St. Louis Showdown Read online

  “Yes, sir. What’s the query?”

  “Stonehenge.” He spelled it. “That’s the site of some ancient Druidic ruins somewhere in England. Here’s the cross-check I want. I want something in the St. Louis metro area which could relate, either historically or physically—or both—to Stonehenge.”

  “Got it. You’ll be in the mobile, Lieutenant?”

  “I will. I’m on Interstate 70 about three miles north of Jefferson Memorial, rolling south, following my smell. Get me that data with all possible haste.”

  “Will do.”

  Postum returned the mike to its clip and activated the scan monitors. He was following more than a smell.

  The chief of police intelligence knew that he was following a brilliant military mind—and a highly dangerous one.

  That scene back there at the salvage yard had jarred Tom Postum’s conscience. This was not some silly damned tactical game of point and counterpoint.

  A dangerous military force was conducting an illegal war on this turf—a scorched-earth war, the likes of which had not been seen in this land since the War Between the States.

  And, yes, Postum was following more than a smell. He was following a shiver and a certainty.

  13: OLD TIMES

  Pol Blancanales walked nonchalantly through the gate at the front of the estate and along the winding drive toward the house.

  He was in combat fatigues, with web belts crossing the chest and encircling the waist, a small machine gun dangling from a neck cord, an M-16 rifle slung jauntly from the right shoulder.

  About fifty yards in, a distant and disturbed voice faintly called, “Hey! You, guy!”

  A skinny man with a wolfish dog dragging him along at the end of a short leash was hurrying across the lawn toward him, from the area of the north wall. The guy was dressed in denim jeans and plaid shirt, hardware visible at the hip in open leather.

  In the background of that vision, a figure in black had just slithered over the top of the wall and dropped lightly to the ground inside.

  Blancanales smiled and stepped over to a willow sapling, turned his back on all that, opened his fly, and began casually watering the tree.

  The guy and the dog were upon him before that task was completed.

  “What the hell is this?” the guy asked angrily while the dog sniffed suspiciously at the fresh moisture on the ground.

  “Takin’ a leak,” the Pol amiably explained.

  “I can see that!” The sentry was eyeing those weapons. “What is this? What’re you doing in here?”

  Blancanales smiled benignly and replied with a question of his own. “Why are you standing here jawing when you got a dead man up there on the gate?”

  The guy’s face went dumb, scared, and unbelieving all at once. “Ringo? Ringo’s dead?”

  The Blancanales smile was pure “aw shucks” charm. “Yeah. I just now did it to ’im.”

  A muscle popped in the guy’s jaw and his eyes flared noticeably one telegraphic second before he went for his gun.

  The Pol’s left hand flashed up and across, a mere inch of surgical steel protruding therefrom and slashing the wrist of that impotent gunhand then traveling on up in the cross-slash to open a frothing welt at the throat.

  The dog danced away in surprise to clear that gurgling fall, then crouched with fangs bared in attack mode.

  A long-bladed hunting knife leapt into the Pol’s hand. He waved it menacingly in front of that slavering snout while sternly commanding, “Down! Down, damn you, or I’ll spill you!”

  It was about a ten-second staredown before the beast tucked its tail and settled uncertainly to the ground, undecided between a snarl and a whimper.

  Pol put out a cautious hand to scratch that dangerous head, then he seized the leash and gently urged the animal to his feet.

  “Let’s go, pooch,” he said, setting off again for the house at a leisurely pace, the dog in tow with not so much as a backward glance for his fallen handler.

  He was challenged again less than a hundred feet from the house. The challenger was under the cupola on the roof, practically invisible along this line of sight, and he was throwing down over the telescopic sights of a big rifle.

  Blancanales dropped to his haunches beside the dog and peered up at the guy, his mind computing sun angles, firing-line obstructions, ground cover. He was in the open, twenty feet from the nearest possible shelter; the sun was no factor; there were no obstructions confronting the guy on the roof, no blind spots at this range. He was a sitting duck, he meaning Rosario Blancanales, the Chameleon, the Politician. Obviously he was not a chameleon in this particular situation. He would have to rely on politics—and perhaps trust and faith in his partner.

  “I’m getting sick of this shit,” he called up there with a disgusted tone of voice. “Doesn’t anybody ever get the word around this joint?”

  “Who are you, guy?”

  “Who am I? Where the hell is the breakfast for my boys? It’s two hours late.”

  “What boys? You sure you got the right camp, kid?”

  “Aw, come on, dammit! Get that cannon off of me!”

  The guy up there was wavering. “Where’s Al?”

  “Al who?”

  “You’ve got his dog, guy.”

  “Oh. Him. He went up to the gate to talk to Ringo. You can’t see that from up there?”

  “I ain’t got stereophonic eyes, guy. I don’t see it all at once. How come you’ve got the dog?”

  “He’s hungry, like me and my boys. Look, I ain’t going to stand here and—”

  “Stay put!”

  Blancanales had begun a cautious move for the portico. He froze and shouted, “Look, dammit, Del promised to send some chow out two hours ago!”

  The guy lifted off the scope but the bore of that rifle remained dead center. “I ain’t heard nothing about no company of grunts outside the walls.”

  “You saw me come in, didn’t you!”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, dammit, Ringo has the word. Al has the word. I know the housemen have the word ’cause they’re supposed to be feeding us. Now dammit …”

  It had been a long parley. Where the hell was—The guy up there was saying, “You stay put. I’m calling down to send someone out.”

  “It’s about time!”

  “Don’t get smart!” It looked as though the guy had a phone to his ear now. “What’re you made up for, guy, Hallowe’en or something?”

  “There’s a war on, dummy, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Blancanales growled back.

  “I never noticed you before, guy.”

  “Just make the call. Tell ’em it’s breakfast for the barf squad and where the hell is it!”

  “What squad was that?”

  “Barf! Barf! Like a dog makes with a B in front!”

  The guy laughed and called back, “Just a min—” but he was overstating his time limitations. That guy did not have a minute left. He had suddenly gone stiff, and Blancanales could see—even at this range—those eyes bulging in a very characteristic manner.

  Man and gun disappeared inside the cupola.

  A moment later, a familiar figure in black appeared briefly to send down a hand signal.

  Man and dog proceeded casually on, arriving at the steps to the big stone porch just as the front door opened.

  A big guy stepped outside, pistol in hand, fixing that alien presence out there with a hard stare.

  “What’s all the yawping about? What the hell are you?”

  “Look, I’m just not going through that all over again,” Blancanales testily replied. He draped the wrist loop of the dog leash over the spire of a low, wrought-iron railing then turned his back on the guy to give the dog a farewell pat.

  When he came up and around, the chattergun was in his hands and blazing.

  The burst swept the big guy off the porch and head first into a freshly dug flower garden at the edge of the lawn.

  Another burst atomized the glass panels framing the d
oor as the warrior took those broad cement stairs in two leaping strides and hit the doorway at full gallop, bursting inside with the auto at full chatter—catching two guys in the entry hall with mouths wide open and hardware barely clear of leather, sweeping them together like so much rubbish into a tumbled welter of arms and legs and depositing them in a corner near the far doorway.

  The room just beyond was a huge, ballroom-like affair with vaulted ceilings and a magnificent curving stairway. That particular area was clear of human presence at the moment, but just beyond was another broad hallway with tall sliding doors along either side—and a guy was hurtling out of one of those rooms as the Pol reached the center of the ballroom.

  This guy had a chopper and they dueled briefly—very briefly—with a stream of big forty-five-calibre slugs chewing a path past Blancanales’ feet before he could hang a wreath of steel jackets around that chest down there.

  At that same instant, a heavy weapon which could only be Big Thunder boomed and reverberated along the stairwell to herald the appearance of another body, this one in free fall from somewhere above. Man and weapon crashed to the tiles at Blancanales’ feet.

  He yelled up, “Watch it, there—you damn near got me.”

  “You watch it,” Bolan’s icy tones called down. “There’s more of the same up here, between you and me.”

  The big man in black was obviously on the top floor.

  “Secure level one,” he instructed the Pol. “I’ll take care of this.”

  A couple of yappy revolvers came alive immediately, up there, as Blancanales skirted around the stairwell and went on through to check out the rest of the main floor.

  A thunderous duel was going on above his head as he went through the rooms at ground level, and he was starting down the darkened stairs to the basement when Bolan appeared at the kitchen door.

  “How many outsiders, Pol?” the big grim man asked him.

  “I took out the gateman and the north sector wall,” he replied casually.

  “I guess that does it, then. The whole cadre must be out headhunting. These guys were stationkeepers.”

  “I was just about to check out the basement.”

  “Lock it and leave it, for now,” Bolan said. “I’ll get to it. Let’s find the family jewels.”

  Blancanales grinned. “Through the ballroom, down the east hall, first sliding door to your left. I’ll show you.”

  It had probably once been a combination library-study, and very impressively so. Now it was a garishly decorated business office with life-sized Playboy-style pinups framed and hanging behind glass from the cherrywood paneling—a massive hardwood desk with a heavy conference table butted against it in a T arrangement, overflowing ashtrays everywhere.

  It smelled like a bar in there.

  Where once had been bookshelves was now a massive wall of unrelieved steel. It was a bank-style vault.

  “Paydirt,” Bolan murmured and went immediately to the vault.

  He had a load of plastics in a heavy ready-bag which hung from a shoulder strap. He placed the bag on the floor and began kneading long strips of the stuff and deftly shaping it into door wedgies.

  This operation always gave Blancanales the shivers.

  “I’d better keep watch,” he suggested, and wandered out to the ballroom.

  The skydiver from upstairs was crumpled there at the bottom of the stairwell with dead eyes widely staring, grotesque in his death with limbs poking out at weird angles, a hole the size of a fist behind one ear—a soggy, messy corpse but better company than a bag of goop and that big, grim guy massaging it around that way.

  Blancanales trudged around the lower level, peering out windows and whistling softly to himself for several minutes. Then the big guy came out, grinning soberly and fiddling with a small black box he wore on his readybelt.

  “Better take cover,” Bolan warned. “I want to get it the first try. Might take the whole room with it.”

  They stood at the back side of the stairwell while Bolan punched the button on the black box to trigger the detonators in the goop—and yeah, it was a pretty good blow, but it did not take the whole room with it.

  It did spring the vault door, though—barely—and the goodies inside were well worth the Pol’s uneasy stomach.

  Bolan was inspecting the blast marks at the heavy door. “This must be an old one,” he marveled. “Not like the usual shoeboxes you find today.”

  Blancanales grunted with obvious disdain and went directly to the back wall, where an entire shelf was stacked high with bundles of American currency—in twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

  He whistled softly. “Well look at that. Must be a couple hundred thousand here.”

  Bolan glanced at the fortune in American green and said, “Take it. That’s gun money. They won’t be needing it now.”

  Blancanales chuckled and snared a leather suitcase from another shelf.

  Bolan was conducting a rapid search through stacks of papers, metal boxes, odds and ends of stuff.

  The Pol filled the leather bag and tossed it into the room. “See any film?” he asked the big guy.

  “Yeah. Some sixteen-millimeter stuff in that metal box by the door. The big one.”

  Bolan had evidently found his prize. He straightened up with a bundle of bound ledgers in his hands, grinning.

  Blancanales was bending over the big metal box. He exclaimed, “Hell! I think this is it! It is!”

  “Cut a few feet from each reel,” Bolan suggested. “It should be enough to satisfy your client. Dump the rest on the floor and we’ll torch it.”

  “Good idea,” the Pol agreed, and went to work with his knife. “I’ll try to pry a few labels off these cannisters, too.”

  Moments later they were standing outside the vault with their booty. Bolan passed his old buddy an incendiary and told him, “You took the big risks—you get the honors.”

  Blancanales grinned, accepted the incendiary, activated it, and tossed it into the vault—then banged the door on the whole dismal business.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he muttered. “This joint is giving me the creeps.”

  “Wait for me on the porch,” Bolan told him, when they reached the ballroom, “I’m going below for a few minutes.”

  “For what?”

  “I brought enough goop to drop this whole place. But I have to find the drop points. Take about five minutes, Pol. Are you game?”

  Blancanales studied his watch. “We’re out of numbers right now. What the hell—let’s drop it. I’ll eyeball for you from the porch. Hear gunfire, come running.”

  Bolan smiled soberly, snared his bag of explosives, and went to the basement.

  Blancanales wandered out to the porch and lit a cigarette. The dog moaned at him. He went down and removed the leash then told the beast, “Haul ass, guy.”

  The dog looked at him uncertainly for a moment, the tail alternately wagging and tucking.

  “I said haul ass! This place isn’t fit for man or beast!”

  The dog slunk away, disappearing a moment later into the trees at the side. Blancanales watched him out of sight, then returned to the porch.

  He had just finished his cigarette when the transistor radio on his belt beeped at him.

  “Here it comes,” he said, sighing, and lifted the bad news to his head. “Go.”

  Schwarz reported, “Caravan approaching east. Four bandits. One minute.”

  “Stand by.”

  He hurried into the house and to the doorway to the basement stairs. “Sarge! Head parties returning! Gadgets says four units, one minute out!”

  Bolan called back, “I need a couple more minutes. I think it’s worth it. How about you?”

  “I’m game.”

  “Tell Gadgets he’s got his fire assignment.”

  “Okay, but it’s still going to be hell. Don’t screw around down there simply for perfection’s sake.”

  He went back to the porch and relayed the decision to Schwarz, then fed a fresh c
lip into his chattergun and went down to the lawn to retrieve the M-16.

  “Old times are here again,” he said aloud to nobody but himself. Then he grinned sourly and walked into the trees to find the best firing alignment.

  Old times, yeah.

  He’d hid from these bastards long enough—and he was sick of that crap.

  It was good to be alive again.

  Even if only for a little while.

  14: UNHINGED

  Charlie Alimonte was in a terrible mood.

  He’d been out scouring the city for hours, looking for something to whack, and he had not drawn a single drop of blood.

  Then there’d been that terrible brawl with hot-ass Jerry Ciglia. That damn guy was pure crazy. Couldn’t take reality straight from the horse’s mouth.

  “I’m telling you,” Alimonte had assured his boss, “the whole bunch is so dug in we’ll never find them. You gave me the dirty end, Jerry. You give Del the only sure thing we have, and you send me out looking for rabbit holes. Well, dammit, there aren’t any rabbit holes. Does that make Del a hero and me a clown?”

  “We had them all yesterday,” Ciglia had screamed at him. “All of them!”

  “Well that was yesterday and this is today. Mack Bolan wasn’t snorting around town yesterday. He is today. And I’m telling you, there’s not a hole left in town.”

  Then the lousy shit had called New York, right in Charlie’s presence, and told those old men up there that his own head crews weren’t worth a shit—told ’em that, right there with Charlie listening to it—worse than that, with some of Charlie’s boys listening to it!

  You couldn’t run a head shop that way, dammit!

  So now other crews were coming in from all around. From Chicago. From Dallas. From Phoenix. From Denver—of all damn places—how humiliating!—reinforcements from Denver! From Cleveland, and Cincy, and …

  Alimonte gnashed his teeth in the memory of it and groaned audibly. His wheelman, Spencer “Indy” Parelli, flicked him a concerned look and said, “You all right, boss?”.

  “No I’m not all right,” Alimonte groused.

  “Thinking about, uh—”