Don Pendleton: Save the Children

"He... he left several... minutes ago. W-what's going on?"

Bolan stifled a curse.

He released the frightened woman with a nudge toward the demolished glass entrance.

"All hell has come to town," he told her. "Get away fast and don't come back."

"Th-thanks, mister," she said, but did not move. She seemed incapable of pulling her gaze, now more curious than frightened, from the imposing figure of the big intruder who was already turning from her.

Bolan unleathered Big Thunder. He stepped over to a fire alarm encased in a glass box on the wall behind the reception desk. He smashed the glass with one swift blow from the .44's butt.

An alarm suddenly began ringing, piercing through the billowing smoke.

The door behind the desk burst open and two guys rushed into the lobby. They had hood written all over them and the .45 automatics they toted confirmed their pedigree.

The Executioner tracked Big Thunder around on them in a two-handed target acquisition stance before either hardman could bring his own weapon around.

The AutoMag roared twice and a couple of deafening thunderclaps filled the lobby above the wail of the persistent alarm.

The two hoods were kicked backward off their feet and through the doorway amid a haloing spray of their own blood.

Bolan turned around to see the young receptionist transfixed in the haze from the smoke bomb.

"Beat it," he snarled harshly at the woman.

She beat it.

Bolan turned and stalked on through the doorway and down the hallway he found there.

He was hunting David Parelli, the man he had come to Chicago to terminate.

Bolan had been known as the Executioner even before he first set out to declare his "crazy" one-man war of attrition against organized crime in America.

"Crazy" to some, yes. But not to a man who had returned home from the Vietnam war on an emergency leave to bury his family, victims of Mafia violence.

Bolan quickly discovered that those responsible for the deaths of his loved ones were in no danger of being dealt with by law enforcement agencies. The judicial tangle, he found, freely allowed the murderers of Bolan's family to laugh at him and his aching grief.

To soldier Bolan, the only option open to him had been to take justice into his own hands.

Bolan's combat skills, taught him by Uncle Sam and honed to a fine edge in the Asian hellgrounds, were brought home with a vengeance when he first took on the local Mafia family directly responsible for the deaths of his people.

As he became increasingly aware of the magnitude of his enemy...

one congressman having labeled the Mafia as America's invisible government...

this warrior continued to launch one successful campaign after another at the criminal organization that grew like a cancer on a great nation's guts.

They were bloody campaigns that had tested Bolan's spirit and sense of duty all the way.

During the course of these unsanctioned activities, the Executioner had murdered...

so the media termed it...

close to two thousand men since his return from Vietnam.

"I am not their judge or jury," Bolan had said. "I am their judgment."

The Mafia had an open contract of one million dollars, offered to anyone who could deliver Bolan's head.

The Executioner had brought that evil, widespread organization close to the brink of disaster, but hydra-like, another kill-hold was always in the process of being set up.

Like this one.

Tonight, in Chicago.

Bolan had brought his everlasting war to the Windy City to stop a young boss savage called David Parelli, who thought he had a future pipeline into the White House.

And Parelli could be right.

Vague, ominous rumbles had reached Bolan that it was about to go down in Chicago.

Another power play in this sprawling metropolis that had been an organized crime stronghold since the days of Capone and before.

This was not the Executioner's first thrust into this nest of thieves by any means, but the Mob had managed to regroup since the last time and one name, Parelli, had surfaced. That cannibal was clawing and killing his way up through the ranks to try for a grab at the real reins of power.

Bolan was going to make sure it did not happen.

Crazy?

No more so than a gang of two-bit scum in north-side mansions and limos and four-hundred-dollar silk suits who had parlayed their way to control a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry.

The nation's cities were rife with these savages who peddled heroin and degraded women through prostitution. The Mob was involved in countless so-called legitimate operations like infiltration of unions and on and on, all made possible through fear, intimidation and murder that went unpunished.

Bolan had allies in this crazy war of his, too.

Others who were fed up with scum going free because the courts had revolving doors and were full of slick legal experts who laughed at the laws while they twisted and used them.

Bolan counted among his allies some high-level government people; the same government that officially listed the Executioner at the top of every Most Wanted list extant, as well as on the Terminate On Sight lists of the FBI, the CIA, the whole alphabet soup of government law and spy agencies.

The health club appeared empty except for the man with the AutoMag.

Swirling tentacles of smoke followed Bolan down the hallway.

The New Age Center was only the beginning of this hit on Chicago.

Bolan passed a swimming pool behind one glass wall of the hallway and signs pointing to downstairs racquetball courts and a jogging area.

Opposite the pool there were doorways that led to an aerobic exercise room, sauna, whirlpool, steam room and taekwondo room.

He stepped into one doorway that led to a dimly lighted bar room. He hugged the wall inside the doorway and flicked on the light switches he found there, activating harsh fluorescent overheads that flooded a bar and dance floor.

Half-finished drinks sat everywhere on tables and the bar top, but everyone in there had fled.

He killed the lights with the barrel of the AutoMag on his way out.

Three more hoods tumbled into the far end of the corridor from the direction of the lobby. These goons were heavily armed; two carried pump shotguns, the third toted a deadly 9 mm Uzi submachine gun.

They were coughing from the billowing smoke in the lobby and saw the corpses of the two dead just inside the archway.

Then they saw Bolan.

The hoods tried to peel away from each other and bring their weapons to bear on the man with the AutoMag midway down the corridor, but they only got in each other's way and then it was too late.

Orange flame spurted from the AutoMag in Bolan's fist, and heavy projectiles took off the top of one hood's head, the man with the Uzi.

The sudden impact slammed the corpse backward to the floor.

Another goon thwacked against the wall alongside the archway when a bullet blew away his life, dead knees buckling as he slid into a sitting position in the corner.

The third punk forgot about trying to kill the intruder and started to turn and make a run for it.

The Executioner triggered a round that dropped this guy in midflight.

Bolan turned from the litter of corpses and double-timed it toward the far end of the corridor where the receptionist had indicated he would find Parelli's office.

Bolan generally operated with far more to go on about the layout of a hit, but this time was different. This was a rush job. He had arrived in Chicago less than an hour before and had come directly to the health club.

Parelli was that important, yeah.

The Executioner came to the only door in the corridor that did not lead to one of the club areas.

This could only be Parelli's office.