Day of Mourning

15

Bolan found the county road he wanted and began an initial recon to set the terrain of this action firmly in his mind.

At first glance the property owned by Al Miller was not unlike any number of similar ones in the area.

This was horse-estate country.

Miller had to be doing all right for himself, whatever his scam was.

Or he had solid backing.

Bolan guessed the latter.

The millionaire set liked its privacy. Formidable brick walls about ten feet tall surrounded many of these estates. There were huge expanses of uninhabited acreage in between.

Miller's guise of respectability lasted no longer than a closer visual as Bolan's rental vehicle glided past. The Executioner hoped that those inside viewed it as just another car passing in the night.

The main entrance to the grounds was set midway in the face of the walled perimeter that bordered the paved road.

A brick guardhouse sat behind an iron gate.

Bolan saw two sentries; they wore side arms and there was undoubtedly heavier artillery, out of sight but close at hand.

When he reached the far end of the property line, Bolan continued to drive another quarter mile until the looming walls of the estate were blocked from view by a mild dip in the undulating Maryland terrain.

Bolan parked his car well off the blacktop, concealed from casual glances by a cluster of stately oak trees.

He strapped on Big Thunder.

This would be a hard hit.

He jogged back toward the walled property of Al Miller. He stayed off the road, approaching the side wall that connected with the one fronting the county road.

He was not ideally togged or rigged for a night hit. His dark sweater and slacks helped him blend into the night but his black combat grease had been lost when Sam Datcher and Jimmy Lee Brown blew up his rented Mustang at the Interstate Loan shoot-out.

Bolan hoped the moon would not break through the heavy clouds overhead, but that did not seem likely.

The Beretta 93-R rode ready in its shoulder holster and the AutoMag was fast-draw ready. Heavy artillery, sure, but it would be no heavier than the arsenal on the other side of those walls. His other instruments of death, such as the stilettos, garrotes and high-explosive grenades, so important on an assault like this, had also been destroyed in tonight's car blast.

The hell with risks.

The Executioner was blitzing.

He negotiated the wall with ease, landing on the other side without a sound.

He palmed the silenced Beretta.

He hoped Big Thunder would not be needed at all or only as a last resort to blast his way out.

He remained in a crouch, the 93-R ready. He scanned the darkness, his icy gaze encompassing the deserted grounds of the estate.

He saw no one.

Several lights illuminated a massive main house about eighteen hundred meters across a rolling, gradual incline.

Bolan padded cautiously toward the main house. The nightfighter kept to the shadows of the evergreens trees that dotted the landscape.

The Executioner met no interference.

Miller's place was guarded tonight by only a skeleton crew for some special reason. Or the man had nothing to hide and the gate sentries were only for show to grant the guy his privacy.

Perhaps this was another false lead like those Armenians. But Bolan didn't think so.

The night warrior moved on a course roughly parallel to the long, curved gravel driveway. He reached the edge of a tree line that yielded to a clearing surrounding the main house and another building. He paused for further recon.

Grover Jones's instructions had brought Mack Bolan to an expansive Colonial-style mansion. A huge courtyard was dominated by a large fountain now artistically illuminated by multicolored floodlights.

The other building was a more modern, strictly functional one-story prefab job, twenty meters from the main house.

Barracks, thought Bolan.

There was no sign of human activity.

The area was graveyard quiet.

Bolan remembered the armed guards at the gate.

And the lighted windows in the main house.

There was a roofed porch on the south side of the house, across an expanse of sloping lawn from Bolan's position. The stretch of lawn was bathed in faint glow from the floodlit fountain.

Bolan decided to chance it.

He left the tree line. He made it to the porch and holstered the Beretta. He pulled himself up onto the roof. Then he palmed the 93-R again and stretched out a leg to gain balance closer to the nearest second-floor lighted window.

The window was open against the warm night. Wispy drapes offered no privacy this close up. But there was nothing to see. An empty bedroom. A light someone had forgotten to turn off.

Bolan heard the unmistakable mutter of male voices. Then a female voice, coming from the next window down, also lighted.

A foot-wide ledge ran around the white stone mansion between its two levels. Bolan got a firm footing and edged himself toward the window from which he heard the voices coming.

He chanced a peek inside.

Another open window. A good view through lace drapes into another bedroom.

This one was occupied.

Three men and a woman.

The woman was clothed, but not doing too well otherwise.

She was tied to a straight-back chair in the middle of the bedroom, bound hand and foot and body with rubberized clothesline.

Bolan recognized the woman.

Tonight was an unraveling tapestry of this warrior's life. That's what throbbed and tried to close in and race past him at the same time, unbidden, but there just the same. His back pages and his destiny colliding on a warm spring night in Washington, when Death walked and his name was Bolan.

Her name was Susan Landry, investigative reporter.

Bolan would always remember Landry from his assault on the Mafia's Cleveland Pipeline during the Executioner's war against the Mob.

Landry was a woman no man would ever forget. Especially as a lover, as Bolan had been before he blasted Susan's father out of existence for his unholy alliance with the cannibals Bolan fought.

A lifetime ago, to John Phoenix.

The three hard-eyed men in the bedroom stood around Susan. One wore a shoulder-holstered .357. The other two had shotguns that now rested upright against a wall of the bedroom while they took a closer look at the beauty tied to the chair.

Her shoulder-length raven hair was mussed, and she wore a bruise on her right temple that had turned purple. But Susan was just as foxy as Bolan remembered from that long-ago Cleveland action.

Susan's eyes darted rebelliously between the two men in front of her. Then she tried to glance over her shoulder at the guy behind, but she was too damn tough inside to show these creeps any fear.

One of the men reached over and stroked her face, then his hand drifted lower as he squeezed her breast roughly. He laughed when she didn't cry out.

Bolan saw red.

The man sneered, "A tough baby. I like 'em tough."

"Miller will skin you bastards alive when he gets back and sees what you've done," she snarled in his face.

"Maybe Miller ain't coming back," grunted the other man who faced Susan. He reached over as he spoke and idly flicked her skirt up around her waist, revealing smooth, panty-hosed legs that became beauty-queen thighs and sheer panties. "And if Miller comes back, maybe we'll be gone."

The hood behind her guffawed and started unbuckling his trousers.

"After we have some fun with you, bitch."

"I give you nothing," hissed Susan Landry.

Planting her feet firmly, she leaned forward in the chair, lifting its two back legs off the floor. Then she plunged backward. The chair landed with bone snapping impact upon the feet of the jerk who'd been so anxious to take his pants off.

"Oh, shit," he howled as he stumbled back, hopping about the room on one foot.

The other two started to laugh at their friend's misfortune.

Bolan aimed through the wispy bedroom curtains. The laughter was suddenly cut off as the Beretta whispered once. A 9mm slug drilled through the laughing mouth of one would-be rapist, creating a cavity that no dentist could ever fill. The man had not even begun to fall when the 93-R spit fire again, and the two hardmen toppled to the floor.

Susan Landry's eyes opened wide at the tall, icy-eyed man who suddenly appeared in the room.

The third hood forgot about his bruised toes and his unbuckled pants. He drew his .357 Magnum and had time to trigger off a shot at the darting figure who broke from the open window. The explosion reverberated like a nuclear blast in the close confines of the bedroom. The projectile whistled wide past Bolan's right ear.

The Executioner triggered another round from the Beretta, and the third punk joined his deceased friends in the corner.

"Holy Mother!" exclaimed Susan Landry. From her awkward position tied to the chair, she could not escape the drifting stench of burned cordite that stung her nostrils. She looked around at the three dead men who an instant ago had been about to harm her.

The big man chuckled as he holstered the 93-R and bent to yank loose the knots of the clothesline that bound her. "The name is John Phoenix, Ms Landry."

She stood up when she was untied and briefly rubbed wrists chafed raw from trying to break free. She did not take her eyes off this stranger, studying him intently.

"How do you know who I am?"

"Call me a regular reader of your newspaper columns," Bolan replied truthfully. He snapped a fresh clip into the Beretta and held the pistol out to her. "Can you handle one of these?"

She nodded and took the pistol in a practiced grip.

"Thank you, John Phoenix. I have a car downstairs. I drove into my own trap, you see. We can drive out of here."

She did not recognize Phoenix as Mack Bolan. There was no reason for her to. Plastic surgery had altered Bolan's appearance.

They hustled from the bedroom death chamber like a well-rehearsed team, Susan looking no worse for wear from her ordeal.

They hit an upstairs corridor and approached a wide staircase that led to a large foyer downstairs.

Susan and her rescuer were at the top of the stairs when they heard the clatter of footfalls somewhere below.

They saw two guys coming up at them along either side of the stairway. The two hardmen at the bottom grabbed for hardware then had time to do nothing but die.

Susan snapped off a coughing round from the Beretta that pitched one hood backward. If the slug did not kill him, then there was no mistaking the sickening crack as his skull hit the marble floor.

The Executioner triggered Big Thunder, sending hood number two into oblivion. A headless body flew backward as if tugged by an invisible string. Blood splattered the wall as high as the ceiling, then the body crumpled into a heap near the closed front door.

They left the house through a corridor that led to a side exit.

Bolan allowed Susan to lead the way.

They emerged into the night and into a parking lot on the blind side of the house from the floodlit fountain out front.

A half-dozen vehicles occupied the area, including a Datsun station wagon.

Susan led him to it.

"Any idea how many men we're up against?" Bolan asked.

Susan yanked open the door on the driver's side and slid behind the wheel. She reached for keys that were in the ignition as Bolan jumped in alongside her.

"Miller took the main force with him."

The car roared to life.

"Miller took them where?"

They sped along the driveway, hugging the tight curves. They raced past the fountain lights that illuminated the front courtyard.

"I don't know where they went," Landry told him. She wheeled into the straightaway toward the iron gates. "But I overheard him giving orders. There are two men at the gate. Hang on."

"You do the same," grunted Bolan. "Good luck, lady."

Landry aimed the vehicle on a direct course for the iron-grille gate, where the two guards stood with shotguns, alerted by the sound of the revving engine.

The stunning brunette twirled the steering wheel hard to the left. The tail end of the wagon skidded to the right, gouging the trimmed edge of the turf. The Datsun stopped its slide, the passenger side parallel to the guards' left flank.

The sentries spun in Bolan's direction. Too late.

Bolan's AutoMag spoke.

The sentries were kicked backward from the impact of the .44 headbusters.

Susan left the car. These fresh kills were still shuddering in their own blood as Susan dashed to the guardhouse and activated the mechanical gate release.

She dashed back into the Datsun wagon and trod the gas so hard that the rear end of the subcompact danced from side to side as it sped through the gate.

The investigative journalist sped into the Maryland night.

Leaving Mack Bolan to wonder.

A fireball from his past named Susan Landry had reappeared.

It was all coming down.

Tonight.

A night of blood.