Someone had engaged the enemy in there, and they were not firing at him — at least not yet.
Mack Bolan dropped the Uzi's magazine and snapped a fresh one into place, no longer walking now, but jogging toward the sounds of battle.
They had started the bloodfeast without him but the Executioner was coming. Better late than never, right.
He was one of the invited guests whether the hosts were currently aware of it or not.
The Executioner had been invited by the Universe.
* * *
Abe Bernstein reached inside his jacket, pulling out the short slim automatic pistol from his waistband. He took a moment, checking out the action, waiting while old Harry Thorson slid a new clip into the receiver of his Army-model .45.
They had regrouped for the assault on Frank Spinoza's penthouse, Bernstein refusing to take any chances when they had come so far and dared so much to make it work. They would be done with it tonight or none of them could count on a tomorrow — in Las Vegas or anywhere. If Frank Spinoza or another of the capos in there managed to escape with news of what Abe Bernstein had accomplished at the Gold Rush, they could write it off as a total loss.
"All set?" He glanced around and noticed that Jack Goldblume held his pistol pointed to the floor as if he was afraid it might go off and hurt someone. Old Jack was looking green around the gills, as if the sights that he had witnessed there that evening had been almost more than he could stomach. Almost, but not entirely. He was with them still, and Bernstein meant to make sure that he stayed there — at least until they finished with Spinoza and the others. He still needed the Beacon, a sympathetic press, to help cover their tracks when they were finished. Later, when the smoke had cleared and the dust of battle settled... Well, Jack Goldblume was looking more expendable by the moment.
Abe's prey was in there, waiting for him now. Not taking any chances, he had risked a phone call from the last suite they had visited, putting on his best solicitous flunky's voice and asking Frank if there was anything that he could do for any of them.
Coffee? Liquor? Anything at all? Spinoza had cut him off, but not before Abe had heard the other voices in the background, jabbering excitedly together, arguing in angry tones. Liguori.
Catalanotte.
Dioguardi.
A clean sweep, bet your ass.
"Let's go."
He nodded to the pair of mercenaries waiting by the doorway to the penthouse, and they stepped in front of it, their silenced Ingrams leveled from the waist. One of them hit the locking mechanism with a short precision burst and they followed through, the others crowding in behind them, Bernstein jockeying into a firing-line position, letting Thorson and Jack Goldblume ride his coattails.
And his men were under orders not to fire until he gave the order. One last precaution, time to let him verify the targets before the heads began to roll.
He stood there gaping in amazement and shock at the tableau laid out before his eyes. At first the visual impulse made no sense, and then he realized that it was no illusion.
Bernstein saw the woman seated in the chair with her hands bound behind her. He made the recognition through a veil of caking blood that ran down from her nose, her lips, a cut above one eye. Spinoza stood above her, one fist poised to strike again. Behind him the other capos ranged around the desk, their enjoyment of the sport interrupted by the intrusion.
Something cold and deadly rose in Bernstein's throat and he raised the pistol, aiming it at Frank Spinoza's chest before the thought could translate unconscious images.
"You bastard!"
"Wait a minute, Abe..." And there was something in Spinoza's hand, a pistol, Bernstein saw, but he ignored it. Squeezing off a round, he watched the slug drill through Spinoza's throat, releasing bloody plumes that splattered down his shirt front, soaking through.
Another round, and one of Frank Spinoza's eyes exploded from its socket, hurtling across the room. The man was dead now but he would not fall.
Bernstein kept on firing, emptying his magazine into the standing corpse, until the point-blank impact threw him backward, stretched him out across the cluttered desk.
The other capos were reacting, alternately diving for some cover they could never hope to reach, or grasping after weapons of their own. The mercenaries opened fire, and Abe could hear the roar of Harry Thorson's .45 as he joined in. But Abe was heedless of the cross fire now, already kneeling down at Lucy's side and slicing at her bonds with a penknife he carried.
Of the mafiosi, only Johnny Cats had time to reach his weapon and employ it, squeezing off three rounds before converging streams of fire crucified him to the wall. The others died in varied attitudes of flight, devoid of honor, courage — everything but fear.
Abe Bernstein felt the tears as he released his granddaughter from her confinement in the straight-backed chair. His taste of victory had turned to something sour in his throat, threatening to gag him as he knelt there looking at her swollen bloodied face.
He told her he was sorry, begged her to forgive him, but she did not seem to hear. At last he motioned for a couple of his soldiers to assist him, and he lifted her out of the chair, got her onto her feet and held her there until she found the strength to stand.
"Let's get you home," he said, as if a change of scene would make things right again, erase the sights and memories of what had happened here this night. "Let's get you home," he said again, and knew she was not hearing him.
Abe Bernstein turned back toward the door, one arm around his grandchild's shoulders. He saw Jack Goldblume stretched out on the carpet, Harry Thorson bending over him and feeling for a pulse against his throat. The newsman's jacket, shirt and all were soaking crimson where the rounds from Johnny Cats's last burst had caught him, and Abe knew that it was hopeless long before the cowboy straightened up and shook his head.
"No good, Abe."
"Okay, we'll take him with the others. Hurry."
And they were not finished yet, he knew. There were still stragglers to be dealt with in the Gold Rush, and disposal teams to organize. Transporting all the bodies would be no small undertaking in itself, and Bernstein wondered where he might locate a garbage truck at this hour of the night.
No matter. First, he had to care for Lucy, make her understand that what had happened was an accident, a side effect of what he had achieved for all of them this night.
For all of Vegas.
It would take time, he knew, but she would understand once he explained it to her from the start. If he could take her back to the beginning, when the town was young and so was he, before the leeches came to fasten on him, draining off his life's blood.
They reached the escalator and Abe Bernstein forced himself to concentrate on here and now. Before he could tell Lucy anything, they had to get out of the hotel in one piece. And from the sounds downstairs, that might be difficult.
The old catch phrase came back to him — something they used to say all the time during the war. What was it, now?
"The difficult we do at once. The impossible takes a little longer."
Well, he had accomplished the impossible already here tonight. The difficult would prove no match for him, with victory already within his grasp.
Abe Bernstein checked the little automatic's load and slipped it back inside the waistband of his slacks as he followed his mercenaries onto the moving staircase. He could smell the battle now below them, as well as hear it echoing around the vast casino. Lucy vanished from his thoughts immediately, and the hunter reemerged, triumphant.
19
Bolan found the main casino of the Gold Rush shrouded in a pall of drifting battle smoke when he emerged out of the concourse into open view. The center of the room, along the line of vacant roulette tables, had become a lethal no-man's land. Fire teams were off to either side, intent on gaining ground and laying down a steady fusillade that ricocheted from slot machines and ceiling fixtures, gouging ragged chunks of plaster from the walls.
It se
emed as if the hotel staff had risen up in arms against the tenants, with a line of bellhops and blue-uniformed security staked out on Bolan's left, the business suits and shirt-sleeves of the Mafia gunners on his right. And Bolan did not need a cast of characters to know that he was witnessing an overthrow of Frank Spinoza's hoodlum empire. To be replaced by what? Abe Bernstein and his good-old boys? A second-generation syndicate that Bernstein might have put together, waiting in the wings?
Bolan had no time for thinking futures. There was ample trouble in his present to keep him occupied.
And if he played his cards right it would matter little what the mafiosi or their opposition might be planning. The Executioner announced his entry to the battle with a pair of frag grenades among the hostile soldiers. He was already moving when the two eggs detonated into smoky thunder, less than a second apart, seeking cover from the answering fire that could not be far behind. They were still screaming out there, as he reached a bank of slots and hunkered down behind the one-armed bandits, waiting for the storm to break around him.
Downrange a Mafia gunner poked his head around the line of slots, angling for a shot when Bolan took his face off with a short burst from the Uzi. The guy's pistol went off aimlessly as he impacted with the carpet, one stray round careening off polished chrome above Bolan's head. The warrior moved, knowing that the surest way to die in combat was to make yourself a stationary target. He was virtually surrounded now, but neither side could be sure who he was or what his unexpected entry to the three-ring charnel circus might portend for their side. By the time they had an answer, Bolan planned to be on top of things, dealing from strength and calling the tune in their impromptu dance of death. He covered for himself with automatic fire and kept on moving, never pausing long enough for hostile guns to find him. More than one was silenced by the probing bursts from Bolan's stuttergun, and now the fire from one side to another had begun to falter, gunners hesitating as they tried a rapid battlefield assessment of the latest threat. Bolan could not give them time to think.
He plucked another frag can from his belt and yanked the pin, counting down the seconds to doomsday as he chose a target randomly and let the bomb fly. Across the narrow no-man's land, a crap table took flight, all four legs off the ground and levitating on a ball of flame before it settled back to earth in smoking ruins. In the wake of the explosion, Bolan heard the death screams mingling with the clash of small-arms fire and someone shouting for instructions from his crew chief.
He emptied the Uzi in one searing burst, saw two of the blue-uniformed security guards topple underneath the driving rain of parabellum hornets.
Swiftly he reloaded, moving out of there in search of other sanctuary before the hostiles could react.
He reached a blackjack table, overturned already in the heat of battle. He hurdled it, touching down behind the barricade in combat readiness. The warrior was prepared for anything — except, perhaps, to face the mafioso who already occupied that makeshift foxhole, gaping at him now from no more than three feet away, the pistol he extended in his right hand touching-close.
No time to think, and Bolan chopped at the extended wrist with his free hand, swinging the Uzi around like a club toward the other man's face, simultaneously squeezing off a ragged burst at skin-touch range. The chopper's stubby muzzle struck the gunner's skull... and then that skull was vaporized, with scalp and brain and all of it departing in a pink mist.
Bolan felt the man's life blood now as it trickled down his cheeks, befouled his hair and clothing. But the Executioner held the trigger down until the clip had spent its load and he was staring at the headless body of a onetime enemy stretched out on the blood-soaked carpet. Bolan wiped the mess off his face as he rose to a crouch. He was reaching for another magazine to feed the starving Uzi when he saw the little party coming down the escalator, right into the middle of the flagging action. More security, their sky-blues stained from battle on the upper floors, and there behind them, someone else.
The woman, right.
He knew the old man standing on her right and halfsupporting her would be Abe Bernstein. The old man was in charge of what had happened here tonight — or rather, had been, until fate had found a wild card named Mack Bolan in the deck.
No time now for the Uzi, as the mercenaries on the escalator opened fire upon their mafiosi targets. They were swift, professional and deadly with those silenced Ingrams, raking back and forth and blowing holes along the hostile ranks before their presence registered on shellshocked minds.
Another moment... less, and they could turn the tide to victory for their side.
Bolan ripped the AutoMag out of its military leather, thumbing back the hammer as he sighted quickly down the muzzle, making target acquisition at a range of something under forty yards.
Lucy Bernstein was in danger, but he could not afford to let her clear the danger zone. There were no havens here tonight as long as one last cannibal remained alive. The warrior's mission was to kill them all.
And failing that, to wound them savagely, to drive them undercover, bloodied, hurting, thinking twice before they dared to show their jackal faces in the sunlight one more time.
The Executioner was living out his mission, right, performing to the utmost of his duty. He would spare the woman if he could, but in the last analysis she had to take her chances with the rest of them. There were no house odds any more around the Gold Rush. Every rule was canceled now, with wild cards in the game, and it was down to one last hand-winner take all.
Mack Bolan braced the mighty AutoMag in both hands and placed his bet.
* * *
The main casino floor was in a bloody shambles, and Abe Bernstein shook his head, unable to believe his eyes. A simple mopping-up had rapidly degenerated into chaos, and he sensed that they could lose it unless they moved decisively to stem the running tide.
The Mafia troops were up against the southern bank of slots, pinned and fighting tenaciously for their lives. They might break out of their position, rush the exits, make it to the street outside, and... No! It was imperative that all of them be killed. Bernstein barked an order to the mercenaries who surrounded him. At once they formed a spearhead, opened fire upon the Mafia entrenchments, scoring hits immediately with their cold precision fire.
They could still save it, with swift, audacious action, and Abe Bernstein felt another rush, the hot adrenaline now pumping through his ancient veins and giving him his second wind. He brushed past Lucy, plucking at the pistol in his waistband, anxious to be in the finish line, the climax of his dreams.
He saw the man in black peripherally, a rising shadow with a massive silver cannon in his fist. Bernstein flinched away from that impending danger, survivor's instinct taking over like the old days, conscious thought replaced by reflex action.
Bernstein heard the shot — that's good; you never hear the one that kills you — and he felt the hot wind as the Magnum round passed by him, missing by a hair's breadth, ripping into Harry Thorson's ample belly. Harry toppled forward, gasping, clutching both hands to his wounded abdomen and making no attempt to catch himself before he fell. He hit the mercenaries down in front of him, a massive flying tackle from behind, and then all four of them were rolling in a human knot of tangled arms and legs along the humming risers of the escalator, tumbling down twenty feet toward the landing. Below him, Bernstein heard the cannon roar again, and he was moving, but too slowly this time. Something struck his shoulder with sledgehammer force, knocking him completely off his feet. He was conscious of the stairsteps rushing up to meet him, metal slicing deep into his cheek. Then his face collided with the heel of Harry's boot at the bottom of the moving staircase, grounded, with the others coming down on top of him.
He searched about him for the pistol, knew that it was gone, and settled for the Army .45 that Harry had somehow kept hold of when he died. For a fleeting instant Lucy crossed his mind, but now survival was the only thought as he gripped the captured pistol, struggling to his feet among the
twisted, tangled bodies, fighting to maintain his balance. The small-arms fire had momentarily trailed away to nothing on his flanks, and he was conscious only of the big man crouching behind the cover of a blackjack table. This one, this meshugeneh commando, was all his. This one who dared to challenge Abe Bernstein when he was so close to living out his dream. The old man thumbed the safety off of Harry's .45 and staggered across the prostrate body of his friend, unconscious of the pounding in his chest, the throbbing of his own pulse in his ears. He had a job to finish and it lay ahead of him. He raised the pistol, sighted quickly down the barrel and squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Bolan saw the old man coming for him, and he waited, knowing he could end it, here and now, with only minor mopping-up left over for Sam Reese and Homicide. He counted down the numbers, letting Bernstein find his weapon, lift it, get the feel of iron that could not save him now. His first shot was a good foot off, the second closer, but not much. Mack Bolan sighed into the squeeze and rode the Magnum's recoil, keeping both eyes open to assess the shot, make sure there would be no need for a second.
Downrange, old Abe Bernstein took 240 grains of sudden revelation in the chest and vaulted backward, stretching out across the jumbled bodies of the aging cowboy and the shaken mercenaries. Some of them were stirring now, recovering from their spill. Bolan put them back to sleep forever, emptying the autoloader into anything and everything that moved around the escalator. Everything except the woman. She was cringing down to one side of the carnage, eyes closed, hands pressed tight across her ears, and Bolan's fire was never closer to her than a yard away. She did not see the old man die, or watch the others twitching, writhing with the impact of his Magnum rounds. No part of her was watching when the others cut and run, the few live stragglers making for the exits now, their guns and grudge forgotten as they tried to beat the clock and win a race with Death itself.
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