Don Pendleton - War Against the Mafia

Bolan then slung the rifle at his shoulder and slid down the backside of the knoll, deciding that he had rattled enough teeth for the moment. He had to climb a tree to overcome the fence, dropping onto the roof of the car. He carefully stowed the Marlin, climbed behind the wheel and swung the car in a U-turn across the road, then cruised slowly past the scene of excitement he had just vacated. He caught a glimpse of the policeman, gun in hand and a baffled look on his face, staring at the remains of the wrecked limousine. The car's occupants were nowhere in sight. Curious sightseers were beginning to descend upon the scene, and already several cars were pulled over along the shoulder of the road. Bolan gunned on past the entrance to the estate, a satisfied smile on his face, and set course for the home of Leo Turrin, some eight miles distant in another suburban area.

He covered the distance in something under twenty minutes, arriving at Turrin's front door at precisely two o'clock. A pretty, dark-haired woman of about thirty answered his ring. She responded with a warm smile when Bolan introduced himself, and invited him in. He declined, preferring to deliver his message while standing in the doorway.

"My name is familiar to you, then?" he asked her.

"Oh yes," she assured him. "Leo has spoken very highly of you, Mr. Bolan. Are you sure you wouldn't like to come in? I don't know when-"

"No, I really didn't expect to find Leo here," Bolan said quickly. "As a matter of fact, I just left him a little while ago. I neglected to tell him something important -and I was in the area-I thought I could leave the message with you."

"Do I need a pad and pencil?" she inquired, smiling brightly.

"No, it's a simple message," Bolan replied soberly. "Tell him that the iron man broke the contract, and that I would have returned it to him at the fire this afternoon, but that I figured he could wait another day or two."

"I- I guess I have that," she said, gazing at Bolan curiously.

"Fine. And please remind him that I could have just as easily returned it to his wife and children." Bolan smiled. "That part is important also. Please don't forget it."

The pretty brunette's face had clouded. "Mr. Bolan, I -I don't..."

"It's a sort of a code," he said. "Leo will understand the meaning."

"I see," she replied. Bolan had turned and was heading down the steps. She followed. "Uh-Mr. Bolan-if you will forgive my forwardness-just what is your relationship with my husband?"

He turned to her with a pleasant smile. "Hasn't he told you? Don't you know what your husband's business is, Mrs. Turrin?"

"Well, yes, of course." A vague cloud of doubt seemed to momentarily eclipse the light in her eyes. Bolan guessed the eclipse had been there many times before. "But he has so many interests. I was-just-wondering..."

"Where I fit in?" Bolan finished the question for her.

She nodded, her face a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment.

Bolan hated to hit her with it. She seemed a very nice person. But there were overriding considerations. "I'm one of his guns."

"What?"

Bolan casually opened his jacket and let her see the.32 snuggling into his armpit. "Didn't you know that your husband is a Mafiosi?" he asked calmly.

"A what?" She practically screamed it, her face twisted into a stiff mask of shock and horror.

"I'm sure there's enough Latin in your veins to figure that out, Mrs. Turrin," Bolan said cordially. He moved on down the steps and into his car without looking back. She was still standing there in the doorway when he drove away, body rigid, hands raised to her face. Bolan felt like the biggest bastard in the world. It wasn't much fun rattling those kind of teeth. He sighed and headed the black sedan toward Walter Seymour's estate. Well, a rattle was a rattle. It was that sort of a war. Tomorrow that pretty woman would be a widow. And tonight she would have a very frightened husband on her hands. There was no morality in a holy war. It was simply a matter of ultimate good versus ultimate evil. It did not really matter that good becomes evil in the heat of the battle. Combat reduces everything to evil-life itself becomes an evil thing in the heat of the battle. How many times in bygone years had he threshed through these same old stale ideas? Why torture himself with mystical concepts of good and evil? The Mafia was evil. Any opposition to the Mafia is therefore good. The lines of battle were clearly drawn. The only morality in battle was to fight the good fight, to stand strong against the assault and to counterattack unfalteringly when the time was come. This was a soldier's morality. Mack Bolan was a soldier's soldier. He glanced at his watch. If the traffic did not get too bad, he could make Seymour's place by three o'clock. This rattle would prove interesting indeed. Yes. Perhaps he would make it a death rattle. And perhaps the vibrations would make themselves felt throughout the inner circle, the high council, the family fathers. Perhaps he would rattle their house down.

He stopped the car on a narrow dirt road to the rear of the Seymour estate, removed his jacket, and pulled on green coveralls. He unholstered the.32 and shoved it into the waistband of his trousers, then belted on a leather tool kit similar to the type worn by telephone and power company linemen. One of the compartments carried a broad-bladed hunting knife; there were also pliers, screwdrivers, cutting tools, and various other implements. A small mousset bag on a shoulder sling completed the outfit. Bolan left the Marlin in the car, walked through a wooded lot, and easily breached the redwood fence to the Seymour place through the simple expedient of wrenching loose several of the boards. Obviously Seymour placed more reliance on live security than on Maginot lines, and Bolan suspected that much of that live security had been drained off to the Pinechester crisis.

The place, indeed, appeared to be deserted. Walking boldly in the open, he made it to the swimming pool unchallenged, gazed about with almost fond memories, then produced a packet from the mousset bag, ripped it open, and tossed it into the pool. The water immediately began to take on a brilliant red coloration under the influence of the powerful marker-dye. He then kicked over two of the cabanas and shoved them into the pool. He watched them for a moment, wondering if they were going to float or sink, and had about decided on "float" when a man in white slacks and a red jacket jogged around the corner of hedgerow and onto the poolsite, his eyes flickering rapidly back and forth between Bolan and the pool.

"What th' hell?" the man growled. His hand went inside the jacket and returned with a pistol in tow.

Bolan ignored the pistol. "I dunno," he said calmly. "I think something's happened to your pool." His gaze was pure innocence; he turned his back on the security man to peer into the water. "Come and see for yourself," he suggested.

The man stepped up beside him, staring stupidly into the pool, the gun gripped tightly in front of him and pointed into the water. "I don't..." he started to say, the words eclipsing into a bloody bubble. The gun slipped into the pool and he raised surprised hands to a suddenly and unaccountably slit throat, then tumbled forward into the pool only a second or two behind the gun, the rush of blood hardly visible in the already stained waters. Bolan dropped to one knee and swished the blade of the hunting knife in the pool, then dried it, sighed, and sheathed it. The body had disappeared beneath the dye; Bolan rose and walked toward the house, his eyes raised and seeking power and phone cables. Locating them, he ambled casually to a rear corner of the house, pulled the insulated cutters from their holster, and deprived the Seymour home of telephone service, then moved a few feet further on and sliced through the main power cable.