Baltimore Trackdown (4 page)

As the Executioner drove away from the racetrack on a country road, a fire truck charged toward him, its siren wailing and red lights flashing. He pulled to one side to let it pass. He figured the fire at the track had attracted them. But he was too far away to be connected with it.

He had about half an hour to get to Herring Run Park, just off Sinclair, where he was to meet Nino Tattaglia.

His forehead wrinkled as he reviewed his mission in Baltimore. He had to find out what deadly, destructive event was about to go down here, and hoped Nino would be able to tell him.

The Executioner was a big man, more than six feet tall and a finely muscled two hundred pounds. Right now his cold blue eyes were trained on the road. He was not moved one way or the other by the dead men he left behind. Eradicating human evil had long been a necessary fact of life for him.

This was an everlasting war, and it had brought him to Baltimore. It was a war he knew no one man could win.

Bolan was a realist. He knew that one day he would move too slowly, or a bullet or grenade would be in exactly the right spot and the warrior would be killed. But until that happened, he was charging ahead, he was digging into every dirty Mafia operation he could find, he was pumping the Mafia full of hot lead. He was also living large and making every second count.

He would make the Mafia fear him for as long as his strength and life remained.

The holy war against the Mafia had become Bolan’s purpose in life.

And so, to fight again.

He swung the rented Chevy into the park, watching for a man on a picnic bench. He saw him and parked.

Nino slid into the car and frowned. “Bad for my image to be seen sitting on a park bench.”

“What’s going down in Baltimore?”

Nino’s eyes widened. “You’ll never believe it. It’s a capo’s dream!”

“Try me.”

“The Nazarione family’s about to take over the whole goddamned police department! The operation has been in place for months and is coming down to the last phase. Already we’ve got two city councilmen pinned down and two of the four assistant chiefs!”

“Blackmail?” Bolan asked, his face turning grim.

“Most likely, or exposure on some corruption. The family has the whole damn department on the hook, not just a hundred officers and some captains! The whole town will become our playground!”

“What two assistant chiefs have been caught?”

“I don’t know. Hell, I was lucky to get this much. But it’s all on a timetable, so much done each week, and we’re near the end of the game.”

“You and I are going to call off the game because of a number of deaths in the Nazarione family, Nino.”

“Maybe. You hear about the cop getting killed this morning?”

Bolan shook his head.

“Some lieutenant in a shoot-out with a robber. And guess who was on hand, ‘working’ with the lieutenant? Our own Capt. Harley Davis. Which probably means the lieutenant was honest and they gunned him down because he couldn’t be bought or bribed or blackmailed. Odds are that Captain Davis pulled the trigger with three or four bribed cops as backup.”

“What’s the next target?”

“That much I do know,” Nino said. “It will be Assistant Chief Larry Jansen. And it’s set to go down in two hours. I’m supposed to be along for extra protection.”

“I’ll be there as soon as it happens. When you see me, hit the deck and stay down. I may have to use quick target selection.”

“Don’t worry about me. Just be sure you make it. This is a key man in their plans because he’s next in line to be chief.”

An hour later, Nino Tattaglia helped carry Assistant Chief Jansen from a car at a back unit of a motel. The door was open and they put the chief on the motel bed beside a black girl. The lady was nude and dead, and her body and the bed were covered with blood. There were six long slashes on her torso. Three stab wounds marred the soft dark skin.

Polaroid pictures were taken of the chief in several positions beside the girl. In one, his hand was taped around a bloody knife and the blade pushed into the dead girl’s chest. Enough of his face was showing to be recognizable.

“Strip him!” Big Jake Milano said. “Get his pants and shorts off and spread him out over her.” Milano was satisfied. He was getting good at this. Third time! Hell, he’d get a bonus. This time he’d take the old lady on a cruise of the Caribbean.

“Got enough pictures?” Big Jake asked.

“One more,” Tony Larasso said. He put another print on the dresser.

Suddenly the door exploded inward. Before anyone could move, a figure dressed in black stormed in, waving an Uzi submachine gun. Big Jake went for his side arm, caught three slugs in his chest and collapsed against the far wall, dead.

Mack Bolan sized up the four others in the motel room at a glance. There was a kid with a camera to the left, and two hardcases behind the bed to the right. Nino stood near the back.

“Don’t move!” Bolan barked. One of the hard-cases dug for his belt holster and the Uzi spit out five rounds, nailing him against the wall for a few seconds until his corpse slid slowly to the floor.

“Anyone else?” Bolan asked. The kid dropped the camera, leaned over and vomited. Bolan pointed at Nino.

“Take out your piece and drop it on the bed, then get this other goon’s gun and put them both under the bed. Check out the puker here for hardware.”

Nino did as he was told. He turned, holding his hands high.

“Get the chief’s pants on fast!” Bolan snapped.

As Nino complied Bolan grabbed the developed Polaroid prints from the dresser and pushed them inside his black jersey. He picked up the camera and ripped out the film, then checked out the door. No problems.

Bolan pointed to the kid and the older man behind the bed. “Both of you, strip off all your clothes, then lie down on the bed beside the girl. Move it!”

Both men shed every piece of clothing and lay down gingerly on the bloody bedspread.

Nino put the chief’s pants and shirt on him. The cop was starting to come out of his drugged state.

“You, carry that man outside,” Bolan barked at Nino. “You make any noise, or one false move, badass, and I’ll blow your head off.” Nino picked up the blood-smeared cop and took him to the door.

Bolan’s rented Chevy sat six feet away from the motel room. The two Mafia lookouts were hunched over beside the door as though they were sleeping. Nino knew they would never wake up. He lowered the chief into the passenger seat and closed the door.

Bolan waved Nino back inside the room and followed him.

“Now, tough guy. Off with your clothes, too. Then join the others on the bed.”

Bolan grabbed the bundle of clothing, closed the door, stepped into the Chevy and drove to the front of the motel. He stopped to call the police from a phone booth, watching the motel-room door as he dialed. As soon as he had them on the line, Nino stepped out of the motel room and ran full tilt down the alley.

The Executioner told the police a girl had been killed in the motel by Mafia hoodlums. He gave the address, hung up and deposited the garments at the side of the booth. Then he drove off. Half a mile away he pulled over to the curb. Slowly Bolan brought the groggy cop back to his senses.

Chief Jansen shook his head, his vision fuzzy, his mouth tasting foul.

“What the hell?” He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear them. He looked at Bolan. “Who are you?”

“A friend, Chief Jansen. Just relax — you’re safe now.”

“Safe? Where are we?”

“In my car on the street. I just pulled you out of a motel.”

“Motel? I went out for a cup of coffee with one of my sergeants. He said he owed me a store-bought cup and he had a problem he wanted to talk about privately.”

“And then he slipped you some knockout drops. Look at the blood on your hands and your clothes.”

“Oh, Christ! Mine? Where did it come from?”

Bolan made sure the chief was totally back in the current time zone, then explained the whole thing to him.

“Damn! I fell for it. Now I don’t know who to trust! We’ve got to get some units over to that motel!” he exclaimed, still a cop.

“I reported it. The place should be swarming with cops by now.”

The chief nodded. “You didn’t tell me why somebody tried to get blackmail evidence on me in that motel. Are you sure the girl was dead?”

Bolan took out the pictures. One of them had blood splatters on the back.

The policeman’s eyes widened in astonishment. “They were setting me up. What for?”

“Certain groups in town want to take over the police department. They have already blackmailed two assistant chiefs. You were the next target. That officer who was shot this morning was probably murdered by one or more of his fellow officers.”

“No! Captain Davis was with him. One of our best men.”

“Are you sure? Check out Davis’s bank account. He’s taking two thousand a week in payoff money from the Mafia.”

Chief Jansen stared at his bloody hands.

“You’re sure of this?”

“Yeah. You won’t have to dig far into Davis to find out he’s as dirty as hell.”

The chief opened the ashtray on the car and burned the pictures of himself. He saved the other shots of the body and nodded at Bolan.

“I still don’t know who you are, but it looks like I owe my whole career to you. Another ten minutes and they would have had me so tightly tied up I never would have gotten out. How do you fit into this?”

“Just trying to be helpful.” Bolan turned on the car radio to an all-news station and kept the sound low.

“Where can I drop you off, chief?”

“Take me to the side door of the downtown station. I have some clothes there.”

Bolan heard something and turned up the volume on the radio.

“And Baltimore police said it was one of the most grisly killings they have seen in a long time. The body of the woman lay faceup on the bed. The bedspread was soaked with blood, and the nude bodies of two men, both shot, lay sprawled on the bed. Two more men, sitting against the steps outside the room, had also been shot dead. Police have blocked off the area and are talking to all witnesses.

“One man in the motel room next door said he saw one young man running naked down the alley about ten minutes before police arrived. A car that had been parked in front of the room was seen leaving the area, but no one could say who was in the car, or what the license number had been.

“In other news...”

Bolan shut it off.

“You didn’t say anything about the four dead men.”

“Right, I didn’t. Let’s leave it at that. When you identify them you’ll find them all to be Mafia soldiers connected to Carlo Nazarione, who claims he has no organized-crime affiliations.”

“At least we know better than that.” The cop shrugged. “Hell, I won’t push to find out who you are. I’ll never be able to thank you for what you did for me today. Now, one ride downtown, then I want to get showered and dressed and back out to that motel.”

As Bolan let the chief off fifteen minutes later, the cop stared at him a moment. “Have we met somewhere before? Something about your face seems familiar.”

“Thanks. I used to do some modeling — a lot of those rugged outdoor-type print ads. I did a lot for one cigarette company.”

The chief nodded. “Yeah, that was probably it.” But as the car swung away and the cop hurried through the private entrance into the police department’s top-brass area, he knew he had not seen the man’s face in an ad. It was on a Wanted poster. And the guy wore the same black suit. It would come back to him. Damn, he wished he could remember.

He went down the short hall to the chiefs’ men’s room with its lockers and showers. He undressed before anyone else came in, stuffed the bloody clothes into a plastic bag and then showered off the blood. He had never seen so much blood in a shower before. Wrong. That bathtub suicide when the drain plugged.

Half an hour later the chief was dressed and heading for the motel in the passenger side of an unmarked car. When he and his driver arrived he took command of the investigation. As he pushed through the crowd behind the police tape he remembered who the man was who had saved him — Mack Bolan, the Executioner, the one who was at war with the Mafia and wanted by the FBI and in dozens of states!

After Mack Bolan dropped off Assistant Chief Jansen, he stopped at a phone booth that had a directory in it and found the address of a small printing firm. He located one close by but passed it up when he saw a one-man operation down the street.

Inside, the place had the musty, slightly alkaline odor of paper stock mixed with the acid tang of the printer’s inks.

A short, bald, middle-aged man with half glasses came from behind a rotary press that was hissing with every turn.

“Morning!” he said, smiling. “What can I do for you today?”

“I need a business card. On the front I want a name and a phone number, and on the back the nearest thing we can find that resembles a five-dollar gold piece.”

“Easy. And you need it in five minutes.”

“No, that’s the easy part. I don’t want it for two hours.”

“Should be a snap. Cost you as much as five hundred of them would.”

“I’ll give you fifty dollars.”

“Good, that’s what five hundred costs.”

Bolan wrote out the name and the number, and the little man pawed through one box after another. He turned, holding a piece of plastic that had something engraved on it.

“Found something I can use. I’ll set the type and burn a plate and we should be in business.”

“Brown ink on the front and gold ink on the back, right?”

“Cost you another thirteen dollars for cleanup on the press, if you want a good job.”

Bolan gave him a fifty-dollar bill and a twenty, and said he would be back.

His next stop was a phone booth, where he consulted a list of numbers that Nino had given him. He found the Baltimore godfather’s number at the top of the list. He had to go through three men before he got the Baltimore capo on the phone. Bolan had heard Augie Bonestra from Brooklyn testify on TV a few months back. Now he imitated his voice.

“Yeah, this is Augie up in Boston. Hear you got Bolan down there.”

“Right, Augie.”

“I sent a man down early this morning. Want him to watch how you handle the Bolan thing, case he ever comes my way. Guy’s name Lonnie Giardello. Can handle himself. Sent him down and then forgot to call. Should be there in an hour or two. Let him see what’s going on, Carlo.”

“Sure, Augie, no problem. I hope he brought a card.”

“He’s got one of mine. Good talking, Carlo. I got to get moving.”

They said goodbye and Bolan hung up. He grinned. He was not sure how close Augie and Carlo were, but there had been no hesitation about accepting the voice as genuine.

Now for the rest of his outfit.

Bolan went back to his small hotel and changed clothes. He wore a brown pin-striped suit, a red tie and a brown snap-brim hat that he’d bought in a men’s store. He looked like your average hoodlum soldier. Or maybe a little conservative. He could pass.

Back at the print shop the old man was blow-drying the ink with a hair dryer. He showed Bolan three cards. The Executioner picked out one and cut the other two up into strips with a small paper cutter and put them in his pocket. He thanked the printer and left. In his car, he signed the card boldly: Augie Bonestra.

There was no problem finding the fortified mansion where the boss of Baltimore lived. Bolan brought from the hotel a small bag packed with a few clothes to hide six charges of C-4 plastique with radio timer-detonators. He caught a cab to the big house, headquarters of the Mafia empire in Baltimore.

The cab stopped at the massive iron gate. A soldier ambled out and looked inside.

“Giardello?” he asked.

“Yeah, from Brooklyn. How did you know I was comin’?”

“Hey, this is Baltimore. We know everything. Crawl out and pay off the hack. It ain’t a far walk from here.”

The guard pointed Bolan to the side entrance and said someone would meet him there. A small man with sharp features and a sniffling nose opened the door, showed him to a bedroom and said Don Nazarione would like to see him when he was settled.

Bolan grinned, playing the part.

“Hell, how about now?” He adjusted a .45 automatic in his shoulder leather and walked behind the small man along the hall. The mansion was what he expected — overdecorated, plush, expensive, ostentatious.

They went up a small elevator to a huge office forty feet long on the third floor. On that level there was a putting green — a golf-green carpet with four holes and miniature flags. Across the green sat Carlo Nazarione behind a large, old-fashioned cherrywood desk with massive carved feet. An IBM computer sat on the edge of the desk with a daisy-wheel printer beside it.

The don was not what Bolan expected. He stood six-four, had the classic Italian dark good looks, a full head of black wavy hair and was not more than forty years old.

“So you’re the hotshot from Augie?”

“Yes, sir.”

The capo came from behind the desk and Bolan walked up to him, went down on one knee and kissed the offered ring. He stood and stepped back, waiting as he knew he should for Nazarione to lead the conversation.

“Did Augie send me anything?”

“Oh, yes, sir!” Bolan reached in his pocket and took out the card. He handed it to the Mafia chief who looked at it casually and pushed it into his pocket.

“You’ve done some research into this problem?”

“Yes, sir. I’m the Boston expert on the bastard.”

“Good. You can tag along. You want something special, talk to Vinny here.” He pointed to the thin-faced man who had met Bolan at the door. “Outside of that, don’t get in the way, and if we get a Bolan alert, you’ll go along. You got a piece?”

Bolan opened his jacket, showing the butt of the .45.

“Yeah. We got some better hardware. Have Vinny show it to you.” The godfather nodded. The interview was over.

For the next half hour Vinny piloted “Lonnie Giardello” around the layout. He introduced Lonnie to everyone and left him with a six-man crew on alert in the basement recreation room. A door led to a driveway where a crew wagon waited, ready to roll.

“We’re on alert for Bolan,” one of the soldiers said. “That asshole surfaces anywhere in town, we get a call and we’re rolling in two minutes.”

“I’d like to come along,” Bolan said.

The soldier shrugged. “If Don Carlo says show you, we show you.”

“Good, I’ll be around. Don Carlo told me to get acquainted with the layout. What’s outside?”

“Six-car garage, tennis court, swimming pool and lots of lawn.”

Bolan nodded and wandered outdoors. In the garage he looked over the cars — two Cadillacs and one Lincoln. From his pocket he slipped out two packages of C-4 and pasted one under the front fender well on each of the two Caddy crew wagons. The detonators were set for channel one on his radio-controlled signal box.

He walked around, went back inside, found the kitchen and bummed a roast-beef sandwich and coffee, pleading that he had not eaten on the plane.

The Executioner met Nino Tattaglia in the hall and the turned-around hoodlum’s mouth dropped open in surprise.

Bolan came up quickly. “Hi, I’m Lonnie Giardello. Just down from Boston to watch the Bolan fight.”

“Yeah. I’m Nino Tattaglia,” he said, his face still showing surprise.

“Didn’t I used to know some of your people in Brooklyn? Bunch of Tattaglias up there. There was a Joe and Frank, as I remember. Any of your people?”

“Not that I know of. Need a guide around this place?”

“I could use one.”

They talked quietly then.

“What the fuck are you doing? Half the town is looking for you and you charge in here!”

“I was invited. Best way. I see you got away from that motel room before the cops arrived.”

“Yeah, barely. Somebody saw me. At least nobody in the family suspects me. Thanks for that.”

“Who killed the girl?”

“Big Jake, the guy you wasted first. He enjoyed it, the bastard!”

“Any way I can look in the weapons room? You have one here?”

“Sure. No one man runs it. Usually it’s locked. Let’s go check it out.”

It was in the basement next to the recreation room. Several of the pool players looked up and waved when Nino came in. He talked to a couple of them for a minute.

“The weapons room open? Wanted to show our loaner around.”

The men laughed, and the one Bolan had talked to first unlocked it. “We got in a special order this morning,” he said. “Look at these beauties!”

Spaced out on a workbench on clean wipe towels lay three Uzi submachine guns.

“Damn!” Bolan said. “They full-auto?”

“As full as you can get. They forgot to send us any ammo, but it should be here tomorrow.”

Bolan picked up one of the stubby little submachine guns that had been developed by the Israelis from the Czech models 23 and 25 chatter-guns years ago. It was still one of the most effective in the world.

He slipped out the 32-round magazine that would hold the 9 mm parabellums and whistled.

“What we could do with these in Boston!”

“Get your own,” Nino said.

The other Mafia soldier laughed and returned to the pool game. It was his shot.

Bolan picked up a tool off the bench and went to work on one of the Uzis. In two minutes he had stripped off enough parts so he could remove the firing pin. He reassembled it and did the same thing to the next one. Just as he finished that one, two more soldiers came in to look at the new weapons.

As they fawned over the Israeli burp guns, Bolan planted another cube of C-4 plastique under a case of ammunition. This one had been set for detonation by a transmission on the second radio channel. The triggering device in Bolan’s suitcase looked like a radio the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Nino and Bolan eased out of the room, watched the pool game and then wandered outside.

“You are crazy!” Nino said. “The first time they try to shoot those weapons they’ll find out they have no firing pins.”

“Let’s hope it isn’t too soon. Right now I need you to show me three more vital spots where I can hide these little surprise packages of C-4.”

“Plastic explosives? Just be sure to tell me before you light the damn fuses.”

They put the other three plastic bombs in hidden places around the mansion. The last one went in a small niche in the wall opposite Nazarione’s office.

They walked outside in the soft Maryland evening.

A horn bellowed on the ground.

“Bolan alert!” Nino explained. “Let’s go!”

They ran for the crew wagon near the basement door. Bolan got in the first car and Nino the second. When they were filled, the big Cadillacs roared out the driveway, barely waiting for the gate to completely open before racing through.

“Where is he?” Bolan asked the Mafia soldier wedged in the back seat next to him.

“Damned if I know,” he said.

The driver explained that some big dark guy supposed to be Bolan was busting up a gambling spot uptown.

When they got there, the ruckus was still going on. Two of them covered the rear door and five others, including Bolan, stormed into the club and spotted the troublemaker. He held a chair in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. The five converged on him; he swung the chair at Bolan.

The Executioner grabbed the chair, jerked it forward, throwing the man off balance. As he flailed his arms and dropped the knife to regain his balance, one of the Mafia soldiers slammed into him with a shoulder block that carried him to the wall. They grabbed his arms, twisted them behind him and marched him out the back door.

The man was about twenty, blond and blue-eyed.

He gave his name and it checked with the ID he carried.

“Can’t be our man,” one of the hoods said. “Too young, too blond — no way.”

Ten minutes later the Caddy was heading back toward the Nazarione mansion. The man at the club had been enraged at losing his week’s pay on the gaming tables and tried to even the score by breaking up the place. The on-site security swore up and down the guy was Bolan and they were not going near him without shooting first.

“Hell, he was no more the Executioner than I am,” said one of the soldiers beside Bolan.

“Yeah, or me,” Bolan said.

The goon looked at him and laughed. “You look about as much like his picture as that dude we left in the alley back there with his arms broke.”

Bolan had not been able to stop the “penalty” the young man underwent for smashing up two tables in the club. He could have stopped it, but it would have blown his cover.

One man swung up an Uzi submachine gun. He shook his head. “Damn, I wish to hell that ammo had arrived. I’d have greased his ass good with thirty rounds and never let up on the trigger.”

Bolan watched the man caress the gun. The odds were two to one its firing pin had been removed. The Executioner still did not like the odds. He would get to the third Uzi if he could before he bailed out of the place.

He had learned part of what he wanted to know about the enemy camp. They were “up” for this battle with Mack Bolan. They had some good equipment, and some of the men were sharper than he had seen before in the average Mafia goon squads.

When they got back to the mansion, there was a general meeting of fifteen soldiers and one lieutenant as they talked about the operation that afternoon when Chief Jansen got away.

“How did he get the two guards outside?” the lieutenant asked.

“Shot them, the radio said,” one of the hoods volunteered.

A man named Frank was the leader of the discussion. Now he looked around.

“The whole idea is to learn from that mistake. If you’re put on guard, do it! Your life depends on it. If we got a job going down and you’re out there, the guys inside depend on you. So make damn sure nothing and nobody gets at you or past you. With this Bolan bastard, you don’t ever get a second chance. Just ask Big Jake or Tony L. Their funerals will be day after tomorrow. Only the families of the men are to attend.”

That quieted them for a moment. Frank saw the mood.

“All right. So next time we get him, and then all of you can go to his funeral!”

They cheered, Bolan with them, then they quieted.

“You might wonder about another try for Assistant Chief Jansen who we missed today. Don Nazarione just decided we blow him away. It’s all we can do now. Okay, that’s all for tonight. You guys will be getting more briefings. We think the more you know about what we’re doing, the better you can help get it done.”