Chicago Wipe-Out te-8 Page 6

  And then Jimi understood that the enemy were all around them — this was like a game of blind man's buff, with everybody as the blind men and Mack Bolan operating with some sort of a personal inner radar. The night had come alive with running feet on crunching snow, startled exclamations, muffled shouts, and the building sounds of a growing confusion.

  Bolan had come to an abrupt halt, and somehow Jimi knew that he had located the Ferrari. She swung about to get behind him, and found herself sprawling forward suddenly, off-balance and falling over a large object which she immediately recognized as the front end of an automobile.

  Bolan's strong grip was jerking her upright and stabilizing her, and a worried voice closely was inquiring, "Hank? What's the matter?"

  "Nothin', I thought it was you," came the slightly distant reply from the rear of the car.

  Then Bolan's lips were at Jimi's ear and a harsh "down"was echoing inside her skull. Without quite realizing how she had arrived there, Jimi found herself lying in the snow and rolling madly for the protection of the vehicle.

  The Beretta Belle was coughing a soft symphony of destruction amidst the louder crashes of several pistols. Something hit the snow beside her outflung hand and she instinctively seized it and recognized in the feel of it an expended ammunition clip from the Beretta.

  She remembered Bolan's cool words, "... and it takes less then a second to reload," and she understood what was transpiring and felt better for the knowledge.

  Phuttings and booms and muffled cries and grunts, shouts in the night, revving auto engines, madness — and then something hard was being pressed into her gloved hand and Bolan's reassuring tones were ordering her into the Ferrari.

  Jimi found herself responding subconsciously, unlocking the car and sliding in behind the wheel, praying for heavenly direction in the technique of starting this strange vehicle — then the powerful engine was somehow roaring in a half-throttle idle and she was flinging herself into the adjacent seat as Bolan leapt in beside her and they lurched across the snowdrift.

  He commanded, "On the floor, Foxy" — and she was already there and the Ferrari was spinning forward into the suffocating night, without lights, perhaps without hope, but with absolute blazing determination at the wheel.

  Angrily sizzling things were penetrating the car, striking with jarring thumps and tearing through its metallic skin, shattering its glass, shredding its upholstery. Jimi cringed against the floorboards and listened to the Beretta, now unsilenced, blasting defiantly into the entrapment. She heard her man grunt with some unidentified pain and, an instant later, his warning shout: "Get braced, hang on!"

  And then he was lying across the seat just behind her, one arm looped powerfully about her curled body. In a flash of understanding, she knew that they were about to crash into something, and the last sound Jimi heard before the rending impact was the growling chatter of a machine gun and a new onslaught of furious projectiles punching into the Ferrari.

  "On and on and on," she had complained earlier. "Isn't there any end to it?"

  And he had replied, "Sure, there's an end— but I'm in no hurry to get there."

  They had, it seemed, gotten there, and together, and it was probably all her fault. Even through the red fog that was enveloping her, though, Jimi knew that she was definitely en rapportwith the inner man that was Mack Bolan. There were no regrets in that bond, no condemnation. And if she had to die this night, then at least she would die knowing love. No, there were no regrets.

  * * *

  Bolan had not been operating entirely on instinct. With a foresight engendered by a constant battle for survival, he had routinely staked out his retreat route from that motel room, posting in his mind the various details and mentally rehearsing a withdrawal under combat conditions. The trip from the door of his room to the parked Ferrari had become translated into so many steps north, so many west, so many north again — and he had an equivalent picture of the route out of that parking lot, but oriented to elapsed time in a moving vehicle. Long before the storm descended, he had burned into his mind every detail of his physical surroundings.

  Superimposed upon this mental map was Bolan's intimate familiarity with the enemy and their standard operating procedures. The final result — his success in breaking out of the trap — could be regarded as a sort of "battlefield intuition," built of conditioned instincts and a subliminal response to a rehearsed situation. This is the goal of all military training — in such a typical crisis situation, in which the individual's life or the success of a mission is hanging in the balance, the thinking mind moves aside for the crisis-response of trained reflexes — and this is what carried Bolan and the Ferrari and its passenger to that grinding moment at the exit from the motel parking lot.

  Thus, what appeared to Jimi James to be phenomenal perceptions in a bunding storm was actually a high exercise of military preparedness and training. One deviation from his prescribed path would have rendered Bolan as blind and ineffective as the other parties to that chaos; it was foresight, not ESP, that guided this warrior unerringly to his vehicle. And it was this same quality of the military mind, but now translated into an acute sense of timing and the burnt-in memory of a traffic pattern, that guided his vehicle out of its resting place and along the route of retreat.

  This method did not, of course, account for incidental misplaced vehicles blocking the path, banks of drifted snow, a war party of enemy infantry firing wildly into the night, and various other nuisances that could crop up. The Ferrari, as it came charging blindly out of its nest, sent a pair of gun-toting pedestrians hurtling off into diverging flights, sideswiped a larger vehicle which had been idling in the traffic lane, punched down a metal post marking the turn toward the exit, and struck another soldier who had been running blindly into the sounds of battle. And all along this course, the vehicle was taking repeated hits from a determined handgun fusillade; Bolan was required to pilot the car, attempt an effective return-fire, and maintain cognizance of his time-track — all with the same mind and at the same time.

  * * *

  Incredible as this may seem, Bolan might have succeeded in making a clean breakaway had it not been for the final enemy factor — the foresight of another trained warrior, Larry Turk, and the "plug car" just outside the motel exit.

  Turk had left this "safety plug" in the capable hands of Willie Thompson, while he descended wrathfully upon the early sounds of confusion emanating from the parking area. It had been his angry voice demanding the cessation of horn signals from Lavallo's vehicle; Beraie Tosca had not yet had time to get his crew positioned into the trap stations, and Turk was reading Lavallo's interference as the highest form of treason.

  Meanwhile, Willie Thompson had exercised a prerogative of his own and ordered the plug vehicle onto station directly blocking the exit from the motel. Both he and the wheelman had then taken cover behind the street side of the car and awaited developments.

  It seems likely that anyvehicle attempting to leave the motel area would have been accorded the same reception which Bolan received. Willie was targeting entirely on audibles, and when the Thompson opened fire, it was purely a reflexive attack upon a moving vehicle which no one could actually see.

  * * *

  Bolan could, however, see the blazing eruptions from the chopper's muzzle and the shadowy bulk of vehicle from behind which they were emerging, and his reflexes sent him accelerating into the blockade as the only possible hope for neutralizing this latest challenge. He was lying across the front seat with one arm protectively clasping his floored passenger when the Ferrari sheared into the heavier Mafia car, and he had the passenger-door open and was snaking to the ground even while the sports car was quivering into the rebound.

  The chopper had fallen silent and someone nearby was groaning with pain. Bolan was collecting himself, silently calling roll on his various parts and finding them all present and functioning, though his ears were ringing and there was a numbness in the area of his left shoulder. He carefu
lly extricated Jimi from the wreckage and slung the unconscious girl onto his good shoulder.

  The sounds of chaos were drifting over from the parking lot and an anxious voice very closeby called, "Willie? Are you okay?"

  "I think my arms are broke," came a groaning response. "Don't worry about me, check out that Bolan. Make sure he's dead."

  "You got 'im, I know you got 'im."

  "Bullshit, you check 'im out. Don't take nothin' for granted."

  The hood over the Ferrari's engine compartment was crumpled and askew. Bolan slipped the Beretta's muzzle into the opening and squeezed off three quick rounds in a searching pattern, then quickly backstepped as flames whooshed out. He collided with a fast-moving figure who was hurrying around the tail of the Mafia vehicle as the groaning man cried, "Gene! Get me outta here, we're on fire!"

  But Gene had problems of his own, in the form of a hot muzzle at his throat and a coldly insistent voice in his ear, demanding, "Let's find some wheels, Gene."

  In a choked voice, Turk's wheelman suggested, "There oughta be a couple cars right up the street."

  "Okay, let's go," Bolan commanded.

  As they trudged away, a snarling voice from somewhere inside the din of the motel parking lot was shouting, "Goddammit, hold your fire, what the hell you think you're shooting at? Bernie, where the hell are you?"

  "Over here, Turk — I think the bastard got past us."

  "Are you crazy? Can't you hear anything? He's out there dueling with Willie! Get your boys out there!"

  "Christ, boss, I can't even see where I'm at."

  "Fuckwhere you're at! You get it out there where he'sat!"

  Where Bolan was "at," however, was now beyond the immediate reach of the headhunting crew. An expert wheelman was transporting him and his unconscious companion in an appropriated crew wagon, away from the combat zone, deeper into the jungle of survival, onward into the night.

  Bolan was working on his girl, and presently she roused, and found herself in Bolan's arms, and she murmured, "Are you an angel?"

  He smiled, remembering, and replied, "Not hardly. You got a bump on the head. Feeling okay?"

  She gave him a glowing-eyes nod. "On and on and on," she whispered. "I love you, Mack. I hope we neverfind the end."

  Bolan pointedly ignored the declaration of love. He ran a finger through a bullet hole in her ski jacket and gruffly told her, "You came that close to the end, Foxy. About a sixteenth of an inch, I'd say."

  Tooclose, much too close, and Bolan realized that the war had hardly begun. He could not expose this girl to any more of it. He would have to find a place to stow her, and then he would have to get this war into gear and — one way or another — get it finished.

  "You're hurt," she had just discovered. "Your neck, it's..."

  "Just a nick," he assured her. Bolan was not concerned about the scratch at his neck. It was the old wound in the shoulder that was giving him fits — his souvenir of New York. With two hands his task was going to be difficult enough — with onehand...

  The wheelman was throwing him uneasy glances via the rearview mirror. Bolan sighed and said, "Okay, Gene, end of trip for you. Stop at the next sign of life. And don't look so worried, I'm going to turn you loose. With a message. You deliver it straight, and you deliver it completely, or I'll come looking for you."

  "Sure, Mr. Bolan," the wheelman replied. "You got my word, I'll take a message anywheres you want."

  "You'll take it to the Capo's, Gene. All of them. And to the Chicago Four. You tell them that Bolan is busting their sanctum city wide open tonight. Tonight, understand?"

  "Yessir, I got that."

  "And I'm taking them, too. All of them, all the bosses. Their free ride ends tonight."

  "I'll tell 'em that, Mr. Bolan."

  "I know who they are and I know where they are. And not one of them will see another sunrise. Are you reading me, Gene?"

  "Yessir. You're wiping 'em all out tonight."

  "That's it. This storm is my friend, their enemy. You make sure that message gets delivered. All of it."

  "I'll sure make sure, Mr. Bolan. You got my word."

  "Okay. What's this up ahead?"

  "I believe we're coming up on the Merchandise Mart, sir."

  "Fine. You leave us there. You stop the car, you get out, you disappear damn quick, and you don't look back once. Reading me?"

  "Yessir, I been reading you right along."

  Yes, Gene the wheelman had been reading him. Great. So he'd set himself an impossible goal, he'd challenged, himself to produce something unproducible. But that was what this rotten war was made for. Bolan had to get it into gear... and finished for here, another, the War for Chicago would end tonight.

  He gently squeezed the girl's hand and told her, "This is no end for you, Jimi. Not here, not in this lousy way."

  "I end where you end," she murmured.

  Bolan hoped not. With everything in him, he fervently hoped not.

  7

  The course

  The sign outside the modest North Side residence had announced the offices of Joseph Berger, "tax consultant." According to a brief note in Bolan's intelligence book, however, Joseph Berger was actually Leopold Stein, a brilliant Chicago attorney who, in his own way, had also waged a war against the mob... and lost.

  Bolan was familiar with most of the details of Stein's story. He'd been a successful and respected lawyer, well-established in a comfortable practice, when he launched his "citizen's campaign" and began crusading for "a free Chicago." For two years he had weathered threats, beatings, economic pressures, and various forms of political harassment while he dug into and exposed the various links in the chains that held his city bound. And when he began to step on overly sensitive toes, the cancer of power focussed its attention on this insignificant upstart long enough to finally crush the source of irritation. Or so it must have thought. Stein had been indicated on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy, disbarred from practicing law, financially ruined, physically maimed, crippled, and finally reduced to the shame of hiding under an assumed name.

  Now forty-seven years of age, the plucky crusader looked sixty. His hair was snow-white. Prolonged pain and mental anguish had ravaged the once strong face — now heavily-scarred and bearing a leather patch over an empty eyesocket. He was partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair — but Leo Stein was still alive and, in his own way, fighting back. He spent most of his time now preparing legal briefs and background files, anonymously, and forwarding them to various grand juries and crime commissions in Illinois and neighboring states. According to Bolan's notes, Stein was the foremost living authority on mob operations in and around Chicago — it was said that he understood the interconnections of criminal influence even better than most men inside the mob.

  In Bolan's thinking, this man had given more than anyone could reasonably ask. And so it was with an air of apology that the Executioner told him, "We need your help, Mr. Stein."

  "Oh, I doubt that," the attorney replied, inspecting his visitor with a critical gaze from the one good eye. "I've been following your war with interest, Mr. Bolan. I don't entirely approve, but... well, I have to admit that your approach seems more effective than mine." His attention returned to Jimi James, and he added, "And certainly you're far more admirably supported than I."

  The girl's eyes dropped. She murmured, "I'm afraid I'm just so much excess baggage."

  "What do you want?" Stein asked Bolan, suddenly all business.

  "Someone is helping you remain covered," Bolan replied, just as directly. "I want you to ask them to do the same for Miss James."

  "I'll do that," Stein replied without hesitation. "What else?"

  "I want protection for her right away, tonight."

  "You mean that you want her off your hands."

  "Think of it any way you like. I just want the girl protected."

  "You don't feel capable of doing that yourself?"

  The guy was probing him, and Bolan knew it
. He said, "No sir. The chase is getting pretty hot." He drew an imaginary circle about the bullet hole in Jimi's jacket. "Toohot."

  "And you have confidence in my security. That's it?"

  Bolan nodded. "Yes sir, I have."

  "But I'm not all that secure, am I?" the lawyer said quickly.

  "Sir?"

  "How the hell did youfind me?"

  "Any security can be breached," Bolan replied. "She'd still be a thousand times better off than with me."

  "You didn't answer my question," Stein said fiercely.

  "No sir, and I don't intend to."

  The attorney laughed and turned back to the girl. "All right. Leave her here. I'll see that she's provided for."

  Bolan got to his feet. Jimi rose also and quietly told him, "I think I'd rather not."

  "There isn't that much choice," Bolan quietly replied.

  Her eyes fell and she said, "I — I guess you're right. You don't need me on your coattails."

  A muscle rippled in Bolan's jaw. He steeled himself and replied, "That's right. Not tonight, that's for sure."

  "H-how will we ever find each other again?" she asked in a barely audible voice.

  "I'll find you," Bolan promised.

  Stein coughed and dryly observed, "He found me." He threw back his head and yelled, "Missy!"

  A cute kid of about sixteen appeared immediately in the doorway to the office. Stein told his visitors, "This is my daughter. She answers to Missy. Missy, say hello to the pretty lady and get her out of here for awhile. I have some business to discuss with the troubled gentleman."

  Bolan showed Jimi a reassuring smile and nodded his head. "Go ahead," he murmured. "We'll say goodbye later."

  Jimi accompanied the youngster into the living quarters, pausing just inside the doorway to throw Bolan a wistful glance. He again nodded his head, and she went on.

  Stein had moved his wheelchair to a low buffet and was busying himself with a silver service. "Come and get it," he called over. "I can't play the perfect host in this rig..."

  Bolan went over and accepted a steaming mug of coffee. "Thanks," he said, "it's just what I need."