Executioner 057 - Flesh Wounds

  The black hole of the barrel stared hungrily at its target

  Bolan was holding the Beretta 93-R at arm's length in doubled fists. It was pointed at Bleeder's forehead.

  It was a judgment from heaven and hell.

  "In here, April," Bolan said. She entered with the Wilkenson Arms Linda semiautomatic pistol gripped in both hands like a submachine gun.

  "There's no one else around," she said. "Just us chickens," Bolan said to Bleeder.

  Something broke inside the guy. "How'd you get in here?" Bleeder croaked.

  "We busted your door down, that's how."

  "Who are you? Cops? Where's your warrant?"

  Bolan looked at him long and hard. "I'm about to perforate your lungs with it, guy," he said.

  Mack Bolan stabs at the heart of the frustration and hopelessness the average person feels about crime running rampant in the streets.

  —Dallas Times Herald

  Also available from Gold Eagle Books,

  publishers of the Executioner series:

  Mack Bolan's

  ABLE TEAM

  #1 Tower of Terror

  #2 The Hostaged Island

  #3 Texas Showdown

  #4 Amazon Slaughter

  #5 Cairo Countdown

  #6 Warlord of Azatlan

  Mack Bolan's

  PHOENIX FORCE

  #1 Argentine Deadline

  #2 Guerilla Games

  #3 Atlantic Scramble

  #4 Tigers of Justice

  #5 The Fury Bombs

  First edition September 1983

  First published in Australia December 1984

  ISBN 0-373-61057-2

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to

  Ray Obstfeld for his contributions to this work.

  Copyright ©, 1983 by Worldwide Library.

  Philippine copyright 1983, Australian copyright 1983,

  New Zealand copyright 1983.

  Scanned by CrazyAl 2013

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 118 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, NSW. All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  The Gold Eagle trademark, consisting of the words GOLD EAGLE and the portrayal of an eagle, and the Worldwide trademark, consisting of a globe and the word WORLDWIDE in which the letter "o" is represented by a depiction of a globe, are trademarks of Worldwide Library.

  Printed in Australia by

  The Dominion Press—Hedges & Bell

  North Blackburn, Victoria 3130.

  "Other sins only speak, murder shrieks out.

  The element of water moistens the earth,

  but blood flies upward and bedews the heavens."

  —Daniel Webster

  "This is the twentieth century, and civilized men will not hate the savages. Yet we cannot allow the savages to have their way. I believe I understand why I am here, even if most of the world does not. The savages cannot be allowed to inherit the earth. Why defend a front line thousands of miles away when the real enemy is chewing up everything you love at home?"

  —Mack Bolan

  (from the Vietnam journal)

  1

  The tall beefy man in the plaid lumberjack shirt snatched the half-full beer bottle by the neck, smashed the bottom on the edge of the bar and pressed the jagged glass against Mack Bolan's cheek.

  Beer trickled down the man's thick hairy wrist. Most of it was sopped up by his shirt-sleeve, the rest dripping onto his steel-toed boots. A couple of splinters of brown glass were stuck in the back of his hand, drawing blood like slurping mosquitoes. But the burly man did not seem to notice.

  The guy stretched his upper lip into a sneer that revealed large slabs of gray teeth, and his nostrils flared, revealing a forest of wiry black nose hairs.

  He took a step closer, pressed the shattered bottle deeper into Bolan's cheek. It was not enough to break skin, but enough to send most men home in need of a change of pants.

  Bolan stood calmly with one foot on the brass railing, an elbow resting on the scarred bar top, a mug of beer gripped in his right hand. His eyes were bright as flares. He gazed into the bigger man's grizzled face.

  "You break it, you buy it," Bolan said softly.

  "Huh?"

  "You broke my bottle, pal, and there was still half a brew in it. So this round's on you. Understand now?"

  The big man looked confused for a moment and Bolan realized the guy was just not used to anyone talking back to him. Ever. Bolan could see why. The red plaid shirt barely concealed the mob of muscles crowded under the worn clothing. The thick mustache and beard hardly hid the twitching sneer of his mouth.

  His craziness was drug induced, Bolan could tell. Benzedrine, maybe. The way the pupils had dilated, he'd probably already popped three or four today. And it was not yet noon.

  "Hey, Grayson," the bartender said soothingly. "The fella didn't do nothing. He was just standing here drinking a beer—"

  Grayson shook his head violently, still maintaining the pressure of the broken bottle against Bolan's cheek.

  "This s.o.b. is up to something. Been following me all day. Seen him at the hardware store. Then at the supermarket. Saw him buy a pack of cigarettes at Tina's. Now, Pete, you know I always buy my cigarettes at Tina's, dammit. Always."

  Saliva foamed on his lower lip, dribbled down his chin. He wiped it away with his dry sleeve.

  "Hell, Grayson," said Pete, "everybody in Susqua buys their smokes from Tina. Christ, I got a machine over in the corner and even I used to buy from her before I quit. Now put that bottle down before I call Sheriff Dobbs. He'll boot your ass in jail again for sure."

  "Son of a bitch has been following me, I tell ya!"

  Pete looked uncertain as he studied Bolan's face from across the bar. The three other men in the bar also studied him from their table. "You been following Grayson, mister?" Pete asked. Grayson continued to press the broken bottle against Bolan's cheek.

  "I wasn't following anybody." Bolan sipped his beer without moving his head. The slightest shift would cause the sharp teeth of the bottle to shred his cheek. "I went to the hardware store to buy some film for my camera. I went to Tina's to buy cigarettes. I got an ass-numbing drive back to Philly ahead of me. Simple as that."

  "I checked his car, Pete," Grayson said. "Filled with camera crap. All kinds of scopes and stuff."

  "How about that, mister?"

  "I'm a photographer," Bolan muttered. "Trees and streams. Birds. That kind of thing. Tweet, tweet."

  Bolan could see there was going to be trouble. The backwoodsman started to rock back and forth on his feet, the heavy boots crunching broken glass, grinding it into white powder.

  "He's all right, Grayson," Pete said. "Leave him be."

  "Fuck you, Pete. I know what I know. And I know Byron will want to hear about this guy."

  Pete's face went stony. The other men shifted uncomfortably, fussed with their beer and cigarettes. "You just forget about Byron York and the rest, Grayson. That's not for you. Besides, they already tossed you out on your butt. Forget those people."

  Grayson spat, just missing Bolan's shoe, then sneered: "They'll think again when I bring them this little pecker. Come on, asshole. We're going for a rid
e."

  Bolan glanced at Pete out of the corner of his eye and realized that neither he nor the other men at the table were going to try and stop them. That was good. If they did, the first casualty would be Bolan's face. And his face had surely been punished and beaten and surgically tampered with enough in his lifetime.

  Besides, he had already decided: he was not going anywhere with this drugged-out clod.

  "C'mon!" Grayson insisted, grabbing Bolan's upper arm, keeping the jagged edge of the bottle biting against Bolan's cheekbone.

  "Okay, okay," Bolan said. "One last sip and my time is yours."

  Grayson snorted. "Your ass is mine, jerk-off."

  Bolan sipped a mouthful of beer, turned to face Grayson and sprayed the beer between his lips into Grayson's eyes.

  Bolan ducked under the arm that wielded the broken bottle, considered snatching the Detonics .45 from its specially rigged ankle holster but abandoned the idea. He was supposed to be a nature photographer, not a gunman.

  Instead of drawing his gun, he pivoted, grabbed the hand that held the bottle, then yanked it tightly under his arm. Using his own forearm for leverage, he pressed down on Grayson's wrist until it snapped like a stick of kindling.

  Grayson howled with rage. Bolan grabbed the beer mug from the bar and whacked it across Grayson's cheek.

  The bones in the guy's face collapsed. Skin split along the cheekbone. Thick blood bubbled out.

  Grayson staggered back a couple of steps, beyond pain because of the amphetamine pumping through his veins. He reached into his muddy jeans pocket with the hand that still worked and pulled out a heavy pocketknife.

  A flick of the wrist brought the blade out with a click as it locked into place.

  "Enough, man," Pete warned him. "Enough. Bolan backed up against the bar, felt wooden edge press against his spine. He waited. "Grayson, drop it," Pete pleaded. "This fella knows how to handle himself."

  But Bolan could see that talk was useless. Grayson was not listening. He heard his own torture voices, benzedrine voices that urged him onward.

  "Son of a bitch," he mumbled, and charged.

  Bolan spun away from the clumsy maneuver slipped to the side, and with a repetitive movement of fierce speed and force, dug his elbow twice into Grayson's ribs. The ribs caved in under the attack

  Grayson sagged to his knees, gripping the edge of the bar for balance.

  Bolan stood behind him and slammed two sharp punches into the back of the man-mountain's head.

  Two hundred fifty pounds teetered, then collapsed onto the dirty floor. The floorboards groaned; a pillow of dust feathered up around the unconscious body.

  Pete walked around the front of the bar, drying his hands on his apron. He stared at Grayson. "Guy sure as hell had it coming, but I never seen anyone able to deliver it to him before."

  "Lucky punch," Bolan said.

  Pete shook his head. "We should all be so lucky." He prodded Grayson with his toe. No movement. "Guess I oughta call Sheriff Dobbs over in Treetop. Shouldn't take more than an hour for him to get here."

  Bolan made a show of checking his watch. "An hour for him to get here, another hour of questions. I really don't have that kind of time. I must get back to my darkroom if I'm going to make any money out of this trip."

  "Suit yourself, mister. I can't quarrel with anyone making an honest buck."

  "Fine." Bolan stepped over Grayson's snoring body and headed for the door.

  "Hey, what about that last round of beer?" Pete called after him. "And the glass?"

  Bolan nodded at Grayson. "He broke it, he bought it."

  Bolan left the bar and jogged down the narrow street to where he had parked his Fury II sedan. He could tell before he got there that the back door had been tampered with.

  He cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face against the tinted glass. The back was empty. The three cameras were gone. The satchel of spare film, the telephoto lenses, everything.

  He wasted no time looking over his shoulder. He jumped into the car, twisted the ignition key, jammed it into gear and stomped on the gas.

  One thing was certain. They were onto him.

  2

  For the tenth time, Bolan glanced around the interior of the moving Fury and wished he'd made Grayson eat that pocketknife. While the slashed seat covers and missing cameras were irritating, the theft of the negatives had flushed hard days of recon down the tubes. But to return to Pete's place would only draw more attention, or the police.

  Bolan was a pro. He could walk away from the negatives, but that did not mean he liked it.

  Recently there were a lot of things he didn't like. He had always trusted his own keen judgment and hard-won skills rather than any expert or any expensive toy that the government had to offer. He wanted to be free of the government.

  Now, his judgment told him that a trail of trouble began with the bloated speed freak who had trashed his car. Grayson and the bartender had mentioned a Byron York. To Colonel John Phoenix, that name had an odd ring of familiarity.

  At the wheel of the sedan, in the slanting evening light, Bolan's face softened. He allowed himself a small smile. At least the first set of negatives had gotten through to Stony Man. Experience again, he told himself; never stash all your negatives in one place.

  Bolan speed-shifted down a flat stretch of road between two hills. At dawn he would rendezvous with Brognola at an arranged spot in the Alleghenies. Static on the car radio cleared as the vehicle escaped the hills' interference. The sweet strains of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" poured out of the driver's window. April's favorite, Bolan thought. Then, as quickly as the radio had found its signal, an unpleasant thought surfaced. Why had Hal, and not April, answered his latest scrambled phone call to Stony Man?

  Bolan picked up speed as the song faded into the now-dark hills. He had called Stony Man Farm only minutes earlier, using a roadside pay phone that he had fitted with a portable scrambling device. He had asked Hal to keep an official eye on Grayson. Hal had responded by arranging their upcoming meeting, then reporting that the negatives relayed earlier from Bolan's motel had shown a clue as to the whereabouts of the man Stony Man was seeking.

  But Bolan had wanted to hear April's voice, had expected her to answer. She was back at her job after convalescing from wounds suffered in Italy in the Laser Wagon hit against Paradine, and indeed she was evidently anxious to get into high gear. Bolan had hoped to hear her voice as confirmation of her complete recovery.

  He thought about the beautiful woman who had reintroduced him to the good place inside himself that might otherwise have died with the women of his family in Pittsfield, when his personal war began. The image of his mother was clear, as always, but it was his sister Cindy who really stood out in his memory. In many ways April reminded Mack of Cindy. Like Cindy, April had been a nice girl whose ideas about the world were decent and generous and basically unrealistic. Like Cindy, when the time came that April was no longer sheltered, she had proved herself spirited enough to change.

  The circumstances of his sister's death were painful memories that Bolan knew were best left untouched.

  But circumstances had spared April; in a way had made the already self-assured lady even tougher. On Mack's example, she had become a competent warrior.

  Bolan thought back on the first bloody Monday of their love. The process of recall was like flipping through an album of photographs. He saw April naked, stripped of her clothes and her pacifism, holding off a sadistic mobster called Fuzz Martin with nothing but a steel spike. Bolan relived the relief he had felt when he found out she was still alive, and remembered the dark oath he had sworn against Fuzz Martin, that the mafioso would die horribly at Bolan's hands. Bolan's vivid memory remained faithful to his hatred for the one-time slimebucket, even though the guy was eventually offed by Harry "The Apeman" Venturi.

  And since that first encounter with April Rose in Tennessee, a complete understanding had developed between Mack and April. The auburn-
haired lady from the Agency no longer saw Striker as an immoral primitive, an uncivilized jungle-assassin doing evil work in a world where goodness could casually triumph. April had experienced the big man's war firsthand. She knew that Mack's difficult and ugly work was vitally important in a world where evil waited like a dormant virus, its attack attending the first signs of strain or apathy.

  Although they rarely spoke of it, Mack also knew that April understood the place she occupied in his unusual life. The normal things could not be hers while her life was involved with Stony Man One. But Mack was confident that his free-spirited friend did not want "normal" things.

  He slid the ridge of his index finger over the radio's dial as the night sky opened on a full moon past a bend in the hill-country road. He returned his hand to the wheel as Tammy Wynette's voice crooned, "Loneliness surrounds me, without your arms around me."

  It always surprised Mack that he knew so little of April's past, despite the complete trust that existed between them. He could count the known details of her life before Stony Man on the fingers of his free hand. Fact: her father was a musician. Fact: her mother was a college instructor. Fact: she had once been engaged. Fact: before her on-campus recruitment she had been a peacenik with the Students for a Democratic Society—SDS—the moderate predecessor of the more radical Weatherman. Fact: long before Mack had met her she was an electronics, espionage and C3 expert of international quality. Hal had put it well when he once told Bolan, "She is the best."

  Again, Bolan wondered why April had not responded personally to his recent phone call to Stony Man.

  He knew there were dozens of routine tasks that could have occupied her at the precise moment of his incoming call.

  Yet he also knew that there was no better tool for the warrior than intuition. Bolan had stayed alive many times by playing a hunch. He knew enough to trust himself now.

  April had not answered the phone because something was wrong.

  Bolan's mind switched to Hal Brognola. There were strange contradictions at work in Hal. The hard-nosed field agent, who now advised American presidents, hardly seemed a likely counter-part to the off-duty family man that Mack knew him to be. But he and the supercop faced a common enemy and The Executioner was proud that they both brought out the best in each other. So what was bugging Brognola in that phone call that couldn't wait for his return to Virginia?