Jersey Guns

by Don Pendleton

  Without breaking stride, Bolan angled his multi-weapon upward and squeezed into the pistol grip of the M-79.

  A forty-millimeter HE round whizzed into that parapet with a thunderous impact and sent man, gun, and goodly portions of roof tumbling onto the portico.

  He coolly inserted another round of high explosives into the slide breech and went on, beneath the portico and inexorably toward that shattered entranceway.

  Now it was the Executioner who was smelling blood, and already he was sickening on the overdose.

  But it was that kind of world, this Mafia jungle; better their blood than the altar sacrifices of goats both scaped and bled.

  Mike Talifero was about four heartbeats removed from the judgment of the universe.

  It was no time for the instrument of execution to falter.

  He moved on up, kicked aside the twisted aluminum remains of the door casing, and went back into hell.

  And it was almost pitiful, this climactic end to the great fox chase of central Jersey.

  He was met by two batteries of stacked and overturned tables, one to either side of the doorway, with nary head nor weapon showing at any edge.

  This hardsite had gone mighty soft mighty fast.

  A scramble at the far side, accompanied by the angry swearing of Mike SuchIron somewhere in the murky interior, signaled the frantic departure of more battlefield deserters.

  The place was filled with smoke, and a lot of heat was coming down from the ceiling area, but he could see a dude in the background, slumped over a table and covering it with blood.

  Talifero gave away his position in the rear with an emotional scream, “Open fire! Shoot, shoot, damnit!”

  The snout of a Thompson came hesitantly around the side of one of the table-turrets.

  Bolan flipped a grenade into that one and dispatched forty millimeters from the M-79 into the other one.

  Tables splintered and flew and rolled all over that place while men in both sectors screamed until Bolan’s M-16 mop-up put an end to that agony.

  Mike Talifero was yelling something in a strange tongue, and Bolan could dimly see him moving around back there in the smoke—coughing and stumbling about.

  Then a door back there opened and closed, and the target of the night abruptly disappeared.

  It just had to be.

  Bolan knew precisely which door.

  The maze had a way of turning back, folding in, devouring those who played cruel games in her chambers.

  He went on, slid in another round of HE, and let it fly into that door, then followed quickly with his own imposing figure.

  It was the men’s locker room, yeah.

  He went in under the cover of his own smoke while selecting another round for the M-79, and he stalked the fox to his final burrow.

  And the guy was standing there, in the only place left—in the corner of that shower with Bruno’s blood darkly caked about his feet.

  Those eyes were positively wild, and there was not a hint of a smile upon the face that had snickered at human agony lo these many years.

  He had a gun in each hand, and certainly at least a fighting chance, unlike any he’d ever offered another poor bastard who screamed and pleaded only for death.

  But he was frozen there—tongue-tied for probably the first time in his life—stammering something about strong men who die together; but there was nothing truly strong about this man about to die, nothing commendable or admirable.

  He was just another cornered punk, alone and contemplating his own death and seeing nothing of value beyond.

  Without a word, and from about six paces out, the Executioner squeezed the pistol grip of the M-79 to send a chewing pattern of double-aughts grinding in at chin level.

  The pistols clattered to the floor, the body sagged in a flowing river from the shoulders, and a shredded head bounced off the back wall and rolled along the incline toward the drain.

  “May his soul thank mine,” the Executioner muttered.

  He threw a marksman’s medal into the gore; then he turned his back on that and walked away from there.

  And it was a very short step out of hell.

  EPILOGUE

  He appropriated one of the few remaining vehicles at Boots and Bugle—ironically enough, a camper van—and calmly withdrew along that trail of tears, taking with him along those darkened Jersey roads new fodder for future nightmares along the river of blood, as well as some fond memories of tender moments agreeably spent.

  He heard but did not see the approach of the federal task force screaming into that grim ex-encampment back there in the smoldering ashes of the night, and he mentally tipped his hat to Leo Turrin and Hal Brognola, a couple of true friends who, he was sure, would forever figure in his future—no matter how many lifetimes lay ahead.

  He was leaving Jersey with himself in better shape than when he entered. All things considered, that should say something for the place. So he sent a quiet “thank-you” into that corner of quivering universal mold and apologized for all feelings harshly held—while at the same moment promising to return one day for a closer look at the nature of things there.

  And when he arrived at the little airstrip “a few miles south” of the hardsite, he was already relaxing into that postcombative torpor and mellowness that characterize a hard campaign honorably met.

  Waiting there at that quiet edge of the hell grounds was a sleek executive jet, of the type used by corporations to fly their executives around with style and efficiency. Another type of corporation and a decidedly different sort of executive had been calling the shots for this particular air vehicle; Bolan could think of no more fitting exit for himself from the late and not so great shadow of the Jersey guns.

  A single “sentry” waited there, a Marinello hardman with more sand in his eyes than brains in his head; the guy’s eyes flickered but briefly into an awakening one startled heartbeat ahead of the flying fist that sent him back into a deeper and perhaps a more peaceful sleep.

  The pilot was lying in the aisleway of the cabin, fully dressed, a pillow propped beneath his head, feet crossed, sleeping like a baby.

  The Executioner intruded into his dreams and brought him back to the hard world with an awesome black Beretta tickling the tip of his nose.

  The guy’s eyes flared into an awareness of that which was and must be, and his greeting to the man in black was a quiet, “Oh, hell.”

  “Let’s fly,” Bolan suggested, with ice cubes enclosing the words. “Like the birdies. South.”

  It was to be the sole exchange of dialogue until they reached the southern-flow altitude corridor for air traffic; then the pilot advised Bolan, “You’ll have to give me a destination for an ATC clearance.”

  The man in the co-pilot seat replied, “Forget ATC. Just fly south. I’ll tell you when and where to do different.”

  The pilot showed him a halfhearted smile and agreed, “It’s a good night. I can fly visual.”

  Yes, it was a fairly good night. It had been good to Mack Bolan. And all but a few festering wounds had been expiated into that night.

  He shrugged out of his combat rig and tossed it to the rear, then asked the pilot, “You know a fat ghoul they call Sal?”

  “No, I—”

  “A turkey doctor.”

  “Oh, hell no. I just fly these people, I don’t—”

  “When you get home, you pass the word. In the right places. There’s a contract on Sal written deep into my guts. You pass that word. Sal is out of business. Or he’d better be.”

  “Sure, I … I’ll see that the word gets around.”

  Bolan sighed, lowered his lids about halfway down those blood-wracked eyes, and settled into a light “combat sleep”—that divided state of consciousness which gave him rest yet kept him animally alert to the outside world.

  The pilot was telling him, “Between you and me, Mr. Bolan … I mean, just between the two of us, I think you’re an okay guy.”

  The animal side of the Executioner
grinned.

  Sure.

  Sara was okay.

  Bruno was okay.

  And—for the moment, at least—that wild and woolly universe of Mack Bolan’s was okay.

  His soul stretched, seeking a shortcut through the maze, sending a gentle probe into that receding countryside down there, giving form to the thought:

  Good-bye, Mother Sara. Stay hard.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series

  1: KNIGHT AT DAWN

  The darkness of the Texas central plains was being diluted at its eastern edge by the mottled gray advance of dawn as a sleek, twin-engine Cessna swept across from the west, winging close above the flat landscape to maintain a low celestial profile.

  Two men ocupied the aircraft.

  The pilot was a dark, handsome young veteran of many low-profile flights such as this—both in the service of his country in adventures abroad, and in the service of others in adventures here at home. His name was Grimaldi. Until recently he had served the enemies of the man who now sat beside him.

  The passenger wore black. He was garbed in a tight-fitting combat outfit of the type favored by those who must advance by stealth into hostile lands. At the moment he was a one-man raiding party. A military style web belt encircled his waist to support a heavy autoloading pistol plus various other weapons of war. Smaller belts angled from shoulders to waist in a crossing arrangement to accommodate miscellaneous munitions and accessories of survival. His face and hands were smeared with a black cosmetic. In the glow from the plane’s instrument panel, only the eyes were clearly visible—steely glints of blue ice that seemed to see everything.

  The pilot glanced at his passenger and suppressed an involuntary shiver. “Coming around on the midland omni,” he announced solemnly.

  The man in Executioner black did not immediately respond to the announcement, but a moment later calmly replied, “Bingo. Tank farm dead ahead.”

  Grimaldi said, “Right. Okay, get set. We’re making a straight-in to the airstrip. You can mark it one minute and forty from the tank farm to touchdown.”

  The other man fiddled with a watch at his left wrist as he crisply delivered a repetitious instruction. “Keep it on the numbers, Jack. Give me ninety, exactly. Nine-oh.”

  “Sure, I know. That’s from touchdown to full stop.”

  “That’s what it is,” the cold one growled, showing the first traces of emotion. “Unless you enjoy finding yourself in a cross fire.”

  “Nine-oh it is,” Grimaldi replied with a tight smile.

  The Executioner punched a timing stem on his watch as they flashed above a sprawling collection of oil storage tanks, then he began his last-minute countdown preparations. An enormous ammo clip clicked into position in the light chattergun that hung from his neck. Blackened fingers traced out once more the feel and position of munitions spaced along the utility belt while the other hand checked out the security of a waist weapon, the thunderous .44 AutoMag which—for this mission—was carrying scatter loads of fine buckshot. As a final item, a delicately engineered sound suppressor threaded its way onto the shoulder-slung “silent piece”—a 9-millimeter Beretta Brigadier which, through many campaigns, had become virtually an organ of the man and which he affectionately called “the Belle.”

  “That’d better be a dirt strip down there,” he said, as though speaking for his own benefit.

  Grimaldi chuckled nervously as he replied, “It was last time. But that’s still mighty hard territory down there, man.”

  “It all is,” the raider said. He sighed, very softly, and the blue ice glinted with some indefinable emotion. “Just get me in, and make all the dust you can. We’ll take the rest one number at a time.”

  Sure. One number at a time. Grimaldi had seen plenty of Mack Bolan’s “numbers”—in spades. Any way they fell out, it was nothing but bad news for the guys whose misfortune found them on the receiving end.

  But what the hell? This was one of the best-guarded sites the guy could have chosen to hit. Why was it always the meanest ones?

  Grimaldi had been there when the guy hit Vegas. And Grimaldi had been on the wrong side there.

  He’d been there, also, during the Caribbean campaign—which actually had started out as no more than an extension of the Vegas thing. And, yeah, the dumb Italian had started out on the wrong side in Puerto Rico, too.

  So what about this time? Grimaldi shrugged away a little quiver of apprehension and aligned the nose of the aircraft with the tiny dirt strip that came into view just ahead. His hands and mind were going to be very busy for the next minute or so, and for that he was thankful. As for the rest of it … right or wrong, Mack Bolan was his man. There simply was no other way to think of it.

  “Gear down,” he announced quietly.

  Bolan released his seat belt and reminded the pilot, “Start your count when I go out the door.”

  “Sure,” Grimaldi replied.

  Oh, sure. They might have been discussing when to meet for dinner, it was that casual. But that hell-fire guy was going to go out that door with blood on his mind. He was dropping into a Mafia hardsite with no less than a dozen pro killers defending it and with God only knew how many local recruits to back them up—and he was going to be hitting that earth out there with every intention of scorching it or dying in the attempt.

  And for what?

  For what damned possible good?

  It seemed to Grimaldi like a hell of a way to live … or die.

  He brought the nose up and cut the power. Then the wheels touched and a cloud of dust swirled into the slipstream.

  “There’s your cover, Mr. Blitz,” he intoned, the words sounding loud and overly dramatic in the sudden silence of the dead-stick landing.

  A dimly lit shack flashed past on his left; his peripheral vision caught unmistakable movement—human movement—as floodlights erupted on all sides.

  Then he was braking for the turnaround as the door cracked open at the far side of the cabin.

  The man in black called, “Tallyho, Jack.”

  Tallyho, yeah. A hunting cry. The guy was gone in a flash of ice-blue eyes. The cabin door closed with a quiet click. And Jack Grimaldi had just brought a very hot war to the peaceful state of Texas.

  Something was rotten in Texas.

  Bolan did not know precisely what that something was.

  He did know, though, that a strongly apparent odor was emerging from this particular spot on the Texas midlands, one of the nation’s chief oil-producing areas, and that the odor was being experienced at some rather disconcerting points throughout this wealthy state.

  Klingman’s Wells had once been among the most productive oil leases in the midlands. Not now. Several months back, the rich wells of Klingman Petro had abruptly gone out of production, much to the surprise of other oilmen in the area. And an air of mystery had settled upon the place.

  Rumors had it that the old man’s daughter had disappeared and that Klingman himself had gone into virtual seclusion in his Dallas apartment. That in itself was mystery enough. Arthur Klingman was one of the pioneer Texas oilmen, one of the last great independents in this age of corporate giants, a tough old desert rat who could not stand the smell of plush offices and mahoganied board rooms.

  Mack Bolan did not like mysteries, particularly when they involved mob operations. And Klingman’s Wells was now without a doubt a very important mob centerpoint. Whatever the nature of the new activities, quite obviously it was more profitable and therefore more desirable than the harvesting of fossil fuels.

  The most painstaking investigation had failed to reveal to the Executioner’s curious mind the true name of the Mafia game in Texas. But there was more than one way to gain intelligence; if you couldn’t pry it loose then maybe you could blast it into the open. And that was the real nature of this daring dawn strike at a mob command post; it was shock therapy, to be delivered in Bolan’s inimitable style of blockbuster warfare. The shock waves just might rattle something
loose and into the intelligence network.

  So—if Bolan had heard Jack Grimaldi’s silent question, For what damned possible good?—he could have replied, “Not for good, Jack, but for bad. When you have an omnipotent enemy then you simply hit him with everything you can grab—you give him all the bad you can muster—and then you check for leaks in that shell of power.”

  Bolan was here for some damned possible bad.

  He had been here many times—but only on paper. He knew this terrain as though he had lived here a lifetime, and he was intimate with each structure, fixture, and device within that compound—thanks mainly to the remarkable memory of Jack Grimaldi, who had chauffeured several flights of Mafia bosses to the site just after the takeover.

  At the moment, Grimaldi was providing some distracting maneuvers with the taxiing aircraft. Bolan was on the lee side of the dust screen and galloping along the backtrack—the chattergun riding in muzzle-down standby, the silent Beretta Belle in hand and at the ready, and he was closing vital numbers on the growing collection of sounds up there in that confused jumble of sand-polluted darkness and choked floodlights.

  The timing could not have been more precise. It was the moment that divided night from day, with just the faintest sliver of gray light moving into the eastern heavens. Bolan had learned long ago that this was the best possible time to catch an enemy off its guard, especially those who have watched through the long and uncertain night.

  And now the sounds up there in that tail of the night were beginning to assimilate themselves for the alert ears that had come in with the dawn.

  A guttural voice that bore no trace of Texas twang was loudly demanding to know the identity of the landing plane.

  Another voice, calling from somewhere on Bolan’s side of the runway, replied that the craft was “… that Cessna, I think. You know—the Three-Ten, the twinengine job.”