Bolan didn't know Sally's game, could not be sure if she had come with Cigliano or with Patriarcca, but it was enough for now to know that she was in the line of fire.
He scanned past Sally, past the shaken capos, settling the twenty-power on a hardman on the thin defensive line. There was no need to kill just yet. Perhaps an object lesson, just to put the wheels of thought in motion, set the West Coast dons to wondering who might arrange a hellfire greeting for their benefit.
He gauged the drop and squeezed off, riding out the kick and staying with the target, kissing close through the telescopic lens. He saw the puff of fabric, spray of blood as slug met yielding flesh and fragile bone. The gunner wobbled, sat down hard, one arm coming up to clutch the ruined shoulder where the other dangled.
One round remaining in the magazine, Bolan worked the lever action, tracking on to find another target as the line of gunners wavered, broke. One guy was out of there already, sprinting for the house two hundred yards away. Bolan let the twenty-power follow him, already leading, then dispatched a thunderclap that tore his knee apart and sent him sprawling on the grass.
He caught a glimpse of Sally and the capos, crouched behind the stricken lead car, as he rose and backed away from there. It would not take the gunners long to get a fix on his position once they found their nerve. But he would be long gone before a strike team reached his vantage point. And in his wake, he would be leaving some unanswered questions for Minelli and his brothers of the blood.
The West Coast bosses would have questions of their own, bet on it, and their reception almost on the doorstep of Don Minelli's manor house would not endear him to Patriarcca or Cigliano. Already suspicious, they would be verging on absolute paranoia by now, and it might not take much of a shove to propel them over the edge, into outright hostility.
For Minelli's part, he would be wondering who dared to take such liberties on his land with his guests. If he ran true to form, he would begin by suspecting everyone and go from there.
The riddle of the moment, though, was Sally Palmer, and as Bolan reached his rental, stowed the Marlin in the trunk and turned the engine over, he was concentrating on the presence of the lady Fed in such rough company. It was a role she had played before, of course, and with success, but Bolan wondered just what strings she must have pulled — or what she must have sacrificed — to get herself invited to a major sit-down.
Before he reached the blacktop, Bolan knew that he would have to discover what she was doing there, find out if her mission was at odds with his or was simply one more piece within the larger puzzle. And in order to accomplish that, he would be forced to infiltrate the dragon's lair and have a close-up look at what was going down.
It was a deviation from what had started out as Bolan's master plan. But plans were flexible enough to change at need, providing that a soldier had the nerve and the imagination to effect those changes.
Bolan had the nerve, all right, and the experience to pull it off, but he would need a great deal more to come out the other end alive.
The Executioner was not a superstitious or religious man, but he believed in fate, some universal guiding force behind the endless war games men played out with one another. And while he knew for certain that right could fail and evil triumph, he could not help feeling that something in the "rightness" of a cause emitted an energy, a strength, which sometimes, subtly, changed the odds.
The white hats didn't always win, for sure, and he had seen too much hate and inhumanity enthroned to make himself believe that right makes might...but, then again, being right couldn't hurt.
The Executioner was going in, with courage and with experience.
To find a lady Fed.
To find some answers, right.
To find, perhaps, his death.
8
Don Ernesto Minelli surveyed the smouldering ruin of his limousine, wrinkling his nose at the stench of burned oil and rubber. The damned thing was a write-off, and he couldn't say much better for the second Lincoln, either. More than sixty thousand freaking dollars up in smoke, and still he had no firm idea of what in hell was going on.
"That's some reception you arrange for guests, Ernesto."
Patriarcca's voice was angry, but beneath the rage, Minelli heard a tremor of the West Coast capo's fear. Beside him, Lester Cigliano stood with both hands in his pockets, glaring at Minelli as he fought to keep himself from trembling visibly.
"Hey, Jules... I'm sick about this thing, believe me. Thank the Lord it was a couple of my buttons who got hit, instead of you or Lester."
"Dumb luck. If I'd've known that I was going to a turkey shoot, I would've brought a few more guns."
"Same here," said L.A. Lester.
"Could be I oughta make some calls an' have a troop fly out."