A .38 slug had plowed a shallow furrow along the soft underside of her left arm, just below the armpit. Another inch toward center and it would have been a fatal wound. By such insignificant dimensions of mass were the measurements of life and death.
He pulled her into the cabin and quickly washed the wound with soap and water, then he applied a disinfectant from the kitchen cupboard and bound the arm with gauze.
"We have to hurry," he said rightly.
"I am all right," she assured him.
"Okay, get your clothes on. Those guys are part of a coordinated sweep."
Evita nodded her understanding and finished dressing, wrinkling her nose at the torn blouse. "I put back on the stink of Glass Bay," she commented lightly.
Bolan did also, hastily donning the slacks and shirt he had worn, there. Then he told the woman, "Go through this place with a fine comb. Make sure there's nothing left behind to show I've been here."
He started for the door but she reached out and stopped him, laying her cheek against his chest and encircling him with her arms.
Bolan said gruffly, "It'll be okay."
"Mack, I… all this death. It does not bother you?"
Of course it bothered him. He told her, "How much choice is there, Evita?"
She shivered and lifted the troubled face to peer into his eyes. "I am just now realize… this terror, this bloody struggle… it is all of your life. It is never ending, is it? I can give you a choice, Mack. Surrender to me. Go with me to San Juan. I promise you, there is feeling for you in this commonwealth. I have friends, high friends. I will fight to keep you in Puerto Rico."
Bolan sighed and told her, "You're not thinking straight, Evita. First item, you told me yourself that the law wants me dead in Puerto Rico. I'd never see the inside of a police station. Second..."
"I will guarantee you differently!" she cried. "I swear!"
"All right, even if you could guarantee something like that — I've never heard of a jail or a prison that was secure against the reach of the mob. They'd love nothing better than to have me boxed in and defenseless, and they wouldget to me, Evita."
"There could be designed a suitable protection," she replied stubbornly.
Bolan shook his head. "Not a chance. As for keeping me in Puerto Rico, I am wanted for capital crimes in a dozen states and two foreign countries, not to mention that I'm an army deserter and also top man on the FBI's list. Assuming that I could get tried and released in all those places, which would be a wonder equaled only by the second coming of Christ, I would still have years of court battles to look forward to, and with Johnny Matthew dogging me every step of the way."
"Who is this Johnny Matthew?"
"The non-existent Mafia," he said whimsically. "If you're wondering about my chances with legal justice, just consider that weird fact. The mighty U.S. government has backed down to the point of using a cover name when referring to Mafiosi. They are Johnny Matthew now."
"Yes, I have heard of this timidity," she said quietly. "It is shameful."
"Anyway," he added, smiling soberly, "I am not ready to throw down my gun and walk peacefully away. I'm my own Pentagon now, my own war department, and my own executive branch of government. I make the decisions and I carry them out. And it's war, Evita. War to the bloody end."
"It is your choice," she murmured, taking a wooden step backwards.
"It's no choice at all," Bolan told her. "It's the only way to go."
He spun away from her and went outside.
When Evita joined him there moments later, the jeep had been pulled into the yard and the three bodies were piled into the rear. Bolan was carefully collecting the ejected shells from the Thompsons. She helped him round up the fallen enemy weapons, and these were added to the collection in the jeep.
"What is your plan?" she asked him.
"I'm taking this load of garbage out of here," he replied. "There's a car just up the lane, also another dead soldier. I'll pick him up, and you follow me out in their car."
"We will abandon the jeep?"
"That's the idea. I noticed a strip-mine up along the foothills. Do you know the place?"
She nodded. "It is Aggregates Limited. About three miles from here."
"Okay, then I'll follow you. Come on, let's hit it. Too much delay already."
Bolan drove her to the other vehicle, where he picked up the fourth body and gave Evita a snub nosed .32 from the shoulder holster of the first victim.
"This one I can handle," she assured him, spinning the cylinder with an expert touch.
He said, "I'll bet you can," and went to inspect the Chevy.
She followed close on his heels and announced, "It is a Glass Bay company car. But something has been added."
"The radio?"
"No." She ran a hand across the top of the car. "This."
She was pointing out a peculiar design on the roof. Four circular plastic decals were placed along the centerline, each colored a bright orange. Bolan had noted the design earlier, but had thought nothing of it.
"That's new, eh?" he mused.
"Yes. It is new since this morning."
"Air spotters," he muttered.
"What?"
"It's for visual identification from the air."
"The helicopters," Evita decided. "They have been added to the hunt, no? But it will be night very shortly. The marks and the helicopters will mean nothing in the night."
Bolan said, "These will. That's luminescent paint."
"We can peel them off."
"No," he replied quickly. "We leave them' on. This can be turned to our advantage. Listen, Evita, you'll have to drive the jeep. I hate to put you in charge of a hearse, but..."
He was interrupted by the squawking of the radio inside the Chevy, as a testy New England accent swelled in from a noisy background to demand, "Ground Four, Ground Four, what have you got? Report, dammit!"
Evita was counting the four decals atop the car with exaggerated stabs of a forefinger. "I believe you are being paged," she said.
Bolan grinned and leaned in for the microphone. "That's a chopper," he told her. "I could hear the rotors in the background."
He thumbed the mike into transmit mode and put on his street voice. "Ground Four," he announced casually. "Nothing here. Another farm shanty. It's clean."
"Air One, okay," came the noisy reply. "But stay close to the damn radio, eh? Go on to the next checkpoint."
Bolan was gambling. He showed Evita crossed fingers and thumbed on the transmitter again. "Bullshit," he snarled. "It's damn near dark and all we've done so far is roust a bunch of peasants. I say we're wasting it."
"So you got something brighter in mind?" was the response from the chopper.
"Yeh, and I can see it from here," Bolan's street voice replied. "There's a strip mine just up into the hills. Can you see it?"
"Air one, naw, we're running the beach right now. You got a feeling about that place?"
"I got so much feeling I'm getting hard," Bolan reported.
The guy in the helicopter chuckled and said, "Okay, follow your needle, tiger. Call in as soon as you get up there."
"Ground Four, right, you'll be the first to know."
Bolan threw the mike onto the dashboard and turned a worried face to the girl. "Well now we'll see," he told her.
"That was very clever, learning his position," Evita commented. "You act very well, Mack Bolan. You could have made it in Hollywood."
He grinned and said, "Yeah, just another wasted life. Where did Mack Bolan go wrong, eh?"
"More men should be so wrong," Evita said soberly, then the she spun about and marched to the jeep, climbing in without a glance at the cargo behind her.
Bolan sighed and slid into the Chevy.
Yeah, already Fairyland was far behind them. Big Eve knew it. And she'd found another corner of hell to hang her hat on.
So had Bolan. He was about out of ammo for the Thompsons — and they were hardly worth the trouble of draggi
ng around. With a coordinated air-ground search by Lavagni plus the unknown quality of police threat awaiting him at Puerta Vista, the gauntlet seemed to be shrinking in around him.
The jeep pulled up beside him and the girl showed him a tense smile. "I want you to know," she said, "that I agree with your choice. Perhaps I am the bad cop. But I must follow my conscience. And my conscience tells me that the good cop would help you, Mack Bolan, not conspire for your death."
Bolan said, "Thanks. I like this hat too, Eve."
Her smile brightened then abruptly disappeared, and the jeep leapt forward.
Bolan see-sawed the Chevy into the turnaround and plowed on after her.
Yeah, she'd found a new corner of hell, all right.
Where had Mack Bolan gone wrong?
Somewhere between hell and paradise, in a lost corner of that great jungle called life.
And he absolutely would not have had it any other way.
Chapter Nine
Paydirt
They arrived at the mining site in the waning moments of twilight and Bolan drove the Chevy right through the flimsy gate. Evita swung in behind him and they proceeded along the dusty road to a lip overlooking the ugly white gash in the mountainside.
He parked on the overlook and scrambled out for a quick recon of the area. Heavy equipment stood idle here and there along the strip. No lights were showing and there was no evidence of a watchman.
Evita joined him at the front bumper of the jeep and told him, "The spot is perfect. Send them over from here. They would not be discovered until morning."
He replied, "No, let's get all the mileage out of this thing we can. Listen… I can handle what needs to be done here." He pointed to a small building, constructed of cement blocks and snuggled into the lee of the mountain a few hundred feet downrange. "That should be their explosives storage. Shoot the lock off if you have to but get inside there, Evita. Look for dynamite, in sticks. Get me four or five. And pick up blasting caps, fuses, you know."
She said, "Yes, I know," and took off on a run for the blockhouse.
Bolan swung about to the rear of the vehicle and started dragging out bodies. One of them he placed in the driver's seat and slumped him over the steering wheel. The others he scattered about the landscape and placed weapons in or near their hands.
Then he returned to the vehicles and went to work on the Thompsons, specifically on the ammo drums. Between the bunch, he hoped to be able to come up with at least enough of the heavy ammo to reload one drum almost to capacity.
By the time Evita returned from her errand, panting but glowing with success, Bolan had his stage set and he was ready for the next big gamble.
He kissed her, sat her down on the ground and brushed the dust from her nose. "Okay," he said. "Now here is what we are going to try."
* * *
Charlie Dragone was seated irritably in the transparent bubble of "Air One" and closely watching the rocky shoreline as it slipped past several hundred feet beneath him. He pressed the throat-mike and asked the pilot, "How're we doing on fuel?"
"About ten minutes left," Jack Grimaldi replied. "For all the good we're doing, we might as well..."
"Shut up!" Dragone snarled.
They had hit it off wrong from the very start. Dragone did not like wise-guy nobodies who didn't know their place.
He punched in the radio command channel and said, "Air One to Ground Control. It's almost dark and it's been nothing but zip. Whatta you think? Do we keep it up?"
Quick Tony Lavagni's voice returned immediately, vibrating excitedly into the earphones. "I was just about to give you a call, Charlie. Listen, I think I got something going down here on the waterfront. See if you can reach Latigo and tell 'im to close on Puerta Vista."
Latigo was in Air Two, screening the west side of Glass Bay and out of radio range of the east side surface vehicles.
Dragone replied, "You mean him and all his ground scouts?"
"Yeh, let's get 'em all together. At least headed this way."
The chief triggerman acknowledged the instructions, then he punched into the other communications channel and relayed the word to Earl Latigo in Air Two.
This had hardly been accomplished when an excited voice swirled in faintly on the air-to-ground net. "Air One, Air One, can you hear me?"
Dragone busily punched his transmitter into that channel to reply, "Yeah, I hear you. Who's this?"
"Ground Four. And shit man I hit it!"
"You hit what? Talk straight out, buster!"
"Ass, man, ass! It's in a jeep and full of juice!"
"This is Ground Four? Where are you? At that mine?"
"Yeah. Get it up here, eh?"
"Well wait a minute! Are you sure? The boss thinks he's got something, too, down here on the coast. I'm sending all the cars his way!"
"Great, you do that," replied the exultant voice. "I don't need no help anyway. I got this guy boxed in tight, and man his juice is all mine!"
"Well now wait a minute!" Dragone cried.
"Ground Four out, and don't bother calling for awhile. I'm gonna be busy."
"I said wait a minute, dammit!"
There was no response.
The future right hand of a future Capothrew a perplexed glance toward his pilot and muttered, "Goddammit, feast or famine! How the hell do you like that?"
Grimaldi was searching his chart. He pressed his throat mike and said, "I've got the place. There's just about enough gas to run up and look, if you'd like."
"I dunno," Dragone muttered. He punched the channel selector again and tried to raise Lavagni, without success. "I wish people would stay at their goddamn radios," he complained.
"Do we go or don't we?" the pilot wanted to know. "Make up your mind while we have some light left. I can't pick up landmarks in the dark."
"We got enough gas for the round trip?"
"I told you I did," Grimaldi replied. "But if you're going to dick around all night thinking about..."
"Awright, go," Dragone growled.
As it turned out, they had more gas than light. The final minute of travel was conducted during that transition period between sunset and moonrise, and they arrived over the site with no light at all, except for that being provided by the vehicle with the four glowing markers on its roof.
The headlamps were at full blaze, the path of brilliance revealing a jeep swerved and tilted onto a lip of mountainside above the gaping slit trench. A couple of bodies could be seen sprawled out behind the jeep, and a still figure was slumped over the wheel.
And nothing at all seemed to be moving down there.
In a voice thick with emotion, Dragone declared, "By God I believe it's paydirt, all right."
"Do I take her down?" Grimaldi asked.
"Wait a minute." The triggerman pressed the throat mike and said, "Ground Four, what's the situation down there?"
There was no response.
He tried again. "Ground Four, goddammit, report! Whatta you got there?"
A feeble reply came back. "I'm hit."
"Did you get him?"
"Sure… can't you see? But I'm… hit… bad. Can't move."
Grimaldi turned on the ground floods and dropped to about fifty feet, washing the scene in a pale glow of light.
"Yeah," he breathed into the intercom, "that's paydirt."
"Okay, take it on down," Dragone instructed.
The helicopter settled to the ground at about midpoint between the two automobiles.
Dragone growled, "Cover me." He scrambled outside and made a cautious advance on the jeep, remaining clear of the lights from the company car as long as possible, his revolver extended in the firing position and ready to roar.
As he drew abreast of the little vehicle, he fired two deliberate shots into the slumped figure at the wheel, taking no chances whatever that a feeble spark of life there would flare up to turn his victory sour. Then he lunged forward, grabbed the corpse by the hair of the head, and swiveled that lifeless face int
o the light.
And then Charlie Dragone turned suddenly very cold and very stiff, very strongly aware that he had made his life's final blunder.
There would be no sitting in state at the right hand of a Capo — nobasking in unlimited wealth and influence and power — there would be nothing again ever for Charlie Dragone.
He looked up and into the headlamps of the company car, and his face showed the total resignation, that smashing finality of utter defeat — and probably Dragone never heard the growling chatter of the Thompson submachine gun that ripped him, sieved him, and flung him over the edge of the overlook and into the pits of Aggregates Limited.
Several yards away, one accomplished and versatile Mafia flyer had also become aware of the new turn of events — a turn which somehow seemed entirely too familiar.
He was trying to breathe past the muzzle pressure of a very business-like .32 revolver and watching the tall man with the Thompson walk casually toward his aircraft.
"Oh God, no!" Grimaldi groaned. "Not again!"
A coldly decisive female voice with a soft Spanish slur told him, "But yes. And do not dare to even swallow the spit until I say that you may."
And then Bolan was there, and spinning him around, and shoving him back to the aircraft.
No words were spoken until all three were inside and secured into the harnesses, then the big cold bastard asked him, "How much do you want to go on living, Grimaldi?"
"Just tell me where you want to go," the pilot replied, sighing. "But I think you ought to start paying my salary."
The guy actually grinned at the stab of humor and told him, "I just might." The grin disappeared abruptly and the face turned again to ice and Bolan commanded, "Lift her off."
Grimaldi lifted her off, and heeled her about, and pointed her nose toward the coast.
Yes, definitely, the whole scene was entirely too familiar.
"You're too much, Bolan," the flying Mafiosoannounced into the intercom. "Ill bet you sprinkle gunpowder on your Wheaties."
"I take it where I can get it," the laconic bastard replied.
Grimaldi knew better. This guy moved it to wherever he thought he could take it. And now he was moving it to Puerta Vista. But Grimaldi was betting that he knew something about Puerta Vista that Bolan didn't know.
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