"Wish they'd do their scratching back on the ship, then," the wheelman growled. "They give me the creeps."
"You might be damn glad they're not on the ship if that guy shows up around here."
"That guy ain't gonna show up around here! What the hell!"
"We never know, Hoppy. We just never know." Carmine stretched himself and picked up the binoculars.
"Whataya see?" the wheelman asked a moment later.
"Same old shit," Carmine replied, sighing. "Nothing in and nothing out. The joint is as quiet as Christmas night I bet that guy is sitting in there shaking his ass."
"Think he knows we're out here?"
"Nah. Why would he? But he's probably scared to death the bastard will show up. Or maybe not. I wonder do these guys really know what's going down."
"I wouldn't know," the wheelman said. "Ask your men back there, the spaghetti suckers."
"Hey, I’m getting a little sick of that shit, Hoppy. You lay offa those guys, dammit!"
"Okay okay."
The wheelman's attention became attracted by something in the rear view mirror. "Something's coming," he announced.
"It's an RV," Carmine said, using his own side-view mirror. "This is a funny neighbourhood for an RV, isn't it?"
"You see 'em everywhere nowadays," the wheel-man said, though his attention was still riveted to the approaching vehicle.
It was a CMC motor home ... very difficult to see into ... some funny kind of smoked glass for windows....
The big rig was moving slowly, hesitantly, as though the driver was looking for something. It pulled directly abreast of the hit car, halted very briefly, then pulled on ahead and went to the curb a hundred or so feet ahead.
The wheelman snarled, "Well, that goddam prick! He's blocking our view!"
"Simmer down," said Carmine, tensely. "Let's see what."
A guy stepped out of there and looked around , a bit uncertainly. He wore blue dungarees and jacket like a guy in a cigarette commercial, cowboy hat and all. In his hand was a small paper bag, neatly folded at the top like a lunch sack, only white like a baker's bag.
"He's gonna have a picnic!" the wheelman snarled.
"Shut up! Keep your eyes open!"
The boys in the back seat were shifting about, unable to follow the conversation but aware of the tensions in that vehicle.
The guy was walking back along the street toward the car. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. As he approached, the wheelman lowered his window and yelled at him: "Don't leave that damn thing there in my way like that!"
The guy came on, halted at Hoppy's window, peered in, touched the brim of his hat, and announced, "Howdy. I'm looking for 3215."
"You won't find it in here!" the wheelman snarled.
"What is this, meals on wheels?" Carmine asked nastily.
"Beat it, cowboy!" Hoppy commanded officiously. "You're interfering with a police surveillance!"
The guy said, "Well, ten-four, good buddies, mercy me, threes on you." He leaned into the vehicle and flipped the paper sack past the wheel-man's head and into the back seat, very casually, then took off at a fast trot to the rear.
Hoppy growled, "What th' . . . ?”
A guy in the back grunted, "Che cosy e—? [What is—?]"
Carmine yelled, "No! Throw it—I"
Too late came the awareness.
Both Carmine and the wheelman were electrically scrambling for that "lunch bag" when the whole world turned red and puffed itself out to impossible dimensions, fracturing eardrums and bursting horrified eyes, rending flesh and fabrics and metal all as one in a consuming burst of the fragile bubbles of life.
And even after all life had departed that tortured scene, the forces of holocaust raged on through the twisted debris, finding new fuels to feed the devouring flames.
Later, an official observer would declare: "We can't even determine how many people were in that vehicle, not yet. That's a job for experts. As for the cause of the explosion, we can only state at this time that a very powerful device erupted in the interior of the vehicle. The blast seems to have been centred in the rear seat area and it engulfed the entire car. The trunk lid was blown thirty feet away. We, uh, discovered also in the ruins the metallic remains of several weapons, including two light submachine guns. We, uh, are pressing the investigation into that aspect"
The official statement did not include the information that a military marksman's medal had been found lying beside the smouldering wreck. The police were, uh, pressing the investigation into that aspect, also.
15 COLLECTION
Bolan understood Morello's game plan. Indeed, he would have anticipated it even without access to the telephone instructions issuing from that headquarters on the Cuyahoga. The guy was obviously following the convoluted logic that a strong defence is the best offence. He had placed headhunters on surveillance stakeouts covering each name on the Pine Grove pigeon list, evidently assuming that Landry or Sorenson or both had provided Bolan with the names. He was not "protecting" those people so much as he was using them as bait for the counterattack. There was nothing wrong with the logic, as long as the planner would assume that two could play the same game at the same time. And it was a game which Bolan understood very well, from both sides of the question.
His second strike of that fated afternoon came less than twenty minutes following the first. Gerald Parma and crew were staked out in view of a factory office near Washington Park. They had already been alerted to the fact that Johnny Carmine's unit was not responding to radio calls and that "something might be up." The four men in Parma's vehicle were tense and jittery. Nevertheless, they sat unalarmed and watched a tall man dressed in farmer's overalls step from a line of trees which bordered an open field and casually approach their position.
At about fifty yards out, the man stopped and released a strap from the corner of his baggy overalls, turning away from the men in the car and stepping off on a diverted course.
Parma was on the radio at the time. He reported to River Base: "A-OK here. Nothing but a farm boy looking for a place to whack off."
His wheelman commented, "There ain't no farms around here, Jerry."
The gunner behind Parma cried, "Watch it!" and grabbed for his chopper.
The "farm boy" had whirled about with a stubby weapon raised and sighted. Parma instinctively threw himself toward the floor, mistaking the weapon for a sawed-off shotgun. It was not a shotgun but an M-79 grenade launcher hefting a 40mm round of high explosive. The weapon puffed and the HE round impacted on the doorpost, beside which the rear gunner was scrambling to get his own weapon lined into a firing angle. He never got there. The explosive force of the strike rocked the heavy vehicle and engulfed it in a raging fireball. The two men in the rear were killed instantly. Parma was screaming weakly from the front floorboards. The wheelman had been ejected by the blast and flung clear with his clothing ablaze. An other puff from fifty yards out sent a second firestorm into the stricken vehicle, this one impacting just forward of the firewall and instantly stilling the cries of human distress. Ruptured gasoline carriers ignited an instant later and the entire vehicle was briefly airborne by the resultant secondary.
The flaming wheelman appeared at the shattered nose of the vehicle, on all fours and wheeling crazily like a performing elephant. A different weapon immediately boomed from fifty yards out, dispatching a sizzling mercy round of instant death. The human torch fell to his side and continued burning. The man in the overalls stood quite still for several seconds, obviously assessing the human situation over there—then he holstered a big silver pistol, shouldered the M-79, and quickly walked away from there.
He struck again ten minutes later, this time in a sedate residential neighbourhood farther east. Billy Centennial and crew never saw what came for them, though all died with guns in hand. Something crashed through the rear window of their stakeout vehicle, instantly filling the interior with a choking gas. As the gasping men tumbled from the car, an unseen aut
omatic weapon chattered its song of eradication, sweeping all four off their feet and depositing them in a heap at curb side.
The Executioner was at war.
And now the entire city of Cleveland knew it.
Bolan released the sector display and turned the Warwagon toward River Base. There was little point to an endless succession of fire fights at the periphery of the problem. He had made all such strikes that had been intended. It was time now for an assessment of the results of this "push" against Tony Morello's delicate sensitivities. But he did take time, first, to stop at a public telephone for another contact with Leo Turrin, reluctant to use the mobile phone for such purposes.
He got the little guy on the line and told him, "Well, I think the thing is rolling now. Do you have any late poop for me?"
"I checked out that country club," Turrin reported. "Can't find anything against it. But, Sarge, you were right about that Cleveland Fifty. Most of them are represented there. That's a hell of a congregation of firepower—even if it is for fun and sun. You know how much business is conducted in this country over gin and tonic?"
Bolan replied, "Yeah. I’m just beginning to find some of the strands. I think they're tied together in a Gordian knot. Alexander the Great cut his with a sword. I might be faced with that same decision, Leo. I don't mind telling you that I'm dreading it. Have you heard any rumbles?"
"Nary a one. But it's not surprising. I told you. Morello has few ties in this town. Whatever he's doing, he's doing it without the rest of the company. Listen. About that Gordian knot. You watch your ass, buddy. The feds have been going easy on you. You raise too much ruckus in the civilian community, you're liable to have Brognola howling up your ass again."
"That's the worst of my worries, Leo," Bolan growled.
"Well. I didn't notice any politicians with balls in that Cleveland select. You better look outside. They damn sure need a political base if their aim is high."
"That's what bothers me," Bolan told him. "I still haven't identified all the players. All I have right now, in fact, are pigeons."
"Just what do you think is going down there?"
"I feel that my subconscious knows it all," Bolan replied in a musing tone. "It just hasn't reached the conscious levels yet. Tell me, though. Have you seen a long-range weather forecast recently?"
"Weather? I doubt it. No. Why?"
"The weather people are warning that we might have a record winter on tap this year."
"So? The energy crisis is all fixed, I thought. Are you thinking of those Flag Seven nuts down in Texas? Are you getting echoes?"
Bolan said, "I don't know. And the energy crisis is not fixed, no. Smoothed over for awhile, that's all. Suppose we did have a record winter. I mean, suppose the temperatures went below zero and stayed there for a month or two. The entire industrial northeast in deepfreeze. What's the fuel reserve situation for this region? Is there enough oil storage? Are our natural gas reserves adequate?"
"Are you asking me?"
"Yeah, I'm asking you."
"Okay. I'll try to find an answer. You're onto something, aren't you?"
"Maybe, maybe not. It sounds too crazy, too big, too impossible to even consider. But I was wondering if it might be possible for some smart operators to corner the energy market in this area."
"I wouldn't think so," Turrin replied. "That stuff is pretty heavily regulated. What are you onto?"
"I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud, I guess. But I did a scan on the corporate crossovers in this region. Covering only the principals whom I know are involved in Morello's game, one way or another. It's a fantastically complicated study, buddy.
A real bag of snakes. And everything I touch smells like gas."
"Gas?"
"Yeah. Natural gas, liquified gas, heating oil. Every facet of its existence—from drilling to refining to transportation to storage to marketing and all the stops between. Even a number of small gas reserve companies have been absorbed by several of these outfits recently."
"Like I said, it's a heavily regulated industry."
"So was alcohol, Leo, in the nineteen thirties. What the hell does that prove? As long as people do the regulating, then hell . . ."
"Well. I'll look into that hard winter for you. Anything else?"
"Find me a kinky politician, Leo. A fat cat with local interests."
"I could probably find a dozen without leaving my chair," the undercover fed wryly replied. "Your, uh, your judge—your corporate judge—how's it look?"
"I doubt that he ever got into it. I doubt that he knows a thing."
"But there is an angle there."
"The angle is there, sure. They wanted the guy bad."
"Well, there you go, talking about regulation. If that is the gig, then you can bet they'd try to cover all bases."
"Yeah," Bolan said quietly. "That's what I'm betting. Thanks, Leo. Hit you later."
"I'm always there," the little guy sighed and hung it up.
Bolan returned to the Warwagon and found the mobile phone signalling for his attention. He stared at the instrument through a moment of speculation, then pulled on a sneer, picked it up, and said, "Who'd you want?"
It was Susan Landry—confused at first and a bit breathless. "I want—I thought—this is Susan, Susan Landry."
Bolan responded to that in his natural voice. "Fancy that."
"Well, I told you I’d call."
"I didn't believe you."
She sounded as though she had been crying. I want to come home. I'm fed up with peace and love. I just want to get back into that hot little car and help you with your collections?'
He checked the time as he asked her, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, yes. The hurts are all gone."
He frowned. "Are you some place cool?"
"Yes, I'm fine." There was a long pause, then she asked, "Can I come home?"
The Bolan frown deepened. "I think ... we should leave it the way it is, Susan. We agreed to meet at midnight. Let's have it that way."
Another pause, then: "No, please. I can help you with your collections. Can you pick me up right away? I'm at a shopping center on Snow Road Brookgate." Another pause. "I'll be at—"
He said, "You know better than that. I'll set up the meet. I'll call you back in ten minutes. Give me the number there."
"I—I can't give you this number." Pause. "I just borrowed the phone. I'll call you back. Ten minutes?"
"Ten minutes," he said grimly and rung it off.
The Warwagon was already in motion and he was not far from his goal. His mind was seething with the certain knowledge that the lady had made that call with a gun at her head. She'd managed to tip him to that—a damn classy lady—and she'd also maybe managed to let him know where she really was.
She'd really wanted to help him with his "collections"
Yeah.
He hit the retrieval area and immediately summoned the intelligence. It came in on a forty-second tone and settled with a hum into the program bank. He poked in the time noted earlier, during the conversation with Susan. And the playback was an echo: "Who'd you want?"
"I want—I thought—this is Susan, Susan Landry."
He shut it off and ground his teeth and forced his mind to settle down. But all he could think of was a madman who killed for kicks and invented hideous tortures for idle diversions—and a beautifully classy lady with textbook ideals about peace and love, a tear in the eye, and a sob in the voice—and what she must have been put through to divulge that telephone number.
Eyes that oozed ice watched the digital clock in the console—four minutes to wait for the next call—while hands that had learned to kill coolly and methodically twisted at the fabric of the combat fatigues, impatient now for a kill that would be anything but cool.
The Executioner was awaiting a very personal collection. And God help Tony Morello if he did not find her alive and well.
16 Near Miss
The call came right on time. Bolan scooped
up the instrument and said, "Yes, I'm here."
Her control was much better now. She asked, 'Where do I meet your
"Can you make it to Edgewater Park in fifteen minutes?"
Pause.
"I—I think so, yes."
"Okay. At the lagoon. Be there. I won't wait."
"Will you be driving the hot little car?"
He said, “What else. Hurry. You just missed a collection."
Less than sixty seconds later, the first big crew wagon nosed out of the estate and headed toward town, followed by three others in quick succession. Bolan had each one close up in the optics as it cleared the gate and made the swing onto the road. Each was packed to the gunwales with hard eyed men. But nowhere in there did he spot Tony Morello or Susan Landry. Which was something of a surprise. He had half expected that they would take the girl along as a spotter or decoy. But of course there was no reading the Morello mind at a time like this. And Bolan's game plan had remained entirely flexible. He was playing strictly to the ear, hoping only for a chance to reach into their midst and snatch that lady back safe and sound.
And maybe this way was better. Morello must have severely weakened his palace guard by sending out those head parties—four vehicles, eight men per—yeah, severely weakened.
Bolan was preparing the EVA even as his mind worked the problem. Within a minute after that last vehicle cleared the gate, the warrior was in the armoury selecting his weapons. He stripped to the combat blacks and slipped on the battle rig, a belted configuration including grenades, smokers, and incendiaries. Big Thunder, the .44 AutoMag, went to the right hip and the Beretta Belle at the left armpit. Finally, the big punch combo—an M-16 assault rifle with an M-203 nestled below, the mated designation for the M-79. This "big punch" provided a combination of a 5.56mm machine gun with a 40mm hand cannon, the latter handling loads of high explosive (HE), smoke, gas, or buckshot as the need demanded.
Within two minutes after the departure of the head parties, Bolan was out of his vehicle and running for the wall of the Morello estate, the "big punch" slung across his chest from a neck harness. He hit the wall at full charge and vaulted over, landing on his feet and continuing the charge with hardly a break in stride—in the garden area where he'd stalked Morello and Sorenson in the dark, where now was bright daylight and a startled sentry in mind-boggling confrontation with a real live commando on the hoof.
Executioner 030 - Cleveland Pipeline Page 9
