Death List. Don Pendleton

what Pierce had claimed he’d been tasked to do. He was supposed to take Vincent Harmon to the promised audience with the Corinos so that the hit man could be vetted for the extensive job awaiting him.

      Pierce listened to public radio news as he drove. He was not stingy with his commentary.

      “We ought to line up all the politicians,” he said, “and put a bullet in each of ’em. Start over. We could do with a little house cleaning.”

      “I know a man in Washington who might agree with you.”

      “Yeah,” Pierce said. “That’s the thing. Everybody knows the system’s rigged, but nobody does anything about it. But that’s the way the world works, I guess. What can one guy do?”

      “One man can stand against evil,” Bolan replied. “One man can face the worst that life has to offer and through his example inspire others. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated.”

      Pierce shot Bolan a sidelong glance. “You’re a weird guy, Harmon.”

      “I don’t chat politics often.”

      “Right. That figures.” Pierce shifted in his seat.

      The five-inch, grooved wooden dowel attached to his keychain rattled against his knee when he moved. Bolan had noticed the Japanese yawara right away; it was an effective self-defense tool. While it didn’t look like much, it could be used to break bones and deliver devastating blows by concentrating the force of the strike in the end of the dowel. Not a lot of Mob guys carried such accessories, though he’d known plenty who liked a good pair of brass knuckles or the comforting heft of a leather sap. It was an anomaly. A piece of data that painted David Pierce on Bolan’s radar as more than the typical Mafia goon. He would need to watch himself with the smaller man.

      They drove in silence for a while as the area through which they moved continued to become more affluent. The homes they passed were easily worth millions of dollars. Eventually they reached the gated entrance to the Corino estate, which was walled off from the rest of the community.

      Bolan took note of the security systems he could spot. The concrete barrier that surrounded the Corinos’ headquarters was ten feet tall and, he could see, about a foot thick. It had been landscaped with small trees and what might have been fake ivy, all in an attempt to make the stone security wall look more upscale. Cameras on pedestals above and behind the wall were spaced here and there. The fields of view would overlap at those distances. Each camera was equipped with the protruding bulb of an LED spotlight. The cameras appeared to be moving independently of one another, not sweeping in predefined arcs. As setups went, it was a solid one.

      The front gate of the estate boasted a guard shack with a man in a nondescript uniform. To outside eyes, no doubt, the guard looked like any private security babysitter tasked with working the gate and logging visitors. One glance, though, and Bolan could see he was another of the Corinos’ thugs. He wore a light jacket over his uniform shirt. A telltale bulge was large enough to be a concealed shotgun or a submachine gun on a sling. He didn’t look like the typical bored rent-a-cop, either. He looked annoyed and ready to spring.

      Pierce exchanged a few words with the guard at the shack before the iron gates opened on smoothly oiled tracks. The Town Car carried them effortlessly up the winding drive to the house. Bolan took careful note of the layout, as well as the various statues, shrubbery and other items that could be used for cover and concealment. The winding drive didn’t have to be winding at all. It had been designed that way to make it harder for an enemy to drive a truck full of explosives straight through the gate and into the house. The statues were likely bollards with deep concrete posts securing them in the ground. Grates in the paved drive also bore holes large enough for hydraulic barriers or tire-damaging spike belts.

      “Quite the spread, isn’t it?” Pierce said. He pulled into a covered car park opposite the stairs leading to the columned front door. Throwing the Lincoln in Park, he pocketed his keys and gestured for Bolan to follow him. Two hulking guards in expensive suits stood at either side of the door. They wore Beretta 12 submachine guns on straps over their shoulders. The display was probably meant for Bolan’s benefit, but then, given that the front door wasn’t visible from outside the estate, it was possible they just stood around that way all the time. One of them held up a hand as Pierce and Bolan approached.

      “Who’s this guy?” the guard asked.

      “Move it, Tommy,” Pierce replied. “Vincent Harmon. He’s on the list. Got an appointment with you know who.”

      Tommy started to move aside, although he looked like he wanted to argue. He waved them through, saying, “Mrs. Corino is pretty mad about Vincenzo’s.”

      Bolan knew that was the name of the restaurant the Torettos had shot up.

      Pierce made a face. “It’d be a frigging miracle if she wasn’t,” he said. “Now get outta the way.”

      Bolan didn’t yet have enough information to put his finger on Pierce’s position within the Corino organization, but the smaller man walked around as if he were untouchable. That, too, was an interesting detail. The fact that none of the Mob guys they’d encountered offered more than a perfunctory challenge to Pierce’s approach told Bolan that the man was highly placed. He would need to contact the Farm to see why the Corino dossier he had been supplied had not contained a single mention of Pierce.

      As he followed the mobster through the sprawling, opulently appointed home, Bolan felt like he was walking through a movie set rather than a place people lived. The whole house was decorated in Mob Modern: faux-tasteful antique furniture, paintings as forgettable as they were expensive and packaged decorator color schemes that might have come straight from the set of some overwrought Mafia film. The floors were polished hardwoods covered in expensive Persian rugs. Pierce, who wore hard-soled, Italian-leather shoes, seemed to delight in grinding his feet into the rugs, as if he thought them as tasteless an affectation as Bolan judged them to be.

      One more note for the mental file, Bolan thought.

      In an anteroom at the end of a long hallway, another pair of hardmen stopped them. Pierce looked more annoyed than usual as he and Bolan approached. “Stay steady and don’t kill nobody if I have to get a little rough,” he whispered to Bolan. “Things usually get a little rocky between me and Dumb-Dumb over here. He’s a nephew of the Corino family, and he figures he should have my job, not guard duty outside the sanctum sanctorum over here.”

      Bolan shot Pierce a glance.

      “Well, well,” one of the two guards said when Bolan and Pierce were in earshot. “If it isn’t Davey. Hey, Davey. I been meaning to ask you a favor.”

      “Yeah, Seb?” Pierce queried. “What’s that?” His tone did not match his words. He sounded angry, as if he knew what was coming and didn’t like it.

      “Yeah. I was wondering if you could take this magic ring back to the evil mountain where it was forged.”

      Bolan’s brow furrowed. Pierce, meanwhile, didn’t say a word for a moment. Finally he said, “We’re expected. Open the door.”

      “You know,” Seb said, as if he hadn’t heard, “because you’re short. Short like those guys in that thing.”

      “That narrows it down,” Bolan said.

      Now it was Pierce’s turn to look at Bolan. Seb took a step closer and put a finger on the Executioner’s chest. “Look, dim bulb, maybe you don’t hear so good—”

      That was the last word he got out before Bolan reached up, grabbed his finger and hand, and twisted, applying a joint lock that made the big thug howl in agony. Before Seb’s partner could step in, Pierce put himself in front of Bolan and Seb, blocking the way.

      “Nope,” Pierce said. “Keep it in your pants, Joey.”

      “Seb?” Joey asked. “What you want me to do?”

      But Seb wasn’t in a position to answer any questions. Bolan continued to apply pressure to Seb’s finger joints and