Don Pendleton - California Hit

"I'll give you one."

He said, "Okay."

"Don't you start one-wording me again."

"You've got enough for both of us," he told her.

She said, "Weird. This is really weird. I don't believe it. This is the weirdest seduction scene I've ever been in."

He chuckled and asked her, "Who's seducing whom?"

She said, "If you don't know, we're both in trouble."

The two of them left the room clinging to each other and laughing, and Bolan was feeling better than he had for some time.

It wasn't so bad to have to stand alone. That wasn't the worst part. What really got to a guy after awhile was lying alone. Genuine human companionship could be a rare thing in a war zone, especially for a one man army.

For awhile, for a very brief period of detente, the Executioner would find some exquisite human companionship. Perhaps it would have to be enough to last him a lifetime. An hour, a day, perhaps even a week. Yeah, a lifetime.

Captain Matchison was in a steel-chewing mood and Sgt. Bill Phillips was feeling more the rookie than at any time in his career.

They were in the Brushfire mobile command post, and all of the detail leaders had been called in for an ass-chewing.

Bill Phillips was a detail leader.

It had been his job to pin the tail on the cat and he'd ended up with it pinned to himself.

It was bad enough to be black in a white man's world. It was plain miserable to be both black and incompetent. He'd had to tell the Captain the full story. What the hell. It was no time to be cute with your lord god.

Matchison was standing at the side window, glaring at the mess in the DeMarco yard. One balled fist was slowly beating out a controlled rhythm on the glass. The other hand was shoved deep into his pants pocket. The guy never showed much expression in the face. He didn't need to. Forcefields of anger radiated away from him like a satanic halo whenever he was feeling this way. A mad scowl or a cutting word would seem almost like a pat on the back at a time like this.

The other sergeants were semi-circled behind Phillips. He could not see them but he could feel them could sense their embarrassment and frustration. This was an uptight outfit. They had to be. Theirs was an uptight business. They were the elite in the town of the elite, and they had to prove it with every job that came up.

Matchison broke a two minute silence with, "I don't believe it."

Phillips said, "Captain, I..."

"Shut up, Sergeant Phillips," lord god commanded. "Don't remind me of your temporary insanity. I was just counting the stretchers out there. Do you know how many I've counted so far?"

"I guess a few," the Sergeant muttered.

"Try seventeen, and that's just for openers. The meds are still rounding them up and packing them out."

"Yessir, it was a hard hit."

"How many of those bodies do you figure are yours?"

The Sergeant wondered if he could safely light a cigarette. He decided not, and told the Captain, "No more than one or two, I'd say. The PM will tell. I use a .38 Positive. Mack had — the suspect was using two different weapons. One was a foreign job, not too heavy, probably a nine millimeter. Had a silencer on it. The other pistol was — hell I don't know what it was. I'd never seen anything like it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I'd never seen a gun like that before. About a foot long, looked like stainless steel. Hooded barrel with ventilators. I watched him refill the clip. I'd never seen bullets like those, either."

"Hand loads, maybe?"

"Probably, yes, sir. The guy is a gunsmith. Maybe he even made the gun."

"I'll want that in a written report," the Captain snapped.

"Yessir."

Matchison swung away from the window to directly confront his black cop with a hard and level stare. "Bill... I'm going to try to cover you this time."

"Thanks, I appreciate it," Phillips murmured.

"But I want that GI buddy of yours!"

"Yessir, I know that."

"You stay away from him!"

"Sir?"

"I don't want anybody screaming around town that the department is cooperating in a mob wipe-out!"

"Captain, I wasn't in on the hit with him, I just got caught in the crossfire, and Bolan pulled my ass out of there for me. That's all."

Matchison's eyes rolled and he said, "Not a word of that had better get in the press. Understand?"

"Yessir," Phillips replied miserably.

"Caen or one of those guys gets ahold of a story like that and the town will laugh us across the Golden Gate."

"Bolan saved my life," the Sergeant muttered.

"That's exactly what I mean! Now just look at the thing, Bill. Look at it from an outside viewpoint. We're on a full Brushfire alert. We have the town nailed down tight and just waiting for the guy to show. The powerful Brushfire Force, your city's answer to rampant crime in the streets, the elite squad of our police department — all of these great, highly trained, highly paid police officers — against one lonely and desperate man. And so what happens. The guy casually drops in through one of our stakeouts, rubs out at least seventeen of our citizens who are not — not, remember — under indictment for any crimes — and then not only gets away clean but hangs around long enough to rescue one of our officers. Now, Bill... I want that God damned story to die right here in this vehicle."

"It's dead," Phillips assured his Captain.

One of the detail leaders behind him asked, "Is the smoking lamp lit, Captain?"

"Yeah, smoke, why not," Matchison growled. "Get comfortable, all of you. Get very comfortable for about ten minutes, because it's the last comfort you're going to find for quite awhile."

Bill Phillips believed it. He sank wearily onto a canvas chair and lit a cigarette, then sat there for considerably more than ten minutes listening to Captain Matchison's plans for Mack Bolan.

And when he left that command post with the other detail leaders, Phillips knew that it was a whale of a plan. Not even Mack Bolan, the soldier of the century, would find a loophole of comfort in the determined strategy of Jim Matchison.

And the Wang Dang kid from Able Team knew a terrible and penetrating sadness. Somewhere out there in that city the greatest human being he'd ever known was going to be run-to-ground, and impaled upon the horns of quote justice unquote, or else shot down in the streets like some sort of runaway beast.

It was a hell of a way to run a world, but that was the way the world ran... the only way.

Guys like Mack Bolan didn't stand a chance.

But... and this was the most terrible part... what chance did the world itself stand? — without guys like Mack Bolan.

Bill Phillips was a cop, sure.

He was a tough San Francisco Brushfire cop.

But there were times when he wished to God he wasn't.

He was going to kill Mack Bolan. It was his right, his obligation, and he owed it. He owed it to Mack Bolan.

Able Team would do the job better.

From one of Union Square's more expensive hotel suites, another kind of army was being ordered into the field. The suite "at the top of the joint" represented the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition for "Crazy Franco" Laurentis, the torpedo's torpedo and boss of the silk suit brigade.

"Style," Laurentis enjoyed telling anyone who would listen, "is the only thing makes life worthwhile. A man should live in style. He should eat, dress and screw in style, he even ought to die in style. I'd live in this joint if it took every cent I made just to keep me here."

It took quite a bit. The five room penthouse apartment provided one of the most breathtaking views in a city made famous by its views. From the garden terrace, from the glass-walled living room, or from just about any window in that joint, this silk-suited graduate of such institutions as Sing Sing, Leavenworth and Folsom could gaze out over the toughest town in the west and experience the giddy feeling of domain and lordship. One day he would be commanding that town, he would be holding it in his hands just as surely as he now held it in his vision — and he'd do it all from right here, from the top of the joint — because Franco Laurentis was the tops.