Chicago Wipe-Out

6 And into the night

Larry Turk leaned forward to pat his wheelman's shoulder and to instruct him, "Pull up over here, Gene."

The driver nodded and eased the big car to the curb, halting diagonally across from the entrance to the Town Acres Motor Lodge. Visibility in the swirling, wind-driven snowfall was practically zero, and even the glittering neon tower of Town Acres was no more than a phosphorescent-like glow hovering in the sky.

Another vehicle nosed in behind Turk's car. Seconds later, crew chief Bernie Tosca blew into the rear seat beside Larry Turk, bringing in a puff of snowflakes with him.

Turk brushed delicately at his pants leg and growled, "What a night to be out, eh?"

"Yeah." Tosca wiped the freezing moisture from his face and blew into his hands. "That's the place over there, huh?"

"That's it. Homer Peoples has the girl concession here. You know Homer?"

Tosca smiled nastily and replied, "Who doesn't. Is this a sure make, boss?"

"Not all that sure," Turk told him. "Homer saw this white Ferrari in the parking lot. He went to the desk to check it out. Car has Indiana plates, and the desk had 'em registered as Mr. and Mrs. William Franklin, from Indianapolis. Homer couldn't get no more. The day shift had gone home and nobody on duty remembered seeing the guy."

"Homer played it quiet, I hope," Tosca said.

"He said he did. The room number is B-240. That'll be south end, upstairs."

"We have to go in through the lobby? I don't remember this layout."

"Naw, there's four ways up from outside — two stairs going up from the parking lot, that's on this side, and two going up from the — whatta ya call it, the courtyard? — anyway, there's four outside stairs."

"Oh yeah, I think I remember now. All these rooms open on the outside, upstairs they got this iron porch that circles around the joint. I got it now."

"Okay," Turk said, "but listen. I want some boys in the lobby, and I want boys on all four stairways. I want no fuck-ups, Bernie."

"Don't worry, there won't be any."

"You take him inside. I mean that. He gets out in this mess and we might never see him again."

"What if he ain't there?"

"Then you sit and wait, and send somebody down to tell me. And also you send me whoever else isin there."

"Right." Tosca nervously lit a cigarette and leaned against the door. "You want this Bolan alive?"

"If you catch him in bed with his pants down, sure. But don't take no chances. If he's ready for a fight, just bring me his head and his hands, that's all I need. And don't leave nobody else alive. You know?"

"Right. Here's what I'm going to do, Turk. I'm sending two cars in right here, into the parking lot, as insurance. And I'm taking Bobby Teal and Joe the Bouncer with me up the south stairs. The rest of the boys I'll have covering the other ways out."

Turk growled, "You better leave a couple of plug men at the bottom of yourstairs, too."

"Okay, yeah, I'll do that."

"Okay, great," Turk said. "And just in case it allfalls to hell, I'll be waiting right here. Me and Willie Thompson."

A man seated in the front beside the driver snickered and raised the snout of a Thompson submachine gun into view. "I hope it all falls to hell," he commented.

"Fuck you, Willie," Bernie Tosca said, and flung himself back into the snowstorm.

Larry Turk chuckled and again touched the wheelman's shoulder. "Okay, let's ease down in front of that exit."

The heavy vehicle crunched slowly along the snowpacked street, taking station for a rub-out. "You smelling blood, Willie?" Turk asked, still chuckling.

"Hell, boss, I can almost taste it," Wille Thompson replied.

The ghostly glow of headlamps loomed suddenly in front of them as a large car, moving cautiously in the restricted visibility, swung past and into the motel entrance. For one electric instant the occupants were visible in the lights of Larry Turk's vehicle. The field general's chuckles stifled into a grunted, "Christ! Wasn't that... ?"

"It sure as hell was!" the wheelman confirmed.

"Who?" said Willie Thompson. "I didn't see 'em. Who was it?"

Larry Turk was swearing loudly to nobody in particular.

The wheelman told Wille Thompson, "That was Pete the Hauler. With a car-full of boys."

Some of the parcels which Bolan had brought into the motel room had been for himself. The black suit and overcoat had given way to a white, heavy-weather jumpsuit, water-resistant and tightly cuffed at ankles and wrists. Over this he wore a light but warm hooded jacket, also white, and gray rubberized boots with thermal linings.

His concern at the moment was for Jimi James. He gave her a final critical inspection and declared, "I guess you'll do."

"I guess I'd do for an Artie expedition," she replied drily. Bolan had stuffed her into several layers of clothing — frilly underthings next to the skin followed by a thermal suit similar to Bolan's own, then the heavy wool pants-suit and knee-high boots, all in white. A hiplength ski jacket, muffler, cap and gloves completed the outfit — and she was feeling a bit put out by the entire thing. "From the sublime to the ridiculous," she groused. "Where are our snowshoes?"

Bolan ignored the wisecrack and tested his access to the Beretta. Jimi could see the displeasure in his eyes. She said, "Don't mind me. When I get scared I get sarcastic."

"I don't mind you," he assured her. "It's this outfit... it's a bit clumsy." He grinned and added, "Look who's demanding perfection," then he hit the light switch and the room went dark.

In a quavery voice, Jimi asked, "Did you say down?"

He chuckled. "No, I didn't."

"Why are we standing here in the dark?"

"Can you see me?" he asked her.

"No."

"When you can, we'll go out."

"Oh," she said, small voiced. Then..."Are you always this careful?"

"I try to be."

A moment later she advised him, "I guess my eyes are adjusted. I can see you. Sort of."

He said, "Fine," and cracked the door open.

"M-Mack?"

"Yeah?"

"If I die... if we die..."

"Think living, Jimi — not dying." He made a quick doorway recon, then took her by the hand and pulled her outside with him.

The choking snow enveloped them immediately and they moved swiftly along the upper porch to the stairway. Again Bolan paused to get the lie and the feel of the environment.

Jimi gasped, "What's the?.."

"Hush," he whispered.

The engine of an automobile could be heard idling somewhere just below. The motel's outside lights were no more than faint and isolated specks of useless luminescence. Bolan's hand went to the railing of the steel stairway, fingertips lightly pressed to the dry underside.

They stood that way for perhaps thirty seconds, then Bolan quickly propelled her along the porch and pressed her against the side of the building. "Not a sound," he whispered. "Not even a harsh breath."

Jimi knew that the Beretta was in his hand and that he was waiting for something of which she had not yet become aware. She covered her mouth with a gloved hand and huddled to the wall, blinking away the snowflakes which were trying to invade her eyes. Then she became aware that Bolan had moved slightly away from her. She reached out to touch him — he gave the questing hand a reassuring squeeze, and then he was gone.

Seconds later she heard voices, muted and ghostly in the wind, without source of direction, but apparently drawing steadily nearer.

"Jesuschrist I can't see a goddam thing."

"Quiet, just be quiet."

"What if we get lost?"

"Whoever heard of getting lost on a fuckin' stairway?"

"I heard of a guy getting lost in his own backyard in a blizzard once. They found him the next morning, froze to death, ten feet from his own back door."

"Dammit, you guys heard me say be quiet!"

Three voices, evidently ascending the stairway. Jimi was learning to understand the signs of the jungle.

"Did that pimp say B-240?"

"Don't call 'im no pimp. He's a personal friend of th' boss, you better not let him hear..."

"Pimp, shrimp— the next guy to say a word is gettin' a bullet right inna ear! Now dammit, shut up!"

There was little doubt as to the meaning of that muffled conversation, even for a jungle novice such as Jimi James. And suddenly her mind seemed to become as one with Mack Bolan's. She knew that he was poised there, near the top of that stairway, his eyes straining against the blinding snow, all of his senses finely tuned into that split-second of opportunity to pounce like the great jungle cat that he was. And, in that startling instant, Jimi understood the inner man that was Mack Bolan as perhaps no other person had. Her fear, in that moment of understanding, gave way to an inner calm awaiting the inevitable.

And the inevitable came quickly, as Bolan had promised. A shivering voice, very close now, muttered, "Let's see, B-240. I wonder which way that would be."

A returning voice of cold steel suggested, "To your left."

"Huh?"

"Wh?.."

Jimi might have missed the quiet phuttings of the Beretta against the background of storm noises if she had not also seen the lances of flame that came so closely together as to almost be connected — and, yes, she knew now about suddenness.

An almost unbearably drawn-out quiet descended. A sign above Jimi's head creaked with the wind — now and then the murmuring idle of the automobile engine was brought in on the wind. She fought down an impulse to call out Bolan's name, and instead conjured a picture of him standing at the head of that stairway, taking its pulse at the railing, his animal senses flaring out into the storm to draw in impressions which perhaps would not come to an ordinary person.

And suddenly his hand was on her's and his lips, close to her ear, were instructing her, "Let's go, quietly."

She went, and quietly, one hand in Bolan's, his body partially shielding her's. He led her around the cluster of fallen soldiers and they began the descent.

Bolan stiffened suddenly, about halfway down, and Jimi reflexively made herself small behind him. Then she became aware of the sounds that had halted him — another murmur of voices, somewhere out in the storm, rising frequently to angry tones — an occasional glimpse of auto headlamps shimmering through the vertical blanket of snowflakes. She could not be certain if she was seeing multiple sets of lights or if a single pair were creating optical illusions.

Then Bolan was tugging at her and they went on, cautiously planting their feet and pausing at each step before progressing to the next one. And the voices were becoming clearer.

A heavy one, sounding angry and vexed, was declaring, "... tells me where I go and where I don't go. You go back and tell 'im that."

Another, respectful, almost pleading: "It's just that this's no place for an important man like you't'be, Mr. Lavallo. Turk just don't want you exposing yourself needlessly."

"I know what Turk don't want, Bernie, and you better remind 'im who he's dickin' around with. And you better remind yourself."

Bolan and Jimi were off the stairway now and moving past the headlamps and voices — close, so close. The snow was drifting into kneehigh ridges along the line of parked vehicles, and they were following one of these ridges. Bolan was moving surely and swiftly now, and again Jimi marvelled at his finely developed instincts or whatever it was propelling him into the blind chaos of the night.

A formless dark shape materialized in their path; Jimi recoiled at about the same instant that the Beretta coughed and another pencil-flame lanced the storm. The blob gave off a "Whuf" and dematerialized — and on they went. Jimi stumbled over something soft lying across her path. She caught her breath and her balance at the same time, shivering in the knowledge that she had stepped on an arm or a leg of a man who, seconds earlier, had been alive and sentient.

The voices of the night had suddenly shut themselves off, then the angry one could be heard nervously inquiring, "Did you hear that? Didn't you hear something?"

"Sounds will fool you in this kind of weather, Mr. Lavallo. Really now, why don't you?.."

"Naw, that's a sound you never forget. It's that blaster with a special kind of silencer, I think. That bastard's out here somewhere, I bet. I'm gonna call in my boys."

"God, Mr. Lavallo, don't..."

That voice was lost in the sudden loud blasting of an automobile horn. Another blob of motion appeared off to Jimi's right, crunching snow and breathing hard in a hurried transit. She understood then Bolan's selection of white clothing for this night; they were probably invisible, she was thinking. These other people were no more than shapeless patches of a darker mass against the inpenetratable white background.

A loud voice nearby was demanding, "Shut it off! Shut off that goddam horn if you have to shoot 'im!"

And then Jimi understood that the enemy were all around them — this was like a game of blind man's buff, with everybody as the blind men and Mack Bolan operating with some sort of a personal inner radar. The night had come alive with running feet on crunching snow, startled exclamations, muffled shouts, and the building sounds of a growing confusion.

Bolan had come to an abrupt halt, and somehow Jimi knew that he had located the Ferrari. She swung about to get behind him, and found herself sprawling forward suddenly, off-balance and falling over a large object which she immediately recognized as the front end of an automobile.

Bolan's strong grip was jerking her upright and stabilizing her, and a worried voice closely was inquiring, "Hank? What's the matter?"

"Nothin', I thought it was you," came the slightly distant reply from the rear of the car.

Then Bolan's lips were at Jimi's ear and a harsh "down"was echoing inside her skull. Without quite realizing how she had arrived there, Jimi found herself lying in the snow and rolling madly for the protection of the vehicle.

The Beretta Belle was coughing a soft symphony of destruction amidst the louder crashes of several pistols. Something hit the snow beside her outflung hand and she instinctively seized it and recognized in the feel of it an expended ammunition clip from the Beretta.

She remembered Bolan's cool words, "... and it takes less then a second to reload," and she understood what was transpiring and felt better for the knowledge.

Phuttings and booms and muffled cries and grunts, shouts in the night, revving auto engines, madness — and then something hard was being pressed into her gloved hand and Bolan's reassuring tones were ordering her into the Ferrari.

Jimi found herself responding subconsciously, unlocking the car and sliding in behind the wheel, praying for heavenly direction in the technique of starting this strange vehicle — then the powerful engine was somehow roaring in a half-throttle idle and she was flinging herself into the adjacent seat as Bolan leapt in beside her and they lurched across the snowdrift.

He commanded, "On the floor, Foxy" — and she was already there and the Ferrari was spinning forward into the suffocating night, without lights, perhaps without hope, but with absolute blazing determination at the wheel.

Angrily sizzling things were penetrating the car, striking with jarring thumps and tearing through its metallic skin, shattering its glass, shredding its upholstery. Jimi cringed against the floorboards and listened to the Beretta, now unsilenced, blasting defiantly into the entrapment. She heard her man grunt with some unidentified pain and, an instant later, his warning shout: "Get braced, hang on!"

And then he was lying across the seat just behind her, one arm looped powerfully about her curled body. In a flash of understanding, she knew that they were about to crash into something, and the last sound Jimi heard before the rending impact was the growling chatter of a machine gun and a new onslaught of furious projectiles punching into the Ferrari.

"On and on and on," she had complained earlier. "Isn't there any end to it?"

And he had replied, "Sure, there's an end— but I'm in no hurry to get there."

They had, it seemed, gotten there, and together, and it was probably all her fault. Even through the red fog that was enveloping her, though, Jimi knew that she was definitely en rapportwith the inner man that was Mack Bolan. There were no regrets in that bond, no condemnation. And if she had to die this night, then at least she would die knowing love. No, there were no regrets.

Bolan had not been operating entirely on instinct. With a foresight engendered by a constant battle for survival, he had routinely staked out his retreat route from that motel room, posting in his mind the various details and mentally rehearsing a withdrawal under combat conditions. The trip from the door of his room to the parked Ferrari had become translated into so many steps north, so many west, so many north again — and he had an equivalent picture of the route out of that parking lot, but oriented to elapsed time in a moving vehicle. Long before the storm descended, he had burned into his mind every detail of his physical surroundings.

Superimposed upon this mental map was Bolan's intimate familiarity with the enemy and their standard operating procedures. The final result — his success in breaking out of the trap — could be regarded as a sort of "battlefield intuition," built of conditioned instincts and a subliminal response to a rehearsed situation. This is the goal of all military training — in such a typical crisis situation, in which the individual's life or the success of a mission is hanging in the balance, the thinking mind moves aside for the crisis-response of trained reflexes — and this is what carried Bolan and the Ferrari and its passenger to that grinding moment at the exit from the motel parking lot.

Thus, what appeared to Jimi James to be phenomenal perceptions in a bunding storm was actually a high exercise of military preparedness and training. One deviation from his prescribed path would have rendered Bolan as blind and ineffective as the other parties to that chaos; it was foresight, not ESP, that guided this warrior unerringly to his vehicle. And it was this same quality of the military mind, but now translated into an acute sense of timing and the burnt-in memory of a traffic pattern, that guided his vehicle out of its resting place and along the route of retreat.

This method did not, of course, account for incidental misplaced vehicles blocking the path, banks of drifted snow, a war party of enemy infantry firing wildly into the night, and various other nuisances that could crop up. The Ferrari, as it came charging blindly out of its nest, sent a pair of gun-toting pedestrians hurtling off into diverging flights, sideswiped a larger vehicle which had been idling in the traffic lane, punched down a metal post marking the turn toward the exit, and struck another soldier who had been running blindly into the sounds of battle. And all along this course, the vehicle was taking repeated hits from a determined handgun fusillade; Bolan was required to pilot the car, attempt an effective return-fire, and maintain cognizance of his time-track — all with the same mind and at the same time.

Incredible as this may seem, Bolan might have succeeded in making a clean breakaway had it not been for the final enemy factor — the foresight of another trained warrior, Larry Turk, and the "plug car" just outside the motel exit.

Turk had left this "safety plug" in the capable hands of Willie Thompson, while he descended wrathfully upon the early sounds of confusion emanating from the parking area. It had been his angry voice demanding the cessation of horn signals from Lavallo's vehicle; Beraie Tosca had not yet had time to get his crew positioned into the trap stations, and Turk was reading Lavallo's interference as the highest form of treason.

Meanwhile, Willie Thompson had exercised a prerogative of his own and ordered the plug vehicle onto station directly blocking the exit from the motel. Both he and the wheelman had then taken cover behind the street side of the car and awaited developments.

It seems likely that anyvehicle attempting to leave the motel area would have been accorded the same reception which Bolan received. Willie was targeting entirely on audibles, and when the Thompson opened fire, it was purely a reflexive attack upon a moving vehicle which no one could actually see.

Bolan could, however, see the blazing eruptions from the chopper's muzzle and the shadowy bulk of vehicle from behind which they were emerging, and his reflexes sent him accelerating into the blockade as the only possible hope for neutralizing this latest challenge. He was lying across the front seat with one arm protectively clasping his floored passenger when the Ferrari sheared into the heavier Mafia car, and he had the passenger-door open and was snaking to the ground even while the sports car was quivering into the rebound.

The chopper had fallen silent and someone nearby was groaning with pain. Bolan was collecting himself, silently calling roll on his various parts and finding them all present and functioning, though his ears were ringing and there was a numbness in the area of his left shoulder. He carefully extricated Jimi from the wreckage and slung the unconscious girl onto his good shoulder.

The sounds of chaos were drifting over from the parking lot and an anxious voice very closeby called, "Willie? Are you okay?"

"I think my arms are broke," came a groaning response. "Don't worry about me, check out that Bolan. Make sure he's dead."

"You got 'im, I know you got 'im."

"Bullshit, you check 'im out. Don't take nothin' for granted."

The hood over the Ferrari's engine compartment was crumpled and askew. Bolan slipped the Beretta's muzzle into the opening and squeezed off three quick rounds in a searching pattern, then quickly backstepped as flames whooshed out. He collided with a fast-moving figure who was hurrying around the tail of the Mafia vehicle as the groaning man cried, "Gene! Get me outta here, we're on fire!"

But Gene had problems of his own, in the form of a hot muzzle at his throat and a coldly insistent voice in his ear, demanding, "Let's find some wheels, Gene."

In a choked voice, Turk's wheelman suggested, "There oughta be a couple cars right up the street."

"Okay, let's go," Bolan commanded.

As they trudged away, a snarling voice from somewhere inside the din of the motel parking lot was shouting, "Goddammit, hold your fire, what the hell you think you're shooting at? Bernie, where the hell are you?"

"Over here, Turk — I think the bastard got past us."

"Are you crazy? Can't you hear anything? He's out there dueling with Willie! Get your boys out there!"

"Christ, boss, I can't even see where I'm at."

"Fuckwhere you're at! You get it out there where he'sat!"

Where Bolan was "at," however, was now beyond the immediate reach of the headhunting crew. An expert wheelman was transporting him and his unconscious companion in an appropriated crew wagon, away from the combat zone, deeper into the jungle of survival, onward into the night.

Bolan was working on his girl, and presently she roused, and found herself in Bolan's arms, and she murmured, "Are you an angel?"

He smiled, remembering, and replied, "Not hardly. You got a bump on the head. Feeling okay?"

She gave him a glowing-eyes nod. "On and on and on," she whispered. "I love you, Mack. I hope we neverfind the end."

Bolan pointedly ignored the declaration of love. He ran a finger through a bullet hole in her ski jacket and gruffly told her, "You came that close to the end, Foxy. About a sixteenth of an inch, I'd say."

Tooclose, much too close, and Bolan realized that the war had hardly begun. He could not expose this girl to any more of it. He would have to find a place to stow her, and then he would have to get this war into gear and — one way or another — get it finished.

"You're hurt," she had just discovered. "Your neck, it's..."

"Just a nick," he assured her. Bolan was not concerned about the scratch at his neck. It was the old wound in the shoulder that was giving him fits — his souvenir of New York. With two hands his task was going to be difficult enough — with onehand...

The wheelman was throwing him uneasy glances via the rearview mirror. Bolan sighed and said, "Okay, Gene, end of trip for you. Stop at the next sign of life. And don't look so worried, I'm going to turn you loose. With a message. You deliver it straight, and you deliver it completely, or I'll come looking for you."

"Sure, Mr. Bolan," the wheelman replied. "You got my word, I'll take a message anywheres you want."

"You'll take it to the Capo's, Gene. All of them. And to the Chicago Four. You tell them that Bolan is busting their sanctum city wide open tonight. Tonight, understand?"

"Yessir, I got that."

"And I'm taking them, too. All of them, all the bosses. Their free ride ends tonight."

"I'll tell 'em that, Mr. Bolan."

"I know who they are and I know where they are. And not one of them will see another sunrise. Are you reading me, Gene?"

"Yessir. You're wiping 'em all out tonight."

"That's it. This storm is my friend, their enemy. You make sure that message gets delivered. All of it."

"I'll sure make sure, Mr. Bolan. You got my word."

"Okay. What's this up ahead?"

"I believe we're coming up on the Merchandise Mart, sir."

"Fine. You leave us there. You stop the car, you get out, you disappear damn quick, and you don't look back once. Reading me?"

"Yessir, I been reading you right along."

Yes, Gene the wheelman had been reading him. Great. So he'd set himself an impossible goal, he'd challenged, himself to produce something unproducible. But that was what this rotten war was made for. Bolan had to get it into gear... and finished for here, another, the War for Chicago would end tonight.

He gently squeezed the girl's hand and told her, "This is no end for you, Jimi. Not here, not in this lousy way."

"I end where you end," she murmured.

Bolan hoped not. With everything in him, he fervently hoped not.