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Overview
The plane comes in low, dropping its sole passenger on the edge of the oilfield known as Klingman’s Wells. Wearing all black, his chest crisscrossed with ammunition, Mack Bolan begins his assault on the facility. With his two favorite pistols and a handful of grenades, he cripples this mob-run drilling site, causing enough chaos to allow him to escape unharmed—and rescue the kidnapped woman who is trapped inside.
Bolan’s one-man war against organized crime has hamstrung the mob’s gambling operations and stopped its corruption of Washington. Desperate for funds, the syndicate has infiltrated the Texas oil industry, starting with Klingman’s Wells. To save the Lone Star State from mob rule, the Executioner hits one Mafia stronghold after another in a tornado of destruction that is appropriately Texas size.
Texas Storm is the 18th book in the Executioner series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781497685703 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 12/16/2014 |
| Series: | Executioner (Mack Bolan) Series , #18 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 183 |
| Sales rank: | 312,175 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Texas Storm
The Executioner, Book Eighteen
By Don Pendleton
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1974 Pinnacle Books, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8570-3
CHAPTER 1
KNIGHT AT DAWN
The darkness of the Texas central plains was being diluted at its eastern edge by the mottled gray advance of dawn as a sleek, twin-engine Cessna swept across from the west, winging close above the flat landscape to maintain a low celestial profile.
Two men ocupied the aircraft.
The pilot was a dark, handsome young veteran of many low-profile flights such as this—both in the service of his country in adventures abroad, and in the service of others in adventures here at home. His name was Grimaldi. Until recently he had served the enemies of the man who now sat beside him.
The passenger wore black. He was garbed in a tight-fitting combat outfit of the type favored by those who must advance by stealth into hostile lands. At the moment he was a one-man raiding party. A military style web belt encircled his waist to support a heavy autoloading pistol plus various other weapons of war. Smaller belts angled from shoulders to waist in a crossing arrangement to accommodate miscellaneous munitions and accessories of survival. His face and hands were smeared with a black cosmetic. In the glow from the plane's instrument panel, only the eyes were clearly visible—steely glints of blue ice that seemed to see everything.
The pilot glanced at his passenger and suppressed an involuntary shiver. "Coming around on the midland omni," he announced solemnly.
The man in Executioner black did not immediately respond to the announcement, but a moment later calmly replied, "Bingo. Tank farm dead ahead."
Grimaldi said, "Right. Okay, get set. We're making a straight-in to the airstrip. You can mark it one minute and forty from the tank farm to touchdown."
The other man fiddled with a watch at his left wrist as he crisply delivered a repetitious instruction. "Keep it on the numbers, Jack. Give me ninety, exactly. Nine-oh."
"Sure, I know. That's from touchdown to full stop."
"That's what it is," the cold one growled, showing the first traces of emotion. "Unless you enjoy finding yourself in a cross fire."
"Nine-oh it is," Grimaldi replied with a tight smile.
The Executioner punched a timing stem on his watch as they flashed above a sprawling collection of oil storage tanks, then he began his last-minute countdown preparations. An enormous ammo clip clicked into position in the light chattergun that hung from his neck. Blackened fingers traced out once more the feel and position of munitions spaced along the utility belt while the other hand checked out the security of a waist weapon, the thunderous .44 AutoMag which—for this mission—was carrying scatter loads of fine buckshot. As a final item, a delicately engineered sound suppressor threaded its way onto the shoulder-slung "silent piece"—a 9-millimeter Beretta Brigadier which, through many campaigns, had become virtually an organ of the man and which he affectionately called "the Belle."
"That'd better be a dirt strip down there," he said, as though speaking for his own benefit.
Grimaldi chuckled nervously as he replied, "It was last time. But that's still mighty hard territory down there, man."
"It all is," the raider said. He sighed, very softly, and the blue ice glinted with some indefinable emotion. "Just get me in, and make all the dust you can. We'll take the rest one number at a time."
Sure. One number at a time. Grimaldi had seen plenty of Mack Bolan's "numbers"—in spades. Any way they fell out, it was nothing but bad news for the guys whose misfortune found them on the receiving end.
But what the hell? This was one of the best-guarded sites the guy could have chosen to hit. Why was it always the meanest ones?
Grimaldi had been there when the guy hit Vegas. And Grimaldi had been on the wrong side there.
He'd been there, also, during the Caribbean campaign—which actually had started out as no more than an extension of the Vegas thing. And, yeah, the dumb Italian had started out on the wrong side in Puerto Rico, too.
So what about this time? Grimaldi shrugged away a little quiver of apprehension and aligned the nose of the aircraft with the tiny dirt strip that came into view just ahead. His hands and mind were going to be very busy for the next minute or so, and for that he was thankful. As for the rest of it ... right or wrong, Mack Bolan was his man. There simply was no other way to think of it.
"Gear down," he announced quietly.
Bolan released his seat belt and reminded the pilot, "Start your count when I go out the door."
"Sure," Grimaldi replied.
Oh, sure. They might have been discussing when to meet for dinner, it was that casual. But that hellfire guy was going to go out that door with blood on his mind. He was dropping into a Mafia hardsite with no less than a dozen pro killers defending it and with God only knew how many local recruits to back them up—and he was going to be hitting that earth out there with every intention of scorching it or dying in the attempt.
And for what?
For what damned possible good?
It seemed to Grimaldi like a hell of a way to live ... or die.
He brought the nose up and cut the power. Then the wheels touched and a cloud of dust swirled into the slipstream.
"There's your cover, Mr. Blitz," he intoned, the words sounding loud and overly dramatic in the sudden silence of the dead-stick landing.
A dimly lit shack flashed past on his left; his peripheral vision caught unmistakable movement—human movement—as floodlights erupted on all sides.
Then he was braking for the turnaround as the door cracked open at the far side of the cabin.
The man in black called, "Tallyho, Jack."
Tallyho, yeah. A hunting cry. The guy was gone in a flash of ice-blue eyes. The cabin door closed with a quiet click. And Jack Grimaldi had just brought a very hot war to the peaceful state of Texas.
Something was rotten in Texas.
Bolan did not know precisely what that something was.
He did know, though, that a strongly apparent odor was emerging from this particular spot on the Texas midlands, one of the nation's chief oil-producing areas, and that the odor was being experienced at some rather disconcerting points throughout this wealthy state.
Klingman's Wells had once been among the most productive oil leases in the midlands. Not now. Several months back, the rich wells of Klingman Petro had abruptly gone out of production, much to the surprise of other oilmen in the area. And an air of mystery had settled upon the place.
Rumors had it that the old man's daughter had disappeared and that Klingman himself had gone into virtual seclusion in his Dallas apartment. That in itself was mystery enough. Arthur Klingman was one of the pioneer Texas oilmen, one of the last great independents in this age of corporate giants, a tough old desert rat who could not stand the smell of plush offices and mahoganied board rooms.
Mack Bolan did not like mysteries, particularly when they involved mob operations. And Klingman's Wells was now without a doubt a very important mob centerpoint. Whatever the nature of the new activities, quite obviously it was more profitable and therefore more desirable than the harvesting of fossil fuels.
The most painstaking investigation had failed to reveal to the Executioner's curious mind the true name of the Mafia game in Texas. But there was more than one way to gain intelligence; if you couldn't pry it loose then maybe you could blast it into the open. And that was the real nature of this daring dawn strike at a mob command post; it was shock therapy, to be delivered in Bolan's inimitable style of blockbuster warfare. The shock waves just might rattle something loose and into the intelligence network.
So—if Bolan had heard Jack Grimaldi's silent question, For what damned possible good?—he could have replied, "Not for good, Jack, but for bad. When you have an omnipotent enemy then you simply hit him with everything you can grab—you give him all the bad you can muster—and then you check for leaks in that shell of power."
Bolan was here for some damned possible bad.
He had been here many times-but only on paper. He knew this terrain as though he had lived here a lifetime, and he was intimate with each structure, fixture, and device within that compound—thanks mainly to the remarkable memory of Jack Grimaldi, who had chauffeured several flights of Mafia bosses to the site just after the takeover.
At the moment, Grimaldi was providing some distracting maneuvers with the taxiing aircraft. Bolan was on the lee side of the dust screen and galloping along the backtrack-the chattergun riding in muzzle-down standby, the silent Beretta Belle in hand and at the ready, and he was closing vital numbers on the growing collection of sounds up there in that confused jumble of sand-polluted darkness and choked floodlights.
The timing could not have been more precise. It was the moment that divided night from day, with just the faintest sliver of gray light moving into the eastern heavens. Bolan had learned long ago that this was the best possible time to catch an enemy off its guard, especially those who have watched through the long and uncertain night.
And now the sounds up there in that tail of the night were beginning to assimilate themselves for the alert ears that had come in with the dawn.
A guttural voice that bore no trace of Texas twang was loudly demanding to know the identity of the landing plane.
Another voice, calling from somewhere on Bolan's side of the runway, replied that the craft was "... that Cessna, I think. You know—the Three-Ten, the twinengine job."
"Must be Detroit," the first voice decided, showing a tint of nervousness. "Wonder who it is this time. Somebody get that radio—you mean to say he didn't even identify hisself?"
Bolan had not slowed his pace, and now he was almost directly across from the point of reception, moving into the floodlit area. The outline of a low-slung building was framed out over there in the thin slice of gray horizon, a floodlight atop the building sending a swirling beam through dust-laden atmosphere. Without breaking stride he squeezed off two sighing messengers of darkness from the Beretta. The quiet coughing of the Belle mingled with and was absorbed by the explosive shattering of the floodlight.
In that moment of flare-out a startled face loomed into Bolan's restricted field of vision, a visage obviously more at home on a Manhattan waterfront than at this unlikely outpost of civilization.
The guy had spotted Bolan first—may have even heard the gasping reports of the Beretta. His mouth was open in a silent cry and he was flinging himself into a grotesque pirouette while trying to bring a long-barreled revolver to bear on this unsettling apparition from the night. But then the light was gone, Bolan had closed that short range, and the soldier from Manhattan became a shattering reed in the grip of an implacable force which bent him double, cracked his spine, and snuffed out the candle of life as quietly and as quickly as two fingers closing on a wick.
The only sound from the lightning encounter was a despairing whu-uff as a life took flight and the oddly twisted body sagged to earth.
Across the runway, someone was declaring, "Hell, the damn light blew out."
Several other edgy voices were commenting on the fact, revealing presences which until that time Bolan could but guess at—five or six men, spaced at irregular intervals in a more or less straight line along the other side of the landing strip.
But there were closer ones. Another form materialized immediately from the graying darkness on Bolan's side. The guy cried, "Hey! What is—?"
A 9-millimeter zinger spat across the grayness and between parted teeth to explode in a red fountain of displaced matter, the interrupted question finding a ready answer in the gentle phu-uut of the sighing Beretta.
This one died loudly, with a bubbling scream accompanying the backward pitch and rattling return to sources.
The gravel voice from across the way yelled, "What the hell is going on over there?"
So okay. Not just the way he would prefer it, but okay.
This was as far as silent lightning would take him on this mission.
Bolan returned the Beretta to sideleather.
It was time for thunder.
Not counting a few extra inches provided by the Western boots which he had adopted immediately upon his arrival in Texas, Jim "Woofer" Tolucci stood an even five and one-half feet tall. He weighed two hundred and forty very solid pounds—and the face atop that burly frame, even in repose, bespoke a man of seething energies and thinly veiled ferocity.
Tolucci was "head cock" at Klingman's Wells. The garrison force of Mexican nationals had addressed him as Capitain since his arrival at the hardsite. It was a tag which obviously pleased this graduate of big city street wars. The hardmen of his personal Mafia cadre sometimes used the term in an ingratiating sense, though not always to good effect. In private moments, the Mafiosi referred to their boss as "the animal." In kinder moments he was "Woofer"—but always, in direct address, "Mr. Tolucci."
The Woofer had already committed every crime in the book, including several murders, when he was "made" by the mob at the age of twenty. He was not considered overly bright, not even by the lieutenant who sponsored his initiation, but there was no denying the animal cunning and instinctive ferocity that assured Jim Tolucci a valued place in the organization.
He inherited his nickname at the age of twenty-five as a result of an injury suffered during a beer hall free-for-all. Someone had worked over his throat with the jagged edges of a broken bottle, causing irreparable damage to his vocal chords. The effect on his speech was a gravelly basso which could be neither modulated nor softened; his every word was a bark. During exertion or unusual emotional stress, each movement of his respiratory system produced a clearly audible and deep-throated growling.
At this moment El Capitain's growling was continuous, and his barking commands could be heard throughout the compound.
"Never mind the light now! It's almost daylight!"
And, an instant later: "Mickey! Take some vaqueros down there and check out that plane! What'sa matter with that guy? Something's damn funny here! Hasn't that guy called in yet? Get on that fuckin' radio and—!"
This last instruction was interrupted by a gurgling scream emanating from somewhere out in the darkness, across the runway toward the west fence.
Tolucci took a lunging step in that direction then froze to throw back his head and bawl, "What the hell is going on over there!"
Receiving no immediate response, he dispatched three of his boys to that quarter with the wave of an arm and the rasping command: "Check it out!"
But then something very weird happened.
The aircraft hangar and office, just a few paces to Tolucci's rear, went up in a flaming explosion.
The concussion of the blast sent the head cock sprawling to hands and knees. Before numbed reflexes could even begin to assess the situation, a secondary explosion—caused probably by the touching-off of the hangar's aviation fuel storage—rattled the air and sent fiery droplets raining everywhere.
But Tolucci had no time to ponder that event, either. A piece of the disintegrating building descended upon the kneeling figure, flattening it in the dust of Texas-and just as all the lights were going out, El Capitain could have sworn that he caught a glimpse of a tall figure in black, illuminated by the flames of the blazing building, striding coolly into the holocaust with a chopper under his arm and spitting hellfire at everything.
But shit!
That couldn't be possible.
It just wasn't possible.
Bolan himself at that moment was not wondering just how possible it all was. The hastily flung grenade had evidently found a vital spot; the secondary gasoline explosion had come in right on the numbers—and the mission, at this point, was an unqualified go.
He went—with the chattergun blazing the trail through her flame-wreathed muzzle with coolly timed bursts that were seeking and finding maximum effect.
People were staggering and reeling around over there, totally disorganized and seized by the trauma of blitzkrieg assault.
Yeah.
It was entirely possible.
She awoke with a start and lay very still for a few seconds while attempting to recapture the whatever that had awakened her; then quickly she switched on the small bedside lamp.
It came again, then, a whoofing explosion that brightened the skies outside and sent shadows dancing across the walls of her room.
Gunfire, now, and the unmistakable staccato of a machine gun. Men yelling and screaming.
It sounded like—down at the hangar.
Footsteps running past her door. Voices raised in hysterical Spanish. Shadowy figures floating past the window, pounding feet, frenzied commands well sprinkled with obscenities.
More gunfire, closer now—the sudden big booming of some unimaginable weapon.
Thank God. Oh, thank God.
She slid to her feet, draped the thin blanket across her shoulders to cover her nakedness, and willed her legs to be steady as she staggered to the door.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Texas Storm by Don Pendleton. Copyright © 1974 Pinnacle Books, Inc.. 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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