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  Braddock nodded his head in the quiet reply, “Yes, I’m afraid I have.”

  “It’s a typical Bolan hit,” the man from Miami agreed.

  “So it hasn’t been an exaggerated reputation,” Trantham said.

  “Some things are beyond exaggeration,” Braddock replied.

  The three officers trudged about the grounds for several minutes without further comment, poking into the physical evidence without disturbing it and finally the Boston cop declared, “Well … I can’t believe that all of this is the work of a single man. I can’t accept that.”

  “You might as well,” the Captain from L.A. replied. “The guy is a one-man army, Trantham. I’ve been a Bolan watcher from close to the beginning. My town was number two on the guy’s hit parade. Take my word for it … he’s a phenomenon. How he’s stayed alive this long is the greatest mystery. Hell, he just booms in and runs wild, with no regard for odds or whatever. He makes his own odds.”

  “Like a comic-strip character, eh?” Trantham observed wryly.

  “Not at all,” was Braddock’s curt reply. “Nothing comical about Mack Bolan, believe it.”

  Bob Wilson had detached himself from the other two. He was standing just off the macadam drive, at a point where it curved away from the lodge and beelined toward the gate.

  Trantham moved up beside the man from Miami and asked him, “How do you read it, Lieutenant? How did he manage to get bombs into all these vehicles?”

  “Not bombs,” Wilson thoughtfully replied. “When this place has been scraped clean and all the evidence reviewed, I’m betting you’ll find shell fragments—shrapnel—imbedded in the vehicle bodies, and in many of the corpses. You’ll notice also that there’s no blow-out of the roadway beneath the vehicles, as you’d find with dynamite bombs. No … I’m betting your diagnosis will be an artillery attack. A field mortar, probably.”

  Braddock growled, “Yeah, the guy’s no bomber. He’s a hellfire guy. He probably stood out there in the open somewhere and just lobbed this stuff in on these guys—probably had them running hell-for-breakfast all over the place.”

  Trantham’s face twitched. He said, “You could almost admire …”

  The visiting policemen exchanged arched glances. Braddock said, “Sure, the guy’s a heroic figure, you have to give him that.” The big cop sniffed and added, “Hell, he saved my life once. I’ll never forget that. But none of that alters the fact that he’s a public menace. He’s got to be stopped, one way or another.”

  “He’s going to get stopped in Boston,” Trantham replied grimly, his lips barely moving.

  A plainclothes cop from the sheriff’s department approached the group, walking up quickly from the back side of the property. He was carrying a flashlight and his face was twisted into somber lines. He recognized Trantham and went directly to him.

  “Glad you’re here, Inspector,” he said quietly. “This place is a regular battlefield. Dead men are scattered all around. So far I’ve counted 22, and that’s only a beginning.”

  As quietly, the inspector asked, “Recognize any of them?”

  “Just about all of them,” the sheriff’s detective replied. “It’s the Middlesex Combination, or a large part of them. Looks like he caught them bunched up in here and just laid all over them.”

  Trantham grunted, “Yeah. We were just looking at the mess in these vehicles.”

  “We’ll have to rely on fingerprint identification for most of those,” the detective pointed out, needlessly.

  The inspector said, “Yeah, if we can get even that Uh … Harley … do you know these men? This is Captain Braddock, LAPD—Lieutenant Wilson, Miami Metro. Detective Harley Langston, Middlesex County.”

  The officers acknowledged the introductions and shook hands, then Trantham told Langston, “I told one of your uniformed boys to get the light units in here. You want to see how they’re doing on that?”

  The sheriff’s man nodded agreement, but he paused to direct a question to the man from LAPD. “You the captain who was in charge of the Bolan hunt out there?” he asked.

  Braddock sighed and replied, “Hell, Harley, don’t remind me of that.”

  Trantham put in, “Braddock’s detail came closer to nailing Bolan than anyone ever has.”

  Langston nodded as though he were well aware of that piece of information. His eyes had remained steady on Braddock’s. “I’ve got a book crammed full of Bolan,” he said soberly. “I went over to Pittsfield after his vendetta on Sergio Frenchi, and I worked up a reconstruction of his entire routine. Later, when he was laying into your town, I thought I could work him into some sort of M.O. but hell the guy never seemed to follow any set pattern.”

  “That’s one of the problems,” Braddock admitted.

  “Well I’ve been following his campaigns like a fan. I think maybe I’ve got him snookered now. I think I know what his pattern will be in this area. I’d like to talk to you about it, sort of dry-run my ideas, get your thinking on it.”

  Braddock murmured, “Be glad to, Harley. Any time.”

  “Include me in on that,” the Boston cop commanded.

  “I’ll do that. Don’t go away. Back in a minute.”

  The sheriff’s detective strode away on his errand and Bob Wilson commented, “Patterns are one thing. Snookering Mack Bolan is quite a different matter.”

  Braddock growled his agreement with the idea.

  Inspector Trantham said, “You gentlemen are here to advise us, not to discourage us.”

  “I’m here to get Mack Bolan,” Braddock softly declared.

  Wilson echoed the sentiment, adding, “The guy has become a national embarrassment In fact, a national police disgrace.”

  “The disgrace is going to end, right here in Boston,” Trantham declared. “Bolan is one of our own, you know … or very close to it. We know how to deal with the Mack Bolans.”

  Braddock and Wilson exchanged wry smiles.

  They’d heard the same idea expressed before, in various places. But Mack Bolan was still loose and blitzing. And the guy never seem to tire. He seemed, in fact, to get stronger and cagier with each new campaign. And, Tim Braddock was thinking, if that last bit of logic held true, then the old town of Boston was in for a hell of a big dose of Mack Bolan before this one was ended.

  Braddock knew. He’d been around Bolan’s horn. And deep down, the big cop from L.A. was secretly cheering the audacious bastard on. To hell with national embarrassment—and that bit about police disgrace was just too damned bad.

  What was really disgracing the cops, he knew, was not the fact that Bolan remained loose—the disgrace lay in the fact that Mack Bolan was doing the job which cops the world over could not or would not do for themselves. That was the disgrace. Bolan was a more effective cop than any of them, than all of them combined.

  And they were going to kill him for it.

  The mob had found somebody they could neither beat nor buy, and the guy was tearing them to pieces.

  So, sure, what better police logic was there? Everybody had to have a weakness, every man had to have a price.

  A man who could be neither bought nor beaten was a frightening thing in this society of legalized duplicity.

  What was there left to do?

  The cops would have to gun down Mack Bolan.

  The guy was a goddamn national disgrace.

  7: View from Ground Zero

  Slowly and foggily, consciousness came. With it came an awareness of acute discomfort.

  Her head ached. Her tongue felt twice its normal size and seemed to be mildly choking her. A threat of nausea trembled in her stomach.

  Wherever she was, it was dark and damp there. It was also uncomfortably cold. The muted sound of a television set and an occasional murmur of voices came from somewhere beyond her range of vision.

  Her arms and legs were either numb or paralyzed. Numb, she decided, remembering.

  She was lying on her side, her cheek pressed against a hard and cold surface, with some ev
il-smelling and rough fabric draped over her.

  A pained groan came from very nearby—and she remembered more of what had happened. Johnny, of course.

  He was tied to her. They lay back-to-back, tied together at arms and legs with a harsh rope.

  She fought her swollen tongue out of the way and whispered, “Are you awake?”

  He groaned again, and she felt him struggling feebly against the ropes. Then his choked and frightened voice responded.

  “Val?”

  She fought back a wave of nausea and told him, “I’m okay. They’ve got us tied up, that’s all.”

  His voice came back firmer; brave, a young edition of his brother’s. “Don’t worry, Val. Mack must know by now. He’ll find us. Wow! My head is killing me!”

  A vision of hypodermic syringes surged across her memory.

  “They’re keeping us drugged,” she told the boy. “You have a hangover, that’s all.”

  “I’ll never get hooked on this feeling,” he assured her, trying and failing to make it sound lightly humorous.

  “Talk in whispers, Johnny. Don’t attract their attention.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Don’t know. Somewhere close by, that’s sure.”

  “Something stinks,” he remarked, a moment later. “Smells like dead fish.”

  That was the odor, all right. She brushed her face exploringly against the fabric covering it, then abruptly moved her nose away from the contact.

  “I’d say we’re in a fish market, or a packing plant,” she whispered. “They have us covered with old rags and gunny sacks.”

  “Ungh,” the boy grunted. A moment later he asked, “Do I hear a TV?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Another room somewhere, I believe. Johnny … are you alright?”

  “Sure. But my legs are asleep. Look. Val. Don’t be worried. Just keep telling yourself that Mack will be here soon. Keep thinking that.”

  Yes, keep thinking that. For all the world, she would not utter a word to dampen the boy’s hopes. But Valentina Querente knew precisely why she and Johnny Bolan had been kidnapped.

  They were merely so much bait in a trap, a lure to bring Mack Bolan inside. He would come, certainly. But he would come only to his death, and then the deaths of Johnny and Val would follow automatically.

  Could this actually be happening?

  Yes, of course it was happening. It was an event for which she had been mentally prepared since the beginning. The beginning of what? Of the nightmare, of course, the nightmare which had begun when she fell in love with a one-man army.

  She was going to die … soon. And Johnny. And in the name of what madness?

  It didn’t matter, of course, why. The fact remained that they would die … with or without the intervention of Mack Bolan. So why take Mack down with them? Let him stay away … dear God, let him stay away!

  Pray that he does not come, she wished to say to Johnny.

  She could not, of course.

  Instead, she told him, “Yes. He will find us. I’m not afraid.”

  But she was. It was not an intellectual fear, but an animal, emotional, trembling thing that kept lunging at her and expanding into her stomach and pushing against her diaphragm; an unreasoning terror which was trying to seize her mind and overcome her nervous system.

  She was not, she decided, very brave.

  A door opened and a soft light fell across her eyes.

  The sound from the television set became louder.

  Footsteps approached, magnified by the fact that her ear was pressed to the floor.

  Another light came on, brighter, closer. A shadowy form was bending over her. The foul-smelling rags came away, and a man’s face swam into her unsteady vision.

  It was not a handsome face. But then, it was not a particularly evil face, either. Just a face. A young man, perhaps 28 or 30.

  Another one appeared, peering down at her. This one was evil. It needed a shave. The mouth had a nasty curl to it. The eyes raped her. This man was older, in his 40’s.

  Both were expensively dressed but rumpled, as though they had not changed clothes for some time. She tried to study the details of these men, as though some forlorn hope had whispered to her that she might have to identify them some day, pick them from a lineup or a rogue’s gallery.

  The young man’s face moved closer and he said, “Yeah, they’re coming out of it.”

  “Told you I heard them,” the other one said, self-pleased.

  “The chick’s feet are swollen up, George. You got her tied too tight.”

  The older one laughed nastily and replied, “Tough shit.” He laughed again. “We got them tied wrong anyways. We ought to strip them both and tie them up face to face, belly to belly. That might get real interesting, next time they come to.”

  The other man chuckled and said, “He’s just a kid, George. Probably wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  “He’s old enough,” the older one said with a nasty leer. “I bet he’d get the idea quick enough. Hey kid—want me to do you a favor?”

  Johnny lay very still, apparently feigning unconsciousness. The nausea was again surging in on Val. She hoped that Johnny was genuinely unconscious.

  Hands were running along her body. The older man’s voice found a level in her spinning consciousness. “That’s nice stuff, damned nice stuff. Maybe I’ll give the kid a lesson.”

  “Cut it out,” the other voice demanded. “Skip said no funny stuff, and no funny stuff it’s going to be. Not until he gives the word.”

  The evil one chuckled and said, “Well, just remember, I get first jump.”

  “If there’s anything left to jump,” the young one muttered. He was squatting beside her now. A hypodermic needle came into view.

  She fought her mind to a standstill to plead, “Please, no more of that. I promise to be quiet.”

  The older man snorted. “Christ, she turns me on. That voice turns me on, Angelo.”

  “Shut up,” the one called Angelo snapped.

  He was studying her eyes, peeling back a lid for a closer scrutiny with a penlight, the way a medical doctor would do.

  She said, “Please …”

  He sighed and said, “Okay. But one peep and you get another jolt. Dig?”

  She whispered, “I dig. Thank you.”

  He patted her leg, then traced a circle on her cheek and told her, “You’re cold. Want some more cover?”

  She said, “Not … not those rags. The smell is sickening.”

  “What would you do for a nice soft pillow and a warm wool blanket? Huh?” He made a vile suggestion, then laughed at the reaction on her face.

  She was sick, physically sick, but she fought the retching and managed to squelch it, but at a terrible price in pain.

  Both of the men were laughing at her.

  The older one, George, suggested, “Stuff a rag in her mouth, Angelo. She’s gonna mess up the joint.”

  “Some loss,” Angelo replied. “If she wants to lay in it, let her puke it up.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t wanta lay in it,” George said, chuckling.

  Johnny lost his cool. He stiffened and began struggling against the ropes, muttering incoherent threats.

  It was impossible for Val to see him, but she had a mental vision of that fierce young face, so much like Mack’s, so stubborn, so proud and so outraged by human cruelty. She cried, “Johnny, don’t, it’s all right.”

  The younger man reached past Val’s face to roughly rub his knuckles against the boy’s head. “The kid don’t like to hear this kind of talk in front of his girl, George,” he said teasingly. “Wise kid, playing possum on us.”

  Val cried, “Leave him alone, please!”

  “Just wait ’til my brother gets ahold of you guys,” Johnny muttered, his voice muffled with frustration and anger.

  George dropped to his knees beside the younger man and roughly gripped Val’s thigh with one hand as he leaned across her to slap at Johnny with the other hand
. “How would you like to eat your own balls, kid?” he growled. A string of obscene promises followed, including both victims, as he continued pummeling the helpless boy.

  The other man was trying to pull him away, and Val was receiving knees and elbows as a result of the struggle. She tasted blood on her lips and tried to lunge away from a heavy knee in her abdomen—then suddenly both men were on their feet and the older man was being shoved toward the door.

  “You crazy?” Angela yelled. “Skip said hands off. Dammit, you keep hands off ’til he says different.”

  Tears of fear, pain, and outrage were pouring from Val’s eyes, blinding her. The light went off, then the door closed, and again they were left in total darkness.

  It was welcome, entirely welcome.

  Breathing raggedly, Johnny said, “Val, I’m sorry … I mean, the way they treated you. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him, choking on the words.

  “Okay, just don’t flip out. Mack will be here. And he’ll make those guys eat every word of it.”

  Yes. Yes, perhaps he would.

  Valentine Querente was suddenly coming into a deeper understanding of the man she loved, an understanding which she had once fought against.

  She had disapproved of Mack Bolan’s war … yes, right up until almost the present moment.

  She had disapproved of the man himself, even while loving him.

  No man had the right to take another human life, whatever the reasons. This had been her argument to Mack Bolan.

  And he had tried to explain to her that there were men in the world who could not be regarded as men, who could not qualify as members of the human race. He had told her about the man-beasts, the social cannibals who prey upon the human society in utter contempt of all human rights and sensitivities, and he had tried to make her understand why he felt compelled to place his own life between these men and their intended victims.

  She had loved him, but she had refused to understand.

  It had not been a willful refusal. It was simply that she had been unable to draw a mental concept of the savage men of whom Mack Bolan spoke. No human beings, she had thought, could be that vicious, that unredeemable … nobody had to qualify for membership in the human race. Humanity was a heritage, not an exclusive club for the specially endowed.