The crew at the house were going on about their tiring chores as he wheeled the jeep into the soft run for the asphalt road. One of them paused to wipe the sweat from his brow as the jeep eased past.
"Trade you jobs, slick," he called over.
"Get laid," the Executioner called back, and went on into the traffic circle at the carports.
He was just about all the way home now, and already the air was smelling sweeter. Then his eye caught the abandoned VW, and a disturbing little tic began working at his deeper consciousness. He shrugged it away and continued around the circle, avoiding the VW, and pulled onto the blacktop.
Then he swore harshly to himself, swung on around the carports, and pulled to a halt between the bungalows.
Dammit, the woman could be in as large a mess as he was. He couldn't just…
A man's angered tones were coming from the end bungalow. Bolan refueled the Beretta and returned her to the sideleather, then he left the jeep idling between the buildings and went on foot to the front.
A guy in wet, charcoal-smudged clothing stood on the porch. He gave Bolan a sour look and said, "Ay man."
The guy was no freelancer. He was a Mafia hard-man and clearly in a nasty mood.
"Ay," Bolan growled back. "Vince in there?"
"He's busy," the guy said, moving into a tense confrontation at the doorway.
Bolan had no time for games, and he was feeling a bit nasty himself. He replied. "I see," as the Beretta leapt clear and pumped a quiet one up the guy's nose.
Bolan pushed the falling body into the house and stepped across it. The man in the rumpled Palm Beach was standing over a couch and lighting a cigar. He saw the dead bodyguard and the tall man with the Beretta and death itself, with one sweep of the eyes. The hand with the match froze and the guy took a dancing step backwards.
In a voice of clearest ice, Bolan told him, "I want the woman."
"Take her," the Glass Bay boss urged.
She looked Puerto Rican and very pretty maybe twenty-five, simply dressed in a short skirt and cotton blouse. She was sprawled on the couch in a manner suggesting that she had been thrown or knocked there. The blouse was torn down the front, partially exposing an interesting chest, and she'd taken a couple of hard belts across the face.
The girl was crying and breathing hard, and mad as hell.
Bolan knew the guy, by mugshots and reputation only. It was Vince Triesta, a nickel and dime hood who'd made it big in drugs and girls in the Detroit area some years back. Before that he'd been involved in every rotten thing from shylocking to contract killing. He had, in fact, become endeared to the syndicate brass by murdering his ex-wife and her brother when they were preparing to testify before a Michigan crime commission. It had been nothing but roses for Triesta ever since… until this very moment.
And certainly he realized that his time had come. "Take her!" he repeated shrilly. "I don't know her and I don't know you. You're Tony's problem, not mine. Take the broad and blow, and let's call it even."
"Not quite," Bolan told him, and he caressed the Beretta's nerve center once very lightly, and things were suddenly evened for Vince Triesta.
Bolan pulled the shaken girl to her feet and gently shoved her toward the door. "Let's go," he said. "Vamos."
He preceded her to the porch and led the way to the jeep, and it was obvious that she was beginning to understand the situation as she scrambled onto the rear deck and curled herself into a little ball on the floorboards.
He told her, "That's the idea — bueno," and sent the jeep in a tight loop of the bungalow and onto the blacktop.
A guy lolling at the east gate picked up his shotgun and walked to the center of the road as the jeep approached.
Bolan slowed almost to a halt, then he stomped the accelerator and gunned ahead at the last moment. The guy was caught off-guard in the path of the charging vehicle. The impact flung him onto the hood and carried him along for a few feet before spinning him off into the bushes at the side of the road.
Then they were free and clear and climbing a gentle rise onto the coastal road. The girl came out of her curl and climbed into the seat beside Bolan.
"Thank you," she said shakily.
"You speak English," Bolan observed. "Great."
She gave him a ragged smile as she replied, "I speak it once too often in the wrong place. It is my downfall. He would have killed me."
"Triesta, eh?"
"Yes, Triesta. He overhears me on telephone, in the little office. I think I am dead for sure. Except for you, I am."
Bolan was unwinding taut nerves and giving the woman a closer inspection. The eyes were wide-spaced, luminous, intelligent — almost contradicting the blatant sensuality of the rest of her.
"You've been staying at Glass Bay?" he asked.
"Yes, three months I am there."
"You could tell me things?"
She nodded and met his brooding gaze. "I could tell many things. If you are who I think."
Bolan returned his attention to the road and fought the jeep into a screaming turn as they topped the rise. Straightening out, he threw a quick glance along the backtrack. Glass Bay was laid out for his inspection. And it was a revealing one. A pickup truck and another jeep were tearing along the dirt road back there. Evidently the truth was out and the pursuit was on.
The girl had seen it also. She told him, in soft Spanish accents, "A man called Latigo coordinates their operations by radio. That is he in the pickup. Also they have sent to San Juan for helicopters."
Bolan reached into the rear seat and snared the radio he'd inherited with the jeep. He gave it to the woman and told her, "You be our ears."
She nodded assent and activated the radio, with no fumbling whatever.
The woman was becoming more of a puzzle. He bluntly asked her, "Okay, who are you and where do you fit?"
She countered with, "I would ask of you the same."
"Save it for later," he growled. "We're a long way from clear."
"And you are a long way from home, Mack Bolan," she replied.
"Right on," he muttered, not bothering to deny nor confirm the identification.
"You cannot remain on this road. There will be police roadblocks at Puerta Vista, the next village."
"How do you know that?" he asked, feeling already the answer in his gut.
She sighed. "Trust me. I owe you my life. I would not betray you. Go north at the next crossroads. I know a place of safety."
Bolan realized that there was little alternative but to play the game her way. He felt that wriggling finger of destiny tickling at his life-strings once again, and he had learned to yield to its directions.
"Okay," he said tightly. "I guess I'm in your hands."
"And I am in yours."
"Let's set the game," Bolan said quietly. I'm a wanted man. You're a cop. Now where do the two of us go from there?"
"I am also a woman," she reminded him in a small voice.
Bolan didn't need the reminder. From the top of that perfect head to those bare little feet, she was every inch a woman.
He showed her a reluctant smile and told her, "That was the first idea I got."
Her eyes flashed warmly to his and she said, "At the moment, I am justa woman."
Bolan could have told her that there was no such animal as just a woman. The female was the more complex and enigmatic in any species, and she wore many jungle hats. This one also wore a badge.
A small warm hand crept into his. He gently squeezed it and felt a responsive pressure.
"Okay," he said gruffly.
"Okay," she echoed, mimicking his gruff tone.
Then she laughed, a bit self-consciously, and Bolan laughed with her.
Into every jungle must creep an occasional ray of sunshine.
And they were approaching the crossroads. A crossroads in no-man's-land, somewhere on the border of hell and paradise.
Which way, Bolan wondered, led the road ahead?
Chapter Five
Tony Lavagni's report to the war council of bosses was an embarrassing ordeal. His eyes were slightly glazed as he stared beyond the mouthpiece of the telephone and on to the scene just beyond the window of the office, as another sheet-draped corpse was being added to the lineup.
"The thing was sour from the start," Lavagni told his distant audience. "The guy had us set up right from the beginning, nobody can tell me different. And I mean all the way from Vegas. I believe he was counting on being brought here to Glass Bay all the time."
There was a long silence on the line, then a voice which Lavagni recognized as that of New York boss Augie Marinello came in with, "I guess you could be right, Tony. We now discover that the men from Washington have a certain black book that's giving them a lot of thrills. It turns out to be Heart of Gold Vito's last will and testament, mostly testament. We know also that Vito was closely involved with Mr. Blacksuit just before his — uh, untimely death. It figures that Vito's book was in our friend's hands before it went on to Washington."
"That's terrible," Quick Tony groaned.
"It's worse than that," another voice commented.
This one sounded like that little prick from the Bronx, the guy that took over Freddie Gambella's death-ridden organization. "Vito was too careful a bookkeeper. He had it down to dollars and dimes, destinations, names, the whole..."
Marinello's cautious tones cut in with, "Let's remember our problems with telephones, eh. The thing is, Tony, you're probably right. The guy is maybe on another bust. You know what that means."
"Yeah. Well I..."
"Of course we had thought of that possibility when we asked you to meet him there. And if you can't meet the guy at Glass Bay then tell me, Tony, where canyou meet him?"
"It's not all that tight here," Lavagni explained in a muffled voice. "I had nearly a hundred boys on the reception committee. We had everything covered, and I mean all of it. It's just… dammit, there's never nothing sure about this guy. It's almost like he's supernatural. You almost get the feeling sometimes that the guy reads minds or something."
"So what are you doing now to recover the situation?" Marinello asked.
"I got every car we had on the place out looking for him. I also got a couple of whirly birds that should be getting here in a few minutes. And I got in touch with our San Juan connections. They're sending committees out to cover all the roads coming in there from this part of the island. We got four big boats here. I sent them out. They'll check into everything that's floating, with the exception of the U.S. Navy. Soon as the whirlies get here, I'll send them on searching patterns from the air. Beyond all that, sir, I quite sincerely don't know exactly what else I can do."
"You can take some lessons in mind reading," said the little prick from the Bronx.
"What do you need from this end, Tony?" Marinello asked hastily, as though trying to soften the sarcastic comment from the youngest Capo.
Lavagni rode that wave of sympathy. He humbled himself to reply, "Whatever you think I could use, sir."
It didn't work. "Okay," the big boss told him. I'm glad to see you're thinking straight, Tony. Pride goes before the fall, eh? So you won't think it's a slap in your face if we sent Gus Riappi down to lend a hand."
Quick Tony choked back his displeasure at the suggestion as he replied, "Course not, sir. All I want is to stop this guy. I don't care about nothing else right now. I've worked for Gus before, I can..."
"You won't be working forhim, Tony. We're just splitting the territory. You keep on working that end. Follow wherever the trail leads."
"Right, I'll follow it to hell if I have to."
"That's the idea. Meanwhile Gus will be working some other angles."
Lavagni cleared a lump from his throat and said, "The... uh... the Vito book thing?"
"Right. We've cooled everything, naturally, and we'll be setting up a new chain. But we're also going to dummy the old one along. Just for our friend's benefit. We figure maybe he'll come right to us."
"He came right to us at Glass Bay," Lavagni commented darkly.
"Don't remind me," Marinello replied coldly. "I don't have to tell you how disappointed I am, Tony."
"Yessir. Well, uh, we can't write this one off yet. And with me and Gus working towards each other, surely we'll… uh, Gus knows how I work so I guess he won't be getting in my way."
Marinello chuckled and said, "Well come to think of it, Tony, I guess this does develop into a horse race, doesn't it. Winner take all, eh?"
Lavagni understood perfectly. He replied, "Right, sir, I get you."
"Just get Mr. Blacksuit, Tony."
"You make book on that, sir."
The connection went dead and Lavagni slowly hung up. He turned to Charlie Dragone with a tired sigh and told him, "I don't blame them; they're terrible disappointed."
"What'd they say about Triesta?" Dragone wondered aloud.
"I didn't hear any tears splashing off the table." Lavagni sighed again. "They're sending down a replacement. They better replace the whole joint. I wonder how we managed to keep the telephone line."
"Did I hear you say something about Gus? Big Gus Riappi?"
"Yeh," Lavagni growled. They're giving him a piece of the action." He got to his feet and walked out of the office, shielding his eyes against the bright sunlight and gazing into the skies.
Dragone followed him outside. "Just a piece?" he asked.
"Yeh. They've put us in a horse race. Winner take all."
"What's that mean, Tony?"
"It means that whichever one of us gets Bolan also gets to sit at Arnie Farmer's vacant desk, that's what it means."
"God, you mean…?"
"Yeh." Lavagni lit a cigar and watched the smoke drift skyward. "I think I hear those whirly birds. It's about damn time."
Dragone was looking at the potential Capowith new eyes. "You mean you'll be going clear to the top?"
"With Bolan's head in my sack, yeah." Lavagni took a hard pull at the cigar and sent his companion a sidewise glance as he exhaled the smoke. "How'd you like to change families, Charlie?"
The veteran triggerman took his time in replying. I'd have to think about it," he said slowly. "I kinda like it where I'm at. But I… well, I guess if there was something in it…"
"Would you think there was something in standing at the right hand of a Capo, Charlie?"
"Listen Tony… you know better than to ask. I mean, if you mean…"
"That's exactly what I mean, Charlie. Listen. We got to put a sack on Bolan's head."
The exultant glow in the triggerman's eyes was already hardening to a calculated determination. "Where do we start?" he asked.
"Get on the radio and see if Latigo has anything yet. Then pass the word, there's a ten thou' bonus for the boy that comes up with Bolan's tracks, twenty-five-thou' for the one that brings in his head."
"That'll put some lead in their peters," Dragone agreed.
"I hope they get a hard that never goes down."
Lavagni said. "I want them to wantthis boy, Charlie. The same way that you and I want him."
"Offer the contract purse, boss."
"Huh."
"Give 'em something to reallyscramble for."
Quick Tony was weighing the idea. By the time the various territorial bonuses were tacked on, that contract was worth somewhere around a cool quarter-mil. It was a hell of a lot of money. On a head-party expedition such as this, the pay-off ordinarily went to the contractor in charge, with the split going however he wished to make it.
"Well," he said musingly, "the man said winner takes all. That purse is peanuts compared to… Okay. The boy that comes in with Bolan's head gets the purse, all of it, the whole thing. You pass that around, Charlie."
"You just bought yourself a crew of man-eating tigers," Dragone replied, grinning. He hurried away to spread the news, and Quick Tony resumed his scan of the skies.
He hoped that he was buying Bolan's head. At a quarter-mil, that wou
ld be the sharpest deal a guy could ever hope for. Yeh. It would be a horse race well worth the price of winning. Big Gus, of course, could be thinking the same way.
Lavagni fidgeted and watched the helicopters swoop in over Glass Bay. Yeh. It was going to be one hell of a horse race.
* * *
Steady monitoring of the enemy's radio signals had produced the temporarily comforting conclusion that the hounds of hell were off the track and ranging far east of the retreat route. And, for Bolan, the end of a network of dusty trails was an isolated shack, several miles inland and well buried in the agricultural maze of the coastal plateau.
He pulled the jeep into a wooded area near the house and covered it with brush while the woman went on to clear the way for him with her friends. Before Bolan had completed the camouflage job, a slightly built youth of perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two emerged from the cabin and stood quietly watching him.
Bolan threw him a friendly wave and went on with his task. A moment later the Puerto Rican was standing beside him, a cautious smile on his face. "I will help, senor," he offered.
Bolan returned the smile and said, "Sure." He slung a Thompson across his chest and passed the other two to the youth. "You can take these inside."
The boy whistled softly under his breath and accepted the weapons.
"Call me Mack," Bolan told him.
The smile returned, stronger. "I am Juan Escadrillo."
"This your place, Juan?"
"Si, this place is mine."
"I won't be staying long," Bolan said. "Who else is here?"
"Rosalita, my wife."
"No kids?"
"Now, no. Soon, yes." He grinned. "One is in the belly."
Bolan turned away to mask the sudden displeasure he was feeling. This would be no good. A kid and his pregnant wife — Bolan had no wish to involve them in his troubles. So… perhaps a moment of relaxation, a bite of food, and he would be on his way.
The woman reappeared in the yard, the radio slung from her shoulder. "Will you come inside?" she called.
"In a minute," Bolan replied. He told the boy, "Take the weapons in, Juan. I'll be along."
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