‘Willing to Kill’ 
DON PENDLETON

NAME: Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner 
PLACE: Dallas, Texas 
TIME: 1978

CASES: ‘War Against the Mafia’ (1969), ‘Nightmare in New York’ (1971), ‘Hawaiian Hellground’ (1975), ‘Friday’s Feast’ (1979) etc.

DOSSIER: Mack Bolan, the Vietnam veteran known as the Executioner, introduced another new figure into the crime genre: the Aggressor, a one-man army who takes on the enemies of society and destroys them without mercy or a moment’s reflection. He has been called the ‘Everyman of the ‘seventies’, a mixture of professional killer, idealist and avenger who sums up his philosophy in one terse sentence: ‘Live large and stay hard.’ Bolan unwittingly adopted his fearsome new identity after serving with distinction as a sergeant in Vietnam where he carried out almost one hundred killings in the line of duty, which earned him the nickname of ‘the Executioner’ among his fellow soldiery. On his return home to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he found that his family-father, mother and sister-had been killed in his absence by the local Mafia. Not content to let the law take its own course, Mack became a lone crusader, and armed only with a game rifle proceeded to wipe out the Mafiosi in a spectacular explosion of bloodshed. In those moments he discovered his mission in life and now uses many of the techniques that he learned in the army-observation, pursuit, psychological warfare and, especially, killing-to exterminate criminals wherever he finds them. Bolan is, of necessity, a loner, trusting in his own skills as a former combat soldier to survive in the urban jungles where so many of his enemies operate. Although a believer in the sanctity of life, he never shies from wholesale slaughter against those who corrupt and exploit their fellow men. He is an anarchist by nature and undoubtedly most strongly motivated by cases of vengeance. Though the Executioner has yet to be portrayed in the movies, his like has been seen over and again in the roles played by such Hollywood stars as Sylvester Stallone (Rambo) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator).

CREATOR: Donald Pendleton (b. 1927) served in the US Navy during the Second World War, winning a Navy Commendation Medal at Iwo Jima in 1945, and thereafter worked in the engineering industry and as a columnist on Orion magazine. In the late ‘sixties he wrote a large number of westerns and science fiction paperbacks before, as he puts it, ‘striking it lucky’ with the Executioner in 1969, and thereafter being able to devote all his time to the series. Pendleton’s achievement in creating a new sub-genre in the crime field has earned him huge international sales and ultimately allowed him to hand the series over to other writers. ‘Willing to Kill’ is the only short story about Mack Bolan that he wrote and it has been out of print now for almost twenty years.

THE STORY:

At the beginning of his impossible war, Mack Bolan had not envisioned himself as the arch foe of the Mafia world. He had simply reacted to a terribly disheartening situation-in the same way in which any man of like talents and ideals would have done-with no thought that soon he would become the most feared and hated enemy of the crime kingdoms.
He had been a death master in ‘Nam, sure, but he was, after all, just a man-a soldier, not a cop-an individual, not an army. There were limitations to what one man could do. Weren’t there? Perhaps-but the resourceful and daring young soldier’s ‘last mile’ on earth had stretched to encompass the entire Western world as he carried his personal brand of stunning warfare to this new enemy.
And Bolan had not expected to come so far. He was living ‘on the heartbeat’-with no thought beyond the next battle-line-or beyond the next police trap. The men behind the badges were, in Bolan’s understanding, ‘soldiers of the same side’ and he would not engage them in hostilities. But the official police reaction to Mack Bolan’s war was, naturally, unsympathetic. The law was blind so could not distinguish between constructive and destructive violations. In the official book, then, Mack Bolan was the largest criminal of all. And he accepted that. He would, in fact, have it no other way.
Though several quiet offers of official sponsorship had been extended from the highest level of government, the one-man army had declined them all, preferring to wage his own war his own way. Bolan had never turned away a hand of personal friendship from those in the police community, however, and he often worked in quiet collaboration with individual law officers. His best friend in all the world was one Leo Turrin, undercover fed extraordinary and underboss of an eastern US crime family.
Another powerful on-and-off ally was none other than Harold Brognola, the country’s top cop in the official war on organised crime. So Bolan was not entirely without friends. It was just that he had learned early in his war that he was stronger when standing alone-and, indeed, this was how he preferred to operate.
He was not ‘operating’ at all, though, that fated morning in Dallas when he stumbled on to the hit team from Los Angeles. He was simply passing through the area and he’d gone to the regional airport to claim an air-express package containing routine intelligence from Leo Turrin. After picking up the package-a rundown on the mob invasion of Wall Street-he followed one of those subliminal quivers of psyche which led him towards a quick-pass through the passenger terminal. And suddenly he was eye to eye with Jersey Jake Natti, a grizzled survivor of the old Murder Incorporated group.
Natti was on the downslope of life, now, and that fact alone was enough to support his reputation as the wiliest and most effective death contractor in the business. Longevity, in his business, was the stamp of success.
For Bolan it had been instant recognition-a bright spotlight illuminating the mental mugfile. Not so for Natti. He saw only a young Texan wearing Levi’s, T-shirt, dungaree jacket, dusty boots, corduroy range hat-softly drawling an apology for getting in the way. The lack of recognition was understandable. Few living Mafiosi had ever stood eye to eye with Mack Bolan; even those few had carried away from the experience only a confused and faulty impression of what the guy actually looked like. The many composite sketches provided by police artists and mob headhunters alike agreed in but one detail, the eyes-and, indeed, though they captured one essence of the subject, these were without exception the coldly purposeful eyes of the combatman, which seemed to be the one detail which never escaped the living memory of a Bolan encounter. The Bolan gaze was actually composed of many diverse qualities and could flick from cold death to warm compassion in a single leap-or could contain both together at the one moment.
So it was no shame to the reputation of Jersey Jake Natti that he saw only what Mack Bolan permitted him to see. It was, though, perhaps a fatal failure.
Bolan stepped around the death specialist and moved casually on, but he had the guy in his peripheral vision and he kept him there. Natti was not alone. Another guy was at his left elbow and a third cold-eye kept pace two strides to the rear.
They would not be packing hardware, of course-not here, not yet. They had obviously just arrived on an incoming flight and were making their way to the baggage-claim area. None had given Bolan a second glance. He tagged along far to the rear, keeping plenty of bodies between, curiosity more than anything directing his movements.
The head party pulled up at a baggage carousel and stood in casual non-communication, awaiting the baggage offload from their flight. Quite a crowd was gathering there.
Bolan moved alongside an elderly man at the edge of the crowd and asked him, ‘Is this the Denver flight?’
The man chuckled as he replied, ‘I hope not. They told me the LA baggage would be here.’
Bolan thanked the man for that interesting information and moved on, taking position in the background from where a soft surveillance could be maintained.
There had been no Mafia rumbles out of Texas since Bolan’s own firestorm through that state some months earlier. An embarrassed police establishment had quickly closed ranks in the wake of that sweep, determined to keep the lid on any reawakening mob activities in the area. So far as the intelligence could ascertain, there had been none.
So, yes, Jersey Jake’s presence in Dallas could be a matter of considerable interest to Mack Bolan.
The two guys accompanying Natti were youngbloods. The faces had no place in Bolan’s mental file. But those eyes had seen death, many times-no mistake about that. The tagman could hardly be more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old; a lanky kid with a nervous thumb. The guy at Natti’s elbow could be anywhere less than thirty. He was short, stocky, hard-the lips set in a perpetual smile of which the eyes never became aware.
It was a death team, for sure. Guys like these did not travel in sets without very good reason.
Natti had a contract in the pocket, for sure.
Bolan moved closer and mixed with the crowd at the carousel as the baggage flow began. The first bag on the wheel was Natti’s. No coincidence there, either. It was a large, square case with rigid sides-more of a box than a bag-and the baggage check was not the standard type; evidently it had received very special handling, to the enrichment of some lucky handler. Uh huh. Weapons.
The hit team claimed one other bag and went on towards the car-rental desks. The other guys awaited them there, familiar yellow rental envelopes in hand. Obviously those two had gone ahead to handle the transportation requirements while Natti claimed the baggage. But why two cars?
For that matter, why five hitmen? Who in Texas rated that kind of firepower? But that was not the end of wonderment. Another five cold-eyes loitered just outside the exit to the rental parking lot.
Hell, it was a war party.
Something large was going down.
Bolan peeled off and went quickly to his own vehicle. He intended to be in tracking position when those headhunters got their show on the road.
The Executioner had invited himself to the war.

They had circled the northern rim of Dallas on the bypass and were now running east along Interstate 30. Bolan was tracking in the Warwagon, a twenty-six-foot GMC motorhome which served him admirably as base camp, scout ship, battle-cruiser, home. Dubbed ‘the terran module’ by the aerospace geniuses in New Orleans who installed the special systems, the big vehicle had provided fantastic dimensions to Bolan’s one-man war against the Mafia. An onboard computer served as the heart of the space-age technology group which included electronic intelligence-gathering and processing capabilities, communications and navigation systems, unerring and massive firepower. But the big ship had her drawbacks, as well, in certain situations. For one, she stood out like a sore thumb. And though the big Toronado power plant moved her along at acceptable speeds in an open run, she was not as quick and nimble as Bolan would have preferred in heavy-traffic situations. Twice he had taken her back to the experts for modifications to partially offset the drawbacks. The tracking systems could not ‘read’ a target vehicle which could not be seen by the unaided eye, locking the navigation system on to the target for a sure track through the most disheartening traffic conditions. Also, a chameleon-like effect had been engineered into the outer skin of the vehicle, using an electronic system to, colour-programme ‘scale panels’ and provide an almost infinite variety of colour schemes via the onboard computer.
That latter touch had been intended primarily to serve a confusion effect; however, it also provided excellent camouflage designs for off-road concealment, when needed.
Bolan was presently concerned about on-road concealment. He was relying upon the distant-track capability to achieve that, dropping back to a healthy separation when it became evident that the killer force was definitely heading away from Dallas. Traffic on the interstate was moderately heavy and the quarry was travelling at a sedate sixty mph, pacing the flow.
As the final suburban exit flashed past, Bolan activated the mobile phone and worked the contact combination to his inside friend back east, Leo Turrin.
‘I’m on the floater so watch it,’ he told the double-lifer. ‘I got your package-thanks.’
‘Good,’ was the relaxed response. ‘How’re things in God’s country?’
‘Ungodly, I guess,’ Bolan replied casually. ‘I just ran into a guy who’s a dead ringer for Jersey Jake.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Uh huh. Travelling heavy. With a big team. What do you hear from Jake?’
‘I hear nothing,’ Turrin said, that good voice still light and easy. ‘Should I start listening?’
‘Uh huh. Can you get back to me soon?’
‘Right. Soon as possible. A whole team, eh?’
‘In spades, yeah. And it looks like they came to play.’
‘OK. I’ll try to find a scorecard. Keep the floater open.’
Bolan said, ‘Always,’ and killed the loop.
He settled into the track and tried to allow the questions to rest awhile. They would not do so. Not that there was a lack of confidence in Leo Turrin’s abilities. The little undercover fed had an incredible talent for pulling together bits and pieces of a distant picture. But there was no comfort in waiting while those same bits and pieces were hurtling together at a closure rate of a mile a minute-especially when each mile could be the final one. Well and good enough, sure, if this war party was moving against another Mafia faction; Bolan felt no need to interfere when the enemy engaged itself. They were welcome to kill off one another to their little hearts’ content, and certainly there was no desire to take on a bunch like this if there was no need to do so. Bolan was hoping there would be no such need. He did not like extemporaneous engagements. There was too much to be lost and usually not enough gained. This methodical warrior spent his combat energies with the best strategic efficiency possible, not in wild-assed games.
At the moment, he was not all that prepared for an encounter with a superior force. He was low on personal energy and his armaments greatly depleted. He had, indeed, come to Texas to restock the armoury and to pick up a bit of R&R on the coast. There was but one firebird left for the warwagon’s big punch. As for personal munitions-there were hardly enough in the boodle to supply a brief firefight.
But that killer force ahead continued streaking eastwards, the hounds of hell running towards God-knew-whose blood. What were ten guns looking for in east Texas? What the hell was here! What was at stake?
A quick little chill tickled the Bolan spine, emanating from some subliminal tremor of the combat instinct.
And Mack Bolan knew, without knowing why, that he would be there... at the kill.

They were lunching at a truck stop outside Texarkana, on the Texas-Arkansas border. It had been a three-and-one-half-hour run, without let-up, and Bolan had begun to worry about his fuel supply. The headhunters were already seated in the restaurant when he pulled into the service area. He gassed up, then changed clothes quickly and went inside. The group occupied three separate tables. They all seemed a bit uptight, restrained-perhaps intent only upon blending in, non-notable. Bolan gave them only a quick and apparently disinterested glance as he moved on through the lobby and into the truckers’ lounge-but he had their measure. They were all packing hardware, now. And they were as notable as the death look they wore.
He went to a phone booth and began the complicated calling code which would route him into Leo Turrin’s ‘clean phone’. The little guy had dropped a quickie on the floater an hour earlier: ‘Call me clean as quick as possible.’
That usually meant nothing too hot to relate via open circuits.
But that good voice was droll and relaxed as it swelled into the clean connection. ‘Natti is the only Jersey Jake I know of, Sarge.’
That’s the one,’ Bolan assured him.
‘OK. He operates out of an office in Santa Monica. Calls himself a business consultant. But all the wiseguys know what his business is.’
‘What’s he doing in Texas with a war party, Leo?’
‘I got no wires on that. Couldn’t get any. I did call his office in Santa Monica. Got an answering service. Said he would be unavailable for the next twenty-four hours. So.’
‘Yeah,’ Bolan said. ‘So.’
‘Where are you now?’
Texarkana. For lunch.’
That’s just about in Arkansas, isn’t it?’
‘Half and half, yeah. What’s the hot, Leo?’
The double-lifer laughed nervously. ‘Maybe it’s nothing. I just had the hunch. And now you say Texarkana. I, uh, picked up something from the other side of the street.’
Which explained the ‘hot’. Turrin never felt comfortable divulging, even to Mack Bolan, important secrets from the official side of his life.
Bolan said, ‘Suit yourself, buddy. But I’m getting spinal shivers, my elf. So...’
‘Yeah. Me, too. Well. It’s a long shot, but...’
‘Your shivers are good enough for me, Leo. Let’s play it.’
‘OK. There’s a place down in the western region of Arkansas. Long ways from Dallas-long ways from Texarkana, for that matter, but it’s in the ballpark, at least. And you don’t want to discount the fancy footwork getting there.’
‘What sort of place?’
‘They got an FBI safe house there.’
A new chill chased itself along the military spine. ‘Who’s in it?’
‘I couldn’t get that. I only know that it’s suddenly very hot. I tried to get Brognola a while ago, after I talked to you. He’s totally out of reach. En route to Arkansas, I get it. I left a page for him at the Little Rock airport. I figure he’ll be taking a chopper from there. Some VIP they’ve got stashed in this safe house is ready to start talking about a whole new subject. The gossip off of Capitol Hill has it connected somehow with three presidential administrations, the CIA, the Bay of Pigs, and the death of a president plus the undoing of another. I don’t know, it’s very garbled and all I get is echoes. But it’s very hot. And I’m guessing that Brognola is headed down there to begin the formalities.’
Bolan mused, ‘This, uh, VIP had some high visibility?’
‘Oh, it’s all in the family, for sure. He wouldn’t be VIP otherwise, Sarge. They don’t set up button men in mountain retreats.’
‘Where’s the stash, Leo?’
‘Has something to do with a place called Petit Jean.’
‘Is that in the Hot Springs area?’
‘Not really, no. I know what you’re thinking of-but that’s downstate a bit. This joint is up near the Rockefeller ranch, up in the mountain boonies.’
‘That’s all you know, eh?’
‘Sorry, that’s it.’
‘Maybe it’s enough. How would these guys get on to a safe house, Leo?’
‘Well, you know,. Congress has been looking into this stuff. And certain people have been getting very nervous about the direction the inquiries are taking. Already in the last few weeks we’ve had-what?-three big hits? Yeah, it’s damn hot. And once it gets on to Capitol Hill, man-well, anybody who wants to know can know.’
Yeah. Capitol Hill, and the things that went on there, were simply the price a people paid for their democracy. And sometimes they paid in blood.
The conversation concluded with an exchange of quiet pleasantries. Bolan returned to the dining-room and took a stool at the counter. He had a ham and cheese sandwich while the wolf pack devoured giant Texas steaks, and he managed to get back outside ahead of them.
It was a fortunate circumstance that he did so. The two rented cars from Dallas Fort Worth airport had reached their intended destination. Three fresh vehicles had evidently been waiting at the Texarkana truck stop. When the killer force from Santa Monica invaded the state of Arkansas, it was separated into three fire teams and the headcount had swollen to fifteen.
Something was damned ‘hot’, for sure.
And yeah, Leo, the footwork was becoming dazzling.
The new cars bore Arkansas plates and they were radio-equipped. Fifteen minutes of patient scanning by the war-wagon’s monitors finally caught them in an exchange on the UHF range. The voices meant nothing in particular to Bolan except that they were obviously foreign in this region of the country-and the words themselves fit the occasion.
‘Do we take Highway Seven?’
‘Right. It’s nearly an hour ahead. So relax.’
‘That’s pretty country up there, I hear.’
‘Depends on what we find, I guess. Let’s stay off the radio as much as possible.’
‘Right:
No mistake, it was them. Bolan locked his primary transceiver to the frequency but kept the scanners working, just in case. He punched in an area map for display on the command console and programmed his present position, then gave it over to the navigation computer. This would keep him ‘related’ not only to the chase track but also to surrounding terrain as well. His own position in the display appeared as a tiny pulse moving steadily along Interstate 30. If the force intended to diverge from that track at State Highway 7-then, yeah-it was paydirt, OK.
Highway 7 headed off due north from the interstate route to pass through Hot Springs as it continued on through the mountainous western section of the state. He punched in a finder code for ‘Petit Jean’ and was immediately rewarded with a red flare at the top of the display, indicating that the ‘find’ was beyond the hundred-mile display zone. He broadened the zone until the flare locked on to Petit Jean. It was a state park, according to the map, in the west-central region. The immediate region was served by no major highways. Though not too distant, really, from the capital city of Little Rock, the entire region surrounding Petit Jean seemed rather remote.
Good place for a ‘safe house’, sure. Until lips began to flap. Good place, then, for a hunt and kill exercise. Bad place for cat and mousing, though. Once they hit those hills, the tracking would become more difficult. He would have to hang closer. Even radio waves behaved unreliably in such areas. And the major problem, of course, was that Bolan did not know the exact destination. He was depending on the prey to lead him to the war.
The smart thing-strictly from the military standpoint-would be to take on the hellhounds right out here in open country, long before they could pose any sort of threat in the safe zone. But he could not risk open hostilities in these surroundings. Forget the inevitable police involvement. It was a major interstate route, heavily travelled and getting heavier as the afternoon wore on. A lot of innocent people could get hurt by a firestorm anywhere along here... and that was not the name of Mack Bolan’s game.
So he settled into the patient track, dividing his consciousness for a thorough study of the terrain features in the Petit Jean area. The time was three o’clock when the optics monitor signalled a change of track. The killer force had turned north on to Arkansas 7.
Bolan immediately activated the floater and made mobile contact with Leo Turrin. ‘Have you heard anything from Alice?’ he inquired, referring to Hal Brognola, the head fed from Washington Wonderland.
‘Not a breath,’ was the nervous response. ‘I was hoping for a call from Rock City. Maybe it didn’t go that way.’
‘Keep trying. Use every avenue. The doomsday machine is rolling, for sure. Looks like a scorched earth approach. I’d call the ETA at shortly after nightfall. If you should reach Alice in time, I recommend instant withdrawal and distant relocation under full seal.’
‘I get that, right-but I’m afraid Alice has become untouchable. She could already be there. And she is the only avenue into that joint. The whole game may be up to you, buddy.’
‘Don’t rest it on me. I’m not that sure I can turn it.’
‘Are you hurting?’
‘A little, yeah. I’m undermanned.’
‘Do what you can. And I’ll try to find a panic button if you’re sure it’s all that urgent.’
‘You can bet Alice’s life on that, buddy?’
‘See what you mean. OK. Keep the ears floating. I’ll try to keep you updated.’
‘Do that,’ Bolan said quietly, terminating the contact.
A bit of chatter was commanding his attention to the UHF monitor.
‘We need a piss call.’
‘Cross your legs.’
‘It’s a long time to cross the legs, Jake.’
‘Hang it out a window, then. We don’t stop till the Springs.’

Looking back on that moment-a half-hour or so later-Bolan would regret that he had not analysed the brief exchange a bit closer. Yeah. He would really regret that.
Hot Springs is a charming and picturesque little resort city built around a health spa. The bath-houses, and their therapeutic waters, had attracted visitors from far and wide for more than half a century-and a national park had been established there. But ‘the Springs’ had its share of notoriety as well, for several decades supporting a flourishing traffic in gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, and what-have-you. Winthrop Rockefeller had officially closed the ‘open city’ of Hot Springs during his tenure as governor, though-at least on the surface of things-and the recent history of the area had been relatively clean. At least there were now no booming casinos operating along bath-house row in open contempt of the law. But old affections die hard and Bolan was aware that various older mobsters continued to visit and ‘relax’ in the area. So he was alert to a possibility of further intrigue at this stage of the chase and he had no alibis for himself to account for the dismal turn of affairs there.
He simply lost the track at Hot Springs.
The city is built along the side of a hill, highways feeding into it like spokes into a hub, the streets winding and plunging this way and that. Peak-season traffic through the city was horrendous and confused, the sidewalks jammed with tourists, parking lots overflowing, harried cops everywhere trying to control the situation.
It was impossible to keep the killer force in constant view. Their radios remained silent. He lost them completely at midtown-and when he again caught sight of the vehicles, several blocks farther along, they were turning onto US Highway 70, the main route to Little Rock. By the time he overtook the caravan, at the eastern edge of the city, he knew that he’d been had by another instance of ‘fancy footwork’. Each of the cars contained a driver only-and not even the same drivers they’d had from Texarkana.
So. He’d lost the hellhounds. And he was realist enough to know that there would be no recovery possible-not in the confusion which was Hot Springs at high season.
With them, of course, he’d lost his only handle to the Petit Jean affair.
So... dammit, he’d just have to build another handle.
More was at stake than the health of a defecting Mafia VIP with important secrets to tell. At stake, also, were the lives of the entire ‘safe house’ staff-as well as that of a close and good friend, Hal Brognola.
Jake Natti and his West Coast killer force would show no compunction whatever about taking on a federal security staff. The mere fact that they had been ‘sent’ provided full assurances on that count. Had it been regarded as an easy hit, not so many would have been sent. Bolan had not been kidding Leo Turrin about ‘scorched earth’. Those guys were not planning to leave a mouth behind to tell the tale-and they were going to fantastic lengths to cover their own trail behind them.
Yeah, Leo, it was plenty damned hot.
And Mack Bolan was not willing to bet Hal Brognola’s life on the outcome.
He turned the warwagon about for a return to Highway 7. Somewhere, somehow, he simply had to find another handle.

The sun was grazing the peaks of the higher hills. It had been a damn long day already, and Bolan knew that his day was just beginning. Even allowing the possibility that Natti had beaten him out of Hot Springs and arrived in the target zone first, it did not seem likely that the guy would attack in daylight. If he was already on the scene, somewhere, then he was quite probably scouting the set-up and awaiting the cover of darkness.
But, hell, what a scene.
The warwagon’s sector display was centred on Petit Jean Mountain. Highway 7 formed the western boundary, Highway 9 the eastern. At the bottom, running east-west, was State Highway 10 out of Little Rock. The Arkansas River formed the northern boundary. That was the fire zone. Somewhere in that sector Hal Brognola was preparing a Mafia defector for some rather large and spooky revelations. And, somewhere in there, a killer force intended to neutralise the whole hush-hush affair and save the Mafia nation a lot of harassment at the hands of the US Department of Justice. And Bolan could not even find the hot spot.
It was damned rugged country. Isolated, right. Hills and valleys, winding country roads, soaring bluffs, large cattle spreads, here and there a farmhouse or a crossroads village-damn little else.
There was something else, though-and Bolan was staring at the marker through the windshield. Winrock Farms. Santa Gertruda cattle, experimental livestock pastures. Winrock: Winthrop Rockefeller. Leo had said ‘up near the Rockefeller ranch’.
Tickling the Bolan memory was something else concerning Win Rockefeller and his ambitions for a greater Arkansas, his adopted state. Long before his death-for years, even, before he became governor-the famed millionaire had sought to attract industry to the state... had flown in industrialists and investors, entertaining them at his... where?... Winrock Farms? The Rockefeller ranch? The place up near Petit Jean?
What a perfect set-up for a safe house!
It had to have an airstrip and the whole nine yards. Which may explain why Brognola had not responded to an airport page at Little Rock. He had not even gone through Little Rock. He could have flown directly to the safe house.
Bolan activated his optic and audio broad-surveillance systems and sent the warwagon cruising along the access road to Winrock. A fork at the top of the hill provided alternate routes, one marked Private Drive and the other Convention Centre. He opted for the private drive and wound on around toward the residence compound. In the distance could be seen the lush Arkansas River valley and the patchwork effect of pasturelands proliferating in varied designs. Clinging to the edge of an outcropping bluff in the foreground of that vista was an impressive structure of stone and glass-a millionaire’s mansion in the modern vein, right-its curving walls designed to utilise fully the contours of the land upon which it perched and providing a spectacular overlook.
Barring passage to there, though, from about a quarter-mile out, stood a steel gate and a uniformed guard.
The guard pleasantly advised the Executioner, ‘You missed it a couple miles back, sir.’
‘Missed what?’ Bolan asked, just as pleasantly.
‘The state park. You’re on private property. There’s no camping here.’
‘I’m not camping,’ Bolan told him. ‘I’m meeting Brognola here.’
The guy seemed genuinely confused by that. ‘Who?’
‘He said Winrock. Isn’t this Winrock?’
There’s nobody here, sir. You must be looking for the convention centre.’
Bolan produced his stock ID wallet and flashed it at the guy. ‘Are they here or aren’t they?’ he asked, growling just a bit.
It didn’t shake the guy any. He knew where he was at. ‘There’s nobody here, sir,’ he replied firmly. ‘Try the convention centre.’
So Bolan sighed and tried the convention centre.
And he struck immediate paydirt there, just inside the parking area.
A couple of guys in standard FBI profile came loping out to intercept the intruding ‘camper’.
Bolan did not try fake credentials with those guys. He cracked his window and told them. ‘It’s a red alert.’ He handed down a small, sealed envelope. Inside was a card with a single word scrawled upon it: Striker. ‘Get this to Brognola on the double damn quick. I’ll wait here for him.’
The agents consulted each other with eyes only, then one trotted away with the envelope while the other stood in silent and wary regard of the visitor. Bolan was wearing smoked glasses and a hunter’s cap set low over the brows but still he was uncomfortable with the scrutiny. It was no time for identity games with the cops. He told the guy, ‘Relax-I’m not here to smoke your VIP. But it’s not far away. So save your nerves. You’re going to need them.’
The guy said nothing in reply but the eyes were massaging the message. Bolan lit a cigarette and took a moment to check the optic monitors. The whole area seemed clean-no movements anywhere within the optic range, nary a whisper from the radio monitors.
The ‘convention centre’ was a largish structure of simple architecture set into the hillside behind a respectable parking lot. It did not look like much from this approach, but Bolan suspected that the back side of the building would be mostly glass for scenic overlook effect-and it was quite large enough to handle a number of guests. A small motel, really. Also, stone walkways wandered off here and there, suggesting the presence somewhere of other nearby facilities-guest cottages, perhaps.
The grey of twilight was settling on to these hills, though, and a guy could not see all he would like to see.
Wherever the safe house may have been on those grounds, it took Brognola less than two minutes to respond to the summons. Bolan spotted him hurrying along one of the flagstoned walks, and the sudden appearance of the familiar figure only served warmly to remind the warrior of the urgency of the moment.
The head fed stepped aboard with a snort and a growl. ‘F’God’s sake, Striker! How the hell did you-what’re you doing here! Are you out of-?!’
‘Save it,’ Bolan growled back, cutting short the disturbed greeting. ‘Fifteen hot guns are right now camped at your front door and they’re not here for the scenic view. How many people do you have?’
Not a beat was lost in the uptake. ‘I have four staff agents and two marshals. Who’s gunning?’
‘Jake Natti. I picked him up at the Dallas airport. He was ten strong, out of Dallas. Another five joined him at Texarkana. I lost the pack in Hot Springs-so he could be more than fifteen, by now. I figure they’ll wait for nightfall. Which gives you very little time. I suggest you cut and run. Pack it out, as quick as you can.’
‘I dislike the suggestion,’ Brognola replied worriedly. ‘I don’t want to be running around in the dark with God knows how many guns on our ass.’
‘How did you get here, Hal?’
‘By chopper from Little Rock Air Force Base. I sent it home.’
‘Call it back, then. How long could it take? You’re not more than-‘
‘You can’t just snap your fingers and get the goddamn things! I don’t know how long it would-besides, you’re talking about evacuating a dozen people. I’ve got-‘
‘Who are you safing, Hal?’
‘Come on.’
‘You come on. Who is it?’
The guy turned absolutely purple, but he came on. ‘It’s your old buddy from the Bronx. Chianti.’
Bolan’s mind whistled at that. ‘Sam the Bomber?’
‘Yeah. Plus his wife and kids.’
Plus the wife and kids, sure-calm Theresa, the good lady whom Mack Bolan would not make a widow for all the nightmares in New York. Chianti had been an underboss for Freddie Gambella, and he’d been as large a savage as any. But somewhere in that kingdom of evil Sam the Bomber had found the good Theresa-and some of her had evidently rubbed into the monster of the Bronx. And even though Bolan had been an inch away from pinning a death medal on the guy, Theresa had apparently rubbed something on to the Man from Blood, as well.
‘For her, Sam,’ he’d told Chianti on that fated night as he let the guy off. ‘Not for you. For her, one time only.’
So apparently the hunch had been right-and ‘one time only’ was the only time needed. Chianti had assured the Executioner that he would defect and seek federal protection. And so he had.
God, that seemed so long ago.
‘So the wife and kids are here, too,’ Bolan muttered to his friend from Wonderland.
‘Sure they’re here,’ Brognola growled. ‘Chianti isn’t under any indictments. He’s co-operating. We’re giving him a blanket. And this guy has some stunning stuff, Striker. We simply can’t let it go.’
‘No way,’ Bolan muttered in reply.
No, indeed, no way whatever. Quite aside from the human angle, and forgetting even the justice angle, there was no way they could allow the mob to pull off something like this. Those guys already thought they were gods-and they had a fair portion of the world convinced of that myth, also.
‘Send for your chopper, Hal,’ Bolan told Alice in Wonderland. ‘Work out a foolproof recognition signal. Get those people out of here as quick as you can. Leave the rest to me.’
‘Leave it to you, eh?’ said the nation’s top cop. But there was no sarcasm there. The tone was, if anything, resignation... to a reality.
And Mack Bolan had to be the most comfortable reality of Harold Brognola’s present moment.
‘Yeah,’ quietly said the warrior. ‘Leave the rest to me.’

They came with first dark, five heavy vehicles moving slowly up the mountain without lights-nothing cute - just a straight-on frontal assault like any cocky, elite force with massive power and supreme confidence. Five, now, yeah-count ‘em-with a minimum of five guns per vehicle. Not a pistol force, either-bet on that-they would be toting automatics and big boomers, for sure.
Bolan’s first quivery feeling about that bunch was borne out to the final sigh. They had come to scorch the earth around Petit Jean-to brazenly serve open notice on all potential defectors that there was no possible protection behind the law.
Bolan was as ready as he was likely to get. He had completely swept clean the personal arsenal. He was wearing the skintight combat blacks and soft black shoes. All exposed flesh was cosmetically darkened. The big .44 AutoMag was strapped to the right hip. An M-i6 with extended clip dangled from a neck strap; riding its underside was the M-203 personal howitzer, forty flaming millimetres of firepower backing up the withering assault rifle. Belt-strung reloads circled the torso from each shoulder and various other items of military ordnance dangled from the belts.
It was not exactly a misnomer to call this guy a one-man army. He was-even in a depleted condition. And the warwagon, of course, even with just one bird aboard, added the final dimension. The big cruiser was poised at the overlook, roof-mounted rocket pod raised and locked in the firing ready. Laser-supplemented infra-red optics bathed the mountainside with invisible light, bringing an eerie red glow and negative-like images to the command console.
Bolan refined the optic focus and zoomed in on the point vehicle, then turned the system over to Target Acquisition. Rangemarks superimposed themselves upon the target image. He made a final fine adjustment and punched in Target Lock, then got the hell out of there on the combat double, pulling night goggles into place over the eyes as he went EVA.
He’d picked the spot with all the care that time allowed, with full knowledge in his soldier’s heart that he had to get it all his first time out. There would be no second chance at this bunch.
He dropped down over the hill in a sliding plunge toward the final hairpin turn into the straightaway, taking position on the upslope about fifty feet above the roadway. There was no seeing them, now, but he could hear those powerful engines of the doomsday machine and he knew that they were no more than a few inches out of the firetrack.
Then, suddenly, there they were, yeah-creeping around that final curve and lining into the run to doomsday-picking up speed already hungry for the kill-glowing feebly in the night goggles and for all the world a pack of hounds straight out of hell.
He gave them a five-count, then punched the EVA-Remote at his belly, summoning forth the fire. The fire responded instantly, leaping off the overlook with a rustling sigh-seeming to hesitate for a brief instant of initial flight to sniff the air and find a track-dipping, then, hot on the scent and sizzling along on a tail of flame and smoke.
They saw it, too, perhaps one lurching heartbeat before the intercept. An electrified foot stabbed at a brake pedal; the point vehicle staggered and nosed-down in a final, futile manoeuvre as the mighty little rocket slammed in.
Bolan glimpsed dismayed faces in there as that car lifted on a fireball and flung parts of itself back down the road upon the following vehicles. The fuel tank lent itself to an immediate secondary effect, blowing straight up and scattering flaming debris and smoking flesh all over that tortured hellground.
And there was little comfort in those closely following vehicles. The one-man army was striding along their flank with the M-2O3 at full bellow, roaring out angry little chunks of high explosives in forty-millimetre packages, bringing daylight to the night and final darkness to those who tarried too long in the midst of the firestorm.
It was twenty numbers into the hit and four of the cars were flaming wrecks-the fifth stalled broadside across the roadway-when the sporadic answering fire began. But those who still had the means and the will were finding very little to shoot at. Bolan was prowling the dark zone-the master in his own element-night goggles now abandoned as the leaping flames of combat illuminated the target zone with the dancing hues of hellfire. And the M-16 was raking that entire zone with quick bursts of lightning that never needed to strike twice in the same spot.
One silly guy came running out of the inferno with both hands on the head-and Bolan sent that silly guy sliding back with no head whatever.
No conventions governed this war; no meaningless gallantries extended to those savages who spat on civilised ideals. It was a war to the death. Mack Bolan intended to take as many as possible to hell with him. Let them make their peace with the devil; they would never find any from Mack Bolan.
Sam the Bomber had, of course. Plus a few others, here and there, when the right man and the right moment had coincided at the right place. But there had been not many of those.
‘There are times,’ Bolan had declared, early in his war, ‘when a man will make his stand for what is right. It isn’t enough to simply believe in something. To be truly alive, you have to be ready to die for something. Harder still, there are times when you have to be willing to kill for something. I am both ready to die and willing to kill.’
The deathmaster from Vietnam had made his stand on the home grounds. Over, and over, and over again. And he did so, again, that blighted night on Petit Jean Mountain.
Perversely enough, Jersey Jake Natti was the last to die in that stand. The veteran hitman was pinned by the legs beneath a burning vehicle and screaming for help when Bolan quit the darkness and moved in closer for the mop-up.
And the contractor knew his enemy when he saw him, this time. He knew what had come for him-and he was prepared to die as he had lived: with an utter contempt for life. ‘Finish me off, huh?’ he requested, as coolly as possible under the circumstances.
‘It’s why I’m here, Jake,’ Bolan assured him as he shot the dying man once between the eyes with the thundering .44.
He dropped a marksman’s medal into the mess and told Jake Natti’s remains, ‘My contempt is for death, guy.’
The air force chopper had arrived at the height of the festivities and was chugging away into the dark skies when Mack Bolan paid his final respects to Jersey Jake.
So much for that, then.
One more time, Theresa.
He devoted another minute or two to the clean-up, then went wearily up the hill to reclaim his cruiser and put those hellgrounds behind him. Isolated area, sure, but no more peace here for Bolan than anywhere else, following a firefight. No place in God’s world was that secure.
But he was jarred a bit to find Brognola and his two marshals awaiting him at the overlook. Bolan could not afford to be that sure of any cop-not ever.
‘You missed your plane,’ he said quietly, speaking only to Brognola.
The top cop seemed a bit uncomfortable. ‘Couldn’t run off and leave you to face it alone, buddy. You just didn’t give us any room for response.’
One of the marshals was grinning openly at the most-wanted ‘criminal’ in the country. ‘That was the damnedest hit I ever saw,’ he commented.
‘Not me,’ grunted the other. ‘I was in New Orleans when-‘
Brognola moved quickly and firmly to shut that off. He never referred to Mack Bolan by any name other than ‘Striker’ and obviously he wanted no open association whatever. But the embarrassment was still in the voice as he declared, ‘I can’t introduce you guys because I don’t know the man’s name-but if you boys want to shake his hand, you get in line behind me.’
Bolan grinned, shook hands all around, and returned to the only ‘home’ he would ever know.
He wiped off the cosmetic goop and pulled on Levi’s over the bloodstained skinsuit, then sent the cruiser down the hill. He had to pick his way carefully through the debris of combat, but soon he was off and running free, the whole wide world lying before him in an entirely uncertain future.
Maybe he could catch some R&R now-some of that good Arkansas fishing, perhaps.
Then again, maybe he would find only another battlefield. Not that he thought of himself as the arch foe of the Mafia tribes. He was just a soldier, after all.
And there were certain limits to what one lone man could do.
Weren’t there?