"Дон Пендлтон. The Violent Streets ("Палач" #41) " - читать интересную книгу автора

Mack Bolan had come to St. Paul on what seemed a simple mission.
To help a friend.
To relieve the pain of a suffering comrade-in-arms.
But the nature of the Executioner's mission in the Twin Cities was
rapidly shaping up into something else, something vastly different from what
he had come to expect. The campaign had all the makings of a unique
experience for Bolan in his home-front wars, and the very difference of the
mission was what made it so desperate, so dangerous for all concerned.
For openers, Bolan had less solid information about his enemy - or
enemies - than he had ever carried into battle before. In his previous
campaigns, whether against the Cong, the Mafia, or the new breed of
terrorists that John Phoenix had been resurrected to fight, he had always
gone into combat with at least a general understanding of the enemy's number
and goals.
He had always known their name and their game, yeah.
But not in St. Paul.
So far, the Executioner knew only that he was searching for one
deranged young man who raped and murdered women for reasons best known to
himself. An animal who had to be found and very forcefully neutralized.
But along the way, he had already encountered five men who bore all the
earmarks of syndicate hardmen, and they seemed to be intent on scuttling any
search for the Twin Cities rapist-killer.
That was a new one on Bolan, and he was a long way from having thought
it completely through.
One thing was clear enough for the moment. He had come into St. Paul
operating on faulty perceptions, without all the necessary information.
Clearly, the game was not to be a simple, deadly one-on-one between the
headcase and the Executioner. It had already evolved into something more,
something larger, more sinister.
Someone had called out the guns in St. Paul; whether in support of
Bolan's intended prey or on behalf of some unknown, unrelated cause, he
couldn't yet be certain. He knew only that the gunmen existed, and that he
undoubtedly would have to deal with more of them before he was finished in
the city.
The strong indications of organized crime activity - and possible
police complicity, whatever its scope - indicated that there was more at
stake in St. Paul than a relatively simple string of rapes and murders
committed by some faceless madman.
The Twin Cities had never ranked high in the American Mafia hierarchy,
even before Mack the Bastard Bolan had appeared out of nowhere, rattling
cages and finally blowing their whole damned house down. The syndicate had
representatives and outposts there, nevertheless, and it carried out the
same time-honored game of rape and ruin. However, the local action had never
rated an Executioner visitation, either during the main war, or during
Bolan's savage week-long "second mile" through hell.
Never, that is, until now.
Now it looked as if it might be time to correct an earlier oversight.
Across the nation, the crime syndicate lay in smoking ruins. But just
as the V.C. had managed to avoid massive sweeps in Vietnam, just as the