.”

  “There’s always the chance he won’t come tonight at all,” the capo pointed out, for perhaps the twentieth time.

  “You’re forgetting Boston,” Talifero said.

  “I’ll never forget Boston,” Marinello assured him.

  “The guy goes off his rocker when he finds a turkey. Look at what he did to Freddy, that time in New York. Over a dumb kid he hardly knew. How do you think he feels about this one? The guys were battlefield buddies in Vietnam. This guy worked with the surgeon who gave Bolan his new face, out in California.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Well, what do you think this is doing to that guy’s guts? He’s crazy, I’m telling you, crazy for revenge. He’s running around out there somewhere just crazy as hell, trying to come up with a way to hit us. I know that, and you know that, Augie.”

  “Don’t get assy with me, Mike.”

  “You know I’m not …” Talifero halted his pacing and told the big boss, “I’m sorry, Augie. Bear with me through this, huh? This is a hell of a—”

  “I know.” Marinello’s cigar had gone out. He frowned at it, then cast a reproachful glance at the nearest tagman. The guy leaned forward with the ever-present lighter and applied new heat to the five dollars’ worth of hand-rolled tobacco leaves. The old man puffed new life into the cigar, then told his fair-haired boy, “You’re taking this too personal, Mike. You’re going to fool around and stub your toe again. You better back off some.”

  And that was a hell of a thing to say. Right out in the open, that way. Talifero shot an angry look in the general direction of the bodyguards. It had not been a thing to say to the hardarm of the whole damn world, not with underlings present.

  Without looking at the boss, he quietly stated, “I have never stubbed my toe, Augie. You don’t run an outfit like this with stubbed toes. You know that. Why are you needling me? At a time like this—”

  “This is exactly the time,” the old capo shot back. “I’ve been counting the score, Mike—me and some others. It’s why I came down, myself, personal. You missed the guy at Miami. You missed him in Vegas—damn near permanently. Your brother is still a vegetable from that. You missed Bolan at Philly. And you’ve been missing him here in Jersey all week long. You can understand, I know, if we start wondering, Mike, just when you’re going to start connecting.”

  “Well, what a hell of a time to …” The famous Talifero smile was absolutely plastered from one ear to the other. In a voice as calm as cold soup he recovered himself and told the boss of bosses, “That’s not fair, Augie. I have never before had absolute control over any situation involving that bastard. You know that. I’ve always been called in to save a losing situation after most of it was lost. This time is different. This time the guy is dancing on my strings. I’m going to get that son-of-a-bitch this time, Augie, if I have to go out and do it on my own. I am going to get him alive … and I am going to keep him alive for a long, long time.”

  “That’s exactly what’s got me worried,” Marinello quietly replied. “I think you got too much of your own ass in this thing.”

  “Then take me off.”

  “You know I won’t do that, Mike. You’re the best there is. I just want to be sure you keep your own ass out of the way. Get the bastard, Mike. Roast his dick off in boiling oil if that’s what you gotta do, but get ’im first. Any way you can. Forget the fancy horseshit. Just get the guy!”

  “I fully intend to.”

  The capo di tutti capi arose abruptly from his chair. “And just in case you don’t, I’m going back home.”

  “That could be a wise decision,” the gestapo boss said icily. “But not for the reason given.”

  The two architects of human misery locked gazes, and the little flares deep within the wily old eyes of the man who had built an empire of it from nothing but nerve and determination clearly showed an awareness of and distaste for this other monster of his own creation.

  “I made you, Mike,” he reminded his hardarm. “I can unmake you just as easy.”

  “That would be at your pleasure, of course,” Talifero replied stiffly, smiling the deadly smile.

  “Just don’t get any assy ideas, that’s all. I put out a memo before I come down here. The council is going to review this whole setup. Just don’t try anything assy in the meanwhile.”

  “That’s an ultimatum, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure I know what that means, Mike. You college boys have it all over me in the word department. I’m just telling you to get this Bolan. If you can’t get him, maybe we’re not so sure about the way you might handle other things. You get me, Mike. You know what I’m saying.”

  “I know, Mr. Marinello. What I don’t get is why you’re springing it at a time like this. I need confidence, not a knife at my back.”

  “You’re the boy with all the knives, Mike. We just wanta make sure you know how to use ’em, that’s all.”

  The capo swept out, a tagman at front and rear. He picked up another small group who were waiting just outside the office door, and the party from Manhattan moved swiftly toward the main exit.

  Mike Talifero appeared in the doorway to call out instructions to his own troops. “Mount a convoy! See that our friends get back to their plane and off the ground safely!”

  Marinello halted in mid-stride to throw back a counter-command. “Never mind that. We’ll take care of our own selves our own way!”

  This was not only an open slap in the face for Mike Talifero. It was also an open statement of mistrust by the boss of bosses in his commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

  Mike himself knew that, even if every other man in the building did not.

  The Marinello party moved on, and before it had even cleared the building, a Taliferi lieutenant burst in through a side entrance and hastened to the side of his boss.

  “Okay, it’s started,” he announced tensely. “Charlie just stumbled on two of our boys down on the early line, necks broke, dead.”

  Mike Talifero chuckled and commented, “Well, well.”

  “You want me to stop Augie?” asked another lieutenant who had been standing by.

  “By no means,” the hardarm of the world replied quietly. “By no means whatever.”

  While outside, with a promising wind at his back, the Executioner was about to find his first great windfall of the long night.

  22 INTO THE MAZE

  Bolan had quietly withdrawn from his soft probe and returned to his temporary war wagon, with hardly a blade of grass disturbed to mark his transit through that enemy territory.

  He sprang the arsenal from its storage in the luggage compartment and put together everything he could carry.

  He would very probably not be coming back this way again.

  In addition to the usual combat rig, he was now burdened with back and chest packs, loaded with the necessities of one-man warfare.

  A one-man army had also to double as pack mule, from time to time, and this was clearly one of those times.

  The packs featured quick-disengage buckles. He could come out of them in a flash, if necessary.

  Fully engaged, he estimated that he was now carrying a load almost equal to own weight. He experimented with the tender leg and found just a bit too much demand imposed there. Regretfully he jettisoned several of the heavier munitions and went on. With all votes counted, he would need
his own physical prowess more than a few items of hardware.

  He was not traveling the edge of creation on this trip through. He was at the very center of it, and he had to clear a path as he advanced—a trail through a jungle of jumpy amateur warriors whose first loud alarm would mean Bolan’s premature exposure, and undoubtedly a quick end to an unhappy night.

  The object was to get in close, undetected; to make some sort of setup from where he could send war winging into several quarters at once; to induce confusion and panic, paralysis in the enemy, and, hopefully, full flight on the part of the ragtag street-corner bad guys who’d hired out their guns for a war they knew nothing about.

  This would be a sort of victory in itself, but of course, this was not the primary objective of the night.

  It was but a means to an end.

  The end was Mike Talifero.

  He meant to execute that guy, and leave him with a marksman’s medal lying atop the wound.

  Maybe someday other guys would get the message, deciding that the wages of command in this outfit were too poor for the risks involved.

  At that moment, though, Bolan had to admit to himself that his objective of the night was but a forlorn desire, not a true and viable goal of the battle.

  He would consider the mission a success if he could simply storm in there and rattle them, scatter them, scare the living hell out of them, and make them wonder why they’d come—destroy their smug pride and wipe that arrogant “lord-of-the-realm” sneer from their faces. And make them think twice the next time around, when another helpless victim of storm-trooper tactics lay at their mercy.

  For the moment, he had to sneak in, and cover his progress with every wile of silent combat.

  And twice during that quiet reentry he shrugged out of his mule packs and slithered in with the sighing wind, to silence quickly and efficiently a potential alarm post.

  These two were his only obstacles, and he reached the eastern perimeter of the dumb line with his mission intact and with an angle of attack rather clearly formulated.