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Nightmare in New York
The Executioner, Book Seven
By Don Pendleton OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1971 Pinnacle Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8560-4
CHAPTER 1
FACES
Four faces of death awaited him as he stepped into the main terminal area at Kennedy International. Bolan went on without a pause but his mental mug-file clicked to a halt at a quick make on Sam "The Bomber" Chianti, a contract specialist in the Manhattan-based Gambella Family. The other three faces had no identity beyond the screamingly obvious imprint of Mafia street soldiers.
Bolan casually transferred the topcoat to his right arm, allowing it to cover the hand. His eyes, behind the dark glasses, swept on beyond the four hardmen as he moved smoothly past them and into the flow of traffic toward the helicopter station of Manhattan Airways. They had made him, of course—tagging along behind now, unbunching and fanning out like wranglers on a roundup.
Sam the Bomber was on Bolan's right flank. The other faces, glimpsed briefly yet seared now into his mental file, were keeping a discreet distance and covering any possible angle of escape, efficiently crisscrossing in the crowd, maintaining the rear seal.
A man ahead of Bolan was complaining loudly to a companion about the high cost of fun at Frankfurt. Bolan himself was thinking tiredly about the high cost of coming home and confronting the enemy unarmed. He had felt it wise to abandon his hardware at London Airport rather than risk detection by the hijack-conscious air marshals. The gamble had been for a quiet re-entry into the U.S. Bolan should have known better. Now he did. Too late.
With death stalking him, the survival instincts of the professional combat man took over and began directing Bolan. Sam the Bomber was moving in, quickly closing the gap between them. Bolan spoke without turning his head or breaking pace. "You ready to die, Sam?" he asked coldly.
"Huh?" the other man grunted, caught offguard by the direct remark and briefly uncoordinated, his hand jerking toward the opening in his coat.
Bolan held the fast pace and snapped a glance at the dumbfounded hood. "It's a setup," he growled, his face unconcerned but his guts churning. "Feds are all over me. You too, now."
"Bullshit," Chianti replied, vocally rejecting the warning. His eyes, however, were not all that positive, sliding about in an involuntary inspection of the crowd.
"So you'll be buried in bullshit. It's your last contract, Sam." Bolan was rounding the corner to the helicopter station. The flustered Chianti moved a step too close going into the turn. Bolan's arm moved in a sudden blur, the topcoat whipped across the Mafioso's face, and Bolan's elbow slammed into his gut.
Chianti's breath left him with a whooshing gurgle. A short-barreled .38 revolver which had momentarily occupied his gun hand disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived and dropped into Bolan's waiting pocket as though the transfer had been a carefully rehearsed one. Bolan's hammering forearm chopped into the hardman's throat. He staggered back into the fast moving stream of traffic, going to the floor and taking several pedestrians down with him.
Bolan went on, leaving the confusion behind and merging with the main swirl through the gates. He snapped a backward glance as he crowded into the waiting helicopter and quickly located two anxious faces in the pileup at the boarding gate. The doors closed behind him and Bolan found a seat. Moments later the big ferry craft was lifting into the air. Through the window Bolan saw Sam the Bomber, his face a study in rage and frustration as he stepped into a phone booth.
Bolan sighed and fingered Chianti's .38 through the fabric of his jacket. So now it would be a race with time. The chopper would be putting down in midtown Manhattan in a matter of minutes. And another head party would be scrambling to get there ahead of him.
Bolan tried to relax, knowing that he could not. He scowled darkly at his reflection in the window. A guy did not go to his own execution all sweetly composed and ready for a gentle sigh into that last breath of life. Not this guy. His last breath would be a snarl, not a sigh.
The Midtown Station was perched atop a skyscraper not far from Grand Central Station. The ungainly craft settled onto the rooftop landing pad and Bolan was the first passenger to the door. He showed the crew man his pistol and told him, "Go ahead and open up, but don't let anyone out for one full minute. There might be some gun play when I hit that roof. Understand?"
The crew man's face paled. He nodded his head in understanding.
Bolan asked him, "Is the escape hatch forward, same as on the military version?"
Again the crew man nodded.
"Okay. Remember, one full minute." Bolan found the emergency exit in the copter floor, opened it, and quickly dropped to the roof of the building. The rotors were still chugging overhead as he swung out beneath the belly and ran for the steps to the elevator area.
In the periphery of his vision, Bolan saw a large man with both arms extended step from behind a bricked area directly opposite the landing pad, and at the same moment a heavy-calibre handgun began to fire. Whistling slugs tore across Bolan's path and plowed into a ventilator housing just beyond. The guy was targeting on him from a firing-range stance, one hand grasping and steadying the gun wrist as he continued to coolly squeeze off round after round.
Bolan snap-fired two running shots from the .38—both missing, but close enough to send the gunman scurrying for cover. A confusion of shouted commands and the sounds of running feet accompanied Bolan to the stairway which led to the raised deck, where a little guy with a big gun appeared at the top just as Bolan was starting up. The man at the top tried to dodge but Bolan's instinctive trigger finger had already dispatched an untidy hole directly between the retreating eyes. The gun went over the railing as the small man flopped onto the stairway. Bolan stepped aside to be clear of the falling body, then raced on to the top as a thick voice from below called up to him, "You ain't got a chance, Bolan! We got you sealed on this roof!"
Bolan did not doubt the truth of that for a moment. But he had three seal dissolvers left in the revolver and he meant to spend them wisely. He sprinted across the raised area, then launched himself into a rolling dive as an assortment of handguns began unloading on him from the elevator shelter. He took a searing hit in the meaty part of his left shoulder then another burned across the flesh of his hip. Firing from the prone, Bolan squeezed off three deliberate shots into the crouching figures at the elevator, toppling them like dummies in a shooting gallery. Then he sneered away the pain alarms from the shrieking shoulder and lurched to his feet for an eyes-on confrontation with the final remaining obstacle to freedom. The guy was bent forward at the waist, a big auto-loader thrust out in front of him, and he was wildly jerking the trigger against an empty or jammed magazine, slowly backing into the elevator car. Bolan transferred the now useless .38 to the equally useless and dangling left hand and sent a mental command to the damaged limb to hang on for just another moment, and he went in after the quickly dissolving seal. The guy saw death coming for him and his eyes began to roll. The automatic clattered to the floor and the hood's hands went to the back of his head. He croaked, "Jeez, Bolan, I—"
Bolan's good right hand shot out to grab the guy's tie, and he catapulted him out of there in an arcing swing from the throat just as another group charged to the top of the stairway from the helicopter area. The guy was dancing around just outside the elevator, trying to keep his footing against the wild eviction fling. Guns thundered from the stairway and the Mafioso's dancing took on a freakish quality as he stopped the hot missiles meant for Bolan. The elevator doors, closing, also intercepted a grouping of sizzling metal. Then the car was in motion and Bolan was alone with his empty revolver and a steadily building pain in his shoulder. The pistol slipped away from numbed fingers and his lifeblood followed closely, dropping into bright scarlet spots on the floor. He wadded a handkerchief and jammed it roughly inside his shirt, holding it tightly and grinding his teeth against the new onslaught of harsh sensation.
The firefight on the roof had seemed to last an eternity. Actually, hardly more than a minute had elapsed since he dropped from the belly of that chopper. Men died in a fingersnap; time seemed to stand still at moments like that. It was not standing still now. Bolan's shoulder wound was bleeding furiously, and he could literally feel the life energies seeping away from him. He had not escaped, he knew—only delayed the end a while longer.
The elevator was an automatic express between the roof and the thirty-eighth floor. He left it at that level and took another car to the sixteenth floor, then doubled back to the twentieth. There he carefully cleaned up some wet splotches of spilled blood and went looking for the stairway, taking care not to leave a telltale trail of crimson.
The arm was beginning to stiffen, his coatsleeve was soaked, and the bleeding was showing no signs of letting up. The grazed hip was stinging like hell but had bled very little and was obviously not going to give him much trouble. Not that he needed any more. Those guys on the roof would not be giving up all that easy. At that moment, Bolan knew, they were swarming the building in a determined effort to keep him sealed in there. And, of course, in a minute or two there would be cops to contend with. There would always be cops, as dependable as heat in hell.
The shoulder was not hurting much now. That was a bad sign. Also his legs were getting rubbery and his eyes were becoming unreliable. The truth bore in on his dizzied consciousness—he would not find that stairway, and it would not do him much good if he should. He was losing consciousness. He stumbled, and threw his good hand out to steady himself against the wall. Instead he fell against the frosted glass of a door and his hand came to rest on the doorknob. Artful letters on the door told him that Paula's Fashions lay just inside.
Bolan pushed on inside just as his legs gave way altogether and the floor of the office floated up to receive him. A feminine voice squealed something in an alarmed falsetto, and impossibly long and shapely legs ran over to stand beside him. Then a pretty face was hovering above his and a disembodied voice gasped, "Oh wow! I know who you ..."
Bolan had lost his dark glasses somewhere back there in the fracas. Sure, everyone knew who he was. That face of his had been plastered across newspapers, national magazines, and television screens so often that it had become almost as familiar to the American public as John Wayne's or Paul Newman's.
His voice sounded to him as though it were coming from someone else as he feebly commanded, "Call the cops and leave!" Death crews left no witnesses, and suddenly the most important thing in his spinning mind was to warn this girl of her danger. "Quick, get out before ..." The words became entangled in his tongue and he lost them.
Another pair of legs floated in from somewhere. The same voice he'd heard before was declaring, "It's that guy, that Executioner."
"Some executioner," said another, less excited, female. "It looks as though he tried once too often."
With his final erg of conscious energy, Bolan whispered, "Don't get caught here with me. Run, now—split!"
Then the most incredibly beautiful face he had ever seen was hanging there just above his, inspecting him with a concerned smile, and he took that image with him into the beckoning whirlpool of utter blackness. Perhaps, he thought, he would not die with a snarl, after all. If he was dying, then it was with a quiet sigh of deepest regret.
CHAPTER 2
BODIES
Bolan dreamed of lush Elysian Fields and of cavorting with beautiful naked nymphs with impossibly long legs, and of skinny-dipping in sparkling pools where the nymphs grew Mafia heads beneath their arms. The dream seemed uninterrupted and endless, and when he finally opened his eyes he could not be sure that he had been or was not still dreaming.
He lay beneath a sheet on a luxuriously large bed in a beautifully decorated room, and he was naked beneath that sheet. His shoulder was bandaged and the arm was taped to his side. Lying beside him above the sheet and propped onto multiple pillows was a lovely young thing in the briefest of bikini panties and a peekaboo shortie-top of purplish gauze; her face was angled away from him and all but buried in the pages of a book—but yeah, they were the same long legs that had stood over his bleeding body so many dreams ago.
At the far side of the room upon a table at an open window was something equally as interesting. He thought at first that it was a life-size statue or mannikin—maybe a female Buddha. Whatever it was, it was stony-naked and seated in a somewhat awkward pose, facing the open window, legs folded and drawn up under it, ivory skin gleamingly reflecting the sun's rays, head slightly bent, absolutely unmoving, absolutely stark staring beautiful.
Bolan was gazing at the still figure and trying to get a better focus when another girl entered the room and came directly to the foot of the bed to stare at him in unblinking appraisal. She was clad in a long gown with a bulky shorter overgarment, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, dark hair styled in a soft contour of the very lovely head, sensitive lips, eyes beautifully delineated and tending to brood a bit. Bolan returned her level gaze and presently she broke the silence. "Welcome back to the world of light and beauty."
He said, "Is that what world this is?"
She solemnly nodded her head but whatever she had at the tip of her tongue was lost as the girl beside Bolan came out of her book and twisted toward him with a stifled little gurgle of excitement. "You're back!" she squealed.
Bolan recognized the voice. It was one of the last things he'd heard before he died, or passed out, or whatever. He shifted his reluctant focus toward her and weakly asked, "Where've I been?"
"Out of it," she told him. "Absolutely out of it for nearly twenty-four hours."
The tall girl at the foot of the bed said, "I'll fix you something light to eat," and went back the way she'd come, silent as a wraith.
"That's Paula Lindley," the girl at his side informed him. "She went almost all the way through nurse's training. You can thank her for fixing you up."
"I'll do that," Bolan murmured. His eyes had a new focus and his mind was lethargically cataloging the shareholder of his bed. She was a moppet, no more than nineteen or twenty, with luminously inquisitive eyes, gleaming golden hair looping down to softly rounded shoulders in two heavy braids, and the cutey-pie face of a rapturously expectant romantic.
"We knew we didn't dare get a doctor for you," the cutey-pie was telling him in that very alive voice of bursting excitement. "We know who you are, you see." She giggled.
"But you don't know who we are, do you. I'm Evie Clifford." She pointed to the girl in the lotus position at the window.
"That's Rachel Silver. Doesn't she have a fantastic body? Don't mind her, she's a home naturalist."
Bolan shook at the cobwebs connecting his brain tissues and muttered, "A what?"
"A home nudist. Also she's hung up on Yoga and she's meditating right now. At times she'll sit the whole day through like that, right there, and you might as well talk to the wall. Some roommate."
"I'll bet you have very attentive neighbors on the other side of that window," Bolan commented sluggishly.
The moppet laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'll bet. But don't worry, no one saw us bring you in. We dress-carted you."
"What?"
"We curled you up in the box of a dress cart, covered you with bolt ends, hung a bunch of fashions on the overhead rods, and just pushed you right through the whole mess, cops and everything." Her eyes were dancing with the exciting memory. "We thought we'd die when your blood started leaking out."
Darkly, Bolan said, "Yeah, me too." He heaved himself to a sitting position then quickly eased back to the pillow when the room began revolving about him.
"How long did you say I've been out?" he asked her, his voice suddenly going thick and gutteral.
"Since two o'clock yesterday afternoon. This is Sunday, almost noon. Paula's been getting worried. She was thinking about trying to rent some I.V. equipment if you didn't come out of it pretty soon."
"Rent what?" Bolan asked dizzily.
"You know the bottles and the tubes and needles and junk for intravenous feeding?"
"Oh."
"So you'd better try eating whatever Paula brings you, unless you want to end up with a needle in the arm."
Bolan closed his eyes and tried to piece things together in his mind.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nightmare in New York by Don Pendleton. Copyright © 1971 Pinnacle Books. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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