Save the Children (17 page)

Four people emerged, going down the short flight of concrete steps to the ground, starting across toward the low office building.

David Parelli was in the lead.

His mother, looking as elegantly dressed as she had been half naked the last time Bolan saw her, kept pace at her son's side.

Bringing up the rear were Lana Garner and a Mafia street soldier who held her arm. He was dragging her along roughly, just as Bolan had seen the little child dragged to the truck minutes ago.

Bolan waited, the numbers ticking away in his head, until the four of them disappeared into the office building, then he headed for the office at a dead run, not caring anymore if his presence was detected now.

A light burned behind a shade-covered window in the office building, but whoever had pulled down the shade had left a small gap at the bottom.

Bolan paused long enough to steal a glance through the tiny opening.

He saw Mrs. Parelli sitting behind a metal desk.

Her son stood in front of the desk and they both looked on as the gunman slammed Lana Garner down in a straight-backed kitchen chair placed in front of the desk.

Bolan left the window, covered the distance to the door in two long, pumping strides, slinging the Ingram MAC-10 around into his right fist while he cross-drew Big Thunder into his left hand.

He hit the door with his shoulder, slamming on through into the room, the AutoMag and the MAC-10 coming up in automatic target acquisition as the door flew off its hinges.

The gunman spun around in Bolan's direction, trying to lift the shotgun he carried, the woman forgotten.

Bolan squeezed the trigger of the SMG, the lethal burst stitching the guy's chest.

Blood and flesh mushroomed from the man's back as the slugs drove him against the office wall, the shotgun flying from nerveless fingers. He bounced off the wall to pitch, quivering in death throes, facedown onto the linoleum floor.

Denise Parelli shot out of her chair, a look of total surprise twisting her expression into something ugly.

Lana Garner lifted her eyes to Bolan, stray strands of dark hair falling across her face but not masking her relief.

David Parelli started to move away, his hand darting beneath his jacket, his eyes wide as they took in the two-gun warrior.

"Hold it!" Bolan rapped, swinging the AutoMag to cover David while he centered the snout of the Ingram on a spot between Denise Parelli's breasts.

"Mack!" Lana gasped from her chair, her voice a sob. "I'm so glad to see you!"

Bolan did not take his attention from the Parellis.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine... now." Lana stood, moving to his side, her voice urgent. "The kids, Mack. You've got to help them! They're going to truck them off somewhere!" Her eyes took in mother and son. "They're... animals!"

Denise Parelli smiled.

"Really, Mr. Bolan, there's no need to be so melodramatic. You can't accomplish anything by this. We've got more than thirty men here."

David at first appeared startled by his mother's cool-headed offer, then he considered it and relaxed his own stance, a sneer pasting itself across his swarthy face.

"Yeah, you're a dead man, you bastard, only you just don't know it yet."

They were a gutsy team, all right.

Especially Mrs. Parelli.

"I don't think so," Bolan told them.

"Why not?" Denise demanded, losing some of her sureness.

Bolan did not answer.

He didn't have to.

Outside, the world erupted into flame and fury with a ground-shaking series of explosions as the planted plastique did its stuff and the night turned blood-red.

The four explosions came so close together that they sounded like one gigantic blast, vibrating the office around the tense tableau of the Parellis, Lana Garner and Bolan. The head-pounding booms distracted everyone in that office except Bolan.

David Parelli's hand flashed toward the pistol holstered under his jacket.

"David,
no!"
his mother shrieked.

The mobster barely had the weapon clear of shoulder leather when Bolan triggered the AutoMag. The hand cannon bucked in his fist, the head buster picking Parelli up off his feet and depositing the young don of Chicago as a burbling, headless mess in the nearest corner.

More explosions were ripping through the night outside as the gas tanks of the line of trucks started fireballing to secondary explosions.

Denise Parelli stared down at the body of her son, then looked at Bolan.

Lana was huddled against him now, her face buried in his shoulder, his right arm around her as he held the Ingram in his right fist, not shifting it from the real boss of this inhuman operation.

"You've... killed him," Denise Parelli said in a barely audible whisper. "You've killed my little boy."

"How many children have you sent away, Mrs. Parelli?"

Bolan's voice was as cold as the night wind howling outside.

The real boss of Chicago seemed in a state of shock.

"David was innocent once. He was a sweet boy. He did everything his mama told him to."

"That was his mistake."

Then her face hardened, and Denise Parelli drew herself to her full height, gathered the fur jacket around her.

"I'm leaving," she announced imperiously, "and you are not going to stop me. I know something about you, Bolan. You're not about to shoot an unarmed woman."

Bolan felt Lana lift her head to gaze up at him, to see what he was going to do.

A flood of thoughts flashed through his mind.

The little girl in the warehouse being manhandled into the truck.

Compared to what would happen to her later if she wasn't rescued, that was probably nothing.

The children who had been forced to make the films Dutton and Parelli and all the other perverts like them watched, slavering in the dark with their sick fantasies.

Who knew how all those innocent kids had ended up? Badly, that was for sure.

Thousands of parents with parts of themselves ripped away callously, left to grieve and ask endless questions, never to know the fate of the ones most precious to them.

And the inhuman bitch responsible for all that suffering had arrogantly declared that he would not shoot an unarmed woman.

"In your case, I'll made an exception," the Executioner told her. But before he could trigger the Ingram, Lana Garner grabbed the weapon, still on the sling around Bolan's neck, and emptied the clip into Denise Parelli's body. The impact of the fusillade drove the female Mafia boss backward through a window, her tattered corpse half in and half out of the window, gushing rivulets of spreading blood.

Lana did not hide her eyes against Bolan's shoulder this time as she looked upon the shapeless garbage in silks and furs. Bolan gently pulled away the weapon and fed in a fresh clip.

"This is justice," she told Bolan.

"Come on," he said. He holstered the AutoMag and unleathered the Beretta, which he put in her hand. "You wanted in on the fight. You've earned a taste if you still want it."

"Just give me a chance at these scum."

He quickly showed her how to operate the weapon.

A hardguy came bursting into the office from outside.

"Mr. Parelli, they..."

He skidded to a stop as he saw the corpses.

The silenced Ingram came up and stuttered again, drilling the Mafia punk who was trying to withdraw. Three 9 mm slugs all but took the guy's head off his shoulders, pitching the standing corpse back out through the door.

Bolan grabbed Lana's hand and they ran out of there, vaulting over this latest kill without slowing.

Outside was an inferno.

All of the tractor trailer trucks were ablaze, the flames roaring high into the night sky, the heat tremendous.

Ignited gasoline had been blown out from the trucks in a circle as the fuel tanks exploded, the resulting fire reminding Bolan of a napalm raid in Vietnam as he and the woman hustled away from the office.

The flames had reached the maintenance garage, the front wall of which was already burning, but the building that housed the children was untouched, the tractor trailer rig still in place at the loading dock.

Men ran everywhere, machine guns ready, looking for the ones responsible for this destruction. Several of them staggered around like human torches, having been drenched by the burning gasoline when the trucks blew.

The Executioner and Lana Garner rushed toward the warehouse, losing themselves around the periphery of the wild confusion for nearly the whole distance, before one of the scurrying guards spotted them.

"There they are!"

Those were his last words. Even as the man swiveled his weapon toward the two running figures, Bolan snapped a burst at him with the reloaded Ingram. The man pitched backward, a death reflex triggering his weapon uselessly into the air.

A shotgun boomed up ahead and Bolan saw one hood standing on the loading dock next to the open doors of the truck. The thug started firing at Bolan and his companion but the guy's aim was thrown way off by his excitement at spotting them.

Lana assumed a crouched shooting stance. She triggered the Beretta in three-shot mode and the report was barely audible beneath the hellfire raging all around them.

The shotgunner jackknifed forward as the slugs punched into his guts, and he free-fell from the loading dock and did not move.

Bolan and the woman reached the dock, their shifting position still not pinpointed by the majority of hoods who were looking around wildly, searching for targets. Shouts punctuated the cacophony of terror, carnage and confusion that reigned in the compound.

Bolan left the ground in a leap, vaulting to the loading dock without bothering with the steps at the side. His momentum carried him forward, and he fell, the maneuver saving his life as an automatic pistol sprayed bullets through the air where he had been a split second before.

His silenced Ingram spit dirty orange flame, and ejected shell casings glinted in the conflagration. The Executioner returned fire from the ground and his slug sent a geyser of red out the guy's back.

Bolan propelled himself sideways as more rounds chewed into the concrete floor to his right.

Lana appeared at the top of the steps. She knelt and opened fire on the two men who had been concentrating their fire on Bolan.

The pair of hardguys had no time to swing their weapons toward her; they had expected the Executioner to be on his own, and the 9 mm bullets from the lady's Beretta sent both hoods toppling over each other. One of the men was only wounded. He started screaming.

Bolan finished the job with a tight burst from the Ingram and the screaming stopped. He fed his smoking weapon a fresh magazine.

Lana came over to join him.

For a moment, the man and woman stood back to back, each scanning for human targets and finding none.

Bolan saw two guys running toward the loading dock from the direction of the burning rigs. He triggered a burst that sent both hoods into tumbling falls from which they did not rise.

Then he heard the children crying.

Lana heard it, too. She lowered the Beretta and turned toward the truck.

The children were all inside, huddled as far forward as they could get, away from the sounds of hell.

Some of the kids were calm, almost too calm; many of the others were crying, shivering, some were screaming pitifully.

Lana ran into the truck, her steps echoing hollowly in the metal confines of the trailer.

Some of the children cringed away from her, but she fell to her knees and threw her arms around as many of them as she could reach, doing her best to bring some order and adult reassurance.

"It's all right, kids," she told them in a choked voice, tears running down her face. "It's okay now."

Bolan stood at the rear of the truck, the Ingram ready, waiting for the next wave of violence to come at them. He felt eyes watching him and glanced over.

One of the kids, a little boy no more than six or seven, was staring up at him, seeing a tall, grim-faced giant in black, weapon ready, features grimy from powder smoke. Bolan tossed a wink at him and the little boy's face broke into the widest gap-toothed smile Bolan had ever seen.

A bullet slapped past Bolan's head and made him spin around. The Ingram chattered and two more of the enemy were punched back down the steps before they could make it halfway up.

Lana started to stand and join Bolan.

"Stay there!" Bolan rapped, motioning her back. "Stay with the kids. Are they all there?"

Lana looked around and got several nods in answer to the question.

"I think so!" she breathed.

Bolan loosed the Ingram, returning it beneath his right arm. Then he drew Big Thunder.

"Everyone hug the floor and stay toward the front," he instructed.

Lana's eyes widened as she realized what he was going to do.

They had to get out of there. The truck's metal trailer was good cover, but the heat from the fires was intensifying and it wouldn't be long before the gas tank of the vehicle exploded. It made sense to take the kids and the truck out together.

Bolan leaped down from the dock and ran toward the front of the tractor trailer truck.

The heat from the flames, together with the diminishing ranks and the lack of enthusiasm of the Mafia soldiers now that their boss was dead, had caused the remaining force to withdraw toward the fence surrounding the trucking company. But now they spotted Bolan and opened fire.

Projectiles ricocheted harmlessly from the cab and body of the truck.

A burst of autofire caught the windshield and shattered it into myriad cubes, the broken glass covering the interior of the cab.

The driver's door was open.

Bolan stretched his arm and gripped the window, hoisting himself up behind the steering wheel, feeling the door shiver under his hand as a bullet thudded into the metal.

The truck's engine was still idling.

Bolan booted the clutch and the gas together and upshifted the big rig away from the loading dock with a tremendous surge of horsepower.

He hauled the wheel around, steadily increasing his speed. The roar of the diesel engine filled the cab, and cold wind whipped through the blown-out windshield as Bolan put the pedal to the metal and pointed the truck's radiator toward the closed mesh gates in the front fence.

Several of the dispersing Parelli hardforce were gathered in front of the gates where they had been about to withdraw.

When they saw the truck barreling at them, some of the men scattered and two of the dumber ones held their ground and opened fire, pouring lead at the oncoming truck.

Bullets whistled all around Bolan and he hoped none of them found their way through to the back of the truck where Lana and the kids huddled.

He steered with his left hand and unlimbered Big Thunder with his right. He opened fire through the blown-away windshield, the AutoMag thundering as he sent high-caliber fire toward the gunners who tried to dive aside at the last second.

They were not fast enough, and the big semitrailer truck slammed into them, their screams lost to Bolan beneath the truck's engine roar and the sounds of tearing metal as the truck smashed through the front gates.

The two barriers were hurled into the air as the tractor trailer barreled on through and away from the flaming chaos behind it. The big rig's diesel engine roared like the battle cry of some prehistoric beast... right into a swarm of flashing red and blue lights that seemed to be racing toward the Parelli property from every direction, as if following some sort of cue to block any escape route for the truck.

He hit the brakes, hearing the hiss of air blending with the whining sirens everywhere.

Slowly, the truck rumbled to a stop.

Police cars surrounded it while other official vehicles swerved around it and headed toward the fires.

Bolan heard heavier sirens bringing up the rear.

Fire-fighting equipment and ambulances.

Orchestrated, yeah.

He cut the truck's engine and opened the door. He swung down from the cab and strode to the back of the vehicle. He looked in on the frightened but safe kids.

Sitting on the dirty floor of the trailer with them was Lana Garner, her face wreathed in one of the happiest smiles Bolan had ever seen.

"You see," she said to the rescued kids, "I told you it would be all right."

Her eyes met Bolan's.

Whatever happened from here on out, these children were safe.

He heard the distinctive sound of pistols being cocked and looked carefully over his shoulder.

"I figured it was you, Bolan." Detective Lester Griff and another plainclothes officer had their service revolvers drawing a bead on him from less than ten feet away. "It's time we had another talk. You're under arrest. Drop your weapons."