Bolan knew that he had found the serpent's head.
A twitch of his trigger finger and the launcher roared to life, unloading its remaining cylinders in rapid fire; fl6chettes, shot and high-explosives all impacting on the Cadillac's interior like a draft from hell itself. The windows on the Caddy blew outward and the crew wagon seemed to bulge for a moment, inflating like some kind of cartoon vehicle before it simply burst apart. Bolan rode out the shock wave and went to ground beneath the flying shrapnel, feeling pieces of the vehicle and occupants as they rained down around him in a grizzly downpour.
And from the distance, drawing nearer-sirens.
He could hear the numbers falling in his mind, their echoes louder than the straggling gunfire that continued from inside the Kuwahara house. Some of the enemy were still engaged back there, but he no longer had an interest in them. Captain Reese and his commandos would be more than capable of dealing with the stragglers. And Bolan had more serpents left to kill this night before the desert sun came up and burned away the sheltering darkness.
He was far from finished in Las Vegas, right — if anything the major battle lay ahead, and he had only fought a skirmish here with Kuwahara's men and the advance guard from New York. If he had severed and destroyed one viper's head, the whole damned nest awaited him downtown, and he did not intend to keep the serpents waiting long. The Executioner was done in Paradise, the snakes were driven out — for now — and he was moving on.
To Glitter Gulch.
To the Gold Rush.
To Frank Spinoza and the good-old boys.
If they were waiting for him now... for someone — braced for trouble — then there would be killing in the Mafia's open city such as Captain Reese had never seen.
17
"All right, we're set to go."
Abe Bernstein looked around him at the faces of his soldiers. Then his eyes fell on Jack Goldblume and old Harry Thorson, feeling pride well up inside of him until he was about to burst. It took a moment for him to continue but he finally found his voice.
"Spinoza's men have run into some kinda trouble at Kuwahara's and they won't be back. At least not soon. We've got a chance to clean it up tonight if everybody does his job and follows orders."
He turned to the tall mercenary dressed in a hotel security uniform, raising one eyebrow as he spoke.
"Your people in position?"
"Yes, sir. This hotel is sealed off tight. Nobody in or out without your say-so."
"Fine."
The old man nodded satisfaction.
"All of you have team assignments, wings to cover. Are there any problems?"
"Hell, no," Harry Thorson growled around the stub of his cigar. "Let's quit the goddamn jawin' and get on with it."
Bernstein smiled, half turning toward Goldblume.
"Square with you, Jack?"
"Fine."
But there was something in the newsman's voice that made Bernstein uneasy. A trace of weakness, perhaps. The taint of fear. He had arranged for two of Goldblume's team to watch him through the night, dispose of him if he seemed likely to jeopardize the mission. Their friendship spanned four decades, but tonight Abe Bernstein was about to realize a lifelong dream. And no damned friend was going to cheat him out of it, no way.
If Goldblume pulled his weight fine, but if he tried to weasel out.
Bernstein dismissed the topic from his mind and checked his Rolex.
"Okay. We start on top and work our way down, clearing each floor as we go, and meet back here within the hour. Cleanup detail starts at 1:00 A.M. What do you military fellows call it?"
"Oh-one-hundred hours," the tall mercenary responded, his face deadpan.
"Right, then. At oh-one-hundred hours, I want everybody back down here for cleanup. Anything still living in the joint by then had better be on our side."
He watched the teams led by Thorson and Goldblume as they headed for their separate banks of elevators, leading to the south and east wings of the hotel. His own team would take the north wing in a moment, ride up to the penthouse level and begin their killing at the top. Abe Bernstein felt that it was going to work this time. Sweet revenge was within his grasp and he could almost taste it now, it was that close.
His troops had reached the elevators, moving like real soldiers as they crossed the wide deserted lobby. Three of Spinoza's watchdogs were lying back behind the registration desk with throats slit, no longer interested in reporting to their boss exactly what was going on beneath his nose. Spinoza would find out for himself soon enough, and Abe Bernstein was saving that one for himself. He had made certain that his team would be the one to take Spinoza and the others — Johnny Cats, that goddamned Liguori from Chicago — all of them.
A clean frigging sweep. A royal flush, with the Mafia's local royalty flushed right down the goddamned sewer where they all belonged.
"Let's go," he said to no one in particular, already leading out across the lobby, trusting his specials to fall in behind him. He knew that when he turned around they would be there. They were good soldiers and always followed orders.
Abe Bernstein had heard that somewhere, but he could not make the mental linkup and he put the thought away.
No time for the abstractions now that they were down to the reality of action.
He was hunting big game now and when the smoke cleared there were going to be some very interesting trophies on his office wall.
Lucy Bernstein poked her head out of the office door and took a cautious glance along the corridor in each direction. There was no one in sight and she edged into the open, taking time to close the door behind her, wincing as the locking mechanism clicked audibly into place. She realized that she was holding her breath and it embarrassed her, but she was still afraid. It was more than an hour since the last paying guests had cleared the Gold Rush, and in that time, instead of digging up the leads she needed for the climax of her expose, she had been in and out of empty suites and offices, dodging and hiding wherever she could find a door unlocked.
They were not hunting her — not yet — but she felt cut off now, under siege. She had accomplished nothing, losing track of Frank Spinoza and his friend almost at once, and now the only thing that she could think about was getting safely out of there, away from what she sensed was brooding danger. She had been right, the lady news hawk knew, when she suspected that her grandfather was lying to her.
There had been no labor trouble at the Gold Rush this night, not if all the bellhops and domestic personnel around the place were any indication. Strange, but now that Lucy stopped to think of it, she had not seen a woman anywhere around the hotel and casino since she'd left the crowded lobby better than an hour ago. It was as if the female staff — the cooks, the maids, whatever — had been cleared away to preserve them from the coming storm.
Now she was all alone inside the cavernous hotel that had so quickly taken on the characteristics of an armed encampment. That was a story in itself, but first she had to be alive to write it — and she feared that if she was discovered, her short career might be abbreviated by a one-way midnight ride into the desert.
Lucy did not plan to end her days as cactus fertilizer, and she moved along the corridor with grim determination, looking for an unobtrusive exit that would get her out of there and on the street again without attracting any unwelcome attention along the way. She reached the bank of elevators, hesitated with her finger on the button, finally decided against it. If the elevator did not dump her right into the lobby, she would run the risk of being stopped at any one of several floors along the way, or else emerging into hostile hands upon arriving at her destination. No, the elevator simply was not safe enough to suit her needs.