Baltimore Trackdown (5 page)

Bolan got next to Frank as they walked out of the recreation room. He had been introduced before.

“Frank, I got to make a phone call. Augie said contact him tonight sometime. He said be careful about the line. What’d he mean by that?”

“You’re reporting back to Augie Bonestra in Boston, right? I’ll check, but I’m damn sure what he meant was not to call from any phone inside this place. The cops have a way of putting two and two together. Wait a minute — I’ll check with somebody.”

Bolan went up to the first floor with Nino and waited around the TV set until Frank came back.

“Yeah, Lonnie, I was right. Call Augie, but do it from a pay phone down at the shopping center. It’s a mile straight down the road. Harder to trace calls from a pay booth.”

“Wheels?”

Frank went outside with Bolan and whistled up a crew wagon. The driver bailed out, and Bolan thanked him and drove to the front gate. It opened automatically. Frank had called the gate guard telling him to let the next car through.

Bolan grinned as he wheeled down the road. He knew there was no way he could have sneaked out of Don Carlo’s armed fortress without somebody getting suspicious. He also knew that Nazarione would not want a long-distance call from his house to another Mafia family don. They had to let him go outside to make the call.

At the shopping center Bolan parked and walked across half a block of parked cars to a phone booth. He called the Baltimore police department and left a message for Chief Jansen. He told them, “I have a tip that Carlo Nazarione is going to try to shoot down Chief Jansen in the next twenty-four hours. Tell him to lie low for two or three days.” Bolan hung up before they could trace the call. Even if they had the automatic readout of the calling number on their system, the Executioner would be miles away before any radio-dispatched police unit could arrive at the pay phone.

He wasted another half hour, then rolled back toward the big house that Mafia money had built.

The Executioner pulled up to the entrance. The heavy iron gate stood open. Unusual. He drove ahead, saw no one in the guardhouse. More lights were on now in the drive and in front of the big house than before, when he had driven away. Trouble. Bolan put the rig in gear, angled the car down the middle of the drive, kicked the lights up to bright, then hunched low and jumped out and sprinted fifteen feet into the shrubbery at the side of the drive.

In the darkness, he ran for the gate. It was a trap. He turned and saw the car swerve toward one side of the drive, but it recovered and rolled slowly into the lighted section in front of the house.

Twenty shots barked into the quiet evening, then a dozen followed, and soon more gunfire ripped and punctured the heavy car, blasting out all the glass, killing the engine, blowing out the tires. Somebody wanted to be sure that the driver wound up with his head in a bucket.

Mack Bolan sprinted out the front gate, which was still unmanned, and ran down the winding roadway toward the first lights at the corner a block away. Just as he turned into the next street, he heard tires squealing at the gate. The Executioner ran into the dark driveway of the second house and stepped behind the attached garage.

He touched his .45. It was still in place and loaded. Evidently the godfather had sensed something wrong and called Augie Bonestra in Boston. It would not take them long to discover the hoax and set up a trap of their own.

Bolan saw a crew wagon wheel along the street, moving slowly, with men staring out rolled-down windows.

Maybe next time, the Executioner thought. There was no chance they were going to find him tonight. It might take him a little longer to get back downtown, but he would catch a taxi sooner or later.

As it turned out, it was later.

The men of the Baltimore Police Department swore you could set your watch by the movements of Chief of Police Stephen C. Smith. He arrived at his second-floor office at 07:49 every morning. He went over the status reports on his desk from the past two watch captains, made any recommendations at once and cleared his desk.

By 08:02 he had greeted his front-office staff and had poured a cup of coffee from the communal pot, then started the rounds of his assistant chiefs, looking for any problems they might be having. He had delegated more work assignments than any former chief had ever done. It was working well.

This morning he was up as usual at 06:00. His driver called for him at his suburban home at 07:20 and he had twenty-five minutes to read the New York Times on his ride to work.

The chief’s sedan had just rounded the first corner heading toward the boulevard and eventually the expressway when another car jolted away from the curb and roared toward it.

Patrolman Donald Connors saw the car through his rearview mirror.

“Something’s happening, Chief!” Connors shouted. “Car back there coming up fast. Get down, Chief! Guns are showing out the windows!”

The chief glanced around, saw the long gun aimed at his car and dived to the floor of the back seat.

The black Cadillac behind them raced forward, a shotgun boomed and thirteen double O buck lead slugs slammed with thundering force into the chief’s sedan. They tore through the side windows, blew out the windshield, dug into the heavy side panels of the rear door.

Three of the slugs tore into Patrolman Connors just over the starched shirt collar of his uniform. He slumped over the wheel, dead. The horn was blaring. His foot lifted only slightly from the throttle. The car jumped the curb, knocked down a pair of small trees and rolled across a lawn until it crashed to a stop against the wall of a two-car garage.

Before the Mafia crew wagon could stop, another car raced up behind it and the driver lobbed a contact grenade over the roof so it landed on the black Cadillac’s hood and exploded.

Jagged shards of steel drove through the windshield and decapitated the driver. The second man in the front seat caught burning shrapnel in both eyes.

The driver’s foot lifted from the pedal and the Cadillac ground to a halt. The explosion had blown apart the ignition system under the hood.

Before the surprised hoodlums in the back seat could leave the car, a second grenade ripped open the gasoline tank. The gasoline ignited in a whooshing roar, creating a spectacular funeral pyre for the Mafia killers inside the car.

The man who had thrown the grenades pulled his rented Chevrolet to the curb, leaped out and ran to the chiefs wrecked car.

Chief Smith crawled out the rear door. Bolan helped him, then urged him toward the Chevrolet.

“There are men in that burning car!”

“Not men — Mafia scum,” Mack Bolan said. “And there probably is a backup car. We’ve got to get out of here fast!”

“Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. Is your driver dead?”

“Yes.”

By then they were at the Chevy. Half a block behind them a car spun away from the curb.

“Here they come!” Bolan shouted. He leaped in the passenger side and slid over as the chief jumped in beside him. Then Bolan had the sedan moving. He ground around the first corner he came to, tires screaming. When the Executioner looked behind him, the black Caddy crew wagon was gaining.

“What’s the quickest way out of town?” Bolan asked.

The chief looked behind, then at the grim expression on his rescuer’s face.

The chief told him the turns to make, scowled as Bolan ran two red lights and two stop signs. When they were away from the heavily populated suburbs and on a country road with only a few houses scattered along it, Bolan said, “Look in that suitcase in the back seat. Get out that Uzi submachine gun. You have your service revolver?”

“Yes,” the chief said. He got on his knees in the seat and reached into the back. “Hey! Everything in this suitcase is illegal!”

“Be glad of it, Chief Smith. If we’re lucky and you can use some of those weapons, we might be able to get out of this alive. Can you use that Uzi?”

“I’ve fired them before. In Korea we didn’t have anything quite this fancy.”

Bolan flashed him a grin. “You’ll do.”

The Caddy had been at a disadvantage on the quick turns in town, but on the straight road the big engine made the difference as it came closer and closer. Bolan speeded up, found the spot he wanted on the sparsely traveled country road, then yelled.

“Brace yourself, I’m doing a slide stop. We’ll be sideways in the road, and we both go out your door. Stay low, take the Uzi and some extra magazines and be ready to defend yourself. These Mafia hit men don’t care how they kill you.”

Chief Smith nodded. He grabbed the Uzi, three extra magazines and two frag grenades.

The Chevy screamed into the braking slide and stopped, almost fully blocking the narrow road. The Caddy could pass if it slowed and took it easy on the shoulder, but Bolan did not think the Mafia driver would try.

They left the car by the passenger door. Bolan opened the rear door and pulled the suitcase to the edge of the back seat for easy access.

“Here they come,” Bolan said. “Let’s give them a welcome.”

“They have to shoot first,” the chief said.

“They just killed your driver!”

“That was a different car, different men.”

The Caddy slid to a stop thirty yards away. Four pistol shots ripped into the morning air. Two of them caught body metal, two more went through the front windshield.

Bolan lifted the French army rifle and shattered the crew wagon’s side windows with six rounds.

Bolan’s next burst went between the Caddy’s wheels. When the firing stopped he heard a scream of rage.

“Get behind the front wheel and stay low,” Bolan said.

An answering burst of fire came under the Chevy. He heard one automatic weapon. It had to be an Uzi.

A man sprinted from the Cadillac, angling toward a row of trees and brush at the side of the road.

The chief lifted the Uzi and sent three rounds at him. He missed. He corrected and the next five rounds put the runner down.

Bolan watched as the Mafia soldiers tried to lay down a protective hail of fire. The windows in the Chevy broke into thousands of granules of glass. Bolan scattered two more bursts from the rifle, then reached in the suitcase for a fragger.

“You’ve used these?” he shouted to the chief over the sporadic pistol fire.

The chief nodded.

“Good. Let’s do it. You put one at the front of the car, and I’ll get one to the rear.” They both pulled the safety pins and looked at each other. Bolan bobbed his head. The chief threw first. His grenade hit short and rolled within three feet of the Caddy before it exploded. Before the noise died down Bolan threw his small bomb slightly behind the rig so it would roll just beyond it. The explosion came first, then the screams of pain as jagged steel met flesh.

An Uzi opened up on full-auto, screaming twenty 9 mm parabellums into and under the Chevy. Bolan threw one more grenade and rolled it under the Caddy, hoping it would explode just on the far side.

When it went off there was silence on the country road for a moment. A car came up behind them, and the chief waved it back, flashing his badge at the surprised driver. The car turned and raced away.

The silence continued from the Mafia machine.

“I’ll go check it out,” the chief said.

“No, Chief. You didn’t even make the SWAT squad. I do this kind of work all the time. You keep that Uzi handy.”

Without a wasted motion, Bolan jumped into the six-foot ditch at the side of the road. He had taken no enemy fire. He bent over and ran along the ditch, two fraggers swinging on his black combat harness. Big Thunder jolted where it was tied down at his hip. He carried the French army rifle like a toy.

When he was beyond the Cadillac, he rose and looked over the lip of the ditch through some tall grass.

He saw only one man standing, and he was bleeding from the head and chest. The man turned and sent a dozen rounds from the Uzi in the ditch twenty feet away from Bolan, then dropped the weapon, let out a soft cry and collapsed.

Bolan fired two shots into the air, but without reaction from the Mafia soldiers. Slowly he moved toward the battered crew wagon. Four dead men lay on the tarmac. One other moved, wounded with shrapnel. Bolan kept the French rifle on full-auto as he ran into the scene. He checked the bodies, then looked at the man who had moved. He stared up, at Bolan with angry eyes.

“Man, they didn’t tell us it was gonna be a goddamned war! You must be that Executioner guy.”

Bolan nodded.

“Damn!” the hoodlum said, then died.

It was over. Bolan called to the chief. The cop ran around the Cadillac and stared at the massacre.

“It looks like that hill in Korea where we lost so many guys.”

“They attacked us — remember that.”

“I don’t even have a radio.”

“Let’s see if the Chevy will drive. They forgot to shoot out the tires at least. We might be able to start it.”

They got in and Bolan ground the engine three times, then it started. They headed toward the nearest telephone.

Bolan told the chief about the Mafia’s attempted takeover.

“They knew they couldn’t turn you, so you had to be killed. That’s what happened to Lieutenant Paulson yesterday. We’re almost certain that Capt. Harley Davis killed him.” Bolan continued laying it all out, about the try for Assistant Chief Jansen the day before and that two of his assistant chiefs already had been blackmailed.

“That’s the story, Chief. I’d suggest that you lie low for a day or two. Let them think they nailed you.”

Chief Smith shook his head. “It’s so much to accept at one time. Captain Davis! One of my best men. He’s taking two thousand a week.”

“Men do strange things for money, Chief.”

“But not you. You must be this Executioner we’ve been hearing about. Big story about you in the paper this morning. The FBI says to shoot you on sight.” He chuckled. “You save my life once, and then the second time. I guess you broke some laws, but I had deputized you. You were helping a law-enforcement officer in his sworn duty. But we’re in the county jurisdiction here.

“I better call the sheriff. I think I’ll stay out here somewhere. Let me make that call, then run me in to the little town up ahead. It’s got a motel and some cafes. I’ve got my credit card.”

He shook his head again and got out of the car. They were parked outside a general store. “Better make that phone call.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “How many... how many men did you and I kill today?”

“They weren’t men — they were Mafia killers who had each murdered some Mafia enemy to get in the club. What we did was a public service. Wait until you look at the rap sheets on those guys.”

The chief nodded and went into the store. He returned quickly.

“Sheriff already had a report and two cars are on the way. We better get out of here. I made it an anonymous report.”

Half an hour later Bolan had driven the chief to within a block of a motel and let him off. Then the Executioner put all his weapons back in the suitcase along with his combat harness, slipped on a sport shirt and left the shot-up Chevy on the street. He took his suitcase, walked away and caught a taxi into downtown Baltimore.

Bolan changed hotels, checked in under a different alias and sat in his room considering his next move. He phoned the rental agency and told the clerk where the car could be found. He mentioned it had been somewhat wrecked and reminded the anxious clerk that the rental fee and the insurance had both been prepaid.

Captain Harley Davis of the Baltimore Police Department had taken the day off as Chief Jansen had suggested, but he did not tell his wife. Instead he drove his unmarked car to an apartment house just off Franklin Street and went up to suite 1111. Eleven was his lucky number.

A woman wearing a short nightgown came to the door. She peeked around the barrier and when she recognized him, swung open the door.

“Hey, you gonna bust me?”

“Of course not, Francie. Any friend of Carlo’s is a friend of mine.”

“He said you might be around. Had breakfast?”

“Yes, but I’m still hungry,” he said, looking at her chest suggestively.

She stepped back and smiled. “None of that until I have breakfast. A girl has to keep up her strength.”

“You eat, I’ll watch,” Davis said. He sat in the little kitchen observing the woman. It was a delight. She never failed to excite Davis, no matter what she wore. Right now his motor was running at high throttle.

The apartment she lived in rented for at least fifteen hundred a month. But she didn’t worry about that. Carlo Nazarione picked up the rent and the tab for her clothes and everything. He was not the jealous type. He offered her around, and Francie seemed to dote on the attention and the variety.

When breakfast was over, Francie crooked her finger at him and walked to the bathroom. She found a new toothbrush for him, still in a plastic wrapper, and indicated he should brush. She brushed her teeth and washed her face, then put on her makeup as he watched.

When she’d finished she winked at him, then slid out of the nightie, handed it to him and walked away. Captain Davis growled and started after her. Francie was one of the fringe benefits of being so friendly with Don Nazarione.

The phone rang just as Davis pulled off his tie. Francie sprawled across the bed, grabbed the phone and rolled onto her back.

“Saks Fifth Avenue, lingerie and notions department.” She listened. “You really need to talk to him. He’s gonna be pissed right out of his pants.” She paused. “Hell, it’s your problem now.” She tossed the hand set to Davis, who stood beside the bed unzipping his pants. He caught it and put it to his ear.

“Yeah?”

On the other end of the line a uniformed cop named Tony Ricca talked so fast Davis yelled.

“Hold it already! Damn, I can’t make out a word you’re saying. Take it easy and give it to me slow.”