The Bone Yard (14 page)

He took the tall one first, a single measured squeeze dispatching silent death to close the gap between them, a parabellum mangler opening his cheek beneath one eye and boring through to find the brain. The guy kept going through his paces, traveling without a conscious object now, colliding with the wall and then rebounding in a boneless mass across the doorway.

By the time he hit cement, the sentry's partner was a fading memory, wet pieces of himself adhering to the window and the wall behind him where Bolan's single round had exited behind one ear. He sat down hard, no longer reaching for the pistol that was still secure inside his holster. Bolan checked the alley once again in each direction, taking time to drag the bodies ten feet from the doorway and depositing them together in a waiting dumpster.

They would be there when the trucks from Silver State Disposal came to get them with the other garbage in the morning.

Two down, and how many left to go?

The Executioner had no way of determining the answer in advance, and even if he had been able to predict the odds against him it would not have made a qualitative difference in his actions. He was here to fight, to spread the cleansing fire among his enemies, and he would carry out that mission whether five guns or five hundred waited for him in the Gold Rush, right.

The Executioner was not a gambler, normally. He much preferred to make his moves on the basis of reconnaissance and hard intelligence, but sometimes there was only time for action.

Like now.

He would be gambling this time, with the highest stakes that any man possessed — his life. But more than that, if he should lose, it would be victory for the cannibals and a defeat for everything that Bolan cherished.

He was up against the house odds, but there were ways around those odds. A skillful player with the guts to stand up and defy the house could sometimes break the bankroll and come out a winner. Someone with the guts of a warrior. An Executioner, perhaps. H e slipped inside the service entrance, shedding his topcoat to reveal the armament he wore beneath it, moving boldly toward the main casino now.

Mack Bolan's life was riding on the line, and he was playing out the only hand available. It was a death hand, right, and for the moment he was dealing.

Spinoza faced the woman across his desk, reading the fear in her eyes and knowing he could use that fear against her, given time. She would say anything, do anything he asked her to when he was finished with her.

Given time.

But time was one commodity that he was running short of, and the others with him in the room — Liguori, Johnny Cats, and Tommy Dioguardi, from Minotte's family — were taking every opportunity to let him know of their impatience.

They were chafing at the bit, unsettled by the news from Kuwahara's. Paulie and the gunners from New York had run into a storm out there, and from all reports the few of them who walked away from it were looking at six-figure bail, for openers. It would take time to get them out — the ones who were not hospitalized already — and meantime the chieftains who were gathered at the Gold Rush had begun to feel exposed, unprotected. Spinoza was not worried.

There were still some forty guns at the hotel, and even if that bastard Kuwahara was alive, he would be tied up with the cops until they sorted out the shooting down in Paradise. If he was still alive, Spinoza meant to find it out and have a hot reception waiting for him when he made his bail, damn right. A welcome-home party that the little Nip would long remember.

As for the woman.

It was disturbing, Dioguardi's story of her showing up at Bob Minotte's just before the raid that took the Southern capo's life. She did not have the lethal look about her, but Spinoza had learned never to take anything for granted when it came to life and death. He put no faith at all in blind coincidence, and that meant she had a reason for her presence at Minotte's, and now here, in the Gold Rush.

Whatever that purpose might be, he meant to find it out within the hour. By any means necessary.

"All right, let's try it one more time," he said. "I want your name, the reason that you're here... and after this is settled, we can all relax. You can go home."

"Like hell..." Liguori started to intrude, but Frank Spinoza raised a hand and cut him off.

"Excuse my friends," he said, forcing a smile. "They're just a bit excited — and they don't take kindly to trespassers, eavesdroppers... that kind of thing."

The woman sat mute, just staring back at him, and underneath the fear, there was something else — a kind of grim determination, maybe, that told Spinoza to expect resistance.

Fine.

He had encountered stubborn types before, and where persuasion failed, the application of strategic force was often more effective. Spinoza reached inside his top desk drawer, drew out the Browning automatic and set it on the desk between them with its muzzle pointed in the woman's direction.

"Now. I understand you're scared," he told her. "And you've got good reason. If I don't get answers from you pretty quick... well, I can't be responsible for what might happen to you."

"I've got nothing to say," she informed him, her voice small and quaking. "You're holding me against my will. That's kidnapping. I'll stack that against a trespass charge any day, so go ahead and call the police."

"When I'm ready." Spinoza felt his smile going, but could not retrieve it in time. "First thing, I'm going to have those answers."

Silence once again and another toss of the head that set her hair in dancing motion all around her face.

"Goddamn it, Frank..."

"Shut up, Larry. Leave this to me."

And he could feel the others staring at him in amazement, wondering where he found the guts to talk that way to other capos, but Spinoza was no longer worried about their reactions. He raised the pistol, circling the desk to stand before the woman, and bent down, his face mere inches from her own.

"I'll ask you one more time," he said, and there was no mistaking the menace in his tone.

"Go to hell."

He hit her with his open palm, the shock of it exploding up his arm with stunning force. Her head rocked back, blood spurting from her nose, and when she opened her eyes again she had the dazed expression of a shell-shock victim. Frank Spinoza gave her time to clear her head before he stuck the pistol in her face and cocked the hammer.

"One last time," he told her now. "I want some answers and you'd better be convincing." He was giddy with the power of the moment, knowing that he could do anything he wanted to with this one. He could blow her head off, throw her on the desk and take her then and there with all the others watching... anything.

The others.

When he finished with the woman, he had plans for them as well. There would be rounds enough inside the Browning's magazine for everyone. A clean sweep, sure, and too long overdue.

The capo of Las Vegas smiled, a reptile's grimace, full of hunger unfulfilled.

Bolan cleared the service area and made his way in the direction of the large casino proper, moving cautiously, scanning the corridors to either side of him. He held the Mini-Uzi ready, waiting to respond to any hostile challenge, knowing that the savages were all around him now. The problem would be finding them, rooting them out and destroying them without walking into an ambush.

And he found them thirty feet along the corridor as he was passing by an office doorway with the legend Private painted on it. As he passed the door it swung open and a startled face confronted him, mouth working silently for several seconds as the brain attempted to translate its silent warning into sound.

The guy recovered instantly at sight of Bolan's rising Uzi. He leaped backward, slamming the door behind him and fumbling with the locking mechanism. And he had his voice back now, alerting anyone in earshot to the danger of an armed intruder in their midst. Bolan stitched a burst across the flimsy door, then hit it with a flying kick that tore the lock apart, following through into a diving shoulder roll. He caught a glimpse of hardman number one slumped back against a filing cabinet, clutching at the bloody ruin of his punctured abdomen. Others were unloading on him now with handguns, and he let the dying take care of themselves.

Two of them were crouched behind a massive metal desk, taking turns at popping up to fire in his direction. A third was holed up in a tiny back room that appeared to serve as combination lounge and storeroom. Bolan pinned the two desk gunners down with probing fire and scuttled backward to the cover of another unattended desk that faced their sanctuary from across the room.

It was a weak position, right, with space beneath the desk for ricochets to find him if they started thinking straight instead of firing out of reflex. Worse, they had the chance to pin him down until sufficient reinforcements could arrive to rush him.

The Executioner would have to move swiftly if he meant to stay alive. Another moment might be all the time he had.

Bolan sprang a frag grenade from his combat harness, pulled the pin and let it fly, already counting down. The pitch was perfect, even under fire, deflecting off metal filing cabinets to drop down behind the desk, between the hostile gunners in their little foxhole.

"What the..." And that was all before the blast eclipsed their screaming voices, toppling the desk and spreading both of them across the walls like lumpy red wallpaper. A piece of shrapnel clipped the wounded gunner where he stood transfixed for a moment.

Then he slid into the graceless sprawl of death.

Three down and number four was screaming in his little pantry hideaway, half-blinded by the smoke and deafened by the harsh concussion of the blast. He lost it, lurching up and out of cover, firing blindly as he cleared the narrow doorway with no more idea of where his target was than if he had been shooting at the moon.

Bolan tracked him through the doorway, stroking off a three-round burst that picked the gunner off his feet and twisted him around, a human corkscrew, airborne, sprawling back across the smoking desk.

Before the body finished twitching, the Executioner was up and out of there, already moving back along the corridor to the casino, searching for the action. And it was just ahead of him, the Executioner could hear it now, the jangle of the play replaced now by the pop and crackle of small-arms fire.

Someone had engaged the enemy in there, and they were not firing at him — at least not yet.

Mack Bolan dropped the Uzi's magazine and snapped a fresh one into place, no longer walking now, but jogging toward the sounds of battle.

They had started the bloodfeast without him but the Executioner was coming. Better late than never, right.

He was one of the invited guests whether the hosts were currently aware of it or not.

The Executioner had been invited by the Universe.

Abe Bernstein reached inside his jacket, pulling out the short slim automatic pistol from his waistband. He took a moment, checking out the action, waiting while old Harry Thorson slid a new clip into the receiver of his Army-model .45.

They had regrouped for the assault on Frank Spinoza's penthouse, Bernstein refusing to take any chances when they had come so far and dared so much to make it work. They would be done with it tonight or none of them could count on a tomorrow — in Las Vegas or anywhere. If Frank Spinoza or another of the capos in there managed to escape with news of what Abe Bernstein had accomplished at the Gold Rush, they could write it off as a total loss.

"All set?" He glanced around and noticed that Jack Goldblume held his pistol pointed to the floor as if he was afraid it might go off and hurt someone. Old Jack was looking green around the gills, as if the sights that he had witnessed there that evening had been almost more than he could stomach. Almost, but not entirely. He was with them still, and Bernstein meant to make sure that he stayed there — at least until they finished with Spinoza and the others. He still needed the Beacon, a sympathetic press, to help cover their tracks when they were finished. Later, when the smoke had cleared and the dust of battle settled... Well, Jack Goldblume was looking more expendable by the moment.

Abe's prey was in there, waiting for him now. Not taking any chances, he had risked a phone call from the last suite they had visited, putting on his best solicitous flunky's voice and asking Frank if there was anything that he could do for any of them.

Coffee? Liquor? Anything at all? Spinoza had cut him off, but not before Abe had heard the other voices in the background, jabbering excitedly together, arguing in angry tones. Liguori.

Catalanotte.

Dioguardi.

A clean sweep, bet your ass.

"Let's go."

He nodded to the pair of mercenaries waiting by the doorway to the penthouse, and they stepped in front of it, their silenced Ingrams leveled from the waist. One of them hit the locking mechanism with a short precision burst and they followed through, the others crowding in behind them, Bernstein jockeying into a firing-line position, letting Thorson and Jack Goldblume ride his coattails.

And his men were under orders not to fire until he gave the order. One last precaution, time to let him verify the targets before the heads began to roll.

He stood there gaping in amazement and shock at the tableau laid out before his eyes. At first the visual impulse made no sense, and then he realized that it was no illusion.

Bernstein saw the woman seated in the chair with her hands bound behind her. He made the recognition through a veil of caking blood that ran down from her nose, her lips, a cut above one eye. Spinoza stood above her, one fist poised to strike again. Behind him the other capos ranged around the desk, their enjoyment of the sport interrupted by the intrusion.

Something cold and deadly rose in Bernstein's throat and he raised the pistol, aiming it at Frank Spinoza's chest before the thought could translate unconscious images.

"You bastard!"

"Wait a minute, Abe..." And there was something in Spinoza's hand, a pistol, Bernstein saw, but he ignored it. Squeezing off a round, he watched the slug drill through Spinoza's throat, releasing bloody plumes that splattered down his shirt front, soaking through.

Another round, and one of Frank Spinoza's eyes exploded from its socket, hurtling across the room. The man was dead now but he would not fall.

Bernstein kept on firing, emptying his magazine into the standing corpse, until the point-blank impact threw him backward, stretched him out across the cluttered desk.

The other capos were reacting, alternately diving for some cover they could never hope to reach, or grasping after weapons of their own. The mercenaries opened fire, and Abe could hear the roar of Harry Thorson's .45 as he joined in. But Abe was heedless of the cross fire now, already kneeling down at Lucy's side and slicing at her bonds with a penknife he carried.

Of the mafiosi, only Johnny Cats had time to reach his weapon and employ it, squeezing off three rounds before converging streams of fire crucified him to the wall. The others died in varied attitudes of flight, devoid of honor, courage — everything but fear.

Abe Bernstein felt the tears as he released his granddaughter from her confinement in the straight-backed chair. His taste of victory had turned to something sour in his throat, threatening to gag him as he knelt there looking at her swollen bloodied face.

He told her he was sorry, begged her to forgive him, but she did not seem to hear. At last he motioned for a couple of his soldiers to assist him, and he lifted her out of the chair, got her onto her feet and held her there until she found the strength to stand.

"Let's get you home," he said, as if a change of scene would make things right again, erase the sights and memories of what had happened here this night. "Let's get you home," he said again, and knew she was not hearing him.

Abe Bernstein turned back toward the door, one arm around his grandchild's shoulders. He saw Jack Goldblume stretched out on the carpet, Harry Thorson bending over him and feeling for a pulse against his throat. The newsman's jacket, shirt and all were soaking crimson where the rounds from Johnny Cats's last burst had caught him, and Abe knew that it was hopeless long before the cowboy straightened up and shook his head.