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  St. Louis Showdown

  The Executioner, Book Twenty-three

  Don Pendleton

  This book is dedicated to the hellgrounds—and to all who labor there in high ideals, however vainly.

  dp

  The mind is its own place,

  and in itself

  Can make a heaven of Hell,

  a hell of Heaven.

  —JOHN MILTON (Paradise Lost)

  This is where the world is made—out here in Hell. But there is no sense to Hell when there are no people in Heaven. Some of us must choose Hell, some Heaven. I have made my choice. And I intend to rule this place if I can, if only to make some sense of it!

  —MACK BOLAN (his War Journal)

  PROLOGUE

  In the war zones of Southeast Asia his government had given him the code name The Executioner. Enemy commands referred to him as “that devil”—and put a price on his head. Others in that same war zone, however, called him Sergeant Mercy, and many sick and terrorized villagers of that bloodied land owed their lives to this committed young man who walked those trails of hell with death in one hand and compassion in the other.

  Mack Bolan was a penetration specialist, leader of an elite group known officially as Able Team. Their business was espionage, sabotage, demoralization, death—in a highly personal reference. These jungle fighters lived off the land and ranged far and wide through enemy territories, usually totally isolated from their own forces, often separated from one another, and operating independently—self-sufficient, self-commanding, waging war and surviving through sheer wit and instinct.

  Bolan himself was generally regarded by his peers as the master at the game. He was a phenomenal marksman, a cool and patient warrior, a nerveless death machine with unerring instincts and awesome determination. His official kills of enemy bigwigs had approached the one-hundred mark, and his exploits had become legendary in every military enclave when The Executioner was suddenly called home on humanitarian leave.

  His entire family had become victims of another sort of war.

  Mack Bolan never returned to the jungles of Southeast Asia. Instead, he brought them home with him, buried his own beloved dead, and launched his personal war against “the greater enemy” at home.

  Never had a man so qualified been faced with a challenge so awesome.

  Mack Bolan, The Executioner, declared war on the Mafia. It was a hopeless sort of war—illegal, immoral, impossible—but the resourceful and determined sergeant from Able Team was waging it with unparalleled commitment and dedication—and it was even beginning to appear that he might succeed where armies of police had failed.

  He had carried the fight to the enemy and survived more than twenty pitched battles, employing a mixture of jungle wiles and blitzkrieg assaults which usually left the enemy in stunned disarray and with heavy losses. The odds remained almost the same, however—and Bolan realized that he was fighting a beast which grew new heads and limbs as fast as he could hack them off.

  He was in constant jeopardy, also, from a pyramiding police reaction to his illegal crusade. Bolan himself was now the “most wanted criminal” in America, and his every known move was instantly flashed to law enforcement agencies throughout the free world.

  It was also a well-known fact that Bolan’s head would make an instant millionaire of the lucky gunman who could deliver it to the desperate men who ruled La Cosa Nostra; such was the aggregate payoff of a dozen “open contracts” issued on Mack Bolan’s life—and the scramble of the bounty hunters became wilder with every day that the formidable one-man army remained alive. Any punk who could scrape up the price of a Saturday-night special was a potential enemy and a constant threat to this man whose precarious path of life became, of grim necessity, even narrower and lonelier.

  A few trusted and scattered friends remained to offer covert assistance to the war and unyielding concern for the man, but Bolan shunned even these few contacts to the greatest possible degree. He was a walking disaster and knew it; one day he would be pulled down, and he had no desire to involve others in his unavoidable fate.

  There were times, though, when Bolan felt that the dictates of the moment outweighed the cautions—when the stakes were too high to be affected by personal considerations. And these were the circumstances that precipitated the St. Louis Showdown.

  His old Able Team partner and Death Squad survivor, Rosario (the Politician) Blancanales, had spotted the play in Missouri and sent word to perhaps the one man in the world who could add a meaningful dimension to the game. The flash had not come as a particularly surprising development to Bolan. He had known for some time of ambitious movements in the Show Me State. But he had been wary of St. Louis. A steady infusion of hardline torpedoes had been stiffening the area ever since the Texas hit. There had been noises to the effect that Jerry Ciglia’s St. Louis boys were the nucleus of a new, national stop-Bolan effort, and there had been various indications from other quarters to support that notion. Bolan had recently tangled with Ciglia—but in another territory and with the advantage on Bolan’s side. The whole Missouri thing could be a trap play designed to lure him into a situation where all the advantage would be on the other side.

  Mack Bolan was not a “wild-ass warrior”—as some seemed to believe. He was a cautious and a wary one, and he had remained alive thus far because of that fact. He responded to the SOS from St. Louis not with a gung-ho spirit but rather with a sigh of resignation. A showdown at St. Louis had become inevitable. Bolan was the sort of man who could face the inevitable. He went. But not, he hoped, as prey. He went as The Executioner to do a job which could no longer be avoided.

  Such was the situation on that brooding spring night when a sleek GMC motor home left Interstate 270 north of St. Louis and climbed the high ground to a bluff overlooking the night glow of the riverside city. Bolan sent his warwagon nosing into the parking area of a Holiday Inn and pulled into the overlook. Moments later another vehicle eased in beside him. A dark, strongly built man in casual dress moved quickly to the van and stepped inside. The greeting between the two old friends was warm but subdued.

  “You’re looking great,” Bolan said with a tight smile.

  “You too,” Blancanales replied. “I was about to give you up. I been camped up here for two nights.”

  “I know,” Bolan said, smiling. “I’ve been looking you over for two nights.”

  The two men chuckled. The dark one said, “I could’ve guessed it. I didn’t see you … but, man, I could feel you. Where were you?”

  Bolan’s steely blue gaze flicked toward the lights of the motel. “Been here most the time. Checked in Wednesday. Left the warwagon parked in Burke City while I reconned the situation here.”

  “Am I clean?” Blancanales grunted.

  Bolan grinned. “I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. So what’s with the SOS?”

  The Politician scowled as he replied, “They’re getting ready to take over this town. They could do it, too—they’ve got the kicker. And there’s visions of a Capone-era Chicago transplanted to old Saint Louie. Your buddy Ciglia is the guy with the franchise.”

  “What’s the kicker?” Bolan asked quietly.

  “Curious situation here, Sarge. The city has no control over its own police department. State law. The commissioners are appointed by the governor.”

  Bolan frowned. “That’s the kicker?”

  “That’s it. Does the name Newman—Chuck Newman—mean anything to you?”

  “No,” Bolan replied, cocking his head thoughtfully. “Should it?”

  “I thought maybe—I knew the guy in ’Nam. Special forces—he was in the pacification program. Well he’s in politics here, now. Running for governor. Looks like he’ll make it, too, especially now
that, uh …”

  “The mob’s behind him?”

  “In a backhanded sort of way, yeah. Chuck didn’t invite them in. They just horned in, planning to ride the poor guy right into the state house.”

  Bolan sighed. “What do they have on him?”

  Blancanales dropped his eyes and fidgeted. “His wife. She has, uh, past indiscretions.”

  “The guy should withdraw,” Bolan decided coldly.

  “He wants that office awfully bad, Sarge. Besides, they won’t let him out. They’re holding this stuff over his head like a time bomb. Either he plays ball or the bomb goes off.”

  “Must be quite a bomb,” Bolan observed sourly.

  “It is. The lady was a porn queen—back when all that stuff was strictly underground. It’s been so long ago—well, she thought the past was dead and buried. Then Ciglia turns up with half a dozen of those old films under his wing. Look—Chuck knew all about that stuff when he married her. He’s that kind of guy—he married her for what she was, not what she’d once been. Now they have a couple of nice kids, social position—ahhh hell, Sarge, you know the routine. Ciglia says he’ll release the films into the legitimate porn outlets unless Newman dances to his tune. You know what that would do to that lady, those kids—forget about the political ambitions.”

  Bolan said, “Yeah, that’s quite a kicker. I suppose Ciglia also already has his own police commissioner picked out for St. Louis.”

  “Sure. And that’s only the beginning.”

  “Is Newman a client of Able Group?” Bolan inquired.

  “Yeah. He learned about us via the New Orleans publicity. Contacted me a couple of weeks ago. Wants me to get those damned films. Hell. It’s an impossible assignment, Sarge. Except, maybe, unless …”

  “You didn’t call me over here for that,” Bolan said.

  The Politician grinned. “Not really. But I’ve got the town wired now. And I know just how bad the general situation is—forgetting Newman’s personal problems. I thought you’d be interested. And I thought, maybe, in the fallout …”

  Bolan growled, “Yeah.”

  And sure, he was very interested. This town should have been on his hit parade long before now.

  He sighed and told his old partner, “Okay, Pol—I’ll want a full briefing. I want everything you’ve got. Then I want Able Group to pull out and remain clear—at least until all the pieces have settled.” Blancanales smiled sourly and fidgeted as he replied, “Well, uh, that, uh …”

  Bolan sighed again, heavily, and asked, “Just how deep in are you?”

  “Clear up to Toni’s neck, I’m afraid,” the Pol replied with a grimace. “She’s been playing the inside game with Ciglia. No contact since Monday.” He raised his hands to shoulder level and slowly lowered them. “Gadgets and I have been out of our heads trying to get a line on her.”

  Bolan said, “Well, dammit, Pol. You should have told me that when—”

  “It wasn’t a problem then. I’ve had no chance to tell you, ’til now.”

  Bolan ran a hand across his forehead and gazed stonily upon the metropolitan sprawl which numbered more than two million inhabitants and nearly three thousand square miles. Toni was the Pol’s kid sister and a licensed investigator with Able Group, the detective agency chartered by Blancanales and Gadgets Schwarz in the wake of the San Diego Siege. Bolan had met Toni for the first time during the battle for New Orleans, and a rather special thing had developed between the two.

  Yeah, a very special thing.

  And now she was somewhere out there in that no man’s land where only the brave and the bold survived, and then only the very best of those.

  “Okay,” he said quietly.

  No further words were necessary to explain his decision. It was, Blancanales knew, going to be a hell of a hot time for the old steamboat city.

  1: FROM THE TOP

  Mack Bolan was starting at the top in St. Louis. A couple hours of darkness remained of the night when the wraithlike figure dropped quietly over the wall surrounding a crumbling estate in an exclusive neighborhood on St. Louis’ west side. He was outfitted in night-black combat garb. The chillingly silent Beretta Belle rode head-weapon position beneath his left arm; the impressive .44 AutoMag occupied the thunder spot at the right hip. A ready belt of personal munitions crossed the chest. Nylon garrotes and pencil-diameter stilettos were slit-pocketed onto the outer calf of each leg.

  There had been no time for a daylight reconnoiter of the target. He was moving entirely on combat instincts as he silently crossed the fifty yards of rear lawn to the shadows of the three-story house.

  The place belonged to Arturo (Little Artie) Giamba, titular head of the St. Louis mob for many years. Giamba was one of the old guard, an aging nickle-and-dimer of little imagination and limited ambitions who had been content to sit atop a crumbling empire and watch it fade away in concert with his own life.

  The Giamba Family was a poor cousin in the national alliance of organized crime and was not even represented on the ruling council, La Commissione.

  But things were changing.

  Bolan needed to discover just how far the change had gone. According to intelligence sources, Jerry Ciglia had been sent down by New York to “revitalize” the territory, bringing an army of torpedoes with him. Shortly thereafter, Giambia had dropped from view. Underworld rumors of his fate covered the full range from execution to genteel exile in a Latin American republic. Ciglia himself had been in rather low profile in the area since his arrival, but it was known that he had set up his headquarters in the old Giamba mansion.

  So, yeah, Bolan was starting at the top in St. Louis. If he should luck onto Ciglia clean, he’d take the guy with the first shot of the battle. And it was too bad, Bolan was thinking as he loped across that no man’s land between wall and house, that he hadn’t wasted the guy on that golf green down on the Gulf Coast. Maybe all this would be unnecessary, now. It had been a different game, then, of course. Ciglia had been a mere pawn in that fight. So now he was the king … and that was the way things went in Mack Bolan’s world. It was a war of attrition that paved the highway to hell with broken bodies and mortgaged souls, and yet there never seemed to be any attrition in the ranks of the enemy. Like targets in a shooting gallery, knock one down and another pops up in its place—on and on, endlessly, clear to hell’s gates. So sure, forget the what-ifs; the name of the king meant not a damned thing. If it were not Ciglia then it would be someone else. It was not the man that mattered, it was the office—and Mack Bolan had come to St. Louis to slay an idea, not a man. Men were going to die, for damn sure, but only because there was no other way to get rid of the idea.

  But Jerry Ciglia would not take top honors as the first to die in this battle. An indolent shape detached itself from the shadows at the rear of the house as Bolan approached and a lazy, unconcerned voice drawled, “Who’s that?”

  The Beretta chugged a pencil of flame in response, but the guy never heard the whispering death that blew across that twenty-foot range to snap him back and punch him over, dead before the fall.

  Bolan dropped a medal on the dead soldier’s chest as he stepped across the mess and went on around the side of the house to check out the forward area. He found another yardman there, near the vehicle gate, and dropped him just as quietly, then returned to the building with no lost motion.

  Knowing hands found the telephone cable and cut it. Several heartbeats later, he was on the rear service porch—a glassed-in affair with laundry tubs and a hodgepodge of appliances. He located the main power panel there and disabled it.

  A quick kick in a vital spot sent the kitchen door creaking inward, and he was inside—pencil flash in hand and moving swiftly.

  Just beyond a swinging door lay the dining room, and seated there in the dark over an interrupted game of solitaire was a heavy guy in shirt-sleeves and bulging shoulder holster.

  Bolan sent the beam directly into the guy’s eyes and kept on moving.

  “What happen
ed to the lights?” the guy grumbled, holding a card to his eyes to shield them from the flashlight beam.

  “I put them out,” Bolan replied quietly—then the big silver thundergun was muzzle-up to the guy’s nose and no further explanation was necessary.

  “Easy, easy,” the guy croaked. “Anything you say, eh?”

  Bolan deposited the flashlight on the table and disarmed the houseman, then he dropped a bull’s-eye cross into the center of the solitaire spread.

  The guy groaned and his facial muscles tightened, eyes bulging at the little medal; otherwise he was a marble statue.

  Bolan coldly told him, “I guess it’s you and me, baby. You’ve got about a heartbeat to decide how long it’ll stay that way.”

  “Name it,” the houseman replied quickly, no decision necessary.

  “Who’s here?”

  “Jerry and a broad, master suite, top of the stairs, second floor. His two shadows across the hall. Two boys on outside detail. Another boy on the third floor with the old man. That’s it.”

  “So far, so good,” Bolan said in those icy tones reserved for the living dead. “Who’re you?”

  The guy’s eyes clouded. At a moment such as this, in a world such as this, identity could be a highly important thing. “I’m Steve Rocco,” he said, sighing.

  “Out of Chicago,” Bolan decided.

  “Yeah. You, uh, I think met my brother Benny once.”

  “Your late brother Benny,” Bolan reminded.

  “Yeah, well—you take your paycheck and your own chances, I guess. I ain’t holding no—”

  “You’re holding your life in your own hands, Rocco. I hope you’re not a butterfingers.”

  “I can be very careful,” the guy said very soberly.

  “What’s Ciglia doing to the old man?”

  “Starving ’im, I guess. Nothing goes up there but bread and water, and not much of that.”

  “Why?”

  Rocco shrugged beefy shoulders. “Hell, I’m just one of the troops. They don’t let me in on their secrets.”