The Bone Yard (11 page)

Paradise Valley lies south of Las Vegas and cast of the Strip. It has been colonized by well-to-do casino personnel and such show-business stars as chose to live in Vegas through the off months, when they are not on the road. A spacious area with mammoth homes and ready access to four separate country clubs, the neighborhood enjoys a reputation for conspicuous consumption, and the residents take pride in their affluence. In the fifties they elected old Gus Greenbaum mayor of Paradise, deciding that his quasi-ownership of the flamboyant Riviera Hotel and Casino necessarily outfitted him for public office. Everyone professed surprise when Gus, a one-time murderer and closet junkie, ran afoul of mafiosi who were really putting strings down at the Riviera. He was on vacation at the family home in Arizona when somebody hacked his head off with a butcher knife and then went on to practice further surgical techniques upon Mrs. Greenbaum in the next room, taking time to spread out plastic tarps beneath each body prior to cutting. And the folks back home in Paradise could well appreciate the hit team's grim fastidiousness. No maid could ever clean those twenty pints of blood out of a Persian carpet.

And Paradise had made almost a cult of looking clean, of putting up appearances and hiding in the shadows. Driving down the tree-lined streets and looking at palatial homes in back of finely manicured lawns, no casual tourist would suspect which houses had been built with skimmed casino money, cash from tax frauds and insurance swindles.

If your next-door neighbor was in league with mobsters, if he was a practicing arsonist who torched his own concerns for profit, well... the world was dog-eat-dog, and every businessman had overhead to meet. As long as you could settle out of court with IRS or dodge the audits altogether, there was no real reason for concern.

And if you took the fall there would be someone waiting for the house, with ready cash in hand.

Someone like Seiji Kuwahara, the businessman from Tokyo who specialized in restaurants — and other things. His neighbors knew him vaguely, did not seek acquaintance with him on a daily basis, but if asked, they would assure investigators that there could be nothing wrong with Mr. Kuwahara. How could any criminal keep such nice flower gardens, after all? Mack Bolan smelled the flowers — and the stench of death that drowned their sweet fragrance like the reek of fresh-laid fertilizer. Crouching in the darkness, sweeping Seiji Kuwahara's desert palace with his night eyes, the Executioner knew that he was looking at a dragon's lair. The residential neighborhood had not been Bolan's first choice for a battlefield, but it was preferable to the Lotus Garden, down on Paradise, where stray fire might encounter any one of several hundred tourists still abroad and seeking action.

Here, at least, the residents were either still out for the evening, or else settled safely in behind their triple locks and burglar bars.

It was the best that he could do, right, and the place would simply have to serve his purposes.

He had come dressed for combat, decked out in the nightsuit that clung to him like a second skin, its hidden pockets filled with slim stiletto, strangling gear, the grim accoutrements of silent death.

The silenced Beretta 93-R hung beneath his left arm in its shoulder harness, and Big Thunder, the .44 AutoMag, occupied its usual place on his right hip, hung on military webbing. Nylon pouches circling his waist held extra magazines for both the handguns, prearranged to let him find them by their feel alone amid the smoke and dust of battle. Slung across his back was a Mini-Uzi submachine gun, fully loaded. Inches shorter than its parent weapon, the little stuttergun had not surrendered any of its manbreaking firepower when it was miniaturized. Roughly the size of an Ingram MAC-10 with its side-folding stock, the little Uzi could lay down its parabellum manglers at a cyclic rate of 1,200 rounds per minute-a cataclysmic outpouring that Bolan had himself refined to a more manageable 750 rpm.

Head weapon for the evening was a recent Bolan favorite, the XM-18 semiautomatic projectile launcher. Built on the revolver principle, the XM-18 sported a 12-shot rotary magazine.

Constructed out of coated steel and durable cast aluminum to cut the weight, it was a one-man piece of field artillery, and Bolan could unload its twelve big chambers in the space of half as many seconds when the heat was on. The rifled bore belonging to the 40mm model made hits possible out to the weapon's maximum effective range of 150 yards, and with a steady hand, the cannon could work miracles against the opposition.

Double belts of premixed rounds encircled Bolan's chest, combining high-explosive rounds with gas and smoke, fl6chette and shot — enough to give an army pause, damn right.

Which was exactly what the soldier meant to do.

Fifteen minutes had passed since Bolan spoke with Tommy Anders, and the mental clock was ticking off the numbers. The pace was picking up now, the Las Vegas caldron coming to a boil around him.

Precision timing was the key if Bolan did not mean to wind up as a piece of well-done meat left floating in the stew pot. He was counting on Spinoza to dispatch an army straight for Kuwahara's, armed for war. The mafioso might be having trouble with his men, collecting all the arms he needed for the raid... but even so they should be on the scene at any moment now.

Inside the walls he could pick out a moving human figure here and there, primarily keeping to the shadows and avoiding the noonday glare of strategically positioned floodlights. It was far too late for gardeners, and from the glimpse that Bolan got on one occasion as his target inadvertently stepped into light, the slender men in tailored business suits had never done a day of spadework in their lives. Unless, perhaps, they had been planting bodies in the desert lately. Bolan counted half a dozen of them behind the low retaining wall, and knew there would be more where those came from. A man like Kuwahara, taking on the Mafia by choice, would not sleep well at night without an army at his beck and call. The question for Mack Bolan now revolved around how many men were in there, and how many guns they had at their disposal. He had come prepared to buck the odds, and yet...

A stab of light in his peripheral vision claimed the Executioner's attention. He half turned, just in time to see the tag end of a four-car caravan as it negotiated the right-hand turn and fell back into line with the procession rolling down the avenue toward Kuwahara's mansion. Four black Lincolns, six-door models with jump seats down that would accommodate from twenty-four to thirty gunners, depending on how tightly they were packed in there.

An army, right.

And from the way they cut their lights a half block down, approaching like a ghostly funeral cortege with only street lamps left to guide them on, they had not come in peace.

A pair of Kuwahara's men materialized from out of nowhere just inside the decorative wrought-iron gates. They were watching as the line of limousines approached now, reaching underneath their tailored jackets, coming out again with hardware.

Bolan used the opportunity to take the low retaining wall in one smooth motion, landing in a combat crouch among the occupant's prizewinning roses.

He moved away from there, preferring empty shadows and the smell of new-mown grass to the funeral-parlor perfume of the flower garden. He was settling into other cover, downrange, when the leader of the limo caravan decided he had had enough of caution. Standing on his Lincoln's accelerator, the wheelman cut hard left and brought his tank squealing up the short driveway from street to gates, rear tires smoking as they ate the pavement.

Kuwahara's guards each fired a futile round or two in the direction of the juggernaut, then leaped away to either side as the Detroit torpedo met the gates, plowing on through to the accompaniment of grinding, screeching steel.

A clap of gunfire drowned the sound of falling numbers in his head, and Bolan moved out, traveling on instinct now. From here on in, reconnaissance was next to worthless, planning almost pointless.

There were too damn many wild cards in the game, and any combination of them came out to the dead man's hand.

The soldier took a firm grip on the XM-18, leaving cover in a rush. He knew only one strategy for playing when the stakes were life and death. You bet the limit.

Inside his private study Seiji Kuwahara contemplated strategy in silence, eyes and mind closed to the world around him. A casual observer might have thought he was asleep, and any passing medical examiner would certainly have given him a second glance for vital signs, but Kuwahara was in fact both conscious and alert. And he had problems. He was concerned by the reports of military buildups at the Gold Rush, gunners flying in from eastward, others already in town, arriving by the carload. Somehow, something had occurred that forced the disparate Mafia factions to seek their safety in numbers, cooperating for the moment where they normally were barely speaking.

It might have been the raid on Bob Minotte, but the man from Tokyo was not convinced. Minotte was not popular among his fellow capos, and as long as the entire threat seemed to be directed at his camp, it seemed unlikely that the others would do more than pay lip service to their high ideals of brotherhood.

Still there were reports of violence at the Gold Rush earlier that afternoon. His man inside Spinoza's camp had been unable to provide in-depth reports, but there appeared to have been some shooting, even loss of life.

Kuwahara was worried that something might be about to spoil his master plan. He had intended to divide and conquer, take the mafiosi piecemeal, but now they seemed to be presenting him with a united front. That meant a sudden change in strategy but he was equal to the challenge. A simple shift of gears and he could easily accommodate the new requirements of the war that he had chosen to initiate. It might be helpful, after all, to have his enemies collected at the Gold Rush. Narrow down the targets, concentrate your fire. And yet, his group was not large enough to risk a full-out frontal raid against a force that seemed to number in the vicinity of sixty guns. There would be more by now, for sure, with locals coming in to bolster up the ranks. And while he had faith in his little clique of samurai, he did not wish to waste them when the odds were four or five to one.

Seiji Kuwahara was a tactician not a betting man. If there was some way he could infiltrate a ninja team into the Gold Rush, have them seek out and annihilate the capos assembled there... ah, it would have made his life so much less complicated. Another suicide mission, of course.

But then, his troops were brought up in the way of the samurai, preferring death to failure and dishonor.

He would think about the infiltration process, but in the meantime there was the matter of simple personal defense to be considered. Frank Spinoza and the others would be coming for him, one way or another — at the restaurant, at some public appearance, anywhere — and Kuwahara knew he must be ready for them.

The time was past for him to place some calls to San Francisco and Los Angeles, for starters. He needed reinforcements now, and if he made the calls this evening troops could be at his disposal by tomorrow. The first faint sounds of gunfire reached his ears like pinpricks stabbing at his psyche, piercing through the veil of meditation, opening his senses to the outside stimulus. And close behind he heard the grinding shriek of steel on steel.

Before he knew it, Kuwahara's heart was in his throat, leaving him alone with only raw emotion for a shield. He was too late. The calls he contemplated could not bring him help in time. He was trapped. Not yet.

The man from Tokyo regained a measure of his inner strength, reminding himself that an assault upon his house was not a victory his enemies could celebrate unless they reached him, killed or captured him. He could elude them still, perhaps defeat them with the force he kept on hand for such emergencies.

There would be time enough to place those calls an hour from now, he reasoned. Time enough to carry out a new offensive. His house was under siege by savages, and when the man from Tokyo had dealt with them, there would be more than ample time to ponder suitable reprisals on their masters.

Kuwahara left his study, moving with renewed determination toward the battlefront. His troops had need of him, and he of them. Together they were strong, and in their strength lay victory.

Moving through the darkness in a combat crouch, Bolan counted off the limos as they cleared the gate. The first was through and running clear, the windows down. Automatic weapons were spitting jagged tongues of flame in all directions at the gunners who were bold or foolhardy enough to show themselves. Behind it, numbers two and three broke through in tandem, rattling right across the twisted remains of Seiji Kuwahara's decorative gates.

He waited until number four was nosing through, then he raised the XM-18. Sighting quickly down the stubby barrel he stroked off a high-explosive round and rode out the negligible recoil, watching as his can impacted on the Lincoln's nose. There was a flash, a crack of heavy-metal thunder ripping through the night, and the crew wagon lurched to an abrupt halt, shattered engine dying in an instant.

Doors were springing open down there, the surviving occupants unwilling to sit still and wait for flames or the incoming rounds to seek them out like sitting ducks.

The warrior left them to it, satisfied that he had plugged the only exit, moving on in search of other targets in the hellgrounds. All around him small-arms fire was rippling through the night, most of it concentrating on the three remaining Lincolns as they powered along the curving drive toward Kuwahara's mansion. The other drivers either had not missed their tail car, or else they had decided that the crewmen were expendable.

And Bolan tipped his hat to savage loyalty, knowing that the cannibals would turn upon their own to save themselves. It was a trait that had assisted him before in time of need, and might again. He paced the Lincolns, tracking them on foot and keeping to the far left of the driveway, letting those cars draw the full attention and the hostile fire of Kuwahara's soldiers. They were taking hits out there, but armored bodywork and bullet-proof glass would keep the gunners safe until they ventured out and into range.