Canadian Crisis Read online

  “So what do we do now?”

  “They’re tracking us into a hit,” Bolan told him. “Just waiting for a stretch of empty road.”

  “So?”

  “So we wait them out. And we’ll play their game—but our way.”

  “I’ll take that pistol, now,” Chebleu said.

  “Not this one. Go aft.” Bolan punched a button on the console. “Armory’s open. Choose your weapon.”

  Chebleu was smiling grimly. “So. You knew it all the while.”

  “Suspected,” Bolan corrected. “For better or for worse—it’s you and me, Andre, soldiers together.”

  “Of the same side,” the Canadian growled, and went aft for his weapon.

  3: ENGAGEMENT AT NIAGARA

  Tommy Sandini and his Broadway crew were just pulling into the front lot at Naturals’ as the big RV was easing out the other end. One of the boys even made a joke about Gramelli’s business “picking up by the busload.”

  Sandini himself had not even stepped out of the car before one of his boys discovered the dead bodies near the back entrance to the club. A quick look inside confirmed the awful suspicions, and a fast calculation of two plus two sent the Sandini crew highballing after that “bus.”

  “Those bodies were still warm, boss,” reported tagman Vacchi.

  “Still bleeding, he means,” added another.

  “Everybody back inside!” Tough Tommy commanded. “Which way’d that bus go?”

  “Went up Delaware,” the wheelman muttered. “Everybody just hang on, I’ll be up their ass in two snorts.”

  And thus the chase began.

  As it turned out, more than a couple of snorts were required before wheelman Roselli could close the distance between the two vehicles. By that time, the chase had turned east along Sheridan Drive.

  “They’re headed for the Thruway,” Sandini growled. “Lay back and let ’em go, let’s see where it takes us.”

  “We could hit ’em at Sheridan Park,” Vacchi suggested.

  “Hit, hit, what hit?” the boss snarled. “We don’t even know who it is. Maybe we ought to be back at Gramelli’s, taking that joint apart.”

  “I got an idea, Tommy,” the wheelman said. “That bus ain’t no bus. Know what it is?”

  Sandini respected his wheelman, especially in anything concerning automobiles. He growled, “It’s one of those camper things, isn’t it?”

  “Right, an RV, so-called recreational vehicle. That one up there is pretty jazzy but it’s still an RV. You know what I heard from a guy was out in Seattle awhile back—you know when? When the fur was flying out there.”

  “You mean the Bolan thing.”

  “Yeah. This guy says Hardcock Bolan was driving one of them things, an RV.”

  “Shit.” Sandini responded, in a sibilant whisper.

  “That’s what the guy said, Tommy.”

  “Let’s uh, keep a distance. If uh, if what you say …” The boss’s mouth got lost in his mind, and a strained silence descended upon that group.

  Presently one of the young hardmen who had discovered the bodies of Gramelli and lieutenants inside the club made a strange sound and touched his boss’s shoulder from the jump seat.

  “What is it?” Sandini asked in a subdued voice.

  “I picked something up back there. Had blood on it. I just wiped it off and dropped it in my pocket. Didn’t really hit me, boss.”

  “What didn’t?”

  “What does a marksman’s medal look like?”

  “It’s a bull’s-eye cross,” Vacchi said quickly.

  “Oh shit,” said the young gunner. “I thought it was a religious medal.”

  “Let me see that thing!” Sandini demanded, reaching for it.

  A moment later, it all came together—and the Sandini crew from the Broadway territory knew they had a tiger by the tail.

  “What’re we going to do?” Vacchi mildly inquired of his boss.

  “We’re going to stay on his ass, that’s what we’re going to do,” Sandini snarled back. “Now shut up and let me think about it.”

  The wheelman quietly got in his favorite gripe. “We should’ve gone radio-equipped, Tommy, like I been saying. We could get some help out here.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Sure, Tommy.”

  It was a whisper from one of the youngsters in the rear, but it came through loud and clear. “Shit, there’s six of us. We could take ’im.”

  “How many was back there at Naturals’?” Vacchi purred.

  “That was different,” replied the anonymous whisper. “He caught them cold. This is diferent.”

  “Shut up that fuckin’ whispering back there!” Sandini howled. “What is this? A goddamn hunt club? Shut up back there! That’s a million-dollar baby up there, not no goddamn pigeon tied to a stake!”

  “There’s our last chance,” the wheelman reported. “He’s taking the Thruway uh—yeah, yeah, north ramp. We’re headed north.”

  “Stay with him!”

  “You wanta drop a boy off, boss, before it’s too late? Get to a phone, I mean.”

  “Fuck no, forget that! Okay, yeah! Fonti—get out! Call Joe Staccio! Tell ’im what we got here and to goddammit get us some help up here. Get a damn helicopter, get anything, just get some help and quick!”

  “Headed toward Niagara?” the kid grunted as he tumbled through the doorway.

  “Just tell ’im what you know!” Sandini yelled—and again they were off.

  “So what do we do?” Vacchi asked the boss.

  “We keep back and give him room to run, that’s what. Not too close, dammit—just run him.”

  “This traffic is pretty thick,” the wheelman reported. “I better not give him too much slack.”

  “The guy might be headed for the Ontario side,” Vacchi worried. “We ought to hit him before that.”

  “There’s plenty of spots between here and there,” said Roselli.

  “I’ll tell you when,” Sandini growled. “Let’s give Joe Staccio all the time we can to spring some help this way.”

  “I know a perfect spot,” Roselli muttered. “This time of night—if he takes Mose Parkway into the Falls … that’s a perfect spot, boss.”

  “I’ll tell you when,” Sandini fretted. It was perhaps the largest moment of his life. He was not about to blow it. “You boys listen to me. This is the big one, the mother lode. We get Mack Bolan’s head in a sack and we can write our own ticket anywhere. You understand me? This is the big one.”

  The pep talk was unnecessary. Each man in that fated vehicle knew very well the size of this moment. Riches, reputation, rank, glory—all was represented in that dim glow of taillights running the road to Niagara Falls. And five glazed gazes knew it. The Sandini crew was ready to fulfill its destiny.

  They rolled over Buckhorn Island and across the Niagara River, then west along the river route. Chebleu told Bolan, “This is the zone I would choose for the attack.”

  “I expected them sooner than this,” Bolan replied. He did not like the cat-and-mouse aspect which had developed here. “They’re playing it too cozy. Must be expecting reinforcements somewhere along the way. Get ready, Andre. We start our game now.”

  Chebleu nodded and took his position—on the floor, at the midships doorway—a light autopistol at the ready.

  They were moving along within a small clump of traffic, flowing leisurely at the speed limit—perhaps a dozen vehicles, in all—the tail car hanging grimly to the trailing edge of the formation.

  Bolan hit his flasher and the wheel at the same instant, tromping the accelerator and swinging into a gap in the adjacent traffic lane, gathering momentum and weaving through the pack until he was clear and hurtling along in a free run toward the next pack, far ahead.

  The crew vehicle, though faster and more maneuverable, was not finding the holes quite so well. The warwagon was a full thousand meters out front before the other car broke clear—but then the gap began quickly shortening between the two, and
Bolan knew that it was going to be a horse race into the chosen zone of combat. He needed a lonely stretch, a place where innocent bystanders would not be subjected to the hellfire of open warfare. And that place lay just ahead. The countdown was on. The engagement at Niagara was about to be consummated.

  “Did you see that!” Sandini cried. “He’s sniffed us! He’s running!”

  “Not far,” Roselli growled, leaning toward a hole to the right.

  From the jump seat, Vacchi marveled, “I didn’t know those big jobs could move that fast.”

  Roselli swore and tromped his brake. That hole on the right had disappeared. He hit his horn and surged up to the rear bumper of the car ahead. The guy up there was watching him through the rearview but otherwise ignoring that presence on his tailgate.

  Sandini yelled, “Move ’im, dammit! We’re losing the show!”

  It was at such times that a professional wheelman earned his daily bread. Roselli growled, “We’re going through—hang on.” The big car leapt onto the bumper of the car ahead—just a tap and a shove before falling back and swerving right to graze the other vehicle of the box.

  The startled drivers of the other cars immediately gave room, the one falling back and the other surging ahead. Roselli cackled as he swung into the hole and he flipped a finger at the driver on his left as he powered on through and ahead. The lights of the “bus” were receding into the distance as he extricated himself from the rest of the pack and began really laying rubber.

  “Move it, move it,” Sandini growled.

  “We’re doing a flat hundred.”

  “Don’t give me speed reports, dammit. Catch that bastard!”

  “He ain’t going nowhere, boss.”

  “Damn right he ain’t. We take no more chances.” Sandini swiveled tautly toward the rear. “You boys get it ready. Shoot the son of a bitch off the road. Rosy will tell you when. Right, Rosy?”

  “Right,” the wheelman replied. He was hunched over the wheel, giving the big cruiser every rein she would take. “I’ll pull by fast,” he explained. “Get your windows down, back there. Hoss—you lay your shotgun right down in the tit of the window. I’ll put you right even with the driver’s seat. That’s when you let go, and that’s when I let go. We’re going to be moving like hell, so don’t muff it.”

  “We gotta stay clear,” Sandini cautioned. “Don’t want the damn thing rolling over on us.”

  “You blow ’im away with that shotgun, Hoss,” Roselli said. “I’ll take care of the rest, boss.”

  The Broadway crew trusted wheelman Roselli’s instincts in a moving vehicle. There was no real worry in that regard. It was Vacchi who voiced the real worry. “Sounds too easy,” he fretted. “That guy isn’t going to let us just slide up there and start booming away. If he’s sniffed us, then he’s getting ready for us. That’s for sure.”

  “You got a better plan?” Sandini asked coldly.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Hit ’im, Rosy. Just like you called it.”

  They were moving up, now, swiftly and surely, eating away the distance to sudden riches and glory. The RV was no more than a football field ahead.

  Sandini suddenly made a noise in his throat, following with: “Do you see that?”

  “What, boss?”

  “I thought that bus was flat on top. Now it’s got a—a …”

  “Air conditioner,” Roselli said, instinctively slowing the advance, however.

  “Naw, naw, that ain’t what that is,” Sandini growled.

  Vacchi suddenly grabbed the seat by Sandini’s shoulder and gasped. The “thing” above the RV was moving, swiveling about, and it suddenly became quite apparent to the ex-GI what that “thing” was. “Stop, Rosy!” he yelled. “Stop the car!”

  “You crazy?” Sandini snarled.

  “It’s a rocket launcher! That’s a Goddamn—!”

  Yes, the Broadway crew had themselves a tiger by the tail, and now all knew it for once and all—“all” being the final fleeting seconds of the motley assortment of misspent lives.

  Vacchi was still trying to scream an explanation of what the “thing” was when a flaming arrow leapt clear up there and whizzed along the backtrack in a hustling intercept. The moment became frozen, illumined by the certain knowledge of what was coming for them, the horror heightened by the rustling sound the thing was making and the inevitability of the firetrack.

  The big rocket met that speeding vehicle smack on the windshield, and engulfed it in a shattering, roaring, all-consuming fireball that lifted it completely off the road, spun it drunkenly in a plunging cartwheel, and swept it into the Niagara River.

  And far ahead, Mack Bolan deactivated his fire-control system, retracted his launcher into the roof, and told his passenger, “Stay alert. There could be more.”

  Chebleu was shaken, stunned by the unexpected turn of events. “I think not,” he replied quietly. “If so, they would have lost the heart, just now.”

  He came forward, ruefuelly inspecting his unused weapon, and dropped into the seat opposite Bolan. The look he was giving the man held new respect. “I think, also,” he added quietly, “that I can hardly wait for Montreal.”

  Nor, indeed, could the Executioner. The French-speaking capital of North America was next on his hit parade.

  4: FROM THE TOP

  Joe Staccio, as boss of the upstate New York territories, was one of the eleven iron old men who ruled the farflung Cosa Nostra empire. His seat on La Commissione had been secure and unchallenged for many years and it was generally known that his voice at the ruling council was a respected and influential one. Still, Joe Staccio knew his place. There was but one “boss of all the bosses”—and that one was Augie Marinello, the crusty old patriarch of the “five-family” New York City territory.

  Augie was getting pretty old, sure, and he’d never been the same since that brush with death at the hands of one Mack Bolan in New Jersey one terrible night. He’d lost both legs to Bolan’s fireworks, and his claim on life itself had been nip and tuck for a while there—but a man such as Augie Marinello did not need legs to sit at the head of the table, and he did not need the steel grip of youth to hold the reins of this savage empire. A flash of the eyes, a toss of the head, a clearing of the throat, the clenching of a feebled fist—any of these was sufficient to topple governments or ruin powerful corporations anyplace on the globe. Augie was still the boss’s boss—and none had ever thought of it any other way. Particularly not Joe Staccio.

  He came in quietly and kissed the old man’s ring, then sat down and waited for an acknowledgment of his presence there.

  Augie looked terrible. The years were piling up on him. The hair had gone snow white almost overnight, the skin on face and hands almost corrugated with wrinkles. When those eyes came open, however, the boss was still the boss.

  “How you doing, Joe?” he asked tiredly.

  “I’m doing fine, Augie. You’re looking swell.”

  “I’m looking terrible and you know it,” Marinello said, sighing. “I’d like to get this thing sewed up before I die.”

  Staccio shifted uncomfortably as he replied, “You’re not going to die, Augie.”

  “Sure I am. Everybody dies. I’m running out of time, Joe. I know it in my bones. I want this thing sewed up, and quick.”

  “That’s what I came to talk about.”

  “I know. Did you set it up?”

  Staccio fidgeted some more. “The meet is set, yeah. We got an army up there to keep things in hand, and all the delegations but Greece have checked in.”

  “All of ’em?”

  “Like I said, all but Greece. They’re due in tonight.”

  “Turkey?”

  “Sure, them too. That’s like a little NATO we got going up there, Augie. I wish you could make it yourself.”

  “Something’s on your mind, Joe. What is it?”

  “Well … there could be a hitch, Augie.”

  “What hitch?”

  “I got th
is wild call from Buffalo last night. One of the downtown kids. He says somebody walked in and knocked over a suburb office. About midnight. Maybe you don’t remember Bobby Gramelli.”

  “Sure I do,” the old man replied immediately. “I made Bobby more’n twenty years ago, gave ’im a numbers concession in the Bronx. What about ‘im?”

  “He got shot in the head last night, Augie. And four of his boys along with him. This kid that called me is from the downtown office. You know Tommy Sandini?”

  Marinello shook his head. “Maybe if I saw him.”

  “Come to me by way of Boston, had blood connections there but he was a little wild. His uncle, Charlie Sandini, asked me to take him under my wing for a while, get the kid’s feet planted good. Been with me ever since. I put him in charge of the downtown Buffalo office a couple of years ago. Well Tommy Sandini and his crew happened along right as the suburb office was getting knocked over. They see this guy hottin’ it out of there in one of these, uh, you know, what they call mobile home, uh, no, I mean motor home—you know, these damn trucks with a house built on them. They chased after the guy, finds him heading out the river parkway toward Niagara Falls. Well by now they’ve got the idea that this boy they’re chasing is none other than Mack Bolan.”

  The old eyes flashed. “Where’d they get that?”

  “One of the kids has picked up a marksman’s medal, back at the suburb office. It’s laying on Bobby Gramelli’s dead body. This is a green kid and he don’t think to mention it until the chase is on. So anyway, they drop this kid off somewheres to sound the alarm and off they go on Mack Bolan’s tail. They—”

  “When do you get this, Joe?”

  “Right away. I’m in Syracuse, just for overnight to rest up for all that diplomatic crap in Montreal, and I get this hot call from my office in Rochester. Matty Howell there tells me this hysterical kid is on the horn with this wild story about chasing Mack Bolan out of Buffalo. I say okay and Matty switches the call over, and I get it straight from the Buffalo kid. He says the chase is running toward Niagara and what should they do? I was fit to—”

  The old man interrupted with a kindly comment. “This Bolan guy puts the shivers in the best boys, Joe. No need to apologize for yours.”