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  “I wonder what about Franky Lucky,” Bonelli fretted, perhaps only to change the subject.

  “What is this Franky Lucky?” Pena snorted. “Some kinda goddam greaser golden boy?”

  “Watch it,” Willie Walker suggested in a low voice, his eyes shifting meaningfully to Harold the Greaser.

  Pena laughed. “Aw hell, Willie, Harold ain’t sensitive about being foreign born. Are you, Harold?”

  Harold muttered something unintelligible and laughed. Pena laughed with him, although obviously he did not understand the comment. “Everybody’s happy today,” Pena observed.

  “Except maybe Franky Lucky,” Walker said. “Now Lou … this guy is as cold as a fish. And you were about right, he’s a golden boy, at least as far as Deej is concerned. And he’s got his contract. And Deej says we’ll just have to avoid him the best we can until he calls in or comes in. And the way Deej talked, this boy ain’t going to be listening to anything we might have to say. He’s going to shoot first and save the polite conversation for after.”

  “Didn’t you say he’s handling the hit personally?” Pena asked thoughtfully.

  “This guy’s a loner, Lou,” Bonelli piped up. “They tell me he never takes no one along.”

  “Well hell, there’s six of us, ain’t there?” Pena said. “Anyway, he’s not gonna be gunning for us between here’n home. Is he? What the hell are you worried about?”

  The wheelman glanced over his shoulder and said, “Don’t Franky Lucky wheel a blue sleek Mercedes?”

  “Yeah, some kind of hot wheels,” Walker replied. “Why?”

  Tommy Edsel’s head was now wagging to and fro as his eyes moved rapidly from his own route to a winding road descending from the hills to their right. “I bet that’s him,” he said ominously.

  All eyes turned to the mountain road, about a quarter-mile distant. “You sure got better eyes than me, Tommy,” Pena said, squinting with his forehead pressed against the window.

  “Just keep looking,” Tommy Edsel replied, his head still wagging rhythmically. “He’s in and out. Look for a flash of blue. There! Did you see? Shit, man, that’s him, that’s Franky Lucky! And is he wheeling!”

  As alarmed sounds rose up around him, Pena braked, “Awright awright, settle down. If it’s him, and it probably ain’t, just remember there’s one of him and six of us. He ain’t likely to try nothing. He’ll trail along and wait for a chance. He ain’t gonna highway duel us, that’s for damn sure.”

  “With Franky Lucky,” Walker said worriedly, “nothing’s for damn sure.”

  “Where do these roads come together?” Pena asked. He wet his lips nervously, affected by his companions’ alarm.

  “Just around this next curve,” Tommy Edsel reported, “where the highway turns back toward the hills.”

  “Well dammit, you gotta beat him there!” Pena exclaimed.

  “Dammit don’t think I’m not trying,” the wheelman replied, grunting with exitement. “But this boltpile sure as hell ain’t no Mercedes!”

  Pena and Walker were lowering their windows and the others were squirming about in the tight space trying to get their weapons ready.

  “Just watch where you’re shooting!” Pena yelled. “You guys onna other side be careful!”

  Bolan had recognized the big Mafia vehicle at almost the same instant he had been spotted by Tommy Edsel. His visibility from the mountainside was unrestricted and gave him a panoramic sweep of the flatlands from the south horizon to the north. No other vehicles were in view; indeed, there was nothing but desolation for as far as the eye could see. He ran a quick mental triangulation on the speeding vehicles and smiled grimly at the incredibly perfect timing of his gamble. He would beat them to the junction by perhaps ten seconds; it would be ten seconds enough. The precision driving required to traverse the winding mountain road at such speeds had taken the full use of all his faculties, both mental and physical. There had been little left of Mack Bolan to mull over the unspeakable atrocity he had left behind at Palm Village … and just as well. Beneath his peaking consciousness lurked a consuming rage such as this normally unemotional man had never experienced. His executions of the past had always been performed with a cool detachment, his combat-trained instincts dominating and guiding the actions of the mission. Never before had Bolan stepped forward with rage governing his performance, not even while avenging the deaths of his own father, mother, and sister. But that rage was there now, just below the surface. It was about to erupt … and, with it, the full potency and ferocity of the Executioner.

  Chapter Twenty

  BETWEEN HORIZONS

  The Mercedes slid to a halt at the intersection with screaming rubber. Bolan was outside and standing alongside almost before the forward motion was halted. He tossed his pistols to the shoulder of the road and quickly leaned back into the vehicle, depressing the clutch with one hand and shifting into low gear with the other. Then he ripped the rubber accelerator peddle away and forced the rod to full depression, wedging it into the hold of the floorboard. The big engine was screaming in full idle, reminding Bolan of a jet engine run-up. He dropped to his knees on the roadway, shifted his right hand over to the clutch pedal, and held the door with his left. He knew that he had to depend entirely upon visibility; he would not be able to hear the approach of the other vehicle through the whine of his own engine. His visibility extended for about three carlengths beyond the intersection; both reflexes and timing would have to be perfect.

  Then came the flash of motion at the edge of vision, and he was lunging clear of the Mercedes, allowing his own bodily motion to jerk his hand free of the clutch pedal. The powerful vehicle leapt forward like an arrow from a bow, the slamming door missing Bolan’s shoulder by a hair, and Bolan completed his roll with both pistols in his fists.

  “We’ve beat him!” Pena yelled triumphantly.

  “We better had!” Tommy Edsel cried. “At a hunnert’n ten I ain’t stoppin’ nowhere soon!”

  And then they were flashing into the intersection and catching first glimpse of the blue sports car nestled just outside the junction on the intersecting road. For a startled instant Pena wondered what the guy was doing on his knees beside the car; another microsecond and his finger was tightening on the trigger of his gun even as wheelman Tommy Edsel’s reflexes began deciding to brake and turn.

  The blue lightning bolt proved faster than Tommy Edsel’s reflexes, however, and his foot was still heavy on the accelerator when the other car leapt into the intersection with a powering screech.

  Willie Walker screamed, “Look out …!” just as the Mercedes crunched against the right front fender in a grinding impact of protesting metal and showering glass. The velocity of the heavier car swung the Mercedes into a centrifugal tailspin, almost welding it to the side of the Mafia vehicle in another shattering impact. Willie Walker was thrown over Bonelli’s head and rag-dolled into the windshield almost directly in front of Tommy Edsel. Harold the Greaser screamed something in Italian as Capistrano and Pena descended on him.

  Expert wheelman Tommy Edsel fought the crazily spinning motion of the paired vehicles for another microsecond, and then the Mercedes was falling away, leaving the larger car to plunge on alone. The rear wheels moved out in front, jumped the shoulder, and then they were shuddering into soft sand and the big car was heeling over and going into its first roll.

  Bolan had only a momentary glimpse of contorted faces and two protruding gun arms and then the two cars were together and moving away from him in a spinning plunge along the main road. He ran along in pursuit but was far behind even before the Mercedes dropped away and spun off into the scrubby desert. It seemed to be happening in slow motion, with the big vehicle coming around in a gentle swing and leaving the highway several hundred feet beyond. Its rear wheels slid gracefully onto the sand, dug in, and the heavy car began rolling sideways in a wide arc back toward the intersection, disgorging curiously flopping bodies along the way. Bolan counted six rolls before the journey ended in a
wheels-up settling of mangled metal.

  Tommy Edsel was still clutching the collapsed steering wheel when Bolan reached the wreckage. Blood was oozing from both corners of his mouth as he hung there in the seat belt. The entire front seat had moved forward; Tommy’s chest had apparently been crushed by the steering wheel, but he turned his head and gave Bolan a glazed, upside down stare. Bolan shot him once between the eyes and moved around to the other side of the inverted automobile.

  Bonelli was twisted into a caved-in section of the roof, partially pulped and obviously dead. Bolan wrestled his head clear, just the same, and shot him between the eyes. Then he began the back track of strewn bodies.

  Willie Walker was the nearest. Part of his head was missing and the legs were bent into an impossible configuration under his back; Bolan had to settle for a bullet between where the eyes had been.

  Harold the Greaser Schiaperelli was next. He was partially decapitated and one hand was missing. Bolan drilled another hole between the gaping eyes.

  Mario Capistrano lay on his side in the sand. He was weeping and contemplating a number of jagged ribs which protruded from his side. Bolan rolled him face up, said, “Close your eyes,” and promptly gave him a third one which could not be closed.

  Lou Pena was on his knees, watching Bolan’s advance. His right arm was missing, from the elbow down. The nose was smashed and two teeth protruded through his lower lip. In a strangely quacking Donald Duck voice, he said, “I got it. I got Bolan’s head.”

  “Do tell,” Bolan said, and shot him between the eyes. He caught the torn body as it toppled forward and felt through the pockets, finding Brantzen’s sketch next to Pena’s heart.

  Bolan struck a match and held the flame under the sketch, turning it carefully to insure an even burn. Then he scattered the ashes in a fine powder across the sands as he retraced his steps to the roadway. He returned to the Mercedes, looked it over, and wrote it off. He opened the gas tank and encouraged a flow across the parched land until he was a safe distance removed, then he struck another match and touched it to the spillage.

  The flames raced quickly along the gasoline trail. Bolan was already trudging toward the Palm Springs and did not even look back when the explosion came. A terrible force was afoot in the land, he was thinking, when a man like Jim Brantzen could be reduced to a mound of mutilated meat by the likes of that back there.

  And there were more, like those back there, up there across that horizon. Mack Bolan’s new horizon had never been closer, nor more passionately sought. Death on the hoof was moving toward Palm Springs.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE SQUEEZE

  The sun was approaching the high point in the sky when Bolan staggered into Palm Springs, picked up a taxi, and went on to his hotel. The desk clerk gaped at this appearance and said, “Did you have an accident, Mr. Lambretta?”

  “I lost my car,” Bolan told him. “Get me another one just like it, will you.”

  The clerk’s chin dropped another inch. “Yes sir,” he replied crisply.

  “Send up a couple of buckets of ice.”

  “Yes sir, and the liquids that go with it?”

  “Just the ice,” Bolan said tiredly. “I’ll need the car in an hour.” He swung about and wobbled toward the elevator.

  “Uh, Mr. Lambretta, we might have to compromise a bit on the color. The Mercedes, I mean.”

  “I said just like it,” Bolan snapped back. He went on up to his room, stripped off the sweat-soaked clothing, and moved immediately to the bath. Shocked by his own dust-streaked image in the mirror, he scowled at the still strange mask of Frank Lambretta, stepped into the shower, and luxuriated there for several minutes, frequently raising his face into the spray to suck the water into the parched membranes of his mouth and throat.

  Two small plastic containers of crushed ice were on the dressing table when he returned to the bedroom. The dust- and sweat-encased clothing had been removed; his revolvers lay on the bed beside a layout of fresh underwear.

  Bolan got into the underwear and stuffed a small snowball into his mouth, then reached for the telephone and called the unlisted number in DiGeorge’s study. Phil Marasco’s voice broke into the first ring. “Yes?” he said softly.

  “This is Frank,” Bolan said. “Tell Deej that order’s been filled.”

  A short pause, then: “Okay, Franky, I’ll tell him. Where are you?”

  “At the hotel. I’m beat. I’ll be in pretty soon.”

  Bolan could hear DiGeorge’s quiet rumble in the background but could not distinguish the words. Marasco said, “Deej wants to know about the picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “The subject was supposedly carrying a surgeon’s sketch of another interesting subject. Do you have it?”

  “Of course not,” Bolan snorted. “I don’t go around collecting souvenirs.”

  Another background rumble, then: “He wants to know where you left that contract.”

  “Where the mountain meets the desert,” Bolan reported cryptically, “and where one subject might wait for another.”

  “Okay, I got that. Deej says come home as soon as possible.”

  “Tell Deej I took a five-mile stroll in the sun. Tell him I’ll be home when I can forget that.”

  Marasco chuckled. “Okay, Franky, I’ll tell him. Get yourself rested, then come on out. There’s things you should know about.”

  “I’ll be there,” Bolan said. He hung up, stared at the floor for a moment, then opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, lit one, and stretched out across the bed.

  “Yes, I’ll be there,” he repeated in a dull monotone, speaking to himself. “With bells.”

  Philip Marasco led the search party out the little-travelled desert blacktop which links Palm Springs and Palm Village. Two cars, each carrying five men, made the short trip to the crossroads and found the scene of Franky Lucky’s “hit” with no difficulty whatever.

  The ten Mafiosi ran excitedly about the scene of action, poking, pointing, and animatedly reconstructing the details. Marasco searched each body thoroughly, went over the vehicle with precision, then arranged his troops at arm’s-length intervals for a wide scrutiny along the entire length of the death car’s travel.

  Returning to the villa, Marasco dolefully reported to his Capo, “If Lou had a sketch, he must’ve ate it. And you should see the mess this Franky Lucky made of those boys. I never saw nothing like it.”

  “It don’t make sense that he had no sketch,” DiGeorge argued fretfully. “He had to have something up his sleeve or he wouldn’t have been beating it back here. I guess there was nothing left alive, eh?”

  “Not hardly,” Marasco replied, shuddering. “There wasn’t hardly anything left even whole. I never saw such a mess. This Franky Lucky is a mean contractor. And let me tell you, Deej, he don’t mess around on a hit. Remember those six-to-one odds we was talking about last night?”

  DiGeorge soberly nodded his head. “Didn’t mean much, eh?”

  “It wouldn’t have meant anything at twelve to one, Deej. I tell you, when this Franky Lucky does find himself a piece of that Bolan, I want to be around to see what happens.”

  DiGeorge was staring thoughtfully into empty space. He noisily cleared his throat and said, “I wonder if you’ve thought of something, Phil. I wonder if you realize that someone has been playing games with old Deej.”

  Marasco inspected his Capo’s face, found no clue to his thoughts, and replied, “What kind of games, Deej?”

  “What was it Franky Lucky was telling me about this fight he had with Bolan? He said he saw Bolan down at the corners, and he recognized him, and they shot it out. And this was just a few days after Bolan ducked us over at th’ Village. Right?”

  “Yeah.” Marasco was chewing the thought. “But I…” His eyes widened and he said, “Whuup! Willie Walker says on the phone that Bolan got his face carved the day of the hit.”

  “That’s just what I been thinking, Philip Honey,” DiGeorge mused
. “Now somebody has got a story crossed. I wonder who?”

  “Why would Franky want to cross you up, Deej?”

  “That’s what I have to wonder about, Phil. We’re just saying if, now. If Screwy Looey was telling it straight. Have you ever caught Lou in a lie, Phil? I mean ever? An important lie?”

  Marasco was thinking about it. He shook his head and replied, “I don’t believe Lou ever gave you anything but a straight lip, Deej. But we got to remember one thing. Lou could have thought he had something. Maybe someone else wanted him to think that.”

  “You ever know any boys that got face jobs, Phil?”

  “Yeah. It used to be the fashion back East.”

  “How long before they’re out of bandages?”

  “Oh, two or three weeks.”

  DiGeorge grunted. “And the boys I knew, they went around with puss pockets and Band-Aids for sometimes a month after that. It’s a messy thing, this face job.”

  “They’re even moving hearts around from body to body now, Deej. Maybe they got better ways to give face jobs now, too.”

  “I want somebody to find out about that,” DiGeorge commanded.

  “Sure, Deej.”

  “Meanwhile, Franky Lucky is right back in probate. If Bolan did get a face job, Franky didn’t see him at no desert corners a few days later, no matter how fancy they get with face jobs. There’s only one of two ways, saying that Bolan did get carved. He either saw him in bandages, or he saw him wearing the new face. Now that’s plain, ain’t it? Franky Lucky could not have recognized Bolan three days after a face job!”

  “That’s a fact, Deej,” Marasco said. He appeared to be slightly out of breath. “Saying, of course, that Lou had the straight lip, then Franky Lucky has been using a curved one.”

  DiGeorge sighed. “That’s a fact, Philip Honey.” He sighed again. “You say the boy shoots a hard hit, eh?”