Canadian Crisis Read online

Apparently there did exist a communications problem, however. Excited voices were raised in several languages all along that hallway—and no one seemed to understand what was happening.

  A bald-headed guy in a bathrobe must have decided that the building was on fire, and was loudly wondering, in strongly accented French, as to the whereabouts of the fire escape. “Où estl’escalier de secours? Ay? Ay? L’escalier?”

  Attica was yelling, “No, no, it’s okay! Go back to bed! Routine—” when a door halfway along the east side banged open and a guy came backpedaling out of there with a gun in his hand and blasting like crazy at something inside the room.

  The crew chief from Syracuse had already begun regretting his hasty approach to the security check—he’d only panicked the whole damn floor and now here was a guy going crazy with a gun. Before that idea was wholly formed in Attica’s reeling mind, however, another one leapt in to replace it—and this one needed no time for formation. The head of that crazy guy down there suddenly went off in several directions at once—flinging parts of itself in a spray onto the wall like an overripe melon falling from a truck. And even before that body could hit the deck, another came sliding out of the same room with a gun in its hand and a gushing hole where its nose had been.

  With all that to occupy his mind, Attica was still able to appreciate the sudden silence in that hallway and to reflect for perhaps one heartbeat upon the effect of gunfire on a panicky crowd.

  Every man Jack in that hall was packing hardware, most of them waving their guns around like cheerleaders with pompons.

  Two dead men were lying in their own fluids on that hallway floor. Twenty or thirty guys with guns in their hands were just standing there gawking at the mess. Only Georgie Corona and Sam Paoli seemed to have any presence of mind. They were returning from the opposite end of the building, shoving people back through their open doorways and clearing that hall as rapidly as possible.

  Elapsed time from the first bloodspray: perhaps ten seconds. Attica himself had just found his own voice, calling to the floormen on the east end: “Watch it, boys, watch it. We got something here.”

  The “guests” on that end were getting the idea also. They were quietly easing back to their rooms and peering through cracked doors to cautiously evaluate the situation.

  The floormen had reached the death scene and were tentatively poking at the bodies with their feet. One of them called to Attica: “I see another one inside, boss. Just like these.”

  Georgie and Sam joined their boss at the midpoint as Attica was calling instructions to the other tow: “Leave ’em be. Stay right there but get back away from that door.”

  Elapsed time: about twenty seconds.

  Corona said, “It couldn’t be, could it?”

  “Sure it could,” Attica snarled.

  “Clear from the third floor?”

  “Don’t ask how, dammit. If he’s here, he’s here—and we want to keep it that way. Get those two boys into the rooms next door. They watch that window, understand? Anything trying to come through it gets sieved. Understand? Then you and Sam take ’im through the front. I’ll stick here and backdrop the whole thing.”

  Corona and Paoli exchanged uneasy glances, then moved on to the combat zone.

  The floormen split up and entered the rooms to either side of the death room.

  The other two hardmen took positions outside the door, pistols up and ready. Paoli slipped inside, then Corona. At that precise moment, the door directly opposite opened and something fell to the floor of the hallway—a small stick-like object. Attica’s mind leapt at that object and simultaneously the object leapt at Attica, sending a dense black cloud spiraling along the hallway.

  Smoke!

  The crew boss screamed a warning to his hardmen and flung himself back along the wall in a quick retreat while his thought processes strained at the impossibility of one guy being two places at one moment.

  So this was how the guy got his reputation.

  No wonder hardened veterans of the savage streets turned tail and ran from a guy like that. He was just too stunning, too tricky, too damned deadly—and Larry Attica, the ambitious third-ranker from Syracuse, was very suddenly running out of ambition.

  He was also running out of people.

  Sam Paoli was the first to fall clear of that burgeoning smoke screen, and he came out of there as though shot from a gun. The truth was that he had been shot by a gun—one vicious hell of a gun, to judge by the hole in Sammy’s head and by the force of the dive that kept him rolling along that floor like a ball off its string. A silenced gun with a chilling choong was its only voice. Then, dammit, it choonged again as a steel-wire voice somewhere back in there clearly stated in tones of mild regret: “Sorry, Georgie.”

  Sorry, Georgie—sure, that could mean only one thing—no more Georgie—and unambitious Larry Attica was headed for the stairway door, posthaste.

  There was something about that voice—familiar but also unfamiliar—different but not different—different from what?

  The fleeing crew boss snapped off two shots into the approaching smoke screen and stepped clear, into the stairwell. He had only a glimpse through the octagonal glass panel of the deadly dude in black who was moving along within that screen, the eyes protected by goggles, a big silver blaster in one hand and a bulb-tipped zinger in the other. The guy was firing both pieces at once, sending a withering fusillade along that hall and tearing into walls and doors with the crack of a dozen axes all going at once.

  A few people at the other end were apparently sending back halfhearted responses but the guy moved on past the stairwell door without pause.

  Larry Attica crossed himself and started up the stairs. In his haste, he lost his footing and fell forward onto the steps. His pistol accidentally discharged to send a bullet ricocheting around the steel stairwell as he raised himself to all fours and scampered on to the safety of numbers upstairs. Then the thought crashed into his mind that he had sent all the boys below—all but the roofmen and Little Al.

  There was comfort enough in those numbers, however, and he was reaching for it with everything he had when that door down there crashed open and a puff of smoke entered the stairwell.

  That was not, of course, all that entered.

  The guy was there, looking up at him over those smoking guns. The goggles were now riding the forehead and those unmasked eyes were giving Larry Attica the requiem gaze.

  The crew master from Syracuse was too stunned to even lift his gun. “You!” he croaked in a shocked whisper, and that was his last word.

  “Sorry, Larry,” said the man in black, and then that big silver pistol belched like a blowhole from hell and sent Larry Attica’s skyrocket to lift him to his final honor.

  It carried him up a couple of steps, then over the rail in a plunge to the depths—as some skyrockets are wont to do.

  “You earned this, guy,” the man in black said solemnly as he flipped a marksman’s medal into the wake of that plunging body.

  Yeah. It was the final honor for a hardworking torpedo: the Unholy Order of Corpus Delicti.

  It was an honor that he would share with many, on this night of nights.

  The Montreal Meet would convene in hell.

  18: SIX PACK

  It was obvious to Leo Turrin that the whole joint was going to hell in a hurry.

  Two guys, in the last few minutes, had jumped from high windows and another half-dozen or so had been shot off of fire escapes. Smoke was pouring out of windows from the twelfth floor to the fifteenth. Obviously someone had turned in a fire alarm—sirens were screaming in from all directions and the streets down there were rapidly filling with people.

  The guys on the roof were getting edgy as hell—and with good reason. It could be a bad place to be, with the joint on fire.

  Turrin found the roof chief and told him, “Use your own head, guy. Take your boys off of here any time you think it’s right.”

  “Are you leaving, Mr. Turrin?” the guy wanted
to know.

  “Yeah. I got to go see what’s happening down there.”

  The roof chief pulled at his chin as he thought it over. “I guess we can hang loose awhile longer. Mr. Attica said stay. We’ll stay as long as we can.”

  Turrin gave the guy an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder and went on toward the apartment. He found a dark spot on the terrance and stepped into it, dug a small transistor radio from his pocket, popped in a miniature earphone, and pushed the call button.

  Hal Brognola’s agitated tones leapt right back at him. “I was beginning to think you’d never speak. What the hell is that guy doing? There was nothing said about torching the joint.”

  Turrin replied, “I think he’s just making smoke. Where are you?”

  “Right under you. I can’t control this situation much longer, pal. They’re wanting to come in.”

  “Hold them as long as possible,” Turrin requested. “Tell them anything but give them nothing.”

  Brognola growled back, “That’s easy to say from where you’re standing. Okay. I’ll twist all the arms I can.”

  Turrin put the radio away and went inside.

  Al DeCristi jumped out from behind a drapery with a snarling challenge. “What the hell are you doing, Turrin?”

  He looked the guy up and down and told him “That’s Mister Turrin to you, DeCristi. What’s the matter with you?”

  “You was using a radio. I saw you.”

  “Go suck a fart, guy,” Turrin coldly replied. “I’ll use a TV and a string band if I get the notion, and I won’t be coming to you for permission.”

  He walked on, ignoring the pistol in the little bodyguard’s hand. The guy had tipped his rocker, that was sure—but Turrin knew how to handle a guy like that.

  Maybe.

  “Mr. Turrin!”

  He halted and turned a profile to the guy. “Yeah?”

  “The hotel is burning.”

  “Thanks for the news. I’ll give it first spot on my next radio broadcast.”

  “What do I do with him?”

  Meaning, of course, the remains of Jumping Joe Staccio.

  “You mean it,” Turrin replied cruelly. “Don’t lose your head over a stiff, Al. Get out of here. Joe don’t need you anymore.”

  He went on, through the glass doors and into the vestibule. He tossed a quick look over his shoulder as he exited, but there was no sign of the little guy.

  Turrin shook his head and then dismissed the whole thing from his mind. He debated briefly between the elevator and the stairs and quickly decided in favor of the hard way, deciding that it was probably the only way.

  He entered the stairwell to pandemonium. Fast feet and excited talk rose up to him from every level as alarmed men moved energetically along that exit.

  The panic was in and the rout was on.

  Leo Turrin had been a first-hand observer on many a scene such as this. It seemed that when Mack Bolan moved, the whole world moved with him—or away from him.

  Not a bad idea, at that.

  The guy was mean enough when his situation was merely untenable. When it became impossible, Mack Bolan became downright formidable—and, yeah, even “the impossible” moved over and made room for Mr. Blitz.

  It required a full five minutes for Turrin to make his way from the penthouse to the fifth floor—and the going became tougher with each level passed. Guys were pushing and cussing each other in the wild scramble to quit that turf—and Leo himself had to backhand a couple of Europeans who were showing too little respect for his place on the stairway.

  The smoke was puffing through as low as the eighth-floor level by the time Turrin passed that point, so he knew that the big guy was still plying his trade and fanning the flames of panic. The underboss from Pittsfield did not exactly understand the rationale of that but he’d quit arguing with Bolan’s tactics long ago. The guy knew what he was doing and—bet on it—he was doing it all towards a coldly calculated effect.

  Turrin had to knee a guy to get through that fifth-floor doorway. He was definitely bucking the flow of traffic but if things seemed bad here, he was trying to visualize the crush-effect down in the lobby … with all exits barred and the streets outside knee-deep in Montreal cops.

  He finally got it into the suite shared with “Ruggi” and lost no time cranking into the hotline to Ottawa.

  One of Brognola’s agents took the call.

  “What’s the situation there, Pointer?” the guy asked with no social preamble whatever.

  “Very tense,” Leo the Pointer Turrin told the guy from Justice Washington. “Your boss is down in the street trying to hold back the dam of outraged police ethics. I think it’s a losing battle, though, and the dam is liable to break at any moment. Meanwhile, out in the lake, the fishes are biting at everything. Striker has them falling over each other’s asses and even trying to climb up them. The rout is definitely on but I’d say we need, at the inside, another half hour to realize a clean sweep. What’s the word from the other side?”

  “Grim,” was the one-word response.

  “You’d better give it to me.”

  The man from Washington sent a harsh sigh along that hotline. “The decision came down an hour ago from the PM’s office. Ottawa will cooperate fully.”

  “So what’s grim?” Turrin growled.

  “Grim is the confrontation now shaping up between Ottawa and Montreal. I understand that the leaders of Parti Quebeçois are in emergency caucus at this very moment. Their radicals apparently view the entire thing as a conspiracy to violate Quebec’s sovereignty. As of this moment, the PM does not have any emergency powers to throw at them, but—”

  “I didn’t think the provinces had sovereignty,” Turrin said.

  “Maybe it depends on the point of view. It isn’t so much a legal question, anyway—it’s a political one—and that’s been a hot area between Ottawa and Montreal for some time, or hadn’t you noticed.”

  “Give me the bottom line,” Turrin said, sighing.

  “Ottawa is backing down. Wavering, anyway. It is entirely a police matter, some advisers are now saying, and therefore entirely within the jurisdiction of Montreal to handle.”

  “Sure,” growled the man from Pittsfield. “This is crazy, Bender, and you know it. You call it politics, I’ll call it the international clout machine. This whole damn town is liable to go up in flames before morning. Whose jurisdiction will it be then?”

  “Hey, look, man—calm down. I can’t send Her Majesty’s troops into that province. Nobody can do that but—”

  Turrin growled, “Yeah, yeah!” and flung the phone down.

  He turned around just in time to see the Man from Blood step through the wall.

  The guy looked like twenty hells.

  He smelled of gunpowder and spent human blood and he bore liberally the telltale marks of both. He’d taken a minor graze wound at the left shoulder and another beneath the ribs. Ammo pockets on the belts as well as utility pouches everywhere gaped empty and useless. He was favoring the left leg and moving slower than Leo Turrin had ever noted as he moved on into the room.

  Bolan went straight to the bathroom, drew a glass of water, and slowly downed it before acknowledging the presence of his old buddy and fellow survivor of many such campaigns.

  “What’s the lie, Leo?” he quietly inquired.

  “Panic in the anthill,” Turrin reported soberly. “What’s yours?”

  “Fatigue in the bones and combat weary all over the body. What’s happening?”

  The little guy from the knife’s edge wet a washcloth and began dabbing at his friend’s scratches. “It’s hard to say what’s happening,” he replied. “General consensus has the building on fire. Human nature has several hundred bodies swarming the stairways and piling up in the lobbies, scratching for a way out. A thousand cops are on the street and two or three fire companies are adding to the general confusion. Ottawa says Montreal is in an emergency situation while Montreal says that Ottawa should stick the queen
up their ass. I don’t know what the hell is happening, Sarge. Maybe you better tell me.”

  Bolan pushed the fussing ministrations away and told the nation’s top undercover cop: “Scratch Naples. Scratch Zurich. Ditto Berlin and Frankfurt with a question mark for Marseilles and Paris. I split the delegation from Brazil and I took a couple from Tokyo. Beyond that, hell, I don’t know. The thing just got too wild. How do you call shots in a stampede?”

  “How many rounds were you carrying, Sarge?” the little guy quietly inquired.

  “Six clips of thunder, six of whisper,” Bolan replied matter-of-factly, the voice practically a monotone.

  Turrin did a quick interpolation and winced with the result. The guy was a phenomenal marksman and a genuine miser with combat rounds. A round spent was usually a life spent, as well.

  “Was that you, plunking at the fire escapes?” he asked quietly.

  “That’s where I caught the crew from Brazil,” the warrior said. He went to the closet and tiredly dragged out a suitcase, opened it, and began replenishing for his war effort.

  Turrin watched in disbelief for a quiet moment, then inquired, “Now what the hell are you doing?”

  “Blitzing,” was the simple reply.

  “That’s what you did, buddy. What you’re doing now is withdrawing. Quick and clean. Leave the rest for the scavenger crews.”

  “The clout machine is too strong here for that and you know it,” the big guy declared matter-of-factly. “They’re foreign nationals. The harshest thing they might get is an order to leave the country. And they’ll laugh all the way home. Once they’ve settled their nerves, the same clowns will be back with the same hungry plans. If not here, somewhere else. I’m not going to give them that, Leo.”

  “There’s too damned many, Sarge.” Turrin was pleading, now. “You can’t carry that many bullets.”

  The big tired guy in black showed his friend a tight smile and told him, “Relax, guy—I haven’t slipped off the edge. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Well how ’bout letting me know.”

  The smile stayed. “How many cops did you say are down there?”

  “Hell, it looks like a thousand. Probably a hundred or so, anyway. Why?”