As a former licensed Doctor of Medicine, used to an annual income exceeding $50,000, Wight Byron had no thought whatever upon his release from Sing Sing of acquiring a new trade. Besides, he had customers — Byron called them clients — awaiting: call girls with various professional ailments, friends, or friends of friends he'd made in the penitentary, with gunshot, stab, razor and other wounds, including broken faces and crushed ribs suffered in hit-and-run auto collisions and other incidents of the violent life.
The first thing, of course, upon his release from prison, Byron had to find a source of supply for drugs. Not only dope and painkillers, but antibiotics. Nothing had been easier, because he'd made the proper connections. In fact, he found that he had to distribute his business among half a dozen various pharmacists in order to keep them all happy.
As a front, so the beat cops and precinct sergeants wouldn't get too nosy, Byron opened a secondhand bookshop on the ground floor, with a considerable supply of skinmags, all kinds. This drew crowds. "Clients" in the know had the recognition signals necessary to get past the stud guarding the elevator to the upper rooms, fading from amongst the tit gawkers without notice.
Leo Turrin, the double agent from Pittsfield, had tipped Bolan to Dr. Byron.
Byron stood six feet three, red freckled face, bushy eyebrows, almost colorless gray eyes. He simply nipped the skin along Bolan's ribcage and the slug popped out into his palm. "Ah, yes — "
"Meaning what?" Bolan demanded. "Infected."
"Of course. How long has it been in there?"
"Long enough to become infected. Can you fix it?"
"I would imagine — "
"No, that's not what I asked. Can you fix it? Now."
"I'll have to call for certain medication."
"No phone calls, doc." With singular effort of will, Bolan pushed himself up from the dressing table, rested a moment, head swimming dizzily, swung his legs off and sat resting a moment longer. He gazed hazily around the cubicle, finally focused his eyes on the glass-fronted cabinet with shelves holding bottles. He slid off the table, staggered, caught his balance, lunged across the narrow space and caught his balance again, and once more through sheer effort of will focused his eyes.
He reached up slowly and slid back one of the glass doors. He reached inside and pulled down a bottle holding thick yellowish, creamlike liquid — antibiotics.
Bolan clutched the bottle, fell around with his weight pinning him against the table below the glass case. He held the bottle forward. "Give me a hit, doc. I mean a hit, a massive injection."
"It could kill you."
"It will kill me if I don't. I can smell it now. The wound's gone septic."
Byron nodded.
"You still want to make a phone call, doc?"
"I should."
"Why?"
Wight Byron shrugged, just one tiny fraction too elaborately so Bolan knew. He knew. A conscienceless doctor would not hesitate to collect $100,000. And this dude had a setup he could never have unless he'd "mobbed up" while in the joint. Mobbed up meant Mafia, Cosa Nostra, whatever the hell they called it nowadays.
Bolan breathed deeply, and again, and twice more, hyperventilating, pumping his bloodstream full of oxygen. His vision cleared and he felt strength returning to his tired, aching legs. "How you like it, doc?"
Genuinely puzzled, Byron asked, "Like what?"
"Life. Living. Booze and broads and feeling safe, like it'll last forever. You'll never grow old, be bald, need eyeglasses, being a Main Man."
"I don't understand." Once more the just slightly too elaborate shrug.
"Man, listen to me. I don't go naked in the world. You hit me a massive dose of this medication, or I'll blow you up where you stand."
Wight Byron felt the icy blue gaze sink holes through his face, and knew he'd die in his tracks if he failed to oblige this big, broad, scarred deadly man, who should by every logic be dead, wounded as he was. The bastard was shot to pieces. Leg, face, torso. Christ!
Byron moved to the table, carefully. He took up a syringe. He held it before his body in plain sight so the big bastard saw the tube and needle clean. He took the bottle from Bolan's big bony fist, inserted the needle, drew off a massive dosage of the creamlike medication.
Without instructions, Bolan made it to the dressing table and bent over it. He watched Byron over his shoulder. The doc slapped Bolan's butt a stinging smack, and immediately thereafter, when the muscle relaxed, Byron shafted the needle to the hilt and pushed the plunger.
Bolan climbed back up on the table and let the doctor dress his leg wound. He took a smear of stinging Merthiolate, then sulfa salve on the face wound, and a big dressing. That would help conceal his identity, possibly. Something like the clear-lensed, big, dark-framed eyeglasses he sometimes wore, and the moustache and bleached hair.
Bolan lay for a moment resting, and then knew he had to kill the man.
Maybe it was the man's basic character. Possibly those things he'd learned in the joint. Maybe Byron just had consuming greed.
A hundred grand was a hell of a lot of money, tax free.
The man from hell ground felt a drowse come upon him, and he fought with every last bottom gut he had. Someway, somehow, despite Mack Bolan's scrutiny, Dr. Byron had hyped him, the lousy son of a —
Bolan forced himself upright. He swung his legs off the table. On the table below the glass case, four feet from him, he saw an open medical instrument tray. He launched himself with all his superior strength, scrabbled for a scalpel, and just as Byron said, "Hello," into the wall telephone, Mack Bolan plunged the point of the razorlike blade into the base of the man's skull.
Wight dropped dead instantly.
Leaning against the wall, Bolan groped for the telephone, listened a moment, then in the best imitation of Byron's voice he had off the cuff, The Executioner said, "Never mind," and hung up.
Bolan locked the door. Fighting the effects of the unknown drug Byron'd hyped him with, he staggered across the room to the single window. He raised it, looked down into a concrete well littered with trash, thirty feet below. Bolan went back to the dressing table. His efforts and physical movements seemed to overcome the drug's effects. He peeled the sheets off the table, took one and tied it around the table with a square knot. He took the second sheet, tore it into big strips and tied them to the first sheet around the table. He shoved the table to the wall directly under the window, and tossed the loose end of the linen "rope" out of the open window. He flopped, belly-down on the table and slithered out the window, gripped the dangling sheet and began easing himself down. He'd gone ten feet when the cloth in his hands began ripping. In an instant he dropped three feet. Then the fabric held. Gingerly, Bolan went down, hand under hand, and the sheeting ripped again, dropping him another breathless four feet. He hung on, waiting. There was nothing else to do but wait.
The sheet held. Bolan went hand under hand down again, one, two, three —
And then, with the razzling sound of a burpgun's ripping burst, the sheeting ripped apart and dropped him free-fall to the bottom, smashing into the unyielding concrete.
2
Snake
As a lad born and raised in a Massachusetts metropolitan area, The Executioner, also known as Mack Bolan, knew virtually nothing of serpents, whether tame or wild, harmless or deadly.
After some twelve years in the army, and two tours in Nam where poisonous snakes killed men in the jungles, and huge tigers carried them off clamped between saber-like teeth, Sgt. Mack Bolan became educated.