Death List

Bolan let his foot do the talking. He kicked in the door to the bar and shouted loudly, “Anybody here with the Torettos?”

A number of people scattered, heading under the tables or out the back door. Bolan would have to trust that Pierce knew what he was doing. He was more interested in the man with the sawed-off shotgun that popped up from behind the bar. He did, indeed, have a scar across his nose.

Bolan punched a single bullet into the middle of the guy’s face. Jack the Bartender discharged both barrels into the floor as he fell backward behind the bar. There was movement on both sides of the bar as a pair of gunners tried to flank him. Bolan shot first one and then the other. The sound-suppressed MP-5 was not completely silent, but in the close confines of the bar, it wasn’t punishing his ears. Bolan was grateful for that. As much close-quarters fighting as he did, hearing loss was a real concern.

Bolan looked left then right. The bar was the best cover available. He took it at a run and vaulted over, displacing several glasses in the process. On the other side, he crouched by the body of the dead Mob bartender and waited. The sound of running feet soon reached him.

“Hi, there!” he said, popping up. The Mob gunners rushing to the front room from the back turned at his words. He shot each of them down in turn, careful this time to sweep their legs. One of them wouldn’t take the hint. He tried to fire back from the floor, so Bolan punched another few shots into him before moving carefully out from behind the bar. This time, he used the opening at the side. The spring-loaded bar top was already open.

“Don’t try for it,” Bolan warned the man on the floor. The thug was reaching for the .38 revolver he had dropped. At Bolan’s approach, he withdrew his hand and went back to clutching at his lower calf. A neat bullet hole, through-and-through from what Bolan could see, had gouged a hole in the flesh of the man’s leg.

Somewhere at the back of the bar, Pierce’s shotgun barked. Bolan tensed. There were two more shots in quick succession, as fast as a man could rack the pump. Then the bar was silent.

Bolan would need to move quickly. It would not take long for the cops to show up, even in a neighborhood like this. One gunshot could be ignored. A few would probably go unnoticed for a little while. But the twin explosions, followed by the battle inside, would bring first responders. Bolan had no desire to be anywhere near there when they showed up. He had always lived by the cardinal rule that he would not engage police officers. He was not about to start now.

Pierce emerged from the rear hallway. He had his shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. “All clear out back,” he said. “I tagged a couple. We gotta get out of here, Harmon.”

“I know.” Bolan dragged the wounded man to his feet. “You know this guy?”

“Yeah,” the Toretto gunner said with a sneer. “He knows me—”

Pierce smashed the pistol grip of his shotgun into the man’s jaw. He reeled, and Bolan held him upright. “Shut up, punk. You don’t get to have attitude.”

To Bolan he said, “He’s one of Toretto’s numbers boys, yeah. I’ve seen him before.”

“What I need,” Bolan said to the bleeding thug, “is an address. The place where your bosses launder their money.”

“I’m not telling you—” the thug started, only to have his head snapped back by another blow from Pierce’s shotgun grip.

“I’ve got this hippie niece,” Pierce said. “She taught me about medicine bags.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow at that.

“A medicine bag,” Pierce went on, holding up one finger, “is this little cloth bag full of bits and pieces of things. Crystals. Stones. Herbs. Nonsense like that. Like a little bag full of useless little junk that hippies carry around their necks.”

“Why you telling me this, man?” the thug whined.

“Because,” Pierce said, smacking the thug in the chest with the shotgun to punctuate each phrase, “you tell us...what we want to know...or I make a medicine bag...full of your teeth.”

The mobster managed to blubber an address through the blood in his mouth.

4

“This is a money-laundering operation?” Bolan asked.

“This is it.”

“This right here.”

“This right here,” Pierce repeated. He put his hand to his face. Bolan realized he was struggling not to laugh. Bolan, himself, could not help but grin.

The words “Coin Op Laundry” had been painted, many years ago, on a sign that was struggling not to fall off the ancient brick building. The street it faced was narrow even by congested Chicago standards. Trash was piled high on either side of the building, strewed in clumps across the pavement and blowing past in whirls and eddies of dust and debris kicked up by passing traffic.

“Get your shotgun,” Bolan ordered.

“How you want to do it?”

“You take the back. I’ll go straight in the front.”

“They’re loaded for hell and gone in there, Harmon,” Pierce replied. “You sure you want to just stick your junk in a hornet’s nest like that?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Not here to judge you,” Pierce said.

Bolan shot the Mob enforcer a quizzical glance before stepping out of the car. The pair went to the Lincoln’s trunk. This time Bolan selected an AK-47 knockoff and threw a MOLLE rifleman bag loaded with 30-round magazines over his shoulder.

Pierce raised an eyebrow at the assault rifle. “Why the AK?”

“I want to make an impression.”

“It does do that,” Pierce admitted. The little enforcer waved, took his shotgun and made his way around the corner of the laundry building into a fetid alley so narrow he had to turn sideways to get through.

Bolan, meanwhile, held the AK lowered, against his body. He glanced up and down the street. There was no police presence and no civilians moving around that he could see, which was good. They were about to make enough noise that police response would be inevitable. They would need to get in, get this done and get out before they could be confronted by law enforcement.

No time to be subtle, in other words.

Bolan put the AK-47 to his shoulder, snapped the selector switch to automatic fire, then kicked in the front door of the laundry. The largely hollow receiver of the Kalashnikov rifle rang like a drum when it was fired, making the weapon sound like the Hammer of God to the uninitiated in close quarters. Bolan was counting on that blitz effect to take down however many Toretto gunmen might be holed up in the laundry.

First, though, he had to make sure he wasn’t dealing with any innocents. It was fine for Pierce to claim this was a Mob money laundry, but as the old Russian proverb said, “Trust, but verify.”

“Federal agent!” Bolan bellowed. “Hands where I can see them!”

The irony of impersonating a Mob hit man impersonating a federal agent was not lost on Bolan. He was nominally a federal agent himself, even if he had kept the government at arm’s length for many years now.

The cramped coin-op laundry looked like any of others Bolan had seen over the years. The walls were dominated by inset dryers. Rows of large, front-load washing machines were laid out in three long lines that jutted into the square space. The floors were scuffed-and-stained linoleum that probably dated to the moon landing.

Then there was the fellow with the Beretta 93-R, presumably a Toretto gunner, who leveled the piece at Bolan but did not fire. He was standing behind the dingy service counter at the back of the room, the sort of place an attendant would dole out change and sell single-use packets of detergent and fabric softener. He stared openmouthed at Bolan, his eyes wide.

“I said,” Bolan enunciated carefully, keeping his sights between the gunman’s eyes, “federal agent. Put the gun down.”

“You’re no Fed. You put yours down.”

“Last chance,” Bolan said. “You one of the Torettos?”

“You stupid cop.” The sound of a bell ringing came from the rear of the laundry, echoing along a small hallway that led to the back of the building. Footsteps pounded on the linoleum.

Reinforcements, Bolan thought.

Where was Pierce? Why wasn’t he covering the back?

The gunman grinned. Clearly he thought his own guys were coming to back him up, which made all the difference in his attitude. “You stupid cop,” he said again. “Yeah, we’re Torettos, all right, and that’s the last name you’re ever going to—”

Bolan shot him in the face.

A lot of guys thought if they just kept talking, it would mask their movements, like the telltale clenching of a hand on the butt of a gun as the owner prepared to fire. Bolan had seen every trick in the book. He had walked battlefields from one end of the Earth to the other. He wasn’t falling for something like that. It was obvious the gunner was going to plug him, and now that he had confirmed these were Mob goons, he didn’t have to worry that this might simply be the best-guarded laundry in the state.

He didn’t know too many shopkeepers or hired clerks who carried Beretta machine pistols, though.

The sound of Bolan’s shot brought the other gunmen boiling out from the back room. He noted a couple of pistols, a sawed-off shotgun and what had to be Spectre subguns, something he didn’t encounter in the field too often. He dropped to one knee and started slapping the trigger on the AK, fanning the barrel from left to right at knee level.

The gunmen screamed and started toppling. Bolan dived behind the nearest line of washers. The machine shook and rattled as the gunmen hammered the appliances, screaming and trying to drag themselves back toward the rear hallway. The linoleum was suddenly awash in blood. There was a good chance at least one of them had been nicked in an artery and would bleed out quickly...but it wouldn’t be quickly enough for Bolan’s purposes.

Bullets had a nasty tendency to go right through interior walls and hollow-core doors. Appliances were among the few household items that could stop small-arms fire. Bolan didn’t want to trust his washing machine to stop many more rounds, though, so he rose, bringing the AK to his shoulder. A few quick bursts was all he needed to put down the opposition for good. He bounded over the bodies, conscious of the numbers counting down before the law would arrive.

The gunman hiding in the rear hallway nearly took Bolan’s head off. The Executioner ducked at the last second as rounds from the man’s pistol tore into the wall near the doorway.

The sound of a shotgun blast at close range was followed by the toppling of a body. Bolan risked a fast glance around the door frame and then took a second, longer look. Pierce was standing there. His scalp was covered with blood, but he was holding his shotgun and standing over the body of the Toretto gunman.

“What happened to you?”

“Don’t ask.” Pierce gestured to the rear door of the laundry. “I’ve got some unfinished business out back. This door—” he jerked his chin at the door facing the exit “—leads downstairs. I don’t know how many guys are going to be down there, so if you want to wait for me...”

“I’ve got it,” Bolan said, reasoning that an assassin like Harmon would take pride in being able to handle business himself. “Try not to take any more shots to the head.”

Pierce grunted and headed back outside. Bolan eased the door to the basement level open and stole a look down the stairway. The steps were solid, which was good. Open stairs would make his feet and legs a target the whole way down.

Of course, anybody down there would just be waiting to shoot him when he got to the bottom. He needed something. He went back out into the charnel house that was main area of the laundry.

Pausing to scoop up the Beretta 93-R and search its owner for more 20-round magazines—he found several—Bolan tucked the weapon into the waistband at his back. Then he grabbed a cardboard box that was by the front door. It was of heavy stock and large enough for his purposes. He took it to the basement stairs and flattened it at the top. Then he drew both of Harmon’s Berettas, thumbed the hammers back and the safeties off, and perched himself on the collapsed box.

“Federal agent!” he shouted, and pushed off.

The gunfire that greeted him told him the men in the basement had no qualms about murdering a government agent—or an unwelcome visitor—and that marked them as hostile combatants. The bullets didn’t find their mark: Bolan was sliding down the steps at a breakneck clip, riding the piece of folded cardboard like a toboggan. Bullets cracked and splintered the steps behind him. The shooters were too slow. The Executioner’s sudden slide had given him just enough of an element of surprise.

He hit the bottom of the steps with a jolt, rolled through a somersault and stood with Harmon’s Berettas in both hands. The basement was a warren, lighted by bare bulbs hanging from extension cords mounted to the ceiling. Folding tables were arranged in rows. Some were covered with stacks of cash. At least one bore plastic bags of white powder, which was either heroin or cocaine. The smell lingering in the room told Bolan it was the latter. Whatever the Torettos were laundering, it was tied to illegal drug operations.

It was cool in the basement, but the gunmen working here were shirtless and wearing only swim trunks. There were three of them. Two wielded automatic pistols. The third had a cut-down Ruger Mini-14 sporting a pair of magazines taped end-to-end.

Bolan shot the Ruger wielder in the face. His weapon made him the greater threat. As the standing corpse started to turn, its finger convulsed on the trigger. A single 5.56 mm round belched from the weapon’s chopped barrel, punched a hole through a stack of bagged cocaine and pierced the second gunman’s stomach at the navel. The button man folded, screaming.

The third shooter had managed to draw down on Bolan with reasonable calm, firing off a pair of shots as he squinted against the glare of a nearby hanging light. The mobster’s aim was close enough that it drove Bolan to the floor on his back. The angle was wrong, but there was no time to worry about that. Instead, Bolan took aim at the bare light bulb and neatly popped a round through it. The bulb exploded in the gunman’s face.

The shooter dropped his gun and clawed at his face. Bolan stood once more, aimed carefully, and put a round through his adversary’s forehead. Then he moved to stand over the gut-shot mobster, kicking away the man’s pistol as he did so. A quick search told him he had eliminated all resistance. There were no secondary exits from the basement, unless there was a hidden hatch.

A creak on the stairs behind him made him whirl. He leveled both Berettas at the sound, but it was only Pierce, holding his shotgun by the receiver and raising both arms in surrender. The blood on his scalp was drying in a runnel past his nose. He looked annoyed.

“Only me,” he said.

Bolan lowered his guns. “You settle your business out back?”

“Yeah. But not well. I was hoping to get somebody alive. They figured out what we were doing when you hit the front. Here I am, covering the back, when one of them throws open the door and hits me with a gumball machine.”

“A what?”

“A gumball machine, for crying out loud!” Pierce groused. “You know, the stupid thing that sits in the back of every coin laundry you’ve ever walked into, filled with gum that hasn’t been changed since Kennedy was shot. Nailed me right in the head with it. I hit him in the head with the shotgun and made sure he was out, but by then the rest of the guards were already dancing with you. When I went back to get him so he could answer some questions, he was already awake enough to dig for a backup piece. So I had to plug him.”

“It happens,” Bolan said. Was Pierce telling him the truth? Or was this some clever ruse? And to what end? He wasn’t sure what the Mob enforcer had to gain by lying, but he filed the suspicion away nonetheless. In this game, you simply couldn’t take anyone’s agenda for granted.

Pierce surveyed the dead men and whistled softly. “These guys, the guys upstairs... You’re a one man death squad, Harmon.”

Bolan shrugged off the memories the comment brought back. He had put a few notches in his pistol grips over the years, to be sure. “I do what’s necessary,” was all he said.

Pierce looked more closely at the dead men. “Wait a sec. I know this guy.”

“Who is he?”

“His name really was Mike,” said Pierce. “Mike Morelli. He’s a cousin to Paul Toretto, the Don of the family.”

“Let’s question him.”

Pierce looked at Bolan as if the Executioner was insane. “He’s been shot in the head, Harmon. You’re not going to get anything out of him except juiced brain.”

“His pockets,” Bolan said.

Pierce nodded. He searched the corpse, coming up with a money clip, a folding knife, a lighter, a few other inconsequential items and an electronic car key.

“Maybe Mike’s car has some clues,” Pierce suggested. “You grab it and follow me. We’ll get gone before the cops show, find a parking lot, then search it from top to bottom.”

“Solid plan. Hand me his lighter.”

“You’re not going to do what I think you’re going to, are you?”

“No time for anything else,” Bolan said. The first sirens were barely audible in the distance. Given that they were at basement level, that put the cops too close for comfort. The Executioner flicked the lighter and started one of the stacks of cash ablaze. The cops would call the fire department, which would stop the blaze from getting out of hand, but hopefully the fire would gut the basement before it was put out. Bolan’s policy was never to leave anything behind that could benefit an enemy, if he could help it. If the coke and the cash ended up in a police evidence locker, it might magically find its way out again. Better to destroy it in situ.

“Man,” Pierce said as the stack of Mob money started to burn behind them. “That hurts to watch.”

“It’s going to hurt more for the Torettos before we’re done.”

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