Don Pendleton - The Bone Yard

And it would not be Kuwahara's rising run. No way. His sun was going down in flames, except the Jap was too damned dumb to know it yet. The sun was rising for Spinoza and his family. The Nevada family. And they were going to flourish in the light.

Mack Bolan — lately known as Joe from Jersey eased the telephone receiver down and lit himself a cigarette. He was anticipating the results of his brief conversation with Spinoza, what the aftershock would mean for Seiji Kuwahara, for the Mafia and for the city of Las Vegas. He had cruised by the Gold Rush earlier, observed the hard-eyed types unloading from their chauffeured limos, mobbing up at the hotel-casino. They were going hard down there, about to put an army on the streets, and from his knowledge of the Mafia mind, Bolan knew that when the killing started they would not be taking time to sift out innocent civilians from the line of fire.

West was ready to collide with East and countless lives were hanging in the balance. All of Vegas could become a battleground — unless the Executioner's device turned out to be successful.

He had called Spinoza in the hope of giving him a target, drawing off the savages from roving street patrol and pitting them against the common enemy where they would do least damage to the innocents around them. Kuwahara's hardsite seemed the perfect place to bring them all together. Any troops who hung back at the Gold Rush, left on garrison duty with Spinoza, would be waiting for him when he finished with the spearhead.

He dropped another dime and dialed the number of a giant Strip hotel, his eyes upon the traffic sliding past his phone booth while the operator put him through to Tommy Anders's room. The comic's voice was cautious as he answered, "Yes."

"How is she?"

Hesitation on the other end.

"Well... ah, dammit, man, she split."

And something cold turned over in the soldier's stomach.

"What happened, Joker?"

"I was only in the next room for a minute, maybe two, just touching base with Wonderland. When I came back there was no sign of her."

"How long?"

"I'd say an hour, maybe less."

The warrior's mind ran through some alternate scenarios, but none of them provided him the slightest reassurance. Finally, reluctantly, he put the woman out of mind and went ahead with business.

"Let me have another hour, Joker, then put through a call to Metro Homicide. The man you want is Captain Reese."

"Okay. I've got it."

"Tell him that Spinoza has a crew at Seiji Kuwahara's, and they're bringing down the house. He'll know the address."

"Kuwahara's, right. Hey, Sarge..."

"Forget it."

"Can't. I'm sorry that I let her get away."

"She wasn't ours to hold," the warrior told him. And again, "Forget about it."

But the soldier would have trouble following his own advice that night. Lucy Bernstein was in danger, right, and there was nothing either he or Tommy Anders could have done to keep her safe and sound. The choice was hers, and she had made it freely. And he understood why. She had a job to do and she had gone about it on her own. She was a big girl. He only hoped she had the sense to find herself a shelter from the rising storm that was about to sweep the city. There was no way he could stop the wheels that had been set in motion here tonight.

The Universe was in the driver's seat and all of them were booked through to the end of the line, wherever, whatever that end turned out to be. For some, perhaps for all of them, the vehicle would prove to be a hearse-but none of them could disembark before they reached the final destination preordained by fate.

The Executioner stubbed out his smoke and left the phone booth, moving through the darkness toward his waiting rental car. He had no wish to put off the inevitable; on the contrary, he welcomed the future whatever it might bring.

For he had done his duty, and he would continue doing it while life and strength remained. Tonight, tomorrow — for as long as he was given, he would fight the good fight, carry on and spread his cleansing fire among the dark encampments of the universal enemy.

The Executioner was moving toward a rendezvous with destiny in the desert, with a stopover in hell along the way.

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.