San Diego Siege

The Executioner invades the Mafia encampments in the San Diego area.

The tall man in midnight combat garb stood in stark silhouette on the high ground atop Point Loma, gazing broodingly upon the sprawl and sweep of California's oldest city. Coronado and the impressive Naval Air Station lay directly ahead, Lindbergh Field and the Marine Base slightly to the north, the complex of seagoing navy activities spilling off toward the south bay. Backdrop to it all was the old city herself with her hills and freeways and suburban clusters — "Dago" to generations of servicemen,
San Diego
to those who proudly loved her and made their homes in the sunny, smog-free environment ... "hell-ground" to the tall man in black who quietly contemplated his next area of operations.

He was Mack Bolan, Mafia-fighter
extraordinaire,
the one man army who had already become legend in the world's annals of crime.

This time, however, he was not alone.

Another man moved into silhouette against the city's lights — a shorter man, heavier, powerfully built.

The meeting had been pre-arranged. The greetings, though restrained almost to the point of stiff formality, were nonetheless warmly emotional in undertone.

"You got my message," the short man said, for openers.

"I wish I hadn't," the other murmured.

"Sure, I know. But... well, you said it yourself once or twice. A life without challenge is no life at all. I couldn't stay up there boy-scouting while all this — "

"Okay," Bolan interrupted. He was not a man to spend much time on small talk, but the voice was tired, concerned, and admiring all at once as he added, "You're looking good, Pol. Dropped a few pounds, eh?"

"Yeh." The man patted his belly. "Few inches, too. You look as mean as ever. Even with the pretty new face. Brantzen did a good job."

"They got Brantzen," Bolan declared coldly.

"Yeah, I heard."

"They'll get us all, eventually. You have to know that, Pol."

"Sure, I know that," the other agreed. "In the meantime...."

Bolan sighed. "Okay. What's the big smell?"

"That town down there. They call it 'the city around a park,' or words to that effect."

"So?"

"They should call it 'the town that Uncle built,' meaning Uncle Sam. Between the military bases and the defense contractors, it's the highest federal-impact area in the nation, dollar for dollar."

"Go on," Bolan prompted.

"Well you know what federal dollars mean."

"The city built around a picnic," Bolan replied quietly.

"Yeah. And also the city with a Mexican border. Plus one of the world's ten greatest natural harbors."

The man in black again sighed. "I don't have this town on my hit parade, Pol. They're too well covered here. There's no battleground down there, no combat stretch. San Diego doesn't have skin lesions — it's got cancer of the gut. I can't carve it out without removing a lot of good tissue along with the rot."

"That's exactly the problem," the other man muttered. "An old friend of ours is caught up in that rot down there."

"Who's that?"

"Howlin' Harlan Winters."

Sure. Colonel Harlan P. Winters — Howlin' Harlan or Howlie to his troops, a soldier's soldier, once top-dog of the elite Penetration Teams in Vietnam.

Bolan said, "I heard that he'd retired."

"Yeah. Kicked him up to Brigadier and right out the goddam door."

"That happens to good soldiers sometimes," Bolan mused. "Especially when they get too good."

"Well, he's in a hell of a mess now."

"A mob mess?"

"That's the smell I get. I stumbled onto the thing up in Frisco, sheer accident. He's in deep shit, Sarge — and he needs a guy with a big shovel."

"Meaning the Executioner."

"Yeah."

Bolan's shoulders drooped forward in an almost imperceptible movement and the eyes turned to ice as they returned to a sweep of the crescent coastline of San Diego Bay. He told his companion, "I just came from a messy one, Pol."

"Yeah, I know, I heard. They were even trying to tie you into an assassination attempt on the President. I knew that was pure bullshit the minute I heard it."

"This one could get even messier," the Executioner declared. "I brought quite a bit of Intel away from that Washington sweep. Enough to know that ... well, I can't just blitz into San Diego. And especially not for Howlin' Harlan."

"You know something about him I don't," the other man decided.

"Maybe. Did he ask for me, Pol?"

"Hell no. He doesn't even know I'm into it, yet."

"Then how .. . ?"

"I bumped into him up in Frisco. Looked terrible, scared outta his skull when he recognized me. Said he was on a business trip. Had a chick with him, introduced her as his niece. We had a drink together, the three of us. Small talked, that's all, then they split. Next day the chick looked me up, with SOS written all over her. Now is the time for all old troopers to come to the aid of the C.O. That was her message. You see, he — "

"Save it for a full briefing," Bolan suggested. "You split for now. Meet me again tomorrow — same time, same place."

The other man displayed a tense smile. "It's a go, then."

"A tentative go. I want to scout the terrain a bit before I commit myself."

"Okay, but look out for these San Diego cops. I hear they're pretty savvy."

Bolan knew about the San Diego cops. Many of them, especially higher echelon types, were ex-feds who'd decided they could do a better job under local colors. Which usually meant that something was rotten in fedville. He told his friend, "Yeah, I'll watch it. Now split. Too long already."

"Gadgets wants into this one, too," the other man said, smiling soberly.

Bolan gave a resigned sigh and replied, "Okay. Tell him I said welcome aboard. I'll need every talent he's got."

The smile grew. "The death squad is reborn."

"Not quite," Bolan said.

"Yeah, you're right, not quite."

Rosario "the Politician" Blancanales, along with Herman "Gadgets" Schwarz had fought beside Bolan in Vietnam ... and also in Los Angeles with seven others ... the Executioner's "Death Squad." Of the nine, only Pol and Gadgets survived.

The two men locked eyes for a moment, and there was no disguising the pain which passed between them. Then Blancanales punched his old friend lightly on the shoulder and faded quickly into the darkness.

The entire meeting had consumed less than two minutes.

But the man in black remained on Point Loma for another half-hour, pushing an infinity of ideas through his combat-conditioned mind, re-examining his priorities, re-assessing the implications and directions of this eternal damned war of his. He was realist enough to realize that it could not, in fact, be an eternal war ... it simply seemed that way. He could survive just so many firefights, elude just so many cops, live just so long.

And he had to make every breath of life count for something positive.

As for a resurrection of the Death Squad, even a partial resurrection ... he had vowed never again to take on allies, never again to deliberately place friendly lives on his firing line. There had been much too many live sacrifices upon the altars of the Executioner's crusades. And yet... Pol and Gadgets were living in some sort of purgatory, at best. If they wished to come out and meet their fates head-on...

It was no private damned war.

It had started that way, of course ... private ... but not a war, not in the real sense. It had begun as a simple quest for personal justice. Sergeant Mack Bolan, much decorated hero of a seeming endless war in Southeast Asia, had come home from that combat theatre solely to bury his parents and teenage sister — victims of another sort of ferocity — and to arrange for the care of his kid brother, the lone survivor of that tragedy at home.

But then Sgt. Bolan learned that there was more to the story than was mentioned in the official police report. Ailing steelworker Sam Bolan, Mack's father, had been in a financial squeeze. He had borrowed money at appallingly usurious rates from a local loan company, one which turned out to be operating on the borderline of legality. With continued illness and a partial disability, the elder Bolan fell behind in his payments ... and the terror began for the Bolan family. Sam was physically attacked; repeatedly. Young Johnny Bolan was approached by a theft ring, his seventeen-year-old sister by a prostitution ring — with suggestions as to how they could "bail your old man outta trouble."

Johnny Bolan demurred.

Cindy Bolan did not. Her father was suffering a serious heart condition. Continued pressures and violent intimidation would kill him, she felt. Cindy became a "sponsored" prostitute, turning over her earnings toward the discharge of Sam Bolan's indebtedness.

Upon learning of this, the elder Bolan "went berserk." In a frenzy of soul-torment, Sam Bolan shot his daughter, his son, his wife, then turned the gun on himself. Only young Johnny survived to tell the tale, and it was a story to clamp the jaw and ice the eyes of big brother Mack, a combat specialist who had earned the tag "The Executioner" in the jungles and hamlets of Southeast Asia.

"Cindy did only what she thought had to be done. In his own mixed-up way, I guess Pop did the same. Can I do any less?" By this simple declaration was Mack Bolan's "war against the Mafia" enjoined. In the beginning, however, he did not think of it as a war, nor did he even know that the culprits were
Mafiosi.
He knew only that he was performing an act of justice in an area in which the police had already professed helplessness. He "executed" all five officials of the "loan company" — and, hours later, he knew that he had started another "war without end."

"The
Mafia,
for God's sake. So what? They can't be any more dangerous or any smarter than the Cong. Scratch five, and how many are left? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? So — I've got another unwinnable war on my hands."

In a modern army heavy on specialties, Sergeant Bolan had practiced the oldest specialty of all. He was a death specialist. He was an expert marksman in virtually every personal-weapon category. He was a trained sniper, a skilled armorer and an experienced and wily jungle fighter. He was a man who could operate alone and in enemy territory, for long periods, living entirely off the land and by his own wits.

Few men could have been better equipped for the new job which Mack Bolan had taken upon himself. Still, the outcome of his impossible home-front war could have been foretold from the first shot fired. There was no way that a lone man,
any
lone man, could successfully challenge the might and the reach of the most formidable criminal organization ever to arise upon this planet. U.S. government officials called it "the invisible second-government of the nation." Crusading journalists, racket-busting prosecutors and congressional prob-ers alike had repeatedly warned of the enormous tentacles of "this underground monster" which were spreading like cancerous growths throughout the fibre of American life — and yet all had agreed that little could be done within the existing framework of the American system of jurisprudence to effectively combat the power of highly organized crime.

So yes, Bolan soon learned what he was going against. He came to know, also, that his enemies could never forgive or forget the challenge to their omnipotence. They quickly felt a necessity to squash him — as an object lesson, if nothing else. An empire built upon terror and violence must sustain itself by those same methods. And even if the Mafia did not get him, the police eventually would. Bolan came to be as guilty of murder and other high crimes as were his opponents, in the eyes of the law. From the moment when that first shot of his home front war was fired, Bolan was a living dead-man and he knew it.

He declared, nevertheless, "I will not roll over and die for them."

What did a condemned man have to lose?

The combat specialist from Vietnam resolved to give meaning to his death. He had lived as a professional soldier; he would die like one. His "last mile" would be a bloody one, and not all of the blood would be his own. He would hit their house with thunder and lightning, he would shake and rattle them while he died, and they would know that there was a price to be paid for their way of life.

So Mack Bolan transplanted his jungle warfare techniques to the city streets of America, where he took the offensive against "this greater enemy."

Much to his own surprise, that initial campaign in his home town, Pittsfield, was a resounding success … and surprisingly Bolan lived on while the local house of Mafia virtually disintegrated.

It was a hollow victory, of course. Bolan was now "deader" than ever… with a $100,000 bounty on his head, swarms of
Mafiosi
and ambitious freelancers on his trail, and law enforcement agencies around the nation gearing for his apprehension.

Operating as much on instinct as by the intellect, the young warrior's survival mechanisms directed him into a guerrilla lifestyle. The entire world became his personal jungle of survival, and every chance encounter with another human being became a possible do-or-die situation. To the threatened and the condemned, "aloneness" becomes the heaviest cross to bear. Bolan was not that much different from other men — he sought the comfort and protection of loyal friends — and, shortly after the opening battle in Pittsfield, he turned up on the far side of the country, in Los Angeles, where he hastily recruited his Death Squad of combat buddies from Vietnam.

This maneuver was swiftly revealed as an error in judgment, from Bolan's point of view. The squad was dramatically successful, in that they shattered the powerful DiGeorge family of Southern California — but it was another hollow victory for the Executioner, with seven dead friends on his conscience and the others in police custody. He went on to single-handedly finish off the DiGeorge family, thereafter shunning even the most casual contact with those who might feel inclined to aid him.

A man with Bolan's dedication commanded respect and loyalty, though, whether or not he sought it, and he found many helping hands as his wipe-out trail lengthened and broadened into a seemingly infinite theatre of operations: fron the American Southwest to Miami, international forays into France and England, and back through New York, Chicago, Las Vegas as the ocean of blood around him grew, then a quick dip into the Caribbean area, westward again to San Francisco followed by a searingly urgent call on Boston and a spine-tingling probe of the subgovernment scene in Washington.