St. Louis Showdown Read online

  Tom Postum was prepared for the worst, then, after being roused from his bed in the early morning hours with the report of an “apparent bombing” in the Giamba residence. He immediately relayed that information to his superior at Tactical Command, then hurriedly dressed and lost no time getting to headquarters for a full assessment of developments there.

  Postum calculated a spread of less than twenty minutes from receipt of the call in his bed to the moment he walked through the door at Tac Command. Yet his watch commander was waiting for him with phone in hand and baffled curiosity on his face.

  “Guy on here says he’s Mack Bolan,” the sergeant reported. “Asked for you by name. Says he has important information for you.”

  Postum frowned as he replied to that, “No time for games, Willis. I want to set up a—”

  “Better take the call, Lieutenant. Whoever this guy is, he seems to know all about the blast at Giamba’s.”

  Postum snatched the phone and spoke sharply into it. “What’s the game here?”

  A voice of quiet authority replied, “It’s no game, Postum. I want you to know that I have Little Artie under my wing. He’s alive and safe—for the moment, anyway. Now Ciglia, unless I’ve misread the guy completely, will be moving quickly to cut losses and consolidate his position. He—”

  “Just a damn minute!” the cop snarled. “I believe you are Mack Bolan!”

  “That’s what I’ve always been told,” that voice quietly replied. “Do you want to hear this or don’t you?”

  Postum gave the watch commander a confirming nod of the head and an eye signal, then resumed the conversation while the other cop scrambled over to the intercept system.

  “How long have you been in our town, Gangbuster?” he asked casually.

  “Long enough to know the size of the problem,” was the cool reply. “Ciglia is in full charge here, now—working a franchise directly from New York. He’s going to turn your town and your state into a mob playground like there’s never been before, or so he believes. He just might pull it off, too, if he can get past the problem of one frail old man.”

  “Giamba, of course.”

  “Right. Ciglia has been trying to finesse through a smooth transfer of power to save local fireworks but Artie wouldn’t play that game, not even under starvation and other subtle tortures. Finesse really isn’t Ciglia’s normal game. I believe he’s been acting under restraints from the New York head shed. Now that I have Giamba, those restraints mean nothing. Ciglia has probably already written the old man off as dead. I’m expecting him to be moving very quickly now along the other path.”

  Postum could hardly believe the audacity of the bastard. “Do you know what you’ve done, dude?” he asked disgustedly.

  “Sure,” that strong voice replied. “I’ve killed the hopes for a smooth transfer of power. I read that as a plus, not a minus.”

  “What’s this plus-minus bullshit?” Postum spat bitterly. “I’m talking about blood in the streets, man! You’ve thrown the town into a gang war, that’s what you’ve done!”

  “Which simply means that the town has a fighting chance,” the cool bastard replied. “Isn’t that better than total defeat? How would you like to be carrying your morning reports to a mob torpedo for the rest of your life, Postum?”

  The lieutenant from Tac Intelligence simply could not believe this guy! He sputtered, “I’m not debating the ethics of—with a … what the hell is this, mister? You’ve got a hell of a goddamned nerve calling me up like this and …”

  The guy at the other end of that tense line was chuckling quietly at Postum’s rage. The cop shut himself off abruptly and flashed a sheepish grin at the watch commander.

  “You’re something else—do you know that?” he said calmly to the most wanted man in America. “Are you the one bombed the Giamba place awhile ago?”

  “I am. It was just a couple of flash grenades, but it got what I wanted.”

  “Uh huh. What else do you want, Bolan?”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Twenty-four hours of what?”

  “Police cooperation.”

  “There you go again! You’re a loony, guy!”

  “Maybe so,” the guy said, sighing a bit sadly. “But I keep on hoping. Look, Postum, I called you because I’ve been assured that you’re an intelligent cop. And you are in the tactical game so why not think tactics? Let the war rage. Look the other way, and give it twenty-four hours. The enemy will engage itself and I’ll be in there helping both sides exterminate the other. This time tomorrow I’ll be out of your town, and what’s left of the local mob and their corrupted politicians won’t be worth the expense of jailing.”

  “That’s crazy and you know it. I can’t sell a—”

  “I know you can’t.” The guy chuckled again. It sounded like ice clinking into a deep glass. “That’s the major difference, I guess, between a cop and a soldier. I am a soldier, Postum. And I have to think tactics. Actually, I called to tell you that the war is definitely on, and to suggest that you get your quiet cops to safety.”

  “What quiet cops?”

  “Your intelligence unit has, at my count, a minimum of six undercover men working the—”

  “Okay, okay!” Postum interrupted quickly. It made him nervous to hear even departmental officials discussing his undercover operations. Here this guy was.… “Now let me tell you something, Bolan. I appreciate your concern for the safety of police officers but it doesn’t buy you a damn thing. We’re not looking the other way here, mister, and we don’t need your kind of help to solve our problems. What’s more, if I—”

  “Sorry,” the guy cut in. “My time is up. Good talking to you, Postum. Stay hard.”

  The line clicked dead and the Tac lieutenant turned his irritation to the watch commander.

  “Not enough time,” the sergeant reported, shaking his head. “It came through a north side exchange. That’s as far as we got.”

  “That damn guy,” Postum said wonderingly. “Did you hear that damn guy?”

  The watch commander was smiling soberly. “Too bad, isn’t it? Sounds like an okay guy. Tragic. Very tragic.”

  “Save that shit for his funeral service,” the lieutenant savagely commented. “But don’t bother to write it down—there won’t be time enough to forget it.”

  “Mack Bolan,” the sergeant went on, his tone unaltered, “in St. Louis. Can you beat that? I never suspected the guy would turn up here.”

  “Don’t make it sound like such an honor,” Postum growled. He was moving toward his office as he spoke. “Pull that tape and make sure you got a good print. Then call the captain and tell him I want to bring it in for his evaluation.”

  “Oh—I meant to tell you. He’s called a meeting of unit heads, his office, in …” the sergeant glanced at the clock, “… five minutes.”

  “Check that tape,” Postum called back. “I’ll take it with me.”

  He went into his office and closed the door, then sat on the edge of his desk, pulled a knee up and clasped it in both hands, and allowed the pent grin to break across his usually sober face.

  “That damn guy,” he murmured admiringly.

  4: THIS OLD WORLD

  Toni had come out of that smoking house wearing nothing but bikini briefs, weight about one ounce and covering power practically zero. Luckily, Bolan was carrying a change of clothes for himself in the rented car—slacks and shirt—which he promptly made available to the girl.

  She turned up her nose at the ridiculously overlarge slacks but demurely slipped into the shirt, which covered her petite figure like a shortie nightgown and merely accentuated the natural appeal of the equipment it covered.

  She moved into the front seat while Bolan made his call to the law, satisfied that Artie Giamba was in no immediate danger of dying.

  When Bolan returned and they were rolling again, she sniffed, “Sorry I’m so hard to look at in my nothings.”

  She knew better th
an that.

  “That’s not the situation,” Bolan replied soberly. “I have enough problems without driving around town with a naked lady in my car.”

  She laughed softly and lay her head against his shoulder. “I know. I was just fishing for a compliment. It’s okay, Mack. I can take it if you want to tell me that the mere sight of my exposed flesh fills you with shrieking desire. It won’t cost you a thing, either.”

  He grinned, remembering another time. “It cost me damn near a week, once,” he reminded her.

  She pressed against him and sighed. “Yeah. If that’s what you call living large, Sergeant Bolan, then it’s been nothing but small for me ever since. Mack … I’ve missed you terribly. And I’ll bet you’d forgotten I’m alive. Hadn’t you?”

  “Still fishing?”

  She said, “Sure. It’s okay. I can take it if you want to tell me your life has been nothing but tears and despair ever since we’ve been apart. I won’t believe it, anyway, and we can both enjoy the thrill of the lie.”

  He told her, “Toni, you’re very special.”

  “To you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you still have that beautiful mobile honeymoon suite?”

  She was referring to the warwagon, in which she and Bolan had traveled west from the New Orleans war zone—several tough lifetimes ago.

  “I have it,” he assured her.

  “It’s okay to tell me you love me. It won’t cost—”

  Bolan simply had to put a stop to that. He cut her off with a sharp rebuke. “Toni! What’s eating you?”

  She wriggled away from him and replied, “Nothing.”

  “If it’s Ciglia, don’t let it.”

  “I feel so damn dirty,” she sniffed.

  “So okay, we’re both dirty,” he said harshly. “You bed them, I bleed them. You don’t mention the blood on me, I don’t mention the paw marks on you. Play your high school parlor games with the kids back home, Toni.”

  “You just go straight to hell!” she flared back.

  He muttered, “I’m already there.”

  She flung herself back upon him, wrapping his free arm in both of hers. “I’m sorry,” she softly apologized. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s okay,” he replied, just as softly. “I understand it, Toni. Used to fight the same devils in myself. Still do, now and then. Look, kid—it’s that kind of world. This world, I mean. The one you and I have joined. We can’t function here with the values of that other world. Nice guys and good girls just don’t contribute anything here—and, dammit, you can’t live in both worlds. You can’t play the games in this one under the rules designed for that other one.”

  “Let’s see,” she murmured, “you’re saying that you don’t judge me the same way you would if we were just a guy and a girl trying to get it on, back home. You don’t despise me for—for …”

  He sighed. These were the hard moments. “If I judge you at all, Toni, it’s through your professional abilities—your effectiveness in this world. And I don’t despise anybody.”

  She shook her head at that. “You despise that old man back there.”

  “Uh uh. I understand him. I recognize his threat to that other world. I’ll take whatever steps I consider necessary to neutralize that effect. But I don’t hate that old man, Toni. In certain ways, I even admire him.”

  She had her knees beneath her, now, perched side-wise on the seat and peering unblinkingly into his profile.

  “I guess I’m still getting to know you,” she whispered.

  “Look at the blood on me, then,” he quietly suggested. “And ask yourself how far simple hatred can propel a man through Blood River. Hate doesn’t move me, Toni. Once, maybe, it could and did. No more. I’ve lost the capacity for hate.”

  “What moves you then, Mack Bolan?”

  “You writing a thesis?”

  “Maybe.”

  He flicked a sharp glance her way and replied, “This old world moves me, Toni.”

  “You mean this new world, not the old one.”

  He nodded. “This one is where the battles are fought. But it’s not new. To you and me, sure, it’s new. It has always been here, though—maybe longer than the other one.”

  “I’m getting confused,” she told him. “What’s the name of this world of ours? This one.”

  “Hell,” he said softly.

  “What?”

  “This is hell, Toni.”

  She whispered, “Oh wow. I think I’m beginning to …”

  They drove on, through a moment of rather pregnant silence. Toni was gazing through the side glass, apparently trying to orient herself to the countryside. Dawn was breaking.

  Presently she sighed and said, “You’re blowing me “out, you know. Why didn’t we ever talk like this before?”

  “It just never came up, I guess,” he replied.

  “This is really Hell, huh?”

  “As a state of mind, sure. This is where that other world—that safe world—is made, shaped, motivated. It all comes from right here. This is where the soldiers are. It’s a place where armies clash in the night—constantly, endlessly, eternally.”

  “Does that make me a soldier?” she asked soberly.

  “Sure does. They come in all shapes, sizes, and sexes. And in two polarities—two sides—two only.”

  “The good and the bad,” Toni decided.

  He shrugged. “Or the right and the wrong, call it how you please. In that other world, see, the whole thing is done in shades of gray. In this one, it’s either light or darkness.”

  “And you weren’t just being poetic. You really believe all that. The world of good girls and nice guys is simply a spin-off, a by-product of this one.”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered,” he replied quietly, “about the price tag for a civilization like that one—where girls can be always good and guys always nice? That’s an Eden world, Toni, and it was hacked from a wilderness. Have you ever been in a jungle? You can hack a trail three feet wide in the morning and, by nightfall, that trail has disappeared, the jungle has reclaimed its own. Who do you think built Eden—and who is keeping it there? Good girls? Nice guys?” He shook his head. “Those are the children of the garden. Wouldn’t know which side of the machete to hack with. Eden is built out here, Toni, in the jungle. The garden is a projection from hell.”

  She shivered, then leaned against him, both arms snaking across his shoulders in a tight embrace. “I don’t like it out here, Mack,” she said in a small voice.

  “Neither do I,” he told her. “There’s still time for you, Toni. You can get out.”

  “But you can’t?”

  “You know I can’t. Look at the blood on me—just look at it.”

  She began to cry and he pushed her away, his jaw clamping and the eyes settling once again into icy depths. “Don’t do that to me,” he said.

  “I don’t like this damn world of yours, Mack Bolan!” she declared emotionally.

  “I didn’t build it,” he replied. “I just live here. Those who live here, die here. If you’ve got other plans, then I can probably stop this world long enough for you to get off. But don’t drop sad tears on me, Toni. They’re infectious. And if I ever start, I’d drown this whole damn world with mine.”

  “You?” she gasped unbelievingly. “Cry?”

  “Not if I can help it,” he said harshly.

  He pulled the car to the side of the road and turned to the girl with a penetrating gaze. “We don’t live here by accident, Toni. It’s by decision, and 100 percent commitment. It’s time for you to decide.”

  He thrust a small wallet into her hands.

  “There’s money in your hands and a motel one block over. Make your move.”

  She threw the wallet at him and settled herself sedately in the seat. “No way,” she said quietly, speaking through slackening tears. “Consider me properly chastised and let’s go on with the show.”

  “You’re sure,” he pressed her.

&nbs
p; “Sure I’m sure. Give me my damn machete and let’s go hack some trails.”

  Bolan grinned soberly as he eased the car back onto the road. She was his kind of woman. And that was bad. Mack Bolan’s inner reservoir of dammed tears could attest to the badness of that.

  His kind usually died young, in this old world.

  5: SOMEWHERE

  A reconstituted Able Team was together, functional, and once again pounding along the hellfire trails—and Mack Bolan had to admit in his heart that he felt better with the reinforcements.

  In Vietnam, they had been the penetration team to draw the dirtier missions, the more impossible details. “Able Team can do it” had been the quiet battle cry of that day—and Mack Bolan was not the only reason for that record of excellence.

  Gadgets Schwarz was the sort of guy who would lie for days on end in a clump of growth at the edge of a VC village, gathering electronic intelligence with a barrel audio pickup—totally unsupported, isolated by miles from every friendly hand, subsisting on hard crumbs and damn little water—then return to base camp with dry-wit tales of VC sentries pissing on his legs in broad daylight and bringing their women to bed in the weeds beside him at night, “… just one crazy hard-on away from where I’m lying.”

  Blancanales had earned his nickname, Politician, during an earlier era while with the Special Forces in the pacification program. When he came to the penetration teams, some began calling him “the chameleon” in tribute to his ability to become practically invisible in most any environment. It was not a matter of costume camouflage, either. The guy had the knack of simply blending with any background or gathering. He had once walked undetected with a small group of native fieldhands the entire length of an enemy-held village—in full field-combat garb—purchased food at the local market, and again casually strolled out the way he’d come.