MacK Bolan No. 62: Day of Mourning (7 page)

The Tattle Tail was in the heart of D.C.'s black section.

It had been a long time since the open racial hostilities of the late sixties and early seventies, but faces along the sidewalks and tenement steps turned hostile, cautious, at the sight of a white.

Bolan had shed Big Thunder, packing the mini-howitzer away for the time being in its leather beneath the front seat of the rental car when he parked the vehicle half a block away.

He wore the Beretta 93-R shoulder-bolstered beneath his jacket.

The inner-city pavement was crowded because of the warm spell, even though it was well past 1:00 a.m.

The street was alive.

Bright colors and the latest fashions paraded by to the throaty roar of powerful exhausts and the calls of young men to foxy ladies.

The tall man with peculiarly icy eyes ignored the stares and entered the bar that was advertised by a lone Pabst sign in the window.

The joint was busy with an after-hours crowd. The walls, hidden somewhere beyond a swirling haze of cigarette smoke, throbbed to pulsating funk music from a jukebox and the constant din of raised voices.

The conversation dropped when Bolan appeared.

Suddenly there was no sound except for the music.

Dozens of eyes watched the stranger from a sea of black faces.

Then the conversation and din of a barful of people resumed, a notch lower, but more guarded than before.

Bolan walked to the bar and took the end stool where the bar met the wall. There were no patrons back here except for the gaudy hooker two empty stools down.

The whore wobbled onto her high heels and started toward Bolan, but when she got close enough to read his eyes, she changed her mind and went back to her stool and her beer.

The bartender was a squat, round-faced man who came over and regarded the stranger with a careful appraisal that gave away nothing.

"What can I get you?"

The tall man issued a single icy command.

"Grover Jones."

"Uh, what's that, sir?"

The tall man with the icy eyes repeated, "Grover Jones. Calls himself Damu Abdul Ali."

The bartender's expression tightened into a strange mixture of apprehension and hope.

"You a cop?"

"I'm not his friend."

"Yeah, the punk hangs out here," the barman confided in a lowered voice. "I own this place. Name's Ike. This joint used to be called Mr. Ike's, used to be a nice family place.''

Bolan looked around at the noisy hookers and pimps and ghetto nightlife.

"What happened?"

"Eight months ago this Ali bastard came around and said he likes my place and wants it as sort of his headquarters. Wants his own private rooms and his people to get cut-rate bar prices. I told him no, so he hired neighborhood gang kids to hassle my customers. They roughed me up. Said they'd do things to my wife and kid. My little girl, she's only fourteen. They changed the name of the place, everything."

"I can do something about that," said Bolan.

The black proprietor regarded him for a moment.

"I'll damn well bet you can."

"Where do I find Jones?"

"The rooms in back. There's a door to the alley, so I don't know if he's there or not, but some of his boys'll be. Be careful man. Them mothers kill people."

"So do I," growled Bolan. "Thanks, Ike."

The Executioner left the bar. He skirted the bar scene and passed through the archway Ike had indicated. Off to his left were the restrooms. Another short corridor on his right led to a corner. He moved to the corner and around it. At the end of the hallway was an exit sign above a metal door with a push bar handle. There was another door to Bolan's left between him and the alley exit. The sounds from out front were a dull rumble back here. Bolan heard the soft, distinctive click of billiard balls from behind the door to his left.

He walked over and kicked open the door.

There were five people in the room, all black, all dressed in the latest fashions. Three guys were holding pool cues, one of them lining up his next shot on the green baize of the pool table. Two women sat at a private bar across the room, wearing the unmistakable attire of hookers.

Bolan came down three steps into what was decorated like a private club room. He walked over to the pool table. The two other men with cues stood at either end of the table. Bolan faced the guy who was about to make his shot.

"Ooh my, look what just walked in," said one of the whores.

Bolan addressed the guy across from him.

"I want Grover Jones."

The punk's shoulders hunched slightly. He did not look up. A cool one.

"Looks like we got a smartass honkey cop what wants his ass carved, boys."

The two men to either side of Bolan dropped their cues to the pool table.

Bolan allowed them to reach into back pockets and pull out six-inch blades that appeared with expert wrist snaps, learned only on the streets of the ghetto.

"That's how it is?" Bolan asked quietly.

The punk in front of him looked up and flashed Bolan a gold-toothed smile that was all hate and anger.

"That's how it is, motherfucker."

"Good," said Bolan.

Bolan felt himself going into an icy rage.

These were the cannibals who fed on their own — street bums who terrorized decent people too civilized and afraid to fight back. And Konzaki was dead.

Bolan picked up the pool cue set down by the punk to his right. He moved too fast for any of them to register a reaction short of startled grunts. He held the cue with two hands and lunged sideways so hard and fast the pointed end pierced the eye and brain of the guy on his right. Bolan yanked the stick out of the man's head and whipped it backward in a continuous motion with both hands. Bolan threw his weight behind the move hard enough to impact the second punk's forehead with death-dealing force. Both men collapsed on either side of the table, dead.

One of the whores screamed.

The guy across from Bolan lost his cool and his cue. He fished for concealed hardware, coming out with a .38 Saturday Night Special, tracking on Bolan real fast, fading back from the table.

Bolan feinted the guy like a fencer and flicked the stick.

The solid end of the cue clipped the pistol from the punk's hand before the guy could fall back far enough. Then Bolan cracked the thick end of the cue hard across the man's skull, knocking him to the floor.

The two hookers fled the room.

Bolan came around the table and grabbed the punk by his shirtfront. He yanked the creep to his feet. He bent the guy backward across the elevated lip of the pool table.

The punk retained consciousness but almost lost it when Bolan rammed the man's head down onto the felt with a thump. The Stony chief leaned onto the cue that now held the black pinned across the throat.

"Where's Jones?"

Beads of sweat popped out like pearls on the punk's frightened face.

He cried out an address.

Bolan shifted his hold on the stick closer to the sides of the man's neck. He gave a mighty push on the cue, snapping the neck of the punk.

He stepped back and let the limp corpse sag to the floor to join the other two.

The Executioner's fury was abating.

They'll pay, Konzaki. Starting with these cannibals.

He tossed down the pool stick and walked out of the game room. He left the club via the alley exit.

No one tried to stop the tall man with the icy eyes as he disappeared into the night.

Bolan drove past a one-story brownstone in a lower middle-class, racially mixed residential neighborhood. Dim light suggested itself from behind heavily draped windows.

It was the address given him by the black thug whose neck he had broken.

A man came out of the house. He strode briskly to the sidewalk and climbed into a parked car.

Two more men moved up the path that led to the front door of the house. They entered without knocking.

Bolan left his parked rental auto some distance down the block. He concealed the AutoMag under the driver's seat again. He preferred that whatever happened next not escalate into a firefight like the one back at the Interstate office.

The brownstone was the only house on the block showing any signs of life at this hour.

He walked up the front sidewalk, opened the door and stepped inside without knocking.

He was in a whorehouse.

He entered an old-fashioned parlor whose walls were lined with mirrors and couches, the couches occupied by whores of all shapes, colors and descriptions in various forms of intimate attire from lace to leather. The subtle strains of Muzak emanated from somewhere. There was a portable bar, and several men were in the first stages of appraising the merchandise.

Everyone casually looked around at Bolan's entrance.

Then not so casually as he strode through the room toward a hallway that led off the parlor to the private rooms.

"This is a raid," Bolan barked gruffly, throwing a thumb over his shoulder at the way he'd come in. "Everybody out."

There was a mad scramble as half-dressed ladies of the night and flustered Johns poured out, looking for any available avenue of flight.

Bolan stalked into the hallway. He confronted two heavyset white men who appeared to be in charge, drawn by the commotion in the parlor.

Bouncers.

Digging for pistols.

With the edge of his flattened palm, Bolan hammered one guy at the base of the neck. The man slipped into unconsciousness.

The second man pulled out his gun.

Bolan executed a flying judo kick.

The pistol flew from the man's grip. He started to turn.

Bolan stepped after the guy, grabbing the bouncer by the collar. The Stony warrior flung him back into the wall with such force that the man's knees buckled and he collapsed.

Bolan knelt and grabbed the chucker's longish hair.

"Grover Jones. Where is he?"

The guy's eyes were glazed orbs. He pointed toward the back of the house.

"Number twelve."

"Thanks."

Bolan popped the back of the guy's head against the wall hard enough to knock him out.

He unholstered the Beretta and followed the instructions to the only door that was latched shut, around a bend in the hallway. All of the other doorways to the crib rooms yawned open from the haste in which the house had been vacated after the raid warning raised by Bolan.

Bolan stood back and to the side from the closed door. He raised a foot and propelled two hundred-odd pounds of kick force, slamming the door inward off its frame.

The Executioner entered the dark room in a forward roll at the same instant that gunfire spit at him from a corner of the room.

Bolan came to his feet, tracking up with the Beretta, when the gunman made the mistake of trying for a better position. He moved across an unshaded window with enough streetlight outside to silhouette the ambusher.

Bolan tripped the guy, then slashed down with a well-aimed chop at the falling figure. There was a grunt of pain. A gun clattered to the floor.

Bolan took a second to step back and flick on the light switch. A bulb blazed overhead, revealing Grover Jones half sitting on the floor where Bolan dropped him.

Damu Abdul Ali glared up at the man with the Beretta. His right hand sported a heavy bandage where Bolan had shot off some of his fingers a few hours before.

"Who the — "

Bolan stood over him.

"That's what I want to know, Grover."

"The name's Damu Abdul, you mother."

The guy was trying to protect his bandaged hand by slipping it under his right thigh. Bolan grabbed Ali's forearm and stepped on the bandage, grinding it hard against the floor.

Jones let out an unearthly scream and thrashed onto his back.

"Your name is mud," said Bolan, aiming the Beretta at the man's black forehead. "That job tonight. You had Sam and Jimmy Lee follow those Company men until I showed up, then they hit me. Who told you where to sic them onto the CIA? That's Company business."

"I — I don't know," squealed Grover Jones. "Th-they'll kill me if I tell you!"

Bolan stepped down harder on the bandaged hand. Jones squealed louder, tears running down his face. Blood soaked the bandage.

"Okay, okay, please don't! The guy you want is Miller. Al Miller. He's got a place in Potomac!"

"More."

"That's all I know, I swear."

Bolan lifted his foot threateningly

"He... he's got some kinda troops out there... the guy's a merc... I knew him in the service... he fed me the shit on you and set it up."

Bolan stepped back, releasing the bloody hand.

Jones stared up at the snout of the Beretta that did not waver its bead between his eyes. The pain was suddenly forgotten.

"Wh-what now?" he asked.

"The payback," said the Executioner.

He blew Grover Jones's brains out all over the room.

The score is evening up, Andrzej.

Al Miller.

He stalked out of the house.

Back into the night.

Closing in.

Bolan cruised west on MacArthur Boulevard, then left the business artery to head for the grassy, hilly outer reaches of Maryland. He was looking for the county road listed under Al Miller's name in the Potomac telephone directory.

A stop at a twenty-four-hour convenience store gave him the directions he needed to find the Miller place.

The drive to locate the place consumed a half hour; thirty minutes Bolan knew he could not afford to waste.

It was not groundless paranoia that made Bolan think the world of Colonel John Phoenix was suddenly closing in on him, about to explode, taking everything with it.

Bolan realized that in the past twelve hours, his and John Phoenix's life had flashed past his eyes, not in some inner metaphysical sense but in actual flesh-and-blood reality.

Especially blood. During his search to find someone named Miller, the next link in tonight's blood-drenched chain, the Executioner had time to consider the strange, violent odyssey of this day and night.

In the beginning, it was like any of the other missions in this government-sanctioned new war against world terrorism: Mack Bolan, The Executioner, racing toward another confrontation with dark forces.

The Atlantic.

Terrorists.

The Dragon.

But this was only the beginning.

The stepping stone from then to now.

An odyssey to stun anyone's senses.

From an Oval Office briefing with the president to the cathouse depths of sewer city.

And between those two points?

The Mafia.

An old enemy, growing stronger again, probably overdue for attention from John Phoenix. If there would be a John Phoenix in the future.

Tonight, a lapse into automatic behavioral patterns from that past war against the Mafia: a Black Ace appeared from nowhere and right now the
commissione
in New York would be madder than hell, shaking up everyone on the scene for an explanation of why a headcock named Pepsi Giancola got capped along with some street soldiers when it was Pepsi who was supposed to be snuffing out Armenian jerks.

It was almost like the old days when Bolan was alive. Yeah, exactly like an Executioner hit. But of course, Bolan is dead.

Armenians.

The CIA and the CFB and Lee Farnsworth and a murky world of clandestine espionage operations that Bolan never felt comfortable with.

Farnsworth was right, in a way.

Bolan was a soldier.

A combat specialist.

His place was on the front lines, like he'd told the president.

Striking at the enemies of the Phoenix war.

Tonight, the war came home.

At this moment, top priority continued to be
who!

Who was Bolan's real enemy this night?

Somewhere in or around this city of lies, double dealing and treachery, a killer sat smug, thinking he was safe, that his trail was covered, that he could go on with whatever else he had planned for the Stony Man operation, tonight and anytime in the future. Someone who knew all the workings of the U.S. intelligence system from top to bottom.

This someone was Konzaki's killer and the true saboteur of Stony Man Farm as sure as Grover Jones and Miller and whatever other hired hands, hired death, were doing his bidding.

This was the one Bolan wanted more than any of these vermin. The one who pulled the strings and bartered in souls and sent people to their deaths when the whim moved him, hiding it all behind a cloak of influence.

This someone was evil moving among the good, indistinguishable, making him that much more dangerous.

But The Executioner was in town.

And that made all the difference in the world.