Страница:
"We dig where you're coming from, man," Morales broke in. "But we can't play games with this dude. He's been tearing up the families from ..."
"Save the history lesson, Angel. I did six months hard time thanks to that-" He left the sentence unfinished, the oath unspoken, but the grim set of his features told the story eloquently to his companions. Silence reigned in the office for a long moment before Hinshaw spoke again. When he did, all traces of tension and fury had been suppressed in his voice, and the facade of unshakable calm was restored.
"The mission comes first, as always. Bolan has Involved himself now, and we have to deal with him as a definite threat. Angel, what did he want from Kaufman?"
The smaller man squared his shoulders before speaking. "Him and Kaufman were talking a deal, Jim. I swear to God."
Hinshaw was clearly skeptical. "It doesn't ring true. What's the scam?"
"Cease fire, so he says. If Kaufman cools it and takes out the Senator on his own, Bolan will take care of us for him."
Hinshaw shook his head as Worthy swore softly and said, "He just might do it."
"Not a chance," Hinshaw snapped. "We know the enemy now, and we can use that knowledge to advantage." He turned back to Morales. "Was Kaufman buying the truce?"
"He was thinking it over, Jim. He didn't say yes or no but ... well ... I think it's a go."
"So we play it that way. We can pull the rug while he's sitting on his hands."
"What about Bolan?" Worthy asked. "He won't be sitting on his hands."
"If we work it right, we can play them off against each other. While they chase each other around the block, we bag ourselves a territory,. With luck they'll kill each other off. If not, we'll be waiting for the winner before he can catch his breath."
"How do you plan to run it down?" Worthy asked.
"We need a wedge, Floyd. Bolan offered the deal, so we have to play him up as the back-stabber." Hinshaw thought for a long moment in silence. When he spoke again, his voice was firm with self-assurance. "Stay close to the wires on Kaufman and Weiss. I want to know every move they make before it's made. Everybody's on edge, and mistakes are inevitable. When they make one, we'll have our handle."
The other men grinned and rose to leave. Floyd Worthy paused in the doorway, turning for one final comment. "You know, man, if Kaufman doesn't put Bolan away, it's us against the sarge."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Hinshaw told him solemnly.
Alone again, the soldier let his mind dwell on the possibility of a confrontation with Mack the Bastard Bolan. A second confrontation, and the last one, too, one way or another.
Hinshaw's first meeting with Bolan had been long ago and thousands of miles away in another world and time. That meeting had brought the curtain down on the single sweetest experience of Hinshaw's life, cutting it off short. Not to mention the six months' stockade time and a less than honorable discharge, the only blots on an otherwise impeccable military record. Somebody had to pay for that disgrace. Somebody named Bolan. And Hinshaw had been waiting a long time to collect that tab. Waiting and hoping for another chance at Mack the Bastard. But lately, as he almost compulsively followed Bolan's campaigns in the newspapers and on television, his lust for the confrontation had begun to fade.
Wiping moist palms against his trousers, Jim Hinshaw wondered if Moe Kaufman would be able to take Bolan out. It would make everything so much ... simpler, yeah ... simpler and safer. He bitterly rejected the thought and its unsettling Implications. He was not afraid of Bolan, dammit, he was just ... cautious. Yeah, cautious. Everything that Hinshaw was or ever hoped to be was riding on this operation, not to mention Mr. Bonelli's money, time, and trust. Hinshaw had a duty, to repay that trust with success.
Duty, yeah, you could never get away from it. Hinshaw fervently hoped that Kaufman would be up to handling the Bolan challenge, but a nagging apprehension grew in the back of his mind, setting his teeth on edge. Us against the sarge. Sure, and that would mean Hinshaw against Bolan.
"No sweat," he told the empty room, repeating it for emphasis. "No sweat! But he was lying to himself and he knew it.
Hinshaw's Palms were moist again. It was a hell of a sweat.
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
"Save the history lesson, Angel. I did six months hard time thanks to that-" He left the sentence unfinished, the oath unspoken, but the grim set of his features told the story eloquently to his companions. Silence reigned in the office for a long moment before Hinshaw spoke again. When he did, all traces of tension and fury had been suppressed in his voice, and the facade of unshakable calm was restored.
"The mission comes first, as always. Bolan has Involved himself now, and we have to deal with him as a definite threat. Angel, what did he want from Kaufman?"
The smaller man squared his shoulders before speaking. "Him and Kaufman were talking a deal, Jim. I swear to God."
Hinshaw was clearly skeptical. "It doesn't ring true. What's the scam?"
"Cease fire, so he says. If Kaufman cools it and takes out the Senator on his own, Bolan will take care of us for him."
Hinshaw shook his head as Worthy swore softly and said, "He just might do it."
"Not a chance," Hinshaw snapped. "We know the enemy now, and we can use that knowledge to advantage." He turned back to Morales. "Was Kaufman buying the truce?"
"He was thinking it over, Jim. He didn't say yes or no but ... well ... I think it's a go."
"So we play it that way. We can pull the rug while he's sitting on his hands."
"What about Bolan?" Worthy asked. "He won't be sitting on his hands."
"If we work it right, we can play them off against each other. While they chase each other around the block, we bag ourselves a territory,. With luck they'll kill each other off. If not, we'll be waiting for the winner before he can catch his breath."
"How do you plan to run it down?" Worthy asked.
"We need a wedge, Floyd. Bolan offered the deal, so we have to play him up as the back-stabber." Hinshaw thought for a long moment in silence. When he spoke again, his voice was firm with self-assurance. "Stay close to the wires on Kaufman and Weiss. I want to know every move they make before it's made. Everybody's on edge, and mistakes are inevitable. When they make one, we'll have our handle."
The other men grinned and rose to leave. Floyd Worthy paused in the doorway, turning for one final comment. "You know, man, if Kaufman doesn't put Bolan away, it's us against the sarge."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Hinshaw told him solemnly.
Alone again, the soldier let his mind dwell on the possibility of a confrontation with Mack the Bastard Bolan. A second confrontation, and the last one, too, one way or another.
Hinshaw's first meeting with Bolan had been long ago and thousands of miles away in another world and time. That meeting had brought the curtain down on the single sweetest experience of Hinshaw's life, cutting it off short. Not to mention the six months' stockade time and a less than honorable discharge, the only blots on an otherwise impeccable military record. Somebody had to pay for that disgrace. Somebody named Bolan. And Hinshaw had been waiting a long time to collect that tab. Waiting and hoping for another chance at Mack the Bastard. But lately, as he almost compulsively followed Bolan's campaigns in the newspapers and on television, his lust for the confrontation had begun to fade.
Wiping moist palms against his trousers, Jim Hinshaw wondered if Moe Kaufman would be able to take Bolan out. It would make everything so much ... simpler, yeah ... simpler and safer. He bitterly rejected the thought and its unsettling Implications. He was not afraid of Bolan, dammit, he was just ... cautious. Yeah, cautious. Everything that Hinshaw was or ever hoped to be was riding on this operation, not to mention Mr. Bonelli's money, time, and trust. Hinshaw had a duty, to repay that trust with success.
Duty, yeah, you could never get away from it. Hinshaw fervently hoped that Kaufman would be up to handling the Bolan challenge, but a nagging apprehension grew in the back of his mind, setting his teeth on edge. Us against the sarge. Sure, and that would mean Hinshaw against Bolan.
"No sweat," he told the empty room, repeating it for emphasis. "No sweat! But he was lying to himself and he knew it.
Hinshaw's Palms were moist again. It was a hell of a sweat.
Chapter 9
Sucking
Mack Bolan was a supreme military strategist, his expertise acquired in the crucible of Southeast Asia. He had long ago learned that the best offensive tactic is seldom a wild-assed charge into the stronghold of an unknown enemy. Such kamikaze tactics might suffice on certain rare occasions but generally tended to be suicidal. Discretion often was the better part of valor, and the Executioner knew from practical experience that an overzealous enemy may sometimes be lured into a rash offensive with suitable bait. Invested with a false sense of progress, the enemy may be sucked to his doom in a prearranged ambush. The tactic was especially useful when the enemy was successful in camouflaging his base of operations, as Nick Bonelli's strike force had done so far.
Yeah, a suck play was clearly indicated. It remained only for the Executioner to choose the site and the bait.
The site was a shallow horseshoe basin on the western fringe of Echo Canyon Park, a miniature valley, really, bisected by a two-lane highway with lightly wooded hills on three sides. He parked the warwagon atop a shaded knoll on the left or northern tip of the horseshoe, nose toward the highway and rocket pod elevated. From his Position he held a commanding view of the basin and the highway leading into it, ready to unleash his lethal firebirds on selected targets as they Presented themselves.
Next on tap was the matter of bait.
He made the necessary call and again received instant pickup. "Ranch."
"It's me again. Put the man on."
"That was some damn fancy shooting, mister. Just a minute."
It was not a minute but a mere second before another instrument clicked into the line and Kaufman, very subdued, said, "Okay, you proved your point. We need to talk. Let's meet. You say where."
Bolan told him where, adding, "Ten minutes. If You're later than that, I won't be there."
"I can make that. I'll, uh, have some people with me."
"I strongly advise it. Bonelli has troops out scouring the countryside for you. You'd better travel heavy. But this is the way you do it. Two-"
"Wait a minute!"
"Shut up and listen. It's this way or no way. Two cars. Yourself and a wheelman in the first. A backup crew following at 100 yards. The second car keeps its distance."
"How do I know?"
"Use your head," Bolan said disgustedly. "If I wanted it, I'd have had it instead of your telephone. I'm not your present hazard. Do we meet or don't we?"
"We meet," was the instant response. "Your way. But it better be cool."
"Ten minutes from right now," Bolan said and hung up.
It was a gamble, sure. Chancey as hell. A guy with Kaufman's resources could pull a lot of fancy strings in ten minutes. He could send police helicopters. He could probably field a makeshift force of forty to fifty men on a moment's notice, even should he elect to keep the cops out of it. And that was only half the risk.
He was gambling also on Nick Bonelli's field forces, practically certain that the telephone surveillance wires on Phoenix were Bonelli's wires but decidedly uncertain as to the number of guns in the Phoenix task force and their deployment.
It was purely an educated estimate that Bonelli could send no more than two or three cars to any point around the city with no more than ten minute's notice. If that estimate should prove wrong ... then Bolan knew who could just as easily get sucked into this one.
It was possible, even, that he would be contending with two massive forces, one from each side of the set. And that could be curtains, for sure.
He had tried to foresee and to prepare for any contingency to the limit of his combat capabilities. But only the "meet" itself could tell the final tale.
He used the ten-minute wait for final preparations. The rocketry was "enabled" by electronic command, automatically superimposing the control system upon the optics, the electronic grid glowing red from the viewscreen. From the console: Fire Enable Go.
He set it up for manual command and made a slight adjustment to the optics, refining the focus, narrowing the vision field to a fifty-yard radius surrounding that fated slot on the desert floor.
Target selection, now, would be "gunner's choice." Wherever the optics wandered and settled, a simple bang on the knee would dispatch a firebird unerringly to the target centered there. Combat capability was limited to four birds, how ever. A reload would require sixty to ninety seconds at best — and many a battle had been lost in a single heartbeat.
But he settled into the wait with a satisfied mind. He had done all within his power to set the contest. The rest was in other hands.
He had chosen the site well. Not a vehicle strayed into the trap — not even a jackrabbit — when the thing began falling into place at minute eight. The first to enter was a speeding Continental — a burly, crew-cut man at the wheel, Moe Kaufman seated stiffly beside him. The optic system reached out at first contact to pull the vehicle into Its resolving field, locked on, peering within to divine by long-range surveillance the true interior status. It was clean, straight.
Bolan punched back to wide-field surveillance, Immediately picking up the trailing vehicle — a nine-passenger station wagon crammed with tense flesh, obediently maintaining a 100-yard separation behind the Continental. He localized momentarily to read the firepower in that wagon then punched back to wide field to track both cars on into the slot. Kaufman was indeed traveling "heavy." Bolan had read a couple of choppers, a long rifle with telescopic sights, and several shotguns among other armaments bristling from that crew wagon.
They were a minute early.
Both vehicles pulled to the side of the road at the designated spot. No one stood down. Both engines kept firing. After a moment, the Continental backed around to a position ten yards off the highway — poised Perpendicular to the ribbon of blacktop, leaving the option open for fast take-off in either direction. Instantly, the station wagon did likewise. A couple of guys stood down, shielding eyes with the hands and craning the heads in nervous inspection of the surrounding terrain.
They didn't like it.
With good reason. It was the sort of place where wagon trains of old ran tautly at full speed in fear of red man ambush.
But it was perfectly to Bolan's liking.
Minute nine arrived, and, with it, another vehicle running swiftly into the focal field. But it was not the hoped-for Tucson task force. It was a pretty girl moving a small British sports car with the hammer down, long hair riding the wind inside that open convertible, face set in grim concentration. There was no time for Bolan to speculate upon the presence of Sharon Kaufman. Obviously she had followed the convoy from Paradise Ranch — Perhaps arriving there just in time to note the hurried departure and opting for pursuit.
There was no time because a grimmer presence had also made an entrance into the set. It began as a dark mass at the extreme edge of vision, separating quickly under the probing focal finesse of the optics system into a four-car caravan, big black crew wagons running in close consort and closing quickly.
A quick pull-back to wide field showed Moe Kaufman stumbling from his vehicle and running with arms flailing toward the blacktop, galvanized by the unexpected appearance there of beloved flesh — the little sportster burning rubber and fish-tailing to a quick halt.
Another punch of the optics revealed the prime enemy in disturbing close-up. A black face there, eyes concealed behind dark glasses, lips moving rapidly in final instructions, a black beret perched jauntily at the side of the head. Another — lean and brown, narrowed eyes harshly scanning the terrain from the tail car. The rest of those faces were stereotypes. Bolan had seen thousands just like them. But those other two — yeah, it all flooded back, ghosts from the past, psychotic goons in army O.D.
Now he knew his enemy.
Another face from the same past should have been present also. That it was not brought a chill to the Bolan spine. Hinshaw was the name, cannibalism was the game — but cannibalism with a difference — a military difference.
And now he knew that the die was cast. He'd sucked a bit more than he'd expected — and now Kaufman and his girl may have to pay the price for an Executioner's sloppy intelligence effort.
The hit team was speeding into the slot.
Kaufman's crew was now electrically aware of the "betrayal," scrambling for position and sending frantic signals across the 100-yard separation from their boss. Kaufman had the girl in tow, and the two Were sprinting toward the Continental.
Bolan hoped the big vehicle was a "tank!" — an armor-plated retreat — but it did not bear the telltale signs, and even that would not prevent disaster should the "betrayal" become a fact.
Mack Bolan was resolved that it would not.
He banged his knee when the charging lead vehicle was three lengths into the slot. An angry firebird lifted away with a rustling whoosh to sizzle along the target track on a tail of flame and smoke. He saw their flaring eyes in the vision field as the fiery missile closed — then flaring eyes and all disappeared behind a mushroom of roiling flames. The vehicle reappeared a moment later as it careened onto the desert, first kneeling then shuddering onto its crumpled nose and doubling back in an end-over-end barrel roll of disintegrating metal. The fuel tank caught the spirit of the thing on the third bounce and completed the destruction with a secondary explosion that littered the area with smoking flesh and shredded hardware.
Meanwhile, the closely following second vehicle discovered the hard way the hazard of running too close in a pack. At the moment of rocket impact, something had blown back and smashed the windshield of that second car, sending it spinning out of control along the blacktop and coming to rest on its side in a grinding slide almost to the doorstep of Moe Kaufman's outraged crew.
Automatic weapons fire immediately joined the cacophony of doom, accompanied in concert by the basso booming of rapid-fire shotguns — and there was no comfort there for the survivors of that second pile-up.
Cars three and four were meanwhile reacting in the only sensible manner, both of them peeling instantly away from the blacktop and jouncing across open country on widely diverging courses.
But Bolan had punched back to target focus and he had one of them in the range marks. The console sent him an immediate Target Acquisition Go. He thumped his knee and sent another terror. It rustled along the range and overtook the target vehicle, punching in from the rear and lifting the whole works in a thunderous plunge to nowhere. Two of Kaufman's boys immediately trotted off in pursuit to assure the fate of the occupants.
The fourth car from Tucson was executing a tight circle, careening along the reverse course in a desperate effort to regain the highway and put those hellgrounds behind them. Bolan acquired them on his grid, doubled fist poised above the knee, then he changed his mind and instead disabled the rocketry. The pod retracted and locked Into place beneath the sliding roof panel. He sent a quick probe into the slot, saw that all was well there with the Kaufman camp, then instantly returned his attention to the fleeting prime enemy. He watched the wild fish-tailing as some newly educated goons in O.D. found their purchase on solid surface and began the streak to safer ground.
Moments later, the warwagon was moving smoothly along the track, the optics maintaining "shadow distance" behind the remains of the retreating task force.
Bolan had not spared them ... and they would never again find "safer ground."
"Take me home, boys," he said quietly to the optics monitor. "Let's take it all the way to hell."
Yeah, a suck play was clearly indicated. It remained only for the Executioner to choose the site and the bait.
The site was a shallow horseshoe basin on the western fringe of Echo Canyon Park, a miniature valley, really, bisected by a two-lane highway with lightly wooded hills on three sides. He parked the warwagon atop a shaded knoll on the left or northern tip of the horseshoe, nose toward the highway and rocket pod elevated. From his Position he held a commanding view of the basin and the highway leading into it, ready to unleash his lethal firebirds on selected targets as they Presented themselves.
Next on tap was the matter of bait.
He made the necessary call and again received instant pickup. "Ranch."
"It's me again. Put the man on."
"That was some damn fancy shooting, mister. Just a minute."
It was not a minute but a mere second before another instrument clicked into the line and Kaufman, very subdued, said, "Okay, you proved your point. We need to talk. Let's meet. You say where."
Bolan told him where, adding, "Ten minutes. If You're later than that, I won't be there."
"I can make that. I'll, uh, have some people with me."
"I strongly advise it. Bonelli has troops out scouring the countryside for you. You'd better travel heavy. But this is the way you do it. Two-"
"Wait a minute!"
"Shut up and listen. It's this way or no way. Two cars. Yourself and a wheelman in the first. A backup crew following at 100 yards. The second car keeps its distance."
"How do I know?"
"Use your head," Bolan said disgustedly. "If I wanted it, I'd have had it instead of your telephone. I'm not your present hazard. Do we meet or don't we?"
"We meet," was the instant response. "Your way. But it better be cool."
"Ten minutes from right now," Bolan said and hung up.
It was a gamble, sure. Chancey as hell. A guy with Kaufman's resources could pull a lot of fancy strings in ten minutes. He could send police helicopters. He could probably field a makeshift force of forty to fifty men on a moment's notice, even should he elect to keep the cops out of it. And that was only half the risk.
He was gambling also on Nick Bonelli's field forces, practically certain that the telephone surveillance wires on Phoenix were Bonelli's wires but decidedly uncertain as to the number of guns in the Phoenix task force and their deployment.
It was purely an educated estimate that Bonelli could send no more than two or three cars to any point around the city with no more than ten minute's notice. If that estimate should prove wrong ... then Bolan knew who could just as easily get sucked into this one.
It was possible, even, that he would be contending with two massive forces, one from each side of the set. And that could be curtains, for sure.
He had tried to foresee and to prepare for any contingency to the limit of his combat capabilities. But only the "meet" itself could tell the final tale.
He used the ten-minute wait for final preparations. The rocketry was "enabled" by electronic command, automatically superimposing the control system upon the optics, the electronic grid glowing red from the viewscreen. From the console: Fire Enable Go.
He set it up for manual command and made a slight adjustment to the optics, refining the focus, narrowing the vision field to a fifty-yard radius surrounding that fated slot on the desert floor.
Target selection, now, would be "gunner's choice." Wherever the optics wandered and settled, a simple bang on the knee would dispatch a firebird unerringly to the target centered there. Combat capability was limited to four birds, how ever. A reload would require sixty to ninety seconds at best — and many a battle had been lost in a single heartbeat.
But he settled into the wait with a satisfied mind. He had done all within his power to set the contest. The rest was in other hands.
He had chosen the site well. Not a vehicle strayed into the trap — not even a jackrabbit — when the thing began falling into place at minute eight. The first to enter was a speeding Continental — a burly, crew-cut man at the wheel, Moe Kaufman seated stiffly beside him. The optic system reached out at first contact to pull the vehicle into Its resolving field, locked on, peering within to divine by long-range surveillance the true interior status. It was clean, straight.
Bolan punched back to wide-field surveillance, Immediately picking up the trailing vehicle — a nine-passenger station wagon crammed with tense flesh, obediently maintaining a 100-yard separation behind the Continental. He localized momentarily to read the firepower in that wagon then punched back to wide field to track both cars on into the slot. Kaufman was indeed traveling "heavy." Bolan had read a couple of choppers, a long rifle with telescopic sights, and several shotguns among other armaments bristling from that crew wagon.
They were a minute early.
Both vehicles pulled to the side of the road at the designated spot. No one stood down. Both engines kept firing. After a moment, the Continental backed around to a position ten yards off the highway — poised Perpendicular to the ribbon of blacktop, leaving the option open for fast take-off in either direction. Instantly, the station wagon did likewise. A couple of guys stood down, shielding eyes with the hands and craning the heads in nervous inspection of the surrounding terrain.
They didn't like it.
With good reason. It was the sort of place where wagon trains of old ran tautly at full speed in fear of red man ambush.
But it was perfectly to Bolan's liking.
Minute nine arrived, and, with it, another vehicle running swiftly into the focal field. But it was not the hoped-for Tucson task force. It was a pretty girl moving a small British sports car with the hammer down, long hair riding the wind inside that open convertible, face set in grim concentration. There was no time for Bolan to speculate upon the presence of Sharon Kaufman. Obviously she had followed the convoy from Paradise Ranch — Perhaps arriving there just in time to note the hurried departure and opting for pursuit.
There was no time because a grimmer presence had also made an entrance into the set. It began as a dark mass at the extreme edge of vision, separating quickly under the probing focal finesse of the optics system into a four-car caravan, big black crew wagons running in close consort and closing quickly.
A quick pull-back to wide field showed Moe Kaufman stumbling from his vehicle and running with arms flailing toward the blacktop, galvanized by the unexpected appearance there of beloved flesh — the little sportster burning rubber and fish-tailing to a quick halt.
Another punch of the optics revealed the prime enemy in disturbing close-up. A black face there, eyes concealed behind dark glasses, lips moving rapidly in final instructions, a black beret perched jauntily at the side of the head. Another — lean and brown, narrowed eyes harshly scanning the terrain from the tail car. The rest of those faces were stereotypes. Bolan had seen thousands just like them. But those other two — yeah, it all flooded back, ghosts from the past, psychotic goons in army O.D.
Now he knew his enemy.
Another face from the same past should have been present also. That it was not brought a chill to the Bolan spine. Hinshaw was the name, cannibalism was the game — but cannibalism with a difference — a military difference.
And now he knew that the die was cast. He'd sucked a bit more than he'd expected — and now Kaufman and his girl may have to pay the price for an Executioner's sloppy intelligence effort.
The hit team was speeding into the slot.
Kaufman's crew was now electrically aware of the "betrayal," scrambling for position and sending frantic signals across the 100-yard separation from their boss. Kaufman had the girl in tow, and the two Were sprinting toward the Continental.
Bolan hoped the big vehicle was a "tank!" — an armor-plated retreat — but it did not bear the telltale signs, and even that would not prevent disaster should the "betrayal" become a fact.
Mack Bolan was resolved that it would not.
He banged his knee when the charging lead vehicle was three lengths into the slot. An angry firebird lifted away with a rustling whoosh to sizzle along the target track on a tail of flame and smoke. He saw their flaring eyes in the vision field as the fiery missile closed — then flaring eyes and all disappeared behind a mushroom of roiling flames. The vehicle reappeared a moment later as it careened onto the desert, first kneeling then shuddering onto its crumpled nose and doubling back in an end-over-end barrel roll of disintegrating metal. The fuel tank caught the spirit of the thing on the third bounce and completed the destruction with a secondary explosion that littered the area with smoking flesh and shredded hardware.
Meanwhile, the closely following second vehicle discovered the hard way the hazard of running too close in a pack. At the moment of rocket impact, something had blown back and smashed the windshield of that second car, sending it spinning out of control along the blacktop and coming to rest on its side in a grinding slide almost to the doorstep of Moe Kaufman's outraged crew.
Automatic weapons fire immediately joined the cacophony of doom, accompanied in concert by the basso booming of rapid-fire shotguns — and there was no comfort there for the survivors of that second pile-up.
Cars three and four were meanwhile reacting in the only sensible manner, both of them peeling instantly away from the blacktop and jouncing across open country on widely diverging courses.
But Bolan had punched back to target focus and he had one of them in the range marks. The console sent him an immediate Target Acquisition Go. He thumped his knee and sent another terror. It rustled along the range and overtook the target vehicle, punching in from the rear and lifting the whole works in a thunderous plunge to nowhere. Two of Kaufman's boys immediately trotted off in pursuit to assure the fate of the occupants.
The fourth car from Tucson was executing a tight circle, careening along the reverse course in a desperate effort to regain the highway and put those hellgrounds behind them. Bolan acquired them on his grid, doubled fist poised above the knee, then he changed his mind and instead disabled the rocketry. The pod retracted and locked Into place beneath the sliding roof panel. He sent a quick probe into the slot, saw that all was well there with the Kaufman camp, then instantly returned his attention to the fleeting prime enemy. He watched the wild fish-tailing as some newly educated goons in O.D. found their purchase on solid surface and began the streak to safer ground.
Moments later, the warwagon was moving smoothly along the track, the optics maintaining "shadow distance" behind the remains of the retreating task force.
Bolan had not spared them ... and they would never again find "safer ground."
"Take me home, boys," he said quietly to the optics monitor. "Let's take it all the way to hell."
Chapter 10
Audacity
Mack Bolan had first encountered Jim Hinshaw and his two sidekicks during his second Asian tour of duty. Their encounters had been rare, brief, and — for Hinshaw at least — very unfortunate. The last of those encounters had resulted in Hinshaw's brief imprisonment, and the less than honorable discharge of all three men. Bolan had known only part of it then, picking up bits and pieces as the court martial progressed, and the sequence flashed before him now as he tracked Angel Morales and his raiders toward their lair.
Hinshaw, Morales, and Worthy were lifelong natives of Tucson. They had become fast friends in grade school and remained so ever since, their interracial camaraderie a minor curiosity in a city whose schools were not entirely unfamiliar with ethnic antagonism. While other adolescents banded together for safety, and sport in racially homogenous gangs, Hinshaw, Morales, and Worthy stood apart, dubbing themselves "The Desert Rats" and displaying a belligerent pride in their mutual alienation.
Fighting and rumbles were inevitable, and with them came a string of adolescent capers beginning with shoplifting and gradually progressing to car theft and assault. Through it all, Jim Hinshaw emerged naturally as the head of the tiny gang, the strategist and "brains" for a series of minor-league depredations. Worthy and Morales recognized Hinshaw's native craftiness and qualities of leadership, deferring to him without protest, accepting his counsel readily and generally profitting thereby. Hinshaw's operations were logically and meticulously planned, lucrative more often than not. Only the hot car ring had gone sour, and even that was a blessing in disguise, for it inspired Hinshaw's Rats to join the U.S. Army en masse one step ahead of nosy police investigators.
The trio from Tucson had enlisted and trained together, volunteered for the Special Forces together at Hinshaw's earnest suggestion, and arrived in Vietnam together as members of the same Green Beret A-team. Comrades and superiors found them zealous and adept at the martial skills, and then-Corporal James Hinshaw was especially singled out for praise concerning his selfless devotion to duty.
Those commanders had missed the mark there, badly misreading their man. For Jim Hinshaw was devoted not to duty, but to power. He lived for power, worshipping it as some men do their gods, lusting after it as other men do beautiful women. He cared not so much for money, though he never passed up an easy profit, recognizing material wealth for what it was, a means to an end and a symptom of deeper power and influence. To Hinshaw, power was an almost spiritual concept, the ultimate goal of all endeavor, the ability and right to impose order on the lives of lesser individuals. Floyd Worthy and Angel Morales understood their comrade and were content to board the bandwagon in subordinate positions, assured in the knowledge that Hinshaw's ultimate success would bring benefits to all.
Vietnam had been heaven on earth for Jim Hinshaw and his Desert Rats. Assigned to the Army's pacification program in Trah Ninh Province, operating out of My Hoi village, they immediately began taking stock of the local situation and its potential for manipulation by skilled hands. Shortly after their arrival, the sergeant in charge of Hinshaw's A-team was the single casualty of a midnight "guerrilla raid." The attackers were never identified, although troopers Worthy and Morales did bag three peasants near the camp an hour later, riddling them before they could escape or surrender. Hinshaw was routinely elevated to the rank of sergeant, and the marksmanship of his friends was rewarded with commendations and, in Worthy's case, promotion to corporal.
Things began to change in Trah Ninh Province, as Hinshaw led his henchmen in the subtle establishment of a personal jungle fiefdom. Their commanding officers were naturally preoccupied with the broader conduct of the war, leaving the trio more or less free to institute a campaign of intimidation against inhabitants of the region. The Desert Rats gradually became a greater object of local fear than the Viet Cong, and the local peasants accepted their plight with a stoicism born of centuries-long oppression. That is, most villagers accepted it, although two village chiefs in My Ho were assassinated by "known terrorists" before Hinshaw could install a leader of suitable pliability.
Then began the long night of Trah Ninh Province. Artisans, Politicians, and eventually almost everyone Was forced to pay "Insurance" premiums to Hinshaw or face arrest on charges of subversion and involvement with the communists. Local girls and women were recruited and sold like chattel to whore-masters in Saigon, while a few were retained by Hinshaw for a local prostitution network of his own. Persons of every age and both sexes were forcibly enlisted as couriers of drugs and other contraband between villages and into neighboring provinces. Dissenters were rare, due primarily to the overabundance of lethal accidents which haunted the exponents of discontent. When Hinshaw's commanding officer responded to rumors of unorthodox proceedings in the province, he gained dubious distinction as one of the earliest victims of "fragging" in the Asian war. A black GI was observed running from the scene of the grenade blast, but no assailant was ever identified.
Disaster came to Hinshaw's personal kingdom In the Person of Mack Samuel Bolan. Bolan had met Hinshaw several times while working the delta with Sniper Team Able and had considered him a competent, if unusually stern, soldier. His opinion changed drastically following a raid during which Bolan executed VC Colonel Tra Huong and two lesser associates in the south of the province. Returning toward their base camp outside My Hoi, Bolan and Corporal T. L. Minnegas had encountered Hinshaw, Worthy, and Morales in the act of executing three unarmed villagers. One was already dead, but Bolan's intervention had rescued the others and resulted at length in the indictment of all three men on manslaughter charges. Villagers slowly and cautiously came forward with tales of coercion and violence, and other charges were added. Military prosecutors did their best, but matters were seldom clear in Vietnam during the late sixties, and the Desert Rats offered a vigorous defense, asserting their efforts were to stem Red aggression in the province, portraying their accusers as communist partisans. The final verdict was at best a compromise. Morales and Worthy escaped with less than honorable discharges, while Hinshaw was sentenced to six months in the stockade and a similar discharge.
Mack Bolan had recognized the vengeful bitterness in Hinshaw, but chose to forget it as the Asian war and a later, more personal one enveloped his life and transformed it into a never-ending cruise down Blood River. Now the shadows of the past had been resurrected, and much of what had only been confusion now made grisly and ominous sense.
James Hinshaw was an organization man, a master strategist backed by two guns as lethal as his own. Or rather, one other gun now, with Floyd Worthy a smoking twist of lifeless meat back there at the ambush site. Hinshaw with his team had been the perfect man to train and lead Nick Bonelli's private military force, a totally ruthless and immoral man whom the Tucson capo could count upon to serve the project with unswerving dedication and zeal.
A serpent, yeah, and a damned lethal one at that. A sidewinder.
Bolan tracked the hastening crew wagon north out of Echo Canyon Park, following Morales and his men as they swung west onto MacDonald Drive and skirted the limits of Paradise Valley. He was with them when they veered due south on 44th Street, pursuing discreetly but inexorably as they angled back toward the heart of Phoenix. The Executioner remained alert for any deviation from the track, dreading the confrontation to come if Morales should lead him back into the teeming center of the desert metropolis.
Bolan's silent prayer was answered. The crew wagon chose an intersecting desert highway, nosing eastward in an apparent effort to complete a perfect rectangle with its progress. Bolan gave them a lead, then resumed the track, driving on by as the limo swung onto a graveled access road and faded into a screen of dust.
The Executioner sought a parallel track and found it a quarter-mile further on. A mile from the paved highway he was able to pick out buildings off to the side, and leading to those structures, the plume of dust trailing Angel's vehicle. Bolan found his own track circling slowly toward the distant cluster of houses and followed it gratefully, homing on what he knew to be the viper's nest he had sought since entering Phoenix.
Bolan left the warwagon where his route intersected a sagging barbed-wire fence, completing his cautious approach on foot. He circled the dry, rolling terrain warily, Big Thunder and the Beretta Belle ready for action at right hip and left armpit. No man opposed his penetration. Judging from the known body count in Phoenix and a mental sizing of the barracks at the Tucson hardsite, Bolan estimated that close to two-thirds of Hinshaw's force had been eliminated. He hoped to confirm that estimate by direct observation preparatory to any penetration of that armed camp.
He found a low ridge 100 Yards from the cluster of buildings, with desert sagebrush and stunted trees combining to offer adequate concealment for his purposes. Prone amid the thorny vegetation, Bolan scanned the compound with his field glasses, taking in the reception for Morales and his surviving raiders. Counting Angel and his crew, there were eleven heads down there, hardmen all, milling about the dusty Crew wagon and peppering the new arrivals with demands for information.
And Jim Hinshaw was present and accounted for at the heart of the miniature mob scene, questioning Morales, and not at all happy with the answers he was getting. Bolan could not hear what Hinshaw was saying, but he could read plainly that furrowed brow and the grim set of the mouth. The guy was anything but happy, but he seemed to be maintaining control of his temper. As always, control and order were Hinshaw's watchwords. Even when Hinshaw resorted to torture and murder, it was done methodically, devoid of emotion.
Cool as ice ... and deadly.
Bolan's eyes narrowed as he watched Hinshaw lead his shrunken hardforce into the largest of three buildings. The man was a menace, his lethal potential compounded by the almost phlegmatic precision he brought to every endeavor. Whatever the end goal of the Arizona game plan, Jim Hinshaw was the man who could carry it off.
Unless he was stopped ... totally and permanently ... cut off at the knees by a superior force.
Bolan scanned the buildings and grounds through his glasses, noting relationships and proportions, angles and planes. The largest and central building was probably Hinshaw's command post, with space reserved for quartering at least some of the troops. The function of the other structures was open to surmise, but the tall radio antenna erected beside one of them gave Bolan a clue to its primary purpose. He felt safe in assuming that he had found the nerve center behind the "ears" in Phoenix ... the alert and deadly head of a serpent whose heart lay to the south in Tucson.
A penetration was indicated. More, it was mandatory at this stage of the Executioner's Phoenix campaign. The suck play had now fulfilled its purpose by leading Bolan to his ultimate target in the desert city, and he meant to strike against that serpent's head before the brain could recover from earlier stunning blows to marshal a venomous counter-stroke.
Bolan was formulating his strategy as he turned away from that and tableau and retraced his steps to the battle cruiser.
An effective strike would require an effective penetration — and that could be tricky with a pro like Hinshaw. But Bolan was not going for a simple hit-and-run, he was hoping for the knockout — a quick one-two — not just to the head of this beast but to the entire fetid structure. That would call for a bit of audacity. Audacity, hell, he had plenty of it.
Hinshaw, Morales, and Worthy were lifelong natives of Tucson. They had become fast friends in grade school and remained so ever since, their interracial camaraderie a minor curiosity in a city whose schools were not entirely unfamiliar with ethnic antagonism. While other adolescents banded together for safety, and sport in racially homogenous gangs, Hinshaw, Morales, and Worthy stood apart, dubbing themselves "The Desert Rats" and displaying a belligerent pride in their mutual alienation.
Fighting and rumbles were inevitable, and with them came a string of adolescent capers beginning with shoplifting and gradually progressing to car theft and assault. Through it all, Jim Hinshaw emerged naturally as the head of the tiny gang, the strategist and "brains" for a series of minor-league depredations. Worthy and Morales recognized Hinshaw's native craftiness and qualities of leadership, deferring to him without protest, accepting his counsel readily and generally profitting thereby. Hinshaw's operations were logically and meticulously planned, lucrative more often than not. Only the hot car ring had gone sour, and even that was a blessing in disguise, for it inspired Hinshaw's Rats to join the U.S. Army en masse one step ahead of nosy police investigators.
The trio from Tucson had enlisted and trained together, volunteered for the Special Forces together at Hinshaw's earnest suggestion, and arrived in Vietnam together as members of the same Green Beret A-team. Comrades and superiors found them zealous and adept at the martial skills, and then-Corporal James Hinshaw was especially singled out for praise concerning his selfless devotion to duty.
Those commanders had missed the mark there, badly misreading their man. For Jim Hinshaw was devoted not to duty, but to power. He lived for power, worshipping it as some men do their gods, lusting after it as other men do beautiful women. He cared not so much for money, though he never passed up an easy profit, recognizing material wealth for what it was, a means to an end and a symptom of deeper power and influence. To Hinshaw, power was an almost spiritual concept, the ultimate goal of all endeavor, the ability and right to impose order on the lives of lesser individuals. Floyd Worthy and Angel Morales understood their comrade and were content to board the bandwagon in subordinate positions, assured in the knowledge that Hinshaw's ultimate success would bring benefits to all.
Vietnam had been heaven on earth for Jim Hinshaw and his Desert Rats. Assigned to the Army's pacification program in Trah Ninh Province, operating out of My Hoi village, they immediately began taking stock of the local situation and its potential for manipulation by skilled hands. Shortly after their arrival, the sergeant in charge of Hinshaw's A-team was the single casualty of a midnight "guerrilla raid." The attackers were never identified, although troopers Worthy and Morales did bag three peasants near the camp an hour later, riddling them before they could escape or surrender. Hinshaw was routinely elevated to the rank of sergeant, and the marksmanship of his friends was rewarded with commendations and, in Worthy's case, promotion to corporal.
Things began to change in Trah Ninh Province, as Hinshaw led his henchmen in the subtle establishment of a personal jungle fiefdom. Their commanding officers were naturally preoccupied with the broader conduct of the war, leaving the trio more or less free to institute a campaign of intimidation against inhabitants of the region. The Desert Rats gradually became a greater object of local fear than the Viet Cong, and the local peasants accepted their plight with a stoicism born of centuries-long oppression. That is, most villagers accepted it, although two village chiefs in My Ho were assassinated by "known terrorists" before Hinshaw could install a leader of suitable pliability.
Then began the long night of Trah Ninh Province. Artisans, Politicians, and eventually almost everyone Was forced to pay "Insurance" premiums to Hinshaw or face arrest on charges of subversion and involvement with the communists. Local girls and women were recruited and sold like chattel to whore-masters in Saigon, while a few were retained by Hinshaw for a local prostitution network of his own. Persons of every age and both sexes were forcibly enlisted as couriers of drugs and other contraband between villages and into neighboring provinces. Dissenters were rare, due primarily to the overabundance of lethal accidents which haunted the exponents of discontent. When Hinshaw's commanding officer responded to rumors of unorthodox proceedings in the province, he gained dubious distinction as one of the earliest victims of "fragging" in the Asian war. A black GI was observed running from the scene of the grenade blast, but no assailant was ever identified.
Disaster came to Hinshaw's personal kingdom In the Person of Mack Samuel Bolan. Bolan had met Hinshaw several times while working the delta with Sniper Team Able and had considered him a competent, if unusually stern, soldier. His opinion changed drastically following a raid during which Bolan executed VC Colonel Tra Huong and two lesser associates in the south of the province. Returning toward their base camp outside My Hoi, Bolan and Corporal T. L. Minnegas had encountered Hinshaw, Worthy, and Morales in the act of executing three unarmed villagers. One was already dead, but Bolan's intervention had rescued the others and resulted at length in the indictment of all three men on manslaughter charges. Villagers slowly and cautiously came forward with tales of coercion and violence, and other charges were added. Military prosecutors did their best, but matters were seldom clear in Vietnam during the late sixties, and the Desert Rats offered a vigorous defense, asserting their efforts were to stem Red aggression in the province, portraying their accusers as communist partisans. The final verdict was at best a compromise. Morales and Worthy escaped with less than honorable discharges, while Hinshaw was sentenced to six months in the stockade and a similar discharge.
Mack Bolan had recognized the vengeful bitterness in Hinshaw, but chose to forget it as the Asian war and a later, more personal one enveloped his life and transformed it into a never-ending cruise down Blood River. Now the shadows of the past had been resurrected, and much of what had only been confusion now made grisly and ominous sense.
James Hinshaw was an organization man, a master strategist backed by two guns as lethal as his own. Or rather, one other gun now, with Floyd Worthy a smoking twist of lifeless meat back there at the ambush site. Hinshaw with his team had been the perfect man to train and lead Nick Bonelli's private military force, a totally ruthless and immoral man whom the Tucson capo could count upon to serve the project with unswerving dedication and zeal.
A serpent, yeah, and a damned lethal one at that. A sidewinder.
Bolan tracked the hastening crew wagon north out of Echo Canyon Park, following Morales and his men as they swung west onto MacDonald Drive and skirted the limits of Paradise Valley. He was with them when they veered due south on 44th Street, pursuing discreetly but inexorably as they angled back toward the heart of Phoenix. The Executioner remained alert for any deviation from the track, dreading the confrontation to come if Morales should lead him back into the teeming center of the desert metropolis.
Bolan's silent prayer was answered. The crew wagon chose an intersecting desert highway, nosing eastward in an apparent effort to complete a perfect rectangle with its progress. Bolan gave them a lead, then resumed the track, driving on by as the limo swung onto a graveled access road and faded into a screen of dust.
The Executioner sought a parallel track and found it a quarter-mile further on. A mile from the paved highway he was able to pick out buildings off to the side, and leading to those structures, the plume of dust trailing Angel's vehicle. Bolan found his own track circling slowly toward the distant cluster of houses and followed it gratefully, homing on what he knew to be the viper's nest he had sought since entering Phoenix.
Bolan left the warwagon where his route intersected a sagging barbed-wire fence, completing his cautious approach on foot. He circled the dry, rolling terrain warily, Big Thunder and the Beretta Belle ready for action at right hip and left armpit. No man opposed his penetration. Judging from the known body count in Phoenix and a mental sizing of the barracks at the Tucson hardsite, Bolan estimated that close to two-thirds of Hinshaw's force had been eliminated. He hoped to confirm that estimate by direct observation preparatory to any penetration of that armed camp.
He found a low ridge 100 Yards from the cluster of buildings, with desert sagebrush and stunted trees combining to offer adequate concealment for his purposes. Prone amid the thorny vegetation, Bolan scanned the compound with his field glasses, taking in the reception for Morales and his surviving raiders. Counting Angel and his crew, there were eleven heads down there, hardmen all, milling about the dusty Crew wagon and peppering the new arrivals with demands for information.
And Jim Hinshaw was present and accounted for at the heart of the miniature mob scene, questioning Morales, and not at all happy with the answers he was getting. Bolan could not hear what Hinshaw was saying, but he could read plainly that furrowed brow and the grim set of the mouth. The guy was anything but happy, but he seemed to be maintaining control of his temper. As always, control and order were Hinshaw's watchwords. Even when Hinshaw resorted to torture and murder, it was done methodically, devoid of emotion.
Cool as ice ... and deadly.
Bolan's eyes narrowed as he watched Hinshaw lead his shrunken hardforce into the largest of three buildings. The man was a menace, his lethal potential compounded by the almost phlegmatic precision he brought to every endeavor. Whatever the end goal of the Arizona game plan, Jim Hinshaw was the man who could carry it off.
Unless he was stopped ... totally and permanently ... cut off at the knees by a superior force.
Bolan scanned the buildings and grounds through his glasses, noting relationships and proportions, angles and planes. The largest and central building was probably Hinshaw's command post, with space reserved for quartering at least some of the troops. The function of the other structures was open to surmise, but the tall radio antenna erected beside one of them gave Bolan a clue to its primary purpose. He felt safe in assuming that he had found the nerve center behind the "ears" in Phoenix ... the alert and deadly head of a serpent whose heart lay to the south in Tucson.
A penetration was indicated. More, it was mandatory at this stage of the Executioner's Phoenix campaign. The suck play had now fulfilled its purpose by leading Bolan to his ultimate target in the desert city, and he meant to strike against that serpent's head before the brain could recover from earlier stunning blows to marshal a venomous counter-stroke.
Bolan was formulating his strategy as he turned away from that and tableau and retraced his steps to the battle cruiser.
An effective strike would require an effective penetration — and that could be tricky with a pro like Hinshaw. But Bolan was not going for a simple hit-and-run, he was hoping for the knockout — a quick one-two — not just to the head of this beast but to the entire fetid structure. That would call for a bit of audacity. Audacity, hell, he had plenty of it.
Chapter 11
The message
Hinshaw's voice was tense, taut — dangerous. "From the top, Angel. What went sour?"
"It all went sour, Jim," Morales replied with a disgusted gesture. "I think it started sour. It was a suck play straight from the jungle book."
"You said a rocket attack?"
"Yeah. They sucked us into a horseshoe slot, then layed into us from the high ground. There was no way to save it. I'm damn lucky I got out. Poor Floyd ..."
Hinshaw kicked the desk and raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Bastard!" he growled. "He must have tumbled to the telephone tap. How cute. Did you eyeball the bastard?"
The little Latin shook his head and said, "All I eyeballed was them damn rockets whooshing down from the heights. He's got some kind of fancy firepower. Forget them fucking LAWS, this was big stuff. More like guided missiles."
Hinshaw muttered, "So he's teamed up with Kaufman."
"Looks that way," Morales quietly agreed. "You know what this means."
"Yeah," Morales said, sighing. "And we're running about 70 percent casualties as of right now, man."
"So what are you reading?" Hinshaw growled.
"I'm reading scratch," the surviving lieutenant replied. "We can't pull it now. Not without reinforcements anyway."
"You ready to tuck your tail?" Hinshaw asked heavily, "and slink back to Tucson? You ready to face the old man with that?"
"You should've seen what I faced a little while ago, Jim. Listen. That guy deserves his reputation."
"So does Bonelli," Hinshaw said worriedly.
"Well, shit." Morales threw up his hands and walked nervously about the room waving them as though seeking applause from some invisible audience. "This is crazy. I say we call out the hole card and tell them all to go to hell."
"Not yet," Hinshaw said. He gnawed on his lower lip for a moment, then added: "We can still pull it out, maybe." His eyes gleamed with silent speculation, then: "There's a million bucks on Bolan's head. Right?"
"You know why the bounty is a million?" Morales inquired quietly. "It's a million because the meanest guys in the mob haven't been able to take the guy. That's why. I wish you'd been out there with me awhile ago. I wish you had."
"He's just a soldier," Hinshaw mused. "What the hell, Angel ... he's just another soldier."
"Go tell that to Floyd and B Troop," Morales replied bitterly. "With a cool million on his head."
"Shit."
The debate was interrupted by a knuckle rap at the door. A squad leader poked his head in to report, "We got company." His gaze flicked to the window. "You better see."
A big guy in Levi's was standing outside the fence, jawing with a sentry.
Hinshaw turned from the window to scowl at the squad leader. "What is it?"
"He walked in. We spotted him about three minutes out. Walking the phone line. He says we got trouble. Do we have trouble?"
Hinshaw picked up the telephone, listened to it for a moment, then put it down and said, "Yeah. Sounds like eggs frying on there. Dammit! No wonder I got no-how long has it been out?"
The squad leader shrugged. "I didn't know it was until the guy came along."
"Okay, let him in," Hinshaw growled. "Make sure somebody sticks with him. Give the guy a beer. He looks hot and bothered."
"Shit, it's about a hundred out there in the shade, if you can find shade," the squad leader commented. He went out muttering, "I wouldn't have that guy's fucking job on a ..."
Morales was standing at the window, silently gazing out, hands stuffed into his pockets. "What d'you suppose a job like that pays?" he said with quiet reflection. "Couple hundred a week? — maybe two-fifty?"
"You thinking of joining up?" Hinshaw asked heavily.
"Look at the guy. Probably been out there all day in that heat. For what? Tell me for what, Jim."
"Maybe he lost his nerve," Hinshaw pointedly replied. "Maybe he never had any. How 'bout you? Ready to trade it all for a timeclock and a pile of bills?"
"Hell no," Morales said quietly.
But he remained at the window and watched "the telephone guy" go about his little duties. The guy went up the pole, carrying a bag of tools and crap with him.
"What a dummy," Morales commented softly. "Can you beat it?"
"We're doing it, aren't we?" Hinshaw replied. "We're beating it. Right?"
Morales turned around with a grin. "Sure, man. We're beating it."
"Go keep an eye on the guy, huh? Just for safe? I have to call old man Bonelli."
"You're forgetting the phone."
Hinshaw chuckled. The tensions were gone. Angel was back and they'd pull it out together somehow. "We're going to collect that million, Angel. Us. We're going to bag a bonus baby. Go watch the dummy. Let me know as soon as the line is restored. I need a parley with our noble benefactor in south Arizona. I want him to get his bank ready."
Angel laughed and repeated his little applause routine as he headed outside to keep an eye on "the dummy."
But that dummy, be sure, was no dummy.
"The dummy" now stood on a little ridge far removed from, but overlooking the base camp. He'd gone down there and rubbed shoulders with the enemy, sampled their iced beer, played games with their telephones, traded a couple of tall stories while getting their numbers and reading their strengths and weaknesses — and closing the adventure on a note of a most ludicrous melodrama.
Angel Morales had tried to recruit him. It had been a deft try, full of veiled promises while devoid of job description — but certainly a recruiting pitch to anyone "in the know" and able to decipher the doubletalk. Bolan played dumb and, in the process, bought himself enough time to complete the mission in proper fashion — thanks entirely to Morales.
Of course, in all fairness to the guy, Angel Morales had never actually "known" Sergeant Mack Bolan. They had crossed gazes a couple of times in "Nam but that had been a long time ago; also, since then, Bolan had undergone surgical alterations to the facial structure to the point where a close friend from the old days would pass him by without recognition.
Still, it was quietly satisfying to Bolan that he could successfully penetrate a professional camp. There were no false illusions regarding the expertise and military capability of men such as Hinshaw and Morales. Renegades, right — but soldiers still, and they had trained in the same classrooms as Mack Bolan, had survived the same hazards of combat. And it was not contempt for the enemy which provided Bolan with confidence enough to successfully penetrate; it was a recognition and understanding of the complex mental processes which allow identification.
With that understanding, Bolan had early become a master at what he termed "role camouflage." Often he had been totally isolated deep in VC territory, his freedom and survival dependent on wits alone. He had survived many such entrapments. Once he had donned a standard black poncho and an appropriated coolie hat to kneel for hours beside a narrow stream, "mending" abandoned fishermen's nets in the midst of an occupied village. Somehow, even in such an alien environment, Bolan had always seemed to "belong" to any scene to which he lent himself.
Variations upon the same theme had served him well throughout his personal war against the Mafia, always to their disaster.
With a bit of luck, this time, renegade soldier James Hinshaw would fare no better from a walk-in visit by Mack Bolan.
His "tool kit" for that penetration was in reality a mobile munitions lab. And he'd gooped that joint for destruction from end to end, despite the watchful attentiveness of his hosts. Plastics with time-delay fuses were left at a critical Point on the outer wall of the communications hut, tamped to blow inward — hopefully to buckle the wall, drop the building, and topple the mast for the radio antenna. Another application would level the barracks; others were placed for strictly psychological effect.
And that was but one side of the "knockout" equation. The other side was psy-war all the way. Bolan was hoping to stage a master illusion which would confuse and divide the enemy toward their ultimate destruction. Not just here in Phoenix, but back at the heart of the operation as well.
The "psy-war" equipment was now being emplaced. And it hurt the warrior's soul to contemplate the loss of such a fine weapon — but then, weapons were expendable. Human freedom and dignity were not.
Head weapon was the slick M2 .50-caliber heavy-barrel machine gun. He set it gently upon the sandy soil of the ridge and threw off the cover. Sixty-six inches of sleek death machine, the M2 was the most lethally impressive weapon in Bolan's mobile arsenal. Tripod-mounted, the heavy gun would deliver at the rate of 650 rounds per minute from a muzzle velocity approaching 3,000 feet per second. No flesh — and few vehicles or buildings — could stand before that withering stream of big steel-jacketed slugs.
And this one came with a difference — one of armorer Bolan's own devices.
He emplaced the big weapon with care, adjusting the tripod legs and sighting-in for maximum effect. Then he locked in the ammo box and fed the disintegrating-link belt into the weapon's receiver. Two steel rods went into the earth, emplaced nine inches to each side — swing-stops, Positioned for a desired 45-degree arc. He rotated the weapon to verify the arc, then completed the sighting, making fine adjustments for range and azimuth.
Finally he affixed the "difference" — a boxlike device designed to fit over the butt and grips of the M2, a spring-loaded metal tongue meshing with the trigger assembly. A simple timer surmounted the metal box. Bolan consulted his watch, set and wound the timer, and activated it. Psy-war, yeah.
If all went well, those guys would think themselves involved in a very hot freight, precisely 150 minutes from that moment. The planted plastics and the robot gun would do their things together. In the heat and hysteria of the moment, who would know between timed-explosives and another "rocket attack."
To complete the stage dressing, Bolan strewed throwaway fiberglass tubes from several expended LAW rockets about the emplacement. Anyone who'd ever handled an M2 would not be fooled for long by the little charade, but Bolan was not going for longs; he would be content with an early confusion among hot tempers and shaken combat instincts.
Somehow, he had to either equalize or destroy the warring factions in this state — and he had to do it damn quick. He was a sitting duck on the desert and he knew it. Plenty of combat stretch, sure, but damn little comfort in the "withdraw and retreat" department. Any concerted and determined reaction by the police community would be his undoing for sure.
"Damn quick" was the name of the game in more ways than one. He had to cover nearly 200 miles of desert highway between Phoenix and Tucson damn quick. He had to do it in the convincing neighborhood of 150 minutes. And by God he would. He summoned all the horses from the big Toronado power plant and headed for Inter state 10.
The Executioner had to deliver a message.
Not to Garcia, no.
It was a message that only a Mafia boss would understand ... loud and clear.
"It all went sour, Jim," Morales replied with a disgusted gesture. "I think it started sour. It was a suck play straight from the jungle book."
"You said a rocket attack?"
"Yeah. They sucked us into a horseshoe slot, then layed into us from the high ground. There was no way to save it. I'm damn lucky I got out. Poor Floyd ..."
Hinshaw kicked the desk and raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Bastard!" he growled. "He must have tumbled to the telephone tap. How cute. Did you eyeball the bastard?"
The little Latin shook his head and said, "All I eyeballed was them damn rockets whooshing down from the heights. He's got some kind of fancy firepower. Forget them fucking LAWS, this was big stuff. More like guided missiles."
Hinshaw muttered, "So he's teamed up with Kaufman."
"Looks that way," Morales quietly agreed. "You know what this means."
"Yeah," Morales said, sighing. "And we're running about 70 percent casualties as of right now, man."
"So what are you reading?" Hinshaw growled.
"I'm reading scratch," the surviving lieutenant replied. "We can't pull it now. Not without reinforcements anyway."
"You ready to tuck your tail?" Hinshaw asked heavily, "and slink back to Tucson? You ready to face the old man with that?"
"You should've seen what I faced a little while ago, Jim. Listen. That guy deserves his reputation."
"So does Bonelli," Hinshaw said worriedly.
"Well, shit." Morales threw up his hands and walked nervously about the room waving them as though seeking applause from some invisible audience. "This is crazy. I say we call out the hole card and tell them all to go to hell."
"Not yet," Hinshaw said. He gnawed on his lower lip for a moment, then added: "We can still pull it out, maybe." His eyes gleamed with silent speculation, then: "There's a million bucks on Bolan's head. Right?"
"You know why the bounty is a million?" Morales inquired quietly. "It's a million because the meanest guys in the mob haven't been able to take the guy. That's why. I wish you'd been out there with me awhile ago. I wish you had."
"He's just a soldier," Hinshaw mused. "What the hell, Angel ... he's just another soldier."
"Go tell that to Floyd and B Troop," Morales replied bitterly. "With a cool million on his head."
"Shit."
The debate was interrupted by a knuckle rap at the door. A squad leader poked his head in to report, "We got company." His gaze flicked to the window. "You better see."
A big guy in Levi's was standing outside the fence, jawing with a sentry.
Hinshaw turned from the window to scowl at the squad leader. "What is it?"
"He walked in. We spotted him about three minutes out. Walking the phone line. He says we got trouble. Do we have trouble?"
Hinshaw picked up the telephone, listened to it for a moment, then put it down and said, "Yeah. Sounds like eggs frying on there. Dammit! No wonder I got no-how long has it been out?"
The squad leader shrugged. "I didn't know it was until the guy came along."
"Okay, let him in," Hinshaw growled. "Make sure somebody sticks with him. Give the guy a beer. He looks hot and bothered."
"Shit, it's about a hundred out there in the shade, if you can find shade," the squad leader commented. He went out muttering, "I wouldn't have that guy's fucking job on a ..."
Morales was standing at the window, silently gazing out, hands stuffed into his pockets. "What d'you suppose a job like that pays?" he said with quiet reflection. "Couple hundred a week? — maybe two-fifty?"
"You thinking of joining up?" Hinshaw asked heavily.
"Look at the guy. Probably been out there all day in that heat. For what? Tell me for what, Jim."
"Maybe he lost his nerve," Hinshaw pointedly replied. "Maybe he never had any. How 'bout you? Ready to trade it all for a timeclock and a pile of bills?"
"Hell no," Morales said quietly.
But he remained at the window and watched "the telephone guy" go about his little duties. The guy went up the pole, carrying a bag of tools and crap with him.
"What a dummy," Morales commented softly. "Can you beat it?"
"We're doing it, aren't we?" Hinshaw replied. "We're beating it. Right?"
Morales turned around with a grin. "Sure, man. We're beating it."
"Go keep an eye on the guy, huh? Just for safe? I have to call old man Bonelli."
"You're forgetting the phone."
Hinshaw chuckled. The tensions were gone. Angel was back and they'd pull it out together somehow. "We're going to collect that million, Angel. Us. We're going to bag a bonus baby. Go watch the dummy. Let me know as soon as the line is restored. I need a parley with our noble benefactor in south Arizona. I want him to get his bank ready."
Angel laughed and repeated his little applause routine as he headed outside to keep an eye on "the dummy."
But that dummy, be sure, was no dummy.
"The dummy" now stood on a little ridge far removed from, but overlooking the base camp. He'd gone down there and rubbed shoulders with the enemy, sampled their iced beer, played games with their telephones, traded a couple of tall stories while getting their numbers and reading their strengths and weaknesses — and closing the adventure on a note of a most ludicrous melodrama.
Angel Morales had tried to recruit him. It had been a deft try, full of veiled promises while devoid of job description — but certainly a recruiting pitch to anyone "in the know" and able to decipher the doubletalk. Bolan played dumb and, in the process, bought himself enough time to complete the mission in proper fashion — thanks entirely to Morales.
Of course, in all fairness to the guy, Angel Morales had never actually "known" Sergeant Mack Bolan. They had crossed gazes a couple of times in "Nam but that had been a long time ago; also, since then, Bolan had undergone surgical alterations to the facial structure to the point where a close friend from the old days would pass him by without recognition.
Still, it was quietly satisfying to Bolan that he could successfully penetrate a professional camp. There were no false illusions regarding the expertise and military capability of men such as Hinshaw and Morales. Renegades, right — but soldiers still, and they had trained in the same classrooms as Mack Bolan, had survived the same hazards of combat. And it was not contempt for the enemy which provided Bolan with confidence enough to successfully penetrate; it was a recognition and understanding of the complex mental processes which allow identification.
With that understanding, Bolan had early become a master at what he termed "role camouflage." Often he had been totally isolated deep in VC territory, his freedom and survival dependent on wits alone. He had survived many such entrapments. Once he had donned a standard black poncho and an appropriated coolie hat to kneel for hours beside a narrow stream, "mending" abandoned fishermen's nets in the midst of an occupied village. Somehow, even in such an alien environment, Bolan had always seemed to "belong" to any scene to which he lent himself.
Variations upon the same theme had served him well throughout his personal war against the Mafia, always to their disaster.
With a bit of luck, this time, renegade soldier James Hinshaw would fare no better from a walk-in visit by Mack Bolan.
His "tool kit" for that penetration was in reality a mobile munitions lab. And he'd gooped that joint for destruction from end to end, despite the watchful attentiveness of his hosts. Plastics with time-delay fuses were left at a critical Point on the outer wall of the communications hut, tamped to blow inward — hopefully to buckle the wall, drop the building, and topple the mast for the radio antenna. Another application would level the barracks; others were placed for strictly psychological effect.
And that was but one side of the "knockout" equation. The other side was psy-war all the way. Bolan was hoping to stage a master illusion which would confuse and divide the enemy toward their ultimate destruction. Not just here in Phoenix, but back at the heart of the operation as well.
The "psy-war" equipment was now being emplaced. And it hurt the warrior's soul to contemplate the loss of such a fine weapon — but then, weapons were expendable. Human freedom and dignity were not.
Head weapon was the slick M2 .50-caliber heavy-barrel machine gun. He set it gently upon the sandy soil of the ridge and threw off the cover. Sixty-six inches of sleek death machine, the M2 was the most lethally impressive weapon in Bolan's mobile arsenal. Tripod-mounted, the heavy gun would deliver at the rate of 650 rounds per minute from a muzzle velocity approaching 3,000 feet per second. No flesh — and few vehicles or buildings — could stand before that withering stream of big steel-jacketed slugs.
And this one came with a difference — one of armorer Bolan's own devices.
He emplaced the big weapon with care, adjusting the tripod legs and sighting-in for maximum effect. Then he locked in the ammo box and fed the disintegrating-link belt into the weapon's receiver. Two steel rods went into the earth, emplaced nine inches to each side — swing-stops, Positioned for a desired 45-degree arc. He rotated the weapon to verify the arc, then completed the sighting, making fine adjustments for range and azimuth.
Finally he affixed the "difference" — a boxlike device designed to fit over the butt and grips of the M2, a spring-loaded metal tongue meshing with the trigger assembly. A simple timer surmounted the metal box. Bolan consulted his watch, set and wound the timer, and activated it. Psy-war, yeah.
If all went well, those guys would think themselves involved in a very hot freight, precisely 150 minutes from that moment. The planted plastics and the robot gun would do their things together. In the heat and hysteria of the moment, who would know between timed-explosives and another "rocket attack."
To complete the stage dressing, Bolan strewed throwaway fiberglass tubes from several expended LAW rockets about the emplacement. Anyone who'd ever handled an M2 would not be fooled for long by the little charade, but Bolan was not going for longs; he would be content with an early confusion among hot tempers and shaken combat instincts.
Somehow, he had to either equalize or destroy the warring factions in this state — and he had to do it damn quick. He was a sitting duck on the desert and he knew it. Plenty of combat stretch, sure, but damn little comfort in the "withdraw and retreat" department. Any concerted and determined reaction by the police community would be his undoing for sure.
"Damn quick" was the name of the game in more ways than one. He had to cover nearly 200 miles of desert highway between Phoenix and Tucson damn quick. He had to do it in the convincing neighborhood of 150 minutes. And by God he would. He summoned all the horses from the big Toronado power plant and headed for Inter state 10.
The Executioner had to deliver a message.
Not to Garcia, no.
It was a message that only a Mafia boss would understand ... loud and clear.
Chapter 12
Symbols
Nick Bonelli hit the roof, as expected. But the Tucson Mafioso was a cat, adept at landing on his feet and not yet ready to surrender the last of his nine lives. Plans had gone awry before, but the world was still turning, and Nick Bonelli was still around. Sure he was mad — mad as hell — when the soldier boy called from Phoenix with his tale Of twenty dead men and no visible progress. Who wouldn't be mad as hell? But on second thought, after careful reconsideration, Bonelli reed that the setback to his military arm might be a blessing in disguise. It was Nick Bonelli's chance to get in on the action personally.
He had relished that possibility from the start. Oh sure, he had gone along with his son Paul on the Idea that the Phoenix move should be made by an outside force, not readily traceable to the brotherhood. And that soldier, Hinshaw, had been the only Topical choice. Tough. Hard as nails. And smart, too, don't forget that. The boy had brains to spare. "Combat sense," Paulie had called it. A good choice, yeah.
But Nick Bonelli missed the action. He secretly longed for the excitement he used to feel in the old days, riding the beer trucks with Tony Morello and the other old boys. Most of them were gone now, one way or another, but Nick was still around. And he needed action.
Besides, he had a personal stake in the Phoenix game plan. It was no mere lust for action that spurred him on now to take personal command of the campaign, but rather a matter of inner necessity. Too much was at stake up north for the capo to just sit back and watch it slip away with a wistful sigh because some soldier boy got caught with his drawers down.
Personal, yeah.
For years — hell, for decades — Bonelli had watched with ill-concealed jealousy and spite as Moe Kaufman and Ike Ruby pulled the strings of power from Phoenix, while he, Nick Bonelli, a brother of the blood, sat on the sidelines and champed his bit. The California bosses, Julian Digeorge and Ben Lucasi, had forged close ties with Kaufman while paying lip service to their alliance with Bonelli and growing rich at his expense on one-sided narcotics deals. Or so Bonelli described it to himself, although each kilo of Mexican brown had fattened his bankroll considerably. Even Augie Marinello, and through him La Commisstone, had smiled upon Kaufman's Phoenix clique when it should have been Bonelli at the helm in Arizona. It was Bonelli's right as a brother of the blood.
Of course, Nick had tried to rectify the uneven situation over the years, peacefully at first and later by force. He had opened a posh nightspot in the heart of downtown Phoenix, seeking thus to establish a beachhead, to drive home a wedge that would pry the town open for full-scale invasion. The results were humiliating. At Kaufman's orders, teams of local police stationed themselves outside Nick's place every night, checking the age of customers and making spot arrests for public drunkenness. Nick wisely withdrew that probe.
Next he tried assassination. Twice, teams of hardmen drove north in search of Kaufman and Ruby, and twice, they disappeared without a trace. Rumors circulated of midnight funerals in the desert. Johnny Scalise, Nick's own cousin, volunteered to fulfill the contract and hurried up to Phoenix. Johnny did not disappear. A carload of Boy Scouts found his nude and emasculated body, crucified with barbed-wire bindings to a giant roadside cactus.
Matters had rested there until Paul Bonelli had approached his father with the news that he not only knew the way to get Kaufman, but he also had the man to do it. From there it was off to the races, with Nick funneling men and cash into Hinshaw's hands, preparing for the big push into Phoenix that would knock Moe Kaufman off his stolen throne.
Paulie and Hinshaw had suggested that Kaufman might better serve the cause alive than dead. Bonelli had resisted the idea as anathema to his inbred sense of revenge, the vendetta. But at length he came to realize the wisdom of their words, for Moe Kaufman alive could serve well as a puppet on Nick Bonelli's strings. Kaufman had the connections already, let him continue to retain the appearance of power, as long as he knew in his heart where the real power lay. It could all be so satisfying, rubbing Kaufman's nose in the muck and stripping him of his empire, leaving him alive to grieve over the loss of that which he could never regain.
Satisfying, yeah. And rewarding. La Commisstone could hardly fail to recognize the power and tactical brilliance of the man who could execute such a master-stroke. At last Nick Bonelli would be assured the respect of those old fools who had snubbed him while courting the favor of Kaufman and his connections. And the plan had shown every sign of working out smoothly. Hinshaw's men were primed and ready, poised to strike at Kaufman's jugular and apply the pressure that would bring him to his knees. Everything should have gone like clockwork.
He had relished that possibility from the start. Oh sure, he had gone along with his son Paul on the Idea that the Phoenix move should be made by an outside force, not readily traceable to the brotherhood. And that soldier, Hinshaw, had been the only Topical choice. Tough. Hard as nails. And smart, too, don't forget that. The boy had brains to spare. "Combat sense," Paulie had called it. A good choice, yeah.
But Nick Bonelli missed the action. He secretly longed for the excitement he used to feel in the old days, riding the beer trucks with Tony Morello and the other old boys. Most of them were gone now, one way or another, but Nick was still around. And he needed action.
Besides, he had a personal stake in the Phoenix game plan. It was no mere lust for action that spurred him on now to take personal command of the campaign, but rather a matter of inner necessity. Too much was at stake up north for the capo to just sit back and watch it slip away with a wistful sigh because some soldier boy got caught with his drawers down.
Personal, yeah.
For years — hell, for decades — Bonelli had watched with ill-concealed jealousy and spite as Moe Kaufman and Ike Ruby pulled the strings of power from Phoenix, while he, Nick Bonelli, a brother of the blood, sat on the sidelines and champed his bit. The California bosses, Julian Digeorge and Ben Lucasi, had forged close ties with Kaufman while paying lip service to their alliance with Bonelli and growing rich at his expense on one-sided narcotics deals. Or so Bonelli described it to himself, although each kilo of Mexican brown had fattened his bankroll considerably. Even Augie Marinello, and through him La Commisstone, had smiled upon Kaufman's Phoenix clique when it should have been Bonelli at the helm in Arizona. It was Bonelli's right as a brother of the blood.
Of course, Nick had tried to rectify the uneven situation over the years, peacefully at first and later by force. He had opened a posh nightspot in the heart of downtown Phoenix, seeking thus to establish a beachhead, to drive home a wedge that would pry the town open for full-scale invasion. The results were humiliating. At Kaufman's orders, teams of local police stationed themselves outside Nick's place every night, checking the age of customers and making spot arrests for public drunkenness. Nick wisely withdrew that probe.
Next he tried assassination. Twice, teams of hardmen drove north in search of Kaufman and Ruby, and twice, they disappeared without a trace. Rumors circulated of midnight funerals in the desert. Johnny Scalise, Nick's own cousin, volunteered to fulfill the contract and hurried up to Phoenix. Johnny did not disappear. A carload of Boy Scouts found his nude and emasculated body, crucified with barbed-wire bindings to a giant roadside cactus.
Matters had rested there until Paul Bonelli had approached his father with the news that he not only knew the way to get Kaufman, but he also had the man to do it. From there it was off to the races, with Nick funneling men and cash into Hinshaw's hands, preparing for the big push into Phoenix that would knock Moe Kaufman off his stolen throne.
Paulie and Hinshaw had suggested that Kaufman might better serve the cause alive than dead. Bonelli had resisted the idea as anathema to his inbred sense of revenge, the vendetta. But at length he came to realize the wisdom of their words, for Moe Kaufman alive could serve well as a puppet on Nick Bonelli's strings. Kaufman had the connections already, let him continue to retain the appearance of power, as long as he knew in his heart where the real power lay. It could all be so satisfying, rubbing Kaufman's nose in the muck and stripping him of his empire, leaving him alive to grieve over the loss of that which he could never regain.
Satisfying, yeah. And rewarding. La Commisstone could hardly fail to recognize the power and tactical brilliance of the man who could execute such a master-stroke. At last Nick Bonelli would be assured the respect of those old fools who had snubbed him while courting the favor of Kaufman and his connections. And the plan had shown every sign of working out smoothly. Hinshaw's men were primed and ready, poised to strike at Kaufman's jugular and apply the pressure that would bring him to his knees. Everything should have gone like clockwork.