Battle Mask Read online

  “Okay … uh … I’m sorry as hell, Deej.”

  DiGeorge quietly hung up the telephone, stared at it dolefully for a long moment, then said, “You sure are, Lou baby.”

  Bolan sent his car powering into a squealing turn to follow the torturous mountain road, crested the hill, and began the drop into the interior valley. The twinkling lights of a small town were showing, far ahead. He glanced at his watch and decided that he was making pretty good time, even with all his zig-zagging and backtracking through the mountains. His gasoline supply was getting low; the powerful car could consume a lot of fuel during two hours of this type of driving. The lights in the distance should be Palm Village, he decided. He wondered if he had gas enough to make it on in, and whether or not he would come onto a service station on this lonely road. A dull ache in his right ankle told him that the injury from the Balboa battle was again demanding attention. He felt shelled-out, weary, and entirely resigned to the role fate had decreed for him. He was going to die by the gun, he knew this. The only question remaining unanswered, in Bolan’s mind, was the when of it. Why not right now, he mused. Why prolong it? A forlorn pride surged up from the depths of his weariness. He knew, of course, why it had to be prolonged. A man did not choose a time and place to die; he chose a battleground for life. Bolan had chosen his own battleground. The rest of it was simply a matter of fighting the battle to the best of his ability, and all the way to the end. Was that a philosophy, or a resignation? Bolan shook his head. He recognized it as neither. Philosophies, to Bolan’s mind, were no more than idle games. In the final analysis, a man either spent his life or bargained it away. Bolan was spending his.

  He then swept around another curve and immediately began slowing for a brightly lighted intersection straight haead. A roadside sign with GAS-OIL-CAFE caught his attention. It directed him to a rundown building with a single gas pump, occupying one corner of the road junction. Bolan eased on the brakes and swung onto a dusty ramp, bringing the car to a halt at the gas pump. He opened the door and stepped out, gingerly testing the sore ankle. Two other vehicles were parked in the shadow of the building; another was angled toward the highway at the far end of the ramp. Limping slightly, he went around the rear of his car and entered the building. Shelves on the back wall contained a dreary assortment of dry groceries. An ancient pinball machine occupied a dark corner. A rough-hewn counter with four stools constituted the “cafe.” Behind the dingy counter stood a middle-aged woman in a grease-spotted white apron. Two of the stools were being held down by a pair of elderly men. They wore soiled work clothes, were drinking beer from cans, and they were staring interestedly at Bolan. When he smiled at them, they turned away. Bolan moved on to the end of the counter and addressed the woman. “I need some gas,” he told her.

  “You’ll have to pump it yourself,” she replied, in a surprisingly cultured voice.

  “All right,” he said agreeably. “I’ll have some coffee, too.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, I’m out of coffee. How about a beer?”

  Bolan grinned and declined with a shake of his head. He stepped toward the door.

  “Don’t go out there, son,” said a voice behind him.

  Bolan paused with a hand on the door and gazed over his shoulder. One of the men at the counter had swivelled about and was regarding him with an intent stare. “I said, don’t go out there,” the old man repeated.

  “Why not?” Bolan inquired, his hackles already rising.

  “That car still out there? Edge o’ the road?”

  Bolan nodded his head and moved casually away from the door.

  “Three men in it,” the man informed him. “They was in here askin’ about you, little while ago. Figger they’re sittin’ out there just waitin’ for you now.”

  “How do you know they were asking about me?” Bolan said.

  The old man’s eyes raked Bolan from end to end. “Described you pretty well,” he replied. “And they’re packin’ guns.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Same way I know you got one under that jacket there. They got a shotgun, too. Saw it’n their front seat when they drove up. Don’t act like cops, either.”

  “They’re not,” Bolan assured him. He turned to the door again.

  “My old pickup’s out back,” the man said, in a tense voice.

  “Yeah?” Bolan was trying to appear relaxed and nonchalant as his eyes probed the vehicle at the intersection.

  “If you was to leave your car sittin’ there, I could probably drive you right past ’em.”

  Bolan examined the offer.

  “I was ’bout ready to go, anyway,” the man added.

  “There’s a suitcase on my back seat,” Bolan murmured. “I have to have it.”

  The old man slid off the stool. “I’ll go out and raise your hood and stick the hose in the gas tank,” he said. “They’ll think you’re gettin’ serviced. Can I get in that car from this side?”

  Bolin was gauging the angle of vision between the two cars. If the Mafiosi remained in their vehicle, they would not be able to see between Bolan’s car and the building, especially with Bolan’s hood elevated. “I’ll get the bag out and meet you in the rear,” he suggested.

  The old man nodded as he shuffled past Bolan and out the door. Moments later the hood of Bolan’s car sprang open, blocking Bolan’s view of the other vehicle. He quickly stepped outside, leaned into his car for the suitcase, then moved quickly around the corner of the small structure. A rattle-trap pickup truck sat on a dirt driveway at the rear. Bolan quietly deposited his luggage in the bed of the truck and climbed into the cab. He sat on the floorboards and eased the pistol into the ready position. He had hardly become settled when his elderly benefactor climbed in on the driver’s side and, without a word, cranked the engine. They jounced around the far end of the building and pulled slowly onto the highway, coming to a full stop directly opposite the stake-out vehicle. Bolan saw the old man nod genially at the Mafiosi, then the gears ground and they lurched on through the intersection.

  “They barely gave me a look-see,” the old man reported, chuckling. “Too busy tryin’ to see you gettin’ back in your car.”

  Bolan counted to ten, then lifted himself into the seat. The highway junction was disappearing around a gentle curve, and again the road was heading into a steep descent. “Better get all the speed you can out of this bucket, sir,” he advised. “Those guys won’t sit there and stare at an empty car forever.”

  “Ain’t had so much fun since Anzio,” the oldster declared. “You figger they’ll come shootin’ when they find out we suckered ’em?”

  “That’s what I figger,” Bolan replied quietly. “You’ll have to drop me at the first convenient spot. If they ever catch up with you, tell them I was holding a gun on you.”

  “Shoot! I ain’t never turned tail on vermin before. And, believe me, son, them back there is vermin.” The old man wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “It’s ten miles into Palm Village,” he added. “I guess I can get you that far. That’s where I’m headed anyway.”

  Bolan produced his wallet, extracted two fifties, and shoved them into the man’s shirt pocket.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  Bolan smiled grimly. “I couldn’t possibly do enough,” he said. “You have a right to know … those vermin back there are Mafia liquidators.”

  The old man smiled. “Shoot, I know that. Know you, too. Seen nothing but your picture on teevee for most a week now.”

  Bolan shot a glance through the rear window, grunted deep in his throat, and observed, “So … I guess you know what you’re doing.”

  The man’s head snapped in a decisive nod. “Sure do. Know what you’re doing, too. Want you to know, you got most of the people behind you. You’re a national hero … know that?”

  Bolan grinned again. He lightly massaged the grip of his pistol and swivelled sideways in the seat for a clear view to the rear. “You’d better get this vehicle movin
g faster than this,” he said worriedly.

  “She’s gulpin’ all the gas she can handle. Like me, she ain’t exactly in her prime.”

  Bolan peered despairingly at the speedometer. They had not even achieved the speed of flight. He threw off the safety of his pistol and began searching the road ahead for a place to fight. The Executioner’s flight appeared to be drawing to a close.

  Chapter Three

  THE HORIZON

  It was shortly past midnight when the ancient Ford pickup rolled to an indecisive halt at the junction of a country lane, just west of Palm Village. The tall figure descending from the passenger’s side of the cab dragged a suitcase from the bed of the truck, then stepped clear and threw a silent salute to the driver. A darkly weathered face smiled back at him, and the old vehicle chugged away.

  Limping slightly, Bolan headed down the tree-arched lane into inky darkness. He halted about ten yards from the intersection, moved behind a tree, and sat quietly on the up-ended suitcase, patiently waiting.

  Moments later another vehicle came to a halt in the intersection, then eased onto the shoulder of the main road. The headlights were quickly extinguished. A car door opened and gently closed, then another. A muffled voice declared: “Yeah, he stopped here, all right. We’ll check it out. You stay on th’ truck.” The smooth acceleration of a powerful engine signalled the departure of the second vehicle.

  Bolan arose with a quiet sigh, clipped a pencil flashlight to a low-hanging tree-branch, turned the tiny flashlight on, carefully positioned the suitcase, then moved swiftly and silently behind the line of trees and toward the intersection. Two men were moving cautiously toward him, one to either side of the lane. He sensed, rather than saw or heard, their approach, freezing behind a large elm and allowing them to pass. The men had obviously spotted the faint glow of the pencil-flash and were closing on it with great care.

  Their quarry smiled grimly as his stalkers moved downrange between him and the light, their shadowy forms taking on bulky substance against the lighter background. He stepped soundlessly onto the pavement and tagged along, bringing up the rear in the apex position of the three-man triangle. The two were perfectly outlined now as they moved on in a half-crouch, pistols thrust forward and ready.

  One of the men made an excited sound as the shadowy form of the grounded suitcase loomed up beyond the light. Both pistols exploded into sound and flame, and the suitcase toppled over onto its side with an ominous thud.

  “Hold it, hold it!” an excited voice commanded. “We got ’im!”

  “Then why’s the damn light…”

  “Turn around,” suggested a calm baritone behind them.

  Then men whirled as one, weapons roaring again even with no target in sight. A stuttering chatter overrode the other sounds, and extinguished them. A pained voice exclaimed, “Oh God, Frankie … oh God!” Bolan’s weapon stuttered again, very briefly. He stepped forward, gingerly probed the bodies with an extended foot, and said “uh-huh” with evident satisfaction.

  Bolan wasted no time over the dead. He retrieved the pencil-flash and the suitcase and returned quickly to the junction of the main road. There he concealed himself behind a small bushy growth and began another quiet wait. He lit a cigarette and calmly dragged on it, filling his lungs and holding the smoke for several seconds, then exhaling in short bursts of calculatingly released tensions. On the third inhalation, the eastern horizon began glowing with the suggestion of approaching headlights. Bolan carefully crushed the cigarette beneath his foot and examined his weapon.

  Moments later a speeding westbound automobile braked into the junction with a squeal of tires, hunching to a halt just inside the lane and slightly downrange from Bolan’s position. With engine idling and headlamps in full glare along the overshadowed lane, the driver of the vehicle stepped onto the roadway and called out softly, “Frank? Cholli? Be careful! He wasn’t in th’ truck!”

  Bolin had moved onto the lane and was approaching the vehicle from the rear. “Wonder where he could be?” he whispered harshly.

  The man said, “I dunno, he…” He stiffened suddenly, reaching into the car and trying to swing toward Bolan in the same motion. The stock of a sawed-off shotgun became entangled in the steering wheel. Grotesquely off balance and fighting frantically to free the shotgun, the man screeched: “No, Bolan, wait! I give …”

  What he planned to give was lost in the explosive bark of a single report from Bolan’s weapon. The bullet punched through an upflung hand and crunched into the bone between the eyes. The man crumbled, his limp body sagging onto the door, then flopping to the asphalt below. Bolan rolled him clear, dropped the shotgun across the body, and stepped into the car. He backed to the intersection, picked up his suitcase and threw it into the rear seat, then swung onto the main road and proceeded easterly toward Palm Village.

  Entering the residential outskirts of the city some moments later, Bolan came upon the battered pickup truck in which he had recently been a passenger. It was now even more battered, having apparently veered off the road, climbed the curbing, and come to rest against a tree. A human form lay on the grass beside the wrecked vehicle. A police cruiser was parked nearby and a uniformed officer stood at the edge of the road, excitedly waving Bolan on through with a flashlight, though there were no other vehicles on the road. Slowing through a gathering crowd of curious, nightclothed people, Bolan overheard a man exclaim: “Why, it’s old Harry Thompson!”

  Another voice observed, “Someone’s taken a shotgun to ’im.”

  A hot rage clutching at his chest, Bolan halted alongside the policeman. Careful to keep his face in shadow, he said tightly, “Anybody hurt?”

  The young officer then nodded his head in exasperation and said, “Please, keep moving. We gotta keep this road open for the ambulance.”

  “Still alive, then?”

  “I think so. Move along, will you? I can’t let this road get jammed up!”

  “There was some shooting about a mile back,” Bolan said, his tone chatty. “Might be some connection to this.”

  “We’ll check it out,” the officer assured him. “Will you please move …”

  Bolan applied pressure to the accelerator and left the scene quickly behind. His fingers were white on the steering wheel, the only outward sign of his inner raging. His anger was directed mostly toward himself; he’d had no right to involve the old man in his war. Sorrow was a luxury Mack Bolan could not afford. He cleared his mind of the old man, directed the car on to the business district, and abandoned it in a darkened public parking lot. Setting off on foot for the eastern edge of the city, he frequently shifted the suitcase from one hand to the other and halted occasionally to rub his swollen ankle.

  It was well past midnight when he found the neat collection of modest buildings and the flower-bordered grounds of New Horizons Sanitarium. He inspected the inconspicuous sign with interest, hoping that the name would prove symbolic for him. The phrase “new horizons” was a familiar one to Bolan: Jim Brantzen had used it often enough in speaking of his surgical specialty. Brantzen himself, however, was not an easy man to read. Although he had cut through Army custom and formalities to establish a strong friendship between a comissioned officer and a non-com, there had always existed that silent barrier between the two minds. Bolan had saved Brantzen’s life—not once, but twice—and there existed also that quiet bond of unspoken indebtedness. Still … Bolan was not certain that he would be greeted here with open arms. He would be requesting an illegal operation—surgery, that is, to escape apprehension and prosecution under law—and it would be asking quite a lot of any member of a respected profession, friendships and debts notwithstanding. There was also the matter of personal hazard via the Mafia. Bolan had just been given a jolting reminder of the danger he brought into each life he touched, no matter how casually. What right had he to…?

  He stared at the neat signboard and pondered the agonizing question. Could he construct a horizon for himself upon the graves of his friends?
Already seven graves lay at Bolan’s feet, perhaps eight now. A distant siren sounded across the night stillness. Bolan shivered and stepped away from the New Horizon sign. Then a light flashed on outside the central building and a screen door was opened. A familiar voice said, “Well … are you going to stand out there all night, or are you going to come in?”

  Chapter Four

  DESIGNS

  Captain Tim Braddock, LAPD, stepped out of his car and kicked absently into the fine gravel of the parking lot as he surveyed the sprawling beach house. Carl Lyons, the young sergeant of detectives who had been with Braddock since the beginning of the Bolan Case, code-named Hardcase, walked around the corner of the building and approached the captain’s vehicle.

  “It’s a sure score, Cap’n,” Lyons intoned softly.

  Braddock grunted and walked to the edge of the gravelled area, kneeling to inspect a deep impression left in the sand by a heavy wheel. “Would you say a semi-trailer?” he asked Lyons.

  The young man knelt beside his boss and spread his hands over the wide track. “Uh huh. There’s more of the same around at the side. Camouflage netting back there, that’s how they concealed it.”

  “What else have you found?” Braddock asked, grunting as he pushed himself upright.

  Lyons came up with him, smiling tightly. “Enough to convince me this was their headquarters,” he said. “Two bazookas and about 20 rounds of AP. Explosives, grenades, smoke pots, every type of weapon you can imagine. Target range and armorer’s shop set up back there under the cliffs, along the beach. Oh … and these.” He reached into his pocket and produced an envelope which he handed to Braddock.

  The Captain opened the envelope, and quickly glanced through the snapshots.

  “The DiGeorge place, Beverly Hills,” Lyons explained. “And from every conceivable angle. Bolan obviously plans these things with the thoroughness of a military field commander. It looks as though they did a thorough study of the terrain before they made their hit.”