MacK Bolan No. 62: Day of Mourning (8 page)

Bolan found the county road he wanted and began an initial recon to set the terrain of this action firmly in his mind.

At first glance the property owned by Al Miller was not unlike any number of similar ones in the area.

This was horse-estate country.

Miller had to be doing all right for himself, whatever his scam was.

Or he had solid backing.

Bolan guessed the latter.

The millionaire set liked its privacy. Formidable brick walls about ten feet tall surrounded many of these estates. There were huge expanses of uninhabited acreage in between.

Miller's guise of respectability lasted no longer than a closer visual as Bolan's rental vehicle glided past. The Executioner hoped that those inside viewed it as just another car passing in the night.

The main entrance to the grounds was set midway in the face of the walled perimeter that bordered the paved road.

A brick guardhouse sat behind an iron gate.

Bolan saw two sentries; they wore side arms and there was undoubtedly heavier artillery, out of sight but close at hand.

When he reached the far end of the property line, Bolan continued to drive another quarter mile until the looming walls of the estate were blocked from view by a mild dip in the undulating Maryland terrain.

Bolan parked his car well off the blacktop, concealed from casual glances by a cluster of stately oak trees.

He strapped on Big Thunder.

This would be a hard hit.

He jogged back toward the walled property of Al Miller. He stayed off the road, approaching the side wall that connected with the one fronting the county road.

He was not ideally togged or rigged for a night hit. His dark sweater and slacks helped him blend into the night but his black combat grease had been lost when Sam Datcher and Jimmy Lee Brown blew up his rented Mustang at the Interstate Loan shoot-out.

Bolan hoped the moon would not break through the heavy clouds overhead, but that did not seem likely.

The Beretta 93-R rode ready in its shoulder holster and the AutoMag was fast-draw ready. Heavy artillery, sure, but it would be no heavier than the arsenal on the other side of those walls. His other instruments of death, such as the stilettos, garrotes and high-explosive grenades, so important on an assault like this, had also been destroyed in tonight's car blast.

The hell with risks.

The Executioner was blitzing.

He negotiated the wall with ease, landing on the other side without a sound.

He palmed the silenced Beretta.

He hoped Big Thunder would not be needed at all or only as a last resort to blast his way out.

He remained in a crouch, the 93-R ready. He scanned the darkness, his icy gaze encompassing the deserted grounds of the estate.

He saw no one.

Several lights illuminated a massive main house about eighteen hundred meters across a rolling, gradual incline.

Bolan padded cautiously toward the main house. The nightfighter kept to the shadows of the evergreens trees that dotted the landscape.

The Executioner met no interference.

Miller's place was guarded tonight by only a skeleton crew for some special reason. Or the man had nothing to hide and the gate sentries were only for show to grant the guy his privacy.

Perhaps this was another false lead like those Armenians. But Bolan didn't think so.

The night warrior moved on a course roughly parallel to the long, curved gravel driveway. He reached the edge of a tree line that yielded to a clearing surrounding the main house and another building. He paused for further recon.

Grover Jones's instructions had brought Mack Bolan to an expansive Colonial-style mansion. A huge courtyard was dominated by a large fountain now artistically illuminated by multicolored floodlights.

The other building was a more modern, strictly functional one-story prefab job, twenty meters from the main house.

Barracks, thought Bolan.

There was no sign of human activity.

The area was graveyard quiet.

Bolan remembered the armed guards at the gate.

And the lighted windows in the main house.

There was a roofed porch on the south side of the house, across an expanse of sloping lawn from Bolan's position. The stretch of lawn was bathed in faint glow from the floodlit fountain.

Bolan decided to chance it.

He left the tree line. He made it to the porch and holstered the Beretta. He pulled himself up onto the roof. Then he palmed the 93-R again and stretched out a leg to gain balance closer to the nearest second-floor lighted window.

The window was open against the warm night. Wispy drapes offered no privacy this close up. But there was nothing to see. An empty bedroom. A light someone had forgotten to turn off.

Bolan heard the unmistakable mutter of male voices. Then a female voice, coming from the next window down, also lighted.

A foot-wide ledge ran around the white stone mansion between its two levels. Bolan got a firm footing and edged himself toward the window from which he heard the voices coming.

He chanced a peek inside.

Another open window. A good view through lace drapes into another bedroom.

This one was occupied.

Three men and a woman.

The woman was clothed, but not doing too well otherwise.

She was tied to a straight-back chair in the middle of the bedroom, bound hand and foot and body with rubberized clothesline.

Bolan recognized the woman.

Tonight was an unraveling tapestry of this warrior's life. That's what throbbed and tried to close in and race past him at the same time, unbidden, but there just the same. His back pages and his destiny colliding on a warm spring night in Washington, when Death walked and his name was Bolan.

Her name was Susan Landry, investigative reporter.

Bolan would always remember Landry from his assault on the Mafia's Cleveland Pipeline during the Executioner's war against the Mob.

Landry was a woman no man would ever forget. Especially as a lover, as Bolan had been before he blasted Susan's father out of existence for his unholy alliance with the cannibals Bolan fought.

A lifetime ago, to John Phoenix.

The three hard-eyed men in the bedroom stood around Susan. One wore a shoulder-holstered .357. The other two had shotguns that now rested upright against a wall of the bedroom while they took a closer look at the beauty tied to the chair.

Her shoulder-length raven hair was mussed, and she wore a bruise on her right temple that had turned purple. But Susan was just as foxy as Bolan remembered from that long-ago Cleveland action.

Susan's eyes darted rebelliously between the two men in front of her. Then she tried to glance over her shoulder at the guy behind, but she was too damn tough inside to show these creeps any fear.

One of the men reached over and stroked her face, then his hand drifted lower as he squeezed her breast roughly. He laughed when she didn't cry out.

Bolan saw red.

The man sneered, "A tough baby. I like 'em tough."

"Miller will skin you bastards alive when he gets back and sees what you've done," she snarled in his face.

"Maybe Miller ain't coming back," grunted the other man who faced Susan. He reached over as he spoke and idly flicked her skirt up around her waist, revealing smooth, panty-hosed legs that became beauty-queen thighs and sheer panties. "And if Miller comes back, maybe we'll be gone."

The hood behind her guffawed and started unbuckling his trousers.

"After we have some fun with you, bitch."

"I give you nothing," hissed Susan Landry.

Planting her feet firmly, she leaned forward in the chair, lifting its two back legs off the floor. Then she plunged backward. The chair landed with bone snapping impact upon the feet of the jerk who'd been so anxious to take his pants off.

"Oh, shit," he howled as he stumbled back, hopping about the room on one foot.

The other two started to laugh at their friend's misfortune.

Bolan aimed through the wispy bedroom curtains. The laughter was suddenly cut off as the Beretta whispered once. A 9mm slug drilled through the laughing mouth of one would-be rapist, creating a cavity that no dentist could ever fill. The man had not even begun to fall when the 93-R spit fire again, and the two hardmen toppled to the floor.

Susan Landry's eyes opened wide at the tall, icy-eyed man who suddenly appeared in the room.

The third hood forgot about his bruised toes and his unbuckled pants. He drew his .357 Magnum and had time to trigger off a shot at the darting figure who broke from the open window. The explosion reverberated like a nuclear blast in the close confines of the bedroom. The projectile whistled wide past Bolan's right ear.

The Executioner triggered another round from the Beretta, and the third punk joined his deceased friends in the corner.

"Holy Mother!" exclaimed Susan Landry. From her awkward position tied to the chair, she could not escape the drifting stench of burned cordite that stung her nostrils. She looked around at the three dead men who an instant ago had been about to harm her.

The big man chuckled as he holstered the 93-R and bent to yank loose the knots of the clothesline that bound her. "The name is John Phoenix, Ms Landry."

She stood up when she was untied and briefly rubbed wrists chafed raw from trying to break free. She did not take her eyes off this stranger, studying him intently.

"How do you know who I am?"

"Call me a regular reader of your newspaper columns," Bolan replied truthfully. He snapped a fresh clip into the Beretta and held the pistol out to her. "Can you handle one of these?"

She nodded and took the pistol in a practiced grip.

"Thank you, John Phoenix. I have a car downstairs. I drove into my own trap, you see. We can drive out of here."

She did not recognize Phoenix as Mack Bolan. There was no reason for her to. Plastic surgery had altered Bolan's appearance.

They hustled from the bedroom death chamber like a well-rehearsed team, Susan looking no worse for wear from her ordeal.

They hit an upstairs corridor and approached a wide staircase that led to a large foyer downstairs.

Susan and her rescuer were at the top of the stairs when they heard the clatter of footfalls somewhere below.

They saw two guys coming up at them along either side of the stairway. The two hardmen at the bottom grabbed for hardware then had time to do nothing but die.

Susan snapped off a coughing round from the Beretta that pitched one hood backward. If the slug did not kill him, then there was no mistaking the sickening crack as his skull hit the marble floor.

The Executioner triggered Big Thunder, sending hood number two into oblivion. A headless body flew backward as if tugged by an invisible string. Blood splattered the wall as high as the ceiling, then the body crumpled into a heap near the closed front door.

They left the house through a corridor that led to a side exit.

Bolan allowed Susan to lead the way.

They emerged into the night and into a parking lot on the blind side of the house from the floodlit fountain out front.

A half-dozen vehicles occupied the area, including a Datsun station wagon.

Susan led him to it.

"Any idea how many men we're up against?" Bolan asked.

Susan yanked open the door on the driver's side and slid behind the wheel. She reached for keys that were in the ignition as Bolan jumped in alongside her.

"Miller took the main force with him."

The car roared to life.

"Miller took them where?"

They sped along the driveway, hugging the tight curves. They raced past the fountain lights that illuminated the front courtyard.

"I don't know where they went," Landry told him. She wheeled into the straightaway toward the iron gates. "But I overheard him giving orders. There are two men at the gate. Hang on."

"You do the same," grunted Bolan. "Good luck, lady."

Landry aimed the vehicle on a direct course for the iron-grille gate, where the two guards stood with shotguns, alerted by the sound of the revving engine.

The stunning brunette twirled the steering wheel hard to the left. The tail end of the wagon skidded to the right, gouging the trimmed edge of the turf. The Datsun stopped its slide, the passenger side parallel to the guards' left flank.

The sentries spun in Bolan's direction. Too late.

Bolan's AutoMag spoke.

The sentries were kicked backward from the impact of the .44 headbusters.

Susan left the car. These fresh kills were still shuddering in their own blood as Susan dashed to the guardhouse and activated the mechanical gate release.

She dashed back into the Datsun wagon and trod the gas so hard that the rear end of the subcompact danced from side to side as it sped through the gate.

The investigative journalist sped into the Maryland night.

Leaving Mack Bolan to wonder.

A fireball from his past named Susan Landry had reappeared.

It was all coming down.

Tonight.

A night of blood.

The vehicle driven by Susan Landry flew along the dark county road away from the Miller place.

Bolan bolstered his AutoMag in its fast-draw rig on his hip. He reclaimed and holstered his Beretta.

"My car is in that clump of trees," he told her as they approached the spot where he had concealed the vehicle. "I suggest you come with me. This car is your death warrant if these people have the connections I think they do."

Susan cut her speed and guided the Datsun over the gravel shoulder and among the trees that Bolan had indicated.

"Miller has connections," she acknowledged. "You're right, of course. Care to give a lady a lift?"

Bolan's rented wheels were right where he left them.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Bolan assured her, already climbing from the station wagon.

Landry briskly kept pace with him, easing into the passenger seat as he kicked the engine over, backed out and continued their course toward MacArthur Boulevard and D.C.

He felt her eyes appraising him in the darkness as he drove.

"Thank you for saving my life," she said.

Those were the exact words Kelly Crawford had used less than two hours ago.

What a night.

Without looking up, he reached for the pack of cigarettes wedged behind the sun visor above his head, stuck one in his mouth and lit it with the dash lighter.

Susan Landry had gone through changes since he last encountered her in Cleveland several years ago. Then, she had been an idealistic young woman; an idealistic young journalist. The toughness had been there, but not the maturity, the inner strength that had come from years as a roving investigative reporter.

There were character lines around her eyes that made her more beautiful than she had ever been before she had earned them.

"You got us out of there in one piece,'' he reminded her as he caught MacArthur Boulevard heading back into the city. The street was virtually untraveled at this hour. "You're a hell of a wheelperson, Landry.''

He offered her a cigarette. She shook her head.

"I'm also a reporter," she said. "Even if I wasn't, I'd sure like to know what a man named Phoenix is doing stalking the wilds of Maryland like some jungle panther. Don't laugh. That's what you are, and mister, you look like pure trouble."

"Trust your instincts on this one, Susan. You're right. I am trouble."

"I'd say I was in a good deal more trouble before you showed up. I guess I will have a cigarette."

Her hands shook when she took the smoke from the pack and tried to light it.

"Let's trade," said Bolan.

"Fair enough. Ladies first, I assume."

Bolan grinned at her. He liked her style.

"Talk to me, Susan," Bolan said.

"I'm investigating the soldier-for-hire community that thrives in this city. Men with professional military training, soldiers, ex-government service people."

"Mercs," growled Bolan. "A real mixed bag."

Landry nodded. "And I drew the rottenest one."

"How did you hook up with Miller?"

"I was a disgruntled woman with a prison record. Bitter. Unable to find work. I knew some of the places in Washington where contracts for services in the merc community are lined up. I made sure I was in the right place at the right time. It goes with the territory."

"Miller must be pulling in some heavy bread to have a place like that in Potomac."

"He's paid well, but that house isn't really his. No one in the community knows that, of course. Say, this is the way to the airport...."

Bolan fired another cigarette. It was close. What he'd been tearing this town apart all night to find out.

"The house in Potomac. Did you trace it?"

"As far as a paper corporation operating out of an Arlington PO box. It dead-ended there. Why are we going to the airport?"

"I have a friend waiting there with a helicopter. What was Miller doing behind those walls with all that acreage?"

"He was training men for night commando work. Where are we going in a helicopter?"

"How many men does Miller have?"

"He bragged to me about that. About twenty for the raid, not counting those scumbags he left behind to watch his place tonight. They were going to rip him off while he was gone and — "

Her hand with the cigarette started shaking again. So did her voice.

Bolan knew she was thinking how close she came to being raped. "Easy," said the big man softly.

She snapped out of it. "And you didn't answer my question. I thought this was a trade. Where are we going in a helicopter?"

They crossed the Wilson Bridge and swung north onto Mount Vernon Highway parallel to the river. The lights of Washington National Airport came into view up ahead to the right.

"We
are not going anywhere in a helicopter. Do you have any idea what kind of target Miller was training his men to hit?''

"Not going anywhere," she echoed. "Then I guess our little trade is off."

"Miller is taking orders from someone high up in the U.S. intelligence community," he told her.

He could feel her eyes spark with interest even in the dim interior of the car.

"Now we're trading. And I don't suppose you'll tell me who this person is?"

Bolan steered them into one of the airport approach lanes. He followed the curve away from the main terminal to the private landing area. He could see Jack Grimaldi's Hughes chopper waiting.

"I don't know who's giving Miller his orders," said Bolan.

Suspicions. They were all he had to go on right now and he could hardly breach the security of Lee Farnsworth, the CFB or General Crawford by dropping names to a journalist.

He braked the car to a stop near the chopper.

When Grimaldi saw who the driver was, he revved up the Hughes's engine. The rotors started whirling. The flight lights started blinking.

"I've only been... with Miller for two weeks," Landry told him, raising her voice to be heard above the throbbing rotor. "I've concentrated on the workings of his operation, the training of his men. I... assumed they were training for action in some other country. I never realized — "

Bolan had no more time. He opened his door and gave her a last look.

"Take the car, Susan. Go somewhere and find yourself a typewriter and write whatever you want about Miller."

"What about you?"

"If you write about me, some good people will have their cover blown and probably die."

"So it's like that?"

"That would be a hell of a way to repay me for saving your life, wouldn't it?"

She laughed. A nice sound.

"You bastard. You're used to having your own way, aren't you?"

He started out of the car.

"Take care, Susan. Good luck."

"Wait a minute, soldier. You are talking to the world's most hardheaded woman. I don't get off this easy."

He paused, not mistaking the determination in those sharp blues. He saw the same look in the mirror whenever he shaved.

"Susan, I can't take you with me. I know where Miller is planning his hit. You told me enough for me to know it's going down tonight. Or this morning. I've got to do what I can to stop it from happening."

"You are not going to stop me from going with you," said Landry, distinctly enunciating each word.

"Sorry, lady, but I've got to," said Bolan sincerely, and he formed a loose fist and popped her one on the jaw that pitched Landry's head against the seat. He felt the pulse and nodded, satisfied she was unconscious, but unhurt.

"Sorry, Susan."

Bolan left the car wondering if he and this lady would ever cross paths again.

He knew they would.

Grimaldi commenced lift-off the moment Bolan was half inside the chopper's bubble front.

The pilot chuckled, gave his passenger a disparaging look.

"You sure do have a way with the ladies, boss. You sure do."

"I'd rather have that lady unconscious for a while than dead permanently."

"What a guy, throwing away a woman like that."

"I've got a feeling we haven't seen the last of her," Bolan growled, reaching for the radio transceiver on the chopper's dash control cluster.

"Whereto?"

"The Farm, Jack, and don't spare the horses." Then, activating the transceiver, "Striker to Stony Man, come in Stony Man."

April's voice came over a backup shortwave setup at the Farm.

"This is Stony Man, go ahead Striker."

"I'm coming in. The hit will go down this morning before sunrise. Give it a ninety-nine percent probability. Commando unit, about twenty men."

"I'll pass the word."

"Anything turn up on that security scan on Captain Wade?"

"Negative. He appears to be clean all the way."

"Everyone is so clean but still there's so much dirt. Damn. Okay, lady, batten down the hatches. Jack and I are on our way in. Over and out."

"Hurry home, Striker. Over and out."

Static crackled in Bolan's headphones.

Grimaldi piloted the Hughes in a southwesterly course. The lights of residential Virginia thinned out as the flight took them over black patches of Blue Ridge mountain country. Toward Stony Man.

There was no inclination to talk.

A merc-gone-bad named Al Miller.

The next link in the chain.

Bolan would find Miller at Stony Man Farm.

He could have waited at the Farm all evening for Miller instead of tearing apart Wonderland on the Potomac, looking for the truth in a city of lies.

Sure.

Hindsight is 20-20.

But Bolan would have missed the privilege of dispatching the vermin he had encountered on this chase that was about to erupt at the very heart and soul of everything that meant anything to Bolan in his life as John Phoenix.

A commando assault on Stony Man Farm.

How many men had the Executioner killed this night?

Not nearly enough.