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Don Pendleton
Arizona Ambush
"Man is that part of nature through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events... to discover his destiny as agent of the evolutionary process..."
Julian Huxley
"I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby."
Winston Churchill
"There is little comfort in a life dedicated to thunderation and hellfire everlasting. But I accept the role destiny has handed me. The goals then become simplified. I live only for the destruction of the Mafia."
Mack Bolan, from his journal.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgment:
Special thanks to Mike Newton for valuable assistance in the development of this book.
Acknowledgment:
Special thanks to Mike Newton for valuable assistance in the development of this book.
Prologue
Personal awakening may come in many forms, the variations as infinite as the possibilities of human development. For young Sergeant Mack Bolan, that awakening came one summer afternoon in the form of a telegram. Bolan was completing his second combat tour of duty in South Vietnam when word reached him of the deaths of his father, mother, and sister. Returning to the States to care for those beloved dead, Bolan had been thrust jarringly into head-on confrontation with a shady underside of civilization that most people never see or even imagine.
Mack Bolan's family had run afoul of the Mafia, that sinister criminal society which had blossomed from its own tiny beginnings a century ago into what one recent attorney general called the "invisible second government" of the United States, with bloody hands dipping into virtually every legal or illicit field of enterprise imaginable.
A highly skilled professional warrior, Mack Bolan early recognized the means by which the evil mafiosi have managed to frustrate and emasculate the American legal system, and he reacted in the only way remaining. It was a technique which, in Vietnam, had earned him the label of The Executioner.
"What's the use in fighting an enemy 8,000 miles away," young Bolan had asked, "when the real enemy is tearing up everything you love back home?"
Thus was the Executioner's war brought to America, an unending holy war against the forces of evil, the forces of Mafia. Against all the odds, the warrior survived his first engagement with the omnipotent crime syndicate and swept on to confront the brutal godfathers on other battlefields. Wherever La Cosa Nostra reared its foul head, the implacable Executioner was ready, willing, and able to lop off that head.
The Mafia was taken totally off guard, woefully unprepared to face Mack Bolan's personal style of relentless warfare. They knew that in the end they must win out, the odds were simply too great, too impossible for any one man, even a supremely conditioned warrior, to stand indefinitely against the combined might of the organization. And yet, in the meantime, Bolan seemed to lead a charmed life as he rampaged across the Mafia's fortress America at will, pillaging the empire of corruption and evil.
The Executioner's latest foray against the syndicate legions had been in Cleveland, Ohio, where he frustrated the imperial dreams of one Bad Tony Morello and routed the Mafia troops again. It was Bolan's thirtieth campaign against the mob, and even the soldier himself realized that his string of good fortune could not last forever. It would run out one day, probably sooner than later. But in the meantime, Bolan was determined to use the last ounce of his strength — the last drop of his life's blood — to carry out his war against the enemy. His was a war without quarter asked or given, a war without possibility of peace or surrender, short of the grave.
A Marine captain,[1] in a different war for similar, if not identical, goals, had written a hymn to gallantry in battle which well characterized Bolan's quixotic quest:
Who plows the sky, said a wise man, Shows himself a fool; But he went out to plow it Taught in a different school.
Who sows the wind, says Scripture, Must reap and reap again; But he went out to sow the wind And reaped the bitter grain.
He took his death like charity, Like nothing understood; He freshened all the oldest words With all his blood.
Yeah, Executioner Mack Bolan was ready and willing to spend his blood, and that of his enemies, to freshen those old words. Words like peace, justice, virtue. Words with meaning even yet, although the Mafia had done its level best to distort and erase that meaning.
The Executioner was prepared to put the meaning back into those hallowed words. With all his blood.
Mack Bolan's family had run afoul of the Mafia, that sinister criminal society which had blossomed from its own tiny beginnings a century ago into what one recent attorney general called the "invisible second government" of the United States, with bloody hands dipping into virtually every legal or illicit field of enterprise imaginable.
A highly skilled professional warrior, Mack Bolan early recognized the means by which the evil mafiosi have managed to frustrate and emasculate the American legal system, and he reacted in the only way remaining. It was a technique which, in Vietnam, had earned him the label of The Executioner.
"What's the use in fighting an enemy 8,000 miles away," young Bolan had asked, "when the real enemy is tearing up everything you love back home?"
Thus was the Executioner's war brought to America, an unending holy war against the forces of evil, the forces of Mafia. Against all the odds, the warrior survived his first engagement with the omnipotent crime syndicate and swept on to confront the brutal godfathers on other battlefields. Wherever La Cosa Nostra reared its foul head, the implacable Executioner was ready, willing, and able to lop off that head.
The Mafia was taken totally off guard, woefully unprepared to face Mack Bolan's personal style of relentless warfare. They knew that in the end they must win out, the odds were simply too great, too impossible for any one man, even a supremely conditioned warrior, to stand indefinitely against the combined might of the organization. And yet, in the meantime, Bolan seemed to lead a charmed life as he rampaged across the Mafia's fortress America at will, pillaging the empire of corruption and evil.
The Executioner's latest foray against the syndicate legions had been in Cleveland, Ohio, where he frustrated the imperial dreams of one Bad Tony Morello and routed the Mafia troops again. It was Bolan's thirtieth campaign against the mob, and even the soldier himself realized that his string of good fortune could not last forever. It would run out one day, probably sooner than later. But in the meantime, Bolan was determined to use the last ounce of his strength — the last drop of his life's blood — to carry out his war against the enemy. His was a war without quarter asked or given, a war without possibility of peace or surrender, short of the grave.
A Marine captain,[1] in a different war for similar, if not identical, goals, had written a hymn to gallantry in battle which well characterized Bolan's quixotic quest:
Who plows the sky, said a wise man, Shows himself a fool; But he went out to plow it Taught in a different school.
Who sows the wind, says Scripture, Must reap and reap again; But he went out to sow the wind And reaped the bitter grain.
He took his death like charity, Like nothing understood; He freshened all the oldest words With all his blood.
Yeah, Executioner Mack Bolan was ready and willing to spend his blood, and that of his enemies, to freshen those old words. Words like peace, justice, virtue. Words with meaning even yet, although the Mafia had done its level best to distort and erase that meaning.
The Executioner was prepared to put the meaning back into those hallowed words. With all his blood.
Chapter 1
Solutions
The big man crouched in darkness, immobile, his alert senses sending out reconnaissance probes into the surrounding blackness. Around him, the desert was vibrantly alive with secret movement — the nocturnal thrust and counterthrust of instinctive survival. Insects trilled lightly in the thorny bush beside the man, and somewhere on his flank a sidewinder lisped across the sand in its endless search for prey. The man, Mack Bolan, was also hunting, but his quarry was far deadlier than the venomous desert reptile.
The Executioner was hunting cannibals. He had followed their spoor from the killing grounds in Cleveland to the expanses of Arizona, where he found them in abundance. The Mafia savages were there, daily strengthening their parasitic grip upon society in the Grand Canyon State. There had, indeed, been such a wealth of targets that Bolan spent the better part of a week in Tucson merely cataloguing them and gauging their numbers, seeking the most propitious point and moment to strike. Amid the now familiar recital of scams and swindles which everywhere marked the symptoms of the Mafia cancer, the Executioner had uncovered "something else." Beginning with vague whispers, fragmented rumors of a "joint in the desert," Bolan had gradually pieced together an admittedly incomplete portrait of something special brewing on the Tucson Mafia scene — "something else" worth further in-depth investigation.
Bolan had found the "Joint in the desert" late on his sixth day in Tucson. He had come without preconceptions, expecting nothing and open to any opportunity for a "handle" on this latest phase of his unending war. What he found was an enigma. A solution without a mystery, an answer lacking the question. And so he had returned in darkness, seeking that question which would, in turn, lead him on to yet other questions and their ultimate solutions.
The Tucson Mafia's "joint in the desert" was a military-style compound covering some thirty acres and ringed with tall chain-link and barbed-wire fences. In daylight, long, squat buildings were visible near the heart of the compound, all darkened now in the predawn hours.
The big project of the Arizona Mafia was currently narcotics, the wholesale importation of marijuana and "brown" heroin by jeep, truck, and private plane across the 360-mile border shared by Arizona and Mexico. Of late, Federal narcotics officers had come to speak of an Arizona Corridor for drugs which threatened to equal and eventually eclipse the volume of the old French Connection routes from Europe. Dope and a readily accessible border had built the southwestern Mafia, but this apparent hardsite in the arid wastes carried little of the narcotics smell about it.
Sure, there was the paved airstrip running north to south along the western rim of the compound, and Bolan would not be shocked to learn that more than one plane load of Mexican drugs had found their touchdown point there. But the joint itself was clearly more than an isolated heroin depot, and Bolan knew it at a glance. The mob preferred isolated and inconspicuous sites for such landings, and the Tucson mafiosi would never have considered erecting fences and buildings to advertise their purpose.
The place was, theoretically, an outpost of the State Land Reclamation Commission, as proclaimed by the metal NO TRESPASSING signs on the perimeter. The official facade meant nothing to Bolan, and fifteen minutes of circuit riding in the guise of an idle rockhound had been enough to convince him that the cover was fraudulent. No canals or irrigation pipes crossed that perimeter, and the buildings, which he scanned casually through field glasses, lacked the nebulous "official" quality he had come to expect in sites devoted to scientific research at state expense.
No, the place was a hardsite — or had been at one time. Neither Bolan's daylight recon nor his silent nocturnal vigil had turned up more than a handful of hardmen moving too casually about their business. There was no open display of gun-leather, but those guys inside the compound were hardmen all the same. Bolan read their pedigree from a distance as easily as if they had been uniformed. City boys, unfamiliar and uncomfortable with desert living, even in the mild heat of early spring. They dressed casually in blue jeans and fatigues, but they moved like men more accustomed to flashy, expensive suits and alligator shoes.
The Executioner meant to know their number and their purpose. He had opted for a soft probe, if at all possible, and had outfitted himself accordingly. He was in blacksuit and blackface. His "head weapon," the big silver .44 Automag, rode military web at his right hip. The silenced 9mm Beretta Brigadier, the "Be-Be," nestled in side-leather beneath his left armpit. Extra clips for both pistols circled his waist. Slit pockets in the legs of his skinsuit held a stiletto and other useful accessories. Black sneakers on his feet completed the doomsday ensemble.
Bolan had planned the infiltration for dawn, when the forces of heredity and chemistry override training to produce sluggishness and torpor in the most alert of sentries. That hour was fast approaching. Off to the east, across the dry bed of the Santa Cruz River, the first gray fingers of dawn back-lighted the darker mass of Tucson. To the south and west, the San Xavier Indian Reservation lay in pitch blackness, its inhabitants awaiting nature's signal to open another day of struggle and deprivation. Bolan was on the south perimeter of the rectangular compound, where the wire barrier drew closest to the clump of buildings.
He had earlier tested the fence for electricity and found none. He removed a pair of wire cutters from their holster at his waist and cut an entrance through the chain-link barricade in five minutes of concentrated effort. And then he was inside, a deep blotch of shadow which had shifted from one side of the fence to the other as if following a moonbeam.
Inside the compound, Bolan moved with speed and purpose. He crossed the expanse of ground between fence and buildings in a semi-crouch, sacrificing some concealment for the greater speed of long strides. His target was the longest of the structures, a squat rectangle of corrugated steel which stood like the head of a "T" in relation to the other buildings. Bolan gained the midnight shadow of that wall without encountering obstacles and merged silently into it. A long moment passed as his straining ears and keen night vision scoured the blackness in search of foes he never found.
Satisfied that he was alone to this point, Bolan moved out, edging along the wall of the building. He had traversed one-third of the structure's length when he encountered a door, secured by an outside hasp and padlock. He crouched with his ear close to the door panel before touching the lock, striving in vain to pick up the telltale sounds of human presence. There were none. The lock yielded to the probings of a specially constructed pick, and the hasp swung open with a faint grating sound. Again Bolan froze, every muscle tense in anticipation of impending attack.
He gave the moment all the numbers, then slipped quickly inside to stygian darkness, electing to risk the advantage of a needle beam from his penlight. Folding chairs, small tables, metal lockers lining one wall — then yawning emptiness to the far wall where heavy mattresses formed a backdrop from ceiling to floor — just hanging there, suspended ... and shot all to hell. Those mattresses were riddled with holes, their cotton innards trailing in spidery strands to the packed-earth floor. To Bolan's eyes it was obvious that the pads had formed a backdrop for an indoor shooting gallery, from which the actual targets had since been removed.
Interesting, sure, but not particularly revealing. More interesting was a small blackboard affixed to one wall behind the tables. Someone had been illustrating a talk — or a strategy of some type — with chalked arrows and other cryptic marks which, standing alone, had no meaning whatever. Beside the blackboard was posted a well marked-up street map of the city of Phoenix. Bolan removed the map and consigned it to a slit pocket as he moved silently outside.
The remainder of the compound was laid out before Bolan like a miniature town. Or, more precisely, like a miniature combat training base. A second glance revealed that the double row of "buildings" was in fact a mockup of a town, false fronts complete with occasional open doorways and windows. A make-believe town. Mack Bolan had seen this sort of town before.
It was a shooting gallery, or — more correctly — a combat range. The mockup was used by the military, the FBI, and many metropolitan police forces to hone the combat reflexes of their line personnel. The trainee walks through the "town," and life-size photos of friends, foes, and innocent bystanders pop into view in the vacant windows and doors. It was a hypothetical survival course, with the trainee required to make split-second decisions of life and death, whether to fire or hesitate, whether to live or die. Bolan himself had run a similar practice course on several occasions, earning a "master" rating each time.
Easing the silent Beretta from its sheath, the Executioner moved cautiously down that dark and lifeless street. As he walked, he was reminded of the climactic showdown in High Noon. The tall silent stranger with a gun, stalking his villainous prey as he fought to "clean up the town." Bolan did not overlook the apt comparison between that mythical crusade and his own grim war without end.
He paced off the street of that hollow town with measured strides, every sense on the alert for danger, the slim Beretta nosing out ahead of him like a sensor of peril. Bolan was ready, therefore, when a subtle alteration of the shadows to his left brought him spinning into a confrontation with death.
A dark man-shape filled one of those empty doorways, and faint starlight gleamed on polished gunmetal as the man brought his heavy automatic to bear on Bolan. The Beretta got there first, sneezing out a pair Of silent words to discourage the foe. The deadly parabellum slugs sighed in on target, punching twin paths through head bone barely a finger's width apart. The man silhouette dematerialized, leaving the doorway empty again.
Bolan crossed quickly to the Plywood facade, examining his fallen enemy as much by touch as by sight. A middle-aged man, his body lean and hard under the rough work clothes he had worn in life, the remaining features of his face thick and swarthy.
Mafia.
The Executioner moved on, stepping more carefully, quickly along the blackened street of the combat range. At the far end of the mock town he found deserted barracks and an equally empty combination kitchen-dining room. There was nothing exceptional about either building, nothing of interest to Mack Bolan.
The dead man had been alone.
Bolan knew it with certainty as he left that place behind, moving across the compound with no effort at concealment. The guy had been on night-watch, in the wrong place at the wrong time. His tab had come due to the universe for past wrongs, and the bill had been collected in full. That was the end of it.
But not for Bolan.
He had come in search of a clue to the purpose of that enigmatic "joint in the desert." And, at least in part, he had that answer. The place had been a school. A school of death, a finishing academy for gunmen.
And the pupils were gone.
The maneuvers Bolan had witnessed earlier had plainly been the mechanical actions of a cleanup crew, tidying in the wake of the Mafia's graduating class.
And where were those "graduates" now?
Already bent upon their missions of pain and death?
The mob had never taken this sort of trouble before to train its palace guard, and Bolan had no reason to believe they were starting now. The pupils of this death academy would be intended for some special post-graduation exercise.
The Executioner's Arizona blitz had begun as a relatively simple thrust against the heroin traffic, a logical culmination of Bolan's progress from the Cleveland hellgrounds, but it had suddenly become much more. A new element had been introduced into the Arizona game — a wild card element that had to be identified and understood if the chains binding this desert state were to be broken. All the indicators pointed to the existence of a paramilitary force under mob sponsorship. Who were they? Where were they now? What was their mission? Such were the questions being raised by the answers discovered on this desert encampment. A subliminal tremor shivered Bolan's spine.
What was awaiting the Executioner in these new hellgrounds?
He quit that place and returned quickly to the gully where he had stowed the warwagon. The answers would find him. He was positive of that. Those answers always seemed to find their way to Mack Bolan's door.
The Executioner was hunting cannibals. He had followed their spoor from the killing grounds in Cleveland to the expanses of Arizona, where he found them in abundance. The Mafia savages were there, daily strengthening their parasitic grip upon society in the Grand Canyon State. There had, indeed, been such a wealth of targets that Bolan spent the better part of a week in Tucson merely cataloguing them and gauging their numbers, seeking the most propitious point and moment to strike. Amid the now familiar recital of scams and swindles which everywhere marked the symptoms of the Mafia cancer, the Executioner had uncovered "something else." Beginning with vague whispers, fragmented rumors of a "joint in the desert," Bolan had gradually pieced together an admittedly incomplete portrait of something special brewing on the Tucson Mafia scene — "something else" worth further in-depth investigation.
Bolan had found the "Joint in the desert" late on his sixth day in Tucson. He had come without preconceptions, expecting nothing and open to any opportunity for a "handle" on this latest phase of his unending war. What he found was an enigma. A solution without a mystery, an answer lacking the question. And so he had returned in darkness, seeking that question which would, in turn, lead him on to yet other questions and their ultimate solutions.
The Tucson Mafia's "joint in the desert" was a military-style compound covering some thirty acres and ringed with tall chain-link and barbed-wire fences. In daylight, long, squat buildings were visible near the heart of the compound, all darkened now in the predawn hours.
The big project of the Arizona Mafia was currently narcotics, the wholesale importation of marijuana and "brown" heroin by jeep, truck, and private plane across the 360-mile border shared by Arizona and Mexico. Of late, Federal narcotics officers had come to speak of an Arizona Corridor for drugs which threatened to equal and eventually eclipse the volume of the old French Connection routes from Europe. Dope and a readily accessible border had built the southwestern Mafia, but this apparent hardsite in the arid wastes carried little of the narcotics smell about it.
Sure, there was the paved airstrip running north to south along the western rim of the compound, and Bolan would not be shocked to learn that more than one plane load of Mexican drugs had found their touchdown point there. But the joint itself was clearly more than an isolated heroin depot, and Bolan knew it at a glance. The mob preferred isolated and inconspicuous sites for such landings, and the Tucson mafiosi would never have considered erecting fences and buildings to advertise their purpose.
The place was, theoretically, an outpost of the State Land Reclamation Commission, as proclaimed by the metal NO TRESPASSING signs on the perimeter. The official facade meant nothing to Bolan, and fifteen minutes of circuit riding in the guise of an idle rockhound had been enough to convince him that the cover was fraudulent. No canals or irrigation pipes crossed that perimeter, and the buildings, which he scanned casually through field glasses, lacked the nebulous "official" quality he had come to expect in sites devoted to scientific research at state expense.
No, the place was a hardsite — or had been at one time. Neither Bolan's daylight recon nor his silent nocturnal vigil had turned up more than a handful of hardmen moving too casually about their business. There was no open display of gun-leather, but those guys inside the compound were hardmen all the same. Bolan read their pedigree from a distance as easily as if they had been uniformed. City boys, unfamiliar and uncomfortable with desert living, even in the mild heat of early spring. They dressed casually in blue jeans and fatigues, but they moved like men more accustomed to flashy, expensive suits and alligator shoes.
The Executioner meant to know their number and their purpose. He had opted for a soft probe, if at all possible, and had outfitted himself accordingly. He was in blacksuit and blackface. His "head weapon," the big silver .44 Automag, rode military web at his right hip. The silenced 9mm Beretta Brigadier, the "Be-Be," nestled in side-leather beneath his left armpit. Extra clips for both pistols circled his waist. Slit pockets in the legs of his skinsuit held a stiletto and other useful accessories. Black sneakers on his feet completed the doomsday ensemble.
Bolan had planned the infiltration for dawn, when the forces of heredity and chemistry override training to produce sluggishness and torpor in the most alert of sentries. That hour was fast approaching. Off to the east, across the dry bed of the Santa Cruz River, the first gray fingers of dawn back-lighted the darker mass of Tucson. To the south and west, the San Xavier Indian Reservation lay in pitch blackness, its inhabitants awaiting nature's signal to open another day of struggle and deprivation. Bolan was on the south perimeter of the rectangular compound, where the wire barrier drew closest to the clump of buildings.
He had earlier tested the fence for electricity and found none. He removed a pair of wire cutters from their holster at his waist and cut an entrance through the chain-link barricade in five minutes of concentrated effort. And then he was inside, a deep blotch of shadow which had shifted from one side of the fence to the other as if following a moonbeam.
Inside the compound, Bolan moved with speed and purpose. He crossed the expanse of ground between fence and buildings in a semi-crouch, sacrificing some concealment for the greater speed of long strides. His target was the longest of the structures, a squat rectangle of corrugated steel which stood like the head of a "T" in relation to the other buildings. Bolan gained the midnight shadow of that wall without encountering obstacles and merged silently into it. A long moment passed as his straining ears and keen night vision scoured the blackness in search of foes he never found.
Satisfied that he was alone to this point, Bolan moved out, edging along the wall of the building. He had traversed one-third of the structure's length when he encountered a door, secured by an outside hasp and padlock. He crouched with his ear close to the door panel before touching the lock, striving in vain to pick up the telltale sounds of human presence. There were none. The lock yielded to the probings of a specially constructed pick, and the hasp swung open with a faint grating sound. Again Bolan froze, every muscle tense in anticipation of impending attack.
He gave the moment all the numbers, then slipped quickly inside to stygian darkness, electing to risk the advantage of a needle beam from his penlight. Folding chairs, small tables, metal lockers lining one wall — then yawning emptiness to the far wall where heavy mattresses formed a backdrop from ceiling to floor — just hanging there, suspended ... and shot all to hell. Those mattresses were riddled with holes, their cotton innards trailing in spidery strands to the packed-earth floor. To Bolan's eyes it was obvious that the pads had formed a backdrop for an indoor shooting gallery, from which the actual targets had since been removed.
Interesting, sure, but not particularly revealing. More interesting was a small blackboard affixed to one wall behind the tables. Someone had been illustrating a talk — or a strategy of some type — with chalked arrows and other cryptic marks which, standing alone, had no meaning whatever. Beside the blackboard was posted a well marked-up street map of the city of Phoenix. Bolan removed the map and consigned it to a slit pocket as he moved silently outside.
The remainder of the compound was laid out before Bolan like a miniature town. Or, more precisely, like a miniature combat training base. A second glance revealed that the double row of "buildings" was in fact a mockup of a town, false fronts complete with occasional open doorways and windows. A make-believe town. Mack Bolan had seen this sort of town before.
It was a shooting gallery, or — more correctly — a combat range. The mockup was used by the military, the FBI, and many metropolitan police forces to hone the combat reflexes of their line personnel. The trainee walks through the "town," and life-size photos of friends, foes, and innocent bystanders pop into view in the vacant windows and doors. It was a hypothetical survival course, with the trainee required to make split-second decisions of life and death, whether to fire or hesitate, whether to live or die. Bolan himself had run a similar practice course on several occasions, earning a "master" rating each time.
Easing the silent Beretta from its sheath, the Executioner moved cautiously down that dark and lifeless street. As he walked, he was reminded of the climactic showdown in High Noon. The tall silent stranger with a gun, stalking his villainous prey as he fought to "clean up the town." Bolan did not overlook the apt comparison between that mythical crusade and his own grim war without end.
He paced off the street of that hollow town with measured strides, every sense on the alert for danger, the slim Beretta nosing out ahead of him like a sensor of peril. Bolan was ready, therefore, when a subtle alteration of the shadows to his left brought him spinning into a confrontation with death.
A dark man-shape filled one of those empty doorways, and faint starlight gleamed on polished gunmetal as the man brought his heavy automatic to bear on Bolan. The Beretta got there first, sneezing out a pair Of silent words to discourage the foe. The deadly parabellum slugs sighed in on target, punching twin paths through head bone barely a finger's width apart. The man silhouette dematerialized, leaving the doorway empty again.
Bolan crossed quickly to the Plywood facade, examining his fallen enemy as much by touch as by sight. A middle-aged man, his body lean and hard under the rough work clothes he had worn in life, the remaining features of his face thick and swarthy.
Mafia.
The Executioner moved on, stepping more carefully, quickly along the blackened street of the combat range. At the far end of the mock town he found deserted barracks and an equally empty combination kitchen-dining room. There was nothing exceptional about either building, nothing of interest to Mack Bolan.
The dead man had been alone.
Bolan knew it with certainty as he left that place behind, moving across the compound with no effort at concealment. The guy had been on night-watch, in the wrong place at the wrong time. His tab had come due to the universe for past wrongs, and the bill had been collected in full. That was the end of it.
But not for Bolan.
He had come in search of a clue to the purpose of that enigmatic "joint in the desert." And, at least in part, he had that answer. The place had been a school. A school of death, a finishing academy for gunmen.
And the pupils were gone.
The maneuvers Bolan had witnessed earlier had plainly been the mechanical actions of a cleanup crew, tidying in the wake of the Mafia's graduating class.
And where were those "graduates" now?
Already bent upon their missions of pain and death?
The mob had never taken this sort of trouble before to train its palace guard, and Bolan had no reason to believe they were starting now. The pupils of this death academy would be intended for some special post-graduation exercise.
The Executioner's Arizona blitz had begun as a relatively simple thrust against the heroin traffic, a logical culmination of Bolan's progress from the Cleveland hellgrounds, but it had suddenly become much more. A new element had been introduced into the Arizona game — a wild card element that had to be identified and understood if the chains binding this desert state were to be broken. All the indicators pointed to the existence of a paramilitary force under mob sponsorship. Who were they? Where were they now? What was their mission? Such were the questions being raised by the answers discovered on this desert encampment. A subliminal tremor shivered Bolan's spine.
What was awaiting the Executioner in these new hellgrounds?
He quit that place and returned quickly to the gully where he had stowed the warwagon. The answers would find him. He was positive of that. Those answers always seemed to find their way to Mack Bolan's door.
Chapter 2
Jokers
The Mafia had come to Tucson in the 1940s, when enemies from without engaged the nation in global war, leaving the enemies within to devour the vitals of society. Niccolo "Nick" Bonelli, an underboss and junior partner of Cleveland's Bad Tony Morello, had visited the desert spa while recovering from gunshot wounds and decided to stay. Morello had looked askance at his new desert outpost, until Bonelli enlightened him about the miracles of geography and Mexican politics. Overnight Bad Tony's scorn had been converted to admiration for Bonelli's foresight. For three decades Nick Bonelli had mined the illicit Arizona goldfields in his master's behalf, always reserving a healthy slice of power and profit for himself. Of late, Bad Tony had become more concerned with his own eastern machinations, content to let Bonelli run his fiefdom at will, so long as the usual percentage found its way home to the Cleveland coffers. And when at last Tony lost it all in his clash with Mack the Bastard Bolan, Nick Bonelli was on his own, free at last from the puppet master on Lake Erie.
Niecolo Bonelli, at age 55, now headed the most powerful Mafia family between the Rockies and the Pacific. He had climbed the ladder of illicit power from gambling, prostitution, and wartime black-marketeering to achieve ultimate status as the heroin king of the Southwest. His hopes and fortune lay south of the border, and the Mexican heroin his pilots ferried across from Sonora biweekly had financed Bonelli's excursion into more legitimate forms of enterprise. The California families relied heavily upon Nick's southern connection, as did the dons in Cleveland and Detroit. Augie Marinello had used Nick's services before he bought the farm in Pittsfield. Lately, rumor had it that the flow of drugs reached as far as Alaska and the boom towns opening along that last frontier.
Nick Bonelli's strong right arm, underboss, and heir apparent was his son Paul. Paul Bonelli had "legs," everybody said so. Legs and balls. He had "made his bones" with a contract hit at age nineteen and ably assisted in the family's administrative business ever since.
Bolan dredged these facts from his mental index file as he piloted the GMC warwagon north along Interstate Highway 19 into South Tucson. He caught the interchange onto Interstate 10 there, nosing the sleek battle cruiser across the desert toward Phoenix.
During his week in Tucson, the Executioner had searched out Nick Bonelli's hardsite home and his major centers of operation. Automated intelligence "Collectors" were installed on the phone terminals of the hardsite, Paul Bonelli's suburban palace, and the desert capo's major underground clearinghouse. The warwagon's super-sophisticated electronic collection gear could reap the harvest of that data in a ten-second drive-by, and Bolan felt secure in leaving Tucson behind him for the moment.
All of Bolan's combat senses told him that the immediate crisis lay to the north in Phoenix. His days of reconnaissance had uncovered no likely hiding place in Tucson for a paramilitary troop such as the one he sought, and the captured map of Phoenix was another pointer to the next battlefield.
But Bolan had no idea what he would find there.
Phoenix is the state capital and the seat of Maricopa County, widely proclaimed as one of the nation's fastest-growing cities. Bolan's pre-blitz recon had found tourism, mining, and the manufacture of chemicals and electronics gear vying for first place as the state's leading industry there — plentiful targets for a Mafia strike force, but Bolan could not read the minds of unknown men at long range.
Phoenix was also the mob capital of Arizona, the seat of government for a corrupt ruling commission with fingers in every important pie in the state. And these guys were not Mafia, at least not in the blood. Second and third generation descendants of immigrants from Eastern Europe, amoral renegades paying blasphemous lip service to the religion of their fathers. Jews in name, yes, but Nazis in their souls, savages and cannibals devoted to the subversion of every ideal held sacred by their ancestors. They blackened the name of their religion just as the Mafia godfathers blackened the name of an entire race.
Yes, Bolan knew them. And he knew their city. His computer banks and mental mug file were crammed with their names and various connections to the workings of the Mafia's ruling commissioner. Wherever the Mafia had grown and prospered since Prohibition, these other savages were there as well, ever clinging to the shadows as the more flamboyant amici filled headlines and mortuaries, lending their advice and financial acumen where it was lacking in their Mafia comrades, Siegel, Buchalter, Cohen, Lansky. Bolan knew their names and their games.
And he had wanted no part of them in Arizona.
Sure, they were well deserving of the Executioner's attention. He had hung the mark of the beast on one of them as recently as the Cleveland battle.
But Mack Bolan needed no new enemies. He had more than he could handle in a lifetime simply dealing with the Mafia's brothers of the blood, where the battle lines were more or less clearly drawn, the enemies generally recognizable at a glance.
Any expansion of the war would necessarily mean an escalation of uncertainty and the corresponding potential for disastrous mistakes. The fine line between innocent bystanders and civilian savages would necessarily become more difficult to distinguish.
In the past, Bolan had deliberately avoided confrontation with what one observer of the syndicate scene had dubbed the "Kosher Nostra," but there could be no avoiding them now. He was headed full tilt into their capital city.
And the whole deck was wild now in the Arizona game.
The Executioner was in effect facing not one, but two crime syndicates, and he had no idea at the moment whether they were cooperating or at war. And to complicate matters further, there was that lethal "something else," Nick Bonelli's own private army, a paramilitary force of unknown size and strength, traveling unknown paths toward completion of an unknown mission.
Too many wild cards for the Executioner to formulate campaign strategy in advance. He would have to play by ear in Arizona, riding his instincts to the ultimate end of success or total destruction.
Bolan punched in a geo-plot on the warwagon's console viewing screen, consulting the automated index for the microframe desired, then locking in the display for the area he was traveling.
Interstate 10 approaches Phoenix from due south, looping through the suburb of Tempe before curving away northwest past Sky Harbor International Airport and into the downtown heart of Arizona's capital as Interstate 17. Bolan flipped on the overhead light to consult the "liberated" street map of Phoenix which was covered with cryptic markings. There were thick black crosses, which he took to designate some sort of staging areas, and four separate potential targets had been circled with bold strokes. Drawn between the staging areas and target zones were the routes of access and retreat, with primary routes marked in red and emergency alternates in green.
Bolan recognized three of the targets — one from simple knowledge of geography and the other two from a working acquaintance with the Phoenix crime scene. The fourth target remained an enigma, but for the moment three were enough.
Two of the targets were private homes, and Bolan recognized them by the street names and progressive block numbers printed on the map as belonging to the major organized crime figures of the city. If an inter-mob war was brewing, these targets would come as no surprise. The third target riveted Bolan's attention. The state capitol building.
Bolan urged his warwagon on to greater speed, giving the big Toronado engine its head in the race toward Phoenix and an almost certain confrontation with holocaust.
In fact, only the death card was certain now in what had started as the Tucson game, then shifted to the Phoenix game. It was the Arizona game now.
The other cards were all jokers, and the jokers were wild.
Niecolo Bonelli, at age 55, now headed the most powerful Mafia family between the Rockies and the Pacific. He had climbed the ladder of illicit power from gambling, prostitution, and wartime black-marketeering to achieve ultimate status as the heroin king of the Southwest. His hopes and fortune lay south of the border, and the Mexican heroin his pilots ferried across from Sonora biweekly had financed Bonelli's excursion into more legitimate forms of enterprise. The California families relied heavily upon Nick's southern connection, as did the dons in Cleveland and Detroit. Augie Marinello had used Nick's services before he bought the farm in Pittsfield. Lately, rumor had it that the flow of drugs reached as far as Alaska and the boom towns opening along that last frontier.
Nick Bonelli's strong right arm, underboss, and heir apparent was his son Paul. Paul Bonelli had "legs," everybody said so. Legs and balls. He had "made his bones" with a contract hit at age nineteen and ably assisted in the family's administrative business ever since.
Bolan dredged these facts from his mental index file as he piloted the GMC warwagon north along Interstate Highway 19 into South Tucson. He caught the interchange onto Interstate 10 there, nosing the sleek battle cruiser across the desert toward Phoenix.
During his week in Tucson, the Executioner had searched out Nick Bonelli's hardsite home and his major centers of operation. Automated intelligence "Collectors" were installed on the phone terminals of the hardsite, Paul Bonelli's suburban palace, and the desert capo's major underground clearinghouse. The warwagon's super-sophisticated electronic collection gear could reap the harvest of that data in a ten-second drive-by, and Bolan felt secure in leaving Tucson behind him for the moment.
All of Bolan's combat senses told him that the immediate crisis lay to the north in Phoenix. His days of reconnaissance had uncovered no likely hiding place in Tucson for a paramilitary troop such as the one he sought, and the captured map of Phoenix was another pointer to the next battlefield.
But Bolan had no idea what he would find there.
Phoenix is the state capital and the seat of Maricopa County, widely proclaimed as one of the nation's fastest-growing cities. Bolan's pre-blitz recon had found tourism, mining, and the manufacture of chemicals and electronics gear vying for first place as the state's leading industry there — plentiful targets for a Mafia strike force, but Bolan could not read the minds of unknown men at long range.
Phoenix was also the mob capital of Arizona, the seat of government for a corrupt ruling commission with fingers in every important pie in the state. And these guys were not Mafia, at least not in the blood. Second and third generation descendants of immigrants from Eastern Europe, amoral renegades paying blasphemous lip service to the religion of their fathers. Jews in name, yes, but Nazis in their souls, savages and cannibals devoted to the subversion of every ideal held sacred by their ancestors. They blackened the name of their religion just as the Mafia godfathers blackened the name of an entire race.
Yes, Bolan knew them. And he knew their city. His computer banks and mental mug file were crammed with their names and various connections to the workings of the Mafia's ruling commissioner. Wherever the Mafia had grown and prospered since Prohibition, these other savages were there as well, ever clinging to the shadows as the more flamboyant amici filled headlines and mortuaries, lending their advice and financial acumen where it was lacking in their Mafia comrades, Siegel, Buchalter, Cohen, Lansky. Bolan knew their names and their games.
And he had wanted no part of them in Arizona.
Sure, they were well deserving of the Executioner's attention. He had hung the mark of the beast on one of them as recently as the Cleveland battle.
But Mack Bolan needed no new enemies. He had more than he could handle in a lifetime simply dealing with the Mafia's brothers of the blood, where the battle lines were more or less clearly drawn, the enemies generally recognizable at a glance.
Any expansion of the war would necessarily mean an escalation of uncertainty and the corresponding potential for disastrous mistakes. The fine line between innocent bystanders and civilian savages would necessarily become more difficult to distinguish.
In the past, Bolan had deliberately avoided confrontation with what one observer of the syndicate scene had dubbed the "Kosher Nostra," but there could be no avoiding them now. He was headed full tilt into their capital city.
And the whole deck was wild now in the Arizona game.
The Executioner was in effect facing not one, but two crime syndicates, and he had no idea at the moment whether they were cooperating or at war. And to complicate matters further, there was that lethal "something else," Nick Bonelli's own private army, a paramilitary force of unknown size and strength, traveling unknown paths toward completion of an unknown mission.
Too many wild cards for the Executioner to formulate campaign strategy in advance. He would have to play by ear in Arizona, riding his instincts to the ultimate end of success or total destruction.
Bolan punched in a geo-plot on the warwagon's console viewing screen, consulting the automated index for the microframe desired, then locking in the display for the area he was traveling.
Interstate 10 approaches Phoenix from due south, looping through the suburb of Tempe before curving away northwest past Sky Harbor International Airport and into the downtown heart of Arizona's capital as Interstate 17. Bolan flipped on the overhead light to consult the "liberated" street map of Phoenix which was covered with cryptic markings. There were thick black crosses, which he took to designate some sort of staging areas, and four separate potential targets had been circled with bold strokes. Drawn between the staging areas and target zones were the routes of access and retreat, with primary routes marked in red and emergency alternates in green.
Bolan recognized three of the targets — one from simple knowledge of geography and the other two from a working acquaintance with the Phoenix crime scene. The fourth target remained an enigma, but for the moment three were enough.
Two of the targets were private homes, and Bolan recognized them by the street names and progressive block numbers printed on the map as belonging to the major organized crime figures of the city. If an inter-mob war was brewing, these targets would come as no surprise. The third target riveted Bolan's attention. The state capitol building.
Bolan urged his warwagon on to greater speed, giving the big Toronado engine its head in the race toward Phoenix and an almost certain confrontation with holocaust.
In fact, only the death card was certain now in what had started as the Tucson game, then shifted to the Phoenix game. It was the Arizona game now.
The other cards were all jokers, and the jokers were wild.
Chapter 3
Paradise
Bolan swung the warwagon off the Interstate and onto Central Avenue, powering smoothly along the thoroughfare toward the heart of Phoenix. He passed Union Station and the county office complex on his left, and soon spied the multimillion dollar bulk of the new Civic Plaza looming two blocks over to his right on the east flank.
The Executioner's target of the moment was not downtown. Technically, it was not in Phoenix at all. He was homing on the elite suburb of Paradise Valley and had elected the Central route to save time wasted on a maze of residential streets. The sleek battle cruiser powered on, leaving behind the campus of Maricopa Tech and the Phoenix Art Center in its wake. Bolan left Central far from the heart of town, swinging east onto Camelback Road and homing on his target as common homes began to bloom and blossom into mansions.
Bolan was well versed on the peculiar pedigree of Paradise Valley. The exclusive "in" community boasted three private country clubs, yet another private golf course, and a theoretically public "tennis ranch," and some years back the socialite inhabitants had cast their mayoral votes for gambler and stock swindler Gus Greenbaum. Old Gus hadn't been a bad mayor really, since he spent most of his time visiting with co-investors in Las Vegas gaming ventures. The Nevada connections had proven hazardous for Gus, and he went the way of all flesh in 1958, when one of those dissatisfied partners slit his throat from ear to ear and left him leaking on the posh carpet of his palatial home in Paradise.
And Paradise had been truly a paradise for the Phoenix mob, a retreat and sanctuary, a home away from the daily details of corruption and murder, a breath of clean air amid the reek of the syndicate charnel house.
Mack Bolan came to Paradise one morning in early spring and found the Serpent already there ... or, at least, the Serpent's lair.
He drove on by and pulled up three blocks further on, beside the rolling greenery of a well-trimmed public park. Selecting a nondescript jumpsuit and blue hardhat from his wardrobe of disguises, the Executioner quickly transformed himself into a telephone lineman. A tool box, safety belts, and climbing spikes completed the outfit.
Bolan quit the warwagon, jangling off along the quiet lane toward his destination. He chose a phone pole at one corner of the walled estate he sought and began to climb with easy practiced movements. His crow's nest at the terminal box provided him with an excellent vantage point for viewing the entire estate: scattered trees, gently rolling grounds, and a charmingly extravagant manor house at the end of the graveled drive.
A dragon lived within those walls, a corrupt old serpent in human form. Morris Kaufman — Moe to his old friends in Detroit and the new ones here in Paradise — had once been jokingly referred to as "the Yiddish Augie Marinello," a reference to the Mafia's late and unlamented Boss of Bosses. A joke, of course, but there was more truth than humor in the analogy, and the joke was on Phoenix society.
Like Mack Bolan, Moe Kaufman had come west in adversity, one propitious jump ahead of a crusading grand jury in Detroit. And he had built an empire in the desert, growing along with his adopted city in wealth and influence. He outranked Bonelli in seniority and sheer wealth. More importantly, he pulled the political strings for much of the Grand Canyon State from his de facto position as the mentor and financier of rising lights in government. Of late there had been speculation as to how far his influence might reach into the upper ranks of state government and beyond, but one investigative reporter had already "committed suicide" in recent months, and the rest was silence.
A dragon, yeah. A scabrous old parasite living to eat the bowels of the society that sheltered him. But maybe a dragon in trouble.
The Kaufman estate was one of those "marks" on Bolan's captured battle map.
Bolan opened the terminal box and plugged in. He found a line in use on the second try, and what he heard instantly riveted his full attention. A man's hard voice was growling in the earpiece. "else is here. She's alone here with the houseman and a maid."
"Shit!" An answering male voice, deep, with a hint of southern twang.
"We had to burn the houseman. So now what?"
"Dammit! He was supposed to be there!"
"Think we should wait?"
"No! No waiting! Did the maid get a look at you?"
"Sure she got a look."
"Okay. Take care of that. And put a sack on Miss Boobs and drag her over here. We'll bring the guy to us."
"Ten-four, gotcha. We're on our way."
The line went dead.
Bolan hurriedly clipped in a miniature recorder-transceiver and tidied the tap with some quick camouflage, then quit that perch, descending immediately and shedding his lineman's tools as he trotted toward the ironwork entrance to the Kaufman estate.
A car engine coughed to life somewhere within those grounds, and the squeal of tires along the drive signaled the coming confrontation. Bolan opened the jumpsuit and sprung the silent Beretta from its armpit sheath as he jogged into that meet. The iron gate was humming and rattling as it slowly withdrew along the remote-controlled pulley chain. A four-door sedan was approaching, slowing for the gate. In the split second before his brain impulses were translated into lethal action, Bolan ran a rapid sizing on that fated vehicle. Four heads were behind that glass — two guys in front, another guy and a young woman in the rear. With hardly a break in stride, Bolan swung into the confrontation with Beretta raised and steadied in classic combat crouch. The silenced weapon coughed four times in rapid succession, dispatching two parabellum manglers into the auto grillwork and two more at precise points through the windshield. Two heads snapped back, imparting a mingled spray of life forces into the compact atmosphere, splattering the other passengers with wet streamers of crimson and gray.
The sedan lurched to a stop, its punctured radiator spluttering its death rattle. The girl was going crazy, her mouth yawning in a soundless scream, but her companion in the rear seat retained more self-composure. A side door sprang open and ejected that hardman in a diving headlong roll, his frantic hands clawing for gun-leather. The Beretta chugged out a deadly double message, and the guy's graceful dive suddenly became an awkward blood-drenched wallow of death.
Bolan moved swiftly to the car and leaned inside. The front seaters were both dead as hell, the backs of their skulls missing and replaced by sodden muck. The fourth passenger, however, was very much alive.
And, quite naturally, scared as hell.
Her screams were winding down to a breathless series of panting little gasps. At sight of Bolan and that ominous black blaster, she began screaming again, shrill, strangled sounds, eyes bulging and face reddening. She was dressed only in a wraparound bathrobe, and that was blotched with spreading Patches of blood.
The kid was lapsing into hysterics. It was no time for sophisticated handling. So he slapped her. Twice. Hard, stinging blows across each pale cheek. She sobered immediately, her wheezing cries dying to an injured murmur.
"You're okay," he said, the tone firm and reassuring. "Cool it. Who are you?"
The girl's mouth worked for a couple of seconds before the sounds emerged. "I-I'm Sharon Kaufman."
Oh yeah. Wonderful. Bolan's cup fairly runneth over. He pulled the girl out, slung her across his shoulder, and without wasting a precious moment, hurried to the warwagon with his "prize."
The going was not all that easy, though. She was no frail wisp of a girl but a substantial chunk of womanhood with long, flowing lines and plenty of nice womanflesh packed onto that feminine frame. Bolan sized her out at about 130 to 140 pounds and close to six feet in height. If she'd wanted to put up a fight, he would have had his hands full. But there was no fight in this one. She was still obviously terrified, confused, perhaps only partially conscious.
He deposited her on a bunk in the warwagon and peeled away the bloodied robe. She shrank from that invasion of personal privacy but made no move to interfere with the inspection. "Miss Boobs," for sure. Not just big but big and firm, proud and — in most any other circumstances — tantalizing.
"Please!" she whispered. "Don't ... don't ..."
"Relax," he said pleasantly. "I'm just looking for hurts." He closed the robe and told her, "You pass. A-OK. None of the blood is yours. You'll feel a lot better after you've scrubbed it off." He pointed out the shower stall to her. "Don't waste the water. It's a small tank."
He patted her hand and gave her a friendly smile, then went forward to send the battle cruiser to softer ground. Circling the streets of Paradise, Bolan drove with one portion of his mind while using the rest to probe the new dimensions of his problem.
Moe Kaufman had been the hit team's primary target, no doubt about it. He wasn't home, the voice on the phone had said — the girl would bring him to "us." So far it played. But had the crew been looking to hit the Jewish capo or merely abduct him? And to what ultimate end?
Sharon Kaufman was yet another wild card in the game. The Serpent's daughter, a pearl before swine. With the old man missing, her abduction had been the logical and inevitable move. If the mountain won't come to Mohammed ...
And where did Bolan's new "prize" fall in the scheme of things? A healthy and apparently vibrant young woman, but a serpent's daughter all the same. Where would she stand when the cut came?
Another imponderable in the Arizona game.
The players were multiplying like rabbits, and it was getting hard to tell them apart without a program. There was more than one serpent in Paradise now, and they were at war.
Bolan found himself joining the Arizona game late, already several moves behind. But he had captured a queen on his opening gambit, and it just might be enough. Enough to scatter the players, and maybe — just maybe enough, to upset the whole damn board.
The Executioner drove on deeper into Paradise, Searching for serpents.
The Executioner's target of the moment was not downtown. Technically, it was not in Phoenix at all. He was homing on the elite suburb of Paradise Valley and had elected the Central route to save time wasted on a maze of residential streets. The sleek battle cruiser powered on, leaving behind the campus of Maricopa Tech and the Phoenix Art Center in its wake. Bolan left Central far from the heart of town, swinging east onto Camelback Road and homing on his target as common homes began to bloom and blossom into mansions.
Bolan was well versed on the peculiar pedigree of Paradise Valley. The exclusive "in" community boasted three private country clubs, yet another private golf course, and a theoretically public "tennis ranch," and some years back the socialite inhabitants had cast their mayoral votes for gambler and stock swindler Gus Greenbaum. Old Gus hadn't been a bad mayor really, since he spent most of his time visiting with co-investors in Las Vegas gaming ventures. The Nevada connections had proven hazardous for Gus, and he went the way of all flesh in 1958, when one of those dissatisfied partners slit his throat from ear to ear and left him leaking on the posh carpet of his palatial home in Paradise.
And Paradise had been truly a paradise for the Phoenix mob, a retreat and sanctuary, a home away from the daily details of corruption and murder, a breath of clean air amid the reek of the syndicate charnel house.
Mack Bolan came to Paradise one morning in early spring and found the Serpent already there ... or, at least, the Serpent's lair.
He drove on by and pulled up three blocks further on, beside the rolling greenery of a well-trimmed public park. Selecting a nondescript jumpsuit and blue hardhat from his wardrobe of disguises, the Executioner quickly transformed himself into a telephone lineman. A tool box, safety belts, and climbing spikes completed the outfit.
Bolan quit the warwagon, jangling off along the quiet lane toward his destination. He chose a phone pole at one corner of the walled estate he sought and began to climb with easy practiced movements. His crow's nest at the terminal box provided him with an excellent vantage point for viewing the entire estate: scattered trees, gently rolling grounds, and a charmingly extravagant manor house at the end of the graveled drive.
A dragon lived within those walls, a corrupt old serpent in human form. Morris Kaufman — Moe to his old friends in Detroit and the new ones here in Paradise — had once been jokingly referred to as "the Yiddish Augie Marinello," a reference to the Mafia's late and unlamented Boss of Bosses. A joke, of course, but there was more truth than humor in the analogy, and the joke was on Phoenix society.
Like Mack Bolan, Moe Kaufman had come west in adversity, one propitious jump ahead of a crusading grand jury in Detroit. And he had built an empire in the desert, growing along with his adopted city in wealth and influence. He outranked Bonelli in seniority and sheer wealth. More importantly, he pulled the political strings for much of the Grand Canyon State from his de facto position as the mentor and financier of rising lights in government. Of late there had been speculation as to how far his influence might reach into the upper ranks of state government and beyond, but one investigative reporter had already "committed suicide" in recent months, and the rest was silence.
A dragon, yeah. A scabrous old parasite living to eat the bowels of the society that sheltered him. But maybe a dragon in trouble.
The Kaufman estate was one of those "marks" on Bolan's captured battle map.
Bolan opened the terminal box and plugged in. He found a line in use on the second try, and what he heard instantly riveted his full attention. A man's hard voice was growling in the earpiece. "else is here. She's alone here with the houseman and a maid."
"Shit!" An answering male voice, deep, with a hint of southern twang.
"We had to burn the houseman. So now what?"
"Dammit! He was supposed to be there!"
"Think we should wait?"
"No! No waiting! Did the maid get a look at you?"
"Sure she got a look."
"Okay. Take care of that. And put a sack on Miss Boobs and drag her over here. We'll bring the guy to us."
"Ten-four, gotcha. We're on our way."
The line went dead.
Bolan hurriedly clipped in a miniature recorder-transceiver and tidied the tap with some quick camouflage, then quit that perch, descending immediately and shedding his lineman's tools as he trotted toward the ironwork entrance to the Kaufman estate.
A car engine coughed to life somewhere within those grounds, and the squeal of tires along the drive signaled the coming confrontation. Bolan opened the jumpsuit and sprung the silent Beretta from its armpit sheath as he jogged into that meet. The iron gate was humming and rattling as it slowly withdrew along the remote-controlled pulley chain. A four-door sedan was approaching, slowing for the gate. In the split second before his brain impulses were translated into lethal action, Bolan ran a rapid sizing on that fated vehicle. Four heads were behind that glass — two guys in front, another guy and a young woman in the rear. With hardly a break in stride, Bolan swung into the confrontation with Beretta raised and steadied in classic combat crouch. The silenced weapon coughed four times in rapid succession, dispatching two parabellum manglers into the auto grillwork and two more at precise points through the windshield. Two heads snapped back, imparting a mingled spray of life forces into the compact atmosphere, splattering the other passengers with wet streamers of crimson and gray.
The sedan lurched to a stop, its punctured radiator spluttering its death rattle. The girl was going crazy, her mouth yawning in a soundless scream, but her companion in the rear seat retained more self-composure. A side door sprang open and ejected that hardman in a diving headlong roll, his frantic hands clawing for gun-leather. The Beretta chugged out a deadly double message, and the guy's graceful dive suddenly became an awkward blood-drenched wallow of death.
Bolan moved swiftly to the car and leaned inside. The front seaters were both dead as hell, the backs of their skulls missing and replaced by sodden muck. The fourth passenger, however, was very much alive.
And, quite naturally, scared as hell.
Her screams were winding down to a breathless series of panting little gasps. At sight of Bolan and that ominous black blaster, she began screaming again, shrill, strangled sounds, eyes bulging and face reddening. She was dressed only in a wraparound bathrobe, and that was blotched with spreading Patches of blood.
The kid was lapsing into hysterics. It was no time for sophisticated handling. So he slapped her. Twice. Hard, stinging blows across each pale cheek. She sobered immediately, her wheezing cries dying to an injured murmur.
"You're okay," he said, the tone firm and reassuring. "Cool it. Who are you?"
The girl's mouth worked for a couple of seconds before the sounds emerged. "I-I'm Sharon Kaufman."
Oh yeah. Wonderful. Bolan's cup fairly runneth over. He pulled the girl out, slung her across his shoulder, and without wasting a precious moment, hurried to the warwagon with his "prize."
The going was not all that easy, though. She was no frail wisp of a girl but a substantial chunk of womanhood with long, flowing lines and plenty of nice womanflesh packed onto that feminine frame. Bolan sized her out at about 130 to 140 pounds and close to six feet in height. If she'd wanted to put up a fight, he would have had his hands full. But there was no fight in this one. She was still obviously terrified, confused, perhaps only partially conscious.
He deposited her on a bunk in the warwagon and peeled away the bloodied robe. She shrank from that invasion of personal privacy but made no move to interfere with the inspection. "Miss Boobs," for sure. Not just big but big and firm, proud and — in most any other circumstances — tantalizing.
"Please!" she whispered. "Don't ... don't ..."
"Relax," he said pleasantly. "I'm just looking for hurts." He closed the robe and told her, "You pass. A-OK. None of the blood is yours. You'll feel a lot better after you've scrubbed it off." He pointed out the shower stall to her. "Don't waste the water. It's a small tank."
He patted her hand and gave her a friendly smile, then went forward to send the battle cruiser to softer ground. Circling the streets of Paradise, Bolan drove with one portion of his mind while using the rest to probe the new dimensions of his problem.
Moe Kaufman had been the hit team's primary target, no doubt about it. He wasn't home, the voice on the phone had said — the girl would bring him to "us." So far it played. But had the crew been looking to hit the Jewish capo or merely abduct him? And to what ultimate end?
Sharon Kaufman was yet another wild card in the game. The Serpent's daughter, a pearl before swine. With the old man missing, her abduction had been the logical and inevitable move. If the mountain won't come to Mohammed ...
And where did Bolan's new "prize" fall in the scheme of things? A healthy and apparently vibrant young woman, but a serpent's daughter all the same. Where would she stand when the cut came?
Another imponderable in the Arizona game.
The players were multiplying like rabbits, and it was getting hard to tell them apart without a program. There was more than one serpent in Paradise now, and they were at war.
Bolan found himself joining the Arizona game late, already several moves behind. But he had captured a queen on his opening gambit, and it just might be enough. Enough to scatter the players, and maybe — just maybe enough, to upset the whole damn board.
The Executioner drove on deeper into Paradise, Searching for serpents.
Chapter 4
Pros
Jim Hinshaw was unhappy, and rightly so. A consummate professional, accustomed to excellence in every undertaking, he naturally possessed a low tolerance for failure. It rankled, offending his sense of order, upsetting the sensation of control that he relished in every situation. He had invested six months of his time and over ten grand of Nick Bonelli's money to insure his control on the current project, only to find his thrust blunted and broken by unknown forces.
The Kaufman snatch should have gone off without a hitch. Hinshaw's spotters had staked the old man out for an honest-to-God solid month, charting his every move day and night, and he'd never once left the house before nine in the morning. Until today. The day. Hinshaw had abandoned his belief in miracles at age six, when his father stepped out for a quick beer and never came home, so Kaufman's absence had to be ascribed to either freakish coincidence or advance warning. Ever the realist, he opted for advance warning. And that meant a traitor.
Not within Hinshaw's troops, he was reasonably sure of that. His men were loyal. Loyal to the project out of greed and, at another level, loyal to him out of mingled fear and respect.
Hinshaw admired loyalty in his equals and demanded it from his subordinates. It was one of the qualities that marked the line between amateurs and pros, between a mob and a skilled team of operatives. It was essential to the maintenance of order.
Order demanded that Hinshaw salvage the situation in Phoenix. Loyalty and skilled professionalism would make that salvation possible.
Hinshaw began checking off the pluses and minuses of the current situation. Minuses first: Kaufman had slipped through their fingers, the broad — Kaufman's daughter — had managed to get away, too, and three of his men were stretched out in a refrigerated drawer downtown. That was 10 percent of his force out of action in the first skirmish, a skirmish that should not have occurred in the first place.
On the plus side, their cop downtown seemed convinced that one man alone had pulled the morning hit. Hinshaw was inclined to think his team had overlooked one of Kaufman's housemen, allowing the guy to take them by surprise on the way out. Carelessness kills. Awaiting Hinshaw's next order were the other pluses: Angel Morales and Floyd Worthy, Hinshaw's oldest friends from "Nam, his personal "secret weapons." And backing them up, twenty-five of the meanest, ass-kickingest boys who ever pulled a rod in Tucson, his boys now, courtesy of Nick Bonelli.
Hinshaw owed a lot to Bonelli, for all the trust and power and money — yeah, that counted, too — that the Tucson capo had supplied over the months. Nick Bonelli's goals and hopes were his goals now, his hopes, and by God, he couldn't bring himself to tell the old man that somebody had screwed up on phase one. He could still pull it out, and he damn well would. He owed that to Mr. Bonelli. And to himself.
Hinshaw punched buttons on the desk intercom and growled a summons. The office door opened to admit two men. They nodded greetings and moved toward empty chairs. They lacked ramrod spines and the overall military carriage that marked Hinshaw, yet they moved with an identical grace and power, emitting lethal vibrations into the room.
Pros, yeah. Men.
Angel Morales. Small and lean, straight black hair framing finely chiseled Latin features, sensual lips curving slightly in a little smile which widened to a grin in the heat of combat. And Floyd Worthy. Tall, grim, black as the ace of spades, his restless hands ever moving, at peace only when holding one of the weapons that he loved.
Hinshaw felt better already, stronger, more confident. They were a team all right, and together, Hinshaw knew, they could move mountains.
Worthy opened the dialogue with his deep, drawling voice. "What's the word, my man?"
"The word is that our boys were iced by one man. I take that to mean that Kaufman has no troops in the field — yet. If we move quick enough, we should be able to cut our losses and salvage the play."
"Target Baker?" The question came from Morales.
"Affirmative. We still need a hostage for our hole card. Floyd, I want you to take personal charge of this action, and be sure the boys understand that we need the pigeon alive. Cold meat won't get us the time of day."
Worthy gave him an unemotional "Roger," the big ebony hands opening and clenching in slow rhythm.
"Take a half-dozen men with you," Hinshaw continued. "The last team came up short." There was no trace of regret in his voice as he dismissed the deaths, merely a recognition of tactical error.
"I can handle it," Worthy assured him, risking a narrow smile for the first time.
"I have every confidence," Hinshaw told his friend, returning the grim smile. "Angel, you're on backup and communications. Commit minimal reinforcements as a last resort. Emphasize that."
"Gotcha," Morales replied. "Floyd don't need any help on a run like this, do ya Floyd?"
"Made in the shade," Worthy rumbled in response.
"Right. That's all." Hinshaw dropped his eyes to a folder of papers on the desk, and the other men recognized the dismissal for what it was, letting themselves out.
Jim Hinshaw was no longer upset. He felt good now, powerful, worthy of Nick Bonelli's confidence. It would be the old squeeze play, just like in "Nam, bring the enemy to his knees and keep him there. The old Special Forces motto came back to him: When you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. Yeah, and their fortunes, too, any damn thing you demand. But first the squeeze, the all-important stranglehold. Yeah, that was the name of the game.
The GMC motor home which served as Bolan's warwagon was parked on a wooded lane in Echo Canyon Park. Bolan and Sharon Kaufman sat on opposite ends of the same fold-down bunk, he still in blacksuit and she looking almost childlike in the voluminous folds of his robe. Almost childlike, but not quite. Even in that outsize garment, she was a hell of a lot of woman, and no clothing could disguise the fact.
Bolan reluctantly pulled his eyes away from there and caught hers over the lip of an upraised coffee mug. He found lingering fear in that gaze, but she offered him a tentative smile as she lowered the mug and haltingly told him, "I-I don't know what to say except ... thanks ... I-I guess."
His eyes remained warm, but the voice was ice-tinged as he replied, "You could say a lot more than that." Her gaze fell to the coffee cup. She said nothing.
"Your father is Moe Kaufman."
"Of course."
"He's in trouble."
"Yes I ... I gathered as much. What did those men want?"
"They wanted his head. Someone still does. That's why they tried to snatch you. Your head was a means to his. It's the big game, Miss Kaufman. Why did you think they took you?"
"I-it didn't-I didn't have time to think about it. Everything happened so fast. Who are you?"
"I'm the guy who snatched you back. But you are in your own hands now. Walk away, if that's what you want. Return home. But I advise that you don't."
Fear was becoming a living presence between them. Her eyes receded, shrinking from his gaze as her mind obviously tumbled with a thousand questions and perhaps ten times as many logical answers. "What should I do then?" she asked.
He spread his hands as he suggested, "Talk to me."
She hesitated. "About what?"
"You could start with your father's business associates."
"What? I don't-"
"Nick Bonelli." It was neither a statement nor a question, it was simply there, hanging between them in the sudden silence.
"Well ... yes, Mr. Bonelli and my father are friends. I believe they're partners in some sort of business venture in Tucson."
"The partnership is dissolving," Bolan told her grimly.
"What?" More tension in the young voice now, edging out the confusion.
The Kaufman snatch should have gone off without a hitch. Hinshaw's spotters had staked the old man out for an honest-to-God solid month, charting his every move day and night, and he'd never once left the house before nine in the morning. Until today. The day. Hinshaw had abandoned his belief in miracles at age six, when his father stepped out for a quick beer and never came home, so Kaufman's absence had to be ascribed to either freakish coincidence or advance warning. Ever the realist, he opted for advance warning. And that meant a traitor.
Not within Hinshaw's troops, he was reasonably sure of that. His men were loyal. Loyal to the project out of greed and, at another level, loyal to him out of mingled fear and respect.
Hinshaw admired loyalty in his equals and demanded it from his subordinates. It was one of the qualities that marked the line between amateurs and pros, between a mob and a skilled team of operatives. It was essential to the maintenance of order.
Order demanded that Hinshaw salvage the situation in Phoenix. Loyalty and skilled professionalism would make that salvation possible.
Hinshaw began checking off the pluses and minuses of the current situation. Minuses first: Kaufman had slipped through their fingers, the broad — Kaufman's daughter — had managed to get away, too, and three of his men were stretched out in a refrigerated drawer downtown. That was 10 percent of his force out of action in the first skirmish, a skirmish that should not have occurred in the first place.
On the plus side, their cop downtown seemed convinced that one man alone had pulled the morning hit. Hinshaw was inclined to think his team had overlooked one of Kaufman's housemen, allowing the guy to take them by surprise on the way out. Carelessness kills. Awaiting Hinshaw's next order were the other pluses: Angel Morales and Floyd Worthy, Hinshaw's oldest friends from "Nam, his personal "secret weapons." And backing them up, twenty-five of the meanest, ass-kickingest boys who ever pulled a rod in Tucson, his boys now, courtesy of Nick Bonelli.
Hinshaw owed a lot to Bonelli, for all the trust and power and money — yeah, that counted, too — that the Tucson capo had supplied over the months. Nick Bonelli's goals and hopes were his goals now, his hopes, and by God, he couldn't bring himself to tell the old man that somebody had screwed up on phase one. He could still pull it out, and he damn well would. He owed that to Mr. Bonelli. And to himself.
Hinshaw punched buttons on the desk intercom and growled a summons. The office door opened to admit two men. They nodded greetings and moved toward empty chairs. They lacked ramrod spines and the overall military carriage that marked Hinshaw, yet they moved with an identical grace and power, emitting lethal vibrations into the room.
Pros, yeah. Men.
Angel Morales. Small and lean, straight black hair framing finely chiseled Latin features, sensual lips curving slightly in a little smile which widened to a grin in the heat of combat. And Floyd Worthy. Tall, grim, black as the ace of spades, his restless hands ever moving, at peace only when holding one of the weapons that he loved.
Hinshaw felt better already, stronger, more confident. They were a team all right, and together, Hinshaw knew, they could move mountains.
Worthy opened the dialogue with his deep, drawling voice. "What's the word, my man?"
"The word is that our boys were iced by one man. I take that to mean that Kaufman has no troops in the field — yet. If we move quick enough, we should be able to cut our losses and salvage the play."
"Target Baker?" The question came from Morales.
"Affirmative. We still need a hostage for our hole card. Floyd, I want you to take personal charge of this action, and be sure the boys understand that we need the pigeon alive. Cold meat won't get us the time of day."
Worthy gave him an unemotional "Roger," the big ebony hands opening and clenching in slow rhythm.
"Take a half-dozen men with you," Hinshaw continued. "The last team came up short." There was no trace of regret in his voice as he dismissed the deaths, merely a recognition of tactical error.
"I can handle it," Worthy assured him, risking a narrow smile for the first time.
"I have every confidence," Hinshaw told his friend, returning the grim smile. "Angel, you're on backup and communications. Commit minimal reinforcements as a last resort. Emphasize that."
"Gotcha," Morales replied. "Floyd don't need any help on a run like this, do ya Floyd?"
"Made in the shade," Worthy rumbled in response.
"Right. That's all." Hinshaw dropped his eyes to a folder of papers on the desk, and the other men recognized the dismissal for what it was, letting themselves out.
Jim Hinshaw was no longer upset. He felt good now, powerful, worthy of Nick Bonelli's confidence. It would be the old squeeze play, just like in "Nam, bring the enemy to his knees and keep him there. The old Special Forces motto came back to him: When you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. Yeah, and their fortunes, too, any damn thing you demand. But first the squeeze, the all-important stranglehold. Yeah, that was the name of the game.
The GMC motor home which served as Bolan's warwagon was parked on a wooded lane in Echo Canyon Park. Bolan and Sharon Kaufman sat on opposite ends of the same fold-down bunk, he still in blacksuit and she looking almost childlike in the voluminous folds of his robe. Almost childlike, but not quite. Even in that outsize garment, she was a hell of a lot of woman, and no clothing could disguise the fact.
Bolan reluctantly pulled his eyes away from there and caught hers over the lip of an upraised coffee mug. He found lingering fear in that gaze, but she offered him a tentative smile as she lowered the mug and haltingly told him, "I-I don't know what to say except ... thanks ... I-I guess."
His eyes remained warm, but the voice was ice-tinged as he replied, "You could say a lot more than that." Her gaze fell to the coffee cup. She said nothing.
"Your father is Moe Kaufman."
"Of course."
"He's in trouble."
"Yes I ... I gathered as much. What did those men want?"
"They wanted his head. Someone still does. That's why they tried to snatch you. Your head was a means to his. It's the big game, Miss Kaufman. Why did you think they took you?"
"I-it didn't-I didn't have time to think about it. Everything happened so fast. Who are you?"
"I'm the guy who snatched you back. But you are in your own hands now. Walk away, if that's what you want. Return home. But I advise that you don't."
Fear was becoming a living presence between them. Her eyes receded, shrinking from his gaze as her mind obviously tumbled with a thousand questions and perhaps ten times as many logical answers. "What should I do then?" she asked.
He spread his hands as he suggested, "Talk to me."
She hesitated. "About what?"
"You could start with your father's business associates."
"What? I don't-"
"Nick Bonelli." It was neither a statement nor a question, it was simply there, hanging between them in the sudden silence.
"Well ... yes, Mr. Bonelli and my father are friends. I believe they're partners in some sort of business venture in Tucson."
"The partnership is dissolving," Bolan told her grimly.
"What?" More tension in the young voice now, edging out the confusion.