Mack Bolan pushed his Firebird eastward, the satchel full of cash on the seat beside him as he left the Club Uhuru, rolling through the heart of Liberty City toward his next target destination. The numbers were falling now, with half a dozen stops to make and no time left to waste.
Liberty City was Miami's ghetto, tucked away just south of the Opa-locka airport, out of sight for most of white Miami, and largely out of mind. On many city maps it was a blank space, the streets ignored as most of the neighborhood's population had also been ignored until very recently.
Black rage had torn the neighborhood apart in recent months, and the scars of that explosion were still visible. The fuse was still sputtering, and every public official in Miami knew that it was only a matter of time until more violence rocked the area. Suspicion, hatred and paranoia on both sides had made the area a pressure cooker, and the lid was ready to blow if someone turned the heat up, even fractionally.
Bolan's target was a numbers countinghouse some six blocks over from the Club Uhuru. The Executioner knew that all the front men and the players would be black, but it was still a Mafia franchise, run behind the scenes by one Dukey Aiuppa.
Aiuppa's real name was Vincenzo, but he won his street name from a string of welterweight bouts he fought professionally before discovering that punching men — or women and children — outside the ring brought higher pay.
Instead of knockouts now, he had a sheet of thirty-five arrests behind him, without a single conviction. A Brooklyn transplant who had worked his way up through the local ranks, Aiuppa ruled his ghetto fiefdom like a colonial warlord, surrounded by stormtroops of all nationalities and colors, reaping sky-high profits from a people mired in poverty and filth.
Aiuppa's countinghouse was tucked away above a pool hall frequented by pimps and pushers. Bolan found his target and parked the Firebird a half block down, unable to get closer because of the Cadillacs and Lincolns lined against the curb on either side of the street. He walked back, feeling hostile eyes upon him as pedestrians turned to stare at his expensive tan-colored suit, dark-brown silk shirt and white silk tie. He drew grim comfort from the Beretta 93-R, which he wore beneath his left arm in a shoulder harness.
He reached the pool hall, pushed on through the swinging doors in front. The pool hall proper was in semidarkness, but he was still able to pick out the scattering of players grouped around two tables on his left. They were watching him, whispering among themselves, but Bolan ignored them, moving between the other deserted tables and on to a flight of wooden stairs set against the back wall of the long, narrow room.
A black man stood on guard at the base of the stairs, watching Bolan approach. He stood with arms crossed, back against the banister, prepared to block the Executioner's progress.
"What's happenin'?"
"I'm looking for the Duke," Bolan told him.
"He ain't expectin' any visitors."
Bolan flashed a stony grin.
"Well, let's surprise him."
"He don't like surprises, man."
The Executioner shrugged, the smile softening.
"In that case..."
He moved as if to push on up the stairs past the strong-arm, then pivoted with lightning speed as the guy tried to block him. Bolan ducked beneath a looping right cross, driving the rigid fingers of one hand deep beneath the black man's rib cage, punching the wind out of him and doubling him over.
The Executioner seized an arm and twisted it behind the slugger's back, high up between his shoulders. Then Bolan put his full weight behind the movement as he drove the man into the wall beside the stairs. One hard knee rocketed in, found a kidney once, twice, and the muscle slid to the floor in a boneless sprawl, leaving a blood smear along the wall where his face had made bruising contact with the plaster.
Bolan mounted the stairs, three at a time, barging on through an unguarded door at the top of the landing.
Five startled faces turned to face him, only two of them black. The men were ringed around a small desk piled with money — both bills and coins — and several thousand crumpled betting slips. Bolan quickly recognized the Duke of Liberty City by his broken nose and cauliflower ear.
The soldier nearest to the door was in his shirtsleeves, wearing iron exposed beneath his arm. He was already moving out to intercept Bolan, but the Executioner brushed past him, not giving any one of them a chance to think coherently.
"Hey, what's this crap?" he demanded, managing to sound outraged as he gesticulated toward the betting slips and cash. "You were supposed to have it packed and ready."
Aiuppa glanced at the closest of his aides, scowling as his eyes returned to Bolan.
"Pack what? Where's Jackson? Who the hell are you?"
Bolan knew that Jackson would be sleeping off their brief encounter at the bottom of the stairs.
"You didn't get the word?"
"What word?"
Bolan glared at the Duke. He sounded both suspicious and confused, but he was talking now instead of shooting, and that meant Bolan had a chance to pull it off.
A slim one, yeah — but still a chance.
"The Feds have got a raid lined up," Bolan snapped, checking his watch for emphasis. "With any luck, you may have twenty minutes."
Aiuppa raised a hand, as if asking permission to leave a classroom.
"Hang on there, slick. You can't just waltz in here and..."
"You wanna dick around and flush this bankroll down the crapper?" Bolan asked him furiously. "You think you can afford it, Dukev?"
Aiuppa bristled.
"I guess you'd better tell me just exactly who the hell you are, guy."
Bolan reached into his suit coat, seeing all of them tense, hands edging toward their holstered weapons. He brought out the black ace and skimmed it across the desk at Aiuppa. It landed on a pile of twenties and fifties, directly in front of the welterweight.
Aiuppa stared down at it for a moment as if trying to make sense of what he saw. Looking at Bolan now, Aiuppa seemed hesitant, a touch of fear behind the burning eyes.
"It's been awhile since I saw one of these," he said at last, his voice a bit subdued.
"They're back in style."
Aiuppa's right hand slipped down out of sight, below the lip of the desk top, and Bolan was braced for him to make a move — but now the hand was coming up, still empty, resting palm down on the desk among the bills and coins.
"I'm gonna need authority for this,'' the mobster said.
"You're looking at it."
Aiuppa straightened up, his shoulders flexing.
"It ain't enough,'' he said flatly.
Bolan tried to put a touch of sympathy into his mocking smile.
"Okay. You wanna tell the man you pissed away — what is it there, a quarter mil? "
Aiuppa hesitated again, but found the guts to call Bolan's supreme bluff.
"I'll have to take the chance.''
Bolan spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
"You called it, Duke," he said. "You live with it — if you can."
Bolan was turning to leave the crowded little office, one hand already sliding toward the open flap of his jacket, when the office door banged open and the black sentry reeled into the room.
There was a pistol in his hand, and he was spluttering with rage, mumbling through battered lips in confusion.
Bolan did not let him have the time to polish up his speech. He chopped down on the man's gun hand with his own hard right, seizing the hood's arm simultaneously and whipping him around. The human projectile hurtled across the room, impacting on the desk and scattering men, money and betting slips in all directions.
The battered gunner ended up atop the desk, his bloody face almost in Duke Aiuppa's lap, driving the Mafia capo backward, hard against the wall.
All of them were trying to recover from the explosive interruption as Bolan ripped the 98-R out of side leather, sweeping right to left across the room. In the heat of the moment he knew there was no time for anything fancy now. It was kill or be killed.
The bodycock in shirt-sleeves had his .38 revolver clear and rising, the guy beside him still struggling with an undercover rig. Bolan took them both out with a rapid double punch, 9mm manglers drilling skull, spraying blood and brains across the wall behind them in a gruesome abstract mural pattern.
The Executioner caught another gunner breaking for the sidelines, clawing at a .45 tucked in his belt. Bolan drilled him through the chest with a parabellum round that left him thrashing on the floor.
The man called Jackson was struggling up, rolling off the desk and onto hands and knees beside it, shaking his head like a wounded animal. Bolan's next round took off half of Jackson's face.
Behind the desk Aiuppa was clawing for iron beneath his jacket. The weapon was halfway drawn when a third unseeing eye appeared in the middle of his forehead and the Duke of Liberty City stumbled backward, blood pumping from the ragged hole.
The final gun slick had his weapon out and got a single shot off, gouging plaster over Bolan's head before the Executioner pinned him against a filing cabinet with a deadly 9mm slug.
Bolan moved swiftly to retrieve the black-ace death card, leaving in its place a marksman's medal among the bills and coins.
As he retreated from that kill zone he knew the numbers had run out and the only thing that he could hope for was an easy exit from the pool hall.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and found the poolhall empty. He swiftly crossed the narrow room, striding toward the front doors when he caught a glimpse of movement in the street outside. He hesitated for only a heartbeat as he spotted half a dozen troops leaving a bar across the street. They were all coming his way, two in front unlimbering sawed-off pump shotguns, the others dragging handguns out of hidden leather.
It clicked, suddenly, and Bolan cursed himself for not figuring exactly what was happening when Aiuppa had reached beneath the desk top. The man had pressed a panic button, wired to ring alarms in a nearby building, where Aiuppa's guns would be waiting on the off chance of a call.
Bolan braced his Beretta in both hands, sighting quickly through a plate-glass window on the lead man, one of the shotgunners. The Executioner fired the instant he made target acquisition. The parabellum drilled a neat hole in the glass, a not so neat one in the gunner's chest, and he went down, his shotgun firing aimlessly into the gutter.
Five guns erupted instantly outside, pumping wild, reflexive rounds into the pool hall, raking windows, walls and furnishings without a clear idea of who or where their human target was. Buckshot and revolver rounds were chewing up the tables, bar, the posters hanging on the dingy, unwashed walls.
To stand and fight was suicide, and Bolan, canny warrior that he was, had other plans.
He doubled back along the length of the room, running in a combat crouch. He held his fire, knowing he would need every round in the Beretta if his plan fell through, if they caught up with him in there or when he made it to the outside.
Bolan found the back door locked from the inside and he kicked his way through it and into the alleyway beyond. Turning right, he could see daylight half a block away. He broke for it, pounding along the alley, Beretta in his fist and ready to answer any challenge at a heartbeat's notice.
He heard the voices, scuffling footsteps on the gravel of the alley at his back, and knew that he would never reach the Firebird, waiting for him at the curb. They were already after him, the first wild rounds impacting on garbage cans and raising clouds of brick dust as they ricocheted off walls to either side.
A shotgun roared, and Bolan ducked instinctively behind a dumpster, nearly deafened as the trash container took the buckshot charge, reverberating like a huge bass drum next to his ear.
Another twenty feet across the no-man's land whistling with blistering rounds, and he would reach the street. There was a chance, a slim one, right, that they would hesitate to follow him out there into the daylight.
Knowing the overwhelming odds, Bolan felt he had no chance but to try. He broke from cover, sprinting for the alley's mouth, ready to receive the searing fusillade that would lift him off his feet and send him spinning into final darkness.
But his move apparently surprised the gunners. They were caught flat-footed, thinking he would stay behind the dumpster long enough for them to throw a tight perimeter around him. Now they began firing wildly.
Bolan reached the mouth of the alley, knowing that the sunlight made his silhouette a perfect target. He was weaving to the right and seeking cover when a fiery red convertible screeched up in front of him, almost knocking him back against the bricks.
A woman was sitting at the wheel, a stunning beauty — and it took no more than a second for the warrior to identify her as the one he had first seen in Tommy Drake's embrace.
She was dressed now, right, but still a dazzler. When she looked at him, the Executioner half expected her to open fire on him with hardware of her own.
Instead, she motioned to him and urgently called out in an excited voice.
"Get in! Please hurry!"
The big warrior quickly figured the odds. He might be leaping out of one fire square into another, but he had no options at the moment. And if Bolan had to take his chances with an enemy that afternoon, he would prefer a single woman to an armed platoon of Mafia hardmen anytime.
She floored the gas and dropped, the sportster into first, screeching out of there with rear tires smoking. Long before the troop of pistoleros reached the intersection, Bolan and the woman were turning north onto a major side street, the engine's whine a fading jeer at the frustrated gunmen.
Riding in the bucket seat beside her, Bolan let himself relax a notch. But he kept a firm grip on the hot Beretta, pointing it at the floorboard between his knees. He might have use of it again at any instant, and the Executioner was not taking anything on faith these days.
A death mask could be beautiful, damn right, and if he walked into a trap on this one, Bolan would be going with eyes wide open, primed to kill.