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

see it. These boys were no shitheads, you know? Not like the old days, hell,
but okay. You didn't take them out with no friggin' beginner's luck."
Bolan remained silent, letting the guy spill his guts.
"Fact is," Copa continued, "damned few guys I ever heard of could take
two men... three men... in a face-to-face. Some of the old aces maybe, but
hell..."
Behind those weasel eyes, wheels were turning, gears clicking into
place as an embryonic idea or suspicion took shape. Benny's face underwent
subtle changes, and Mack Bolan's gut rumbled in response, feeling something
coming.
"You know, if it wasn't so goddamned far out... hey, uh, listen... that
wouldn't be a Beretta you're holding, would it?"
Bolan saw the end coming, inexorably, the last unknown variables
falling into place behind Benny Copa' s suddenly haunted eyes.
And he nodded.
"You called it, Benny."
Copa's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, then he licked his lips
and tried again.
"You're dead, guy," was all he could manage.
"So are you," Bolan told him.
And the Beretta chugged once, putting a 9mm parabellum round through
Benny Copa's left eye socket and slamming him over out of sight behind the
desk. There was no need to check his condition, and Bolan didn't bother.
He put Copa's place behind him swiftly, his mind occupied with his own
thoughts. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the office phone began
jangling overhead, loudly and insistently. There was no one up there to
answer the call.
Back in his rental car and rolling, Bolan heard the grim words again in
his mind. First spoken by Pol Blancanales in predawn darkness, and now,
again, by the late and unlamented Benny Coppacetti.
You're supposed to be dead, guy. Dead and buried.
And yeah, theoretically, hypothetically, Mack Bolan was buried. Parts
of him had been shed forever in Southeast Asia, in Pittsfield, in the final
New York firestorm of his second mile against the Mafia.
It might come to pass that another part - or all of him - would be
buried right there in St. Paul that very day, but he couldn't - hell,
wouldn't - live in fear of the unknown and the inescapable. It was not his
way, and never would be.
Mack Bolan was alive and living large.
All the way to a meeting with the assistant P.C. of St. Paul, yeah, and
beyond that, if necessary, into the gates of hell itself.

12

From the journal of John Phoenix:
We live in a cyclical universe. It seems that everything repeats
itself, and comes full circle given time. I know that to be true of life and
death, love and hate. I am finding out that it is also true of war. Nothing
stays the same in life or war, but in the end, nothing changes.
At one time, during one existence, the Mafia was my enemy and primary