"Дон Пендлтон. Chicago Wipe-Out ("Палач" #8) " - читать интересную книгу автора

frustration . If he could not cut out the heart of this cancer, he would at
least sever an arm here and there, keep them off balance, and keep hacking
at them until the world awakened to the reality of this many-tentacled giant
bent on devouring it.
Thus also, Chicago. If New York had been a nightmare, then Chicago must
surely be the grim awakening, the model city for The Thing of All Things,
Cosa di tutti Cosa, the Thing already come to pass. For Mack Bolan, Chicago
was the inevitable next scene of confrontation with the mob. Certainly he
was knowledgeable regarding that triumvirate of power described by
bestselling author Ovid Demaris in hb masterful work on Chicago, Captive
City :
"Today it is nearly impossible to differentiate among the partners -
the businessman is a politician, the politician is a gangster, and the
gangster is a businessman."
So what sort of man is it who single-handedly challenges such a power
combine? Is he indeed the same naive soldier who returned from the
battlefront of Vietnam to bury his own beloved dead - and then to avenge
their deaths? Could any sensitive and normally intelligent man undergo the
gory violence and continual jeopardy of the Bolan Wars without also
undergoing a radical alteration to his personality? It would seem not. Bolan
had been growing into his own destiny-1 - certainly into a deeper
understanding of the dimensions of his conflict - and most probably into a
finer appreciation of the reasons for this war.
Shortly before his entry into Chicago, he penned this thought in his
personal journal: "... it's going to be a wipe-out... them or me. I have
lost the ability to judge the value of all this. But I'm convinced that it
matters, somewhere, which side wins. It matters to the universe. I consign
my fate to the needs of the universe."
A man's character is his fate. The same could be said of a city, or of
a nation.
But what sort of man would willingly and alone walk into The Chicago
Wipe-Out !
Whatever else he might be, Mack Bolan, The Executioner, is that sort of
man.

1
The challenge

In a matter of seconds, Bolan knew, the Chicago War would be on. The
face in his crosshairs was the one he had been patiently awaiting for two
hours on this crisp winter afternoon beside Lake Michigan. Faces had come
and gone through the hairs of the 20-power, but this was the one he had
wanted. Once it might have been handsome, or at least it might have
possessed a potential for comeliness. Now it showed the indelible tracings
of an inner rot, of power and greed too long unrestrained - a face that had
seen death and brutality and atrocity far too many times to remain comely in
the mirror of humanity - and, yes, this was a face to launch the War for
Chicago.
For a second The Executioner hesitated. Some deep uneasiness over this
hit was gnawing for a quick mental review of the situation. Two days of