Bolan grinned and said, “That’s carrying women’s lib a bit far, isn’t it?” He reversed his thermal skinsuit, turning the white inner surface to the outside, and began getting into it. “You’d better get it in gear. I’m leaving here in five minutes, with or without you.”
“Five minutes!” she squealed. She leapt off the bed and dashed into the bath, calling back, “I thought you told me you had some sort of deal. About me, I mean.”
He replied, “For what it’s worth, yeah.”
“Well just what is it worth?”
“It’s a confusion factor, that’s about all. I figure it may have bought us a couple of hours, and maybe a temporarily divided enemy camp. But we can’t bet on even that.”
“But surely we’re safe here!” she cried. “I mean, after all, they can’t search every room in Chicago, can they. Can they?”
Bolan strapped on the Beretta and told her, “Sure they can. That’s the whole game, at this point. I threw down the gauntlet, and it hit them right across the face. At the time, I hadn’t planned …” He paused and changed the direction of his explanation. “I changed the battle plan a little—and now it’s their offensive, not mine. And, yeah, they’ll be searching.”
“Well, what are we going to do?” She emerged from the bath and went to the parcels Bolan had brought in earlier. Her eyes collided with the Beretta and skipped hastily away.
He slipped into his shirt and muttered, “Does the gun bother you?”
“That’s the first real gun I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I had no idea they looked so … so menacing.”
“The word is deadly,” he told her. “And this one’s a jewel. I picked it up in France. Worked in the trigger for a four-pound pull, which means she blasts if you breathe hard on her. She’ll target eight rounds into a two- inch grouping from thirty yards, and it takes less than a second to reload. Carries nine-millimeter Parabellum hishockers, and she’ll put a crease in a guy that would make a tommy-gun green with envy.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” she asked quietly.
“Just want you to know what you’re traveling with. If I suddenly yell down, that means you de-materialize and reassemble yourself on the ground or on the floor, wherever you happen to be. It means that the Beretta Belle is leaving her leather behind, and she comes out blasting, and we don’t want any beloved flesh getting into her path. Understood?”
Jimi murmured, “Understood,” and withdrew a scruff of silk from a paper bag. “Oh wow,” she said. “Heart shaped panties. Where’d you say you bought these things?”
He said, “Don’t change the subject. I want you to—”
“I liked that part about beloved flesh,” she told him impiously. “And don’t worry about me getting in your way. If you yell down, I’ll just faint. Would that put me out of the way quick enough?”
Bolan said, “Not hardly. I could be working on the second load before you could topple over. When I say down, I mean this!” He showed her what he meant, going from full perpendicular to flat horizontal in a heartbeat.
The girl’s eyelids fluttered. She sank to her knees and showed him a teasing smile. “Now I know where you got your boudoir prowess,” she said. “You learned it on the battlefield.”
He got to his feet and barked, “Do it!”
Her eyes fluttered some more and she replied, “You’re really serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life. It’s a jungle out there we have to get through, Jimi. You have to know how to survive it.” He pulled her upright and said, “Okay, now show me. Down!”
Jungle Jimi went down, then she rolled onto her back and lay there laughing. “I can’t wait to show the Foxy Ladies,” she giggled. “How’d I do?”
“Okay,” he growled. Again he pulled her upright, turned his back on her, said “Get dressed, dammit,” and took two steps across the room. Then he cried, “Down!” and flung himself to the floor in a lightning scramble, rolling back towards the girl with the Beretta out at full extension.
She was standing where he’d left her, frozen, the heart-shaped panties in her hands, gaping at him.
“Dammit, I just cut your legs off at the knees,” he told her.
“I—I wasn’t expecting you to say it,” she explained.
“That’s the whole point.” He got up and found his trousers and put them on. “That’s the way it happens, when it happens.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. And you better be flexed to react like that, if you mean to stay alive.”
The seriousness of the situation was beginning to impress itself on her. She carried the clothing to the bed and began dressing. Her hands trembled, and she was having other difficulties. Bolan went over to help her. “What a rotten end to such a lovely honeymoon,” she said miserably.
“It beats dying,” he pointed out.
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh Mack, how can you live this way?” she wailed.
He dug out a bra and hung it on her. “If I don’t live this way,” he softly explained, “I die quick.”
“But on and on and on. Isn’t there any end to it?”
He fastened the bra and told her, “Sure, there’s an end. But I’m in no hurry to get there.”
“It’s like the law of the jungle,” she whispered. “Survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, no quarter, damn the torpedoes, all that.”
“That,” he whispered back, “is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. Now listen to me. The storm has hit. All the airlines are grounded. The highways are closing. Trains have stopped running. There’s no way I can get you out of this town. And we can’t hole up, that gives the mob all the advantage of the hunt. We have to go out there, and we have to keep moving, and we have to keep alive. Out there, Jimi, in that jungle. Are you fit to survive?”
Bolan had achieved the desired effect. The soft shoulders stiffened and fiercely she said, “You’re damn right.”
“Then stop shaking and start dressing. Every minute could be vital.”
“I’m in your way, aren’t I,” she declared quietly. “I’m really just jeopardizing you.”
“No,” he lied. “You’re giving me a better reason to stay alive.” And maybe it wasn’t all lie.
She pulled a pants-suit from the boutique box and held it to her. “It’s lovely,” she said. “Everything you do is lovely, isn’t it.”
He grinned and told her, “Sure, I even kill lovely.”
“But only in the jungle,” she said, trying to sound cheerful again.
“That’s right.”
She lunged forward suddenly and planted a wet kiss on his lips. “Caught you, you’re dead,” she whispered.
“Huh uh,” he replied. “Alive. Totally alive.”
She pushed him away and watched him from beneath lowered lashes as she stepped into the clothing. “Girls have jungles too, you know,” she said. “Just wait ’till I get you into mine.”
“Hell, I’ve been there,” he said, grinning.
“Well, just wait ’till I get you back in there.”
Bolan turned quickly away to conceal the emotion surging into his eyes, covering with a noisy inspection of the Beretta. He hoped with everything he had that he would walk Jimi’s beautiful jungle again one day. Right now, though, he had to safely escort her through his own.
And that, he knew, was going to take some doing.
6: AND INTO THE NIGHT
Larry Turk leaned forward to pat his wheelman’s shoulder and to instruct him, “Pull up over here, Gene.”
The driver nodded and eased the big car to the curb, halting diagonally across from the entrance to the Town Acres Motor Lodge. Visibility in the swirling, wind-driven snowfall was practically zero, and even the glittering neon tower of Town Acres was no more than a phosphorescent-like glow hovering in the sky.
Another vehicle nosed in behind Turk’s car. Seconds later, crew chief Bernie Tosca blew into the rear seat beside Larry Turk, bringing in a puff of snowflakes with him.
Turk brushed delicately at his pants leg and growled, “What a night to be out, eh?”
“Yeah.” Tosca wiped the freezing moisture from his face and blew into his hands. “That’s the place over there, huh?”
“That’s it. Homer Peoples has the girl concession here. You know Homer?”
Tosca smiled nastily and replied, “Who doesn’t. Is this a sure make, boss?”
“Not all that sure,” Turk told him. “Homer saw this white Ferrari in the parking lot. He went to the desk to check it out. Car has Indiana plates, and the desk had ’em registered as Mr. and Mrs. William Franklin, from Indianapolis. Homer couldn’t get no more. The day shift had gone home and nobody on duty remembered seeing the guy.”
“Homer played it quiet, I hope,” Tosca said.
“He said he did. The room number is B-240. That’ll be south end, upstairs.”
“We have to go in through the lobby? I don’t remember this layout.”
“Naw, there’s four ways up from outside—two stairs going up from the parking lot, that’s on this side, and two going up from the—whatta ya call it, the courtyard?—anyway, there’s four outside stairs.”
“Oh yeah, I think I remember now. All these rooms open on the outside, upstairs they got this iron porch that circles around the joint. I got it now.”
“Okay,” Turk said, “but listen. I want some boys in the lobby, and I want boys on all four stairways. I want no fuck-ups, Bernie.”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be any.”
“You take him inside. I mean that. He gets out in this mess and we might never see him again.”
“What if he ain’t there?”
“Then you sit and wait, and send somebody down to tell me. And also you send me whoever else is in there.”
“Right.” Tosca nervously lit a cigarette and leaned against the door. “You want this Bolan alive?”
“If you catch him in bed with his pants down, sure. But don’t take no chances. If he’s ready for a fight, just bring me his head and his hands, that’s all I need. And don’t leave nobody else alive. You know?”
“Right. Here’s what I’m going to do, Turk. I’m sending two cars in right here, into the parking lot, as insurance. And I’m taking Bobby Teal and Joe the Bouncer with me up the south stairs. The rest of the boys I’ll have covering the other ways out.”
Turk growled, “You better leave a couple of plug men at the bottom of your stairs, too.”
“Okay, yeah, I’ll do that.”
“Okay, great,” Turk said. “And just in case it all falls to hell, I’ll be waiting right here. Me and Willie Thompson.”
A man seated in the front beside the driver snickered and raised the snout of a Thompson submachine gun into view. “I hope it all falls to hell,” he commented.
“Fuck you, Willie,” Bernie Tosca said, and flung himself back into the snowstorm.
Larry Turk chuckled and again touched the wheelman’s shoulder. “Okay, let’s ease down in front of that exit.”
The heavy vehicle crunched slowly along the snowpacked street, taking station for a rub-out. “You smelling blood, Willie?” Turk asked, still chuckling.
“Hell, boss, I can almost taste it,” Wille Thompson replied.
The ghostly glow of headlamps loomed suddenly in front of them as a large car, moving cautiously in the restricted visibility, swung past and into the motel entrance. For one electric instant the occupants were visible in the lights of Larry Turk’s vehicle. The field general’s chuckles stifled into a grunted, “Christ! Wasn’t that …?”
“It sure as hell was!” the wheelman confirmed.
“Who?” said Willie Thompson. “I didn’t see ’em. Who was it?”
Larry Turk was swearing loudly to nobody in particular.
The wheelman told Wille Thompson, “That was Pete the Hauler. With a car-full of boys.”
Some of the parcels which Bolan had brought into the motel room had been for himself. The black suit and overcoat had given way to a white, heavy-weather jumpsuit, water-resistant and tightly cuffed at ankles and wrists. Over this he wore a light but warm hooded jacket, also white, and gray rubberized boots with thermal linings.
His concern at the moment was for Jimi James. He gave her a final critical inspection and declared, “I guess you’ll do.”
“I guess I’d do for an Artic expedition,” she replied drily. Bolan had stuffed her into several layers of clothing—frilly underthings next to the skin followed by a thermal suit similar to Bolan’s own, then the heavy wool pants-suit and knee-high boots, all in white. A hiplength ski jacket, muffler, cap and gloves completed the outfit—and she was feeling a bit put out by the entire thing. “From the sublime to the ridiculous,” she groused. “Where are our snowshoes?”
Bolan ignored the wisecrack and tested his access to the Beretta. Jimi could see the displeasure in his eyes. She said, “Don’t mind me. When I get scared I get sarcastic.”
“I don’t mind you,” he assured her. “It’s this outfit … it’s a bit clumsy.” He grinned and added, “Look who’s demanding perfection,” then he hit the light switch and the room went dark.
In a quavery voice, Jimi asked, “Did you say down?”
He chuckled. “No, I didn’t.”
“Why are we standing here in the dark?”
“Can you see me?” he asked her.
“No.”
“When you can, we’ll go out.”
“Oh,” she said, small voiced. Then—“Are you always this careful?”
“I try to be.”
A moment later she advised him, “I guess my eyes are adjusted. I can see you. Sort of.”
He said, “Fine,” and cracked the door open.
“M-Mack?”
“Yeah?”
“If I die … if we die …”
“Think living, Jimi—not dying.” He made a quick doorway recon, then took her by the hand and pulled her outside with him.
The choking snow enveloped them immediately and they moved swiftly along the upper porch to the stairway. Again Bolan paused to get the lie and the feel of the environment.
Jimi gasped, “What’s the—?”
“Hush,” he whispered.
The engine of an automobile could be heard idling somewhere just below. The motel’s outside lights were no more than faint and isolated specks of useless luminescence. Bolan’s hand went to the railing of the steel stairway, fingertips lightly pressed to the dry underside.
They stood that way for perhaps thirty seconds, then Bolan quickly propelled her along the porch and pressed her against the side of the building. “Not a sound,” he whispered. “Not even a harsh breath.”
Jimi knew that the Beretta was in his hand and that he was waiting for something of which she had not yet become aware. She covered her mouth with a gloved hand and huddled to the wall, blinking away the snowflakes which were trying to invade her eyes. Then she became aware that Bolan had moved slightly away from her. She reached out to touch him—he gave the questing hand a reassuring squeeze, and then he was gone.
Seconds later she heard voices, muted and ghostly in the wind, without source of direction, but apparently drawing steadily nearer.
“Jesuschrist I can’t see a goddam thing.”
“Quiet, just be quiet.”
“What if we get lost?”
“Whoever heard of getting lost on a fuckin’ stairway?”
“I heard of a guy getting lost in his own backyard in a blizzard once. They found him the next morning, froze to death, ten feet from his own back door.”
“Dammit, you guys heard me say be quiet!”
Three voices, evidently ascending the stairway. Jimi was learning to understand the signs of the jungle.
“Did that pimp say B-240?”
“Don’t call ’im no pimp. He’s a pers’nal friend of th’ boss, you better not let him hear—”
“Pimp, shrimp—the next guy to say a word is gettin’ a bullet right inna ear! Now dammit, shut up!�
�
There was little doubt as to the meaning of that muffled conversation, even for a jungle novice such as Jimi James. And suddenly her mind seemed to become as one with Mack Bolan’s. She knew that he was poised there, near the top of that stairway, his eyes straining against the blinding snow, all of his senses finely tuned into that split-second of opportunity to pounce like the great jungle cat that he was. And, in that startling instant, Jimi understood the inner man that was Mack Bolan as perhaps no other person had. Her fear, in that moment of understanding, gave way to an inner calm awaiting the inevitable.
And the inevitable came quickly, as Bolan had promised. A shivering voice, very close now, muttered, “Let’s see, B-240. I wonder which way that would be.”
A returning voice of cold steel suggested, “To your left.”
“Huh?”
“Wh—?”
Jimi might have missed the quiet phuttings of the Beretta against the background of storm noises if she had not also seen the lances of flame that came so closely together as to almost be connected—and, yes, she knew now about suddenness.
An almost unbearably drawn-out quiet descended. A sign above Jimi’s head creaked with the wind—now and then the murmuring idle of the automobile engine was brought in on the wind. She fought down an impulse to call out Bolan’s name, and instead conjured a picture of him standing at the head of that stairway, taking its pulse at the railing, his animal senses flaring out into the storm to draw in impressions which perhaps would not come to an ordinary person.
And suddenly his hand was on her’s and his lips, close to her ear, were instructing her, “Let’s go, quietly.”
She went, and quietly, one hand in Bolan’s, his body partially shielding her’s. He led her around the cluster of fallen soldiers and they began the descent.
Bolan stiffened suddenly, about halfway down, and Jimi reflexively made herself small behind him. Then she became aware of the sounds that had halted him—another murmur of voices, somewhere out in the storm, rising frequently to angry tones—an occasional glimpse of auto headlamps shimmering through the vertical blanket of snowflakes. She could not be certain if she was seeing multiple sets of lights or if a single pair were creating optical illusions.
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