Blood Testament (5 page)

Like now.

A hellfire warrior who could bend the rules or break them as he chose, with the impunity of one who stands outside the system, looking in. A dedicated soldier who was ready to commit himself and risk his life on behalf of others without thinking twice about the costs.

Their situations were identical, and Turrin knew that Hal had used up his other options before he mentioned Striker's name. The guy was like a frigging doomsday weapon — you could not control him; you could only point him in the general direction, turn him loose and pray. There were no guarantees that he would finally succeed, no guarantees of any kind — except that he would do his best, use every means at his disposal to prevent unnecessary harm from coming to the innocent, to any noncombatant.

As he closed the office door behind him, Turrin wondered what had happened to the noncombatants, anyway.

Increasingly the lines were blurred, and he could not distinguish friend from enemy, civilians from belligerents. Increasingly, he had begun to share Striker's view, which held that there were battle lines on every front, insidious opponents waiting for an opportunity to strike on every side. Your enemy might be the syndicate, a clutch of terrorist fanatics or the homicidal boy next door, and any man committed to the preservation of society who, once he relaxed his guard, could count upon no mercy from the opposition.

Turrin knew where Bolan could be found — if not precisely, then at least in general terms. His means of making contact were distinctly limited, but there were ways, and he would spare no effort on behalf of Hal Brognola's cause. The soldier would respond, if he could get in touch before it was too late. If Bolan had an opportunity to extricate himself from the campaign in which he was involved. If he had not become a casualty by now.

Too many
ifs.

It was the only chance Brognola had, and Leo meant to play it out, whichever way it went. If he could not touch base with Striker, Leo was prepared to stand with Hal and face the enemy alone, no matter what the risk.

It was his duty to a friend, no matter what the rule book said. Some moral obligations never found expression in the printed guidelines, but the lawman knew precisely where they lay.

It was a trait he shared in common with the soldier known as Striker. There were too few like him in the modern world, but one could be enough.

One man with skill, determination and a will to win.

One man like Bolan, sure.

If he could find his way to Wonderland in time.

Mack Bolan had been in place since shortly after dawn, and he was stiff from lying in the same position, scarcely moving for a period of hours. Immobility and patience were a sniper's special skills, as much a part of ultimate success as the selection of a weapon, calculation of the drop and windage on a given shot. But stakeouts bore a certain risk, as well. New York was not the Southeast Asian jungle, where a man could disappear ten paces from his comrades, swallowed by the forest undergrowth and shadows. In Manhattan, eyes and ears were everywhere, although they sometimes opted not to see or hear.

The soldier had already staked his life on urban uninvolvement, praying silently that people who might take notice of his rooftop vigil would ignore him, go about their business without giving him a second thought. A call to the police might ruin everything, assuming the police responded to a noontime prowler call with any alacrity. Positioned so that he could see and hear the squad cars coming, Bolan waited for his target to reveal itself.

The condo he had chosen for his sniper's nest had been a lucky find. Unoccupied for weeks, and likely to remain so as the focus of a bitter palimony suit between two headline actors, its position on the northern fringe of Central Park was perfect for his needs. In fact, the park meant nothing to Mack Bolan; rather, he was interested in the neighbors who lived two doors down — one neighbor, to be strictly accurate. Together with her frequent visitor.

The woman's name was Marilyn DuChamps. She did not interest Bolan personally. Rather, he was drawn to her companion, an eccentric businessman who drove around Manhattan in an armor-plated limousine and had his hair cut daily to achieve the fresh-trimmed look. Two nights a week — and every Saturday — the businessman arrived at Marilyn's expensive condominium to pass some time in solitude, away from workaday concerns. Most times the limo's driver and another man would wait outside, regardless of the visit's length. The men were being paid to sit and wait as Marilyn DuChamps was being paid to satisfy the businessman's peculiar tastes in "relaxation." No one questioned his prerogatives, his right to keep them waiting, use them as he wished. He owned the limousine, the condominium in which he sought his pleasure and a dozen others on the street. He owned them all.

The businessman was known as George Fratierri — he had dropped the Giorgio years ago — and since the New Year he had gained a great deal of prestige around Manhattan. On New Year's Eve his nominal superior, one Paul Castigliano, had been rather forcefully removed from competition while alighting from his armor-plated limousine outside a favored restaurant. Flanked by two "accountants" who were said to be more comfortable with calibers than calculators, Castigliano had been ventilated by a burst of automatic-weapons fire that erupted from a passing car. The two accountants as well, DOA. His driver, bending down to tie his shoe, had been protected by the limo's armor, but he hadn't seen the attackers nor their vehicle. So sorry.

Fratierri had been no more helpful when questioned by police. Castigliano had been like a brother to him, guiding him in business, helping him to prosper. Who would wish to harm a saint? The city was an open sewer, populated with the dregs of humankind. If Fratierri hadn't had his business there...

What business? Real estate, of course. Some wholesale outlets in the garment district. Restaurants. In case they hadn't noticed, Paulie was about to enter one of George's eateries when he was ambushed. All those ugly rumors — the narcotics, gambling, prostitution — were a slander on Fratierri and his family's honor. He would gladly file a lawsuit if the source of his humiliation could be readily identified. As for this talk about Five Families... what man could cope with more than one? The Boss of Bosses? Someone had been spending too much time on penny dreadfuls and the late show. They should give up watching
The Untouchables
and get in touch with modern-day realities.

It was an act that George Fratierri had perfected over thirty years of dress rehearsals, fending off the questions of police and federal officers, congressional investigators and the media. His injured innocence routine was easily the longest-running joke in town, but so far prosecutors had been unsuccessful in connecting him with any of his extra-legal enterprises. Members of the DA's staff were absolutely certain that Fratierri held controlling interests in cocaine and heroin for south Manhattan, that he dominated out-call prostitution city-wide and that he had been personally responsible for twenty-seven homicides since 1980. The hit on Paulie Castigliano and his two bodyguards was the latest in a series of strategic murders that had placed Fratierri in position to unite the city's powerful Five Families beneath his own umbrella... and the DA couldn't prove a thing.

Mack Bolan, for his part, did not require corroborating evidence prepared in triplicate. He recognized Fratierri for the animal he was, and in the instant of that recognition had decided on the means of coping with his evil. Years might pass before the government prepared a solid case for prosecution, if they ever got that far. In the meantime, Fratierri's sordid empire would be growing, fattening upon the flesh and blood of citizens from coast to coast. The Executioner already knew of the Mob chief's ties with the narcotics syndicate out west, his plans for squeezing out the Cubans and recapturing control of cocaine traffic nationwide. The money earned from coke and skag would strengthen his position in the East, and let his morbid influence expand from sea to shining sea.

Unless he was eliminated.

Castigliano's sudden death had left the New York Families confused, disoriented, just the way Bolan liked to see them. If he could not finally eradicate the enemy, at least he could perpetuate dissension in the ranks and turn the cannibals against themselves, devouring their brothers in a struggle for the throne. Fratierri's sudden rise to power threatened to impose stability upon Manhattan's Mafia, and Bolan did not choose to let that happen. On this Saturday the soldier was prepared to use his veto, coolly and decisively, before the coronation could become accomplished fact.

New York was a familiar battleground to Bolan. He had visited the Families from time to time, before and since the interlude at Stony Man, reminding them as necessary that their chosen lifestyle had a price attached. A more impatient warrior might have given up, become frustrated with the New York syndicate's refusal to collapse, but Bolan recognized his private war as something of a holding action, a containment of the enemy. No victory was guaranteed forever in the kind of war he fought; no threat was finally eradicated while a single enemy survived. The capo that he killed today would be replaced next week, next month, and he would have to do it again. But the reality of everlasting war did not discourage Bolan. Going in, he had known the long odds and there could be no turning back.

Today at least he had the opportunity to make a difference, and the streetwise soldier took his opportunities as they arose.

Downrange, an armored Lincoln nosed along the boulevard, its driver and the shotgun rider scanning windows, cars parked along the curb. They didn't bother with the rooftops, trusting years of grim experience to let them spot an ambush on the street as they had spotted others in the past. A lurking Cadillac was trouble, or a curtain drawn too hastily, but no one put his shooters on a roof. Invisible behind the tinted glass, their passenger was confident that he had hired the best available, that they would see him safely to his rendezvous and back again. Three days was three damn days too long, and he did not intend to keep the lady waiting.

Bolan shifted slightly, reaching for the Marlin lever-action rifle with its massive twenty-power scope. At fifty yards, the scope was hardly necessary, but it would allow him to shake hands with Fratierri, look him in the eye and count the fillings in his teeth before he squeezed the trigger. Chambered in .444, the weapon held six rounds and hurled the big 240-grain projectiles at 2,440 feet per second. At his present range, the slugs would spend 2,000 foot-pounds of explosive energy on impact with the target. Bolan could have dropped a charging elephant at twice that range, and George Fratierri had no chance at all.

All things considered, it was more than he deserved.

The shotgun rider scrambled clear and stood beside the Lincoln for a moment, scanning empty sidewalks in a ritual that had become routine. His face filled Bolan's telescopic sight, an angry pimple clearly visible below the jawline, flecks of dandruff clinging to his sideburns like an early fall of snow.

The soldier grinned.

"You need some Head and Shoulders, guy."

Bolan scanned along the Lincoln's roofline, followed the shooter as he backtracked and opened the door for Fratierri. There, the salt-and-pepper hair and ruddy ears, a flash of profile as the would-be Boss of Bosses muttered something to his bodyguard. The shooter grinned and nodded, eagerly confirming that the boss was always right.

He waited, letting Fratierri clear the Lincoln, straighten his jacket, smooth wrinkles from the ride uptown and double-check cuffs to verify that they revealed the proper quarter inch. Another comment to the shotgun rider, and the capo turned away, proceeding up the steps to Marilyn DuChamps and momentary freedom from the worries of an emperor-in-waiting.

Bolan brought the crosshairs of the scope to rest on Fratierri's collar, just below the hairline, at a point where vertebrae connected with the skull. He eased the Marlin's safety off, inhaled to fill his lungs, released half of the breath and held the rest. Another second now, just one more step...

He squeezed and rode out the rifle's massive recoil to verify the hit. The telescopic sight put Fratierri almost in his lap, and Bolan saw the capo's skull explode on impact, spewing blood and bone and brains as if the dreams inside had grown too grandiose to be contained. It took a heartbeat for his headless body to receive the message, fold in upon itself and slump to the sidewalk, but the soldier was already tracking in search of secondary targets.

Gaping at the mess, Fratierri's bodyguard was having trouble with reality. It wasn't every day that you saw your boss decapitated on the street, and by the time he recognized the heavy-metal thunder of a big-game rifle, it was far too late to save himself. The gunner swiveled toward the Lincoln and thought of the armor plating, knowing he could never draw his piece and find a target in time to make a difference. Bolan shot him in the face, round two impacting on his upper lip and crumpling his face like something sculpted out of Styrofoam. The gunner vaulted backward, sliding on the pavement in a slick of blood and bile before he came to rest against a decorative hedge.

The driver had already disappeared beneath the dashboard — what had been good enough for Paulie Castigliano's wheelman should be good enough for George Fratierri's — and the soldier left him there, intent on disengaging before some startled neighbor got around to calling the police. The urban noninvolvement syndrome worked in the expensive neighborhoods as well, but here the paranoia was sufficient to produce a phone call — possibly anonymous — when gunfire broke the stillness of a sleepy Saturday.

Fratierri's seat was henceforth up for grabs, and Bolan smiled as he imagined the subordinates responding to another sudden vacancy. Their eagerness might lead to war, and Bolan wished them well. It would be helpful if the savages would kill one another for a while, and leave him to strike on other fronts, at other enemies.

He stowed the Marlin in a camo duffel bag, retreating through the access hatch that he had used to reach the roof and slipping out through finely manicured backyards the size of postage stamps to find his rental car. He dropped the rifle in the trunk and put the place behind him, satisfied for now.

But somewhere down the line, the soldier knew, he would be called upon to do it again. If not here in New York, then in Chicago, or Los Angeles, or Philadelphia. No victory was constant in his everlasting war. You kept the lid on tight by hammering a few nails every day, year-round, as need arose. His next stop might be San Francisco or Miami, Vegas or Duluth. When he had cleared the present battle zone, it would be time to test the wind and see where he was needed.

He could have used some R and R, and for a moment, Bolan thought of his brother, Johnny, and the security provided by his strongbase in San Diego. He could call ahead or just show up on Johnny's doorstep, and either way he was assured of being welcome, being safe for the duration. It had been too long since he had seen his brother, shared his company and yet...

A homesick warrior was in trouble from the start, he told himself. Besides, the San Diego basin wasn't home. For Bolan, "home" meant memories of blood and pain, all mingled with the good times and the laughter from his childhood. Home was Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the syndicate had squeezed his father dry and turned his sister out to work the streets, where Bolan's father had eventually cracked beneath the strain and turned the family home into a slaughterhouse. It was a miracle that Johnny had survived, and Bolan had refused to let his brother have a piece of warfare everlasting, until the war had come to Johnny independently. Once blooded, there had been no turning back for Johnny Bolan, and the brothers were together now, in spirit and in fact.

The elder Bolan liked the sound of San Diego at this moment, had almost decided on a visit to his brother when he spied a phone booth. He had a call to make before he left New York, and this would be as good a time as any.

Bolan punched the private number up from memory and waited until Leo Turrin answered in D.C.

"I'm calling for La Mancha," Bolan told him.

"Go ahead."

The breach of regular security, the sudden tension in his contact's voice, alerted Bolan to a crisis in the making. Normally, the man from Wonderland would take his number, find a different phone and call him back within five minutes, thus evading any possibility of taps or bugs. For Leo to accept the call unscrambled on his private line could only mean that he, or someone close, was in a world of trouble.