Canadian Crisis

by Don Pendleton

  “Cops in Montreal carry guns, don’t they?”

  “Sure. They got a hell of an impressive—”

  “They’ll shoot back if they’re shot at, won’t they? Even if a foreign national is involved?”

  “Hey! Hey, now.”

  “It’s a modern force? They have the usual protections? Look, Leo, I’m not trying to get a bunch of cops killed. But I’m betting that most of those guys out there know exactly who is overflowing this building. I’m betting they’d like nothing better than to slap down hard on some foreign crud who came here to eat their town. All they need is an excuse. Right?”

  “And you’re going to give it to them.”

  “No. The boys themselves are going to give it to them. I’m just going to push a little, from the rear.”

  “With six clips of thunder and six of whisper, eh?”

  Bolan stood up and double-checked his belts. “It’s a double six-pack, yeah. But the whisper is off. It’s all thunder, now.”

  Turrin sighed and went to the door. “You’re a lunatic, guy,” he said quietly. “But give the boys a six-pack for Leo, huh?”

  The Bolan grin spread just a fraction, but all the tired was still there. “I’ll do that. Where will you be, Leo?”

  “On the roof. I wouldn’t miss this show for a ringside seat at the mating between a donkey and an orangutan.”

  The big guy was still grinning at him as he stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut.

  What a hell of a guy. A push from the rear, huh? Okay, sure, it could work. If Hal could hold the cops on their line and keep the pressure at the front, and if Bolan could put just a little more heat on that pressure burner at the rear—then yeah, sure, the boys could decide to try shooting their way out.

  It would, after all, be their only option.

  The Sarge was running a force play.

  And he was running it with formidable force. Right up their trembling asses.

  19: TWENTY QUESTIONS, ONE ANSWER

  Bolan was satisfied that Leo Turrin was in the clear now. Whatever else may occur during this night of nights, the little big guy’s cover should remain intact—at least, insofar as the association with “Frank Ruggi” could have compromised it. Even if there remained a few who could infer some unwholesome association between the two, it seemed highly unlikely that any direct line could be drawn between “Ruggi” and Mack Bolan.

  So he was leaving Leo to his own artifices and devices. And, of course, it always came down to that. The two stood isolated and alone most of the time, with their lives and diverging roles occasionally coming together for a brief touching—then it was back to solitary for the both of them, each for himself and standing alone.

  Now, Bolan was preparing to quit that place for once and all. He wiped down all possible fingerprint surfaces and removed every possible item which could conceivably link Mack Bolan to Frank Ruggi. He would push his farewell blitz of the lower levels and break clear via Montreal underground, regain his battle cruiser, and head for open country.

  Or so he thought.

  He was standing at room center and making a final visual sweep of the premises when the wall opened and a machine gun’s snout poked into the room.

  The .44 hit his hand and hung there in the firing lineup, stayed by some subliminal recognition of the unfamiliar figure which stepped out behind that impressive weapon.

  The visitor was Betsy Gordon. She was rigged up in neo-American guerilla garb of black jumpsuit and swagger hat, crossed gunbelts, wicked autopistol hanging from the shoulders in a cross-chest carry—and her purposes did not appear friendly.

  “You bastard!” she snarled at the tired man in black.

  The AutoMag was looking at the emblem on her swagger hat—a bolt of lightning separating the letters Q and F, set in an open cluster of thorns.

  Bolan looked her coolly up and down, then he thumbed-off his weapon and sheathed it. His voice was ice-water cold as he asked her, “Come for my blood, kid—or just to look at me?”

  “I’m looking, Bolan,” she assured him in matching tones. “And I don’t like a damned thing I see.”

  “Move aside, Betsy. I’ve no time to jaw.”

  The muzzle of the burper moved ever so slightly and a quick burst ripped out of there, chewing a line across the floor an inch from his toes. “You want to try for ankles?” she promised, shaking rage building inside that voice.

  Bolan knew the emotion. It was the kind that fed on itself. It was not one to be treated lightly.

  He sighed and showed her the palms of his hands. “Put it down, kid. I’ve no fight with you. What’s your squawk?”

  “You told me to look,” she said nastily. “Okay, I’m looking. Not at mirrors, either, Mr. Righteous. I see a pig—a rat—and a fink, all rolled into one Hollywood package. I’m going to shoot your legs off, Mr. America. Then we’ll see how fast you can hobble back across the border on your rotten stumps!”

  He chuckled quietly and told her, “Hell, I believe you’re mad at me. When the women in Vietnam get mad at their men, they catch them asleep with a knife at their genitals.”

  “Don’t give me ideas,” she spat. “And whoever said you were my man!”

  He was still chuckling, relaxing, allowing taut muscles to flow loose and pull him toward an atease position. One foot went back as he languidly turned away from that confrontation—and suddenly he was on her, one hand in control of that chatterpistol, the other at the girl’s throat, his own towering frame bending her backward in a spine-threatening curl.

  Angry fingers dug at him and panicky knees stretched toward his groin without success—then suddenly the fight was over as she let go with a moan.

  Bolan hung onto the autopistol while allowing her to slide free. He removed the clip and pocketed it, placed the weapon on a chair, lifted the girl into his arms and carried her to the bed. Then he wet a towel and sponged that pretty face until she came around.

  She lay passive though glaring up at him—most of the fight gone but glowing embers remaining to remind him of the wrath he’d faced.

  “What’s it all about, kid?” he asked quietly.

  “Betrayal,” she said, putting it all into one word.

  “I haven’t betrayed you, Betsy.”

  “What do you call it, then? You came to us as a friend, seeking support for your cause. We gave it gladly, because you lied to us.”

  He shook his head. “I did not lie to you.”

  “You said a quiet night, then homeward bound. You did not say open warfare, police thronging in the streets, bayonets from Ottawa, destruction of our base.”

  Bolan stared at her for a tense moment, then he went over and collected the autopistol, fed in the clip, chambered a round, and returned to the bed. He placed the weapon on the bed beside the girl and told her, “Okay, this is the second time in the past twenty-four hours I’ve given one of you people a gun to hold at my head. If you can read dishonesty in that, then you go ahead and chop me down.”

  She had not made a move toward that weapon. The gazes clashed, then mingled—and then “the kid” came back home.

  He sat beside her and gathered her in his arms, and he kissed her—but the kiss he received in return was that of a woman, not of a kid.

  She cried a little and he comforted her a little. When the emotional moment was spent, she whispered to him, “Somehow I knew from the beginning that it was going to be like this. I want to make love, not war.”

  “There’s a time for both,” he said, sighing. He pushed away from that tender trap. “Right now, I’m afraid it’s war.”

  “Let’s say to hell with it. Right now. Let’s go away and never look back.”

  “Is it that easy?” he asked quietly, looking away from those eyes.

  “It’s so confusing,” she wailed. “I never know what to believe anymore.”

  “It’s that kind of world,” he muttered. “Too many questions, not enough answers. I’m sorry if I’ve caused your people any suffering. Pl
ease believe that nothing like that was intended. If it’s any comfort, this building is not burning and I can’t believe that I’ve betrayed any of its secrets. Just the same—I have to be honest about this—I’d rather see it burn. I think I understand the QF plans for this hotel. It’s a bad strategy, Betsy. It will turn on you, and eat you.”

  Apparently he had revived her political spirit—with a challenge, as it were. She sat up and glowered at him, then the anger wavered and the eyes dropped.

  “That damned mirror again?” he asked her.

  “Maybe so,” she replied miserably.

  “Betsy. Understand something. I am not a terrorist. I do not cruise through Central Park spraying civilians with machine-gun fire as a protest to crime in the streets. I am a soldier fighting soldiers. My war is a war, in every sense of the word. Is yours?”

  “We think so.”

  “With banners unfurled, drums and fifes, glory and hallelujah?” He shook his head. “Uh uh. You looked at me, earlier today, and you saw a mirror image reflecting back at you. You accused me of murder while actually accusing yourself. This building—” He spread his arms in an encompassing gesture. “This entire bizarre network, this tree of Montreal. Is it for war? Or is it for terrorist activity? Are you going to battle the soldiers of the crown here?”

  She said, defensively, “If need be.”

  “No,” he told her. “That is not the objective, and there is no confusion in your mind on that point. Like Bosquet said, it is magnificent but it is not war. It’s a proxy war. You cannot take on the soldiers of the crown and you know it. So you substitute. You set up a straw enemy whom you can pummel at will, with no real contest involved. You attack the non-enemy, Betsy, because it’s more comfortable that way.”

  “When the cause is right,” she argued weakly, “a certain suffering is acceptable.”

  “Sure, but whose suffering—and acceptable to whom? That’s the basic flaw in terrorist causes, Betsy. There’s nothing noble or holy or even human about sacrificing innocent victims who have no voice in your cause, no reward in your victory. It’s a proxy war, and I can’t respect it. Neither can you. That’s what’s eating you. It’s what causes your confusion, the endless examination of questions, the avoidance of final answers.”

  “We have all faced the decision to die,” the girl murmured.

  “So that makes it holy. That’s a cop-out. The moment of decision comes when you’re looking down the wrong end of a hostile gun. Why not do as the Buddhists do? Leave the holy rites to the holy men, and spare the innocent masses. Form a circle in the town square, douse each other with gasoline, and strike a match. I’ll respect that, kid. But not this. You’ve been getting ready for the Olympic Games, haven’t you, just like everybody else in Montreal? Just like this hotel has been preparing to house the honored guests from around the world. Isn’t it ironic that the hoodlums came in first? Your tree house is perfect for my sort of war, Quebeçoise. But it’s a pretty dismal approach to yours.”

  The girl was eyeing the machine pistol, as though maybe she was going to pick it up and start spraying again after all.

  “Isn’t it?” he prodded her.

  “Brave men, brave women,” she whispered. “Machine guns and hand grenades—against …”

  “It needs rethinking,” Bolan told her. “Nothing good and lasting can grow from soil like that.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she said quietly.

  “Meanwhile, I’ve got this real war on my hands, Betsy. Bug off, huh?”

  She gave him a shallow smile. “I’ll try to convince my friends that what you say is true. But I promise nothing. They intend to cow the world, to bring international pressure to bear, to force political concessions for a free Quebec. That’s a rather heady dream. I doubt that one voice will be heard in the clamor of that dream.” She sighed. “But I will try.”

  “You could be surprised,” Bolan told her as he tested his combat rig. “There could be other voices, just waiting for a strong one to rally around.” He showed her a sudden grin. “You have a pretty strong voice, lady. I was seeing the end of my war a few minutes ago.”

  She dropped those fabulous eyes and murmured, “Sorry about that. And isn’t this all so ridiculous? There you stand, armed for war, lecturing on peaceful solutions.”

  “It’s a crazy world,” he told her.

  “I guess so.”

  Crazy had not yet, however, reached its full meaning. It approached that point one heartbeat later when Andre Chebleu and two others, togged out identically with the Gordon girl, stepped quickly through the wall.

  The Executioner and the triple agent regarded each other through a quiet moment of mutual inspection—and it was the triple agent who broke the silence.

  “You must leave at once,” he announced, the voice taut but friendly. “Your moment has passed, here.”

  “Not quite,” Bolan advised him. “A small matter remains, five floors below.”

  “You cannot move in that direction,” Chebleu insisted. “The underground army is massing in the tunnels.”

  “Which army is this, now?” Bolan inquired.

  “It is not QF,” the Frenchman assured him, “but the storm troops of the new Mafia republic.”

  “Who leads them?”

  Georgette’s brother smiled at the Executioner. “LeBlanc leads them—also known as Chebleu. Your moment has passed. Mine has arrived. Leave me to mine, ami.”

  Bolan had already made his decision. He nodded at the new hope for Quebec and told him, “It’s all yours, Quebeçois.”

  Betsy Gordon scrambled off the bed, breathlessly making some inquiry in rapid-fire French. Chebleu gave her a quick reply in the same language—and Bolan caught a bit of that. Apparently Chebleu had enlisted the majority of QF in response to a new, more urgent cause.

  The girl snatched up her autopistol and told Bolan, “M’oui! Your answer is now my answer. My war has arrived, L’Exécuteur.”

  Chebleu’s pained gaze met Bolan’s. A question and a returning answer crackled along the line of sight.

  “She is a good soldier,” Chebleu told his friend. “Will you accept her as my personal guarantee to you of safe passage to your border?”

  Bolan’s gaze shifted from the guy to the girl as he replied. He knew what Chebleu was asking. He did not want that girl in the tunnels. “She would probably be better off with you, Andre. But, yes, I may need a reliable flanker. If you can spare her, I’ll take her part of the way.”

  The little guerilla was obviously torn between two desires. “But I—I …”

  “You have an optional line of retreat, I assume,” the Frenchman said to the Executioner.

  “Always,” Bolan replied with a surface smile.

  The girl cried, “Well, wait! I—”

  “You have your answer,” Chebleu clipped at her. “You will protect our friend’s withdrawal.”

  Chebleu and his shadows disappeared within the tree, leaving Bolan and the lady to contemplate the new relationship so skillfully thrust upon them.

  There were, also, other considerations crowding the combat mind.

  And yeah, sure, Bolan always had an alternate route of retreat. Even if, sometimes, that route had to be carved from raw territory.

  He took his flanker by the arm and told her, “Prep your weapons. Get it all together. The final answer is waiting for us.”

  “And I,” she said with a toss of the head, “am waiting for it.”

  She would, Bolan knew, find it very shortly.

  20: ALL TOGETHER

  He sent Betsy Gordon to the top of the tree, to wait for him at the opening to the roof, while he took himself out the front door and along the hallway to the public stairway.

  It was strangely quiet on the fifth level, with not a soul stirring but Bolan’s own, and it remained so until he opened the door to that enclosed stairwell. Then the hubbub from below swelled up like lamentations from the crypt—and he knew that the boys were ready for a shot of inspiration i
n the rear.

  The languages of the world were represented in that bawling from below—and although the words themselves were not clear, the sentiments were. Those guys down there were outraged, querulous, frightened, and defiant all at once. Curses and obscenities universal to all languages floated freely in that frustrated atmosphere of containment and panic.

  And, yeah, this was Mack Bolan’s kind of war. This enemy was a rabble, sure, but a rabble of armed soldiers who’d committed misspent lives to the questions of violence and depravity but—like others—were not prepared to face the final answer. These guys could shoot back, if they would—yet none had probably ever faced up to his own final answer with anything other than a proxy enemy. That was one of the problems of the world: too damn many proxies, not enough true confrontations. A cop was a proxy. So was a judge, a congressman, a legislator, a preacher or priest or rabbi. Everybody, it seemed, wanted someone else to handle the important affairs of the world.

  In a one-on-one situation, most men could handle their own problems with justice. But if the guy had to take the abuse from a savage, then call a cop as the first in a long line of stand-ins to represent him in exacting justice for the abuse—well, sure, it was easy to lose it all in the tangle.

  If every savage in the world knew that each civilized man had the means and the will to retaliate immediately and effectively upon any trespass of his fundamental rights—then the days of human savagery would be numbered.

  Mack Bolan believed that with all his understanding of brute psychology. It was, indeed, his own motivation. He was, in the final sense, a proxy himself. He was Judgment. He had come to Montreal to call the roll, and he’d come to this point of this night in Montreal to call it again—certain in his soul that all who heard would stampede away toward a more comfortable enemy.

  He swiftly descended the stairway, shattering light bulbs with the butt of the AutoMag as he passed them, bringing darkness with him until he stood at the final flight above the bawling crowd.

  The problem, down there, was obvious.

  There was no more room at the inn.