man who had met Bolan at the door. “Outside of that, don’t get in the way, and if we get a Bolan alert, you’ll go along. You got a piece?”
Bolan opened his jacket, showing the butt of the .45.
“Yeah. We got some better hardware. Have Vinny show it to you.” The godfather nodded. The interview was over.
For the next half hour Vinny piloted “Lonnie Giardello” around the layout. He introduced Lonnie to everyone and left him with a six-man crew on alert in the basement recreation room. A door led to a driveway where a crew wagon waited, ready to roll.
“We’re on alert for Bolan,” one of the soldiers said. “That asshole surfaces anywhere in town, we get a call and we’re rolling in two minutes.”
“I’d like to come along,” Bolan said.
The soldier shrugged. “If Don Carlo says show you, we show you.”
“Good, I’ll be around. Don Carlo told me to get acquainted with the layout. What’s outside?”
“Six-car garage, tennis court, swimming pool and lots of lawn.”
Bolan nodded and wandered outdoors. In the garage he looked over the cars — two Cadillacs and one Lincoln. From his pocket he slipped out two packages of C-4 and pasted one under the front fender well on each of the two Caddy crew wagons. The detonators were set for channel one on his radio-controlled signal box.
He walked around, went back inside, found the kitchen and bummed a roast-beef sandwich and coffee, pleading that he had not eaten on the plane.
The Executioner met Nino Tattaglia in the hall and the turned-around hoodlum’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
Bolan came up quickly. “Hi, I’m Lonnie Giardello. Just down from Boston to watch the Bolan fight.”
“Yeah. I’m Nino Tattaglia,” he said, his face still showing surprise.
“Didn’t I used to know some of your people in Brooklyn? Bunch of Tattaglias up there. There was a Joe and Frank, as I remember. Any of your people?”
“Not that I know of. Need a guide around this place?”
“I could use one.”
They talked quietly then.
“What the fuck are you doing? Half the town is looking for you and you charge in here!”
“I was invited. Best way. I see you got away from that motel room before the cops arrived.”
“Yeah, barely. Somebody saw me. At least nobody in the family suspects me. Thanks for that.”
“Who killed the girl?”
“Big Jake, the guy you wasted first. He enjoyed it, the bastard!”
“Any way I can look in the weapons room? You have one here?”
“Sure. No one man runs it. Usually it’s locked. Let’s go check it out.”
It was in the basement next to the recreation room. Several of the pool players looked up and waved when Nino came in. He talked to a couple of them for a minute.
“The weapons room open? Wanted to show our loaner around.”
The men laughed, and the one Bolan had talked to first unlocked it. “We got in a special order this morning,” he said. “Look at these beauties!”
Spaced out on a workbench on clean wipe towels lay three Uzi submachine guns.
“Damn!” Bolan said. “They full-auto?”
“As full as you can get. They forgot to send us any ammo, but it should be here tomorrow.”
Bolan picked up one of the stubby little submachine guns that had been developed by the Israelis from the Czech models 23 and 25 chatter-guns years ago. It was still one of the most effective in the world.
He slipped out the 32-round magazine that would hold the 9 mm parabellums and whistled.
“What we could do with these in Boston!”
“Get your own,” Nino said.
The other Mafia soldier laughed and returned to the pool game. It was his shot.
Bolan picked up a tool off the bench and went to work on one of the Uzis. In two minutes he had stripped off enough parts so he could remove the firing pin. He reassembled it and did the same thing to the next one. Just as he finished that one, two more soldiers came in to look at the new weapons.
As they fawned over the Israeli burp guns, Bolan planted another cube of C-4 plastique under a case of ammunition. This one had been set for detonation by a transmission on the second radio channel. The triggering device in Bolan’s suitcase looked like a radio the size of a pack of cigarettes.
Nino and Bolan eased out of the room, watched the pool game and then wandered outside.
“You are crazy!” Nino said. “The first time they try to shoot those weapons they’ll find out they have no firing pins.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t too soon. Right now I need you to show me three more vital spots where I can hide these little surprise packages of C-4.”
“Plastic explosives? Just be sure to tell me before you light the damn fuses.”
They put the other three plastic bombs in hidden places around the mansion. The last one went in a small niche in the wall opposite Nazarione’s office.
They walked outside in the soft Maryland evening.
A horn bellowed on the ground.
“Bolan alert!” Nino explained. “Let’s go!”
They ran for the crew wagon near the basement door. Bolan got in the first car and Nino the second. When they were filled, the big Cadillacs roared out the driveway, barely waiting for the gate to completely open before racing through.
“Where is he?” Bolan asked the Mafia soldier wedged in the back seat next to him.
“Damned if I know,” he said.
The driver explained that some big dark guy supposed to be Bolan was busting up a gambling spot uptown.
When they got there, the ruckus was still going on. Two of them covered the rear door and five others, including Bolan, stormed into the club and spotted the troublemaker. He held a chair in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. The five converged on him; he swung the chair at Bolan.
The Executioner grabbed the chair, jerked it forward, throwing the man off balance. As he flailed his arms and dropped the knife to regain his balance, one of the Mafia soldiers slammed into him with a shoulder block that carried him to the wall. They grabbed his arms, twisted them behind him and marched him out the back door.
The man was about twenty, blond and blue-eyed.
He gave his name and it checked with the ID he carried.
“Can’t be our man,” one of the hoods said. “Too young, too blond — no way.”
Ten minutes later the Caddy was heading back toward the Nazarione mansion. The man at the club had been enraged at losing his week’s pay on the gaming tables and tried to even the score by breaking up the place. The on-site security swore up and down the guy was Bolan and they were not going near him without shooting first.
“Hell, he was no more the Executioner than I am,” said one of the soldiers beside Bolan.
“Yeah, or me,” Bolan said.
The goon looked at him and laughed. “You look about as much like his picture as that dude we left in the alley back there with his arms broke.”
Bolan had not been able to stop the “penalty” the young man underwent for smashing up two tables in the club. He could have stopped it, but it would have blown his cover.
One man swung up an Uzi submachine gun. He shook his head. “Damn, I wish to hell that ammo had arrived. I’d have greased his ass good with thirty rounds and never let up on the trigger.”
Bolan watched the man caress the gun. The odds were two to one its firing pin had been removed. The Executioner still did not like the odds. He would get to the third Uzi if he could before he bailed out of the place.
He had learned part of what he wanted to know about the enemy camp. They were “up” for this battle with Mack Bolan. They had some good equipment, and some of the men were sharper than he had seen before in the
