Missouri Deathwatch Read online

  Ahead, a pair of headlights flared, and Bolan recognized the backup limousine at once, its sleek shape sinister beneath the street lamps. It was only common sense for them to stake out the grounds, watch for any late arrivals, stragglers escaping from the strike.

  The headlights flashed once, again... a prearranged signal, sure. The soldier wasted no time trying to decipher it. He kept his pedal to the floor and barreled past them, knowing it was too late to think about evasive action.

  A glimpse of startled faces swiveled to follow him, and then the Executioner left them in his wake, the dark street clear in front of him. His eyes were on the rearview mirror, watching as the Lincoln growled to life and powered through a U-turn, screeching into hot pursuit of Bolan and his groggy passenger.

  Confusion had to count for something, and the gunners would be arguing among themselves by now. If they had glimpsed his face, then they would have to know the Caddy was in strange and hostile hands. And they would pursue him until they made the tag... or until Bolan shook them off his track.

  But granting that the gunners might have seen his face, however fleetingly, the Executioner could not afford to merely shake them off. He had to kill them and make damned sure that none of them were left alive to spread his new description.

  They would have to die, but not before he had a chance to question one of them, to find out who they were and why they were so interested in his passenger.

  The soldier kept his mind on grim survival for the moment, knowing he might never live to extract any intel if hostile gunners overtook him here, in the middle of a sleeping residential neighborhood.

  It was not Bolan's way to wage his war with innocent civilians in the cross fire. There were times, of course, when he could not dictate the battlefield, but when a choice existed, Bolan tried to isolate his targets and eliminate the noncombatants from his field of fire.

  Like now.

  The Continental's driver had recovered from his momentary disadvantage on the starting line, and he was gaining ground, his headlights glaring back like dragon eyes at Bolan from the rearview mirror as the tank bore down on them. The Caddy was already straining near its limit, and the soldier knew he had to try another tactic.

  He had made a brief refresher study of the neighborhood before his probe, and Bolan knew the through streets now. He gunned the Caddy through two intersections, finding the one he wanted, finally standing on the brake and cranking hard left on the wheel.

  He heard Giamba sliding on the seat behind him, struggling to pull himself erect inside the swerving car. A pudgy hand gripped the back of Bolan's seat, clung briefly, then lost it as he made another screeching turn, doubling back the way he had come. There was a muffled curse as Artie hit the floorboards with a solid thump.

  "Goddammit! What the hell?..."

  "Stay down!" the soldier cautioned, and there wasn't any time for further dialogue if they were going to survive the next few moments.

  On his final screaming turn, the Continental was a full half block behind, and Bolan hoped his sudden deviations from the track had shaken crew and driver. The soldier knew that if he could keep them disoriented, then he had a chance.

  The Caddy and its tail were leaving larger homes behind and roaring through the streets of smaller tracts. The warrior marked the vacant lots that opened out on either side, the red light winking on a radio tower away to his left. The city was behind them now; ahead lay drab industrial developments.

  The Continental was a looming silhouette in Bolan's mirror, gaining once again, the driver's confidence returning as his lights picked out the straightway. The tank already had its windows down, and it was bristling with weapons as gunners braced themselves to make a strafing run.

  Bolan held the Cadillac at sixty-five and watched the Lincoln closing on his tail, weaving back and forth, the driver seeking room to pass. The soldier held his own tank in the middle of the two-lane road, sharp eyes on the mirror, trying to anticipate the hostile wheelman's moves.

  He sprang the AutoMag from leather, and placed it on the seat beside him. He let the Caddy drift off center, giving his assailant room to pass, to try a broadside fusillade. His hand was wrapped around the silver cannon when the wheelman saw the opening and went for it, the Lincoln surging forward like a hungry panther, bright eyes tunneling the darkness.

  It was up to the soldier's timing now, split-second expertise that would draw the line between success and failure, life and sudden death. The tiniest mistake would doom him, but Bolan was not ready to concede defeat.

  His eyes were on the outside mirror, left hand steady on the wheel, as he tapped his brake and held it for a heartbeat, two, the Caddy instantly responding to his signal, slowing just enough to let the gun crew draw abreast. Another second now, and they would have him in their sights, begin unloading with everything they had at point-blank range.

  If Bolan let them have the time.

  Big Thunder's silver barrel slid across the windowsill, the Magnum an extension of himself, as the warrior turned to let the gunners have a graveyard smile. Before it had a chance to register, he was squeezing off in rapid-fire and standing on the Caddy's brake, his wagon nosing down to let the Lincoln roll on by at seventy, a gleaming blur with startled faces framed in open windows.

  And Bolan's rounds were burning in among them now, exploding window glass and bone, dissolving flesh on impact. Slumped across his steering wheel, the Continental's driver was a twitching rag doll, robbed of voluntary movement by the bullet that had clipped his spine. With no hand upon the helm, the tank swerved left, then right and finally went over in a barrel roll, its four doors flapping and disgorging bodies like projectiles in the night.

  Bolan brought his stolen Caddy to a halt uprange, and he was EVA before the Lincoln came to rest, inverted, in the middle of the two-lane highway. Smoke was wafting from the undercarriage, and he knew there would be only moments left before the fuel tank blew, consuming anyone inside.

  The AutoMag was empty, and he fed it a replacement magazine as he advanced upon the ruined tank. The soldier marked a crumpled body to his left, another dead ahead and moved on past them. At twenty yards he spied the driver wedged beneath the Lincoln's wheel, the angle of his twisted head and neck testifying to instant death.

  Dammit!

  He had hoped to take a hostage here, to squeeze some answers in hopes of learning what brought a crew to Art Giamba's fading palace in the middle of the night.

  A movement tp his right brought Bolan into combat crouch before a wounded gunner showed himself. One arm was clearly broken and a bloody flap of scalp was hanging down across his forehead like a cheap toupee. He dragged one leg behind him, grunting with the pain his effort cost him, straining now to put some ground between himself and the smoldering Continental before it blew.

  The hardman's bleary eyes found Bolan almost accidentally, the black-clad image registering slowly on a shell-shocked brain. His injuries retarded the conditioned reflex of defense, but he was digging for the holstered automatic when the Executioner squeezed off one round of thunder at a range of fifteen yards.

  A 240-grain shocker cut the gunner's one good leg from under him, and the pistol flew from nerveless fingers as he sprawled facedown upon the pavement. Whimpering, he tried to drag himself across the asphalt to reach the weapon, but the Executioner was there before him, reaching down to pluck the automatic from his fingertips and toss it out of sight.

  Bolan crouched beside the wounded gunner, rolled him roughly over on his back so that their eyes could meet. The guy was hurting, and when he drew a breath, the liquid rattle in his throat and chest betrayed internal injuries.

  "You're running out of time," the warrior told him bluntly, seeing recognition of the truth behind the hostile eyes. "I need to know who sent you for Giamba."

  "Yeah?" The mortuary whisper carried traces of amusement underneath the pain. "Well, you can fuck yourself."

  A sudden coughing jag brought blood up from the damaged lungs. The
guy was choking on it for a moment, but he finally cleared his throat, and there was grim defiance in his eyes as he regarded Bolan from beneath the fringe of dangling scalp.

  "Okay."

  The Executioner nodded slowly as he rose, silver AutoMag already sliding out to full extension. The hardman saw it coming, tried to spit at Bolan with his dying breath, but he was short on wind and all he got was another coughing spasm for his trouble.

  Bolan sent relief between the bulging, hate-filled eyes, an incandescent mercy burning through to find the brain and cauterize its dark, malignant evil.

  Little Art Giamba had regained his seat when Bolan reached the Cadillac, and he was staring wide-eyed at the apparition that slid in behind the steering wheel.

  "Holy mother!"

  Bolan cranked the Caddy into life again and dropped it into gear, prepared to take them out of there.

  "You took 'em all!"

  "That's right."

  "Do I know you?" the little mafioso asked suspiciously.

  The soldier glanced across his shoulder, gave his passenger a look inside the graveyard eyes.

  "You tell me, Artie," he replied.

  And they were rolling before the mobster had a chance to find his voice, but there was something in the silence that was half an answer in itself. The sudden fear and awe in Artie's eyes had said it ail.

  3

  The mafioso knew Mack Bolan, although he would have been hard pressed to recognize the face. But Art Giamba knew the Executioner, damn right.

  They'd called him "Little Artie" since the old days, and the name had been in reference to his five-foot-four physique and not to any shortage of respect within La Cosa Nostra's ruling hierarchy. Back when booze was the outlawed commodity, Giamba ran St. Louis with an iron hand, his tentacles of power reaching across the broad Midwest to strangle competition.

  With his childhood friend and lethal ally Jules Pattricia, Little Artie was a power to be reckoned with throughout the heartland of America — indeed as far away as Washington, D.C.

  But times had changed and the world rolled over on Giamba in the fifties. He was busied by the Feds and locked away for seven years, while Jules remained behind to mind the store. But he lacked Giamba's business sense, and in the years of Little Artie's exile, raiding parties out of Cleveland and Detroit, Chicago and Miami nibbled at the fringes of a crumbling empire. Returning home, Giamba found his fiefdom withered besieged within the borders of Missouri proper.

  Giamba and Pattricia fought to keep their shrunken empire intact against the border raiders from outside. A major headache was New York, where Augie Marinello's appetite had rapidly outgrown his jurisdiction, and the New-York Boss of Bosses mounted endless sorties into Art Giamba's territory to the west. Deprived of all but the most minimal influence on La Commissione, Little Artie dug in for the battle of his life.

  And he was on the verge of losing it when Bolan came to town, responding to an urgent flash from Able Team. The New York expeditionary force had taken Artie hostage and was starving him to death before the Executioner arrived to spoil their play.

  He had upset the whole equation in St. Louis, leaving Little Artie on his shaky throne as something like the lesser of two evils. In the end, it had not been so much a victory for the Giamba forces as it had been another winning skirmish in Mack Bolan's endless war.

  But it was happening again, and so he had returned — not for Giamba's sake, but for his own.

  They had ditched the Cadillac, and now the little mobster rode beside Bolan in his rental car. Artie remained silent for a while. They were cruising slowly through a residential neighbourhood before he found his voice again.

  "I heard you were alive, but who woulda thought? I mean..."

  "I told you I might be back this way."

  "I know, but hell... Hey, that's some job on your face. I'll bet your mother wouldn't know ya, huh?"

  "My mother's dead."

  And the mafioso did not miss the graveyard growl. He shuddered and slid a few inches farther away from Bolan.

  There was a momentary silence as they rolled along the tree-lined avenue through early-morning darkness. Artie knew the Bolan story well enough, and he didn't need a fresh reminder of the big guy's own blood debt against the brotherhood. He tried to change the subject.

  "Hey, it's lucky that you showed up when you did. Those bastards woulda had me in the bag by now." A sudden thought etched furrows in his brow. "How'd you find out they was gonna hit my place?"

  "I didn't know until they pulled up in your drive," he told the mobster honestly.

  "So you were coming after me."

  His whisper had a desperate, strangled sound within the confines of the car, and the ancient mobster's face took on a pallid look.

  The Executioner allowed his eyes to lock with Artie's for a moment.

  "I was coming after you to ask some questions. If I wanted more, you wouldn't be alive right now."

  A trace of color was returning to the mafioso's thin, anemic cheeks.

  "Well, I guess that's right. I never thoughta that. What kinda questions did you have in mind?"

  "Let's start with who might want to see you dead."

  The mobster's barking laugh was sharp, sardonic. "You got all night?"

  "Not even close."

  The soldier's tone told Artie more than he had meant to hear, and now he sobered instantly, the bitter laughter dying on his lips.

  "I'd say it smells familiar, hey?"

  "New York?"

  Giamba's shrug was eloquent. "I understand you had a guy up there who called himself a Marinello."

  Bolan nodded grimly. "You heard it right, and has's the word. He's dead."

  "Could be he died too late."

  "Explain."

  "It's the same old story, guy. New York gets hungry, and St. Louis feels the bite. This Augie, Jr., or whatever... say he tries to follow in the old man's footsteps an' he wants to cut himself a slice of what we got down here. You with me?"

  "So?"

  "Le's say he's got some troops already on the way, when he gets wiped back home. Le's say his soldiers think they're big enough and bad enough to carry on without him, hey? So Augie, Jr. is feedin' worms, an' I still got his army breathin' down my goddamned neck right here, like he was still alive... or maybe worse."

  "Why worse?"

  "Jus' think about it, eh? You wiped their boss, his territory's up for grabs back east. So why should these cocks ever wanna go back home? They're dead back there. Out here..."

  He did not have to finish it. The Executioner was way ahead of him by now, and it made sense. An expeditionary force had been deprived of its commander, and they were fighting now to stake out territory of their own before they were discovered by the rising warlords of their former turf and deemed a threat that had to be eradicated forcibly.

  And in a backward sort of way, Giamba's recent plight, all the current trouble in St. Louis, could be traced to Bolan's recent skirmish with the Mob in New York.

  One of the Big Apple's rising lights, Don Ernesto Marinello, had turned out to be the bastard son of Augie Marinello, Boss of Bosses and a one-time Bolan nemesis. Resurgence of the Marinello name on La Commissione had been unthinkable to Bolan, and he had been forced to pull out all the stops for one more hellfire cleansing of Manhattan and environs. Underbosses in a dozen gangland families were scrambling to fill the chairs of capos who had fallen in New York, but Bolan had been satisfied to see the hated Marinello name atop his list of casualties.

  And now it seemed the name and Marinello's guiding hand were coming back to haunt him in another battlefield. Old Augie's heir was in the ground, but he had set machinery in motion that was running on without him now and which, if Bolan was not careful, might put down roots in the Missouri soil and flourish like some noxious weed.

  Giamba's personal security meant nothing to the Executioner. The guy was still a cannibal, but he was a dinosaur, out of place and out of time, approaching personal extinction. And i
t wasn't Bolan's job to keep the guy in power.

  Except that Art Giamba's fall would still create a vacuum, and someone would inevitably be drawn in to fill his shoes. If it was someone after Artie's own convictions, then the operations in St. Louis would go on as they had done for years... some gambling, some ladies who would occupy the time with bored conventioneers, some smuggling and domination of the rural moonshine industry.

  But if a Marinello protege should seize the throne, begin to build an empire along the lines of Don Ernesto's rotten structure in New York...

  "I'd say you've got a problem," Bolan told the aging mobster.

  "Yeah. So tell me somethin' I don't know already, hey?"

  "You have someplace where I can safe you while I take a look around?"

  Giamba cut a sidelong glance toward Bolan, chewing on a thought for a while, unable to divine the soldier's motive. "I don't get it, guy. I mean, I'm grateful... This is twice you've saved my ass, but still, it don't add up, ya know?"

  The soldier smiled without emotion. "Let's just say I've got a vested interest in making sure New York stays in New York."

  Another thoughtful pause. "Okay, I can relate to that... I think. You know Pattricia's place?"

  Bolan nodded. "How is old Jules?"

  Giamba's voice turned stony in an instant. "Dead, that's how he is. About a week ago. The bastards caught him drivin' home an' put about a hunerd bullets in his car."

  Artie's voice was cracking, and the soldier glanced at him, startled by the raw emotion on the little mobster's face. Giamba and Pattricia had gone back some forty years together, and clearly there had been a bond between them that was more than surface deep.

  Giamba got himself together and continued as the soldier cut a U-turn, homing in on Jules Pattricia's neighborhood.

  "Jules had a boy. Name's Bobby. Anyway, he's livin' out there now an' takin' care of business. Jus' like his old man, I tell ya that. A goddamn rock."

  The voice was running out of steam again, and Bolan let it go, continuing the drive in silence. He had battle plans to make, and there would be more time for talking when he dropped Giamba at the old Pattricia place. With any luck, he might meet Bob the Rock, and get a better feel for what was coming down in Artie's camp.