Resurrection Day

  Annotation

  BLOOD TIES.

  Mack Bolan, nemesis of human evil, has come full circle. The unending odyssey of a blood-filled career puts him face-to-face once more against his oldest foe.

  After an uneasy sleep, the Mafia is disturbed by rumbles of Bolans return. But this time, the Executioner is flanked by his lost brother. Johnny.

  The dark side of humankind will recoil from the effect of two Bolans unleashed.

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Prologue

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  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Mack Bolan

  Resurrection Day

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Chet Cunningham for his contribution to this work.

  OCR Mysuli: denlib@tut.by

  "What do you hear from Johnny these days?" asked Turrin.

  Bolan's eyes brightened as he answered Turrin. "I hear he's doing great. Growing like a weed in that Big Sky country."

  "You're keeping wires on him, eh?"

  "Very loosely," Bolan explained. "I don't want to jeopardize his cover. And, uh, it's better this way. Give him a chance for a normal…"

  "Bull," said Turrin.

  "That the way you see it?"

  "Uh-huh. The kid idolizes you, Sarge. He'll never forget. And pretty soon he'll be at the age where he can make his own decisions. You'd better be thinking about that."

  "I have," Bolan admitted. "Maybe… after we've interred the bones of Mack Bolan once and for all… well… it'll be a new life. If Johnny wants, uh, let's just say I'll be looking through different eyes. And we'll wait and see.

  Executioner #37: Friday's Feast by Don Pendleton

  Prologue

  The valley was a natural grave.

  Silence echoed across the warm Sicilian hills. Under the branches of an olive tree, a swarthy man in his forties finished setting up a small wooden folding table and two chairs. He motioned to his wife, young enough to be his daughter, to place the picnic basket on the table.

  The air was heavy with the fragrance of wild thyme and myrtle in the late spring sunshine. The woman hoisted the basket onto the table and ran after the two-year-old boy who had started to wander off, chasing a butterfly.

  By the time she returned with the toddler, the man had the contents of the hamper spread out on the white tablecloth: cheese, crusty bread, a bottle of red wine and a six-inch prosciutti roll.

  The woman placed the child on her lap and watched adoringly as her husband began to slice the glazed pieces of preserved pork. The hard meat resisted the blade and the man leaned forward to exert more pressure into the cut.

  Blood splattered the cloth and the woman's mouth formed an O of concern, thinking her husband had chopped his finger with the knife.

  She couldn't make the connection between the other small pieces of flesh that now scattered onto the table as her husband's stomach erupted, and the sharp crack that rolled across the valley only seconds later.

  She screamed when her husband dropped onto the table, knocking the food and drink to the grass. In that instant she knew he was dead. She reached over to grab his shoulder, one hand still clutching the boy's arm, her eyes wildly seeking a place of refuge.

  And that's when the second slug drilled into the back of her skull, sending her sprawling across her husband's body.

  "Mama, mama," the child cried, uttering the only words he had ever learned, startled by the commotion. In his own innocent way, he sensed something was wrong.

  The third bullet cut off the boy's cry and lifted him six inches above the ground, blood gushing from a crater in his neck, his head almost torn from his shoulders. The impact hurled him along the meadow grass, and his body came to rest in a clump of myrtle.

  Then silence settled over the valley again, a faint gurgling from the tipped wine bottle the only sound.

  High on a ridge overlooking the valley, the killer stroked the still-warm barrel of his high-powered rifle. Then he dismantled the weapon, placed the parts carefully in their preformed receptacles in the case and snapped the lock shut.

  The usually white scar that ran down from his forehead dead center across his eye socket to his left cheek was splotched with red spots. As it always was when he was excited. Killing excited him.

  He picked up the slender case and stepped over some rocks as he made his way back to the white Lancia parked on a turnout of the winding mountain road.

  * * *

  Mack Bolan swore as he surveyed the scene in the valley through his binoculars. The growl of a car's engine fired him to action and he dashed toward the rented Alfa Romeo. In actual traveling time he reckoned he was at least ten minutes above the killer's spot on the road that spiraled tortuously down to the valley floor.

  The Executioner slid behind the wheel and cranked the ignition of the small Italian sports car. The eager machine shuddered in a sideways skid as the rear wheels hit rubble from a mountainside rockfall.

  Precious seconds slipped by and the Alfa seemed to stand still, then rubber bit the pavement and the little car shot forward on a straightaway, pebbles shooting out from below the tires into space over the sheer cliffs.

  Bolan took his hand from the gear stick and reached over to grab his binoculars. He had tossed them onto the passenger seat. He brought the glasses to his eyes after making sure there were no curves ahead.

  To his left the road snaked across a spur on the mountain and he saw the white Lancia racing away from him. In a moment the car would round a sharp bend and disappear from view.

  The vehicles were evenly matched in speed, the Executioner knew, and he hoped he could use some of his driving skills to gain on the killer who was eluding him once again.

  For a second, Bolan's mind flashed back to the massacre in the valley and he cursed the poor phone connection between the States and Italy.

  He'd been waiting for a call from Aaron Kurtzman, one of his last remaining links with Stony Man Farm, since early that morning, pacing the village hotel room and pounding a fist into his open palm.

  The warrior hated sitting around, waiting, if even for an important phone call.

  Bolan had flown to the Italian peninsula on the trail of Corrado Rienzone, the man assassinated with his wife and child only minutes before.

  Rienzone had lived in the U.S. since he was twenty. He had worked his way up to being a «made» man in one of the Chicago crime families. Ambitious as ever, he saw a way to become chief capo. And that's where he ran into trouble.

  Manny "The Mover" Marcello of San Diego and other ruling slimebuckets of the international network learned of Rienzone's scheme and he fell into disfavor, to put it mildly. He realized that his star had begun to fall and he would be marked for execution. So he «sang» to the authorities and promptly slipped out of sight with a suitcase full of money.

  By way of a circuitous route that took him to Venezuela and North Africa, Rienzone changed his appearance and bribed or paid his way to Italy — the last place he figured the Mafia would look for
him — and settled in a remote mountain hamlet in Sicily.

  He had left behind in the States a wife and two teenage children, hoping one day to somehow contact them and have them join him in Italy. But it was not to be.

  Through secret sources that he had developed in the village, he learned that the heat was on more than ever. So he continued to lie low for two years.

  But Rienzone needed a woman.

  One day he spotted an attractive young girl, barely more than a teenager, walking in the piazza. Unfamiliar with traditional Italian courting customs, he approached the girl and she, impressed by this man with an American accent, shyly welcomed his attentions.

  Rienzone found out where she lived and decided to talk to the girl's father.

  She was the sixth of ten children in a poor plasterer's family. At first, the girl's proud parent was reluctant to let his cherished Maria marry the older suitor, but when his eyes fell on the packet of lira notes that the stranger held, he agreed to the marriage.

  Bolan had learned some of the dead man's recent history from Kurtzman and had tracked Rienzone to the remote mountain village.

  In his probing of the evidence, the Executioner knew that vital links were missing from the information that Rienzone had spilled to the authorities; links that were vital to Bolan in his everlasting war against the Mafia, and that he felt he could extract from the informer.

  But a new twist was added when Bolan discovered that an assassin, a top hit man from Chicago called Daga, because the scar on his face resembled a dagger, was sent to Italy to eliminate Rienzone.

  The Executioner had followed Daga as far as the hillside ridge, but was too late to stop the killer from blowing away Rienzone. Bolan did not mind that the man had died. Violently. He had lived a violent life. But there was no reason to cut down the young woman and the child. As far as Bolan was concerned they were merely innocent bystanders.

  As he drove, the Executioner was consumed by raw fury, made ever more acute by his frustration at being able to coax no more speed out of the racing Alfa Romeo.

  * * *

  "Thank you for flying Alitalia," the stewardess said to the man with the dagger-shaped scar on his face who was about to enter the plane. He winked at her but did not reply as he made his way to the first-class cabin of the 747.

  Daga took a window seat and positioned himself with his back to the bulkhead, looking anxiously at the top of the stairway that led down to the economy section of the airliner.

  Someone had been following him on the mountain road, he was certain of it. On the hour-long drive downhill, he had caught three tiny flashes of sun on chrome in his rearview mirror. But he could not risk stopping to ambush the pursuer. He had timed his mission down to the final second; he had studied road maps of the region, speed limits and the schedule of flights out of Palermo.

  The tension began to leave Daga when he felt the big aircraft shudder and begin to move forward. He could hear the powerful engines revving as the plane picked up speed on its run down the tarmac. He watched the terminal buildings flash by, then felt the nose of the aircraft lifting as the forward landing gear left the ground, the screaming turbines pulling tons of metal into the sky.

  Minutes later Daga exhaled slowly and ordered a double whiskey, straight. No need to worry now. He'd be thousands of miles away in a few hours.

  The attractive flight attendant smiled at the man with the scar who had ordered the liquor. She felt uncomfortable under his scrutiny and self-consciously tugged at her skirt. Before she turned away, she noticed that small red splotches had begun to speckle the scar on the man's face.

  * * *

  Mack Bolan had just pulled into the parking lot of the international airport at Palermo when he saw the Alitalia jet roaring across the runway past the chain link fence.

  The Executioner slammed the door of the Alfa Romeo and dashed into the terminal building. He looked up and down the corridor, searching for the Italian air carrier's ticket counter. Finally he spotted the desk and began to move, dodging suitcases and tourists.

  He approached a young man fingering the keyboard of a computer terminal.

  "What's the final destination of the Alitalia flight that just left?"

  "Chicago, signore, via Madrid and New York."

  Bolan inquired about the arrival time in Chicago, then purchased a ticket on a direct flight there. It left an hour later and would arrive at O'Hare well before the Alitalia flight.

  He walked a few desks down the corridor to the car rental agency, then chose a seat from a row of chairs.

  He settled down for the forty-five minute wait.

  * * *

  Mack Bolan adjusted his photosensitive sunglasses and fingered the scratchy false mustache as he waited behind a pillar outside the customs area at O'Hare Airport in Chicago.

  He had passed through the immigration section with false papers an hour and a half before, having learned from a stewardess on the plane the precise exit Daga would use on his arrival at O'Hare. If Daga had continued on from New York to Chicago, which Bolan, knowing what was going down in Chicago, guessed he would.

  From what Bolan could guess, half the passengers from the first Alitalia flight had cleared customs already. Still there was no sign of the killer. Could he have stopped off in Madrid?

  Then the Executioner saw him. There was no mistaking the scar. The man carried a slender elongated suitcase.

  The assassin looked up and saw a big man in dark clothes start to move toward him.

  Bolan noticed a fleeting frown cross the killer's face. The guy pushed an elderly couple out of the way and scaled the stainless-steel railing, heading for the main exit door of the terminal building.

  Bolan had made a quick recon of the area, prepared for such a move. The automatic sliding doors had just clicked shut when Bolan saw the man drag the driver of a waiting taxi from behind the wheel. Then Daga slipped into the cab and roared out of there, barely missing some pedestrians on a crosswalk.

  Bolan flagged the next hack in line, ran around the car and wrenched open the driver's door.

  "Slide over, buddy," Bolan growled to the young black man.

  "Say what?" the cabby yelled.

  "Enjoy the ride, no questions," Bolan said icily, and gave the guy a look that sent him cowering against the passenger door.

  It was evening and Bolan could see the taillights of the receding taxi winking as Daga wove in and out of the heavy airport traffic. The Executioner realized the man would be in the downtown area in minutes. And it would be like hell to find him then.

  The warrior looked at the black cabby.

  "I need a shortcut, guy, with few lights. I need to intercept that car," Bolan said, pointing to Daga's taxi.

  "Sure, man. Anything you say," the black replied, only too happy to help, so he could get his car back and save any explanations to the dispatcher later on.

  He gave the Executioner the instructions and Bolan gunned the ponderous vehicle in a sharp left turn down a couple of alleys, then to the right, parallel to the main artery the fleeing killer was traveling on.

  "Hang a right here, blood," the black squeaked. "We'll catch him at the next intersection."

  Bolan spared a glance at the youth next to him and couldn't help but smile as he realized the guy was caught up in the excitement of the chase. He was leaning forward now, both hands gripping the dashboard, his nose almost to the windshield. Bolan hoped he wouldn't have to stop too suddenly.

  The Executioner trod on the gas and the car surged into the junction. Then he stood on the brake and the cab slid to a halt facing the oncoming traffic. Car horns started blaring, but Bolan ignored them as he spotted the lighted sign on the taxi coming toward them.

  The big guy pulled a handful of bills from his pocket and dropped them on the seat next to the black taxi driver.

  "Get out of here," he commanded, wrenching his door open and hitting the pavement in a shoulder roll.

  Bolan heard the cab burn rubber as he came out
of the roll in a wide-legged combat stance, dead center in the intersection. The Beretta 93-R had cleared leather and was now pointing straight at the oncoming taxi.

  Pedestrians stopped to gawk at the imposing figure in black on the city street, aiming a handgun at something or someone.

  The Executioner let them watch as he flicked the Beretta to 3-shot mode, triggering a burst, then another, emptying the weapon at the windshield of the approaching car.

  After the first burst he saw the driver's hands fly off the steering wheel, but still the car kept coming toward him. It was almost upon him and he leaped out of the way in time, and as the vehicle swept past him, he caught a glimpse of the scar, harsh in the streetlight, the driver's head lolling lifelessly against the window.

  The taxi continued on, sideswiping a line of parked vehicles before it came to a stop.

  People were shouting and running toward the stricken taxi. Hardly anyone paid attention to the big man now and Bolan used the time to make a quick withdrawal, melding into the night.

  The warrior walked away from there, pausing only once to look back, the babble of voices diminishing as he strode into the heart of the city.

  The big man walked tall, in lockstep with Death as the reaper prowled the city this night. Grim and mean, it held its secrets secure, offering up nothing.

  The nooks and crannies of the city writhed with menace, its denizens snapping out at innocents, sometimes going hungry. But no matter. Next time there'd be reward — perhaps a life.

  Skeletal fingers beckon from the gloom, whispering promises of narcotic nirvana. Death's head grins when the weak submit, but grimaces if the strong resist.

  Shadows in motion on a wall play out a ghastly scene as upraised arm, clutching some instrument of death, plunges down between unsuspecting shoulder blades. A mercy cry echoes along the city's labyrinth, beseeching help, but the plea falls on deaf ears, ending in a gurgle, finally swallowed up by an unrelenting city.