"Death Squad" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pendleton Don)

Chapter Four Hardcase

Captain Tim Braddock had been with the Los Angeles Police for eighteen years. Married, father of three, still hard and trim at the age of forty-two, he looked more the successful young business executive than a captain of detectives. Braddock was quot;on his way,quot; according to the scuttlebutt around the Hall of Justice. Respected, admired, competent, effective—these were the terms most commonly employed in any discussion of the man. For the previous two years, he had been shunted into administrative and liaison details, public-relations work, and other nonpolicing duties that seemed to be pointing him toward higher echelons of police business. And now he had been assigned as coordinator of the hottest job to hit the force since the Kennedy assassination—the Bolan case.

The project had been appropriately code named Hardcase. It had aroused the active interest of every police agency in the state. Representatives of most of these were now assembling in the briefing room to hear L.A.'s approach to the problem. A man from the Attorney General's office in Sacramento would be out there, as would liaison men from the state troopers, several federal agencies, and various sheriffs departments and a heavy contingent from L.A.'s neighboring municipalities.

Braddock felt as though he were about to enter a lineup; in just a moment he would be asked to step forward, stand straight, state his name and occupation, and say something in his natural voice. He shivered inwardly. A forlorn part of him wished fervently for a return to the earlier, simpler, no-nonsense days of cops and robbers, to a time when being a cop was simply being a bastard, going after the lawbreaker, and shooting him dead or bringing him in to a certain punishment. The practical area of Braddock's mind knew, however, that those simple old days were gone forever. A cop was now one part politician, one part diplomat, one part big brother, one part father image, one part savant, one part constitutional lawyer— all of which left very little room for that part which was just plain cop.

The quot;just plain copquot; was a vanishing American. Tim Braddock did not wish to vanish. He had come a long distance in eighteen years; eighteen more might well see him sitting at the big desk in the chief's office. Ambition could be a stern taskmaster; in this twentieth-century pressure-boiler world of competition, the will to succeed was closely akin to the instinct for survival. It boiled down to that, and no one was more aware of this grim fact than was Tim Braddock.

He squelched the butterflies flitting about his stomach with a stern inner command and listened as the deputy chief was introduced, then allowed his mind to wander as the number-two at L.A. made his presentation of the broad generalities of the case. Braddock was well acquainted with the generalities. He was certain that every officer in the room was equally aware of The Executioner's background and recent history. The audience was respectfully attentive, however; after all Braddock reasoned, the man addressing them was merely one step below the top of the largest police agency west of Chicago. Also, they were being asked for neither approval nor cooperation. Braddock, in his talk, would be asking for both. There would be no room, at that podium, for just-plain-cop Tim Brad-dock. And if he did not pull this thing properly ... well, that chiefs desk would begin to look mighty remote.

The deputy chief was angling into Braddock's introduction. quot;... And Captain Braddock will be coordinating this department's handling of the Bo-Ian affair. His office will be the point of direct contact between all local, state, and federal efforts toward Hardcase. Gentlemen—Captain Tim Brad-dock, Los Angeles Police Department.quot;

Someone in the back of the room applauded briefly as Braddock walked toward the podium. Applause was out of order here. The captain tossed a wink at the back wall, smiled drolly, and spoke into the microphone. quot;Somebody out there knows me,quot; he said genially.

The audience responded with light laughter and Braddock's guts felt better. The ice was broken. quot;Just so that everybody will know me, Officer John Ward will distribute some cards.quot; He angled a nod toward a uniformed officer who stood in the pit just below the speaker's platform. quot;You can think of these as calling cards,quot; Braddock went on, in the lightly genial manner he preferred for starters. quot;I'd appreciate it, though, if you would regard the information on these cards as confidential. The telephone numbers youll find there are reserved exclusively for Hardcase communications. The radio frequencies are for special primary and secondary nets established for mobile units assigned to Hardcase. We presently have ten cars assigned exclusively to this project on a twenty-four-hour basis. Each car is assigned to a specific sector of the city. We are going to ask that each of our neighboring police agencies maintain a listening watch on these special nets, so that they may be fully on top of any developments and be prepared to lend assistance as required.quot;

Officer Ward was moving efficiently along the line of chairs, issuing a stack of the cards to be passed along each row. Braddock continued. quot;Special instructions have been issued to every mobile unit in this department, for a prearranged reaction upon receipt of a Hardcase alert. Bolan is a military tactician, and a darned effective one, I'm told. He should not be regarded as a lunatic. He is not a wild-eyed fanatic or a bloodthirsty gunslinger, and any attempts to deal with him from this viewpoint will generally be ineffective. From all I have been able to learn of his M.O., he studiously avoids any confrontation with police authority. He apparently goes to great lengths to protect innocent bystanders. He is still, of course, a dangerous criminal. He must be apprehended at the earliest possible moment.

quot;Now—I want to take just a moment to review with you The Executioner's activities at Pittsfield last month.quot;

Braddock shuffled his papers, delicately cleared his throat, directed a pleasant gaze upon the assemblage, then began his reading. quot;On August 22nd, firing from an upper floor of a building a hundred yards distant, he shot to death five officers of a Mafia-controlled loan company, in the street outside their office. He used a Marlin .444 with telescopic sights, and he fired only five shots. There was no return fire, although two of his victims were armed. No injuries were sustained by bystanders.

quot;Apparently he then managed to infiltrate the local Mafia activities, went to work for them, and gained a familiarity with their operations in and around Pittsfield. According to police intelligence, the Mafia was tipped to Bolan's true role shortly thereafter, and a contract was let for his death. On the morning of August 31st, two Murder, Incorporated, contractors were shot to death during a gun battle in Bolan's apartment.

quot;This is when the fireworks began in earnest, and this is where the Bolan M.O. begins to show its sting. He seems to go in for the thunder-and-lightning technique, hitting hard, fast, and repeatedly in a blitzkrieg offensive which keeps his enemies reeling and confused. On the afternoon of August 31st, Bolan knocked over a prize pleasure palace ...quot; Braddock raised his eyes and grinned. quot;A house of prostitution, gentlemen.quot; A responsive titter from the assembled lawmen greeted the unnecessary explanation.

Braddock paused to allow the good humor to run its course; then he continued. quot;He knocked over a prized palace in a suburban community, burning it to the ground, then lay cooly on a distant hillock and shot the tires off a parked police cruiser and a fire captain's car, then punched a fusillade into an approaching carload of Mafia henchmen, wounding one of them severely and destroying the expensive automobile.quot;

A shuffling and chuckling in the audience again brought Braddock to a pause. He dabbed at his forehead with a handerchief. quot;It's no wonder this boy captured the public fancy,quot; he went on. quot;A lot of people identified with him, you see, even a lot of police officers. This is an attitude that has worked in Bolan's favor. Needless to say, it hurts the police efforts. Bolan is a war hero. He has been repeatedly decorated for valor and heroism. Many honest, law-abiding citizens are in strong sympathy with him. The Bolan image runs somewhat along these lines: One of our boys in Vietnam, a decorated boy, is called home from the wars to bury his family, victims of Mafia terrorism. Heroic boy from Vietnam becomes avenger, declares a one-man war on the homefront underworld, and sallies forth into a heroic war against another of our country's enemies. Bunk!quot;

Braddock raised his eyes to gaze levelly upon his audience. I say again, gentlemen—bunk! This is a terribly and a dangerously misleading image. Mack Bolan is a highly trained death machine. He is extremely dangerous, both in a positive and in a negative sense. He is a remorseless killer, an executioner in the strictest sense, a brilliant tactician who would replace law and justice with the code of the battlefield. He is judge and jury, prosecution and defense, the law, the final word.

quot;But let's get back to Pittsfield. A short while after his assault upon the pleasure palace, he shows up at the palatial estate of one of the Mafia chieftains. He is dressed in a power-company uniform. He coldbloodedly slips a knife into the two security men guarding the property and dumps their bodies into the swimming pool, after first severing power and telephone lines and luring the men out of the house to assist him in checking out the trouble. Then he goes inside the house, slashes the mattresses on all the beds, and shoots up a large portrait of the Mafia chieftain. This was purely a harrassment tactic—obviously he knew that the owner of the property was not at home.

quot;But this is another significant feature of the Bolan M.O. Apparently he had been exposed before he could penetrate into the higher councils of the Mafia. He was trying to jar them, frighten them— to roust them into a panic that would smoke the higher ups into the open. And this boy does move fast. Listen, now. That same afternoon he returned to the scene of his first hit, the loan company, calmly walked in and helped himself to a secret Mafia cache of undeclared wealth, some one-quarter million, it is said, then ordered the employees to stack all their loan records in a pile on the floor and burn them.quot;

Braddock looked up with a broad grin. quot;Now, how many thousands of good, upstanding citizens would you imagine became endeared to The Executioner through that simple act? He burned the loan records.quot;

Again he waited for the amused response to settle; then he continued. quot;I'm trying to give you some insight into this guy—and possibly explain why the news people have contributed so much to his hero image. He is a heroic figure. He's a natural for the role. People enjoy hearing about a guy who is getting away with it, especially if they can visualize him wearing a clean white hat.

quot;It should be noted, also, that Bolan apparently has an appreciation for his image. He picks his battlefields carefully, confining them, generally, to Mafia property. He is kind and considerate to bystanders and goes to great lengths to keep them out of the line of fire. Instead of bursting into a house with his guns blazing, he meticulously weeds out the villains, invites them outside, and neatly dispatches them. A household servant does not even see the color of their blood.

That night—that same night, yes; he keeps moving—Bolan broke contact at another chieftain's house and ran when the guy's wife starts plinking away at him with a little target pistol. He did not return her fire but elected to break off and run, and it cost him. He was hit, but I guess not too badly. He dropped out of sight for a few days. He could afford to. Earlier that same evening, the night he was wounded, he had followed one of the chieftains to a Mafia family council and broke up the proceedings with a long-range sniper attack—and this one seemed calculated to only serve notice that he had located their headquarters. This is another M.O.-signiflcant tactic. He tied it in later. The family's nerves must have been fraying tremendously during Bolan's recuperative period. Even the fates, it seems, are sympathetic with this guy.

quot;Follow this action, now, in his second blitzkrieg. First he calls the local police department and warns them that he's hitting tonight—and to keep clear. Is he naive, brazen, or boastful?quot; Brad-dock shook his head. quot;Apparently his first stop is at a private warehouse where war-surplus munitions and arms are kept. Note the image keeping, now. He breaks into the warehouse and carefully selects a personal arsenal. He leaves behind a detail itemization of the stolen goods—and more than enough money to pay for them.

quot;And now, on to the blitzkrieg. A series of lightning strikes, at widely separated locations, succeeds in bringing the local Mafia hierarchy into full session. It appears that they committed themselves to a full and final confrontation, and the forces they had arrayed against this man were formidable, to say the least. Bolan must have known that he was walking into a Mafia setup. Of course he knew—he had maneuvered them into just such a confrontation. And the Pittsfield family never really understood the Bolan mentality. He'd been fighting them all along with conventional weapons. A knife, a pistol, a high-powered rifle. He was a man alone. The Mafia brought in a small army, set up some machine guns, and thought they would squash him like a bug the minute he made his move. He showed them the error of their thinking, and we certainly have to respect the Bolan fighting brain. He hit those people with everything in the arsenal, and he was waging a war like the soldier he is. He lit the skies with flares, then sat safely in the dark, a quarter mile away, and hit them with mortars, rockets, and—you name It, he had It. The most amazing part of this entire incredible story is that he then slipped through a police dragnet that numbered more than a hundred city and county lawmen.quot;

Braddock cleared his throat and dropped his voice a pitch to observe, quot;It would seem safe to conclude that not every lawman in that dragnet was overly anxious to apprehend The Executioner. Not because of cowardice—because of admiration, perhaps even affection. Somebody turned his head the other way as Bolan was passing by. Bet on it.quot; Braddock mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and continued in his normal voice, quot;So now we have the problem here. Bolan has brought his war to Los Angeles County. There was a gunfight last week at a residence club out near the beach. When the smoke cleared, six hoods who have been identified as murder contractors lay dead in a parking lot directly adjacent to a patio party where some forty young people were relaxing and enjoying life. It was a miracle that none of these innocents were hit by that spray of bullets. We have since learned that one of the tenants of that building, one George K. Zitka, is a Vietnam veteran and a friend of Mack Bolan. Zitka, need I add, has dropped from sight.

quot;Yesterday morning, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of this area was rocked by a Bolan-type strike that left two dead and a known Mafia figure terrorized. It has been definitely established that at least a half dozen men were with Bolan on this hit.

quot;Keep in mind, now—in Pittsfield, Bolan was alone, and look at the trail of carnage he left in and about the city. He is now in Los Angeles—and he is no longer a man alone. He has a gang now, and these people are apparently conducting military-type operations against certain elements of this community.quot;

Braddock paused dramatically, smiled, and said, quot;I have not come to praise the Mafia—nor even to bury them.quot; The audience tittered. quot;My heart does not bleed for 'Melio Giordano, nor for the two thugs who were rather dramatically chopped from his payroll. But my blood runs cold at the thought of an organized gang war in this city. You all know the certain results of gunfights in our city's streets. We cannot have it. We simply will not have it.quot;

The room had become very quiet. Braddock paused to sip at a tumbler of water. He had their full attention. Now to sell them. It is common knowledge that a six-figure open contract has been let, with Mack Bolan's name on the death warrant. Already, since the publicity of yesterday's strike, twenty-two out-of-town gunmen have been spotted and picked up for questioning. We are being invaded by the most vicious criminal elements from around the nation. Oh, we're picking them up. Just as fast as we can identify them, we pick them up. But it's like a grunion run. For each one we grab, ten slip through our fingers. Gentlemen, Los Angeles County has been invaded by every ambitious gunman in the country. They will shoot at anything that looks like Mack Bolan. There's the negative danger of Bolan's presence in this city. Sudden death can erupt on any street or in any public place or in any private residence in this city and county. We have to get Bolan. We have to get him quickly.quot;

Okay, he had them. They were listening, and they were believing. Rally 'round the flag, boys, the heat is on, Let's sew this guy up good and get him on ice and out of our hair. This was Braddock's message. He would get it across.

quot;Now we have stakeouts on every known Mafia figure in the area. There are not many—and we think our Intelligence is as good as Bolan's. Just to make sure, we are shaking the city good, double checking our informants and then checking them again. Giordano's name was on the Attorney General's list. Possibly Bolan is using that same list. We don't want to make things so tight that we scare Bolan off, of course. And we certainly do not wish to engage him in a shootout, not until we have maneuvered him onto a battlefield of our choosing. Therefore, here is the strategy we are using for Hardcase.quot;

Braddock stepped over to a large chart on the wall behind him and picked up a pointer. quot;We are asking your fullest cooperation in this strategy. All right. We form a loose circle around the probable points of contact, and we play the waiting game. At any time when contact is made, we tighten the circle slightly, set up our net of containment, and run him to ground only when that ground is not likely to get drenched with the blood of innocent citizens. Remember—we are chasing what now appears to be a small but highly professional army. They have heavy weapons. These people will undoubtedly stand and fight if it seems that arrest is imminent. We do not want that fight to spill out upon innocent citizens. We ask that all adjacent communities cooperate fully with us in this plan. We ask the right of 'hot pursuit' into other police jurisdictions. We ask that the utmost delicacy be exercised in every phase of Hardcase and that...quot;

Braddock was not really asking now—he was telling. A seasoned instinct had signalled that the time was ripe for him to assume command of this motley assortment of lawmen. All the other parts of himself had become exhausted as he maneuvered into the minds of those cops out there—now, just-plain-cop Tim Braddock was in the saddle and riding hard. He would get this guy Bolan, or by God there would be no other kind of cop left in him. His cool stare lifted out over the heads of California's finest as he thumped the chart here and there with the pointer to exphasize certain points, and not a man seated there possessed the slightest doubt that The Executioner would meet his fate in Los Angeles.

quot;Big Timquot; Braddock was a man on his way. A dozen Mack Bolans would not stand in that way. The heat was on, Big Tim was stoking the boiler, and it could not be said with any certainty whether Hardcase described the operation or the man who was directing it. In either event, the heat was on. Hardcase was set.