Hard Targets Read online

  “You say that like you figure it’s a bad thing, Sarge.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter, Gene. We get the big bucks to prevent crimes, not encourage them.”

  “Big bucks, my—”

  “Anyway, get somebody checking deeds to property for anything with Gallo’s name on it. The very least, we need to question him about this turkey shoot.”

  “You’re thinking something like protective custody?”

  “Can’t force him into it, but if he asks...”

  “That’s rich. Bum spends his whole life ripping people off and killing anyone who’s in his way, and now we’re supposed to save his ass?”

  “Serve and protect,” Mahan reminded Franks.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Hey, Strauss and Kelly didn’t get the squeal on this?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “There’s something I need to ask them,” Mahan told Franks. “If you see them sometime...”

  “Sure. I’ll make a note.”

  “Meanwhile, let’s try to get these bodies out of here ASAP, so all the happy rich folks can enjoy their view.”

  Chapter 13

  Black Rock, Buffalo, New York

  “Nice welcome you give us, Vinnie.” Al Cavallaro, his forehead bandaged, glared angrily at Gallo.

  “You think I set that up?” Gallo replied. “That’s crazy talk.”

  “You let us walk into it. What’s the difference?”

  “You knew damn well what I’ve been going through and why I called you. Now you got a taste of it yourself. If all you can do is complain, maybe I need another capo for across the river.”

  Cavallaro winced at that, then said, “Tell me what I’m suppose to do with half my men.”

  “My men,” Gallo reminded him. “And you’re suppose to lead them by example. Let them know that metal sliver took your eyebrow off, and not your balls.”

  Gallo had missed the fireworks at his main house in North Forest Acres, having pulled back to the Black Rock hardsite for security. Surrounded by a six-foot wall, it covered fifteen wooded acres between Tonawanda Street and the Scajaquada Expressway. All but a handful of the Family’s remaining troops were now inside the wall, making Gallo feel like an old feudal lord under siege.

  And he didn’t like it. Not a goddamned bit.

  “Okay, if it’s balls you want, it’s balls you get,” Cavallaro said. “What’s the play?”

  “Tonight,” Gallo replied, “we button up and sit right here. Tomorrow, we put every set of eyes we got out on the street. We sweep from Riverside to Kaisertown, through every neighborhood along the way. Tap every source and follow up on every lead. Reward the people who play ball with us, and punish them that don’t.”

  “Take back the town, in other words.”

  “In those exact words,” Gallo said.

  “So, what about the Micks and Clinton Street?”

  “That wasn’t us.”

  “They seem to think it was.”

  “I got my consigliere working on it.”

  “Jerry. So, has he convinced them yet?”

  “I said he’s working on it!”

  “Okay, if you say so.” Cavallaro spread his open hands. “I’d like to know, when I get out there, am I gonna get my ass shot off by Irish, blacks or whoever in hell took down your men, outside your house in broad daylight.”

  “Somebody gives you any grief, you put them down,” Gallo said. “Makes no difference if they’re white, black, green, whatever. Kill a freaking leprechaun if you like.”

  “So, a bloodbath.”

  “It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t start it, but I plan to finish it.”

  “I’ll brief the boys,” Cavallaro said. “Get them fired up for tomorrow.”

  “Tell them when it’s done, we’ll have a party like the old days. Celebrate the victory.”

  “Will do.”

  “Alley, I hope you got my back on this.”

  “Vin, I been covering your back for twenty years.”

  “Just so you remember who’s in charge.”

  “How likely am I to forget?”

  Not likely, Gallo thought, with me reminding you. Part of a boss’s job, the way he saw it, was keeping underlings in line. It wasn’t easy, though, when somebody kept hammering the Family, and Gallo couldn’t find out who in hell they were, much less get rid of them. It was a poor reflection on his leadership and had to be corrected soon, before the Cosa Nostra sharks smelled blood and started circling.

  Like Cavallaro, it was time for Callo to remind his peers that he had balls. And brains.

  And guns, of course. Still lots and lots of guns.

  Justice Building, Washington, D.C.

  “I’M WATCHING IT on CNN right now,” Brognola told his caller, Aaron Kurtzman, phoning in from Stony Man.

  “It’s getting worse,” Kurtzman said.

  “Always does, before the fever breaks.”

  On-screen the printed crawl updated him on Buffalo’s body count. Footage showed EMTs hoisting bagged corpses into a meat wagon, outside the home of “alleged mobster” Vincent Gallo. The segment’s talking head, a seriously flirty blonde, reported that Gallo had not been at home when the fireworks went off.

  “Feels like we ought to do...something,” Kurtzman commented.

  “It’s unofficial,” Brognola reminded him. “Unsanctioned. Personal.”

  “I get it, but—”

  “But nothing. I’ve already got the Bureau with its nose stuck in. As much as it hurts, we need to let this run its course.”

  There was a brief silence on the line, and then, “Okay. It’s your call.”

  “The only call,” Brognola said. “It’s not the first time we’ve been through something like this.”

  “You’re right. Barbara said the same.”

  Mission controller Barbara Price, the Farm’s heart and soul. She was Bolan’s lover, at times, but she still made the hard calls.

  “There you go,” Brognola said. “Anything else?”

  “We think the thing in Venezuela’s nearly done. It looks all right.”

  “Good news, then. Keep me posted.”

  And, as usual, they broke it off without goodbyes. Within the savage world they occupied, a person never knew when one of those was going to be permanent.

  The twelve-step programs pushed a plan of living one day at a time. In Brognola’s world—make that Bolan’s world, which the big Fed had entered full-time when their operation went legit—the focus was on getting through one hour at a time, often one minute at a time. Some made it; others didn’t. Bolan had survived this far on guts, experience, audacity and heart. But he was only human, after all.

  And someday, he’d run out of time.

  Would it be Buffalo, with brother Johnny fighting at his side? Would some reporter ultimately trace the younger Bolan’s background and write a weepy retrospective piece about how tragedy had come full-circle?

  Not if Brognola had anything to say about it.

  But he wasn’t planning for a wake right now. In spite of what he’d said to Kurtzman, he was looking for a way to help and still cover his ass. More accurately, cover Stony Man—which, in Brognola’s mind, like the proverbial show, must go on.

  Maybe a call to Buffalo, to a specific sergeant of detectives. He could dance around the fine points, let the sarge know he was in the midst of something that he didn’t want to mess with. But a good cop wouldn’t swallow that. He’d want the details, and when those were not forthcoming, he’d go out to find them on his own. Maybe get killed while he was doing it—or worse, find out enough to guarantee he would be killed.

  The day it came to that, Brognola thought, he’d pull the pin.

  Maybe. Or w
ould he manage to accommodate that, too?

  We live and learn.

  Sometimes, the lessons make us wonder if we’ve lived too long.

  South Buffalo

  “WE READY?” Brian Devlin asked.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” Kevin Shaughnessy replied. “Thirty-one men, all mad as hell about their mates.”

  “And packed?”

  “Two guns apiece, the minimum. We dug out ever’thing we’ve got, down to the Thompson out of Tom McGinty’s rec room.”

  “Jesus, that old fossil.”

  “Tommy, or the Thompson?”

  “Take your pick,” Devlin said.

  “It can shoot and he can handle it. They’re in.”

  “God bless them, then, and welcome.”

  “So, you found the dagos?”

  “Where we thought.”

  “Black Rock,” Shaughnessy said, not making it a question.

  “Walled up with their lord and master.”

  “Numbers whittled down before they even got there.”

  “They’ll be blaming us for that, as well,” Devlin said.

  “Christ, I hope so. Let them get so scairt they piss themselves.”

  “Be easier to kill, that way.”

  “I hope so. Did you talk to Cletus?”

  “You mean Rocket? Yeah, I called him,” Devlin said. “He doesn’t like Paddies, but he hates the dagos more, right now. He’s in.”

  “Hitting the place together?”

  “In-de-pen-dent-ly, he says. But yeah, at the same time.”

  “How many people is he bringing?”

  “Fifty, if you can believe him.”

  “Fifty? That sounds like a pipe dream.”

  “Crack pipe,” Devlin said, and snickered.

  “Speaking of which, you think his ‘bruthas’ might try wasting us, like accidentally on purpose?”

  “Not before they’ve taken care of Gallo. After that, I’d say all bets are off.”

  “We’re playing for the city, then,” Shaughnessy said, confirming it.

  “High time, I’d say.”

  “Smart move would be to let the Rocket squad go in ahead of us. That way, we got them in a sandwich.”

  “Caught between corned beef and meatballs, eh?”

  “They take the heavy hits and grind down Gallo’s soldiers, leaving us to mop up after.”

  “Could work,” Devlin said.

  “If their asses show on time, or if they show at all.”

  “I think they’ll show, however many make it. Cletus took it personal, wops shooting up his place.”

  “If it was them,” Shaughnessy stated.

  “Who gives a shite? We get the extra cannon fodder, either way.”

  “I told the boys they should be ready for a free-for-all. No limit.”

  “Long as we get out before the law drops in,” Devlin said.

  “Goes without saying, eh?”

  “Speaking of the law, it come as a surprise to me that Greg O’Malley had a fix in with the Gallos.”

  “Coulda knocked me over with a feather,” Shaughnessy agreed.

  “It makes me stop and think about some others I could mention.”

  “Don’t do it, though. Good thing is, once there’s no more Gallos left to pay them, they’ll come hat in hand to see whoever’s running things.”

  “Which would be us,” Shaughnessy said.

  “The very same.”

  “We’d best not feck it up then, brother.”

  “Never crossed my mind.”

  “You wanna flip for who puts Papa Vinnie down?”

  “Whoever sees him first?” Devlin suggested.

  “And the loser buys the first two rounds at Flannery’s.”

  “I’ll drink your whiskey any day.”

  “We’d best be heading out to Black Rock, then,” Shaughnessy said. “I’d hate to miss the party altogether.”

  “Just be fashionably late to make our entrance.”

  Shaughnessy picked up his M4 carbine from the floor beside his chair and took it with him as he started for the exit. Devlin would have plenty of spare magazines collected with the other gear, same mags used by the M16 and AR-15 variants. His backup weapons were a SIG Sauer P239 chambered for .40 S&W rounds, tucked in a horizontal holster at the small of his back, and a bone-handled switchblade he’d honed to razor sharpness, thirsty for a taste of blood.

  It had been six—no, almost seven months—since Shaughnessy had shot a man, and that one managed to survive, though with a crucial lesson learned. This night, he didn’t plan on leaving any of his enemies alive. He would go down in history, with Devlin, as the Mick who made a comeback, taught the Mafia a thing or two and made it stick.

  Assuming they got through the night alive.

  Clinton Street, East Side, Buffalo

  ROCKET HAD NOWHERE near the fifty gunners he had promised to the Irishmen. Barely half that, if the truth be told, but they were strapped to hell and back, ready to rumble. Anyway, no harm had ever come from lying to a honky. It was standard ops around the ’hood.

  It was full dark outside now, and his gangstas were itching to go. They’d scrounged up five cars, counting Rocket’s Caddy STS, the cool Seville Touring Sedan. He would be riding shotgun—make that AK-47—with his four best men, and let the others follow in a righteous convoy over to the Black Rock hideaway where Vinnie Gallo reckoned he could hide.

  Another white man’s dumb idea.

  Rocket was thinking of a movie he had seen years ago, with Spencer Tracy and a bunch of other honkies in it. Tracy was supposed to be a one-armed soldier, come looking for his best friend in some dinky town out west. You knew it was fantasy right off, because his friend was Japanese and this was just a few weeks after World War II. Turned out a bunch of other honkies killed the Asian, naturally, so the one-armed guy started kicking ass.

  Bad Day at Black Rock, it was called. Now Rocket was about to make the sequel.

  Bad Night at Black Rock, yeah, for anybody standing up with Gallo when the Clinton Street Commandos hit his pad.

  Twenty-four men, besides himself, including two peewees he’d brought along to round the number off. One of them was just fifteen, but what the hell. He had to bust his cherry sometime, right? Rocket had personally shown him how to use a MAC-10, and supplied the hardware. All the peewee had to bring along was balls.

  How many Gallo soldiers waited for them at their destination? Rocket couldn’t guess, but this was all about respect and reputation. If he let the ofays kill his men without a reason in the world, and did nothing about it, Rocket knew he might as well pack up and move to Punk Town, sell his bootie on the street to any creep who came along.

  He damn sure wouldn’t be a man.

  Last weapons check, before they started rolling. Everyone was jitter-jiving as he moved along the line, inspecting hardware, making sure they had the safeties on for driving across town, reminding them to keep the guns down, out of sight, so no one saw them, freaked and called the po-po. Rocket wouldn’t mind dusting some cops, the way he felt right now, but if it kept him from the Gallos, that was out.

  “All right,” he said at last. “Y’all know where we’s goin’. Take the thruway west, then north along the river. Watch the signs an’ keep the car ahead of you in sight, but don’t bunch up. Don’t wanna look like some jive-ass parade. Let’s do it!”

  They were piling into cars a second later, really doing it, with Rocket’s Caddy leading as they rolled out of the warehouse he’d selected as their staging point. Nothing could stop them now, unless one of his men did something stupid. Knowing what it meant to him, to all of them—and what he’d do to anyone who failed him—Rocket didn’t think they’d screw it up.

  Bad
Night at Black Rock, baby. Coming to you live, in ever-loving black-and-white.

  Detroit Metropolitan Airport

  ZOE ALMOST DIDN’T make the call. She was afraid, on one hand, and embarrassed on the other. Frightened that she might catch Johnny in the middle of some life-or-death activity, maybe distract him at a crucial moment. Worse yet, have the call be traced and lead the enemy to Johnny—or to her. As for embarrassment, she’d made a damned fool of herself in Buffalo, had nearly died and taken Johnny with her, plus his scary friend with the gigantic rifle.

  Jesus, what a day!

  And all she had to show for it was Johnny’s word that he believed her brother had been murdered, that she might never recover his remains for burial. He’d tried to break the news gently, but it had sickened Zoe. It had scarred her soul.

  She called him, anyway, using a landline in the terminal, so that a trace wouldn’t lead back to her directly. She was that smart, anyway. If someone traced the call from Johnny’s end, somehow, they’d have to reach the airport, search both terminals, eyeball thousands of people who were flying in and out or meeting planes.

  Good luck with that. Her flight was leaving in an hour, for Seattle. Where she’d go from there was anybody’s guess.

  Not home. Not yet.

  She didn’t have his number memorized, but read it off her cell phone, tapping out the digits with her head cocked, the old-fashioned handset wedged against her ear. It would have made her skin crawl the previous day, thinking of all the people who had pressed that plastic to their faces, but the thought of catching something from a telephone didn’t intimidate her now.

  Screw that. She had survived the freaking Mafia.

  So far.

  His phone rang, Zoe thinking she’d be satisfied with voice mail, but he answered on the second ring. “Hello?” It was a cautious tone; no way he could have recognized the number she was calling from.

  “I had to thank you one more time,” she said.

  “You really didn’t.”

  “Yes. You saved my life. You almost died.”

  “Not even close,” he lied.