Thermal Thursday

  Thermal Thursday

  The Executioner, Book Thirty-six

  Don Pendleton

  For Cecil Miles Buffalo,

  a true warrior and a real man.

  Let not young souls be smothered out

  before they do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.

  —Vachel Lindsay (The Congo)

  And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.

  God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

  —Rudyard Kipling (Gentlemen Rankers)

  To know the truth is to be

  responsible for it. God help me.

  I knew too much, too young.

  —Mack Bolan

  PROLOGUE

  What had begun as a simple and direct reaction to an unbearable situation had quickly escalated into the hottest and widest conflict to be waged within the American nation since the War Between the States: Mack Bolan’s personal war against the Mafia.

  Bolan had been an infantry sergeant in Vietnam, a highly trained career soldier with twelve years of service and several combat tours behind him, when his homefront war exploded upon the public awareness. It was an illegal war, of course, conducted without benefit of any official blessing, so Bolan himself was immediately branded a criminal and quickly became the most sought-after fugitive in the country.

  Not only the police wanted Mack Bolan’s body; the Mafia, too, “the enemy,” reacting in typical fashion, at first issued an almost casual “open contract” on the life of this impertinent challenger, a reaction which itself escalated in direct proportion to the challenge. Within a very short time, the response to “the Bolan problem” became a nationwide effort of unmatched proportions, with both the cops and the killers determinedly shrinking that fragile zone between them, which Bolan called “no man’s land.”

  The brilliant military tactician played that zone for all it was worth, though, and succeeded in mounting and maintaining a progression of dramatic and effective guerrilla campaigns against “this all-pervading enemy, the invisible second government of the United States.” Bolan would not, however, take on the official government. He would not fire upon a law officer, nor would he respond with force of any kind to the police effort. This left him a single alternative: he simply had to avoid all contact with police authority. That was not always possible, of course, even though it was common knowledge that many police officers were secretly sympathetic to the Bolan crusade and were themselves avoiding a confrontation.

  On those few occasions when the confrontation was unavoidable, it seemed that the redoubtable sergeant from Vietnam always walked away with a new friend and his freedom intact. There was something about the man that inspired confidence and admiration—a personal quality which could be defined only as “high character”—an aura of ethics and competence to which only the worst of men could not respond favorably.

  Some called it “the Bolan effect.”

  Harold Brognola called it “human excellence.” Brognola headed a federally organized crime strike force at the time of his first encounter with Bolan, early in the war. Thanks in large part to the symbiotic relationship which then grew between the two, Brognola advanced rapidly to the number two position in the U.S. Justice Department and advisor to the president. Bolan also benefited from the exchange of intelligence, which began to “possibilize the impossible.”

  There had never been a moment, in the beginning, when Sergeant Bolan dared dream that he could actually succeed in his self-appointed task to rid the country of the Mafia presence. How could a lone man hope to succeed where armies of cops and the legal might of the greatest nation on earth had failed? Yet it was just that failure of the official system that had prompted Bolan to action. He had never hoped to go the full route. In his own understanding, he had consigned his fate to that of “the condemned man’s last mile.” And his chief aim was to make it a very bloody last mile indeed, to take as many of the enemy to hell with him as he could possibly manage.

  As the war blazed on, Bolan himself could not point to any certain moment where the impossible had become possibilized. His entire life had become a constant walk through hell without letup, without rest, without even pause. He slept with his eyes open, ate on the run, and counted every heartbeat as though it would be his last. There was nothing romantic or even remotely enviable about the life he had chosen for himself. And though he freely looted the enemy’s illicit treasures, all the money thus liberated was plowed directly back into the war effort; Bolan had no Swiss bank accounts or Wall Street portfolios. He lived a life of simple immediacy and pointed significance: he lived only to eradicate the Mafia. Nor could he be content with seeing the enemy behind bars. He knew too well the many crime kingdoms flourishing from behind the temporary inconvenience of prison bars, of the seeming inability of the American justice system to deal with the spreading cancer of organized crime.

  “These people are not criminals in the usual sense,” he once wrote in his journal. “They are a competitive power, a foreign nation within the nation, at war with everything our nation stands for, and yet protected by the very guarantees which they would deny us. It makes no sense to war upon a hostile foreign power while extending to them all the genteel courtesies which we reserve for ourselves. They mean to dominate us, to take away all our protections of law—they mean to conquer, to rape, and to loot this nation. The only sensible response is to fight back—to destroy them if we can, when we can, as many as we can, and let the devil take the bodycount. I am at war with an enemy of my country. And I intend to bring that enemy to its knees … if I can.”

  But he never actually thought that he could.

  It was Hal Brognola who first suggested that the impossible had become possible for Mack Bolan. In Brognola’s view, Bolan’s thirty-odd campaigns against the underworld power centers had greatly weakened their all-important infrastructure and had decimated the leadership to a point where a long-frustrated legal system was, for the first time ever, beginning to gain some real control over the problem of organized crime in America. He wanted Bolan to step down, to end that war—and to begin another of far greater importance (in Brognola’s view), but this time under full governmental recognition and support.

  The new problem was the threat and spread of international terrorism, to which a concerned nation was groping for effective countermeasures. What better man than Mack Bolan to head up a new counter-terrorist force to deal with the problem? With the job would come full forgiveness of all past illegal acts, a cover identity, and official status within the government.

  While Bolan recognized the urgency of the new national concern, he did not share completely Brognola’s assessment of the underworld situation. It was very difficult for this man to turn away from a commitment so diligently pursued through so much hell. He considered the government’s request, then told Brognola: “Okay. I accept. But first …”

  But first the guy wanted to do it all over again.

  Brognola reported to the president: “He’s in, sir. But he insists on delaying a week. He feels he has to do a second mile.”

  “A second what?” asked the man in the oval office.

  “You know, like in the Bible. If a man asks you to walk a mile with him …”

  “Go with him twain,” sighed the president.

  “Something like that—yes, sir. He didn’t put it just that way. But he does want to mount a six-day mop-up of the remaining trouble centers.”

  “Give him all covert support possible,” was the final response by the president. “But get him here, Hal—get the man here, alive and well, one week from today.”

  So began Mack Bolan’s second bloody mile, a highly compressed timetable for final victory. The impossible had become possibilized. Not
assured. Only possibilized. These final six days would tell the tale. If he could survive them while accomplishing the prime objectives … well, yeah, he could then turn away with a clean conscience.

  But there had been too much bloodshed, too many agonies of mind and body, the price altogether too high along that first savage mile to even contemplate an empty peace. Mack Bolan would turn away from nothing short of a real and meaningful victory.

  The first three days had gone okay … okay enough. But they had raised grave doubts in the mind of the man who, in the beginning, had promised himself that he would “shake their house down.” The impossible had become possible … that was all.

  But now it was the fourth day. The place was Florida. The time was Thursday. The situation was, yeah, possible … but just barely.

  1

  H-HOUR

  It was a dawn landing, with nothing but a makeshift windsock emplaced beside the dirt strip to guide the way in. Grimaldi made a sign with his thumb and went around one time at low altitude for a quick recon. Bolan checked the action on his Beretta then returned the piece to concealment beneath a Levi’s jacket as he scanned the layout below.

  The hammock was several hundred yards long by maybe a hundred wide, barely distinguishable from the sea of sawgrass marshland surrounding it. There were no trees and hardly any vegetation—an indication that someone had farmed the tiny island in recent times. Now it was little more than a primitive airstrip buried deep within the Florida Everglades, one of those countless oases-in-reverse that dot the shallow waters. There were no manmade structures on this one except for a rickety pier near the north end of the airstrip. A couple of small boats were alongside and a swamp buggy had been run ashore close by.

  Bolan counted five human figures standing in a clump at the north end of the strip. Off to the west about a mile, two large swamp buggies were approaching the hammock via a narrow channel of open water imbedded in tall grass; that presence would be undetectable from the surface of the hammock.

  “I guess it’s going down,” Bolan muttered to his pilot.

  “They said dawn,” Grimaldi grunted. “Is it a go?”

  “Yeah, go,” Bolan replied without emotion.

  They went, a wing of the twin Cessna dipping into a ninety-degree turn as Grimaldi lined up with the runway.

  The thing was going down, and Bolan was not thinking of the descent of the airplane. “It” was going down—no question about it. Death was overhanging that tranquil scene below—a heavy, smothering presence which a man such as Mack Bolan had long ago learned to recognize as an entity—to be felt on the skin like hot wind, tasted on the lips like brine—entering the body like smoke through the lungs to energize the bloodstream with quiet whisperings.

  Death was here, yes—palpable, imminent, unavoidable.

  Bolan and his partner could avoid it, though—this time, this place. Those down below could not; and, of course, it was Bolan’s task to challenge, not to evade.

  “See the devil force?” the pilot inquired quietly as he continued the landing procedure.

  “About a mile west,” Bolan replied.

  “Yeah—I thought I caught a glimpse. Okay. Here we go. This could be a rough one. Grab your teeth.”

  But it was not so rough a landing. The heavily mineraled soil of the hammock was nicely compacted and relatively smooth for a dirt strip. The Cessna used only about a third of the available runway for the landing roll then turned about for a quick return to the offload area at the north end, where the reception party waited.

  Some party. They were mere kids, those five. And two of them were female.

  Grimaldi ground his teeth as he commented, “Would you look at that! Babes in joyland! What the hell do they think they’re …?”

  “Kids younger than that died in Nam,” Bolan growled.

  “Sure, but … two of these are baby dolls!”

  “Equal rights,” Bolan muttered and stepped outside.

  Baby dolls, right. Pert, smiling, overly energized by the thrill of the adventure—dancing eyes, butts wiggling in too-tight jeans as they strode forward in greeting.

  Baby guys, too. Not your stereotype smuggler, for sure. These guys would look more natural at a pantyraid or pep rally. Bright … aware … alive. Nothing really terminal could ever happen to them, could it? Life was just a game, wasn’t it, after all? The worst that could happen was that you would not collect your two hundred dollars as you passed “Go.” Right?

  Wrong.

  Bolan showed those bright smiling faces his Beretta as he coldly commanded, “Get in the plane. No arguments. Just do it.”

  Bright smiles turned to worried frowns and questioning glances furtively exchanged, but all five entered the Cessna, doing it with no arguments and no vocal comments whatever.

  They probably thought it was a bust. Big deal. So they would not collect their two hundred bucks: Go to jail; go straight to jail; do not collect your two hundred dollars.

  Grimaldi kicked a couple of bundles to the ground as he said something quick and quiet to his new passengers, then he quickly spun the plane around and returned aloft.

  The two bundles appeared to be identical. One, however, contained hi-grade cocaine worth well beyond two hundred bucks, for sure, in the underground trade. The other contained a wicked little Uzi submachine gun, some extra ammo clips, and two fragmentation grenades.

  Bolan carried the bundles to the pier and was opening the one containing the weapons when a miniature breast-pocket radio beeped an incoming signal. He extended the antenna and responded, “Striker.”

  Grimaldi’s voice came back immediately with a terse report from high overhead. “Two hundred yards off the pier in high grass and moving in. It’s a double. I count four per each.”

  Two buggies, eight guns … the “devil force.” It was a new phrase being whispered about the ’glades and along the Florida coasts, a new version of a very old game … modern pirates preying upon the smuggling lanes with a savagery never approached by Blackbeard. But this bunch was not going to find unarmed college kids awaiting their mercy. Instead, this time, they were going to find …

  Bolan replied, “Okay. Keep it cool. Eyes open.”

  “Betcher ass,” was the response.

  Bolan smiled solemnly as he tucked the radio away. Grimaldi had been a good friend and able ally throughout much of the war. The guy was a mob pilot. Once, down in Puerto Rico, he’d done his best to do Bolan in. And vice versa. But one of those strange twists of fate made friends of natural enemies and added an important new dimension to Bolan’s war effort. The guy could fly anything with wings. And, as it turned out, he had no particular love for his employers. Besides becoming a valuable intelligence source, Grimaldi also had combat experience and was a capable and reliable soldier in the hotspots. It was Grimaldi’s contacts that had led Bolan into the new game in Florida—and that game involved quite a bit more than simple pirating. This was a mere starting point.

  And it started like so many others.

  Out of the grass suddenly appeared the snakes. One man in each boat carried an automatic weapon. The other guys packed pistols in side leather. They’d done this before … many times. It was sheer routine now. They even looked bored. The buggies were twenty yards out and proceeding abreast when a guy picked up a bullhorn and called ahead, “Just cool it, mister. Don’t move, don’t even breathe hard, and you’ll be okay.”

  Bolan was cool, he wasn’t breathing hard, and he felt quite okay. Both hands were inside the weapons cache, wherein a grenade with a ten second fuse was receiving its prime. At ten yards out, he produced the little bomb and tossed it with an underhand flip toward the approaching raiding party.

  The startled reaction could have been produced by something as harmless as an apple or an orange; it was like one of those surprise encounters along the Ho Chi Minh Trail where the instinctive reaction precedes rational thought and everyone involved follows his own spontaneous sparking of the survival pattern.

 
A couple of guys hit the water; others flung themselves to the decks in a scramble for protection; one of the burpers cut loose with a wild burst into the air—and all this before the fuse found its ten-count.

  Bolan was in the shallow water beside the pier, Uzi in hand and bracketing the target zone, when the grenade exploded. It had found its mark in the air about ten feet above the buggies. One of them lurched away in a quick turn with no one aboard then came about and ran aground a few yards downrange. The other was ablaze and foundering almost instantly, a dead man at the controls. A scared-looking guy with a submachine gun stood in waist-deep water and gawked at the carnage about him. Bolan cut that guy diagonally across the chest with a burst from the Uzi, then sent another chasing a couple of swimmers who were threshing toward the tall grass.

  That left a single survivor, a guy with a bleeding pattern spreading across his backside, who was painfully pulling himself aboard the beached swamp buggy.

  Bolan deliberately failed to see that guy, instead sending concentrated fire into the burning craft until it exploded and sent its parts hurtling across the disturbed waters. When next he looked, the other buggy was creeping into the sawgrass and disappearing from view some fifty yards downstream.

  Good enough.

  He activated his radio and sent the report aloft: “Okay down here. The rest is yours.”

  “Have him in sight,” came the response. “Just call me flypaper.”

  Bolan smiled grimly and pocketed the radio. He gathered his stuff and fired up the buggy that had been brought there by the kids, took a last look around, then put that place behind him.

  It seemed a strange place for a beginning … but perfectly fitting as an end to a particular devil force. How many hammocks had they left this way—With how many unarmed amateurs left as a picnic spread for the ’gators?

  Too many, if only one.

  But this was Thursday morning—and a modest beginning for a day which would have to see a vicious crime empire dismantled and flung into the muck.