Don Pendleton - Day of Mourning

No one tried to stop the tall man with the icy eyes as he disappeared into the night.

Bolan drove past a one-story brownstone in a lower middle-class, racially mixed residential neighborhood. Dim light suggested itself from behind heavily draped windows.

It was the address given him by the black thug whose neck he had broken.

A man came out of the house. He strode briskly to the sidewalk and climbed into a parked car.

Two more men moved up the path that led to the front door of the house. They entered without knocking.

Bolan left his parked rental auto some distance down the block. He concealed the AutoMag under the driver's seat again. He preferred that whatever happened next not escalate into a firefight like the one back at the Interstate office.

The brownstone was the only house on the block showing any signs of life at this hour.

He walked up the front sidewalk, opened the door and stepped inside without knocking.

He was in a whorehouse.

He entered an old-fashioned parlor whose walls were lined with mirrors and couches, the couches occupied by whores of all shapes, colors and descriptions in various forms of intimate attire from lace to leather. The subtle strains of Muzak emanated from somewhere. There was a portable bar, and several men were in the first stages of appraising the merchandise.

Everyone casually looked around at Bolan's entrance.

Then not so casually as he strode through the room toward a hallway that led off the parlor to the private rooms.

"This is a raid," Bolan barked gruffly, throwing a thumb over his shoulder at the way he'd come in. "Everybody out."

There was a mad scramble as half-dressed ladies of the night and flustered Johns poured out, looking for any available avenue of flight.

Bolan stalked into the hallway. He confronted two heavyset white men who appeared to be in charge, drawn by the commotion in the parlor.

Bouncers.

Digging for pistols.

With the edge of his flattened palm, Bolan hammered one guy at the base of the neck. The man slipped into unconsciousness.

The second man pulled out his gun.

Bolan executed a flying judo kick.

The pistol flew from the man's grip. He started to turn.

Bolan stepped after the guy, grabbing the bouncer by the collar. The Stony warrior flung him back into the wall with such force that the man's knees buckled and he collapsed.

Bolan knelt and grabbed the chucker's longish hair.

"Grover Jones. Where is he?"

The guy's eyes were glazed orbs. He pointed toward the back of the house.

"Number twelve."

"Thanks."

Bolan popped the back of the guy's head against the wall hard enough to knock him out.

He unholstered the Beretta and followed the instructions to the only door that was latched shut, around a bend in the hallway. All of the other doorways to the crib rooms yawned open from the haste in which the house had been vacated after the raid warning raised by Bolan.

Bolan stood back and to the side from the closed door. He raised a foot and propelled two hundred-odd pounds of kick force, slamming the door inward off its frame.

The Executioner entered the dark room in a forward roll at the same instant that gunfire spit at him from a corner of the room.

Bolan came to his feet, tracking up with the Beretta, when the gunman made the mistake of trying for a better position. He moved across an unshaded window with enough streetlight outside to silhouette the ambusher.

Bolan tripped the guy, then slashed down with a well-aimed chop at the falling figure. There was a grunt of pain. A gun clattered to the floor.

Bolan took a second to step back and flick on the light switch. A bulb blazed overhead, revealing Grover Jones half sitting on the floor where Bolan dropped him.

Damu Abdul Ali glared up at the man with the Beretta. His right hand sported a heavy bandage where Bolan had shot off some of his fingers a few hours before.

"Who the — "

Bolan stood over him.

"That's what I want to know, Grover."

"The name's Damu Abdul, you mother."

The guy was trying to protect his bandaged hand by slipping it under his right thigh. Bolan grabbed Ali's forearm and stepped on the bandage, grinding it hard against the floor.

Jones let out an unearthly scream and thrashed onto his back.

"Your name is mud," said Bolan, aiming the Beretta at the man's black forehead. "That job tonight. You had Sam and Jimmy Lee follow those Company men until I showed up, then they hit me. Who told you where to sic them onto the CIA? That's Company business."

"I — I don't know," squealed Grover Jones. "Th-they'll kill me if I tell you!"

Bolan stepped down harder on the bandaged hand. Jones squealed louder, tears running down his face. Blood soaked the bandage.

"Okay, okay, please don't! The guy you want is Miller. Al Miller. He's got a place in Potomac!"

"More."

"That's all I know, I swear."

Bolan lifted his foot threateningly

"He... he's got some kinda troops out there... the guy's a merc... I knew him in the service... he fed me the shit on you and set it up."

Bolan stepped back, releasing the bloody hand.

Jones stared up at the snout of the Beretta that did not waver its bead between his eyes. The pain was suddenly forgotten.

"Wh-what now?" he asked.

"The payback," said the Executioner.

He blew Grover Jones's brains out all over the room.

The score is evening up, Andrzej.

Al Miller.

He stalked out of the house.

Back into the night.

Closing in.

Bolan cruised west on MacArthur Boulevard, then left the business artery to head for the grassy, hilly outer reaches of Maryland. He was looking for the county road listed under Al Miller's name in the Potomac telephone directory.

A stop at a twenty-four-hour convenience store gave him the directions he needed to find the Miller place.

The drive to locate the place consumed a half hour; thirty minutes Bolan knew he could not afford to waste.

It was not groundless paranoia that made Bolan think the world of Colonel John Phoenix was suddenly closing in on him, about to explode, taking everything with it.

Bolan realized that in the past twelve hours, his and John Phoenix's life had flashed past his eyes, not in some inner metaphysical sense but in actual flesh-and-blood reality.

Especially blood. During his search to find someone named Miller, the next link in tonight's blood-drenched chain, the Executioner had time to consider the strange, violent odyssey of this day and night.

In the beginning, it was like any of the other missions in this government-sanctioned new war against world terrorism: Mack Bolan, The Executioner, racing toward another confrontation with dark forces.

The Atlantic.

Terrorists.

The Dragon.

But this was only the beginning.

The stepping stone from then to now.

An odyssey to stun anyone's senses.

From an Oval Office briefing with the president to the cathouse depths of sewer city.

And between those two points?

The Mafia.

An old enemy, growing stronger again, probably overdue for attention from John Phoenix. If there would be a John Phoenix in the future.

Tonight, a lapse into automatic behavioral patterns from that past war against the Mafia: a Black Ace appeared from nowhere and right now the commissione in New York would be madder than hell, shaking up everyone on the scene for an explanation of why a headcock named Pepsi Giancola got capped along with some street soldiers when it was Pepsi who was supposed to be snuffing out Armenian jerks.

It was almost like the old days when Bolan was alive. Yeah, exactly like an Executioner hit. But of course, Bolan is dead.