Hard Targets Read online

  Dizzy with fear and anger—mostly at herself—she rounded on the nearest gunman, clawing at his startled face.

  * * *

  JOHNNY SAW THE strike coming and couldn’t believe it. They were so close, seemed to have a decent chance of making it, then Zoe spun and lashed out at the mafioso on her left, her nails raking bloody furrows down his cheek.

  The guy growled, flinched from her and struck back in an instant, clubbing Zoe with the hand that clutched a sawed-off 12-gauge pump shotgun. Johnny was bringing up his autorifle when Joe Borgio barked out, “Fuck this!” and bolted for the nearest entrance to the theater.

  And just like that, it went to hell.

  Johnny shot Borgio on the run, one 5.56 mm NATO round that drilled a pinhole in his back, left of the spine, then tumbled through his guts and blew out through his navel with a fist-size exit wound. The underboss let out a squeal, hit the pavement and began a crazy, broken crawl that looked like swimming, but the only liquid anywhere in sight was Borgio’s own blood trail.

  Forget him.

  Johnny swiveled toward the escort team, in time to see one of them literally lose his head. It ruptured—make that detonated—like a melon with a cherry bomb inside, but without any sound of an explosion, just a huge wet splat, as blood and mangled brains flew everywhere. The echo of a gunshot came to Johnny’s ears a second later, rolling toward the theater from somewhere in the woods beyond.

  The Barrett, right.

  Johnny was firing then, before his enemies recovered from the sight of Borgio going down and being sprayed with blood from one of their fratelli. With his AUG on semiauto, he put one round through the soldier who’d punched Zoe, spinning him around with the explosive force of impact, shotgun airborne as the big man fell.

  Zoe was on the ground and bloody-faced, but there was no time to concern himself with that. Flesh wounds could be repaired; a bullet in the brainpan, not so much.

  So, when he saw the shooter on her left level his Uzi at her kneeling figure, Johnny targeted him next. It was a hasty shot, center of mass, but did the trick, punching through the mafioso’s rib cage on his right-hand side and spalling through lungs, heart and aorta. Dying on his feet, the shooter still managed to fire a short burst from his SMG, but it went over Zoe’s head and gouged a line of divots in the asphalt yards beyond her.

  Bolan’s next round came in while Johnny was finishing his second man, another head shot, but a bit off-center. This one hit the tallest of the thugs still on their feet and sheared off roughly half his skull, on a diagonal from left eyebrow to right earlobe. Johnny could have sworn the one eye still remaining blinked at him before it rolled back, showing only white, and the machine-gunner collapsed.

  And that left two.

  “I’m on the short one.”

  With his brother’s voice in his ear, Johnny pivoted to take the shooter farthest on his left, had a fleeting peripheral glimpse of the other guy’s end, as a .50-caliber full-metal-jacket round burst through his chest in a bright crimson spray. Johnny’s man had a vaguely stunned look on his face, his M4 carbine beginning to stutter as Johnny squeezed off two quick round of his own.

  And before the guy fell, Johnny raced to Zoe, ignoring the duct tape and blood on her face, grabbing one of her arms and yanking her upright, a sob-gasp escaping from somewhere as she realized that she wasn’t done yet.

  “Focus now!” Johnny snapped at her, shoving her off toward his car. “Run like hell!”

  * * *

  THE FIRST SHOT from the theater had mobilized the backup team. Whatever signal they’d been waiting for went out the window with the crack of gunfire and the vision of Joe Borgio going down. They rushed the parking lot, moving en masse to help their point men handle Johnny and the girl, and weren’t prepared for sudden thunder as the Barrett started hammering the soldiers from the Lincoln Town Car.

  Any scheme they’d drawn up in advance began to fall apart then, as the best-laid plans are prone to do in battle. Combat was a fluid, living thing, where the reactions of an enemy could be surmised, but never quite predicted. A plan that worked on paper often fell apart when living people found themselves receiving fire and wound up fighting for their lives.

  And so it was, this day. Bolan’s first clap of thunder from the .50-caliber Barrett startled the nearest mafiosi, bringing eyes and guns around to seek the source of that explosive sound. One shot wasn’t enough for them to peg him, and the next two came so quickly that the soldiers on the ground had no time to react effectively. But some of them were on him now, the others keeping after Johnny and the woman in their flight.

  Eight rounds remained in the Barrett’s magazine, since he had started out with ten, plus one in the firing chamber. Bolan swiveled on his perch, legs braced, both hands required to aim the thirty-pound XM500. He could probably have taken down his nearest targets without scoping them, but with the AN/PVS-10 they were larger than life, angry faces filling the eyepiece, exploding in Technicolor close-up when he stroked the rifle’s trigger, slamming death downrange.

  Of the fifteen he’d counted, six abandoned their original assignment to go after him. Two were fairly close and on his left, four scattered widely on his right. Bolan took the nearest of them first, squeezing off a round as soon as the telescope’s reticle centered on-target, tracking from one skull’s detonation to the next. It was the paradox of sniping: killing from a distance, when your mark seemed close enough for you to look him in the eye and watch his life go out, as if you were switching off a lamp.

  Two down, and Bolan had to swivel through 110 degrees to bring the next mark under fire. By then, a couple of the four on his right side had seen their friends go down and were retreating through the woods, apparently deciding they would rather live to fight another day than face the Barrett’s devastating fire.

  Too late.

  Bolan took down his third opponent with a shot high in the chest, the explosive impact flipping the guy over backward to drop him facedown on the grass. That convinced number four that he ought to be running for daylight, his mission forgotten, hell-bent on escape without firing a shot. Bolan lined up between his pumping shoulder blades, squeezed off his seventh round and blew the runner’s heart out through his sternum.

  Checking out the field, he saw the other nine torpedoes still pursuing Johnny and the girl. They’d started firing now, Johnny replying with his Steyr AUG to cover Zoe’s getaway. She was almost out of sight, nearing the southwest corner of the theater, but whether she’d be met by other guns was anybody’s guess.

  Bolan could only help with targets he could see.

  Precision was the hallmark of a master sniper. Once a target was selected, hesitation lasted no longer than was required to frame the mark, steady the weapon and send death to keep its rendezvous with fragile flesh.

  Leaving the runners on his right to find their own way from the woods, Bolan targeted the farthest soldier from his vantage point—the nearest to his brother—and sent forty-two grams of destruction hurtling toward impact at three thousand feet per second.

  The mobster never knew what hit him. By the time the bloody remnant of his face slapped pavement, Bolan had already found another target and destroyed it. Chaos was in the ranks now, as the hunters realized that they were prey.

  And there was nothing left for them to do but die.

  * * *

  JOHNNY DOUBLE-TAPPED the last punk who was still upright, and had turned to follow Zoe when he heard her squeal. It wasn’t like a movie scream, but she had torn the duct tape from her mouth after she took that hard shot to the face, and she was in good voice.

  Trouble.

  He slid around the corner of the theater and saw three shooters facing Zoe, maybe thirty feet in front of him. They stood between her and the Mercury Milan, guns leveled from the hip. There’d be no getaway unless he took them out, and any one of t
hem could make it pointless with a single shot at Zoe Dirks.

  No time to waste.

  “Zoe! Down!” he shouted, and cut loose with his Steyr AUG. A thumb-flick switched the piece from semi-to full-auto, and he held the trigger down, strafing his opponents with the remnants of his 30-round magazine. They skittered through a jerky death-dance, slipping in their own blood as it pattered down like rain, two of them managing to squeeze off wild shots even as they fell.

  Zoe hit the deck, cringing, but she’d been fast enough to save herself. The shots fired by her would-be killers rippled overhead and chipped a zigzag pattern on the wall of the theater behind her. Johnny was beside her in another second, lifting her again and steering her around the corpses, toward their ride.

  “They were... I thought... How did you...?”

  “Get in the car,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “But—”

  “You’re going home,” he told her. “And I don’t want any argument about it.”

  Zoe didn’t argue. She didn’t say another word, in fact, as Johnny put her in the Mercury’s backseat.

  “Stay down and out of sight,” he ordered. “We’ve still got another stop to make.”

  Silence had fallen on the park, and it would likely be a few more minutes yet before the law arrived with sirens banshee-wailing. Johnny meant to be well clear by then, but first he had to find his brother.

  They’d arranged two meeting points, the second as a backup if their plan unraveled. Johnny was supposed to get the hell away from there if his brother missed both connections, taking Zoe solo to the airport, but he wasn’t sure that he could do that. Even though they seldom saw each other, trying to imagine life—the world—without his brother in it was an exercise that sickened him.

  But his brother was there, a shadow breaking off from others in the parkland forest, hopping in as Johnny slowed the car, handing his rifle back to wide-eyed Zoe in the rear. She seemed about to say something, then evidently changed her mind and set the big gun down beside her feet.

  “All good?” Johnny asked.

  “So far,” Bolan replied, checking his watch. “We’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Chapter 10

  North Forest Acres, Buffalo

  “All dead?” The words tasted like ashes in the back of Vincent Gallo’s throat.

  “All but the two,” his consigliere said. The look on Jerry Portoghesi’s face was grim, going on ugly.

  “Right. The two that ran away.”

  “To hear them tell it, there was nothing they could do. Joe took the first hit, and it fell apart from there.”

  “To hear them tell it,” Gallo echoed. “I still got some questions for them, when they get here.”

  “Sure.”

  “What do the cops say?”

  Portoghesi shrugged. “They’re barely getting started. It’s a madhouse over there, from what I hear.”

  “How many did we lose, again?”

  The consigliere counted on his fingers, and finally told Gallo, “Twenty-three, with Joe.”

  “Goddamn it!”

  “Something that I might suggest...”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Bring reinforcements over from across the river,” Portoghesi said. “Al took some hits, but no one’s hassling him right now.”

  “That’s good. I’ll call him. What else?” Gallo asked.

  “Well...I’ve been thinking that we haven’t exactly got our money’s worth from the city’s finest.”

  “Kelly and Strauss.”

  Portoghesi nodded slowly. “Sure, they bagged the broad, but now that’s backfired on us. They should make it right.”

  “And how would they do that?”

  “Do their jobs. Work the street and squeeze their informants, whatever the hell they have to do. Get something on these hitters and pin them down.”

  The whole department was already working that side of the street, but what the hell. Gallo agreed with Portoghesi that the two limp dicks owed something to the Family, after the way they’d screwed the pooch.

  “You call them, eh? I don’t think I could stand to talk to them right now.”

  “No problem, Vin.”

  “And while you’re doing that, I’ll get Al moving on those soldiers. Should have twenty, twenty-five that he can spare, at least.”

  “They could be over here within the hour,” Portoghesi said.

  “All right, then. If you think of something else...”

  “I’m on it, Vin.”

  Before he speed-dialed Cavallaro’s number, Gallo poured himself a double shot of Bushmills single malt whiskey and threw it back in one gulp, shivering a little as the liquid heat rushed down his gullet, spreading out from there. He’d heard somewhere that alcohol was a depressant, wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, and didn’t care. He was depressed enough already, damn it, but the whiskey calmed him, helped him clarify his thoughts and focus on what still remained for him to do, if he was going to survive.

  His Family was losing more than cash and soldiers in the shitstorm that had blown up out of nowhere, overnight. The greatest loss had been prestige, with damage done to Gallo’s reputation that could be repaired only through swift, dynamic and decisive action. If he dicked around much longer, even if he wound up winning in the end, the Families that ran surrounding territories might decide that it was time to move on Buffalo. Hell, the Commission might sit down without him and elect someone to take his place.

  He wouldn’t leave without a fight, of course. Unless they hit him first. But fighting meant the final ruin of the Family he had inherited and worked his ass off to expand, growing more powerful and influential over time. Was he prepared to see it all go up in flames around him, just to prove he wasn’t someone his so-called fratelli could step in and push aside?

  Why not?

  Say what you would about the brotherhood, La Cosa Nostra, he’d never known a boss who bowed out quietly or put his own head on the chopping block. Whatever any jealous, greedy bastards wanted from his Family, they’d have to come and take by force.

  Beginning now.

  Chautauqua County-Jamestown Airport,

  Jamestown, New York

  BOLAN’S CHOICE OF airports had two asphalt runways and was served by only one commercial carrier: United Express, with flights to Bradford, Pennsylvania, and Cleveland, Ohio. Nationally, it was ranked as a non-primary commercial service airport, meaning fewer than ten thousand takeoffs per year.

  Which was perfect.

  No one would be watching out for Zoe Dirks at such a small facility, so soon after the firefight at Niagara Falls State Park. From the look of it, Bolan surmised that most Buffalo residents were probably oblivious to the airport’s existence. To make things safer yet, he’d bypassed the commercial line and booked a private charter flight from Jamestown to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. There, Zoe would have her choice of half a dozen airlines serving Southern California.

  Their pilot—Rose MacDonald, owner-operator of Apex Airlines—was a thirtysomething redhead with an Aussie accent and a winning smile—at least, until she got a look at Zoe’s face. She started glaring daggers then, prepared to give the two male strangers holy hell, but Zoe saved them from a shouting match—or worse—by telling Rose that they were friends who’d rescued her from an obsessive stalker. She was going home to spend some time with family, Zoe explained, until the dust settled.

  “I hope you fellas gave the scumbag some of his own medicine,” the flygirl said, still angry, sounding dubious.

  “I think he got the message,” Johnny said. “But we may have to visit him again.”

  “If you do, give him a swift kick in the Jatz crackers for me, eh?”

  “Be a pleasure,” Johnny told her.

 
Bolan wasn’t much on long goodbyes, and since he didn’t know the lady, anyway, he left the send-off to his brother. Zoe had already thanked the Executioner half a dozen times, without asking his name, and he was glad to let it go at that.

  The risk of any mafiosi trailing Zoe back to San Diego was, in Bolan’s estimation, negligible. Vinnie Gallo had the resources to find out where she lived, of course, but he was in the middle of a crisis which, if Bolan had his way, was slated to become a full-scale meltdown. Putting out a contract through some other Family would be the last thing on his mind, assuming that the L.A. branch of Cosa Nostra was inclined to take the job or had hunters to spare.

  No, Bolan had decided. Vinnie Gallo was about to be consumed by trouble in his own backyard.

  They waited to see the Beechcraft Excalibur Queen Air lift off, circle once overhead, then strike a beeline westward, gaining altitude over Chautauqua Lake. When it was nearly out of sight and they were moving toward the car, Johnny declared, “She’ll be all right.”

  “Should be,” Bolan agreed.

  “Tough losing family, though.”

  They’d learned that one firsthand, and it required no comment from the Executioner. Instead, he told his brother, “Gallo won’t be happy with the way the trade went down.”

  “You got that right,” Johnny replied. “He’s out one underboss and...how many guns?”

  “Twenty-two on this round, by my count.”

  “He’s running short of made men.”

  “Still a few left,” Bolan said. “Plus mercenaries.”

  “And the cops.”

  That was a problem, Bolan recognized. And with the ranks of mafiosi thinning out in Buffalo, he’d have to find a way to deal with it.

  Justice Building, Washington, D.C.

  THE BIG FED grabbed the phone, his private line, before it finished ringing once. “Brognola.”

  “Hansen,” said the Bureau’s CID assistant director. “Got a minute?”

  “Fire away.”

  “I sniffed around some more, that thing we talked about. Wasn’t appreciated by the local field office, but they do what they’re told most of the time. Since Boston, anyway.”