Don Pendleton - Poison Justice

Cabriano was growing weary of the insults. No matter what, he knew tough when he saw it. He could burn the nads off Berosa, but the man wasn’t going to break. Besides, the old soldier knew he was dead already.

He saw Marino moving toward Berosa, waved him off. “I don’t suppose you’re gonna tell me where the disk is?”

Berosa laughed. “Why don’t you ask Jimmy?”

“That’s a good idea, Tony. See, what you don’t know is before the sun comes up Jimmy’s taking whatever his big dreams to hell with him. I’ve got people on the inside, Tony,” he said, and saw the stare come back, cold but believing. “Yeah, there’s still a few Feds walking around willing to take my money. I know exactly where Jimmy is. Seeing as how he wants to live out his golden years so bad, I’m thinking if I get my hands on him, put a little fire to his balls he’ll take me by the hand and walk me straight to the disk. What you did, Tony, you just told me you two are the only ones in my house I had to worry about.”

“You’re a disgrace to your father’s memory.”

Cabriano snapped his fingers at Marino to give him his .45. The old soldier was still cursing him when he took the big stainless-steel piece. Then Cabriano silenced the loose tongue with the first of three rounds through the face.

All the years the man in black had been in the killing business and the evil of the savage opposition never failed to amaze, sicken and anger.

Where it was all headed, whatever the fate of humankind, he couldn’t say, nor he thought, was it his place to venture a guess. He was a soldier, from beginning to whatever his own end of the line. As such, he believed common sense, basic decency and having eyes to see and ears to hear, could read into the telltale signs, sift through all the deceit and schemes of the age, and figure out where and how bad it could all get. No matter what the spin or political correctness of the time, no matter how much money was tossed around to turn eyes blind, two and two still equaled four in his game. Yes, there were subtle forms of evil spawning across the land, luring the impressionable or the weak and naive who floundered on the fence toward the abyss. But it was the leviathans of terrorism, international crime, mass murder and other forms of sabotage against the national security of the United States and the free world that was part and parcel of his War Everlasting.

Being only flesh and blood, there were days, however, he woke up and wondered how it had all come to this, where those in charge of running societies, those with power and money and the chance to make a real difference would have the world at large believe right was wrong, wrong was right, up was down and so forth. But they said the Devil was a liar, and his greatest lie was making man believe he didn’t exist.

In the realm he walked it was clear a powerful force of darkness never slept. To him the laws of good and evil were as immutable and ironclad as Mother Nature. Up the stakes from murder of innocents by automatic weapons to weapons of mass destruction, morph a drug dealer or local hood into a dictator savaging his country in genocide, starvation and torture, and only the face of evil and the numbers of victims and depth of atrocity changed. Again, it wasn’t his duty or destiny to be a preacher, politician, or Sunday-morning talking head. But there was clear and convincing evidence enough, from Baghdad to Bogotá to Beijing, that certain and many inhuman factors were hard at work on the planet to push the fate of humankind toward a point of no return.

For the man named Mack Bolan, also known as the Executioner, only a few good men and women rising up to tackle the extremes in action of the Seven Deadly Sins could somehow, someway, save the future, steer it all back on course before it was too late. Without question he counted himself among their ranks.

Big Tony’s Used Foreign Imports was Bolan’s launch pad for the new campaign. It was planted in a decent section of Brooklyn, a sprawling lot carved out between 6th and 7th Avenue, Prospect Park a short walk southeast. But the Cabriano Family hadn’t seized their fortune on turning overpriced European wheels. For a moment, as the Executioner crouched behind the garbage bin at the end of the alley, the sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R out and waiting targets inside the garage, he felt a sense of déjà vu. A hundred lifetimes ago and too many ghosts of the good, bad and innocent to count, the soldier had taken on the Mafia. Back then, he’d been a one-man army, waging war against an invisible empire, at first striking down la Cosa Nostra out of a blood debt owed to his family.

Gradually, as the enemy body count grew, he came to see the true scourge of evil that was the Mob. These men who spoke of honor and respect and loyalty, even attended church—baptisms and marriages before the priest—corrupted everyone they touched, consumed every life that stood in their way to grabbing more profit, more power on the blood and terror of others. Back then it was gambling, prostitution, drugs, murder for hire, bribery, the usual list of sins. Over the years, between his own war and the savaging of the Mob by the Justice Department, the Mafia had nearly been decapitated.

Nearly.

Like when throwing the light on cockroaches, they skittered underground in recent years, erecting legitimate businesses to clean dirty and blood money, sons of Dons and capos earning law and business degrees. Armed with education, and with an eye toward the future, the inheritors reached out to incorporate other homegrown gangs of thugs into their ranks, being equal opportunity employers in the new politically correct age. They dealt in wholesale shipments of narcotics from Latin America drug cartels, joined hands with other criminal organizations as far away as Moscow, reaping a big fat buck the common denominator, one for all. At present, with the insatiable hunger for weapons by terrorists that could wipe out tens of thousands, the game had grown even more deadly serious.

That, Bolan knew, was pretty much the gist of Peter Cabriano’s rise to power and present status on the bad-guy list. With his father having wasted away behind bars, a younger brother who was a criminal defense attorney, but died—irony or justice?—from a cocaine overdose, Cabriano was king of New York. And he was reaching out to some of America’s worst enemies.

Bolan had reconned the lot and surrounding block, but searched the premises again. Three gunshots, muffled slightly by the brick wall, had rung out moments ago. Assuming Big Tony Berosa had gone to judgment, Bolan watched the side door open, disgorging the Don of the day. He could have taken both Cabriano and his wheelman right then, but the Executioner had plans for the Don’s future.

Six to eight stops were mentally penciled in on the soldier’s hit list. Depending on how each situation shaped up, who gave him answers to questions that had drawn him into this mission, and provided he was blessed by good fortune—meaning he lived through the first couple of rounds—Bolan intended to net and skin some of the biggest man-eaters in a terror triangle that was, in his mind, both long in coming, and rife with apocalyptic overtones.

Feeling the weight of the mammoth .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding on his hip, the weapon shielded from the naked eye by his long, loose-fitting black nylon windbreaker, Bolan watched the wheelman hold the door for his boss. Seconds later, the engine gunned, and the Towncar was rolling off into the night.

No problem. Bolan had Cabriano covered. Likewise, the Don’s home, pier, every business clear to his Grand Palace hotel-casino in Atlantic City was under the watchful eyes of official shadows, all of whom answered to the soldier.

Satisfied he was alone with two wise guys about to be burdened with disposal chores, Bolan checked his six. Clear down the alley, but he was mindful of roving blue-and-whites given the coming play. Inside his jacket pocket a thin wallet with credentials declared him as Special Agent Matthew Cooper of the United States Department of Justice. It would pass the smell test, but cops still didn’t like any G-man rolling into their town, shooting up bad guys and blowing up their places of business.