The horn began sounding, grotesquely perpetuating the noisy invasion of the desert stillness. Bolan moved cautiously into the close inspection. The man in the rear seat had taken a bullet through the throat; a .45 automatic lay on the seat beside him, a sawed-off shotgun on the floor. The driver had an obviously broken neck, in addition to a bullet in the shoulder. The man who had been ejected by the collision was groaning feebly through blood-flecked lips. The first of the group to taste Bolan's lead was dead with a bullet through the heart.
A vehicle with a blue beacon flashing from its roof was approaching from inside the industrial complex. Bolan snatched the registration display from the wrecked car and quickly returned to his own vehicle. He extinguished his lights and made a rapid departure, switching them on again just before reaching the highway junction. He paused there to examine the registry paper he had removed from the wrecked vehicle, then growled deep in his throat as cool anger began to replace survivalist excitement. The car was registered to John J. Portocci; the address shown was in a Phoenix suburb. Bolan recognized the name. Johnny (the Musician) Portocci was the underboss of a Phoenix-based Mafia family.
If Bolan had learned any full-dimensioned truth in Vietnam, it was that an aggressor holds all the aces when the defense is limited to purely reaction and containment. Bolan had been in a reaction-only posture for two full weeks, ever since the close of the Palm Springs battle with the DiGeorge Family. He was tired of "reacting" — and the truth was growing on him that his only way out of Arizona probably lay in a power sweep right through the middle.
Now that the shooting had started, the Arizona Troopers would undoubtedly be getting into the act. Roadblocks, in a sparsely-inhabited state such as Arizona, could be a powerfully effective device.
Bolan weighed the registration slip on an index finger, gazed longingly toward the east, then sighed resignedly and turned back west toward Phoenix. A long-forgotten item of information tugged at his brain lobes, something he had read once in a study of ancient history. The phoenix was the fire-bird of Egyptian mythology, the symbol of regeneration or resurrection. Bolan grinned to himself and sent the little speedster hurtling along the backtrack to the city.
The two-story residence of Johnny the Musician was in Mediterranean villa style and set back about fifty yards from the road. The neighborhood was one of the best in the area, a settlement of curving roads, circular drives, and executive homes. Bolan idly wondered if Portocci had been accepted by the country-club set, as he cruised past in an inspection of the Mafia boss's mansion. Several vehicles occupied the circular drive at the front of the house. A limousine was parked outside the attached garage which was linked to the rear of the house by a short breezeway; extra living quarters were above the garage. A single floodlight illuminated the front area and light spilled through several ground-floor windows.
The upper story of the house and the garage apartment were darkened. Two men in the front drive leaned against the fender of a car in the full glare of the floodlight. Bolan went on by, turned onto the next intersecting street, and parked. The neighborhood was quiet and dark. Bolan removed his suit coat, pulled a black, tight-fitting jumpsuit from the rear seat, and stepped out onto the street to get into it. Next he buckled on a web belt with a flap holster, affixed a silencer to the muzzle of the Luger, reloaded, and checked his spare clips. Then he changed into lightweight, crepe-soled "cat shoes" and melted into the darkness. Moments later The Executioner dropped lightly over a low stone wall at the rear of the Portocci property and stepped silently into the shadow of a wooden-slatted windbreak, beyond which lay an oval swimming pool.
The pool was dry and showed signs of neglect. A man, fully clothed, sat at the end of a low diving board, his feet dangling in the air, head thrown back, obviously star-gazing. Bolan watched the man for a full minute, noting the shadowy outline of an object lying across the man's lap and deciding his best move. The decision made, Bolan scooped up a piece of rotted wood which had fallen from the windbreak and sailed it into the shadows of a patio at the far side of the pool. It hit with a soft clatter and slid along for several feet.
The man on the diving board reacted instantly, coming to both knees and peering awkwardly toward the sound of the disturbance, precariously off balance as he swivelled and swung a short shotgun at chest level. Bolan stepped into the open, some twenty feet from the man's position, weapon at arm's length, and said, "Hey!"
The guard jerked about with a startled grunt, trying to bring the shotgun around with him. The Luger bucked in Bolan's hand and reported with a dull phut through the silencer. The guard's head snapped back grotesquely, and man and gun continued the pirouette into thin air and disappeared from Bolan's view. The shotgun clattered as it struck the cement bottom of the pool and skittered noisily along the incline. Bolan was already streaking across the open area around the end of the pool. He made the shadows of the garage just as another man leaned over the railing of the porch from the upstairs apartment and called out, "Al? Al! What is it?"
Bolan's Luger whispered again and another body abruptly took to the air, impacting almost at Bolan's feet. His progress unchecked, Bolan went on to the stairway and quickly ascended to the porch, then stepped off onto the roof of the breezeway and crossed to a flat overhang of the roof of the main house. The second window he came to stood invitingly open. Bolan entered, and found himself in an alcove of an upstairs hallway, dimly illuminated by a small nightlight in the baseboard. He began a methodical search of the upper story, found two darkened and obviously unused bedrooms with doors ajar, a third with male clothing scattered about but also unoccupied, and a large bath which smelled faintly of disinfectant. A door at the end of the hall was showing a sliver of light at the bottom.
Bolan had to move past the stairwell to reach the end room. Men's voices floated up as he passed, mixed with the sounds of a television late movie. He went on to the closed door and pressed an ear against it. Agitated voices, muffled in excitement, were coming through. A man's and a woman's. Bed sounds. Bolan frowned, hesitated, then tried the doorknob. The door was locked. He moved cautiously to the nearest open bedroom and exited onto the roof through a window, then made his way back to the corner of the end bedroom. It was at the front of the house. Kneeling on the flat overhang, Bolan could see the two outside men in the front drive, still leaning against the automobile and conversing in low tones, backs to the house.
Bolan inched along to the window. It was open, but the drapes were closed, allowing only a muted spillage of light although hardly muffling the impassioned voices on the other side. Bolan surmised that the bed was positioned directly beyond the window. A woman's breathlessly urgent tones implored, "God, Freddie, hurry — hurry up — come on, huh!"
Bolan's scowl deepened. He had hoped to find Johnny Portocci in that bedroom. A playful male voice was replying, "Hurry and do what? How d'you know I'm not just gonna get up, get dressed, and walk outta here and leave you like that? Eh?"
"God, don't tease me, Freddie," the woman was saying as Bolan stepped into the room. She lay crosswise on the bed, a beautifully proportioned blond — late twenties, Bolan guessed — flat on her back and fighting for a scissors-lock on the nude man who knelt on the edge of the bed.
The blond, also totally unclothed, did not see Bolan immediately; the man did, facing him head-on across the bed. His face went momentarily blank as his eyes lingered on the big silencer-tipped Luger in Bolan's hand, then he flipped back in a panicky reaction. Failing to understand his reason for the sudden move toward disinvolvement, the blond lunged after him and wrapped him up with both legs about the waist. He dragged her off the bed with him in a futile attempt to reach a gunbelt which was draped across a nearby chair. The Luger phutted a bullet into his ear, and he hit the floor with the blond still in tow. She stared at him stupidly for a moment then made a sick face and lifted stunned eyes to Bolan, apparently noticing his presence for the first time.