Chapter Twenty-Three

Blood springs

Victor Poppy and Tony Avina almost ran over someone in the corridor. Bolan could hear them apologizing. The .32 was in his hand and muzzling for the door when Andrea D'Agosta stepped through. In her hand was the little nickel-plated .22 Bolan had taken from her some days earlier.

She sized up ,the situation in a quick circular glance, then stared soberly at Bolan's weapon. Her nose quivering, she said, "I want my Poppa."

"Someone else already has him," Bolan told her.

"I take everything back," she said. "I want him."

"Andrea, get outta here," DiGeorge growled.

"I've been listening," she said. "I know what's going on here." Her eyes flared pure hatred at Mack Bolan. "You're worse than any of them," she spat. "I didn't want to believe the stories I've been hearing today but they're true. You're a kill-crazy hood and now you think you're going to kill my Poppa."

"Aw hey, bambina," DiGeorge pleaded. "Go on outta here and let us men handle our business. You got it all wrong."

"She has it all right, Deej," Bolan said.

"Well, for God's sakes ain't you got no sense of . . ."

DiGeorge's protest was cut short by the capgun plaap of the tiny revolver. A vase shattered behind Bolan. He grinned and said, "She's got the drop on us, Phil."

"I'll drop you, too," Andrea angrily told him. "Don't think I can't handle a gun."

"I don't think that," Bolan replied, still grinning.

"Come on, Poppa," Andrea said.

"For God's sake, Andrea, this guy is playing with you. He can shoot both your eyes out before you know he's moving. Get on outta here."

"I said . . ."

"Go on, Deej," Bolan said, cutting Andrea off. "I'm not gunfighting your kid."

DiGeorge said, "That means you get off easy. You get me to running and all you have to do is sit back and laugh and send out your boys to shoot Deej in the back. On some streetcorner. In a car somewheres. I ain't going. We settle this here."

"Don't argue with him, Deej," Marasco pleaded.

Andrea elevated her pistol to shoulder level at full arm-extension, sighting on Bolan. "We leave right now, together, or I start shooting," she warned.

Bolan's .32 was still in his hand. He casually angled it toward DiGeorge. "When I go, Poppa goes," he said simply.

"Deej, get outta here," Marasco urged him.

"I ain't forgetting you, Mr. Philip Honey full of stingers. I ain't forgetting,"

"Just go," Bolan said.

DiGeorge went. Andrea went out behind him, the little gun still trained on Bolan. She closed the door and Marasco said, "Well."

"There's still the contract," Bolan philosophized.

"Deej ain't no clown," Marasco said, wetting his lips nervously. "He won't go no further than the first bunch of boys, then he'll be coming back here with 'em."

"I'm not letting him go," Bolan said. He stepped over to the French doors and tugged at the latch. "I didn't want the kid in the middle of this."

"I sure hope there ain't no mistakes about this, Franky," Marasco worried aloud. "I mean, hitting a Capo just don't happen every day. Maybe we should check it first. Just to make sure."

"You crazy?" Bolan said. "Who you think you're gonna check with?" He pushed the doors open and stepped onto the lawn. Marasco leapt after him.

"Well, who issues th' contract, Franky?"

"You crazy? Who the hell you think can order a hit on a Capo? You gonna ask 'em if maybe they haven't changed their minds? You, Philip Honey?"

"Not me, Franky," Marasco replied quickly.

Bolan fired three rapid shots into the air. Several men whirled and raced toward him. "What's up?" one of them shouted.

"You know Benny Peaceful?" Bolan yelled.

"Hell, yes we know 'im! Is his fingers moving?"

"They damn better get to! I want the gates sealed! Nothin' gets out!"

"Nothin' it is!" the man shouted back. He ran toward the front, two others following. A fourth man stood fiat-footed, gawking at Bolan. Bolan raised his .32 and shot him dead where he stood.

"Hey!" Marasco cried. "What's that for?"

Bolan whirled on him with a savage snarl. "Only two kinds are here now. Those that live and those that die. And Benny Peaceful is the line that divides."

"That punk?" Marasco yelled unbelievingly.

"Yeah, it's kind of poetic, isn't it?" Bolan said, suddenly dropping the mask from his Lambretta voice. "Of all the senseless, idiotic killings you lunatics are in for, what could be more senseless and idiotic than letting a Benny Peaceful separate the sheep from the goats?"

"Huh? What?" Marasco was confused and mentally reeling. "I don't get . . . what the hell is . . . for God's sake! You're Bolan!" He was failing away in shock, clawing for his gun.

"That's right," Bolan said, and put a bullet through the base of his nose. Marasco went over backwards, alarm and betrayal and outrage and fear all evaporating in that final mask of death. "Sorry about that, Philip Honey," Bolan said, actually meaning it, and then he began reloading the .32 and went in search of more game.

Bolan's gun was pre-empted by his own strategy, however. Everyone, by this time, was shooting at everyone. A squad of guards with Thompsons were mowing down everything that moved in the vicinity of the gate. Two vehicles in the parking area were burning. Bodies were strewn about the grounds in various poses of death and near-death. Bolan gave up looking for targets and concentrated on finding Andrea. He did not find the girl outside but he did stumble upon the man who had eluded him on the cliffs of Balboa. Julian DiGeorge lay like a split sandbag with his guts oozing out upon the soil of his kingdom, victim of his own trained assassins and their ever-willing Thompson subs. The big .45 calibre bullets had torn him open, but the Capo was still trying to show his dominance of the forces about him, trying to stuff his own entrails back inside with manicured fingers that had not yet received the summons of death. Staring down at him, Bolan was thinking of Doc Brantzen and Genghis Conn and a sweet-faced little lady he had met only in death. He saw the face of pain and surprise on Big Tim Braddock, and he saw the embalmed faces of his own father, mother, and kid sister. He saw the seven grotesque remains of his death squad, and the scores of Mafia dead and dying who had met the Executioner's guns . . . and then he saw only Julian DiGeorge, squirming in the dirt of a kingdom that had not been worth it, and Bolan wondered if anything was worth it. War and violence and death had walked the mountains and valleys of his life for as long as he could remember, and Bolan suddenly could not find any meaningful reasons for any of it. His nose twitched with the smell of death, his ears roared with the screams and moans of the dying, and his eyes smarted with the sight of suffering and torn bodies and blood blood blood everywhere.

Julian DiGeorge looked up at him and said, "Shoot me," in a voice that could not be much longer for this world.

"I wouldn't think of it," Bolan muttered. He stepped away from the dying and went back the way he'd come, across the lawn of death, through the French doors, and into the Capo's study.

Andrea D'Agosta was there also, struggling in the grip of one Benny Peaceful, No. 2 Man of Franky Lucky Bolan's new crime empire. Tears were streaming across her cheeks and she screamed out her hate and rage for the man who had brought them there.

Bolan listened to her until her breath ran out, then he said to Benny Peaceful, "You run a sweet hit. Now get on back out there and clean up the garbage. If cops show, and I doubt it, tell 'em Bolan was trying to hit on th' place."

"Sure, Franky," Benny replied. He went to the door, then turned back with an afterthought. "Oh, by the way," he said, "do I move into the villa?"

"Sure," Bolan said wearily. "You take Philip Honey's suite."

Benny Peaceful went out beaming. Bolan stared at the sobbing girl for a moment, then reached for the phone and dialed Carl Lyons.

"I'm glad you called," Lyons said tightly. "I was thinking of trying to contact you. You asked me to check the death of Charles D'Agosta. There's more than a dozen letters from him on file with a congressional committee on organized crime, all of them relating to the financial empire and underworld involvements of Julian DiGeorge. Now Lou Pena was the guy who . . ."

"Hold it," Bolan said tiredly. "Give it to someone who needs it."

He carried the telephone over to Andrea and held the receiver to her ear. "Tell the man to start over," he instructed her.

"Start over," she whispered mechanically. Seconds later she began holding the instrument for herself. Bolan lit a cigarette and smoked while she listened to the policeman's recital. Then she returned the phone to Bolan, said, "Thank you," smoothed her clothing, pushed at her hair, and walked out.

Bolan carried the phone to the desk and sat in DiGeorge's chair. "What's going on out there?" Lyons asked him.

"Just a little house cleaning," Bolan replied, his voice still wearied. "Tell, uh, what's his name — Brognola? — tell him to forget about that portfolio. I've blown it."

"Your cover?" Lyons asked anxiously.

Bolan sighed. "That and everything else. DiGeorge is dead and his family is a shambles. They're running around shooting at each other now. I suggest you post a couple of platoons of infantry to watch this place. The fireworks will really start when they all wake up and find out what they've done. Maybe you can pick up a few extra pieces in the process."

The detective whistled to cover an embarrassing loss for words, then murmured, "I don't suppose there's any chance for squaring up your cover. I mean . . ."

"No chance," Bolan tiredly replied. "You can fool some of the fools some of the time, but — no, I'm going to gather up some stuff from DiGeorge's desk, my final package, and then I'm going to pull a quick fade. Uh, Lyons — thanks, eh."

"Drop the stuff in a locker somewhere and send me the key," Lyons suggested. "Some of us are thanking you, Bolan. But just some of us."

"I get the message," Bolan said. He hung up, pulled a briefcase from a bottom drawer of the desk, and began filling it with assorted tidbits from the records of the late Julian DiGeorge. Then he went to the door, took a final look at the Capo's control center, and went out through the familiar corridor.

He found Andrea standing beside the pool, staring dazedly into the water. A fully-clothed body floated there, partially submerged.

"You want to leave with me?" Bolan asked her.

"Where to?" she replied, smiling woodenly.

Bolan shrugged. "Does it matter?" he asked.

She shook her head and placed a hand in his. He led her to the new Mercedes, put her inside, then climbed in and cranked the motor. They spun across to the gate. The man whom Bolan had tagged "Andrew Hardy" glanced at her and showed Bolan a smug grin. A bloodstained handkerchief was wound tightly about one of his hands. He leaned against the Mercedes with his good hand and said, "Quite a show, Franky."

"Yeah," Bolan said. "Tell Benny Peaceful I'm taking care of the kid. Tell 'im I said to watch things until I get back."

"Don't you worry none about Benny," Andrew Hardy reassured him.

Bolan nodded curtly and released the clutch. They cleared the gate with a screech of tires and powered down the lane to the main road. Benny Peaceful did not know it yet, Bolan was thinking, but he needed everyone's worry. A family reckoning was coming for this day's work. Bolan knew a momentary twinge of sympathy for the insurgents, but clamped it back, seeing the hired guns in their true light: as budding Lou Penas. The world could get along without them.

Andrea looked back briefly as they swung out of the lane. She shuddered, then straightened and moved closer to Bolan. "Whoever you are," she said quietly, "you've just delivered me from purgatory."

Bolan smiled. "There are two ways out of purgatory, you know," he reminded her.

"Which way are we taking?" Andrea murmured.

Bolan could not answer the girl, but he had a pretty good idea of his own route. It would be a familiar one. A shadow life in a shadow world, taking on three dimensions only when someone's blood flowed. Bolan knew his route. He squared his shoulders, encircled her with an arm, and drew her closer. "Just keep looking at that horizon up there," he told her.

"What will that do?" she quiety inquired.

"It will remind you that you're still alive, that the world is still turning, and that just about anything could happen next."

The girl sighed and moved her head onto his shoulder. They had reached the junction of the main east-west highway. Bolan looked to the west and into the blood-red of a desert sunset. "Oh no," he muttered, swinging east, "I'm not heading into that."

But the Executioner did not need a symbolically red sky to overshadow his future. The red of blood was etched into his very shadow, and all compass points would lead inevitably to the same horizon. If there had been reason for the Mafia to hate and fear Mack Bolan in the past, the time was fast approaching when they would rise up with all their wrath and power to crush this greatest of all threats to their continued existence. Pat and Mike lay just across the Executioner's next horizon. In Bolan's shadow world of the immediate future, all skies were bloody red.

For the moment, however, there was another victory which was not quite a victory, a good car under him, a straight road ahead, and a warm woman in his arms. Andrea sighed, "Wherever you're heading, just take me with you."

"No hard feelings?" Bolan asked her.

"My Poppa died before I was born, Mack," she said.

"What'd you call me?"

"I'll call you anything you'd like," she whispered.

Bolan sighed through his battle mask. "Just don't call me Lucky," he said, and kissed her, and realized that the mask did not have to be all battle.