Don Pendleton - Tennessee Smash

Hell, there was no decision to it.

"Give me that Nashville floater," Bolan said numbly. "I'll hit it before dawn."

A tear slipped from Toby's eye and she spun angrily away to hide it.

The hottest comic in the land was not so loathe to display honest emotion. It came with the territory. Those who live largely also suffer largely. It was a highly emotional game. Tears of relief were streaming down his cheeks. He handed Bolan a card with writing on it and he said, "It's such a helpless feeling, you know. They've been missing a week. I've been walking the damn walls."

Toby cried from the background, "Oh damn-it, Bolan, he set up this entire Clemenza hit. He's not so-!"

"I know what Tommy is," Bolan said coldly, cutting that off before it could be said. "He's no clown," she was telling him. Mack Bolan did not need to be told that.

"See you in Legend City," he said quietly, then very quickly got away from there.

Numbers were falling everywhere.

Police sirens were screaming through the night, converging on the riverfront. The entire area was becoming a hellground-especially for a man like Mack Bolan.

At least, now, he knew why the gut had been clutching ever since his arrival in the area. And he knew, now, why he'd had the starkly spooky feeling down at river's edge, just before the pushoff.

The universe had been whispering to him.

And, yeah, Mack Bolan would go to Nashville, depend on it. Even if he had to ride the hounds of hell all the way.

Nashville is one of those small towns which virtually overnight became a major city-but never quite got into the spirit of the thing. In its heart, Nashville is still a small town though it numbers nearly half a million citizens within its borders-borders which expanded suddenly in the early sixties, at the stroke of a pen, to absorb all of surrounding Davidson County.

To most people, Nashville means country 'music-and though that industry alone accounts for some 60 million dollars of the city's annual economy, the music business is not the sum total of what Nashville is about. Nashville is at the heart of a major commercial, educational and cultural complex with more than fifty colleges, universities and vocational schools, some 500 manufacturers. Publishing, not "picking," is the leading industry. It is a major banking and investment center and ranks only behind Hartford, Connecticut, as the city with the most major insurance company offices.

The "Nashville Sound" has, of course, made the town second only to New York as a recording capital of the world-but culture lovers should also know that the city supports a symphony orchestra and a fine arts center. Although those latter hardly draw the crowds that flock to the $25,000,000 complex known as Opryland USA, they do serve notice that Nashville is a city of interesting contrasts with something for almost every taste.

And Mack Bolan had to wonder about the interests it held for the mob. Jack Grimaldi, the Mafia flyboy and secret Bolan ally, had very little to offer in that regard-despite the fact that he had been flying Syndicate bigwigs and couriers into the area for months. He'd been briefing Bolan on the area since their departure from Memphis, and now he told him, "Look straight down. That's Fort Nashborough, facing the river there. See it?"

"I see it," Bolan replied. "Any special significance?"

"Only as a historical shrine," Grimaldi said. "It's the original site of Nashville. Built about 1790, I believe."

"That long ago, eh?" Bolan asked absently.

"Yeah, just a few years after we became a nation. Andy Jackson got here before that. The guy was a horse trader. Can you believe that?”

Who the hell did he trade with before the settlers came?

"That the same guy who became President?"

"Right. His old home is still here. It's a shrine, too. The Hermitage. Wonder why he called it that?"

"Did he name it before or after he went to Washington?" Bolan inquired lightly.

"Beats me," the pilot said, grinning. "He was the first congressman from Tennessee you know."

No, Bolan did not know that.

"First President from here, too. Tennessee has sent three of 'em. He was the first. Imagine. A horse trader."

Bolan chuckled.

Grimaldi said, "Did you know they were pro-union, before the war actually started? Last state to secede, first to come back in."

Yes, Bolan knew all about that particular bit of history. "Ironic, isn't it," he said softly. "This state was one of the major battlegrounds of the war. Over seven hundred battles. Second only to Virginia in battles and skirmishes fought."

"That right?"

"Yeah. General Hood met his great defeat right here at Nashville. That was one of the battles that broke the South's back. It was the only full rout of a major rebel force. Hood lost six of his generals. He wept after the battle and resigned his commission a month later."

Grimaldi shot his passenger a quick look and commented, "You're quite a war historian, aren't you?"

"War is a science," Bolan replied quietly. "You study it if you mean to master it."

"Right, Master," the pilot said. "Airport's straight ahead. Do we go right in?"

"Fly by once and tell me how it looks, Jack. You know-from a master pilot's point of view. Let's make sure it's cool."

"Amen to that," Grimaldi said, and dipped the nose into the final descent.

At that very moment, a telephone rang in a swank townhouse not far from Nashville 's Music Row. The groggy man who snapped on the bed lamp and reached for the instrument was about thirty years old, handsome, and a bit out of sorts at the moment. "Who the hell?" he growled at the caller.

The voice in the receiver was twangy, worried. "You sleeping alone, Ray?"

"Who's sleeping, dammit?"

"It's urgent-okay? I'm at a phone booth just down the street. You want to meet me or…?"

The man swore softly as he turned blurry eyes toward the nude girl who lay asleep at his side. He sighed and said, "In the middle of the damn night? Can't it wait?"

"Maybe it can but it shouldn't, hoss. It really shouldn't."

The man sighed again and said with resignation, "Okay. Come on over. But keep it quiet. I got company." He hung up, scratched his head vigorously with both hands, then turned off the lamp and softly left the room.

He was drinking milk from a quart carton and nervously pacing the floor of the living room when his caller scratched at the front door.

The man who entered was a bit younger and had the lean, hard look of a gunfighter straight from the Old West. His attire was subdued "country gentleman" with the trousers stuffed casually into western boots. "Who're you sleeping with, hoss?" he asked in greeting.

"None of your damn business," said the host, but pleasantly. "What's so urgent?"

The visitor went to a chair and dropped into it with a heavy sigh. "It just came down the vine a few minutes ago. An army of federals swooped down on old Dandy tonight. They got 'im cold, buried in powder. About a ton of it, what I hear. Not even a kilo was saved. I thought you'd want to know, middle of the night or not. But it ain't. It's closer to five o'clock."

The other man was easing slowly onto the couch. He said, very softly, "Good God."

"Does that touch you, hoss?"

"What d'you mean? No! Nobody can connect us!"

"That ain't what I meant. I meant does it touch you. Are you laughin' or cryin' on the inside?"

"Bet your ass I'm not laughing," said the other. "How 'bout you?"

The cowboy laughed lightly and spread his hands. "You know me, hoss. Easy come, easy go. I was born with nothing but a six-string geetar in my hands. I guess I can go out the same way."

"This just plays hell with everything, you know."