The Bone Yard (6 page)

So much for the human powers of observation.

He brought the Marlin's polished walnut stock back to his shoulder, adjusting to the eyepiece of the massive twenty-power, sighting in upon the ruins of Spinoza's penthouse conference room. He could see bodies stretched out and leaking on the rug in there, furniture overturned, the scars of his first wild shot on the wall eight feet above the floor. It had been necessary to break through the heavy plate-glass window with his first round to avoid deflecting other bullets off the glass. A single 240-grain slug had been enough to do the job, and Bolan had been looking down DePalma's throat before the mafioso knew exactly what was happening. From there it had been easy.

A simple shot one thousand yards away, beyond the calculated limits of the Marlin's range — but well within the big — game piece's killing distance. Bolan had to calculate the drop on each round that he fired and set his sights above the target, allowing the massive rounds to "fall in" on the human silhouettes with grim precision.

No sweat, sure.

As long as you could work the complicated physics problems in your head while holding your breath and sighting down the barrel of roaring elephant rifle.

No sweat. As long as you remembered that each round you fired was ripping into flesh and bone, separating souls from bodies downrange, sending cannibals to whatever awaited them beyond the pale. No problem.

Anyone could do it, given years of military training and two tours of field experience as the leader of a hunter-killer team in hostile jungles.

It was a goddamned piece of cake.

He would have thirty seconds, maximum, before someone downstairs could make himself understood on the telephone. Half a minute before the troops started reacting at Metro HQ down on Stewart, only blocks away. But half a minute could seem like an eternity on the receiving end of Bolan's pinpoint sniper fire.

And they were starting to recover over there, some cautious heads just poking up above the level of the conference table. He started counting once again, marking each of them, verifying faces and positions through the scope. They might as well have been ten feet away from him. His index finger curled around the Marlin's trigger and Bolan took another breath, releasing half of it, holding onto the rest.

Inside his skull the numbers sounded like a bass drum. But he silenced them with an effort of will.

There was no room for a distraction now. Whatever happened in the next five seconds, Bolan had to concentrate exclusively upon his targets. He was reaching out to touch someone, damn right, and rattling Spinoza's cage as it had never been before. Anyone who lived through Bolan's shake-up would be looking back across his shoulder from now on, expecting death to strike at any place and time.

A frightened man became a careless man, in Bolan's estimation, and he knew that careless people made mistakes.

In fact, he was counting on it.

Bolan settled into the squeeze, his mind closing the gap between hunter and target before the bullet ever flew. The mental countdown started. Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

It took a moment for the ringing silence to break through Spinoza's mental fog of terror.

Lying prone beneath the conference table, clinging to the carpet as if he might somehow fall off the floor, the capo from New York was trembling violently, afraid to open his eyes and face the damage all around him.

But the silence penetrated, finally, and he risked a peek. His first view was a pair of wing-tip shoes, years out of style but still available in certain stores, and favored by a few of his "executive" associates. He followed them along, over socks and pant legs, rumpled shirt and suit coat, until he found a face.

Or what was left of one.

And he was looking straight at Julio DePalma's. Somehow the bastard's somersault had brought him back around so that he lay facedown, his head turned to the left as if he had climbed down to check beneath the table for his cringing comrades. One eye peered back at Spinoza from the scarlet ruin of that never-handsome visage. All else — teeth and lips and nose and everything — had been punched back into a gaping fist-sized hole that no cosmetic job would ever close.

Sealed casket on this baby, Frank Spinoza thought, and he felt his lunch coming up. He turned desperately away from DePalma's leaking carcass, swallowing hard to keep everything inside and taking a deep breath to clear his head.

It almost worked.

Around him others were also taking note of the sudden silence, cautiously rising from their prone positions to assess the damage.

"Holy mother!" He recognized the voice of Johnny Cats. "That nervy bastard!"

There was amazement in the mafioso's voice, but Frank Spinoza was distracted, puzzling out exactly who and what the man from Cleveland meant.

Who was a nervy bastard?

Who had the sheer audacity to raid his penthouse in this fashion, dropping Julio and both his boys that way, scattering the assembled might of the commission's representatives like frightened children? And the answer hit him like a fist above the heart, bringing lunch and everything back into his tightening throat.

Seiji Kuwahara.

Damn it!

Everyone had seen it coming down to this, except Spinoza. Everyone except Spinoza and The Man.

Spinoza scowled, wriggling backward from his place of concealment, his mind working a mile a minute now. Suppose The Man had seen it coming?

Suppose he staked Spinoza out like some kind of goddamned Judas goat, leading the others to the slaughterhouse for some reason that Spinoza could not even fathom at the moment?

No.

It did not track.

There was no reason for betrayal, not when everything was going well for all concerned.

Tom Guarini was first on his feet, and under urging from his capo, he stood up warily, surveying the damage and whistling softly between his teeth.

"You're gonna need a maid up here, Frank," he said, trying for a light tone and missing it by a country mile. "You got one helluva..." The sentence ended in a plopping sound, as if someone had sliced a watermelon with a cleaver.

Frank Spinoza, on his knees and rising, was just quick enough to see Guarini undergo the transformation from a human being to headless scarecrow as his skull exploded into smithereens, wet pieces of it flying off in all directions. And a moment later Spinoza heard the rifle fire begin again as he dived toward the floor. Inside, he had been half expecting it, knowing Kuwahara would not let them off this easy.

He would make them crawl some more, rub their faces in it, retreating only when he felt the heat.

And where was the goddamned heat, anyway? Someone downstairs must have called police by now. The bastards were taking their time, letting him squirm, sure as hell. Spinoza was certain of it. The heavy rounds were raining down around him once again and Frank Spinoza ate the carpet, squirming back into the sanctuary of the conference table. He was safe there, for the moment, and he would let the others take care of theirs.

He was planning ahead with the slim edge of rationality he still possessed, thinking past this nightmare and on to the other side of it. If he survived, there had to be a change of game plan. He had been sitting on the sidelines long enough and waiting for the coach to send him in. Somewhere along the line, the coach had lost his playbook, and the team was getting murdered out there, right before his very eyes. And Frank Spinoza was not waiting any longer. If he lived — when he got out of this — he would sure as hell be making waves. A tidal wave that could be felt across the frigging ocean... in the streets of Tokyo.

It was early evening in the Strip casino, the action heating up as tourists finished dinner or awoke from noonday siestas, coming out in all their finery to try their luck. Bolan merged with them, quickly becoming lost in the crowd.

Fully half the gaming tables were still covered, unmanned roulette and baccarat, poker and blackjack, the games that would draw high rollers when the tux and evening gown contingent emptied out of headline dinner shows and sought a way to fill the lingering hours of darkness. For the moment activity centered on the banks of slot machines — the clanking, jangling one-armed bandits that filled up the vast casino with their harsh discordant music. Here and there the flashing lights and buzzers called attention to a jackpot winner, bringing momentary interruption to the action as the other players paused to look in the direction of the lights and Klaxons, paying homage briefly or else cursing underneath their breaths, then turning back with new determination to the own machines.

The neon sign out front lured devotees to try the "Liberal Slots" by promising a "ninety-seven percent return" on house machines. No small print there to clarify the message but the locals understood it well enough. The slots were never meant to pay off ninety-seven percent of the time — and never did; rather, ninety-seven percent of the slots could be expected to pay off in some amount, sometime. As for the other three percent... House odds, damn right.

It was the name of the game.

Bolan crossed the casino floor, rubbing shoulders with the players and security guards — some of them county deputies moonlighting in the private sector. He followed lighted signs to the Tahitian Lounge and found the double doors already closed, the dinner show in progress. Brushing past a life-sized cutout of the grinning star, a stand-up comic billed as "The Ethnologist," he slipped inside the semidarkness of the showroom. Through the murk, a waitress in full black-tie regalia moved to intercept him.

"I'm sorry, sir..."

The soldier palmed a fifty, made the handoff smoothly.

"Don't be. And never mind the table. I'm just passing through."

All smiles now, pocketing the cash.

"Of course, sir, as you say."

The showroom was a horseshoe layout with the rows of mess-hall tables ranged along declining tiers, the stage some fifty yards downrange at center field. Bolan moved to his left, keeping to a narrow aisle that ran along the wall, moving on until he reached the curtained door that led backstage.

The wings were crowded, bustling with musicians, stagehands, nearly naked dancers and a juggler sorting through a crate of sharp-edged kitchen instruments. A pair of six-foot-tall show girls wearing spangled capes and very little else were standing in the wings, and Bolan found a place behind them in the shadows, concentrating on the lone performer occupying center stage.

"Now, I'm not no ethnician, but..."

A ripple of anticipatory laughter fanned out through the audience and Tommy Anders waited for it to swell, then subside, before he continued with his routine. It was the comic's trade line, and it never failed to preface a lampoon against the dark, ironic side of the American melting pot.

Anders had been successful for a score of years with his routines that gaffed the sacred cows of ethnic sensitivity. His talent for expounding on the obvious made him a figure draw in Miami, Las Vegas, Atlantic City. He was also on another, secret payroll circulated out of Washington, D.C. And as an agent of the Justice Department's Sensitive Operations Group, he had participated in a number of the Executioner's campaigns against the Mafia.

And it had all begun some years before in Vegas.

"I'm not no ethnician," he was saying, "but have you noticed how the Japanese are taking over everything these days? I mean it. Thumbing through a catalog at Monkey Wards, you might as well be looking at the Yellow Pages in a phone booth down at Tokyo and Vine."

Another pause for the laughter, rising now as the audience warmed to his subject.

"Just look at all the patriotic brand names that we're dealing with today." And he was counting on the fingers of one hand as he continued. "There's Akai, Datsun, Honda, Isuzu and Kawasaki, Nikon and Sanyo, Sony and Subaru, Toyota and Yashica." By the time he finished the roster everyone in the audience was laughing, drowning out the ice-cube rattle from their cocktails. "They've even got a Hirohito doll due out for Christmas now, I mean it," Anders continued. "Would I lie to you? You wind him up, he takes some snapshots of your town — and then he buys it."

He paused onstage, waiting for the uproar to die down. There was some appreciative applause amid the laughter now.

"I'll tell you honestly, it's getting so a real American just can't keep up with competition from the East. They tell me that the Japanese are even competing with the Mafia these days. I mean it. Honestly, now, I'm not antiethnic, but..." the other trade line and the audience responded on cue, "we've got to draw the line somewhere and it might as well be in the gutter, right? I mean, who needs a godfather who can't pronounce lasagna?"

He had them and the comic had no intention of letting his audience go until the point was made.

"You ever try to toss a body from a speeding rickshaw? Jeez, it's murder on the coolies. Seriously, though, I understand the Mob is getting nervous nowadays. Some of them are mixing sake in with their spaghetti sauce..."

The music and laughter came up together, and Tommy Anders began to disengage himself from the crowd, thanking them for their attention and waving toward the rear.

Around him the spotlights had begun to dance, and Bolan's show girls moved out onto the stage, distracting the faithful while a similar contingent emerged from the wings on the other side. He broke off an appreciative parting glance and made his way back toward the dressing rooms.

He did not miss the three torpedoes lounging near the door with Tommy Anders's name displayed in cardboard glitter. They were slickly dressed, neatly groomed, hard of eye — and they were Japanese. Mack Bolan casually moved on past them, feeling eyes on his back studying him, sizing him up and filing him away for future reference. He found a corner farther down and ambled on around it.

Tommy Anders would be close behind him now, and Bolan could afford to wait, observing what transpired when East met West. Another Five long minutes passed before the ethnologist arrived, and there was caution in his stride as he approached the Japanese contingent, concern disguised beneath the usual glad-hand smile. He made some offhand comment to the delegates from Tokyo — Bolan could not catch the words — and then the trio formed a semicircle blocking his admission to the dressing room.

The tallest of them took the middle, reaching out and jabbing Anders in the chest with one slim finger, punctuating whatever it was he was saying to the comic.

And Tommy Anders was no longer smiling.

Bolan reemerged from cover, closing quietly and keeping to the blind side of his adversaries. Anders saw him coming and relief was visible on his face beneath the show of mounting irritation. When he was half a dozen paces out and ready, Bolan made his presence known to all concerned.

"What's this?" he asked. "Somebody order takeout?"

The three torpedoes spun to face him, all off guard but recovering swiftly, professionally. The leader came at Bolan without preamble, launching himself at the Executioner's face in a flying kick that transformed his body into a hurtling projectile.

The jungle fighter sidestepped, going underneath the lethal legs and bringing up an elbow in the process, digging hard and deep against the other's kidneys as he hurtled past.

The guy lost balance, wobbled in midair and touched down hard upon the concrete floor, his silk suit offering no traction. He slid into collision with some standing scenery, which collapsed around him. His partners watched for half a heartbeat, sizing up the situation, then they made their move.

One of them made straight for Bolan and the other turned on Anders, bringing both hands up in the traditional karate stance. There was no time for Bolan to check out the comic's response now, not while he was fighting for his life against a pro who obviously knew the moves. But there is still a difference, right, between rehearsing in a gym and working out on humans who have nothing left to lose except their lives. A punching bag will never sidestep, never slam a rabbit-punch into your kidneys when you least expect it — and the training only takes you so far toward the razor's edge of combat.

Bolan on the other hand had been there many times, and he had always come back from the edge victorious.

Sometimes he was severely wounded, but the Executioner knew that injury in battle could make a tougher, stronger soldier in the end.

He had picked up the moves from experts in the Orient and then refined them on his own through years of combat trial and error. And if the Executioner was no Bruce Lee, his adversary was no goddamned Mack Bolan, either.

Bolan saw the hard hand flashing toward his face and feinted left, going in below it, driving bone and sinew into yielding ribs with all his might. The thin opponent doubled over, retching, gasping for a breath, but the Man from Blood was not through with him yet. No way.

Bolan seized a wrist — the one that had been meant to drive bare knuckles through his face — and twisted, bringing the arm out to full stiff extension. He wrenched it up and back until the socket yielded, and at the same instant drove his full weight down onto the elbow in a power smash.

There was a matchstick cracking sound, a strangled scream, and pain drove Bolan's adversary to his knees. The useless arm hung slack against his side, its outline now reminding Bolan of a cartoon figure's arm, just caught inside a door.

The guy was sobbing, and the Executioner put him under with a swift kick to the head, his heel impacting on the temple of that would be samurai and driving him against the nearest wall where he lay slack and flaccid like a leaky bag of grain. When Bolan looked, the comic already had his man on the ropes, employing moves they never taught in any comedy school. A slashing right cross dropped the hoodlum in his tracks, and Anders stepped over his prostrate form to survey the field, looking for other contestants.

"Want to leave them here?" the comic asked. "We've got a good custodian."

"Why not," the Man from Blood responded.

"Use a drink?"

"I thought you'd never ask. Just let me change."

Bolan followed Tommy Anders through the narrow door into his dressing room. Behind them, three of Tokyo's finest were stretched out on the cold cement, already drawing curious show girls and stagehands. As the door closed behind him, Bolan heard them calling for someone to fetch security, an ambulance.

The numbers, right.

He heard them running now, and he was running out of time in Vegas. This had been a skirmish, but it would be suicidal to hang around and answer questions for police.

Tommy Anders recognized the urgency and kept his quick-change to a minimum, having Bolan in and out of there in something less than one minute flat. They were well along their way in the direction of the parking lot before security arrived to deal with their attackers.

Outside, the desert night was cooling off despite the blood-red fire of glaring neon. By midnight, you could freeze to death beyond the city. But for Vegas this night, Bolan forecast heat enough to burn some houses down. Enough perhaps, to warm the whole damned town.

"We've played this scene before, you know." Mack Bolan smiled and sipped his coffee, making one more scan of the perimeter around the all-night drive-in restaurant. "I thought it looked familiar." And the Executioner could not escape a certain sense of deja vu, right, sitting there with Anders in the rental Ford. A sense that he had seen and done it all, been through it all before with the comic. Their initial meeting had been backstage from a Vegas showroom, all those lives ago, and Anders had been feeling pressure that time, too. The heat was coming from a pair of Mafia sluggers then, and Bolan had pulled him out from under. They had cooperated on that first campaign in Vegas, and later when they met again in Honolulu, Anders had rendered valuable aid to Bolan's hellfire effort on another front.

He was an ally, right, and so much more.

He was a friend.

"You still have that old knack for charming your admirers," Bolan told him wryly.

Anders grinned, shrugged.

"What can I say? It's my magnetic personality."

"You working this officially?"

"Let's call it a fortuitous coincidence. The date was booked, and then it all broke loose between the local Mob and their Eastern competition. Hal figured as long as I'm here, what the hell."

Mention of the big Fed's name made Bolan smile. The man from Justice was another friend, and friends were few and far between in Bolan's world these days.

"How is... everybody?"

"Getting by. You know how it is — win one here and lose it back over there. You're missed, guy, where it counts."

There was a momentary silence and when he resumed the comic's voice was lighter, more upbeat.

"I hear you took a turn with Hal there a while back."

Bolan smiled and nodded at the reference. His "turn" had been with a group called Savannah Swingsaw, four women determined to shake up the Mob in the southern United States.

"Some guy," Bolan said.

"Yeah." Another silence, longer this time, finally broken by the comic in a cautious tone. "You here to meet the man from Tokyo?"

"He's on my list. Were those his soldiers at Minotte's?"

"You were there?" Anders's eyes widened briefly. "Well, that clears up some question marks. And the kamikaze squad was his — or a very nifty frame."

"There was a girl..."

"Oh, yeah?" The comic raised a lone ironic eyebrow. "I wish you'd tell me where you find the time."

Bolan's answering grin was weary, brief.

"You've got to pace yourself," he answered. "But this was strictly business. Bob Minotte had her in the bag before the samurai express rolled in. I got there just in time to take her out."