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  “The guy will be at Boston Common at midnight,” Figarone said, launching into the explanation without further preamble. “He will be meeting, he thinks, a solid citizen named Greene who will be there as sort of referee. The whole place will be sealed off, there will be a police line surrounding the entire common.” He glanced at his watch. “It should have already started. Bolan will think he’s walking into a sure thing, no cops or anything, just Greene and the merchandise. He—”

  “Just who is this Greene?” Tramitelli asked.

  “A do-gooder, big man on the social register. Don’t worry, he’s harmless. But this is very important. We don’t want to get this Greene caught in anything. Al wants that made very clear. We make no move until the do-gooder is clear and free. The guy may come in handy again someday, Al wants him handled with kid gloves.”

  Figarone was in his own element now and he was relishing the job. He opened his briefcase, withdrew a packet of maps and sketches. “All we have to do,” he explained, grinning, “is to get in there and get set up for Bolan. That means we have to get by the cops, going in and going out. They’ll probably come a’running at the first sound of gunfire, so make sure you understand the escape route.”

  Tramitelli was pawing through the sketches. He said, “Somebody has gone to a lot of trouble.”

  “Right, somebody has,” Figarone replied. “This is going to be where Bolan gets his. Al most emphatically states that Bolan has got to get hit. He is not to be allowed out of this one.”

  “I get his fuckin’ head,” the fisherman declared. “After what he did to me up at Chelsea, it’s my right.”

  “There probably won’t be time for grisly games,” Figarone cautioned. “It’s going to be nip and tuck, getting out of there before the cops swarm in.”

  “I’m gonna get his head just the same,” Sicilia insisted.

  Tramitelli was grinning. He said, “There’s a good price on that head. It would take care of your fine and then some. Maybe we should talk about that before we go in. We’re going to be in this together. Let’s agree on the split right now.”

  Sicilia shrugged. “Even split, I guess. Okay by me.”

  The lawyer said, “You’d better kill the guy first. You can divide his head later. Let’s get on with this. There’s a lot to cover and a lot to be done, and we don’t have all night to do it.”

  Sicilia was smiling serenely, as though reviewing some delicious idea, his eyes cast toward the ceiling.

  Tramitelli and Figarone exchanged glances.

  Sure, both pair of eyes said. It had all turned up roses for the fisherman from Rockport. The bastard was getting everything he’d set out to get.

  Maybe. Figarone knew … it wasn’t ended yet.

  It would not be ended until all of them were standing over Mack the Bastard’s bleeding body.

  Well … in less than four hours, they’d all know for sure.

  Despite utter exhaustion, Bolan’s sleep had been fitful and close to the surface of consciousness. He had dreamed continually, it seemed, and even in his dreams he could not escape the harsh tensions of the Boston situation.

  In one vivid encounter with his subconscious, he was battling a dragon with a sword which must have weighed 40 pounds or more. The dragon was holding two “turkeys” in its mouth on a bed of flames. Each time Bolan slashed out at the monster, the sword passed through the body as though there was nothing there but air. He was trying to induce the beast to spit out the “turkeys”—which were headless and had no limbs—and they were flaming. After a seemingly eternal battle, during which he was worn down to stumbling exhaustion, the unruffled dragon ambled away with its flaming turkeys still clasped tightly in its possession and it disappeared into a faraway building which looked suspiciously like the White House in Washington.

  He came out of that one threshing and grunting, and he gave it up there and staggered into the bathroom. It was time to be up and away, anyway. It was eight o’clock; he’d been fighting dragons for three hours.

  For how long had he been battling the real live ones? With about the same damned results?

  Bolan shook away the hopeless feeling and took a quick shower, shocking himself alive with alternating hot and cold water, then he shaved and put on fresh underwear and a black suit that didn’t smell of blood and hellfire.

  He cracked open a thermos of coffee and consumed all the dry bread and cheese he could stomach, then he got his stuff together and strapped on his weapons.

  The Beretta went into the snapout rig beneath his left arm, the AutoMag mini-cannon at his right waist. Into the belt pockets went two extra clips of 9 mm Parabellums for the Beretta and two reloads of the 240-grain magnum heart-stoppers for the fantastic .44.

  He clipped on a couple of grenades, just for kickers, then got into the topcoat.

  Bolan had long ago given up stopping at hotels and motels; they were much too vulnerable a resting place for the most-wanted man in the country. And so he’d considered himself fortunate to find the South Bay apartment, complete with private garage, on such short notice, even though it left a lot to be desired in terms of comfort and class. All he’d needed, of course, was a safe place to lay his head for a few hours. The old lady who’d rented him the place was about half deaf and it had been obvious that she didn’t see too well, either.

  So, yeah, it had been a fortunate wind of fate or whatever had blown him this way.

  He went out the back way, examined the tamper-seal on the garage door, then he took the battle-scarred vehicle out of there and headed for Back Bay.

  He felt renewed, and ready to bring this Boston battle into final focus.

  A quick run past the Greene mansion showed all lights blazing but no signs of activity inside or out.

  Bolan went on past and parked one block up the street, then he circled back on foot for a more leisurely look.

  He was glad he had. Two official vehicles were parked in a narrow alleyway behind the house, a couple of uniformed cops standing between them and quietly passing the time in relaxed conversation.

  Something was brewing inside, that was certain.

  So, on to the front.

  He went back the way he’d come, passing on by his parked vehicle, and proceeded toward the Common on foot.

  He sniffed out the police line two blocks below the Public Gardens, a combination of quiet vehicular and foot patrolmen in a rather loose consortment along Clarendon Street.

  The purpose of the line was not to keep Bolan out. He understood that. It was to honor the sacred ground which lay just ahead, to keep all others out.

  Any thought that Al 88 would play this game straight would be wishful thinking of the most dangerous sort.

  It would take more than a line of cops to set Bolan’s mind at ease.

  Bolan kept his distance and studied the movements of the police for several minutes, then he slipped off his topcoat and discarded it, electing to go the rest of the way in black suit.

  The universe was favoring him again tonight. The sky was overcast and the darkness was complete, broken only by regular spacings of street lighting.

  He probed along the line until he found the combination he liked, and when he made his move he was no more than a flitting extension of the night.

  He worked his way through the gardens and onto the Common; by nine o’clock he had completed a thorough recon of the meeting site and picked out his forward observation post.

  He was in good cover and he was comfortable.

  His night vision had never been sharper.

  He felt mentally alert and ready for whatever might come.

  All he had to sweat now was the clock.

  This was the one, he supposed, that had been waiting for him all his life.

  He had to meet this challenge, and he had to master it. Everything that held meaning to his life was hanging in the balance.

  It was not, however, a question of his living or dying; that question was not even to be asked.

  It had t
o do with meaning, the answer to the mystery of life itself.

  The only question of this pregnant night would have to be answered by Johnny and Val.

  Did the weak and the defenseless always have to fall to the predator? And did it matter, in the final run of things, whether they did or not?

  As far as Mack Bolan was concerned, the whole answer would be revealed on Boston Common, in the cradle of liberty, on this night which could end all nights and still all questions for a man called Mack Bolan.

  And the Executioner intended to influence the answer to that question with every resource at his command.

  He cleared his head, then, of all the excess baggage—of fire-breathing dragons, flaming turkeys and hopeless warriors, put on his combat mind and settled into the long wait.

  18: The Answer

  At ten o’clock a police cruiser eased into the Common from Park Street and made a slow diagonal crossing, skirting around Frog Pond and creeping on to the junction of Boylston and Charles Streets.

  Bolan marked the passage and continued the grim wait.

  At ten-thirty a sanitation department truck rumbled onto Charles and invaded the park, making stops at several trash stations. Bolan watched closely and decided that no trash was being picked up … but that something was evidently being dropped off.

  At each stop, something slid out of the rear of the truck to then disappear into the darkness.

  He counted six such debarkations, then the truck went on toward Beacon Hill.

  Somebody had slipped some juice to somebody, Bolan was convinced of that. The truck should never have been allowed through the police line.

  He kept his eyes and ears alert and began picking them up again as one by one they scurried into positions surrounding the meeting site.

  Okay. He had them spotted.

  He continued the quiet surveillance for another fifteen minutes and until he had more than their spot—he had their feel, their smell, he almost had their collective frame of mind.

  Here and there the shielded flare of a match or a cigarette lighter, the glow of a cigarette, a cough, nostrils being evacuated—once, even, a soft command passed across the distance.

  Yes, these boys were restless, scared, keyed-up, jittery. He knew them all by 11 o’clock—not their names, of course, but what they were—he knew them individually and he knew them collectively and when he had their feel thoroughly absorbed as a subconscious part of himself, the man from jungleland moved softly away from his drop, to begin a maneuver designed to physically cement that growing relationship.

  He visited them one by one, and ingested them, quietly, slowly, without fuss or argument; one by one he gathered them into himself in a methodical harvest; one by one he reduced their numbers and thus the combat odds between them. And at 11:30, Bolan was again alone in the cradle of liberty.

  At fifteen minutes before the hour of twelve, a man and a woman made an approach from the direction of the Boston Massacre Monument near Tremont Street. They were trudging along stiffly, unhurriedly—moving awkwardly, in a sort of weird single-file.

  Bolan watched with interest, catching them once beneath the full glow of an overhead lamp. The man was rather tall, well set up, and handsomely attired in a pearl-gray overcoat with Homburg to match—maybe fifty, maybe less. Bolan had never seen the guy before. The woman, though … yes, he had seen that fragile flower, and not too many hours earlier.

  Mr. and Mrs. Al 88, Bolan presumed.

  He wondered about the woman’s presence there, but not to the point of distraction. The couple passed close beside him and went on to the designated point, just below Frog Pond.

  They stood there in the pale glow of a park lamp, hardly moving—not even talking, it seemed.

  It was ten minutes before the appointed hour.

  Bolan held his position, and at five minutes until twelve another movement came to his alert attention. Someone was moving up from the Boston Common Garage area, it was more than one someone. Several breaths were blending in a hurried pace; several sets of feet were sending out soft telegraphic vibrations along the ground, announcing their approach.

  And from up on Beacon Hill, a vehicle engine with an irritating quality was sending its message to the quivering perceptions of the man in black. He knew that sound; he had heard it very recently, very …

  The someones from the garage area were taking on indistinct visual shapes now. He separated three forms and began analyzing them. And then his heart lurched, and he knew that an answer was walking toward him.

  Val was there. Johnny was there. And a third vaguely familiar … of course, it figured, Books Figarone, every man’s consigliere.

  But those vibrations from Beacon Hill …

  Bolan made his move then, coming up from his drop in a swift circling of the terrain and closing on the target area with all jungle quietness.

  He was poised in the deep darkness twenty feet to the rear of the shark and the goldfish when the threesome downrange again took on identifiable shapes.

  Before they could move on into the illumination of the meet site, Bolan’s icy tones lofted a command across the Common ground: “Hold it right there, Books!”

  The advance became confused, and then halted.

  The nervous response came then. “Bolan? It’s all right. I have your brother and Miss Querente, right here beside me. Everything’s in order.”

  Point of law, counselor.

  Mr. and Mrs. Shark were turned in half-light, staring back into the darkness enveloping the jungle cat at their rear.

  “Let me hear them,” Bolan called out.

  “Yes, Mack, we’re all right,” sang out the dearly beloved.

  “Mack, it’s Johnny,” the young lion reported in. “This guy says he’s the official go-between. Don’t trust him. I think he’s a weasel.”

  “Stay put!” tense dragon-slayer commanded. “Not you, Books. You move into the light!”

  Al 88 was casting looks in all directions. Wondering where the hell were all the insurance men?

  Figarone came on in, moving slowly, jerkily, scared out of his skull. He, also, was showing considerable interest in the surrounding terrain.

  “Okay, hold it right there. Look at the guy, Books. Know him?”

  “It’s supposed to be Mr. Greene,” the consigliere quavered. “But I never met him, Bolan. Don’t blame me if—”

  “It’s Greene, all right. But he’s a man of many names. Tell him who you are besides Guarini, Al.”

  The guy down there in the lamplight hunched his shoulders and glared morosely into the darkness.

  The man from Cambridge was beginning to get the scent. He caught his breath and swayed forward. “Al!” he cried. “Is that …?”

  “He’s a master of the 88 keys—right, Mrs. Guarini-Greene?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Figarone exclaimed.

  Not even a reasonable facsimile.

  Those vibrations were moving down the hill now, and Bolan was remembering where he’d heard that particular set before.

  The frosty voice advised the trusted adviser, “You’d better listen to the man, Books. Listen to him tell you how to handle this situation.

  “Guarini! You send the counselor back down the road, you advise him to call off all the headhunters and send them home! Right now, before my thumb tires of restraining this hammer!”

  Even Classy Al should know what a dead man’s hammer is.

  “Do as he says, Books!” urged the suave shark.

  “Recognize that voice, Books?”

  Figarone jerked halfway about, torn between the light and the darkness. “The truck, Al!” he gurgled.

  “Head it off, stop it!” pleaded the man who dined at the White House.

  The counselor took off on a desperate mission, flinging himself through the black of night to try to call off a sure thing already set in motion.

  Bolan called, “Val, Johnny. Get going, straight ahead! Keep running until you hit a cop!”

  The goldfish spoke up
for the first time, belaying that order.

  “No! Please! Mr. Bolan, let me help. I can get them out of here safely!”

  “Why do that?” came the cold response.

  “It’s why I’m here.” The frail woman stepped away from Guarini and held up a tiny revolver for Bolan’s distant inspection. “I brought him here with this. I knew what he was planning. Please believe me! There is but one way out!”

  Bolan was torn and bleeding inside … soul blood.

  That sword was beginning to weigh 40 pounds again.

  Johnny and Val had not budged. They were awaiting the decision.

  Mrs. Shark was still trying. “Why else do you think I would come? I couldn’t stand the thought of … believe me, there’s no way out but one. I brought this pistol to be sure. Please!”

  She had given the guy an inspiration. Glibly, he made his bid. “She’s speaking the truth, Bolan. Believe me, we’ve all got to get out of here now. Let’s call a truce and move on while there’s still time!”

  Bolan advised him, “No way, not for you.”

  Yeah, okay, not for him. And that meant not for Bolan. But how about the non-combatants? The answer would have to come from them. He called over, “Val? What’s your feel?”

  “I’ll go with her,” beloved girl replied immediately. “Can’t we all go?”

  “I’ll be along,” Bolan assured her. “I know where you’re going. See you there. Now get going! Johnny, take over!”

  Mrs. Whoever-the-hell led the way; those two loved ones moved into the light momentarily, both pairs of eyes searching the darkness for a glimpse of the man, then they hurried on behind the lady from Back Bay.

  Al 88 was a leaning statue in lamplight, swiveled around off-balance, eyes searching for a differentiation between black and blacker, head tilted, and ears probably cocked for the sound of another kind of hazard.

  His voice was sweating as he urged, “Let’s get out of here, man.”

  Bolan replied, “Too late.”

  And it was.

  Headlamps were bouncing across the uneven surface of Common earth, coming up from the lower road, the laboring whining grind of a truck engine in pulling gear telling it like it had to be: a crew wagon to end all crew wagons.