War Against the Mafia (7 page)

It was just a little past noon when the familiar black sedan pulled slowly through the iron gateway to the suburban estate, the front wheels pausing briefly on a raised lump in the driveway. The driver of the sedan nodded to the young man in the caretaker's overalls and moved the car smoothly along the curving drive of Pinechester. He wheeled on around to the garage area, left the vehicle, and entered the large house through the side door, going directly to the pullcord in the clubroom, announcing his presence. After a small wait, the tall redhead appeared, again sporting silken hip-huggers, these of a flaming green and slitted strategically for ultimate effect. The tailored smile faded from the pretty face. "S-sarge," she stuttered, eyes quickly flicking beyond him in search of another presence. "Wh-what...?"

"What am I doing here?" he finished the question for her, smiling. "Can't you guess?"

The professional smile immediately reasserted itself. She laughed nervously and took a hesitant step toward him. "Mitzi told me you're a devil," she said, her voice rising in obvious discomfort. "I suppose you-you've come to tame
me
this time, eh? Okay," She swayed forward, hands moving toward his neck.

He stepped back and batted her hands down. "You know better than that," he told her.

"What do you want?" she asked, now obviously frightened.

"I want you to get your girls out of here," he told her, "-unless you want them toasted like marshmallows."

She stared at him uncomprehendingly for a brief moment. "Is the house on fire?" she mumbled.

'It's going to be," he assured her. "Start getting them out. Now!"

Her eyes flared angrily, then wavered under the unrelenting impact of the Bolan gaze, and she spun about uncertainly, then went quickly to a small desk near the doorway, opened a drawer, and fumbled inside. Bolan the cat had moved silently behind her; he shoved her roughly and she fell into a nearby chair with a startled cry. She got hesitantly to her feet, rubbing a scraped wrist against the silken pants, glowering darkly at Bolan as he removed the clip from a tiny automatic pistol he had taken from the desk drawer.

"You better hurry," he told her mildly. "I'm putting the torch to this place in about thirty seconds. Take 'em down the fire escape in the back." He slung the automatic across the room, picked up a newspaper, and held it over the flame of his cigarette lighter. Rheeda gasped and bolted up the stairway.

Bolan tossed the flaming newspaper to the floor, beneath the window draperies, then quickly lit another. Moments later the clubroom was a blazing inferno. Bolan exited the same way he'd arrived, climbed into the car, and drove back to the gate. "The joint's on fire," he called to the "gardener." The man threw him a surprised look, then turned his gaze toward the house, reacted visibly, and immediately took off on a hard run for the flaming structure.

"These old places do go up fast," Bolan muttered to himself, then he grinned and pulled on through the gateway and drove up the road, paralleling the fence, for a distance of about a hundred yards. He pulled onto the shoulder, stopped the car, then carefully eased it alongside the fence and killed the motor. He reached into the back seat and produced the big Marlin, then left the car and scaled the fence, dropping lightly inside with the rifle slung over his shoulder. Smiling grimly, he crossed the grounds to a small knoll overlooking the house and drive, lay down, and again took up a patient vigil.

Women were shrieking and running about, most of them in various stages of undress. Bolan could easily spot the flaming green of Rheeda's outfit. He sighted her in with the scope and her angry face leaped into the field of vision. Bolan grinned. Rheeda was fit to be tied. The old structure was consumed in flames already. The "gardener" was moving slowly among the women, talking animatedly, a large revolver inanely clasped in one hand. The distant scream of fire trucks edged into Bolan's consciousness and a Chiefs car flashed into the driveway moments later, executed a quick circle on the lawn, and bounced to a halt just inside the gate. A uniformed man jumped from the car and waved down the hook and ladder truck entering just behind him, passed some brief instructions, then stepped back and allowed the truck to proceed on toward the house. Bolan grinned again. Telling them to never-mind the hoses, he guessed. The place would be gutted before they could even get the hoses laid out. Rheeda and the women were now clustered about the truck. The firemen seemed to be showing more attention to the girls than to the blaze. Another truck was turned back at the gate by the Chief, who then returned to his car and drove on to the house.

Bolan grinned and waited. There was an explosion down in the fire, followed closely by another. Bolan supposed that nobody had thought to move the cars from the garage. The generally unclad women were beginning to move about restlessly, and one barefoot young lady in a nightgown was trudging along the driveway toward the road.
Getting worried,
Bolan decided. He could understand why. Some embarrassing questions would likely be raised concerning the presence of so many underdressed young women on the premises.

A police car turned into the drive, stopped and picked up the deserter, then proceeded to the group on the lawn. Bolan could see Rheeda talking to the cop. He sighted them in, studying the faces. Old friends, obviously. The cop was grinning and nodding his head in response to something Rheeda was telling him.

The firemen were watching the house burn to the ground. Most of the young women were sitting on the lawn. Rheeda and two others were in the police car. The Fire Chief was leaning against the patrol cruiser watching the young women. A limousine pulled into the gateway, inched forward, as though from force of habit, and rested front wheels on the macadam hump. Bolan already had the occupants sighted in. Turrin sat on the passenger's side, in front. The man behind the wheel he recognized as one of the "guns" of Seymour's poolside party. Two other men, their faces not visible to Bolan, were in the back seat.

Bolan shot the front tires off the car as they rested on the hump, then put a quick round through the windshield between the two men. Turrin's startled and frightened face passed swiftly through the scope viewer as he hit the deck. A back door swung open and a large man staggered onto the drive, one hand held to a bleeding scratch at the side of his head. Bolan clucked his tongue; he had not meant to hit any flesh on that first salvo. The sounds of the big rifle boomed across the open ground. The policeman leaped from his car and started toward the fire; all attention in that area was directed to the roaring inferno. Bolan chuckled and swung once again onto the car in the gateway. The driver was trying to move the car on shattered tires. Bolan put an imaginary mark on the hood, under which the carburetor should rest, and levered two quick shots into there. The car stopped moving immediately; the hood blew open and resettled at a skewed angle, and flames licked up around the opening. All doors popped open and galvanized men erupted from the car and sprinted for the cover of the trees a few yards distant. Bolan had been expecting it; he punched a.444 through one man's leg and let it go at that, swinging about to scope in the police car. The cop was tugging at his holstered gun and running toward the burning car in the gateway. The confusion around the firesite was working to Bolan's advantage, this much was obvious; as yet, no one had connected the knoll with the gunshots. He decided to use the confusion while he could, and punched two shots down onto the police car, dropping two of its wheels onto the ground. The women vacated rapidly, darting about in panic while the Fire Chief's car settled onto two of its rims.

Bolan then slung the rifle at his shoulder and slid down the backside of the knoll, deciding that he had rattled enough teeth for the moment. He had to climb a tree to overcome the fence, dropping onto the roof of the car. He carefully stowed the Marlin, climbed behind the wheel and swung the car in a U-turn across the road, then cruised slowly past the scene of excitement he had just vacated. He caught a glimpse of the policeman, gun in hand and a baffled look on his face, staring at the remains of the wrecked limousine. The car's occupants were nowhere in sight. Curious sightseers were beginning to descend upon the scene, and already several cars were pulled over along the shoulder of the road. Bolan gunned on past the entrance to the estate, a satisfied smile on his face, and set course for the home of Leo Turrin, some eight miles distant in another suburban area.

He covered the distance in something under twenty minutes, arriving at Turrin's front door at precisely two o'clock. A pretty, dark-haired woman of about thirty answered his ring. She responded with a warm smile when Bolan introduced himself, and invited him in. He declined, preferring to deliver his message while standing in the doorway.

"My name is familiar to you, then?" he asked her.

"Oh yes," she assured him. "Leo has spoken very highly of you, Mr. Bolan. Are you sure you wouldn't like to come in? I don't know when-"

"No, I really didn't expect to find Leo here," Bolan said quickly. "As a matter of fact, I just left him a little while ago. I neglected to tell him something important -and I was in the area-I thought I could leave the message with you."

"Do I need a pad and pencil?" she inquired, smiling brightly.

"No, it's a simple message," Bolan replied soberly. "Tell him that the iron man broke the contract, and that I would have returned it to him at the fire this afternoon, but that I figured he could wait another day or two."

"I- I guess I have that," she said, gazing at Bolan curiously.

"Fine. And please remind him that I could have just as easily returned it to his wife and children." Bolan smiled. "That part is important also. Please don't forget it."

The pretty brunette's face had clouded. "Mr. Bolan, I -I don't..."

"It's a sort of a code," he said. "Leo will understand the meaning."

"I see," she replied. Bolan had turned and was heading down the steps. She followed. "Uh-Mr. Bolan-if you will forgive my forwardness-just what is your relationship with my husband?"

He turned to her with a pleasant smile. "Hasn't he told you? Don't you know what your husband's business is, Mrs. Turrin?"

"Well, yes, of course." A vague cloud of doubt seemed to momentarily eclipse the light in her eyes. Bolan guessed the eclipse had been there many times before. "But he has so many interests. I was-just-wondering..."

"Where I fit in?" Bolan finished the question for her.

She nodded, her face a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment.

Bolan hated to hit her with it. She seemed a very nice person. But there were overriding considerations. "I'm one of his guns."

"What?"

Bolan casually opened his jacket and let her see the.32 snuggling into his armpit. "Didn't you know that your husband is a Mafiosi?" he asked calmly.

"A
what?"
She practically screamed it, her face twisted into a stiff mask of shock and horror.

"I'm sure there's enough Latin in your veins to figure that out, Mrs. Turrin," Bolan said cordially. He moved on down the steps and into his car without looking back. She was still standing there in the doorway when he drove away, body rigid, hands raised to her face. Bolan felt like the biggest bastard in the world. It wasn't much fun rattling those kind of teeth. He sighed and headed the black sedan toward Walter Seymour's estate. Well, a rattle was a rattle. It was that sort of a war. Tomorrow that pretty woman would be a widow. And tonight she would have a very frightened husband on her hands. There was no morality in a holy war. It was simply a matter of ultimate good versus ultimate evil. It did not really matter that good becomes evil in the heat of the battle. Combat reduces everything to evil-life itself becomes an evil thing in the heat of the battle. How many times in bygone years had he threshed through these same old stale ideas? Why torture himself with mystical concepts of good and evil? The Mafia was evil. Any opposition to the Mafia is therefore good. The lines of battle were clearly drawn. The only morality in battle was to fight the good fight, to stand strong against the assault and to counterattack unfalteringly when the time was come. This was a soldier's morality. Mack Bolan was a soldier's soldier. He glanced at his watch. If the traffic did not get too bad, he could make Seymour's place by three o'clock. This rattle would prove interesting indeed. Yes. Perhaps he would make it a death rattle. And perhaps the vibrations would make themselves felt throughout the inner circle, the high council, the family fathers. Perhaps he would rattle their house down.

He stopped the car on a narrow dirt road to the rear of the Seymour estate, removed his jacket, and pulled on green coveralls. He unholstered the.32 and shoved it into the waistband of his trousers, then belted on a leather tool kit similar to the type worn by telephone and power company linemen. One of the compartments carried a broad-bladed hunting knife; there were also pliers, screwdrivers, cutting tools, and various other implements. A small mousset bag on a shoulder sling completed the outfit. Bolan left the Marlin in the car, walked through a wooded lot, and easily breached the redwood fence to the Seymour place through the simple expedient of wrenching loose several of the boards. Obviously Seymour placed more reliance on live security than on Maginot lines, and Bolan suspected that much of that live security had been drained off to the Pinechester crisis.

The place, indeed, appeared to be deserted. Walking boldly in the open, he made it to the swimming pool unchallenged, gazed about with almost fond memories, then produced a packet from the mousset bag, ripped it open, and tossed it into the pool. The water immediately began to take on a brilliant red coloration under the influence of the powerful marker-dye. He then kicked over two of the cabanas and shoved them into the pool. He watched them for a moment, wondering if they were going to float or sink, and had about decided on "float" when a man in white slacks and a red jacket jogged around the corner of hedgerow and onto the poolsite, his eyes flickering rapidly back and forth between Bolan and the pool.

"What th' hell?" the man growled. His hand went inside the jacket and returned with a pistol in tow.

Bolan ignored the pistol. "I dunno," he said calmly. "I think something's happened to your pool." His gaze was pure innocence; he turned his back on the security man to peer into the water. "Come and see for yourself," he suggested.

The man stepped up beside him, staring stupidly into the pool, the gun gripped tightly in front of him and pointed into the water. "I don't..." he started to say, the words eclipsing into a bloody bubble. The gun slipped into the pool and he raised surprised hands to a suddenly and unaccountably slit throat, then tumbled forward into the pool only a second or two behind the gun, the rush of blood hardly visible in the already stained waters. Bolan dropped to one knee and swished the blade of the hunting knife in the pool, then dried it, sighed, and sheathed it. The body had disappeared beneath the dye; Bolan rose and walked toward the house, his eyes raised and seeking power and phone cables. Locating them, he ambled casually to a rear corner of the house, pulled the insulated cutters from their holster, and deprived the Seymour home of telephone service, then moved a few feet further on and sliced through the main power cable.

There were immediate sounds of activity inside the house. A back door opened and a middle-aged woman emerged, rubbing her hands nervously on a gaily decorated apron. Her troubled gaze swept over Bolan, then she grunted and said, "Well, what is it now?"

"Doing some work on the lines, ma'am," Bolan said, smiling apologetically.

"Well, you picked a swinging time," she told him, obviously chafing with exasperation. "I'm trying to fix dinner. How long's it going to be off?"

Bolan ignored the question; another gun had pushed excitedly through the doorway. "Everything's off," he growled, the ever-present pistol dangling in a relaxed grip.

"What's the gun for?" Bolan asked, then quipped: "You going to shoot me for losing your lights?"

The man glared at him, but reholstered the gun. "How long they gonna be off?" he asked, his tone surly and complaining.

"If I can get a couple guys to help me, I'll have them back on in a jiffy," Bolan told him.

The man jerked his head in an impatient nod. "I'll help," he said. "What do we-?"

"I need two men," Bolan insisted.

"There's another guy out here somewhere. Well-"

"I've got him doing something else," Bolan persisted. "I need-"

"Well, that's tough shit!" the gunman roared. "There's nobody else around! Get your own goddamn-!"

"Okay, okay..." Bolan took him by the arm and walked him toward the pool. The cook was moving back inside. "I guess we can handle it ourselves," Bolan was saying chattily. "Trouble's down here by the pool. See, the-"

They had rounded the corner of the poolside patio, and the gunman was reacting visibly to the confrontation. "Well, shit, what's happened here?" he cried.

"Electron storm, see," Bolan was saying, straight-faced. "Inductance from the pool into the power cables, see. Come here, I'll show you." He had stepped to the side of the pool, and was peering into the water.

The security man moved slowly to join him, the gun hand sliding softly toward the armpit. He stood beside The Executioner, one hand raised to the back of his neck, eyes roving unbelievingly across the red waters and onto the floating cabanas.

"Electrons are powerful little demons," Bolan said soberly. "The power of the atom, you know."

"I still don't get it," the gunman mumbled. The hand had found the comforting contour of the pistol grip and was slowly moving into the open. Bolan's hand had been busy also. The hunting knife whipped up and over, slicing across veins, arteries, and tendons of the gun hand. The man gave a startled grunt and jerked hastily away, but the long flat blade had already found another mark deep in his abdomen and was now slicing back toward the surface in a twisting withdrawal. Bolan's other hand, at the man's back, pushed gently and the scarlet waters accommodated another visitor.

Bolan cleaned the blade once again, muttered, "There's no morality in a holy war," and returned to the house.

The cook met him at the back door. "They're still off," she complained.

"Should be okay now," Bolan told her. "I'd better come inside and take a look."

She nodded and stepped aside. Bolan went in and gazed around the kitchen. "Smell that?" he asked her,

"Just my pot roast," she replied uneasily.

"No- there's something wrong in here," he assured her. "You'd better go outside-get clear away from the house."

She nodded her head in quick agreement and stepped toward the door.

"Is anybody else in the house?"

She shook her head negatively and hurried outside. Bolan moved swiftly then, on through the kitchen and past the dining room and up the stairs to the upper level. He unsheathed the hunting knife and went from bedroom to bedroom, slashing every mattress in the house from head to foot, a task requiring less than two minutes. Returning through the living room, he noted a large portrait of Walt Seymour hanging over the mantel. Bolan coolly sighted his.32 and emptied it into the portrait, completely punching out both eyes. Then he reloaded the pistol, returned it to the waistband of his trousers, and rejoined the cook on the back lawn.

"I heard explosions!" she cried excitedly.

"Yes, ma'am," Bolan said. He walked on past her without another word.

She scampered along after him. "Should I call the fire department?" she asked breathlessly.

"No, ma'am," he said, turning back to gaze at her reflectively. "Uh-you're not a member of the family, are you?"

She shook her head. "I just work here," she cried shrilly.

"Then I suggest you find a job somewhere else, and quick."

"Why?"

"Because your employer does not have long to live, that's why. You tell him that." Bolan dug into the mousset bag, located a metallic object, and pressed it into the woman's hand.

"What's this?" she asked, eyes clouding in confusion.

"You give that to Mr. Seymour. Tell him it's from The Executioner. Tell him it will be just this easy when his time comes. Just this easy. You understand that?"

She nodded vaguely, holding the object up to view it better. "My son got one of these," she said dully. "It's a marksman's badge or something."

"Yes, ma'am. You just give that to Mr. Seymour, and give him my message."

"You're not from the power company," she said, the realization just dawning on her.

"No, ma'am. The house is safe enough if you want to go back in." Bolan left her standing there and reversed his route across the grounds, through the fence, and back to the car. He returned the tool kit and coveralls to the trunk compartment, climbed in behind the wheel, lit a cigarette, and inspected his hands for steadiness. They were shaking a little. It was okay, he realized, it was the proper time to shake. He started the engine and moved the car slowly along the dirt road. He would have enjoyed hanging around and watching Seymour's reaction to The
Executioner's penetration of the defense perimeter-but there would be another time for that.
If
time did not run out for The Executioner. There would be a great hue and cry now, that much was certain. The newspapers would certainly get in on the act; no doubt pressures would be brought to bear on the police. A madman was running loose in Pittsfield. Bolan grinned and gunned the sedan up a little incline and onto a paved highway. A madman with a cause. The important thing was that the House of Mafia would be vibrating from basement to attic. He had shown them how vulnerable they were. The battle would be joined and it would get personal, highly personal. It would not be a matter of cold-blooded murder contracts; this would be a war of emotion, and fear, and the constant threat of sudden death. It was Bolan's kind of war. It was the kind of warfare in which he was an expert. The Matthews would surely recognize that fact now. They'd been penetrated, and they'd damn well know it.