The Bone Yard

Theres a wild card in Vegas.

The Mafia, the Japanese yakuza and the Vegas Old Guard each want control of the city.

Mack Bolan is the new player and hes dealing in death, with skills learned in a hell called Nam and honed to a sharp edge in the urban jungle.

To shave the odds the Executioner pulls a Joker from the deck, Tommy Anders. The game is down to one last hand — winner takes all.

Dedicated to those members of a thirty-five-man special operations force who were killed by Cuban and Grenadian troops after making a secret landing in Grenada prior to the U.S. invasion in October 1983.

The action never stops in Vegas. There is always something riding on the line, always the chance to make or break a fortune with another card, another roll of heartless dice across the green felt battlefield.

In Vegas the hunger is never satisfied. With an appetite for money, sex, prestige or power, somewhere in the all-night town a hungry visitor can find it all. Or lose it all. Las Vegas is a jungle planted in the middle of a desert, and like any other jungle it is filled with predators.

The strong survive by cunning, force and savagery; the weak become their prey, are drained of sustenance and cast aside. The jungle hunters live within a private hierarchy, self-imposed and rigidly enforced. The strongest and best organized cooperate, divide the lion's share of plunder while the jackals forage for their leavings. Natural attrition thins the ranks and weeds out any predator unworthy of the competition for survival. Las Vegas is the town that Bugsy Siegel built, and it had been an early stop along Mack Bolan's hellfire trail. He had been tested there and, against the odds, had beat the house. The Executioner had gambled everything in Vegas and he'd won. But his victory was transient, totally devoid of any lasting guarantees. Now there were rumbles coming out of Vegas, louder than the shock waves from the Atomic Energy Commission's below-ground testing range located north of town. A sinister vibration underlay the omnipresent jangle of the action. It was time to play again in Vegas, right. Against a loaded deck, with every odd belonging to the opposition. Never mind that Bolan did not know the stakes precisely. There was only one rule in the game he played: you bet the limit every time, and never fold. It was a death game, sure, and going into it he held a dead man's hand. With luck and grim audacity, it just might be enough to see him through.

Mack Bolan hit a combat crouch in darkness, frozen into immobility among the shadows. His senses probed the desert night, reaching out for any sign of hostile life in the immediate vicinity, found nothing.

Still, he did not move for half a minute more, taking no chances. A cautious soldier never took anything on face value, and Mack Bolan was a very cautious warrior. Dressed for midnight action, he was virtually invisible among the shadows of the low retaining wall that he had scaled. The blacksuit fit him like a second skin, its snug fabric breathing with him, leaving no excess material to snag on undergrowth or rustle as he moved. His face and hands were blackened with camou cosmetics, leaving only the whites of his eyes to betray him if any foe should get that close.

But none who did would have a chance to sound the warning.

The Executioner was rigged for war. Beneath one arm, the sleek Beretta 93-R nestled in its shoulder harness, specially built to accommodate the silencer of Bolan's own design. Big Thunder, the .44 AutoMag cannon, rode military webbing at his hip, and extra magazines for both weapons ringed his waist in nylon pouches. The pockets of his skinsuit held stilettos and garrotes along with a variety of other tested killing gear. But the man in black was hoping he would not have to fire a shot this night.

His mission was supposed to be a soft probe, in and out, staying only long enough to gather some intelligence before he made his exit. In and out, right. Except that soft probes had a way of going hard when it was least expected, turning into firefights in the time it took to draw a breath or die.

Mack Bolan knew his job. And he was also painfully aware of how "blind chance" could intervene and throw the best-laid plans into the dumpster without warning. So he hoped for soft and traveled hard, a portion of his mind alert for any danger signal on this unfamiliar turf. The outer wall had offered little opposition, but he knew Minotte would have other lines of personal defense between him and the house. The desert night was perilous, and Bolan was not taking anything for granted so early in the game.

Bobby Minotte was the Dixie Mafia's representative on station in Las Vegas.

Theoretically no one controlled the open city and the different families were free to come and go as long as they refrained from stepping on one another's toes. But Minotte's faction was at least as strong as any of the competition. And he was big enough, for sure, to have a handle on the rumbles Bolan had been picking up for weeks along the covert grapevine.

The Executioner knew Minotte could provide the necessary battlefield intelligence if he would talk, and Bolan had unending faith in his own powers of persuasion.

Minotte's private palace in the desert was a rambling ranch-style house surrounded by acres of lawn. The house itself was flanked by stables, where the mobster raised his breeding stock of prize Arabians, and by tennis courts, all dark and deserted now. Despite the hour, the house was still ablaze with lights, and Bolan counted half a dozen cars parked end to end along the curving driveway out front.

The Executioner moved out across the sloping lawn, a gliding shadow, every sense alert for sentries and security devices. He had covered thirty yards, with fifty left to go, before he saw the lookout. The guy was stretched out on the dewy grass, unmoving, one arm raised above his head, the other draped across his chest. He was either dead or sleeping very soundly.

Bolan knelt beside him feeling for a pulse and quickly ruled out the latter possibility. His fingers found no sign of life; instead they came back slick with blood.

A sharp piano-wire garrote had taken out the sentry. The steel strand was buried in the folds of flesh beneath his chin, so deeply that it might as well have been a knife blade drawn across his jugular. The man had died without a sound, if not without a struggle; his side arm was still snug inside its holster at his waist.

The Executioner felt a tremor race along his spine. Someone else had passed this way within the hour, judging from the body temperature, heading for the ranch Bolan had no way of knowing who the hunter was, nor his mission, but the final target had to be Minotte. No one with a working brain would brave the mafioso's fortress just to ice a soldier on the lawn and let it go at that. The capo was the mark, and Bolan was confronted with two equally unpleasant choices. He could forge ahead and take the risk of stumbling into a hit in progress, or he could scrub the mission for tonight and start all over again.

Unpleasant choices, right. But for Mack Bolan there was really no damn choice at all. No question of retreat while there was still a chance of getting what he came for. And if he had to save Minotte's life before he got the chance to question him, fine. It might make the mobster more talkative in the end.

Bolan slid the silenced Beretta from the shoulder rigging, easing off the safety as he moved out, leaving the dead man alone with the universe. Bolan's business here was with the living, and he hoped that he would find some waiting for him in the ranch house. As if in answer to his thoughts there came a muffled burst of gunfire from inside the house.

Bolan hit a sprint, the sleek 93-R probing ahead of him as he devoured the lawn with loping strides. No time for caution now. If he was going to the party he would have to get there while the host still had some life left in him.

The Executioner was twenty yards out from the ranch-style and gaining when the front doors opened and a man emerged onto the porch. He was dressed in shirt-sleeves, reeling like a drunkard, both arms clasped across his abdomen. His once-white shirt was dyed red from the armpits down, a glistening crimson that was sickly brilliant under the floodlights.

And the guy was struggling to hold his guts in with both hands, no longer able to retain his balance as he sank down on one knee. Someone had done a bit of surgery without the benefit of anesthetic, and the patient was using up the last of his strength in the search for a second opinion. Incredibly, the man was rising to his feet again, his face an ashen mask from the exertion. Bolan saw him swivel in the direction of the open doors, one hand rising from his ravaged abdomen, a pistol in the fist with bloody streamers trailing from the snubby barrel. The dying man was trying to sight on some elusive target.

Suddenly a slender black-clad figure vaulted through the open double doors, reminding Bolan of a gymnast in midflight. Swathed in midnight black from head to foot, complete with hood and mask, the figure seemed to be armed only with a three-foot-long flashing sword. He came in low, beneath the houseman's trembling gunhand, bringing the blade up in a glittering arc, almost too fast for Bolan to follow.

One instant the hardman was standing there aiming his weapon at nothing, and then the gun was gone.

As was his hand, his forearm, everything, in fact, from his elbow down. It took a heartbeat for the houseman to decipher what had happened, and by the time he recognized the blood pumping from the severed stub it was too late for him to take evasive action. Any action. The stainless blade was overhead, whistling downward in the time it takes to blink. It made contact with the hardman's forehead, biting through his skull and stopping just short of the shoulders where it met resistance in the jawbone. Satisfied, the swordsman tugged his weapon free and shouldered past the faceless straw man as he took the low-slung porch steps in a single bound.

Mack Bolan spent a frozen moment watching the man's retreat in the direction of the waiting cars.

The hood and mask prevented the Executioner from making a secure ID, but he had seen the swordsman's kind before, and Bolan knew a ninja when he saw one.

Right.

Now what the hell...

Before his mind could even formulate the question, three more black-clad figures burst onto the lighted porch. The first two held a struggling form between them, half dragging their reluctant captive over the flagstones. The third, their flanker, hesitated in the open doorway and turned back to face invisible pursuers. From his hip, he raised an Uzi submachine gun and unleashed a ragged burst into the house.

So they were not all armed with swords and strangling wires, Bolan thought. Their arsenal was broad enough to take in heavy hardware that would make them lethal at substantial range. The soldier had to decide his course of action, but as he watched the little clutch of moving figures the decision was made for him by pure chance. He caught a glimpse of raven hair spilling around the shoulders of the struggling captive, and the floods provided him a flash of slender leg beneath a skirt as it rode up across the prisoner's thighs. A woman, dammit. And she was not going with her escorts voluntarily. Whoever she might be — Minotte's wife or daughter, part of the domestic staff — she needed help. And Bolan seemed to be the only game in town. He pushed Minotte and the mission out of mind, recognizing that a human soul in need was more important than the prospect of interrogating someone who might already be dead inside the house. Bobby Minotte would have to look out for himself tonight, if he was still alive.

The Dixie capo was a secondary target now.

Downrange the submachine gunner was backing across the lighted porch, still firing through the doors and holding back pursuers with his fusillade. Bolan raised the sleek Beretta and stroked the trigger lightly, riding out the recoil, never wincing as the weapon kicked back solidly against his palm.

The parabellum mangler took its target just below the jawline, boring through the mask. The ninja's head snapped back and he was momentarily airborne, making solid impact with the flagstones a second later. He was dead before he hit the porch and still he never let the Uzi's trigger go. The stubby little autoloader emptied out its magazine in one sustained stream of fire, raking the front of the ranch house and shattering one of the twin floodlights before the hammer fell upon an empty chamber.

The two surviving ninja saw their companion fall, but they could not divine the source of Bolan's silent shot. They assumed someone in the house had dropped their comrade so they put on the speed, dragging their hostage toward a waiting Lincoln, whose engine purred softly in the semidarkness.

Bolan swiveled, sighting swiftly.

He had a moving target, with the girl still in the line of fire, but there would never be another chance. The play was now or never — for himself and for the captive. Bolan took a breath and held it, squeezing the silenced Beretta's trigger... once, twice. And he could see the parabellums strike his human target, rippling the fabric of the black costume, boring in to find the man inside.

The ninja on the woman's left side stumbled, sprawling facedown on the flagstones, motionless.

His partner reacted with the smooth instinctive timing of a true professional. Before the woman could react he secured his grip upon her arm, preventing her from breaking free. With measured strides he kept the woman close beside him, using her as an effective shield until they gained the little flight of steps.

She made her move then, fiercely, desperately, kicking out at her captor's legs, whipping her free hand around to claw at his eyes.

She was no match for the ninja, but she managed to throw him off balance for a second, gaining purchase on the steps and almost twisting free of his grasp before he had time to react.

The Oriental warrior seemed about to let her go, had actually released her arm with one hand. But before she could break loose, his free hand slashed across and struck her just below the ear with a disabling karate chop. The woman turned to rubber in the ninja's arms, and he half-dragged her in the direction of the Lincoln.

Bolan burst out of cover of the slanting shadows, snarling as he moved. The snarl became a roar, deliberately directed at the ninja and his captive now, distracting the attacker before he could gain the car and load her inside.

The Executioner's move was effective, and the slender black-clad figure turned to face him, aware of danger on his flank for the first time. A glance took in the gun that Bolan carried but the ninja never hesitated, dumping the woman unceremoniously on the asphalt at his feet as he took up his stance to meet the enemy attack.

One hand dipped down along his waistband, coming up again and flashing forward in a lightning underhand. Bolan saw it coming and went into a flying shoulder roll, rebounding off the new-mown grass and tumbling out of range before the blade sliced air above him.

He came out of the roll with his silenced blaster ahead of him. He milked a searing double-punch out of the autoloader, putting both rounds through the target at a range of fifteen yards. The twin parabellums knocked the man off his feet, one hand raised ineffectually to close the pumping holes above his heart. Another second, and the last reserves of life had melted out of him, his slack form collapsing backward on the pavement. One left, and Bolan was already veering off to meet the driver of the captured Lincoln when the swordsman reappeared, rolling out of the car and onto his feet in a single fluid motion. Instead of the glistening blade his fist was filled with blue-steel hardware, making target acquisition on the Executioner's chest.

Suddenly the guy exploded, face and chest disintegrating into crimson spray, the useless pistol tumbling from his lifeless fingers. The echo of a shotgun blast from the direction of the porch was painful in Bolan's ear. He spun around to face the gunner, knowing one man dressed in black would look like any other to the shaken houseman in the heat of battle. Bolan was just in time as the gunner, already working the slide to chamber up another buckshot round, swung his bulky pump gun across to find the second standing target.

The 93-R coughed discreetly and the shotgunner collapsed along the parabellum mangler's flight path, buckling where it pierced his abdomen and tore up his vital organs. He staggered, lost his balance, fell... but Bolan did not wait around for confirmation of the kill. There would be other men inside, perhaps more prowling on the grounds. He had not risked everything, aborted his reconnaissance, to die there in the driveway with the woman sleeping soundly at his feet. He holstered the Beretta reluctantly, stooping down to catch the woman underneath the armpits.