St. Louis Showdown Read online

  The Bolan gaze went reflexively to the skies. The pattern, yeah. Light, dark, shades of gray. This one would go down in darkness.

  “First dark, Pol,” he replied grimly.

  It always came, finally, to the darkness.

  22: CONG HIGH

  “What the hell are you doing here?” the skipper yelled at his battered intelligence chief.

  “They needed the bed,” Postum explained with a feeble smile. “Or hadn’t you noticed the blood on our streets lately?”

  “You look terrible! Get out of here!”

  “Just stopped by on the way home, Skipper. Few things to pick up. Uh, I thought—is it okay with you if I run the vacation in right behind the sick leave? I’ve been promising Janice and the kids that trip to the Caribbean for three years now.”

  The skipper was giving him that “come, now!” look. Postum had been collecting pay in lieu of vacation since he’d joined the force. He’d never had a vacation.

  “Seriously,” the intelligence chief insisted. “What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Nothing.” The skipper waved his hand in dismissal. “Sure, it’s okay. Get out of here. Go home and go to bed.”

  Which was precisely what Postum had in mind. But then the hot line beeped and the watch commander’s announcement changed that. “Code contacts, Skipper. Same bunch, with a new wrinkle. They’ve added a female.”

  “ADF report!” the skipper snarled.

  “Negative. ADF overwhelmed. Widely scattered sources, transmissions too brief to fix.”

  The skipper stormed out of there.

  Postum grinned understandingly and followed at a more leisurely pace, the new rate of movement not entirely dictated by the trussed-up leg.

  He reached the bull room just as a monitor crackled with one of those “briefs.” A new, female wrinkle, yeah—crisp and businesslike.

  “Ten out and still rolling them.”

  The voice, responding: “Firm the count. Watch for splits.”

  On a different monitor, then, the soft voice: “What is the make?”

  The Chicano: “Cong low.”

  Bolan: “Cong low and running east. Count ten and building.”

  Back to the other channel, the female: “There is a split. There is a split.”

  “Count!”

  “Five east, ten north. That is a tally and wrap it!”

  “Break off north! Track east!”

  “What the hell are they saying?” the skipper fumed.

  “Damned if I know,” Postum murmured, though guessing silently.

  “Can’t you get me a sector isolation?” the skipper yelled at the communications technician.

  “Negative. Signals are diffused, widespread.”

  Postum pulled up a chair, sighed, and sat down. The skipper strode to the window and stared into the quickening nightfall.

  From the monitors, then, the soft voice: “I have no make.”

  “Cong low,” the taut voice of Bolan advised him.

  “Cong low,” the Chicano echoed.

  The skipper kicked the wall.

  Postum grinned, reached into his pocket for a cigarette—the first in years—lit up, sat back, and enjoyed.

  It sounded like a fun game. Tom Postum knew that it was not.

  The digital clock on the communications console rolled on. The skipper paced and the commtech stared at his monitor dials. Tom Postum smoked.

  Then, the female again, the signal stronger now, peaking into the red on that monitor dial: “Levee Riviera with a better view. This is a final.”

  Bolan: “Great work! Break off! Rejoin North Star!”

  North Star, huh? Postum mused. Nice name for an RV. Very symbolic, too.

  He could picture the benign face of “Gadgets,” poised intently above that Flash Gordon command console as the soft tones drifted through the monitor: “Cong high east. I have acquisition.”

  “Cong low north,” reported “Pol.”

  “Watch the folds,” Bolan urged. “Get them all high. We want no lows.”

  “I’m getting a fix,” the commtech reported. “Preliminary indication is Sector Four.”

  “Back there again?” the skipper asked unbelievingly.

  “It is a preliminary. Stand by. We will fix the next transmission.”

  It came a moment later, from the Chicano: “Cong north.”

  “Watch for a north split to low!” Bolan cautioned.

  “Affimative, I have a split. Call it all congs low north, scratch and repeat.”

  “Realign, realign! North Star is east! Ground Star is south! Red Star is west! Report congs!”

  From the RV, then: “Cong high east and centering.”

  From the Chicano: “Cong low south but moving.”

  From Bolan himself: “Cong low west and rising. Close it in! Fold it!”

  The skipper fumed, “What’s this cong high, cong low stuff? Tom? What is it?”

  Postum silently shook his head. It was an echo from Vietnam, sure, but an echo which only certain specialties would understand. Fun games, no. It was the grim game.

  “ADF fix!” the commtech excitedly reported. The wall was lighting up. The alarms were going down. Men were running.

  Tom Postum sighed, went to his office, and began gathering his stuff for the long vacation ahead.

  Hell.

  These damn cops didn’t stand a chance against those soldiers.

  They were coming in, and they were coming hard, and that was good. It was precisely what Bolan had banked on. He had not underestimated Jerry Ciglia. A quiet word in an alert ear was all it took in this business. It had been enough for Ciglia. No beating the bushes for this one, no sending out scouts—no furtive actions whatever which may tip the hand and flush the pigeons from the sure-thing slaughter pen.

  Ciglia was coming for heads, and he meant to have them.

  Five crews had transferred to two swift power launches and were moving upriver to seal off any possible river escape.

  Another five were rolling inland and coming in across the delta while the other five rolled in across the top in a pincers movement.

  The big overkill.

  But a perfect set for the Cong High game.

  Bolan had been patrolling the inland approaches in the Corvette. He’d made the quiet contact, tracked the play into the kill zone, then stashed the little car and closed on foot for the grand finale.

  Blancanales was out there on the levee, just lying out there, about a hundred meters off center.

  Schwarz was in the warwagon and cruising the flanks, confirming the readings, preparing to come in finally as the big-punch sealant.

  And “the camp” was ready for victims.

  The old triple-decker had been dolled up just a bit in that brief time allotted for the “set.” Kerosene lanterns were strung along the open decks at strategic points, others glowing feebly behind cabin windows on the two main cabin decks. The windows of the salon had been draped in black and a congregation of lanterns placed in there.

  Schwarz’s special touch added the final notes of realism—a collection of small cassette recorders loaded with tapes of actual bugged conversations and strewn around into various cabins on continuous playback.

  Quiet music was coming from the salon and the muted buzz of quiet conversations issued from all over that old hulk.

  Yeah … a perfect set for the Cong High kill.

  And they were slipping in higher and higher by each suspenseful moment. The two big launches were laying-off out there in the darkness, engines idling and barely audible even to Bolan’s expert ear. The cars had been ditched somewhere in the background and the gunners were making the final overland approach on foot—coming in from every angle.

  From Bolan’s quiet drop in the bushes, he spotted a group of three in a running crouch moving quietly across the cement levee to the south, then another three at the other end—all disappearing into the shadow of the Jubilee—reappearing a moment later clambering hand
over hand up the side to the top deck.

  An engine on the river revved slightly—and Bolan knew what was going down out there, also.

  His thumb was poised above the ignition button on the black box as he waited them all in—but there was, of course, a moment of diminishing returns of which he must remain cognizant. If those early boarders should tumble to the setup and give the alarm, the whole thing could fall to hell quicker than a remote button could trigger a Cong High party.

  The stealthy movements on the river side were becoming more and more prominent and the levee boarders seemed to be without end.

  These boys were greedy.

  As greedy as Bolan—and they were playing as quiet a game—getting all the headmen on board and stealthily placed throughout the old cruise boat before making the final move.

  Bolan was rewarded for his patience when he caught a movement on the upper deck, a figure moving awkwardly out of the shadow of the pilot house—moving awkwardly because of a “turned ankle” and limping along with a cane.

  The moment had arrived. The “chairman” would be among the last to board. Those who were left out were meant to be left out—and the Cong High plan took that sort of caution into account.

  Regret punched that button—regret not for the actors upon that stage but for the stage itself, for the final end to a romantic past—regret for the last gallant fling of the gaudy lady.

  She blew in a series of trumpeting explosions, beginning below-deck and working upward in a wave motion that scattered blowtorch flames and flying firebrands in a panoramic sweep of the entire kill zone.

  Human figures hurtled outward and crumpled to the levee or plunged into the big muddy. Startled screams and agonized shrieks superimposed themselves upon the thundering tumult of high explosives in sudden destruct.

  But the gaudy lady went without a groan of her own—her decks quietly folding and falling, her bulkheads powdering and scattering into the eternal flow of old man river, her once comfortable cabins puffing into quiet flames and releasing themselves to the atmospheres for the quiet trek back to a romantic past.

  And down upon the levee, the levee so low, a sturdy Cong High veteran with a combat-ready machine gun was blowing a staccato accompaniment to the old girl’s swan song, catching the “low congs” in their startled desire for disengagement.

  A flaming motor launch drifted into Bolan’s line of sight while another roared away in a power surge to nowhere.

  “Nowhere” because that was where the flaming arrow from “somewhere” hurtled across those tortured skies to intercept and discourage any further independent movement. One moment the launch was there and powering into a classy turnaround, the next it was not.

  Frightened men were scurrying across the delta, shouting words of comfort back and forth—headed not to the front but to the rear—but there were not many of these, and Bolan let them go. This particular kill needed witnesses for maximum mission effect.

  The physical effect was certainly there, in all its grim reality.

  As the tall man in black strode along the levee toward his partner, he snatched the black box from his belt, spat on it, and hurled it into the grave of the St. Louis Corporation.

  “There you go,” he muttered. “All you crazy bastards. Welcome out of my world.”

  An “idea” had found its natural end.

  And now, this old man was rolling home.

  EPILOGUE

  Able Group plus One were all in the warwagon and rolling silently along the levee in a quiet tactical withdrawal long before the grim young men of the police tactical squads reached the astounding scene of action.

  “Anything to debrief?” Schwarz asked, peering owlishly back at the group just before the farewells were due.

  “Nothing here,” Bolan reported. He was slumped tiredly in the ready seat, making notes in a leather-covered black book. “Oh, except … be sure to take your cut from the Stonehenge bank. Throw a fourth of the net into the war chest. Take the rest.”

  “That’s too much,” Pol argued. “We’re here on fees, anyway.”

  “That guy couldn’t pay you enough for that job,” Bolan insisted. “Take the money. It just weights me down.” He raised a steady gaze to the sturdy fellow. “I couldn’t pay you enough, either,” he added solemnly.

  “Don’t embarrass me, Sarge.”

  Bolan was still staring at him. “Talk to your man yet?”

  “Yeah.” Pol grinned sourly. “He’s delighted. And the lady is even more delighted that he’s retiring from politics.”

  “That’s sine-logic for you,” Schwartz commented sorrowfully.

  “Aw, shut up, dammit,” Pol said softly with a grin at Bolan.

  “Where do you go from here, Mack?” Toni asked, with just a bit of high color in her cheeks.

  “Home,” he said quietly.

  “Oh. I guess I’d forgotten you had one.”

  “So had I. I got reminded. Toni … it’s been great seeing you again. It’s never long enough, is it. We’ll uh, connect again. Somewhere. Won’t we?”

  “I have a feeling we will,” she replied, sighing.

  They made the switch at the Gateway Arch. The farewells were tough and quick, almost brutal—then three of Bolan’s favorite people were fading away into the night.

  He drove on to the airport motel, put the big bus in a ready-out park, showered, donned fresh clothes, and rejoined that other world for a brief respite from hell.

  He ran into Leo Turrin in the lobby. The little guy was pacing tracks in the carpet and viciously chomping a cigar. He reacted to the sight of Bolan with a relieved scowl and hurried to intercept him.

  “I got a seat on the nine-thirty plane,” he announced with some agitation. “Johnny’s in the room, watching TV. I was wondering if you were coming straight back.”

  “You mean if at all, don’t you?” Bolan corrected him.

  “Okay, so I worry a little,” Turrin replied with a sour smile.

  “Why the hot jump home, Leo? I told you I might take twenty-four hours.”

  “I found out different. That’s why the hot jump. My boss got called to New York for a hot council, and no one’s home tending the territory. Seems they got some disturbing news, about a half-hour ago. They’re saying that Little Artie whacked out Jerry Ciglia and all his legions. That was stunning news, I guess.”

  Bolan just stared at him.

  “Well, dammit?”

  “Well, dammit,” Bolan said soberly, “you better hurry if you expect to catch that plane.”

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you! You’re just going to let me stew about it all the way home!”

  Bolan said, “It’s true, Leo. Ciglia went storming out to an old boat called the Jubilee to collect some heads. I guess you never heard of the Jubilee. Me either. Anyway, Ciglia got collected, instead.”

  “And? So?”

  “Read about it in the papers, guy. I have no time for stories from hell. I have to go watch a kid become a man.”

  He winked at his best friend in any world, spun on his toe, and went to keep that date in paradise.

  It would, he knew, be his very last.

  The End

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series

  1: BORDER PLAY

  A sleek GMC motor home wheeled silently into the parking lot of The Natural, a modest bistro on Buffalo’s north side, and came to rest near a dimly lit rear entrance. The time was precisely midnight, the parking lot about half-filled. The amplified sounds of a western band spilled into the misty night from within the bar.

  Two men appeared from the shadows at the corner of the building near the rear entrance to gaze suspiciously at the big vehicle—dark, burly men with “torpedo” patently stamped into their aggressive stance and scowling faces.

  Most men would have quietly turned and walked the other way to avoid an encounter with these two in a lonely place.

  Not so the occupant of that “motor home.”

&nbs
p; He descended quickly and silently, a barely discernible moving shadow of the night, and had closed half the distance to that rear door before the guardians could react to his presence there.

  The reaction, when it came, was instinctive but well coordinated—quick, decisive, deadly to the ordinary interloper. Each whirled in a beautifully choreographed crouch, putting distance between each other, pistols appearing from nowhere and swinging into a quick lineup on that gliding target.

  This “target” was no ordinary interloper, however. Clad in a black outfit that clung like skin, tall and graceful with a carriage that spoke of superb physical conditioning, his response was instant and final. Without a noticeable break in his forward movement, twin muzzle flashes erupted from the bulbous tip of a weapon in his right hand—silent pencils of flame performing a small arc that told the tale of death for two on the wing. It was a seemingly impersonal and uncalculated act, almost automatic in its spontaneity yet bizarre in its quietly sighing effect as the silenced weapon chugged the whispering emissaries of death into the night.

  Thus died “Ponies” Latta and Harry the Hearse, two of the “meanest boys” in Buffalo—torpedo scowls intact to the end though now collapsing into the center of the red fountains of their faces, educated trigger fingers still several pounds of pull too shy—pitching simultaneously onto their backs with only gurgling sighs to mark their souls’ departure.

  And the man in black went on without pause, striding between the carcasses and straight to the door and through with a well-placed kick which carried him inside and along a darkened hallway to another door. He passed on by that one, going to a curtained doorway overlooking the barroom.

  A bartender was rolling dice with a couple of sleepy-eyed patrons. Scantily clad cocktail waitresses roamed here and there through a listless crowd at tables. Three musicians in bright western costumes struggled to entertain indifference while a pretty kid in a G-string boredly bounced bared breasts in the background.

  The waitresses and the dancer were the only females in the place.

  A gleam of satisfaction stirred briefly from the icy depths of the tall man’s gaze as he turned back to the mission goal. He rapped lightly on the closed door then went on in without awaiting an invitation.