Death Squad

Chapter Fourteen

Beverly Hell

Flower Child Andromede reached into the trunk of the automobile and hastily unwrapped the felt-covered grenade launcher, affixed it to his rifle, and snatched up a prepared pouch of rifle grenades. Then he slammed the trunk door and jogged around the end of the car and ran along a six-foot-high wall that fronted the property directly adjacent to the DiGeorge estate. About fifty feet before reaching the thick hedgerow that marked DiGeorge's line, Andromede vaulted to the top of the wall and slithered along on his belly for another twenty feet, halting in the protective overhang of a date-palm frond.

He could see the rear of the DiGeorge house clearly from this position and could even hear small groups of men moving noisily about the grounds, laughing and passing wisecracks back and forth. The entire place was brightly lighted. Two men were playing toss with a te

Andromede, however, did not feel quite ready for liberation himself. He carefully calculated an assault pattern to provide him the best possible chance for a successful withdrawal, arranged his grenades along the wall for a quick pickup-and-reload capability, then quietly awaited the signal. He was vaguely wondering where Chopper was, when a thick shadow detached itself from the hedges just forward of his position. He immediately recognized the squat bulk of Fontenelli and softly cleared his throat to signal his position. Fontenelli moved into the shadow of the wall and advanced silently, to stand just beneath him.

"You see okay from up there?" Fontenelli hissed.

"Perfect," Andromede whispered. "I'm going to walk 'im in from right to left, up by the house. That oughta jar the piss out of 'em."

"Hope Bolan knows what he's doing," Fontenelli said after a brief silence. That joint is crawling alive with some of the meanest hoods in the country."

"Better keep it quiet," Andromede suggested. "Four of them were walking along the hedge there a couple of minutes ago."

"I wanta tell you somethin'," Fontenelli hissed.

"Make it quick."

"You know 'bout my old lady and her screwin' around while I was in 'Nam."

"Yeah, I know."

"We got two kids back in Jersey."

"Yeah, I know."

"If I don't make it, I want my bucks to go to my kids. To the kids, not to Miss Hotpants."

"You'll make it, Chopper."

"Yeah, but if I don't..."

"Okay, don't worry—I'll take care of it."

"Maybe you won't make it either. Tell Bolan, on the radio."

"Tell him yourself."

"Can't. I lost it."

"You lost your radio?"

"Yeah. Somewhere back there in those hedges. Damn harness came loose."

"Stay close to me then."

"Yeah. Tell Bolan, eh?"

"Okay. Now shut up."

Fontenelli moved silently away. Andromede watched him drop to the ground and crawl into the hedges; then he lost sight of him. Chopper's concern had momentarily u

Then a distant, double cra-aack of twin high-powered rifles firing simultaneously split the calm and froze Andromede's contemplations. Someone at the far side of the house was yelling. The cra-aacks were coming in rapid succession now, and men were ru

Andromede smiled grimly and tensed at the trigger, his ear bent to the small radio. The liberation was on.

Julian DiGeorge did not like the attitudes of some of his nephews. Some of them seemed more worried about their standing in the community than about the threat to the family. And it seemed that everybody wanted to talk about the forthcoming police roustings more than they wanted to plan for the already established threat to Mack Bolan. Leonardo Cacci, the smooth, college-educated nephew at DiGeorge's right hand, was on the board of three banks, he was coining up big in local politics, and he was very unhappy with the thought of taking up a gun and taking on a fight that was obviously so far beneath his personal image.

Cacci's ivory smile might charm the female voters of his congressional district, but it sometimes made DiGeorge want to throw up. DiGeorge's underworld earnings had provided the money that built the braces that had kept the ivory in that smile. Cacci was a nephew; it was one thing to put on legit airs in public, quite another to try to snow Uncle Deej with "one's" responsibility to "one's" community. DiGeorge wondered just how far Leonardo would survive without the constant propping of family money. "One" would not survive far, that was certain.

Then there was Joh

Joh

And he'd been around long enough that he had a certain influence in the family councils. Right now, Joh

Joh

And then something had happened to the back of Joh