Assault on Soho (4 page)

Danno Giliamo was a mighty unhappy man. Twice in one night he had set a flawless trap for that Bolan bastard, and twice in one night the bastard had skipped lightly away and left a pile of bleeding bodies behind him.

"The trouble," Danno complained to his local contact, "is that I'm trying to do a job with nothing but a bunch of two-bit amateurs. We're never going to nail that guy with this kind of talent."

Nick Trigger, a powerfully built man about forty-five, thoughtfully chewed the end of an unlighted cigar, and studied the troubled
caporegime
from Jersey. Known earlier by various names—Endante, Fumerri, Woods, to list only the most recent—Nick had been a trigger man with various eastern mobs since the late forties. He had come to England less than a year earlier, with false papers and under the name Nicholas Woods, and with a singular mission to perform for the council of bosses back home in the U.S. In coded communications travelling between the two countries, this veteran triggerman was identified as Nick Trigger, and the code name had stuck.

Nick's mission in England was true to his trade. He had been commissioned to discourage organized competition with the mob's British arm during their entrenchment there. A better man for the task could hardly have been chosen. Tough, tenacious, highly intelligent and coldly merciless, he is thought to have figured directly or indirectly in more than a hundred Mafia executions during his criminal career. Many of these victims had formerly been close associates.

Now, as Nick Trigger, this same assassin was chief British enforcer for the Council of Capo's, reporting directly to the
Commissione
—and he was not entirely happy with the untidy bundle being edged into his lap by the man from Jersey. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and quietly asked his visitor, "How many boys you running with, Danno?"

Nervously, Giliamo replied, "I brought a dozen of my personal crew, and now two of them are hurt. I got about twenty freelancers left, ones I brought with me. Local talent I never know about, it keeps varying. For every one that gets shot, I lose ten to the trembling shakes."

"Well how many locals you think you got right now?"

"I think maybe a couple dozen."

Trigger whistled softly. "Hell, you got a regular army. You can't nail Bolan with all that?"

"You gotta see this guy to believe it," Giliamo said. "It ain't numbers that's going to get him, it's talent. Now I got some pretty damn good boys with me, Nick, but I ain't got any in
that
bastard's league. As for these tagalong rodmen, it's almost criminal neglect to even put them on the firing line. This Bolan just whacks 'em down and sends for some more. You ought to see what he did to us on this last hit, and I bet he didn't fire a shot hisself. He had my boys shootin'
each other
up."

"He's pretty tricky, eh?"

"Cunning is the word, Nick. This fuckin' boy is
cunning
."

Nick Trigger chewed his cigar for another thoughtful moment, then asked, "Just what is it you want from me, Danno?"

"I thought maybe you'd like to take it over, Nick."

"This Bolan hit?"

"Yeah. I don't know anybody else off hand could handle this job except Nick Trigger."

"I hear he put down the Talifero brothers in Miami," the other murmured.

"Hard, he put them down
damn
hard, that's right. I was there. I saw it. Not just the brothers got put down. The whole place was a disaster area."

"The Talifero's are about the two meanest boys around anywhere," Nick Trigger observed, sighing. "What the hell, maybe this boy Bolan is as big as his reputation."

"He is, Nick," Giliamo quickly affirmed. "Bigger maybe. He scares the living shit outta my boys, I gotta be honest about that. They're so jittery and keyed-up they start shooting holes in each other if anything moves. I gotta be honest about this. I don't know anybody could take this boy except maybe you."

The veteran triggerman smiled grimly. "Don't try buttering me up, Danno. I don't take jobs on butter."

"I'm just being honest," Giliamo assured him. "You know I'm just being honest, Nick."

"Yeah." Trigger was thinking about it. "I been walking a thin line here in England, you know. I mean, a lot's at stake and we don't have things nailed down too good. I have a hell of a big job without all this other trouble."

"I know, Nick, I know. I was just thinking that…"

"We got a lot of legit money invested around. Hell we got movie companies and theatres, clubs, casinos— hell, we got a lot of money strung out around here, Danno. We even have musical groups and records and that kind of stuff. And it's tight—the competish is tight. Nobody's on the make in this town, neither. I mean the cops, the government people—they don't have any handle to grab hold of. I never saw such an honest damn country as this one."

"I understood you wasn't involved in the business end of things," Giliamo said. "I mean, you're enforcing, right?"

"Yeah you're right, Danno, but what I'm staying is all this makes my job tougher. If you can't buy security then you got to
take
it—right? I mean, hell, if the local biggies won't cooperate then you have to carve out a territory the best way you can. And that means I'm busier'n hell, Danno."

"Well, I figure you could handle this job just one two three, Nick. And it would be a real feather in your cap. I mean, you know, it'd show everybody once and for all that you're two heads bigger than the Talifero boys. Right?"

Nick Trigger let out a tired sigh. He plucked at his tie and pushed a coffee cup in little circles about the table. "I'd have to clear it with the people back home," he said.

"That wouldn't be any trouble," Giliamo assured him. "They want Bolan more'n they want Manhattan. I'd appreciate it, though, if you'd put it in a way that wouldn't make me look like an ass. You know. Just tell 'em I don't know the town or something, and you'd like to take over and get this Bolan out of your hair real quick. You know. Don't make it look like I'm flat on my ass."

"Yeah, well, what you say is true, Danno." Trigger told him. "Many more open gunfights around here and the whole town will pull up tight. I don't need the CLD swarming around my operation. Those boys are bad news all the way."

"What's that ODD?" asked the man from Jersey.

"That's what Scotland Yard calls their dick force, Criminal Investigation Division. They're worse news than the feds back home."

"So that's what you tell 'em," Giliamo quickly replied. "Tell 'em you want to take over, and that I'll stick around to help out."

"Okay. Let me think about it," the British enforcer said quietly. But he had already thought about it. Bolan would be a real plum, and at just about the right time. Nick Trigger had the British territory in much better shape than he'd let on to Danno Giliamo. Pretty soon he'd be needing to move onward and upward. And it wouldn't hurt a thing to come home looking two heads bigger than the Talifero brothers. Hell no, it wouldn't hurt a thing.

In an imposing building beside the Thames a group of grim faced men were sitting down to a new day with a rather large sized new problem confronting them. They were solemn, some sleepy and obviously newly awake. There was a minimum of conversation. The time was barely four o'clock.

Their leader stood stiffly in front of a wall chart of the city of London, his arms folded against his chest, and waited until all had been seated and the subdued greetings quietly exchanged. Then he dropped his arms to his side, advanced a couple of steps to a small rostrum, fiddled with a paper lying there, and said, "Well, it's a brisk hour to be starting the day, isn't it? I can see that we're all fired up and anxious to be cracking along, so I'll make this as brief as possible."

He paused, as though expecting some reaction to his dry humor. Receiving none, he plunged right in. "It's this chap Bolan, the American answer to overpopulation. We have good reason to believe that he entered this country at Dover late last night."

He received his reaction then. Sleepy eyes suddenly became wide-awake, a fellow at the rear closed his mouth in mid-yawn, others exchanged significant glances which meant that a rumor had just been confirmed.

"So you can understand the early hour call. There's much to be done and not nearly enough time, we fear, to get it all in. Please listen alertly, take notes, question anything that isn't crystal clear to you. Very quickly now, here are the facts as known at this…"

The meeting took forty minutes and revealed the full scope of Scotland Yard's reaction to the Bolan presence in England. All routine police business had been temporarily suspended, all furloughs indefinitely cancelled, shift rotations halted, and the full force of the most impressive police establishment in existence brought to bear directly upon the problem of Mack Bolan.

It was an extraordinary reaction, but a carefully considered one. Bolan's presence in France, and the resulting uproar there, had been closely noted by the men this side of the channel. The chance that Bolan would come to England had been weighed as a fifty-fifty question, and a rather thin security screen had been set up at all likely points of entry. Bolan had slipped in and in the space of a few hours two explosive and widely separated gun battles had erupted.

Contingency plans had been drawn up at Scotland Yard some days earlier, ready to be put into operation at a moment's notice. Already the machinery was in motion, the inexorable gears of British crime control meshing into the problem. Special squads were activated, undercover contacts alerted, and hot lines opened to underworld informers all about the city. All public transportation terminals were placed under close surveillance, car rental and taxicab companies were alerted, and a watch was established on all persons known or suspected to have connections with organized crime.

The battle for Britain was on, and the Executioner's jungle was again closing in on him.

Bolan had definitely not desired a hot war in London. He knew neither the land nor the people, and his intelligence concerning local Mafia activities was practically nil. There were several names in his target book, and that was all: he had no addresses, no rundown of activities, no feel whatever about the enemy. The only logical course of action that presented itself to him was to get the hell away from there, and with as little lost motion as possible. His intention upon his departure from France, had been to skim through England and quickly out again, U.S. bound. This initiative had been taken away from him, though, with the appearance of Ann Franklin into his life. For the moment, he had felt it best to run with the tide—and he had done so.

The brief skirmish outside the
Museum de Sade
was now more than an hour behind him. He had been running loose since that time with no particular objective in mind except to keep moving. He had driven aimlessly, winding and circling through the maze-like metropolis while considering alternate plans of action.

Ann Franklin and old Charles kept crowding into his mind, along with the cocky little rooster who'd stood unarmed in his path in that upstairs clubroom and the anonymous men who had helped him out of Dover and through the police lines into London.
Why
? Why all of it? Why
any
of it? The lengths they had gone to, all the planning and intrigue and personal danger… what manner of peril had prompted them into such a hazardous undertaking?

Bolan was feeling guilty about his treatment of the people of the
de Sade
. He recognized this, and attempted to combat the feeling with logic. Regardless of their motives, he argued, few things could be more perilous than an alignment with Mack Bolan. Recent history substantiated this conclusion. Everyone who had held out a hand of friendship to the Executioner had gotten that hand promptly chopped off, in one way or another. The Mafia did not take kindly to active sympathy for their enemies. Bolan's list of beloved dead stretched all the way back to the California battles, and hovered on his conscience like an open wound. And in France he had damn near…

He wrenched off the thought and flung it away. The Executioner could not afford the luxury of mourning. Following that heart-rending action in France, Bolan had sworn to never again allow himself any involvements with friendly units. And now he was reaffirming that position; he would not involve the
Sades
.

Case closed.

Next problem, get out of London. This could be no easy chore in a "hot" vehicle, especially a big foreign job that stood out like a neon sign.

As an additional complication, Bolan was lost. The appropriated car had come complete with a street map of the city, but only principal thoroughfares and notable landmarks were shown. Since his discovery of the map, Bolan had found nothing to offer him an orientation to the lay of the city and his relative position in the sprawling confusion.

After several minutes of travelling the maze, however, he came out on a broad avenue and shortly thereafter passed a planetarium and Madame Tussaud's wax-works. Now Bolan had his fix. He was on Marylebone Road, just south of Regent's Park and Zoological Gardens.

He swung into the park and stopped the car to study the map and develop some logic of the London layout. He was far north and a bit west of center. London Airport lay south and even further west. He quickly traced a street route between the two points; then, on impulse, he got out of the car and went back to inspect the trunk compartment.

As soon as he looked in Bolan knew that he had gained far more than a set of wheels; he'd inherited an arsenal. The trunk was crammed with weapons— among them a sawed-off shotgun, an efficient little Israeli
Uzi
submachinegun, and an impressive high-powered bolt action piece, a Weatherby Mark V with a sniperscope and about fifty rounds of .460 Magnum heartstoppers. This last find evoked a low whistle from the arms expert. It came in a leather case vriaidi may have cost as much as the rifle itself; the gun was loaded and ready to roar, and it had been sighted-in with calibrations up to 1,000 yards. In a pocket of the guncase Bolan found a trajectory graph and a ballistics chart. This drew another appreciative response. According to the graph, trajectory drop was less than five inches at maximum calibrated range, and the point-blank range (no correction required) was a little better than 400 yards.

The Weatherby was a precision piece, and it had been further refined by a real craftsman. Bolan was not only happy to have the gun—he was damned glad that an enemy no longer had it. Anyone who could work-in a rifle like that would certainly know how to make the proper use of it. This item of knowledge also sharpened the Executioner's respect for the enemy. All were not clowns; some were masters of death, and the Weatherby served to remind him of this grim fact.

Now he had cause for wonder about the big Lincoln and its proposed role in the British squeeze on Bolan. These gunners had obviously come loaded for bear, and it seemed unlikely that a couple of brief firefights would deter them from their hunt.

Bolan resecured the weapons in the trunk and sent the car along to his next point of reference, the intersection of Marylebone Road and Baker Street, then along Baker to Oxford and over to the broad Park Lane at the eastern edge of Hyde Park. He passed the London Hilton and circled to Knightsbridge, then began angling toward Cromwell Road and London Airport.

His first port o' call would be the air express terminal to pick up the bag he had sent ahead from Paris. It contained items he could use immediately—such as a change of suits and a pair of shoes with both heels intact. There were also some special cosmetics he'd picked up in a shop at Marseilles which might prove beneficial.

As for the weapons now in the trunk of the Lincoln, Bolan had already written them off. If things worked out right he would not and could not make any use of them—Bolan was fading, not charging. There was a twinge of regret over the Weatherby. As for the other stuff, general weapons could be picked up anywhere, when and as the need arose. For the moment, the Beretta was weapon enough.

London Airport presented itself as a confusing sprawl. Overseas flights used one terminal, intra-European flights another. To complicate matters, the road signs directing traffic into the complex could have meant as much to Bolan if printed in Singhalese, and the fog was much worse in this area. After some twenty minutes of trial and error, he found his way to the freight terminal. Then he devoted another ten minutes to a soft recon of that part of the airpark. When finally he went inside to claim the bag, Bolan knew all the ways in and out and the Lincoln was ready for an unobstructed departure.

His business at the express office was conducted quickly and without difficulty. The customs formalities had been taken care of at the shipping point, and Bolan identified himself with a fake American passport he had purchased in Paris. He returned to the car and deposited the bag on the rear seat, then set off for the overseas passenger area. Here he parked in a zone reserved for buses from the BOAC Air Terminal in London, grabbed the bag, and walked briskly toward the flight facility.

When he was within a few yards of his goal, hurrying footsteps sounded at his side and a strained emotional voice advised him, "You musn't go in there, Mr. Bolan."

Ann Franklin, it seemed, was not yet entirely out of his life.

She was compellingly appealing in a London Fog minicoat, a jaunty little hat, and a very worried face. Bolan's hand slipped inside his jacket, and he growled, "Why not?"

"Charles thought you'd wish to know," she reported breathlessly. "The CID is out in force, searching for you. Here too. Charles says there will be an undercover man at each booking stall."

"At each what?"

"The ticketing windows—the places where you purchase… never mind, you simply cannot get out this way."

Bolan's decision was typically quick. He took the girl by the arm and returned to the parked car, put her and the bag inside, then slid in behind the wheel and quietly departed.

When they were clear of the airport proper he said, "Thanks again. But just how clean are you?"

"What?"

"You left the museum with a Mafia tail."

"Oh, that." She gave the lovely head a disdainful toss. "I left them chasing their own tails around Piccadilly."

Bolan turned her a warm grin. "You're something else," he said in a quietly respectful tone.

"In American, I hope that's good," she replied, smiling.

"Yeah, it is." He sighed and added, "How long have you been standing out in the cold waiting for me?"

"Not long," she assured him. "We weren't all that certain that you hadn't slipped out before. Charles rung me at just past four. I came straight out. Major Stone took the BOAC Terminal. Harry Parks, that's the large one who chauffeured us into London—Harry went to intercept you at the West London Terminal." She laughed nervously. "I think it perfectly fitting that
I
drew the lucky spot."

Drily, Bolan said, "Yeah. Lucky you."

She ignored the sarcasm. "By the by, that was a smashing escape from Soho. Charles described it for me. We're all so very proud of you, you know."

Bolan was feeling more the heel with every passing moment. Very solemnly, he asked the girl, "What do you people want from me, Ann?"

"Just now," she told him, "all we want is that you remain alive. And we want you to allow us to help you accomplish just that."

Bolan could not argue a jungle logic into the situation. He smiled faintly, a barely visible twisting of the lips, and said, "Okay, we'll play it that way. For now. But keep one thing in mind. As long as you are friendly to me, you have inherited all my enemies—and those people play very rough games. On the other hand, if you turn out to be
my
enemy… well, I have my rough moments also."

"We understand all that," she replied in a small voice. "And we accept all risks."

Bolan had no ready response, and they drove in silence for several minutes, heading back toward London via Cromwell Road. Then Ann told him, "Gloucester Road is just ahead. Take a left there. We'll go up Paddington and cross to the north."

"Where's our destination?" Bolan muttered.

"Queen's House," she replied. "You have the key in your pocket, I believe."

"That's your place," he said.

"Yes, it's my place. My
secret
place, count on that. It's safe there."

"Okay, I'll count on it," Bolan told her, staring stonily forward.

She leaned against him, resting her face on his arm. "Don't seem so grim, Mr. Bolan. It will be just you and me. And we will… get to know one another far better."

Bolan greeted the prospect with mixed emotions. A vision of the torture cells at
Museum de Sade
flashed through his mind. He glanced down upon the lovely head at his shoulder and experienced a trickling little tightness in his guts.

"Let's hope," he murmured, "that our familiarity does not breed contempt."

"I have no worry about that," she whispered. But Bolan did. Which way, he wondered, was the tide running now?