Haitian Hit

by Don Pendleton

  "I just blew up Bartoli's warehouse on the waterfront. That's one. I've got a nice, long list of targets."

  Sudden panic seized Descartes. The man must be insane. Bartoli's warehouse! It would lead to war, and there was nothing he could do to stop Bartoli from responding violently. It would mean chaos, carnage in the streets, and…

  Stiffening, Descartes maintained his death grip on the telephone receiver.

  "How did you obtain the number?"

  "Never mind the small talk. Tell Bartoli I'll be dropping in to visit someone near and dear at thirty-minute intervals until his friendly neighborhood Macoutes release their latest prisoner. That means unharmed, without a tail."

  Descartes was thinking fast, attempting to ignore the acid burning in his stomach.

  "Prisoner? What prisoner?"

  "Michelle Saint-Cyr."

  He knew the name, of course, as everyone in Haiti must by now. Armand Saint-Cyr had been a leftist troublemaker, vocal in support of dissidents and unions, but his midnight execution had produced a martyr and resulted in a storm of protest. Both his children had escaped arrest when he was killed, but if the daughter had been captured by Macoutes, as indicated, it could mean another round of rioting, more vicious than the last.

  "I have no knowledge of the prisoner in question," he replied.

  "Then you're behind the times," the caller snapped. "She's been in custody two hours. It's already cost your boss his slot machines and tables, and I'm only warming up. The longer she's inside, the worse it gets. If she's been damaged, you can kiss it all goodbye."

  "Monsieur…"

  The dial tone rudely interrupted him. Descartes cradled the receiver and slumped back in his leather chair, waiting for the frantic pounding of his heart to stabilize. He had to pull himself together, take control. He'd touch base with the Macoutes before he called Bartoli, and attempt to find out if Michelle Saint-Cyr had been arrested.

  Two hours. Good God. The Macoutes could drive a man insane within two hours, never mind a teenage girl. Descartes remembered snatches of stories he'd heard about the special pleasure the Macoutes derived from the interrogation of a female prisoner. He made a point of blocking out such information from his mind, but it came flooding back in grisly detail.

  Too late, he thought, already reaching for the telephone.

  The tinted office window shivered, buckled and imploded with a crash. Across the room, a piece of antique crockery was vaporized, its fragments raining upon Descartes. The echo of a distant rifle shot had scarcely reached his ears before a crystal rum decanter detonated on the sideboard, spraying fractured glass and liquor on the walls, the carpeting.

  Descartes sought refuge underneath the desk as someone put a bullet through his leather swivel chair, destroyed a portrait on the wall and blew his telephone to smithereens. His pulse was hammering so loudly that he scarcely heard the final sounds of gunfire carried on the wind outside his broken office window.

  Cringing in his hole, he felt warm blood trickling inside the collar of his shirt, and raised a trembling hand to find the wound. A shard of glass or pottery had nicked him just behind the ear, a superficial cut, but it was bleeding profusely. Looking at his fingers, crimson-slick, Descartes felt dizzy, fearful he would lose his lunch.

  Someone had tried to kill him.

  No.

  He understood instinctively that if the sniper had desired his death, he would be stretched out lifeless on the floor. The shots had been a warning and a reminder of the ultimatum that had been delivered by his recent caller.

  "If she's damaged, you can kiss it all goodbye."

  Excited voices chattered in the corridor, and someone began to hammer on his office door. Descartes crawled out from beneath the desk and stood on shaky legs. Recovering a measure of his old composure, he began to brush his suit off, knowing it would be too late to save the bloodstained shirt.

  He reached the door as uniformed men burst through with pistols drawn, their faces mirroring amazement as they scrutinized the damage to his office.

  "Please, if you will step aside!" he barked, ignoring the questions they threw at him. "It's essential that I find a telephone."

  * * *

  Sir Geoffrey Stuart had inherited his wealth and title, but ambition kept him working when another man his age might easily have opted for a premature retirement. At thirty-six, he was respected in his chosen fields of politics and finance, though he held no office personally and remained a silent partner in the firms that owed their very existence to his investments. Power was his aphrodisiac and his obsession.

  He had been a freshman at Columbia the summer that his father was assassinated. Edward Stuart, like his only son, had lived for power, wielding it selectively against his enemies, in the support of friends, for which he had been handsomely rewarded. Some of those he served were men who stood outside established law and made new rules to suit themselves. Sir Edward gave his life on their behalf, and later, when his son assumed control of the assorted family businesses, those friends had shown their gratitude.

  It had required some time, of course, for Geoffrey to convince them he wasn't a simple minded upstart, trading on his father's reputation. Since Sir Edward had refrained from sharing business details with his son, it had been Geoffrey's task — his pleasure — to unearth the details for himself, examining his father's papers in the dead of night, replacing them precisely as he found them, taking care that not a single paper clip was out of place. Before his father's death — his murder — Geoffrey had assimilated most of the important details relative to half a hundred enterprises scattered over the Caribbean, Central America and United States.

  He had amazed his father's business partners by returning from the funeral to demand his rightful share of everything, persuading those who showed reluctance by revealing bits and pieces of their secret histories in solemn tones. Of course, their confidence would be protected, their investments guaranteed, as long as they preserved the status quo. In the event that one of them should try to squeeze his newest partner out, there might be leaks, exposure in the press, inevitably bringing in police. It would be bad for business all around.

  His newest partner, Anthony Bartoli, was a man of vision. Crude around the edges, certainly, but he could look at wasteland and imagine cities, picture plush hotel-casinos in the middle of a stinking jungle. He was struggling to build the island's future, while divisive bands of malcontents threw roadblocks in his path.

  Sir Geoffrey, through his contacts in the junta and abroad, had helped to smooth the way for building permits, business licenses, the secret payments to officials that had always been a fact of business life in Haiti. In return he found a place on Anthony Bartoli's payroll as a "government consultant," though he held no office of his own. It was a fine arrangement, and he had begun to think there just might be a future for the troubled island after all.

  He was content with life in all respects save one.

  Sometimes, before he drifted off to sleep, the circumstances of his father's death returned to haunt him. The police had never traced the gunman who invaded the estate, eliminating house security before his father was confronted, killed. There had been rumors, harking back to warfare in the underworld, but none of them had been confirmed.

  It was too late to trace the killer now. Too many years had passed, and most professional assassins were themselves assassinated — by their own employers, nervous rivals, targets who preferred to capture the initiative. The man who killed his father would be history by now, but there was still a chance, however slim, that Geoffrey might discover who had let the contract.

  Recently, as greater affluence allowed more leisure time, he had begun to scratch around the surface of the case, discreetly seeking answers to a thousand questions. Gradually he began to formulate a theory, filling in the cast of suspects, planning their demise.

  He owed his father that, at least.

  This afternoon, Sir Geoffrey Stuart left his office at the normal time. Hi
s sleek Mercedes waited in the lot outside, a testimony to his independence in the fact he still preferred to drive himself. The chauffeured limousine was saved for ostentatious dinners and affairs of state, when protocol demanded a display of wealth. On working days, he liked the freedom that he found behind the wheel, secure in the fact that none of his surviving enemies could touch him on his own home ground in Port-au-Prince.

  He nodded to the lot attendant in his booth, a new man. Stuart made a mental note to learn his name and tip him well before the week was out, then slid behind the wheel of his Mercedes. The seductive smell of leather filled his nostrils as he settled in the driver's seat and slipped his key in the ignition, smiling to himself.

  The buzzing sound was barely audible, but sharp ears picked it out. Stuart glanced around him, mildly startled that an insect had been able to invade the car. It was an insect's sound, and yet…

  It wasn't.

  Swiveling, he craned his neck to look behind the driver's seat. A common suitcase rested on the floorboard, and he realized the high-pitched sound was emanating from inside.

  A suitcase filled with bees, perhaps?

  He almost laughed, and then the world exploded in his face.

  * * *

  In his fifteen minutes on the job, Mack Bolan, the new "parking attendant," hadn't introduced himself to any of the customers, nor had he parked a single car. He knew the young tycoon on sight, however, from his photographs and the resemblance to his late father.

  Years before, when he was running down the Mafia's "Caribbean Carousel," Bolan's hellfire path had led him to the doorstep of Sir Edward Stuart. Stuart was a power in the netherworld, where crime and business overlap, a mover in the grand conspiracy that Bolan was committed to destroy. Their meeting had been brief, decisive, lethal.

  He had never planned to call upon Sir Edward's son.

  It happens, sometimes, that a boy will follow in his father's footsteps, emulating that which he has seen and learned in childhood. Generations of policemen, doctors, lawyers offered living proof of the phenomenon — and on the far end of the human spectrum there were family traditions in the world of crime. It mattered little in the long run whether Stuart had deliberately trained his son to dodge the law, or whether Geoffrey had decided on his own.

  The Executioner concerned himself with physical results.

  Beside him, curled up in a corner of the booth, the lot attendant grumbled in his sleep and then lay quiet. Bolan had been forced to render the man unconscious and borrow his cap and jacket. Stuart would be looking for a lackey in the booth, and he would find one.

  The Executioner had placed a plastic charge inside the suitcase, fitted with a radio fuse. The detonator lay before him on the lot attendant's clipboard, its antenna aimed directly at the Mercedes. He had used enough C-4 to crack the case without demolishing the car.

  He didn't intend to scatter Geoffrey Stuart over two square blocks and leave a harried coroner to sort the pieces out.

  Bolan keyed the detonator, listened to the muffled sound of the explosion as the Merc filled up with swirling powder, covering the inside of the windows, making them opaque. Inside the storm, Geoffrey Stuart choked and gagged on clouds of uncut heroin, his fingers groping for the latch and finding it too late.

  He spilled out through the open driver's door, already dying, his esophagus and nostrils clotted with the deadly powder. Twitching uncontrollably, he writhed across the pavement like a spastic snowman, wriggling toward meltdown underneath the tropical sun. A final spasm and he stiffened, going rigid on the ground, his sightless eyes locked open, pupils covered by a film of heroin. Behind him, smoky tendrils stretched out from the car, immediately tattered and dispersed by the prevailing breeze.

  The Executioner shed his borrowed cap and jacket, pocketed the detonator and retreated toward his waiting car. He was a minute past his deadline, thanks to Stuart lingering inside his office, and he had another call to make.

  The time had come for him to speak again with Don Bartoli, one-on-one.

  * * *

  By five O'clock, Bartoli had begun to hate the telephone. It brought him only bad news, and he was sick to death of cautious voices saying that they didn't want to bother him, but if he had a moment free…

  The foreman at his warehouse had been first in line, reporting that a madman with a gun had executed Loony Lester and sent everybody else away before he brought the house down with explosives. Armed patrols were on the scene when he received another phone call from Descartes, the bastard, telling him about the call and the shooting at his office.

  Anthony Bartoli didn't give a damn about Michelle Saint-Cyr. He hadn't heard her name before that afternoon, although he knew her father's reputation as a rabble-rouser well enough. It was a shame, he thought, that the Macoutes had failed to do their job efficiently the first time, wiping out the whole damned family at once.

  But now a stranger had decided that the girl must be released, unharmed, or he'd blow Bartoli's house down. It was funny in a way: some bastard out of nowhere threatening the capo in his own backyard. Except the guy had the brains and muscle to make good on everything he promised, up to now, this guy who had called himself Omega when he visited Bartoli in his home, playing a little game of cat and mouse to find out what the capo might be made of.

  A marksman's medal.

  Jesus. After all this time, with problems all around him, he was saddled with the Executioner.

  Or was he?

  There was still New York to think of, and an idiot could buy himself a gross of marksman's medals at the nearest army-surplus store. He wondered if the Families were trying to pull a fast one in their bid to capture Haiti, running double plays to keep Bartoli guessing while they moved in for the kill.

  Omega had been first, the Ace who carried word of New York invasion, offering support from La Commissione before he turned around and ripped Bartoli off for several million dollars' worth of heroin. He still might be an Ace — Bartoli couldn't say for sure — but any way you sliced it, he was on the other side.

  Now Bolan. Or Omega playing Bolan. Yet another possibility: a ringer from New York, impersonating Bolan while the Ace, Omega, ran around and helped to stir things up.

  It was enough to make a strong man cry, but Don Bartoli hadn't shed a tear since he was twelve years old. On that occasion, when his dog had been run over by a garbage truck, his father found him crying in the middle of the street and slapped his face so hard it made his ears ring. Never cry in public, Joe Bartoli told his only son. A real man doesn't cry at all. He gets revenge instead. A few days later, when the office of a midtown trucking company was razed by fire, the old man took his son aside and asked one question: did you do it?

  Terrified of punishment and scared to death of lying, Anthony had told the truth. He lighted the fire himself and watched it burn until the hook-and-ladder trucks arrived.

  His father had surprised him with a smile and said, "That's better, Tony. Now you're acting like a man."

  Bartoli didn't give a damn about Michelle Saint-Cyr, but if she mattered to his enemies, she became important to the capo, too. He wouldn't be intimidated by Omega, Mack-the-Bastard Bolan, or an army from New York. Whoever had their sights set on Bartoli was looking at a war with no holds barred.

  The telephone rang again. He waited, listening to half a dozen rings before he picked it up.

  "What is it?"

  "Doomsday."

  "Who the hell…" And then he knew. He recognized the voice. Omega. "Listen, asshole…"

  "Have you talked to Geoffrey Stuart lately?"

  "What?"

  "You missed your chance," the voice told him. "Light a candle."

  "I'll be lighting one for you, you piece of shit."

  "Your warehouse was a mess," Bolan said, "I had to clean it up a little."

  Simmering, Bartoli held his rage in check as he replied. "I'm keeping score. You've got a lot to answer for, already. Maybe we can talk about it, sometime soon."

>   "We might at that. I want the girl."

  "I heard. You looking for a little something on the side?"

  "You missed one deadline, Tony. Stuart paid the tab. You're running out of front men."

  "I don't know about this girl. She isn't anything to me."

  "You ought to reconsider. She could save your life."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "Nineteen minutes. Think about it."

  "Listen…"

  But the line was dead, and he replaced the telephone receiver with a gesture of disgust. Smart bastard, thinking he could bluff a capo and the whole damned Family by trotting out a two-bit scrap of metal with some song and dance about the Executioner.

  Bartoli hoped that Bolan was in town. The guy had spent a lifetime running rings around the Families, including all the big shots in New York. If Don Bartoli could eliminate the bastard, it would send a message north, and no mistake. Manhattan could proceed with a planned invasion at their peril, realizing that their adversary was a man to reckon with.

  And if Omega wasn't Bolan… well, it all worked out the same. He might be, and the medal had been his idea, for openers. A dead Omega might just pass for Bolan in a pinch, and who could prove the two weren't the same?

  New York would have their hands full either way, just covering their violation of Commission policy. If it should get around that one or more of the Manhattan capos had been backing Bolan's play, perhaps for years, the whole damned Syndicate would rise against them overnight.

  It seemed to be a no-loss situation all around. Bartoli only had to kill Omega to pull it off.

  It would be simple.

  Like falling in a grave.

  14

  The troops from Lauderdale had been sequestered in a large downtown hotel. Bartoli had no problem getting reservations, with the tourist business knocking on death's door; he booked ten rooms for twenty men and paid the first week in advance. The owner knew which side his bread was buttered on and made no protest when a porter told him confidentially about the shotgun barrel he'd seen protruding from a golf bag on his second trip upstairs with luggage.