The Bone Yard te-75 Read online

  The tallest of them took the middle, reaching out and jabbing Anders in the chest with one slim finger, punctuating whatever it was he was saying to the comic.

  And Tommy Anders was no longer smiling.

  Bolan reemerged from cover, closing quietly and keeping to the blind side of his adversaries. Anders saw him coming and relief was visible on his face beneath the show of mounting irritation. When he was half a dozen paces out and ready, Bolan made his presence known to all concerned.

  "What's this?" he asked. "Somebody order takeout?"

  The three torpedoes spun to face him, all off guard but recovering swiftly, professionally. The leader came at Bolan without preamble, launching himself at the Executioner's face in a flying kick that transformed his body into a hurtling projectile.

  The jungle fighter sidestepped, going underneath the lethal legs and bringing up an elbow in the process, digging hard and deep against the other's kidneys as he hurtled past.

  The guy lost balance, wobbled in midair and touched down hard upon the concrete floor, his silk suit offering no traction. He slid into collision with some standing scenery, which collapsed around him. His partners watched for half a heartbeat, sizing up the situation, then they made their move.

  One of them made straight for Bolan and the other turned on Anders, bringing both hands up in the traditional karate stance. There was no time for Bolan to check out the comic's response now, not while he was fighting for his life against a pro who obviously knew the moves. But there is still a difference, right, between rehearsing in a gym and working out on humans who have nothing left to lose except their lives. A punching bag will never sidestep, never slam a rabbit-punch into your kidneys when you least expect it — and the training only takes you so far toward the razor's edge of combat.

  Bolan on the other hand had been there many times, and he had always come back from the edge victorious.

  Sometimes he was severely wounded, but the Executioner knew that injury in battle could make a tougher, stronger soldier in the end.

  He had picked up the moves from experts in the Orient and then refined them on his own through years of combat trial and error. And if the Executioner was no Bruce Lee, his adversary was no goddamned Mack Bolan, either.

  Bolan saw the hard hand flashing toward his face and feinted left, going in below it, driving bone and sinew into yielding ribs with all his might. The thin opponent doubled over, retching, gasping for a breath, but the Man from Blood was not through with him yet. No way.

  Bolan seized a wrist — the one that had been meant to drive bare knuckles through his face — and twisted, bringing the arm out to full stiff extension. He wrenched it up and back until the socket yielded, and at the same instant drove his full weight down onto the elbow in a power smash.

  There was a matchstick cracking sound, a strangled scream, and pain drove Bolan's adversary to his knees. The useless arm hung slack against his side, its outline now reminding Bolan of a cartoon figure's arm, just caught inside a door.

  The guy was sobbing, and the Executioner put him under with a swift kick to the head, his heel impacting on the temple of that would be samurai and driving him against the nearest wall where he lay slack and flaccid like a leaky bag of grain. When Bolan looked, the comic already had his man on the ropes, employing moves they never taught in any comedy school. A slashing right cross dropped the hoodlum in his tracks, and Anders stepped over his prostrate form to survey the field, looking for other contestants.

  "Want to leave them here?" the comic asked. "We've got a good custodian."

  "Why not," the Man from Blood responded.

  "Use a drink?"

  "I thought you'd never ask. Just let me change."

  Bolan followed Tommy Anders through the narrow door into his dressing room. Behind them, three of Tokyo's finest were stretched out on the cold cement, already drawing curious show girls and stagehands. As the door closed behind him, Bolan heard them calling for someone to fetch security, an ambulance.

  The numbers, right.

  He heard them running now, and he was running out of time in Vegas. This had been a skirmish, but it would be suicidal to hang around and answer questions for police.

  Tommy Anders recognized the urgency and kept his quick-change to a minimum, having Bolan in and out of there in something less than one minute flat. They were well along their way in the direction of the parking lot before security arrived to deal with their attackers.

  Outside, the desert night was cooling off despite the blood-red fire of glaring neon. By midnight, you could freeze to death beyond the city. But for Vegas this night, Bolan forecast heat enough to burn some houses down. Enough perhaps, to warm the whole damned town.

  "We've played this scene before, you know." Mack Bolan smiled and sipped his coffee, making one more scan of the perimeter around the all-night drive-in restaurant. "I thought it looked familiar." And the Executioner could not escape a certain sense of deja vu, right, sitting there with Anders in the rental Ford. A sense that he had seen and done it all, been through it all before with the comic. Their initial meeting had been backstage from a Vegas showroom, all those lives ago, and Anders had been feeling pressure that time, too. The heat was coming from a pair of Mafia sluggers then, and Bolan had pulled him out from under. They had cooperated on that first campaign in Vegas, and later when they met again in Honolulu, Anders had rendered valuable aid to Bolan's hellfire effort on another front.

  He was an ally, right, and so much more.

  He was a friend.

  "You still have that old knack for charming your admirers," Bolan told him wryly.

  Anders grinned, shrugged.

  "What can I say? It's my magnetic personality."

  "You working this officially?"

  "Let's call it a fortuitous coincidence. The date was booked, and then it all broke loose between the local Mob and their Eastern competition. Hal figured as long as I'm here, what the hell."

  Mention of the big Fed's name made Bolan smile. The man from Justice was another friend, and friends were few and far between in Bolan's world these days.

  "How is... everybody?"

  "Getting by. You know how it is — win one here and lose it back over there. You're missed, guy, where it counts."

  There was a momentary silence and when he resumed the comic's voice was lighter, more upbeat.

  "I hear you took a turn with Hal there a while back."

  Bolan smiled and nodded at the reference. His "turn" had been with a group called Savannah Swingsaw, four women determined to shake up the Mob in the southern United States.

  "Some guy," Bolan said.

  "Yeah." Another silence, longer this time, finally broken by the comic in a cautious tone. "You here to meet the man from Tokyo?"

  "He's on my list. Were those his soldiers at Minotte's?"

  "You were there?" Anders's eyes widened briefly. "Well, that clears up some question marks. And the kamikaze squad was his — or a very nifty frame."

  "There was a girl..."

  "Oh, yeah?" The comic raised a lone ironic eyebrow. "I wish you'd tell me where you find the time."

  Bolan's answering grin was weary, brief.

  "You've got to pace yourself," he answered. "But this was strictly business. Bob Minotte had her in the bag before the samurai express rolled in. I got there just in time to take her out."

  "The litter on the highway?" Anders spoke with mild awe in his voice, a tone that said he knew the answer before Bolan voiced it.

  The Executioner's silent nod was anticlimactic.

  "She does some writing for the Daily Beacon here in town. Name's Lucy Bernstein."

  A frown creased the ethnician's face. He seemed to be searching for something in the mental data banks and finally found it.

  "You don't mean old Abe Bernstein's granddaughter? That the one?"

  "Abe Bernstein?" Small alarms were going off in the back of Bolan's mind, insistent but still ill-defined. The name meant something to him
, but....

  "You have to know him, man," the comic said. "The Father of Las Vegas. Word is, he built everything that Meyer and Bugsy missed."

  And it was coming back to Bolan, sure. He had dismissed the name and face, consigned it to the small "inactive" file reserved for mobsters who retired because of age or illness, but he called the reference back now, ran it through the terminals of memory.

  Abe Bernstein was originally from Detroit, where he had helped to found the famous Purple Gang around the time America was entering World War I. He got a jump on Prohibition, staking out a territory on the river just across from Canada and turning bootleg liquor into liquid gold, defending his investment with a formidable army.

  A year before Repeal he smelled the winds of change and made the shift from booze to big-time gambling, staking out preserves around Kentucky, Florida and Southern California that saw him through the Great Depression.

  When the Mafia started flexing muscle in the thirties, easing out or killing off the old-line Jewish gangsters, Bernstein traveled west, giving ground reluctantly before the Sicilian juggernaut. Along the way he pioneered in legal gaming, setting up his first small clubs in Reno, moving south when Bugsy Siegel struck the mother lode along Las Vegas Boulevard in 1947.

  The Gold Rush Hotel-Casino was his first investment in Las Vegas — one of many that included real estate and industry, construction, politics and cattle ranching. Bernstein funneled thousands — some said millions — into local charity and was rewarded with a host of plaques and honors for his labors, testifying to his latter-day respectability. In time, his sanctuary was invaded once again by mafiosi, and this time there was nowhere to run. As the new wave gradually replaced the old, Abe Bernstein was reduced to something of a puppet, going through the motions of administering that which he once owned outright. Among the Justice Strike Force leaders there was little doubt who held the puppet's strings — and they were long ones, stretching east to Brooklyn and Manhattan.

  "I didn't know Abe had a family," Bolan said at last.

  The comic frowned.

  "A daughter," he responded. "Out of wife number three or four... I don't remember. The daughter's gone now, but there was one child... the granddaughter." Anders hesitated and a chuckle crept into his voice, almost reluctantly. "If she's your Lucy... well, they've got a sense of humor, anyhow."

  "What's funny?" Bolan asked.

  "Well, Old Jack Goldblume, down there at the Beacon... hell, he used to work for Bernstein at the Gold Rush. Handled all the joint's PR back in the old days, before he got religion and went into the civic conscience business full time." Another hesitation and Anders was no longer laughing. "Kind of makes you feel like it's all in the family, eh?"

  Bolan barely heard him. He was already thinking through the riddle, trying jumbled pieces, rejecting each in turn and moving on to something new.

  Jack Goldblume used to work for Bernstein at the Gold Rush. Now he ran the Daily Beacon, and they were, presumably, still friends.

  Now Bernstein's granddaughter — if she was his granddaughter — worked for Goldblume. As a plant?

  A favor for old times' sake? And Lucy Bernstein, acting under Goldblume's orders, was preparing to expose the very Mafia that owned her grandfather. Why?

  Bolan knew that to receive the necessary answers, he would have to ask the proper questions. And of several potential sources, he planned to start with one who owed him something. Like her life.

  10

  Bolan found the large apartment complex on the first pass. It was off the main drag two blocks over to the south of West Sahara where he had dropped Lucy Bernstein the night before. A quick call to her number listed in the telephone directory had brought no answer, and the Executioner was betting that last night's festivities had shaken her enough to make her call in sick to work and lay low for a day or two.

  As on the previous visit, Bolan found the guard shack out front unattended, and he cruised past, slowing over the omnipresent speed bumps, following the parking lot that ran around the complex proper like an asphalt moat. The buildings fit the martial image, bearing more resemblance to a desert fortress than anything elsewhere rough stucco with the red tile roofs of vaguely Spanish style.

  The soldier parked as close as possible to his intended target, locked the car and left it.

  Lucy's friend lived back inside the complex, away from the lot, and any way he went about it, he would have to walk. Bolan was counting on the empty sentry booth out front to mean there would be no security on foot inside the complex after nightfall, either. He passed a combination swimming pool and sauna with a couple hiding from the nighttime chill inside the heated whirlpool bath. Their movements told him they were making love — or maybe only warming up for later — but he did not take the time to stop and check it out. His mind was occupied with war and death at the moment; lovers had no place on Bolan's solitary battlefield.

  He moved along the imitation flagstone path to Building 9, then followed his nose around to apartment 186. It was a two-story town house layout and the only lights showing were upstairs, above a boxed — in patio of sorts.

  He spent a moment scanning the surroundings, buttoned his jacket shut, and pressed the doorbell set above a cardboard nameplate that identified the occupant.

  Feeble chimes inside, then nothing.

  Bolan waited thirty seconds and tried again.

  Now he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs inside. Despite the muffling distance they sounded heavy, labored. Male.

  A light went on behind the French doors to his left, escaping through the peephole in the door. A shadow blocked it out as someone planted an eye against the viewing lens.

  "Who is it?" a male voice inquired.

  Right, Bolan thought, noting the heavy flavor of the Bronx. Bolan started thinking fast.

  "Pizza man."

  "We didn't order nothing'."

  He played it cautious, knowing this might be a boyfriend of either young woman. He glanced down at an imaginary sales slip in his hand, performing for the benefit of the invisible observer.

  And what materialized in his fist was the silenced Beretta 93-R, safety off and ready to rip.

  "Well, I gotta note here says deliver one large pepperoni to a Mrs. Castorina," Bolan told the blank impassive door. There was a hesitation on the other side, slow wheels turning in there and sealing the other man's fate.

  "She ain't here now," Mr. Invisible answered.

  "Must be some mistake." You made it, slick, the soldier told himself, and plugged a silent mangler through the door six inches underneath the peephole, following through with a kick to the door that exploded the lock mechanism, slamming it back and open, catching the dead man before he had a chance to fall.

  Bolan dragged him across the room checking him out with a glance — the scarlet flower blooming on his chest, dead center, and beside him on the floor, a Colt Commander .45 that he would never have another chance to use. One down.

  He scanned the combination living room and kitchen, found it empty. He was moving toward the stairs and homing on the sound of running water when a voice hailed him from the second-floor landing overhead. More Bronx in this one, with a hint of speech impediment behind the growl.

  "Hey, Lenny — what the hell?" No answer from the leaking Brooklyn delegate.

  Bolan waited by the stairs until he heard the sound of cautious footsteps, tracking them halfway down before he made his move, emerging in a combat crouch, the Beretta out in front of him and steadied in both hands. A chunky goon in shirt-sleeves spent a second gaping at him, finally reaching for the side arm he had stupidly left snug inside its shoulder holster, knowing he could never make it in a million years. Mack Bolan stroked the trigger twice, and lisping Bronx became a sliding bag of bones, descending gracelessly toward him. The soldier was already moving, hurdling the corpse and taking the carpeted risers three at a time. The 93-R nosed out ahead of him, and he gained the final landing unopposed. Two bedrooms opened on his right
— both dark, empty. Dead ahead the bathroom door was standing halfway open, spilling pale fluorescent light into the hallway. He heard water running — a bathtub by the sound of it — and Bolan drifted to his right, craning for a better look inside the room. Another step, and he could see the mirrored medicine cabinet on the wall above a sink. It let him scrutinize the back side of the open door, a towel rack — and the gunner waiting for him just inside. Bolan stepped back out of sight, approaching catlike and thumbing up the fire-selector switch to shift his weapon from the semiautomatic to 3-shot mode. He took up station three feet from the open door and three feet to its left, directly opposite the waiting gunner, only lath and plaster in between them now.

  He held the Beretta up, chest high, imagining the outline of a man emblazoned on the stucco, and stroked the trigger twice, two short bursts ripping through the cheap construction, all six rounds impacting in a fist-sized circle.

  A muffled grunt inside was followed by a crash as number three connected face first with the mirrored glass of the medicine cabinet. Bolan stepped inside and found the gunner wedged between the sink and toilet bowl where he had fallen. His riddled back and lacerated face were dribbling crimson pools that beaded up on contact with the waxed linoleum.

  The bathroom's other occupant was stretched out naked in the overflowing tub, her face a precious inch or two above the waterline. And it was Lucy Bernstein, barely alive.

  Bolan killed the tap and took a heartbeat to appreciate her beauty before he reached down between the floating legs to pull the plug. He caught her under the arms, lifting the lady up in one fluid motion. When she was clear of the tub, Bolan got an arm beneath her thighs and carried her back past the lifeless pistolero to the nearest bedroom. They might have been interrogating her, but more likely they had meant to kill her and leave it looking like a simple household accident. Whatever, someone in Minotte's camp had traced her here and, had it not been for Bolan's timely arrival, she would be another colored pin on Captain Reese's wall map.