"Nice country," Bolan muttered.
"It's not the country, it's the government. They're blacks, you know. A bit of French mixed in here and there, but it's mostly black. And if the people at home think the panthers are mean, they need to clue in on this Haitian gestapo. They make the Mafia seem like gentleman students pranking around."
"Is Sir Edward black?"
Grimaldi's eyelids fluttered. "I couldn't say," he replied.
"You've never seen him?"
"No."
"How many times have you been into Sir Edward's joint?"
"Just once, my last trip in, three months ago."
"What was the occasion?"
"Meeting of the board. Finance matters."
"Who'd you bring in?"
"Manny Walters and his legal eagles."
"Manny the Muck?"
"The same."
"What's Detroit got going down here?"
"Bit of juice, I hear, among other things."
"You don't mean nickel and dime juice."
"Hell no, big league stuff. Unofficial loans for off-the-record business enterprises And the take is high. I hear as much as thirty percent in some cases."
"The Haitian government condones that?"
Grimaldi shrugged "What the hell is the government? In a country like this one, especially. Look, Bolan. Get the picture. The black people in our country have been screaming about white repression of blacks and all that jazz — and I'm not saying they shouldn't. They're right. Every guy has a right to his own shot at life, his own way. That's not the point. Here's a country that's all black. But it's not very beautiful down here. It's misery and poverty and repression like no American black man has experienced in this century. And he's getting it from his own brothers, see. I mean, when you speak of the Haitian government, you're talking about a gang of thieves and cutthroats with licenses."
"Okay, I have that picture," Bolan said.
"They're all on the take."
"Is Sir Edward a black man?"
"I told you I didn't know, dammit."
"What's his real name?"
"I don't know. In Haiti, he's Sir Edward Stuart. That's all I know."
"But he is not a citizen of Haiti."
"No, hell no. Look, Port au Prince is just the center. Everything down here revolves around that center."
"Who does Sir Edward belong to?" Bolan asked quietly.
Grimaldi snorted and replied, "It's the other way around, friend. Look, he's bigger than — look, get the picture straight, huh? Sir Edward Stuart is not a Mafioso."
"I understood that."
"A private pilot is like a bodyguard, you know. We hear all kind of stuff — but we're supposed to pretend that our ears are missing. This Sir Edward is an international biggee. I thought you knew that."
"I do. Who else is getting burned — other than the people of Haiti."
Grimaldi sighed. "Everybody, man. Cuba, even, and that's a whole ball game of its own. Fidel thinks he's got Cuba snookered. The poor sap. I could tell Fidel, capitalism is flourishing in his living room. And it's black money, and it's moving through Cuba like Ex-Lax."
"Panama bankers?"
The pilot nodded. "Same laws as Switzerland, you know. Hell, it's tailor-made for the Caribbean takeover."
"Then it really is a takeover," Bolan mused.
"You'd better know it is. Did you ever notice the way the good money always flows behind the blood money? Watch the so-called legit businessmen swarming toward the good thing. They know."
"What do you know about the Mediterranean tie-in?"
"What the hell is this, Bolan?" Grimaldi asked irritably. "A pump job or a hit?"
"It all figures in, Jack. The more I know, the better I can operate. What's this stuff about the Med?"
The pilot sighed and replied, "Just talk, that's all I know. A word here and there, a joke, a slip, it doesn't amount to much."
"Give."
"They just call it 'the island.' Somewhere in the Med, I don't know where. Someplace around Italy, I think — or maybe it's Greece. Hell, I don't know. The international Commissionemeets there, I hear. It's like a little UN. But it's more than Mafia, bigger than Cosa Nostra. I don't know just how it's structured. But it's a cartel, Bolan. The world monopoly on organized crime. And it's big, daddy, it's damn big."
"And Tel Aviv?"
Grimaldi smiled sourly and said, "Shit you do have big ears. That guy is officially retired, I hear. He requested and received political sanctuary under the Israeli charter. You know, the inviolate home of the international jew. The Israeli government doesn't like it, I hear… I mean, giving refuge to a guy like him… but they're stuck with it, gored by their own constitution."
"Ishe retired?"
"Thatguy?" Grimaldi snickered. "Does a shark turn into a goldfish in its old age?"
Bolan muttered, "It just goes on and on, doesn't it."
"Make you feel like you're trying to dam the tide with turds?"
Bolan growled, "Sometimes, yeah. But then I remember."
"You remember what?"
"I'm not here to cure, just to kill."
Grimaldi shook away a shiver and said, "Well, you do that pretty well. And Sir Edward is next on tap. Right?"
"Right. You get me in there, Jack. That's all I ask."
"You don't want me to get you out?"
Bolan grinned. "I'd consider that a bonus. But yeah. Yeah, I'd like to get back out, Jack."
"That's my specialty. But tell me, Bolan. Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why this Mil? Why any of them? What the hell are you winning? I mean, realistically now. You know the score. You pop one, he falls over, another steps up, you pop him, up comes the next guy. They're too big for you, fella. You're fighting a machine that fixes its own hurts. So why?"
"Crime pays," Bolan replied quietly. "It pays damn big."
"So what else is new? Was that supposed to answer my question?"
"Yeah. I'm not fighting a machine. I'm fighting people. People who intend to profit from crime. I'm showing some of them that there is no profit. Okay?"
Grimaldi said, "Okay. Maybe you're right. If you can stay alive and keep it going, then maybe so. Maybe you'll make it too damn hazardous for the next guy to step to the head of the line. But I doubt that you'll live that long, Bolan."
"I'm going to try."
"By trying a hit on the hell hole of the Caribbean? So keep trying that hard, buddy, and… aw, what the hell. Let's go do it."
"You got everything straight in your mind?"
Grimaldi glanced at his watch. "We have plenty of time, let's run through that floor plan once more, just in case I forgot something."
Bolan shuffled the map to one side and laid out the diagram of the cliff side, mansion near Port au Prince, as reproduced from Jack Grimaldi's memory of a brief visit three months earlier.
"Okay," he said. "North wall here, gate to the west, guard shack over here. Bedrooms..."
"Hell I'm glad I looked again," Grimaldi interrupted. "There's a courtyard between the east and west wings."
"Right here?"
"Yeah. Flower gardens and stuff. Uh, I think — yeah, French doors into the house, ground level. Security station down here at the corner."
"Hardmen?"
"Hard blackmen. Civilian clothes."
"Weapons?"
"Sidearms, concealed."
"How many at that station?"
"Two, I believe. Yeah, two."
"Okay, let's take the whole thing again, detail by detail. First floor, reception hall — a man and a dog. Right?"
"Right."
"Winding stairway up to the left, library to the right, ballroom straight ahead."
"Yeh, but they don't ball there."
"Kitchen, dining room, butler's pantry, security cell. Right?"
"Right. The cell is manned day and night. Electronically locked."
"Any idea about the duty shifts in that cell?"
"I think three.
I saw them changing at midnight."
"Okay. Now. The guy in the cell. He monitors all three floors."
"Right. The television cameras are all over the place. They might even have hidden ones in the bedrooms. I wouldn't put it past them."
"Anything else about that first floor? Anything at all?"
Grimaldi pondered for a moment, then replied, "That's all I can draw."
"Okay, upstairs. Sir Edward's suite."
"I never got in there."
"Think of it from the outside."
"Well… yeah, I told you… uh, come to think of it, he must take the whole damn corner there. Let's see, the doors are…"
"Think about it."
"I'm thinking. The guard in the hall and one in the inner security room. Let's see… oh, all the inside guards are hard Mafia, I mean wops like me. Uh, I'll bet he has about three large rooms in that suite. I mean, not counting the security jazz."
"Women?"
"I never saw one on the whole place."
"Okay. Over to the west wing, now. Offices, conference rooms, a vault."
"Yeah."
"Second floor. Is this all the windows there are on the second floor west?"
"Hell I didn't build the damn place, I just spent an evening there."
"If you think hard enough, Jack, you could tell me all about your mother's womb. Are you saying there are just two damn windows on that whole floor?"
"Well now wait, no — I've got the stairs in the wrong place. Look. Gimme the damn pencil. Here's the way…"
And so it went, toward the dawn.
The Caribbean Kill was definitely not over.
The big one was yet to come.
Chapter Fourteen
With the dawn
The Republic of Haiti is slightly larger than the state of Maryland and has a population estimated at close to five million people. Discovered by Columbus in 1492, it became a French colony in 1677, achieved independence from France in 1804, and has been a constituted republic since 1820. The ore-rich and agriculturally productive country has had a turbulent history, especially during the 20th century. Following a five year period of political tumult and violence, U.S. forces occupied Haiti in 1915 to restore order, this occupation lasting until the mid-1930's.
A surface calm prevailed over this troubled land until 1950, and then five successive governments rose and fell until the election in 1957 of "Papa Doc" Duvalier. That administration undertook a program of severe political repression and engineered a constitutional "reform" in 1964 which established Papa Doc as President of Haiti for life. The Duvalier years were marked by official terrorism, internal strife and rebellion, and open hostility between Haiti and her island neighbor, the Dominican Republic.
Through all of this tense history, the plight of the ordinary Haitian citizen seems to have shown little improvement. Illiteracy in the republic is common, wretched poverty a way of life.
It was not difficult for Mack Bolan to understand why Haiti had been selected as the hub of the Caribbean Carousel. A government which showed no official respect for its people would certainly be amenable to the influences of an "international invisible government" trafficking in the same brand of human exploitation and organized greed. They made a pair, Bolan decided — and he had to wonder how many other small and vulnerable countries around the world were being setup for invisible domination by the international cartel of crime.
The situation seemed a bit ironic. The giant "world powers" had been locking horns and cold-warring for international influence for most of three decades. They'd rattled rockets at one another, maintained huge armies, raced into outer space, fought or backed brushfire wars, and tried to woo the world with dollars, rubles, and yens.
And quietly, through it all, the street-corner hoods of all the lands had been nickle-and-diming their way toward the formation of that brooding and overlying conglomeration which could certainly be called The Fourth Power. Without armies or foreign aid or space programs, they had invisibly welded themselves onto the throats of their societies and interlocked their tentacles in a whole new and devastatingly effective political idea — the new politics — the politics of rape and robbery — and they were making it work.
A guy didn't have to grow up in a ghetto to develop a criminal mentality. The neighborhood punks could never have brought it off without the assistance of that other criminal type — the business-man without a conscience, the politico without a soul, the lawyer with nothing but contempt for human justice.
There were some strange bedfellows beneath that Fourth Power sheet. There were, it seemed, entire government administrations, corporations, international financiers, "nice" people of every race and religion and political philosophy, hoods, punks, thugs, psychopaths — yeah, it was the little United Nations, all right. An entire fourth society brought together under one common banner: greed.
And they were eating the world.
Bolan was aware that his war was expanding. The battle fronts were extending in all directions at once, and into infinity.
What the hell could one man do in the face of all that?
Bolan knew that his was an extreme case of reaction. He could not expect others to follow his example, to abandon their own quests for happiness and fulfillment in exchange for unrelenting and unlimited warfare. But he could expect no less of himself.
He had been taught to kill. It was his trade, his profession. And he was good at it. He had the tools, the skills, and an awareness of the enemy. He could do no less than all-out war.
So what could one man do?
He could kill. He could cover himself with blood and offer up his own for the taking. He could stand up to the appetites of that voracious Fourth Power and shake his fist in their bloated faces. He could stay alive as long as possible while continuing the opposition. He could remind them that not every man had a price — that principle and dedication and audacity and guts were still alive in the human race.
He could remind them that there was a higher reason and purpose behind the forward spiral of human evolution, and that the universe would be kind to those who continued to reach beyond themselves toward the higher goals. He could tiog them every step of the way, and hold up a mirror to their gross distortions of the estate of mankind, and show them that they were, by God, not going to get away with it
And it was this overlying rationale that sent Mack Bolan into a foreign republic, with stealth and in darkness, to kill a man whom he had never heard of until a few hours earlier.
Jack Grimaldi's reasons were perhaps a bit more personally defined. He quit simply admired Mack Bolan, and he was thoroughly disgusted with the unadmirable course his own life had taken.
As they scuttled across the Haitian landfall in the helicopter, Grimaldi told Bolan, "When my cousin came to me with this proposition, I figured what the hell. I had the Italian name, I may as well live in the image."
"What image?" Bolan asked, though he knew.
"What the hell, if you're Italian you've gotta be Mafia. Right?"
Bolan grinned and replied, "Yeah I know, Jack. I grew up with Italians. I know them, as a people. It's a shame that a speck of dirt is able to tarnish the whole image."
"You like wops?" the pilot asked, smiling.
"Sure." Bolan patted his belly. "My stomach even remembers. It knew every kitchen in the neighborhood."
Grimaldi chuckled. "You got your strength from pasta."
Bolan replied, "Yeah, I..." then fell silent when his companion tensed suddenly and craned his head into a scan of the higher altitudes. "What is it?"
"The fuzz, I fear."
The earphones crackled then from an outside carrier wave and a breathless foreign voice delivered an officious announcement.
"You understand that?" Bolan asked the pilot.
"It's French Creole, no. But I know what he wants." Grimaldi touched the throat mike and announced, "Helicoptere Americain, voyageur permettrePort au Prince, Sir Edward numero cinquante et un."
; A propellor-driven military fighter plane buzzed them, flashing past in the darkness as a well-enunciated reply came in English.
"Welcome to Haiti." He pronounced it high-tie. "Please conform to established flight paths."
"Roger. Thanks."
Bolan showed his companion a tense grin and commented, "Real class."
"Oh they're classy as hell," Grimaldi told him. "Until they decide they don't like you."
"What was that number you gave him?"
"It's the one I was given to use last time. I don't know, maybe it's a standard code. Anyway, it worked."
"Anyone visiting Sir Edward can come and go without worrying about customs inspections?"
"That's the idea. I told you, man. He's a hand in their glove."
"I wonder what happens to the glove," Bolan mused, "when I chop off the hand."
"A glove without a hand isn't worth much," Grimaldi replied. "It'll find itself another one. That's what I meant. This war of yours is hopeless, man."
"Not until I'm dead," Bolan growled.
"You're already dead," Grimaldi said.
"Just sit there," Bolan told his newest ally, "and watch the dead walk again."
It was, after all, the land of the zombie.
The land of the living dead.
And Mack Bolan felt entirely at home.
The helicopter circled in a high, wide pass at "the mansion in the rocks" while Bolan studied the situation through binoculars. Lights were showing from every visible window, and a considerable number of cars could be seen in the vehicle area. Few other details were available, from this viewpoint.
"What's with this 'attack at dawn' jazz?" Grimaldi groused. "Is it just a tradition? They were always calling us out for dawn strikes in Nam, and I never could figure it out. Why dawn?"
Bolan continued the binocular surveillance as he replied, "Not entirely tradition. There's a psychological moment involved — also a biological one."
"Oh well, that answers my question entirely," the pilot said sarcastically.
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