Chapter 12

Symbols

Nick Bonelli hit the roof, as expected. But the Tucson Mafioso was a cat, adept at landing on his feet and not yet ready to surrender the last of his nine lives. Plans had gone awry before, but the world was still turning, and Nick Bonelli was still around. Sure he was mad — mad as hell — when the soldier boy called from Phoenix with his tale Of twenty dead men and no visible progress. Who wouldn't be mad as hell? But on second thought, after careful reconsideration, Bonelli reed that the setback to his military arm might be a blessing in disguise. It was Nick Bonelli's chance to get in on the action personally.

He had relished that possibility from the start. Oh sure, he had gone along with his son Paul on the Idea that the Phoenix move should be made by an outside force, not readily traceable to the brotherhood. And that soldier, Hinshaw, had been the only Topical choice. Tough. Hard as nails. And smart, too, don't forget that. The boy had brains to spare. "Combat sense," Paulie had called it. A good choice, yeah.

But Nick Bonelli missed the action. He secretly longed for the excitement he used to feel in the old days, riding the beer trucks with Tony Morello and the other old boys. Most of them were gone now, one way or another, but Nick was still around. And he needed action.

Besides, he had a personal stake in the Phoenix game plan. It was no mere lust for action that spurred him on now to take personal command of the campaign, but rather a matter of inner necessity. Too much was at stake up north for the capo to just sit back and watch it slip away with a wistful sigh because some soldier boy got caught with his drawers down.

Personal, yeah.

For years — hell, for decades — Bonelli had watched with ill-concealed jealousy and spite as Moe Kaufman and Ike Ruby pulled the strings of power from Phoenix, while he, Nick Bonelli, a brother of the blood, sat on the sidelines and champed his bit. The California bosses, Julian Digeorge and Ben Lucasi, had forged close ties with Kaufman while paying lip service to their alliance with Bonelli and growing rich at his expense on one-sided narcotics deals. Or so Bonelli described it to himself, although each kilo of Mexican brown had fattened his bankroll considerably. Even Augie Marinello, and through him La Commisstone, had smiled upon Kaufman's Phoenix clique when it should have been Bonelli at the helm in Arizona. It was Bonelli's right as a brother of the blood.

Of course, Nick had tried to rectify the uneven situation over the years, peacefully at first and later by force. He had opened a posh nightspot in the heart of downtown Phoenix, seeking thus to establish a beachhead, to drive home a wedge that would pry the town open for full-scale invasion. The results were humiliating. At Kaufman's orders, teams of local police stationed themselves outside Nick's place every night, checking the age of customers and making spot arrests for public drunkenness. Nick wisely withdrew that probe.

Next he tried assassination. Twice, teams of hardmen drove north in search of Kaufman and Ruby, and twice, they disappeared without a trace. Rumors circulated of midnight funerals in the desert. Johnny Scalise, Nick's own cousin, volunteered to fulfill the contract and hurried up to Phoenix. Johnny did not disappear. A carload of Boy Scouts found his nude and emasculated body, crucified with barbed-wire bindings to a giant roadside cactus.

Matters had rested there until Paul Bonelli had approached his father with the news that he not only knew the way to get Kaufman, but he also had the man to do it. From there it was off to the races, with Nick funneling men and cash into Hinshaw's hands, preparing for the big push into Phoenix that would knock Moe Kaufman off his stolen throne.

Paulie and Hinshaw had suggested that Kaufman might better serve the cause alive than dead. Bonelli had resisted the idea as anathema to his inbred sense of revenge, the vendetta. But at length he came to realize the wisdom of their words, for Moe Kaufman alive could serve well as a puppet on Nick Bonelli's strings. Kaufman had the connections already, let him continue to retain the appearance of power, as long as he knew in his heart where the real power lay. It could all be so satisfying, rubbing Kaufman's nose in the muck and stripping him of his empire, leaving him alive to grieve over the loss of that which he could never regain.

Satisfying, yeah. And rewarding. La Commisstone could hardly fail to recognize the power and tactical brilliance of the man who could execute such a master-stroke. At last Nick Bonelli would be assured the respect of those old fools who had snubbed him while courting the favor of Kaufman and his connections. And the plan had shown every sign of working out smoothly. Hinshaw's men were primed and ready, poised to strike at Kaufman's jugular and apply the pressure that would bring him to his knees. Everything should have gone like clockwork.

Mack Bolan changed all that.

Bonelli had secretly expected a visit from Mack the Bastard for a long time. He thought that time had come when the guy stopped off in Arizona long enough to kick some ass with Ciro Lavangetta and Johnny the Musician, but it turned out he was only passing through on his way to Miami. Bolan had done Nick a favor there, for Ciro had died in Miami, severing the encroaching tentacles of the old Digeorge family onto Bonelli territory. But Nick had always known that Bolan would — indeed, had to — come back.

In spite of that mental preparedness, that back-of-the-mind alert, Bolan's appearance now had caught Nick completely by surprise, threatening to louse up everything that Bonelli and Hinshaw had been working toward for months. Bolan anywhere in Arizona was bad news, but Bolan in Phoenix could be unmitigated disaster, the absolute worst. Or maybe not.

After the first panic reaction had faded, Bonelli took stock of the full potentials of the present situation. Hinshaw assured him that Bolan and Kaufman would be at each other's throats before nightfall, and the soldier seemed confident that given a few hardy reinforcements, he could play both ends against the middle. Bonelli had sent the reinforcements, almost gleefully, despite the half-hearted tongue lashing he had given Hinshaw on the phone. Maybe — just maybe — Bolan's arrival could be good news for the Tucson capo. There was that cool million still riding on the guy's head, and Bonelli could always use that kind of money. But more enticing was the mammoth prestige that would automatically fall upon any man who could bag the Executioner's head. And if Nick could bag Bolan and Kaufman at the same time, with a made U.S. Senator as the kicker — well, Bonelli just had to smile at the prospect, his mind conjuring images of himself as the new man of the hour. Boss of Bosses? Capo di tutti capi? Why not?

He fired a two dollar cigar and reached for the desk intercom. His house boss, Jake Lucania, appeared in answer to the bleeping summons.

"Get Phoenix on the phone, Jake. I need another parley with Hinshaw."

Lucania answered, "Sure, boss," and went to place the call. It had been over two hours since Bonelli's last contact with Hinshaw, and more than an hour and a half since Paulie had pulled out with a war party. Bonelli was sending reinforcements all right, and he was sending his son and strong right arm as well, just to insure that there was no more dicking around.

Minutes passed, and then Lucania reappeared to announce: "He's on line two, sir."

Bonelli nodded a silent thanks and scooped up the receiver, greeting Hinshaw with a curt, "What's happening up there?"

The younger man's voice sounded defensive, on edge, and maybe just a bit nervous as he answered. "No change, Mr. Bonelli. My-we're sitting tight like you suggested."

"Okay. Paul is on the way, with some help, Look for him any time now."

There was a long pause, and when Hinshaw spoke again, the note of tension and suppressed resentment in his voice made Bonelli smile. "I understand, sir. As you wish. But I honestly feel that I-"

"It's no disgrace to need help, kid. You been hurt bad. Paul can give you a lot of comfort. How many boys You got left there?"

"Roughly a dozen, sir. They're all in top form, and I'm confident that with the replacements you've sent we can save the play without further difficulty."

"Yeah, great," Bonelli answered, though certain in his own mind that there would be a great deal more difficulty before the final curtain came down in Phoenix.

Hinshaw was muttering more assurances when Bonelli broke in again. "Listen, about this Bolan thing-"

Bonelli's words were cut off by a curious hollow booming sound at the other end of the line. It filled his ear, stabbing Painfully into his brain, and the line was suddenly buzzing, with Hinshaw in the background loudly demanding to know what the hell that was. The sounds from the Phoenix end became jumbled then, with a second explosion and a third coming almost together, and the loud thunking sounds which Nick Bonelli, the old street warrior, identified at once as heavy-caliber bullets ripping through walls and furniture. Hinshaw and company were catching hell in Phoenix, and Bonelli could do nothing but sit there and listen to it happen. And then, suddenly, he could not even do that. The line went dead.

But no, it couldn't be dead. He could still hear the sounds of battle, the staccato gunfire and booming explosions. They sounded the same, and yet different at the same time. Sharper somehow, and clearer. Closer.

Nick Bonelli rose from his chair and bolted for the study door as the floor beneath him lurched in another blast. The rattle of gunfire was loud in his ears now, and there could be no possible doubt as to its meaning. Lucania burst through the door at that precise instant, a thin trickle of dark blood bisecting his ashen face.

"It's a hit," he shouted at the would-be Boss Of Bosses. "We're being hit!"

Bolan had pushed the warwagon hard, urging unaccustomed speed from the Toronado engine and reaching his target in western Tucson with minutes to spare. Nick Bonelli's fortress home lay there, almost on the fringe of Rolling Hills golf course and backed against a river bed called Pantano Wash. Bolan made a quick drive-by, pressing the appropriate button on his command console to trigger the "collection" of data from miniature recorder-transceivers previously installed on the Bonelli Phone terminals. The taped data was pre-edited and time-phased, Omitting wasteful periods of silence to present an uninterrupted flow of intelligence. The playback was running as Bolan prepped for combat, enlightening him as to the latest troop movements and reassuring him that the capo was at home within those walls.

He stowed the warwagon In a screen of willows along Pantano Wash, on the northwest flank of Bonelli's hardsite, and immediately enabled the rocketry, aligning selected points of the manor house and fortifications in the range finder of the firing grid and registering the coordinates in the memory bank. His touch upon a special set of controls meshed the computer and firing mechanism, setting the rocketry on "automatic." He set the console timer two minutes ahead and quit that vehicle, the sounding of the lethal metronome loud in his ears.

The Executioner moved swiftly over the arid ground, despite the tremendous load he carried.

Along with the Automag and Beretta, extra clips and grenades girding his waist, he carried his big double-punch weapon, the M-16/M-79 combo. The autoloading assault rifle could spew 5.56mm tumblers at a rate of 900 rounds per minute, while the 40mm hand cannon slung underneath was a single-shot breech-loader, handling tear gas, buckshot or HE rounds at the discretion of the gunner.

Satchels filled with Clips for the M-16 and mixed rounds for the grenade launcher completed the Bolan combat rig, upping his normal weight by some seventy-five Pounds.

He did not seem to feel that weight or be affected by it as he scaled the stony wall and put himself inside Bonelli's estate. He moved swiftly across the rolling expanse of finely manicured lawn, making no effort at concealment while his mental alarm clock ticked off the numbers until doomsday.

The first hardman saw him at fifty yards out. Obviously unable to believe his eyes, the guy just stood there and gaped for about a half-second too long. When he made his move, simultaneously squawking a warning and reaching for his sidearm, the effort was too little and too late. Bolan's finger stroked the trigger of the M-16 and the guy went into a jerky little dance of death. The gunfire alone would have alerted the whole compound, but it was instantly eclipsed by the sound of hell arriving to visit the ungodly.

Bolan had glanced at his watch and saw the sweep second hand signal doomsday. Over his left shoulder, then, came a faint whoosh from the warwagon's rocket pods as the thunderbolts came in directly on time and on target, rattling over the low defensive wall at three-second intervals. Number one erupted at the front gates, shattering those portals and flinging the debris of stone and humanity about like so much flotsam on a raging sea. Number two impacted between two limousines parked in the curving drive, lending shreds of blackened steel and streamers of flaming gasoline to that lethal atmosphere. Numbers three and four had been reserved for the manor house itself, and they plowed in as ordered by the warwagon's electronic brain, unleashing a volcano of flame and oily smoke within that palace of corruption.

Men were milling around that funeral pyre like ants In a bonfire. They were shouting and brandishing weapons, but confusion reigned supreme and no man seemed certain where to go or what to do. The Executioner helped to resolve that fatal uncertainty, sweeping the ranks with a prolonged burst from his automatic rifle. Guys were flopping around down there, wallowing in their own Juices and shrieking as the spray of steel-jackets ripped through them. Those still standing spun toward Bolan and flung Ineffectual pistol fire in his general direction.

He emptied the clip of the M-16 into those stumbling, staggering straw men, then slammed a fresh clip home and emptied that one as well. Unsatisfied, he gave the M-79 Its roaring head, alternating rounds of buckshot and high explosives as he marched a parade of death across those hellgrounds.

A handful of walking wounded were frantically dragging themselves toward hopeful cover.

Bolan let those survivors go, turning his attention to the house itself. It was burning now in spots, sagging badly in others where the deadly firebirds had impacted in their flight, but the overall structure stood defiantly, a symbol of all that Bolan had sought to eradicate in Arizona. He turned the grenade launcher on that castle of gloom, spewing round after round of explosives and gas into the smoking shell. Masonry flew. Bricks showered the grounds, punching holes through the pall of smoke in their passage. Secondary explosions sounded within the bowels of that structure as a plume of inky smoke rose straight into the cloudless Arizona sky.

It was enough. The message was loud and clear.

Bolan poised there for a long moment surveying that scorched landscape, the stench of gunpowder and blasted flesh irritating his nostrils, then he spun about and went out the way he'd come.

The old man may or may not have survived that holocaust. Either way, the message was sent and received. There would be no easy take-over in Arizona ... not this time.

But the real battle still lay to the north. Bolan was strongly aware of that fact. He'd monitored the telephone conversations, knew that fresh troops were being rushed to the combat zone, knew that plenty of hellfire and thunder lay in his future.

The presence of people such as Hinshaw and Morales in this environment of corruption constituted a clear and present danger unimaginable to the average citizen. A natural rapacity combined with military expertise and further combined with the greed and power lust rampant in the area could spell nothing but death and dishonor to the people of Arizona.

So no one had appointed Mack Bolan their lord protector. So what?

So the common man In the street looked on underworld hoods as some sort of glamorous, charismatic defiers of the system. So what?

Bolan was not there for applause, nor was he there to save Arizona from itself. He was there because his destiny was there, because he could not turn away from his fate. He was an instrument of an evolving universe.

He was Judgment. Not the judge, not the jury, not the sentence itself.

Mack Bolan was the Mafia's Judgment and he knew it and accepted it.

Let the people of Arizona accept what they would.

Chapter 13

Face

"It's hard to believe one man could do all this." Paul Bonelli was fit to be tied. His narrowed eyes scanned the compound, lingering over various points of particular carnage.

"Well, one did," Hinshaw replied, a defensive tone edging his weary voice.

The two men stood on the porch of Hinshaw's field headquarters. A handful of Hinshaw's men flanked their leader, remaining aloof from the forty or so Tucson hardmen milling around their crew wagons in the yard. Bonelli's gunmen were taking in the incredible scene as well, commenting on the site's condition In hushed tones.

There was much for comment. The walls of the main building were riddled with symmetrical holes, the window frames splintered and empty except for jagged shards of glass. The ruined hulk of a limousine slouched beside the house, its pock-marked body sagging to starboard on two shredded tires. Behind the ventilated structure, two mounds of blackened lumber memorialized the former existence of other buildings.

The younger Bonelli shook his head in bewilderment and turned toward the door. Hinshaw got there first, holding it wide for the Tucson underboss. Bonelli accepted the courtesy as his due and stepped inside, pausing briefly in the doorway to finger the jagged splinters left by heavy-caliber slugs which had punched through the panel. He took in the interior damage at a glance — bullet gouges, furniture overturned and shattered.

"How many did you lose this time?" he asked Hinshaw.

"Four dead, two wounded. It's a wonder we didn't lose more."

"Any rumbles from the cops?"

"None. Neighbors are scarce around here. And they mind their own business."

Bonelli nodded his satisfaction with the answer, allowing his eyes to sweep the room again. His gaze settled on a large weapon which sat atop a dusty tripod In one corner of the room. Two short tubes made of plastic or cardboard or something were propped against the big gun, completing the sinister little tableau. The mafioso gestured toward the pile of weaponry with one hand as he turned toward Hinshaw.

"That's it?"

"That's it. A .50-caliber machine gun and a couple of LAW rocket tubes."

Hinshaw's tone was brisk, matter-of-fact.

"What's that LAW?"

"Light anti-tank weapon," Hinshaw explained to the "civilian."

"Think of it as a throw-away bazooka. We found them on a rise overlooking the compound, about a hundred yards out. He did this with the .50." Hinshaw's hand swept the room, indicating the hundreds of bullet holes. "It has an automatic trigger lock, set for continuous fire. That left his hands free to handle the LAWS."

"The chopper shoots by itself?" Paul Bonelli was skeptical.

Hinshaw nodded. "It's a relatively simple mechanism. He probably-"

"Simple?" Bonelli interrupted, scarcely able to believe his ears. "It was simple for one man to kick hell out of your entire force? What were your boys doing, Jimmy?"

"Dying," Hinshaw answered flatly. "Or trying like hell not to."

Bonelli was boiling. "It looks bad, Jimmy. One guy dumping all over — how many men is it now?" The Tucson sub-capo knew very well how many men had been lost before Hinshaw answered "twenty-three" in a tired voice. Bonelli nodded solemnly as he repeated the number aloud. Then his tone softened and he took a different tack with the beleaguered field commander. "Okay, I can see what you've been up against here. I understand. But my papa, now ..." Paul left the sentence hanging, letting Hinshaw know that Don Niccolo Bonelli was not apt to share his son's understanding of the situation. He let Hinshaw think about that for a moment then added, "I hate to bring home news like this so soon after your other troubles." Another pause, then, "Maybe I don't have to tell him right now. I guess we can wait until after we have this thing in the bag." Bonelli smiled at the scowling soldier. "We are going to bag it, aren't we?"