“There are some smaller buildings off to one side,” Bolan prodded.
“Oh, yeah. Bungalows. For special parties. You know.”
Bolan knew. He said, “Who owns it now?”
Turrin spread his hands. “Manny sold out when he got the TB and went to Arizona. He died—couple of years ago, I guess. Had the siff, too, I think. Started going kind of crazy even before he went west. Who owns it now? I don’t know. I sort of had the impression that the company took it off his hands. But I couldn’t swear to that. The joint was too far out. I closed it up. Haven’t been out that way since.”
“Okay. We better break. I have a lot to do. So do you. Get with Eritrea. Set yourself a deal. Now’s the time to drive a bargain, buddy. Make it a good one.”
“Watch my smoke,” the little guy said with a solemn smile. He was leaving his seat when Jocko Fresni came down to whisper something in his ear. Leo turned to Bolan and said, “Maybe you should wait here a minute. I got to return an urgent call. Came in on the car phone. Let’s see what it is.”
Bolan settled back and watched the ladies do their joyful stuff while Leo went to a phone booth near the snack bar.
The little guy was gone no more than a couple of minutes. When he returned, he looked like the very death. His face was gray and his eyes quivered as he slid tensely onto the seat next to Bolan.
“It’s cut,” Leo announced quietly.
“What’s cut?”
“That was Hal. They’ve got my woman. They’ve got Angie.”
Bolan’s hackles stood tall as he growled, “Who’s got her?”
“She’s been snatched. Hal just found out a little while ago. But he says it looks like they came during the night. Lights were on all over the place and the bedside clock was pulled out of the wall at four-twenty-two. So that’s all of it, buddy. I’m sorry, but that’s all.”
Bolan said, “Don’t get crazy yet. Where was she stashed, Leo?”
“A safe house, on Cape Cod.”
“A government safe house?”
“Yeah, but well covered. It seemed the best to do. Two of Hal’s best men were there with her. Another one had gone on a campout with the kids—some CYO thing or something, on one of the islands. Hal said he just had so damn many things going in Washington he honestly didn’t—oh, hell, Sarge, it’s not Hal’s fault. He tried to call there twice today and couldn’t connect. And he had all these other things …”
The Bolan mouth was hard and grim as he asked his suffering friend, “How did he learn? Did someone make a contact?”
Leo shook his head. “No, they won’t do it that way. They’ll want me to sit and sweat awhile. They’ll know that I’ll know—the next move is up to me. I’ll have to go down to the headshed, Sarge, you know—present myself. The right guy will find me.”
“Give it awhile longer,” Bolan urged. “Your life won’t buy Angie a thing and you know it as well as I do.”
“Hey, I can’t think, I can’t …”
Bolan had to talk the guy clear. “Are the kids okay?”
“Yeah, they’re fine. Hal swooped them away under a full contingent—until the smoke clears, as he says. That’s when they discovered the snatch, when the kids came back from the camparee. What the hell can I do, Sarge? I can’t just sit here in the hole and—dammit, it’s their game, now. I have to play.”
“Get with Eritrea first,” Bolan suggested. “Try to get an alignment firmed up, then see what you can work through the new channels. It’s worth a try, Leo. And it could be Angie’s only chance. You know how these guys play their games.”
“Well, God, I don’t …”
“Do this,” Bolan urged, still trying to talk him clear. “First, cool your head. You can’t work the problem if you don’t have a head. Then keep the date with Eritrea. Make a play, and take no decisions whatever until you can evaluate the results of that play. At that moment, Leo, you’ll do what you have to do. But give it that much. Give it that much, guy!”
Those tortured eyes were beginning to settle down. It had been a long, hard “life” for this little guy. Bolan’s heart was squeezed for him.
“Thanks,” Leo said a moment later. He got up and started off but then turned back with an empty, cockeyed smile. “Just so you’ll know, Sarge. I have a hollow tooth. And I have a pill that fits that tooth. I just want you to know. I’ll never be a turkey.”
Bolan groaned, “God, Leo.”
The best friend he’d ever had walked up the aisle and out of view.
Bolan had not felt such emotion for a long time. It was threatening, now, to burst out all over him.
That’s the way, he knew, when a guy lived forever at tight rein. He could imagine, then, the inner forces now tearing at Leo Turrin.
The worst of it, from Bolan’s inner view, was that he felt chiefly responsible for this sorry development. He’d talked the guy into stonewalling the Pittsfield purge. This—this right now—was the “boilover” which Bolan himself had so diligently sought. And so it had come to this. Full capitulation for Leo, with no alternative remotely in sight.
Probably as bad as any other feature was the unhappy fact that a mafios’s wife had been snatched out of a government safe house. Her presence therein, in the mob view, could mean but one thing. Well—one of two things. Leo Turrin had made a deal with the feds—or he was a fed himself. Either way, there would be no comfort for Leo or his wife.
Bolan felt absolutely wretched.
Once again, also, the “iron man” was reminded of why he himself had opted for the solitary life. He’d turned away from his only blood, his kid brother, and he’d turned away also from the first woman he had ever truly loved—simply to avoid this sort of situation. The Bolan name was lost forever. Young Johnny had been the last of the line—and now he was living the secret life in a western state under an assumed name.
Yeah. He felt wretched. It was a sorry goddamned excuse for living, this solitary adventure into damnation.
But, looking at Leo Turrin’s disappearing back, Mack Bolan was glad that he was alone.
One day—perhaps this very day—he would die alone.
But a lot of others were going to get there ahead of him. Mack Bolan himself had reached the flashpoint. The Executioner was in “boilover” mode. He got up and took his leave—with a final, almost yearning look toward the ladies. And, yeah—he decided—the basic difference there lay in an orientation to the life process.
Most men, it seemed, were oriented toward death.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Alignments
“This is Striker. Leo is too numb to lay it out. What happened?”
The headfed was obviously in about the same mood as Bolan. That voice was strained almost to its limits as it came back along the clean line. “We found our leak, the hard way. That’s what happened. I’m going to crucify a certain Senate aide with this one, bet on that. And if I can’t crucify him then I’ll get satisfaction with my own penknife at his balls!”
“That won’t save the situation, Hal. Stop beating yourself. The only thing you’re guilty of is moral optimism in a world gone crazy. What are you doing to save it?”
“I have fifty federal marshals sifting through everything from cobwebs in the attic to the sand on the beach. And I am very seriously contemplating an FBI raid on the New York headshed. I’m going in within minutes for authorization for a complete sweep of the entire eastern seaboard. I’ll make it so goddamned hot for these cocky bastards they won’t dare rearrange a hair of that lady’s head! I’ll—”
“You won’t get it, you know. The authorization. All you’ll get is a waltz around the White House ballroom. So forget it.”
“Forget it, hell! They can have my resignation if—”
“Hall You’re not thinking! Stop beating yourself, dammit, and start thinking! Who got snatched? The president’s wife? Hell no! A little Italian housewife who’s married to an undercover operative whose very existence is already an embarrassment to, the federal executiv
e—that’s who got snatched! Now forget that!”
It was pretty strong talk for a man of Brognola’s high office but it seemed to have an immediate shock value, if nothing else. The line was silent for perhaps ten seconds. When the headfed got himself back together, the mood was stiff and cool, but decidedly more thoughtful.
“I wish you had to sit in this chair for just twenty-four hours, Striker. Would you like to trade? I’ll make the switch tonight—right now.”
Bolan replied, “No way. You’ve got your cross and I’ve got mine. Let’s hook them together for awhile and see if we can’t lighten the load on both.”
The guy heaved an overlong sigh, then told the most wanted man in America: “You’re right. Okay. You’re also entirely right about the little Italian housewife. So I guess I’m open to suggestions. Do you have one—from your cross to mine?”
“Leo is trying to work something cool from this end,” Bolan reported. “Let’s give it a couple of hours and see what he can flush through. Meanwhile there is something you should be working. The other problem, Hal.”
“Which other problem?”
“The cover problem. They snatched the lady out of a government house. I don’t have to spell that out, do I.”
“There’s no way to save it. Short of mass assassinations, I guess—and I don’t even know the candidates. They found the lady through our Senate leak. Now they could not have known who they had found, not by name, not until after the actual snatch. All they learned from here was that we were safing the family of a very important government operative who is getting ready to break cover and enter the courts. But they know, now, Striker. They have to know now.”
“What happened to the men you had with her?”
Brognola sighed. “They’ll be buried the day after tomorrow.”
Bolan said, “I believe your first idea was the best. Do you know for sure who the guy is?”
“Not in any sense of hard legal evidence, no. My gut knows for sure, though.”
“Okay, grab the guy. To hell with due process. Grab the guy and take him to a sweat room. Beat hell out of him, scare him out of his skull—do whatever it takes—but find out what his alignment is. Don’t tell me you can’t do that.”
“With all my strong talk,” Brognola admitted, “the very soul cringes at the thought.”
“You’re dealing with savages, Hal. You can’t civilize them overnight. Take the guy to the fire. We’ve got a matter of hours and we need to make the most of every minute there is. You let your conscience be your guide and if it leads you into the right corners of your cringing soul then you hit my floater as soon as you get a name and you leave the goddamn message—and leave the burden on my smarting soul! Tell me no!”
Brognola sighed the sigh of the damned. “You know I can’t. Okay. Soon as I know something, you’ll get the flash”
“Now you’re thinking,” Bolan growled, and hung it up, and went on to the next alignment.
Bolan’s new face had never been inside this place; still, the high-risk factor was very real any time Mack Bolan walked into a police station. Artist’s sketches of the “new look” had been circulated worldwide. Right here in the home town, the “penetration” was doubly daring. The man he sought was a man who had come to know the young Sergeant Bolan quite well—and any man was more than a mere face.
But this one was for the marbles.
He left the car at the curb in a ten-minute zone, donned smoked glasses, and went inside. He showed federal credentials at the desk and told the pretty lady there, “I was asked to check in with Captain Weatherbee.”
She gave him a pretty smile and an invitation to rest in a soft chair while he waited—and she kept throwing him quick smiles until that final one which sent him up the stairs to “the second door on the right.”
The big cop had put on a few more big pounds; otherwise he looked about the same as a captain as he’d looked as a lieutenant—that same solemn expression which could vary in a twink from sour to sweet, those same piercing eyes that saw everything and revealed nothing—a one-hundred-percent cop, who would not know how to live any other life.
Bolan shook hands and flashed the Washington ID as both men murmured say-nothing greetings, then he went to the window to stand with the light behind him as he looked onto the street. “Nice town,” he said, as though speaking to himself.
“First visit to our town, uh, Pulaski is it?”
“Not exactly,” Bolan muttered. He turned back to the cop but kept the window behind him, framing himself in the bright sunlight so that the contrast would be all in his favor. “You handled the thing at the airport very nicely. We appreciate it.”
The captain was giving him that reveal-nothing police appraisal. “Haven’t we met before?”
“Possibly. This is my first time through here in quite awhile, though. People change, you know.”
“They do at that, don’t they.” The big cop seemed to be losing interest in the small talk. He lit a cigar and spoke around it as he inquired, “What can I do for the federal government this afternoon?”
“This is straight down the pike, Captain. A lot of hell is headed this way.”
“It got here already,” Weatherbee sniffed. His hand gesture took in a confusion of glossy photos which littered his desk. “We’re still trying to put it together.”
“By nightfall, you’ll have forgotten that even happened,” Bolan said coldly. “The New York bunch is fielding a battalion force. It’s on the way here right now.”
The captain did not bat an eye. “So why aren’t you heading them off at the pass?”
“Too little and too late, that’s why. I wanted to alert you to the fact that—”
“Okay, I’m alerted. The City of Pittsfield thanks you. Now why don’t you get the hell out of our town, hotrocks, and take all the hell with you.”
Bolan removed his glasses, dropped into a chair, and sent the guy a very solemn smile. “You had me going in, didn’t you,” he said quietly.
The cop did not return the smile. The expression in those eyes were—if anything at all was readable—pained. “New face and all, you’ve got a hell of a nerve—I’ll say that. What makes you think you’ll be allowed to walk out of here?”
“I had to take the chance, Al. Too much is going down.”
Weatherbee harrumped and said, “Should’ve thought of that before you came. I warned you before and I’m warning you again. You’re into something you can’t possibly handle to a conclusion. There’s only one possible end to it. New face and all, mister, you are just so much dead meat awaiting burial.” The harsh gaze relented somewhat as the stern old cop added, “Still, I guess you’re about the most man I’ve ever run into. I’ll give you five minutes, soldier boy—then I’m suddenly going to place that altered face.”
Bolan told him, “I’ll take four of them right here.”
The guy actually smiled. He said, “Always pushing, aren’t you. Is that badge you showed me for real?”
Bolan shook his head and formed a “no” with his lips. “Comes in kind of handy from time to time, though.”
“Not here, buddy-o. So they’re sending you a battalion force. Just what is a battalion force?”
“Several hundred guns. Helicopters. ATV’s. Probably some exotic weaponry. Maybe even some dogs.”
Weatherbee grunted and swiped at his nose with a finger. “Sounds like a paramilitary force.”
“It is.”
“Then you’d better be getting along, hadn’t you.”
“I was hoping you would get with the county and state, talk them into putting up some roadblocks. Maybe close off a few area airfields. That sort of thing.”
“Why would I do that? I don’t even know they’re coming.”
“You know I’m leaving.”
Those police eyes lay all over Bolan for about thirty seconds before the old cop replied, “That’s what you really want?”
Bolan shrugged. “It’s one problem at a time with me, C
aptain. Right now my problem is a battalion force. I doubt that anything will stop them completely. But I’ll need all the time you can buy me.”
Weatherbee slowly shook his head. “You really want them bad, don’t you, soldier boy. How much is it going to take to sate you, youngster? Haven’t you drunk enough blood to wipe out all the sins of the world?”
“You make it sound like some sort of feast.”
“Vengeance always is, isn’t it?”
It was Bolan’s turn to lay eyes all over. Finally he said, “Think what you like.” He stood up. “Guess my four minutes are gone.”
“I had to ask it,” Weatherbee said amiably. “I’ve been having this debate with Alice. Alice is my wife. I guess she sees something in you that reminds her of Jack Armstrong, the all-American boy. I’ve been telling her it doesn’t usually work that way in real life. So if it’s not vengeance, what is it? What is it about you that gets a tough goat like Hal Brognola all lathered up every time you stub a toe? What is it that causes good honest cops all over this country to turn their backs and look the other way when they see you walking by?”
Bolan paused at the door and sort of half-looked at the guy. “About those roadblocks …”
“I’ll try.”
“What is it?” Bolan asked quietly, “about a tough old cop who never took a pad in his life that makes him enter a conspiracy with the most wanted criminal in the country?”
He stepped into the hall and collided with another cop—a youngish guy with a burly body and baby face.
“Hi, Pappas,” Bolan said easily and went on out of there.
“Who was that?” Sergeant Pappas asked the captain as he stepped into the office.
Weatherbee sighed and clasped his hands behind his back. “That,” he said solemnly, “was Jack Armstrong.”
“I thought he looked—who the hell is Jack Armstrong?”
“I guess you’re too young to know, Johnny boy. It’s a flaming anachronism, a vanishing species of American life.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cap. The guy called me by name. How’d he know my name?”
“That guy,” Weatherbee said, eyes twinkling, “sees all, knows all, and, I guess, does all.”
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