a.s.sault on Soho.

by Don Pendleton.

PROLOGUE.

Mack Bolan's one man war against the Mafia began, as do so many larger wars, as an act of rage, frustration, and vengeance. Bolan himself has admitted this in his personal papers, and he makes no attempt to pose as a hapless victim of circ.u.mstances.

"I knew what I was doing," he states. "I was out to collect a blood debt from the outfit that destroyed my family. That's all there was to it, at first. Then when my hate wore thin, I began to see that there was a lot more at stake than one man's personal revenge. I stopped hating the enemy and began to understand them, and it became all the more important that I stand and fight to the bitter end. Someone has to stand up to these guys and show them that they are not G.o.d almighty. They are not trying to prove prove that they are: they that they are: they believe believe that they are. that they are.

"This Cosa Nostra Cosa Nostra is a religion and a sovereign government and a culture all rolled into one. They think the whole world is theirs for whatever they can gouge or terrorize or shake out of it. Everything they touch turns rotten and every place they stake out begins to eat itself. What do you do with a cancer... ask it to kindly go away and die quietly? Not is a religion and a sovereign government and a culture all rolled into one. They think the whole world is theirs for whatever they can gouge or terrorize or shake out of it. Everything they touch turns rotten and every place they stake out begins to eat itself. What do you do with a cancer... ask it to kindly go away and die quietly? Not this this cancer. cancer.

"Some newspapers have been calling me the 20th century Don Quixote. That's okay. Maybe what I'm doing is stupid and even wrong and maybe I am just another idiot fighting windmills, but I don't hear any laughing from the enemy camp. I am doing what I have to do and all I know for sure is that when I stop fighting, I'll also stop living. I don't want to stop living with all these little G.o.ds still carving up the world into personal territories. I intend to go on fighting until my last breath, and I'm going to shake and rattle and bust that kingdom of evil with everything I have."

In Bolan's case, "everything I have" was considerable. He had been a different kind of hero before the Mafia cancer reached into his personal life. He was a U.S. Army sergeant serving a second combat tour in Vietnam, a professional soldier with simple tastes and ambitions, a quiet and friendly man as regarded by his comrades, an extraordinary weapon of war as regarded by his government.

Bolan had been a weapons expert, a skilled armorer for every personal weapon in the army's a.r.s.enal, and he was a crack marksman with each of these weapons. His combat experiences also revealed steel nerves, a remarkable instinct for guerilla warfare tactics, and a self-sufficiency which made him a natural for the special role thrust upon him in Southeast Asia, one which earned him the unofficial t.i.tle, The Executioner The Executioner.

Operating as a sniper team sharpshooter, the young sergeant repeatedly penetrated hostile territories and strongholds in missions requiring that he remain for extended periods behind enemy lines to "seek out and destroy" Viet Cong military and terrorist leaders. His score was phenomenal, with more than eighty verified VIP "kills" in the official record book.

Bolan's personal courage and resourcefulness won him the admiration of superiors and comrades alike, and his effect upon the enemy was incalculable in terms of psychological warfare benefits. He was far more than a sniper. Executing an important defector or enemy field commander on his own soil could be a ticklish business. To simply locate and identify the target in unfamiliar territory was challenging enough, and a task of no ordinary dimensions. To then make the strike, remain in the target zone long enough to verify the kill, and to then safely withdraw through miles of aroused enemy country-and to perform such missions repeatedly throughout two full combat tours-required a decidedly special kind of man. Bolan was that special kind. The enemy recognized this-his name had become a VC epithet, and he was one of the few noncommissioned soldiers in history with a price on his head.

His own nation's government recognized his value also; he was one of the most decorated soldiers of the Vietnam conflict. According to those who knew him best, however, the young sergeant-son of an immigrant steelworker had remained a quiet man with simple tastes and ambitions, a kindly man who repeatedly jeopardized his own safety to a.s.sist a wounded comrade or a terrified child or a stricken peasant woman. He took no noticeable pride in his grim specialty and in fact refused to discuss details of his missions with anyone other than his military superiors. Of the several men who knew him intimately, none would agree with the war correspondent who characterized Bolan as a "coldblooded and remorseless killer with an Army hunting license."

In Bolan's own a.s.sessment, he was simply a professional soldier doing his job.

Towards the end of his second combat tour, Bolan was called home to bury his mother, his father, and a younger sister. This traumatic homecoming brought a dramatic turn to the young soldier's life. The official police findings in the family deaths were listed as double homicide and suicide, with Bolan's father as villain of the piece. Sergeant Bolan could not accept this verdict, and his own investigation turned up evidence that Sam Bolan, the father, had been squeezed beyond human endurance by a loansharking operation of a local Mafia arm. When the young Bolan girl was pressured into working as a prost.i.tute to help retire a usurious loan, and her father learned about it, the elder Bolan had gone berserk and had killed the girl, her mother, and himself.

Mack Bolan could find no blame in his heart for his father's insane actions. He blamed the cancer of organized crime and he quickly learned that there was no possibility of getting justice through official channels. And so it was that The Executioner The Executioner decamped from the problems of Vietnam and opened a new front against the larger enemy at home. The rest is history. decamped from the problems of Vietnam and opened a new front against the larger enemy at home. The rest is history.

Bolan expected no medals in this new war. He understood and accepted the fact that his actions could not be condoned by American society, and he felt no bitterness at becoming the nation's most wanted "criminal." He did, sometimes, feel very much alone. Warfare can be a lonely business for a one man army. Like any other man, he missed the warmth of human friendship and detested the feeling of utter isolation. Like any other man, he suffered the tensions of a constant balance between life and death... he knew fear, and anxiety, and pain, and revulsion and desperation... he had all the feelings of any normal man.

But, in his words, Bolan had "built my own h.e.l.l. I can live here, and I guess I can die here. Some things you just have to accept. It seems that I have a job to do, and I accept that. But I do not accept death-that is, I do not seek it. A man can't look for a place to die; he has to take his stand on a way to live. When you do that, death comes naturally in its own time and place."

An executioner's philosophy? Perhaps. But Bolan's philosophy centered mainly about action. Peripherally, he was incorruptible, non-negotiable, ready to die if necessary, but anxious to live. But his task was to kill the Mafia and this fact provided the central core of his life. A soldier wars to win, and Bolan had long ago demonstrated his dedication to that proposition. He was fighting the impossible fight, yes... but he was fighting to win, not to lose, and he sought not his own death but the death of the enemy, all of the enemy, anywhere and everywhere, for as long as this impossible war could last. And it could last only so long as Mack Bolan could remain alive. Kill to live, and live to kill. No job, this, for the squeamish, or the weak or the non-dedicated.

"Some things you just have to accept," said Bolan. And what he had accepted was a kingdom of evil, a domain of violence, a life of unending warfare.

In Bolan's five previous campaigns against the crime combine, we saw him growing into his destiny and taking the war to the enemy with thunder and lightning which, indeed, shook their "kingdom of evil" to its very foundations. He succeeded in becoming the most feared man in underworld history and the most sought by the police.

Not only the Mafia and the police want Mack Bolan; a $100,000 open contract with generous additional bonuses has drawn professional and amateur gunmen into the largest bounty hunt of modern times-and although the average man in the street thought of Bolan as a sympathetic and heroic figure, every hand stretched out to him in friendship must be viewed with suspicion. Even a genuine offer of aid carried built-in hazard, both to the ally and to Bolan himself. Allies complicate the battle and broaden the responsibility: Bolan had learned that the violent domain was kinder to him when he walked alone.

At the opening of this account, Bolan has again become "the cat that walked by himself." Once again in a strange land, he nevertheless discovers that "all places are alike to him." The Mafia is there. Bolan is there. And, inevitably, violence and terror and death are there.

Chapter One.

RECEPTION AT DOVER.

Bolan did not see the enemy but he could sense their ominous presence out there, in the darkness. He had felt that from the moment he stepped aboard the car ferry at Calais, and it had lasted throughout the brief crossing of the English Channel and the landing at Dover.

Sure, they were waiting for him: the escape from France had been too smooth, too easy, as though someone had been running interference for him. Even the fast shake through British customs had been entirely too easy. Now that he was in England the feeling had accelerated into a big ball of mush at the pit of his stomach and he knew knew that he had been maneuvered here, manipulated and channeled and directed to just this place and time. And now they were out there, waiting. that he had been maneuvered here, manipulated and channeled and directed to just this place and time. And now they were out there, waiting.

He unb.u.t.toned his coat and tested the breakaway on his side leather, then checked the clip of the hot little Beretta automatic, retracted the slide to chamber in a 9mm round beneath the hammer, and snugged the combat-ready weapon back to his side. The retreat was over.

Bolan had purposely hung back to allow the swirl of debarkation to proceed on ahead of him as he watched and evaluated possible avenues of escape. Now he stepped out of the shadows of the ferry station and into very light foot traffic, walking at a casual clip toward the waiting railway cars. Footsteps immediately moved in behind him, pacing him across the darkness; a double pair, slowing when he slowed, quickening when he quickened. Bolan's trained ears could recognize a dropback set... and as he crossed the fifty yards or so of wharf he became aware also of a converging set across his flanks. He was being bracketed on either side and cut off from the rear. Somewhere up ahead he would find the final side of the box, and this would be a place of their careful choosing, a point of no escape, with doubtful survival for the prey caught in the center of that box.

Bolan took a deep breath and made his move, pivoting suddenly and walking straight toward the left flank. He heard them quietly adjusting, a soft voice in the darkness behind him issuing m.u.f.fled commands, a sudden sc.r.a.ping of quick feet just ahead making hurried changes to the ch.o.r.eography, running sounds on his new right flank.

It was time to hit, perhaps the only time he would find. But first he had to make positive identification of the enemy. He had never yet slapped leather on a cop; he had no wish whatever to do so now. A dim overhead lamp, m.u.f.fled and impotent in a high-swirling fog, lay just across his path. He stopped directly beneath it and lit a cigarette, his ears straining for movements about him, and he found encouragement in the knowledge that they still seemed to be somewhat off balance and scurrying toward new positions on the box. He went on quickly then, looking to neither left nor right but with ears quiveringly alert to the sounds behind him.

Now! He flipped the lighted cigarette far ahead, the gun hand moved inside the coat and his forward motion was arrested on the ball of his right foot as he went into his pivot, swinging about to the right in a lightning sweep, the Beretta swinging with him at full extension and spitting its sharp argument against entrapment as Bolan sprawled into a p.r.o.ne fixing position. For a single heartbeat Bolan had hesitated, staying the trigger finger and sacrificing that all-important moment of surprise in the interests of identification. But a heartbeat was all that was required; his uncanny timing had caught them directly beneath the overhead lamp, and this split-second of visual reference was all Bolan needed to confirm his earlier instinctive identification... his welcoming committee were Mafiosi Mafiosi.

Earlier that day Bolan had refined the tolerances on the new Beretta and reworked the trigger for a four-pound pull, getting consistent two-inch target groupings in rapid fire from twenty-five yards. Tonight he was thankful for that foresight, even though firing at an almost point-blank ten-yard range. The two men under the lamp were dead on their feet with mutilated hearts, pistols hardly clear of the sideleather, and even as they fell Bolan was rolling on. Then he gathered his feet under him, and charged the side of the box. Muzzle flashes pierced the darkness ahead of him as handguns were unloaded in panicky reaction and fired blindly at him, the unseen and fast moving target. Even so, Bolan was moving through a suddenly dense atmosphere, and the flashing synapses of his computer-quick brain told him that the enemy had come out in ma.s.sive force. A whistling slug tore through the fabric of his coat, another took the heel off his shoe. He charged into their ranks, the Beretta blasting with telling effect as the 9mm Parabellums spurted into the opposing flashes, their success registering as despairing grunts and m.u.f.fled cries.

Bolan was moving swiftly and feeding the Beretta a fresh clip when he collided with a large human bulk.

They went down together in a sprawling tangle and a heavy weapon exploded almost in Bolan's face, the shot sizzling off into the night. Bolan's free hand chopped out and turned the weapon just as the hammer fell again and this time the shot buried itself in soft and unresisting flesh. The man wheezed, "Oh, Jesus..." and melted fluidly out of the tangle.

Again Bolan rolled, getting as much distance as possible from that encounter. Running feet pounded toward him shadowy shapes took form against a backdrop of sudden light. He came to one knee and sent all eight rounds of the new clip into that suddenly visible pack. It scattered, with toppling bodies and shrieks of alarm.

The source of light was arching toward Bolan now: automobile headlamps, blunted and haloed by the fog, and moving forward so that Bolan was not exposed to the full glare.

The enemy were either faltering or regrouping; there was silence and a sudden cessation of gunfire. Suddenly Bolan heard a feminine voice calling out to him, and it was coming from behind those headlamps. "Bolan, get in!"

Another voice, harshly excited and far to the rear, yelled "That car! Stop that car!"

The voice was American and Bolan thought that he had heard it before but a new volley of fire, this one directed against the vehicle, was now commanding all his attention. The car was taking repeated hits and swerving erratically in tinkling gla.s.s when Bolan reached it. A door flew open and Bolan flew in, and was immediately pinned to the seat under high-G acceleration as the scene of carnage quickly fell behind.

Bolan had an impression of softly feminine curves, glistening dark hair worn short and casual, an almost luminous skin, a nice fragrance. He judged her to be about twenty-five, and scared half to death. A short skirt was crumpled high on the hips; gleaming thighs reflected the light from the dash; knee-high leather boots fit tight on well-turned calves that trembled almost out of control. The car whizzed in a tight circle around the railway station, then plunged down a narrow street. Somewhere off in the distance the wail of police vehicles was added to the insane quality of that soft misty night.

Bolan added a fresh clip of Parabellums to the pistol and told the girl, "I'm grateful, but... that was a dumb stunt."

She threw him a quick look, hardly more than a twitch of her eyes, and gasped, "Don't speak of dumb stunts. Your odds back there were about thirty against one."

"I was doing all right," Bolan said quietly.

He recognized her suddenly, and also the car, a Jaguar sports model. He had noticed both aboard the ferry from Calais. He had even lit a cigarette for her on deck while they small-talked about the value of radar navigation through channel fog. Now he was hanging on grimly as the powerful vehicle swerved through the foggy streets, navigating without radar.

"You shall never get out of Dover unless you do exactly as I say," she said in a voice thin with tension. "The hatbox, behind you... it's yours, put it on quickly."

"It" was a wig of fiery red hair and matching beard, also a seaman's jacket in Bolan's size. He stared at the contents of the box while his mind clicked through the various implications of this latest development. Obviously the rescue had been a planned, not a spontaneous, action.

Quickly the girl confirmed this. "We'll exchange cars just ahead," she told him. "Get into your hair and be ready for the jump."

An uneasy feeling was crowding into Bolan's gut. Who the h.e.l.l was the beautiful lady with the expensive car, and why was she interested in Mack Bolan's welfare? Where did she plan to take him, and for what purpose? From the noise of the sirens screaming through the night, it seemed that the police also had prepared some sort of reception for him. How had everyone tumbled so quickly to his movements? The idea of manipulation manipulation was churning in Bolan's mind, and he wondered just how prominently this lovely young woman had figured in those maneuvers. was churning in Bolan's mind, and he wondered just how prominently this lovely young woman had figured in those maneuvers.

At the moment, though, idle speculation was too great a luxury. His instinct told him to run with the play, and he was already reacting to the decision. The wig and false beard went on easily and snugly, and he was changing jackets when they braked to a squealing halt beside a waiting VW bus. A shadowy figure moved forward immediately to take over the Jaguar; another was crouched over the steering wheel of the VW and impatiently gunning the motor. Bolan and the girl climbed quickly aboard the bus as the Jaguar disappeared into a small garage. A fast moving police vehicle with siren at full wail blasted out of the darkness to their rear and screamed past them.

The man in the driver's seat of the VW chuckled and moved the vehicle into the wake of the police car. The girl sat in a rear seat with Bolan. She breathed in quivering little gasps. She cuddled against him and, burying her face in his throat, she trembled with a hard case of the shakes.

Well, Bolan silently told himself, here we go again.

His chief interest in England had been as a link in his route back to the U.S., with possibly a quick hit on a couple of names in his notebook. But he had been required to fight his way into the country. Now, it appeared, he would have to fight his way out. No quick hits tonight. The jungle had closed in on him again, and he would have to hack his way through it.

His life had long ago become fixed in an unalterable groove, and Bolan had learned to accept the grim fact that everywhere he went became a battlefield. He had never, however, thought too highly of a purely defensive mode of warfare. Particularly not against a ma.s.sively superior enemy.

The girl was beginning to cry. He sighed and pulled her closer in a comforting embrace. He owed her a lot, whatever her motives. She'd pulled him out of a tough defensive position and now perhaps she was providing him with a temporary platform from which to launch a counter-offensive to carry him on through and out of England.

And not a bad platform, at that, he was thinking as the supple body molded against his. Down through history, he knew, lesser bodies had launched entire armadas and armies. What he did not know was that this one was fated to launch the Executioner's shattering a.s.sault upon Britain.

Chapter Two.

MUSEUM DE SADE.

The girl's nerves were in good shape. After a brief letdown, she dried her tears and regained her composure and was staring solemnly at Bolan's hands when the VW pulled into the lineup at the police blockade, just west of Dover. She pulled his arms around her, lay her head on his shoulder, and said "Calmly, now. Just let us do the talking. Don't give away your American accent."

A uniformed officer stepped up to the driver's window and said something in a pleasant tone. The thick man at the wheel pa.s.sed a paper through. The officer inspected it and handed it back, then held up something for the driver to look at. They conversed in low tones for a brief moment, then the policeman stepped down to the girl's window and lightly rapped his knuckles against it. She came out of the embrace slowly, reluctantly, her eyes going to the officer in a convincing display of confusion, as though she had just that moment become aware of the world outside.

The policeman touched his hat and pa.s.sed in a large glossy photo of Bolan. "Have you seen this chap?" he asked her.

She nodded her head immediately and replied, "Many times, on the telly. It's that American adventurer."

"Have you seen him tonight?"

She shook her head, confusion still very evident. Bolan shook his red-maned head also, growling something unintelligible in a guttural negative.

"Did you see a Jaguar sports roadster?"

The driver called back, "You're wastin' yer time, Bob. Them two ain't seen nothin' this night but their-selves, I'll wager that."

The young officer touched his hat, smiled faintly, and waved them through.

As they cleared the roadblock, the driver swiveled about to flash a grin at Bolan. "And 'ow was that for 'andling the b.l.o.o.d.y situation, eh? We'll 'ave you in Londontown in no time now, mate. Just keep your p.e.c.k.e.r up."

Slightly embarra.s.sed by that last bit of advice, Bolan glanced at the girl.

She smiled and explained, "He means that you should keep up your courage."

Bolan grunted, let the girl go, and relaxed into the seat. He was going to have a language problem in England, perhaps more so than in France, this much was certain. But not immediately.

The balance of the trip was conducted in virtual silence, the girl withdrawing to her corner to gaze broodingly out the window, Bolan silently scanning the road ahead and behind, and watching the movements of the driver. Explanations, he figured, would come in due course; he would play it step by step.

It was just past midnight when they entered London. They crossed the Thames at Westminster Bridge and swung up past Pall Mall to edge into the Soho district Here the town was still very much awake, bustling with the after-theatre crowd and the people who swarmed the thousand and one restaurants, niteries, and discotheques which had established Soho as one of the mod capitals of the world.

Bolan was driven to a nineteenth century townhouse at the western edge of Soho, a handsome building with cut gla.s.s windows and a red carpeted entranceway. There was a simple metal plaque on the ma.s.sive door:

Museum de Sade Members Only The VW dropped its pa.s.sengers and drove away. Bolan followed the woman inside the building, seeing crystal chandeliers and dark wood. They went into a mahogany-paneled clubroom. The place was deserted, musty, oppressive. Boland had a feeling of entombment.

He asked the girl, "What kind of museum is this?"

She flicked him a sidewise glance and murmured, "It's private. No worry, I'm the curator. My name is Ann Franklin."

"Why did you bring me here?"

She replied, "It isn't my place to tell you that. Please be comfortable while I ring up the directors."

"What directors?" he asked.

"The directors of the museum. It is they who arranged all this, though I must say we didn't expect the fireworks at Dover." The girl was moving away from him, toward a door at the far side of the room. "The bar is over there," she called back, pointing it out with a flourish. "Please be comfortable."

Bolan felt not at all comfortable. He removed the false hair and beard and changed back into his own jacket. Then he went to the bar, poured some tonic into a gla.s.s, and tasted it before he went to try the door through which the girl had gone but his suspicions were confirmed, it was locked. He retraced his steps across the room and tried the other door. It, too, was locked.

Uneasily and with a growing sense of alarm, Bolan returned to the bar. He lit a cigarette and caught a flash of something reflecting off the opposite wall as he extinguished the flame of his lighter. Closer investigation revealed a wide-angle camera lens set flush into the paneling. He glared at it for a moment, then placed a hand over the lens and called out, "Okay, end of game. What's going on here?"

A cultured and crisply British voice responded immediately through a speaker concealed somewhere overhead. "You are quite perceptive, Mr. Bolan. Welcome to England. We hope you'll like us here. Dreadfully sorry for all that bother at Dover, you know. Please understand that we had nothing at all to do with that."

Bolan let his hand fall away from the wall and he stepped back to gaze coldly into the lens. "Shades of James Bond," he said drily. "Locked room, closed circuit television, the whole bit. What's it all about?"

A short, barking laugh preceded, "Surely you will understand our caution, Mr. Bolan. Your reputation is ah, legendary to say the least. We think it best that-"

Bolan angrily interrupted with, "No way, friend. Either those doors come open in twenty seconds or I'm blasting out."

A brief pause, then: "Please don't be boorish, Mr. Bolan. Nor imprudent. As soon as Miss Franklin completes her report then we'll see what can be done."

"Boorish, h.e.l.l," Bolan said. He sprung the Beretta and put a bullet through the camera lens. The report of the gun, magnified, reverberated in the tightly closed room.

"Really, Mr. Bolan..." the voice spluttered.

Calmly Bolan asked, "Can you still see me?"