"Дон Пендлтон. Caribbean Kill ("Палач" #10) " - читать интересную книгу автора

understanding of this curious enemy deepened. He learned to think as they
thought, to speak as they spoke - he became a master at deception and
manipulation, aad the death blows began to reverberate throughout the entire
empire of syndicated evil.
Stung now to a total response, the far-flung families of La Cosa Nostra
assembled at Miami Beach for a summit meeting to discuss ways and means of
responding to the Bolan threat. Bolan himself did not receive an invitation.
He went anyway, and the summit meeting became a Mafia disaster on a scale
never before experienced.
Bolan had many things going for him - nerves of steel, audacity, an
utter contempt for death, moral outrage, the ability to discipline himself,
military expertise - all of these, certainly, but perhaps the attribute
which continued to spell success for this audacious warrior was an almost
uncanny sense of timing. His hit-and-fade strategy had the Mafia bigwigs
figuratively climbing the walls of their empire with frustration and
desperation. Ordinary street soldiers throughout the country developed the
nervous habit of continually looking over their shoulders, of going through
doorways with extreme care and of sleeping in lighted rooms. The Mafia's
businessmen doubled their retinue of bodyguards and sent their families on
vacations out of the country. The face value of the murder contract let on
Bolan pyramided as territorial chieftains added enticing bonuses to keep
ambitious freelancers thick and alert in their areas.
Meanwhile "the bastard" blitzed on, surfacing here and there for a
quick hit and an even quicker fade-out, and Bolan's 'last bloody mile"
became an ever-widening wipe-out trail which ranged across the ocean into
France and England, then back to New York City for a pitched battle there
and another quick fade.
Timing kept Bolan moving, kept him alive - but intelligence and
planning and a finely tuned military poise kept him beating the mob at their
own game.
Mack Bolan was more than a war machine, however. He was also a man -
subject to all the dreams and desires of any mortal - and his soul was
growing weary of its burden of continual warfare, unending violence and
ever-flowing rivers of blood. He did not regard himself as a crusader or as
an avenging angel - but simply as a man who was doing a job which could not
be avoided. Many times he contemplated the comparative ease which death
offered him. Frequently he railed against his 'leper" status, self-imposed,
which necessarily alienated him from all lasting human relationships.
Occasionally he succumbed to a dark melancholy which drove him into deep
introspections and philosophic searches.
Through all this inner writhing he remained Mack Bolan, the
Executioner, one-man army par excellence , and through it all he developed a
meaningful philosophy - or perhaps, simply, a deeper understanding of his
own unique situation. In that understanding there was no possibility of a
personal victory. If the mob did not eventually get him, then the police
would. He was doomed, whether he surrendered or fought on - the only
difference being that his doom could have some positive value for the world
if he continued to fight the good fight. So, life for Mack Bolan had boiled
itself down to the simplest of terms: kill to live, live to kill. Fight on,
and go out like a warrior - or give up, and die like a caged rat. He did not