calling him.'
They hit the expressway with the warning light flashing, pulled into the far-left lane, and hurtled along in steadily building momentum.
'I don't think there's all this big a hurry, though, Johnny,' Weatherbee said uneasily.
'Never can tell,' Pappas replied, flicking a gleaming glance toward his superior. 'And I sure as hell don't intend to miss this one.'
The lieutenant sighed, scratched his cheek again, and said softly: ''And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.''
'What?' Pappas said, chancing another quick glance.
'That's from the Book of Revelation,' Weatherbee said. 'Somehow it seemed appropriate to the moment.'
Pappas shivered involuntarily and hunched closer over the wheel. 'Armageddon,' he repeated musingly. 'That's a sort of hell, isn't it?'
'No,' Weatherbee said quietly, hanging onto the, door Handle to brace himself in the hurtling automobile, '-it's supposed to be the place where the final battle will be fought between the forces of-Christ!-watch it, will you!'
Pappas had swerved between two slower-moving vehicles, setting the lieutenant rocking and swearing beneath his breath.
'Between the forces of what?' he asked, ignoring the complaint.
'Between the forces of good and evil. Goddamnit, we're going to find our Armageddon right here on this expressway if you don't slow this son of a bitch down. Now damnit, that's an order, Johnny!'
Pappas reluctantly released some of the pressure from the accelerator. 'Just hurrying to the gathering,' he said, grinning. 'I sure as hell wouldn't want to miss Armageddon.'
'I'll remind you that you said that,' Weatherbee said quietly.
6 - Execution Hill
The Executioner had left his automobile at a carefully preselected spot in dense brush near the crest of a wooded hill directly opposite the South Hills home of Sergio Frenchi, and was making his fifth trip from the car to his 'drop' on the side of the hill. 'Execution Hill,' as he had come to dub the site, was largely uninhabited, with only three or four residential plots on the entire rise of ground, and there were no buildings of any description on Bolan's side of the hill. Nevertheless he had encountered various sounds of human presence during his trips between car and battlesite, mostly distant rustlings and voices; once he heard a male voice cursing vehemently, and on his third trip a horse and rider crossed his path no more than thirty to forty feet ahead of him, the horse slipping and snorting on the steep hillside and the rider speaking to his mount reassuringly.
The Executioner was exercising the utmost caution and stealth, but there was a lot of equipment to be moved, and he was going ahead with his plans despite the obvious patrol activity around his battlesite. He had selected a shallow hollow lying beneath an outcropping of rock which was angled about thirty degrees easterly of, and roughly ten degrees above, the Frenchi estate, and well-screened behind an overhanging droop of evergreens. He had run his trajectory calculations earlier, based on a range of five hundred yards, estimated. Now he had a GI rangefinder with which to refine those calculations, and he was surprised to learn that his estimate had been so close to reality. He applied the corrections for a 530-yard range, then consulted the graph he'd worked up for the Marlin and decided he would need to target fifteen inches above actual target to allow for trajectory drop. He extended similar calculations for the other weapons he had 'commandeered' from the armory earlier, devoted another fifteen minutes to making his 'setups,' then took time for a leisurely cigarette, carefully shielding the tiny glow from any hostile eyes in the vicinity.
As he smoked, he followed a timeworn tradition and scribbled his thoughts in a black leather-bound book. This concluded, he got to his feet and lightened himself, removing everything from his web belt except the.45 and the knife, even emptying the slit-pockets above his knees of the spare clips for the.45, and moved out quietly in a 'recon' of the area.
Weatherbee had told him that The Family was lying in wait for his next assault. This could mean nothing but a planned counterattack, and it would have to be a highly personal and concentrated one if it were to be effective. Bolan was not overly worried about their abilities in this regard, not unless the Mafia army had been recruited from combat-trained veterans of recent warfare. He had blackened his face and even the heavens seemed to be in his corner tonight, a nice broken layer of clouds keeping the night a black one most of the time. He paused beside a tree as one of the occasional breaks in the cloud-cover drifted overhead, briefly illuminating, faintly, Execution Hill. As he waited, stony and hardly breathing, a match flared a few yards uphill from his position and he could hear clearly the heavy exhalation of a cigarette smoke. The heavy darkness descended again almost immediately, and Bolen went into motion with it, moving silently in a tight circle up the hillside, homing in on the glowing tip of the cigarette. He came down from above and to the rear, and to within a matter of feet from the smoker. It was a man alone, his back to Bolan, seated on a rock and hunched slightly forward. Bolan unsheathed his knife, felt on the ground and found a rotted stick, and tossed it over the man's head and a few yards downhill. The stick hit a tree and the man's body stiffened.
'Hank?' he called softly.
Then Bolan was upon him, one arm curled tightly into the throat, the knife moving in a swift arc toward the rib cage. The body went limp, a rifle toppled and slid slowly down into the brush, and Bolan lowered the suddenly still form gently to the ground. He absently crushed out the lighted cigarette which had fallen to the ground, then stepped quietly down the hill, continuing the seek-and-destroy mission.
Mounted police, crashing about on horseback down below, did not particularly trouble his mind, but he could allow no enemy patrols on Execution Hill. His plan for the assault on the stronghold, once the major thrust was underway, would definitely limit his mobility; therefore the area would have to be positively secured before the attack was launched. His finely tuned ears detected another sound off to the right, and he moved toward it through the darkness, himself an item of darkness and silent, sudden death.
The following is an excerpt from The Executioner's diary, headed 'Thoughts at Execution Hill.'
I suppose that the chief difference between me and ordinary people is that I recognize the challenges of life and find it impossible to turn my back on them. I can't let somebody else do my killing, or bear my blood-smears, or stand in judgment in my behalf. If there is a battle to be fought, I must fight it. If there is blood to be spilled, I must spill it. If somebody is to be judged, I must stand at the bar. I suppose that I am not truly civilized. Maybe I'm a throwback, to another time, to another kind, to another ideal. But this much I know: I am alive tonight because of violence loose upon the earth.
Each breath I take is paid for by crushed and digested once-living things. Violence is the way of the world because competition is the way of life-perpetuation. Without violence there can be no competition, and without competition there can be no life. Something dies for every instant that something else lives.
I just had the thought that I am being morbid- and why not? Life itself is a morbid business. Each life lived is built upon a hill of death; each body is a living monument to death and a moving graveyard. It is the way of life, and even-no, especially -in a civilization. But in a civilization there are appointed executioners, some appointed to serve the greater good, some the greater evil. I am self-appointed, but this fact in no way alters the responsibilities of office.
Valentina, God love her, would die herself before she would crush the skull of a baby steer-but this tender child thoroughly loves her veal steaks. An executioner of baby steers has been appointed in Valentina's behalf, an executioner to crush the skulls of baby steers and thus provide the juicy steaks for tender Val's table.
Valentina, God protect her, is thoroughly repulsed and disgusted by the evil brought to this earth by men like the
Life is a competition, and I am a competitor. I have the tools and the skills, and I must accept the
