Detroit Deathwatch

Don Pendleton

Detroit Deathwatch

Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

Death is watching me.

I am watching her back.

It is a game at which two can play.

Dedicated with admiration to all those who patrol the jungle yet remain immune to the dehumanizing influences there. Stay hard.

Prologue

Mack Bolan had never thought that he would live forever. He had not really expected to survive even the first pitched battle of his war against the Mafia.

A military realist, Bolan had been strongly aware from the very begi

Not, however, In the name of vengeance. Revenge could move a man just so far — and Bolan had long ago passed that limitation of vengeful motivation. Granted, his first reflexive action against the mob had been primarily motivated by a need to strike back, to achieve justice in the only clear ma

So, no, Bolan had not felt helpless in dealing with those responsible for his personal family tragedy. He quickly "executed" five of those most directly responsible and immediately set out to track down the sixth. It was not until this point that he learned the identity of this "new enemy" — "the Mafia, for God's sake!" — the fabled crime organization that a Senate investigator had labeled "the invisible second government of the nation."

Bolan did not dig that kind of "government." It quickly became apparent to this professional soldier that the Mafia posed the gravest threat ever encountered by his country. His feeling in this regard is revealed by an entry in his personal journal, pe

Being human, Bolan was not immune to the scare stories concerning the Mafia's power and ruthlessness — and, yes, he was decidedly uneasy about "taking on the whole damn Mafia." He knew that an organization that had built its success upon fear and intimidation could not turn its back on this counterattack, even by a single individual. An act of violence upon any mafioso would be regarded as an attack upon the entire organization — a debt of honor to be expunged quickly and decisively — and, in the begi

With that first unexpected victory at Pittsfield came a closer understanding of the enemy and a deepening of the commitment. Bolan sallied forth then to slay the Mafia dragon wherever contact could be made — and those contacts became legion.

The personal hazards were compounded, also. He was operating outside the law and counter to every moral precept of his society. His name became prominent on the wanted lists of police establishments throughout the country and eventually around the world. Besides quickening police interest, Bolan had to contend also with hordes of free-lance gunmen, bounty hunters who hoped to cash in on the $100,000 "open contract" set by the Mafia ganglords.

As the impossible odds against survival thus pyramided, the man himself "grew into" the situation — sharpened by the challenges, refined by constant peril, enlarged by each confrontation with almost certain death, strengthened by each piecemeal victory.

Bolan, the man, was not, however, all guts and gore. There existed a sensitive human dimension to the warrior that was evident as far back as the researcher cares to delve. While he was being lauded as the "Executioner" in the hellgrounds of Vietnam, other contemporaries quietly referred to the man as "Sergeant Mercy," in recognition of his selfless services to the civilian victims of that war. Friends and associates of earlier times characterized the youthful Bolan as kind and sincerely idealistic, a thoughtful young man who seemed to be guided by a deep sense of human ethics and compassion.

That these same attributes accompanied the man into his impossible war seems borne out by the attitude of many lawmen and other close observers who secretly cheered him on and sometimes openly offered him aid and comfort. A comrade summed up the Bolan paradox with the words: "It's a weird combination of tough guts and warm heart. Most men wouldn't know how to carry both together. The sarge does."

Bolan's closest friend and only continuing ally was an undercover federal agent who had attained high rank in one of the Mafia families. No matter how desperate his situation, Bolan had never been known to fire upon a lawman, and many times he had risked his own capture or death to protect these "soldiers of the same side."

In many quarters of his society, Bolan had become a folk hero. The press was generally sympathetic to the man and his mission, though there were those who frequently denounced his methods and editorialized for his early capture. There were some in government who thought that Mack Bolan should be regarded as a national hero, and indeed there had been aborted attempts to extend an offer of amnesty plus official status in the government's own war against organized crime.

Through it all, the man walked his own path, mostly alone, a "free agent" in his own mind. Autonomous, self-propelled, selecting his own missions and carrying them through to his own idea of a proper conclusion, marked for death and accepting this as a proper judgment, he gave his every energy to a delay of that sentence, realizing that in this war of attrition, his side was allowed but one casualty.

He could not, of course, live forever. No one knew this better than the man himself. He had learned to take life by the heartbeat, one at a time. This was, in his own understanding, "living large."

Survival itself, however, held no meaning except in the sense that it was advancing his cause, his war. In this understanding, Bolan lived only to kill. But to kill in such a ma