Ivory Wave

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan tried to keep his expression blank. But the chief was studying him, and maybe there had been an inadvertent twitch of the eye, or flaring of a nostril. At any rate, Stiles took it as confirmation. “Yeah, I thought as much. So I thought about Eddie, and about Angela, who was one of the sweetest little girls I ever knew. I watched that girl grow up, you know that?”

  “I do now,” Bolan said.

  “Yeah, well, I did. My own is just a year older. They were in Scouts together, school, all that. Anyway, I remembered what had happened to Angela, and I asked Eddie if he knew you. Of course, he wouldn’t say one way or the other. Which, to me, said it all.”

  “So what now?” Bolan asked.

  “Now I’m going to suggest that you get out of town. I’ve got no interest in hauling your ass down to the station, going to the trouble of arresting you and getting the courts involved. If you sort of lost patience over there at Flat Water and maybe made a little bit of a mess, I got no problem with that. Not, you know, considering how much I liked Angela and her folks.”

  Bolan caught the eye of one of the younger cops, who gave him a discreet nod. It was barely perceptible, just the slightest dip of his head. But it was enough to confirm that the chief was on the level, that his offer wasn’t a trap or a game of any kind. One warrior to another. “Okay,” Bolan said. “You’ve got a deal.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Chief Stiles said. “You’ll be gone today?”

  “Count on it.”

  “In that case, enjoy the rest of your brief stay.” The chief gestured toward the door. One of the younger cops opened it and stepped out. The others followed. The chief stopped in the doorway, gave Bolan a last, appraising look, then closed the door.

  7

  Before the police showed up, Bolan had called Stony Man Farm and read off the DOT identification number on the bill of lading he had taken from the head shop. Now that Chief Stiles and his men had gone, he called Hal Brognola. “I’ve been asked to leave Makin,” he reported.

  “By whom?”

  “The chief of police, for starters.”

  “What are you going to do?” Brognola asked.

  “Leave Makin,” Bolan said. “I think I’m done here, anyway.”

  “Didn’t think they’d be able to chase you out, Striker.”

  “The rest of the story isn’t here anyway. What did the lab come back with?”

  “This is nasty stuff, but you’re right about it not being the normal crap, which is bad enough,” the big Fed said. “This stuff is laced with LSD.”

  “LSD?”

  “Yeah, the lab guys ran it twice. The amounts aren’t large enough to make anyone look real hard or for drug dogs to come back with, but it’s there. The lab techs think it has to do with the addiction quality. The other stuff is addictive and acts a lot like meth, but this stuff adds an extra kick.”

  “Why hasn’t it been picked up before?”

  “In part because you’re not dealing with an FDA-approved pharmaceutical company. The crystals are unpredictable. One container might barely have any while another might be almost pure hallucinogen.”

  “Is the government willing to step in with this evidence?” Bolan asked.

  “No. They need more. Their argument is that anyone along the way could have added the drugs. So if you can track down the source unofficially, I can make it official.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll get to the source. Any word on that truck I asked about?”

  “Actually, yes,” Brognola said. “It’s got GPS, and Aaron’s tapped into Vandyke Freightlines, via the Department of Transportation. The truck’s headed your way.”

  Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman probably knew more about the inner workings of most government agencies than the people who worked for them did, and he definitely knew more about their computer networks. “More precisely?”

  Brognola read off some GPS coordinates, then chuckled. “In English, what that means is that it’s on I-80, about thirty minutes outside Des Moines and headed west.”

  “So it is coming toward me.”

  “Doesn’t mean it won’t change course. But yes. Looks like it onloaded a shipment outside Cleveland and has been delivering orders throughout the Midwest, at cities along the I-80 corridor.”

  “So if I head east, I might be able to intercept it. As long as you guys keep me posted on its whereabouts.”

  “We’re tracking it, so we can do that. No problem.”

  “All right,” Bolan said. “I’m packing up and heading out. Talk to you from the road.”

  He was glad to be able to honor the chief’s request. Chief Stiles might have considered it a command, but although Bolan didn’t like pulling rank, the truth was that his pay grade was considerably higher than a small-town police chief’s. He was, as he’d told Brognola, finished with what he could accomplish in Makin anyway. The Ivory Wave didn’t come from Makin, and its impact was being felt far beyond its city limits. No, he had to find out who was behind the plague, to do whatever he could to shut off the pipeline that pushed it out to where it could poison other kids, send other Angela Fultons to hospitals and morgues.

  He carried his belongings to the rented car, checked out of the motel and made his way to the interstate.

  * * *

  AS THE DAY wore on, Bolan passed through Lincoln and Omaha and into Iowa, with the sun at his back. Stony Man personnel kept him updated on the truck’s progress. It had made some deliveries in Des Moines—or that was the assumption based on its travel pattern—then continued west on I-80. As darkness began to fall, Bolan got word that the truck had stopped again, at a truck stop on the edge of Stuart, Iowa. There was no way to know if it was there for the night or just for a dinner break, of course. But for the moment, at least, it wasn’t budging.

  Bolan had been driving at a steady speed, a few miles above the speed limit, trying to cover ground without attracting the attention of law enforcement. Now he pushed down harder on the accelerator, passing traveling families and big rigs wherever he could. He still kept an eye out for the law—not that a ticket made out to Tom Kenner or Matt Cooper would be a problem, but he didn’t want to be delayed. Catching up to the truck while it was parked would be much easier than having to trail it until it stopped again.

  As he neared Stuart, he learned the truck hadn’t budged in forty minutes. Bolan silently urged the trucker to stay put a little while longer. Have a piece of pie, he thought. Another cup of coffee.

  Soon he saw the glowing lights of the truck stop against the dark eastern sky. He checked in once more, learning that the truck he wanted was still there. He pulled off the interstate and eased into the lot. The rental was low on gas, and he could use a meal and something to drink. But those things would have to wait. He was accustomed to that—his years as a soldier had taught him that the pleasures, even the necessities, of the body often had to be postponed until the mission was accomplished, or else dealt with hastily whenever the opportunity arose.

  The truck stop had a gas station in front, with spaces for passenger cars and small trucks. Off to the left were stalls for bigger trucks. Behind that was a large, barnlike truck-wash facility. A central building, well-lit, contained a convenience store and restaurant, and shower and other amenities for the truckers.

  He drove slowly past row upon row of parked big rigs, watching for the distinctive green of a Vandyke vehicle. Truckers, most of them men, moved back and forth between their rigs and the buildings, carrying coffee or paper bags with meals in them. Bolan saw female truckers as well, dressed, like the men, in jeans and ball caps and coats or jackets against the chilly spring night. A couple of other women, wearing considerably less clothing—a miniskirt and stiletto heels, in one case, though she was an anomaly—were more likely lot lizards, prostitutes who worked the truck lots, servicing the men who
drove the highways.

  The first green truck he saw proved to be the wrong one, but after a few more tries, he spotted one that had the correct Department of Transportation number painted on it. He made a mental note of its position, then drove closer to the store and parked the rental. He put the Desert Eagle in a holster on his hip, his Beretta 93-R in a shoulder holster and his Cold Steel Tanto combat knife in its sheath above his ankle, then donned a dark blue windbreaker. His clothes were black, and he moved easily through the darkened lot, avoiding drivers when possible, and nodding casually to those he encountered. No one stopped him.

  When he had made his way back to the truck he sought, he found it was empty. He checked the cab, tapped on the window in case the trucker was inside the sleeper. The trailer was locked up tight, with a padlock on the outside.

  He didn’t want to attract attention by breaking in, although he knew he could get the cab unlocked in a matter of minutes, if that. Instead, he stuck to the shadows and waited in the area, moving often, never drawing attention to himself.

  Finally a guy walked toward the truck and pawed keys out of his pocket. Long brown hair beneath a Kenworth trucker’s cap was still wet from a shower. The man held a huge plastic mug containing thirty-two ounces of some iced beverage, and he sipped from it, a plastic straw disappearing into a dense handlebar mustache. Not a Vandyke, Bolan noted, though he also had a soul patch under his lower lip. He was lean and tan, with a stringy muscularity that Bolan wouldn’t underestimate. He unlocked the truck’s cab on the driver’s side.

  Bolan moved fast, so that he reached the driver before he climbed up into the tractor. The guy had put his drink on the seat and was just about to heave himself up when Bolan got a hand on his shirt and yanked him backward, off the truck. He snaked a hand around the guy’s mouth so he couldn’t cry out.

  “Is this your regular ride?” he asked.

  The driver struggled against him, his eyes wide with fear. He was strong, as Bolan had guessed—it took a certain amount of strength to handle these big trucks, after all. The soldier asked again, and this time the guy nodded. “So you know what kind of poison you’re hauling around?” Bolan asked.

  The guy squirmed in Bolan’s grasp. The soldier could easily snap his neck, or render him unconscious, but neither of those would provide him with the intel that he wanted. Instead, he was still holding the struggling driver when someone came around the end of another truck and saw them there.

  “Hey!” the newcomer shouted. “There’s someone bein’ robbed over here!”

  He charged toward Bolan and the Vandyke driver, screaming all the way.

  “You don’t know what’s going on here,” Bolan warned him. “Stay back!” He turned the Vandyke driver so that he could defend against this newcomer at the same time.

  But then he heard running footsteps approaching, more people crying out. He could take them on, he knew. He had faced down groups of men before, and walked away. These were innocent men, though, and a couple of women. They weren’t the enemy, just working people, coming to the aid of someone they thought was a peer in trouble.

  Bolan had never been comfortable with the idea of collateral damage. His mantra was innocents wouldn’t get hurt just because they were in his way. He tried to spin the driver he held, to use him as a shield to hold back the others. But there was no way to explain what he was doing, and by the time a dozen people had surrounded them, he knew he was going to have to escape, to try some other way of getting to the Vandyke driver. The important thing now was getting out without being arrested or hurting anyone.

  He pushed the driver into the nearest onlookers and drew the Desert Eagle in the same swift motion. “Everybody stay back,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going on here. You don’t know what this guy is hauling, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to let me explain. I don’t want to hurt anyone, so get out of my way and we’ll just pretend this never happened.”

  The Vandyke driver took advantage of the moment to climb into his cab and start his engine.

  “I don’t think so, buddy,” one of the other drivers said. “The cops are on the way.”

  “You can explain it to them,” another one said.

  Bolan could already hear sirens, and the Vandyke truck was pulling out. He holstered the weapon. He wasn’t going to shoot anyone, not as long as there was another option. Someone grabbed him from behind and he caught the man’s arm, performing a half spin and using him to flail at the people in front of him. He cleared a path, but instead of using it, he dropped to the ground and rolled beneath the nearest truck. The first one to try to follow got a boot in the jaw for his trouble. He fell back, bleeding from the mouth, and the others reacted to that just long enough to allow Bolan to get up on the other side and run between trucks for a minute. One driver tried to block his way, but a straight-arm to the upper chest put him down without even a chance to cry out.

  When he was in the clear for a few seconds, the soldier went up a trailer and lay flat on its roof while people rushed by below. A police car showed up, red and blue lights tinting the sky beneath the glow of the truck stop’s signs. One cop got out and started talking to the gathered drivers while the other stood next to their vehicle, aiming its side-mounted floodlight between the trucks.

  From his vantage point atop the truck, Bolan could see the Vandyke rig making its way to the truck stop’s exit. From there, it would have to travel a short spur road to the interstate, then climb up an entrance ramp, trying to gain speed all the way.

  Bolan had three minutes. Maybe four, tops. The other truckers had mostly gathered around the cops, or gone back to their own rides. Bolan dropped back to the ground, as silent as a cat, and ran away from the truck stop toward the grassy stretch between tarmac and highway.

  As he neared it, he saw the Vandyke truck turn onto the ramp. Its headlights speared the sky as it started climbing. He could hear it ratcheting through the gears. He was running all out, hoping nobody was watching but unable to verify that without perhaps wasting a fraction of a second that he would need.

  The truck was gaining speed. Bolan was at his capacity, and knew that the time he could keep it there was finite. He was breathing easily, his long legs scissoring through the dark night, away from the lights of the truck stop, but he could maintain that for only so long. He thought he had it timed right, but if the truck was able to gain more speed up the ramp than he guessed, this would be a long, hard sprint for nothing.

  The driver shifted again, altering the pitch of the big engine’s roar. The truck started to pick up speed. Bolan dug within himself for an extra measure of strength. He pumped his arms, felt his feet slamming into grass and then the hard roadway, felt the wind of the truck barreling past him, almost near enough to touch.

  Then he slowed minutely and altered his path, because he was there, the truck hurtling past him. He came up behind it, knowing the timing had to be right, because he wouldn’t get two chances.

  Missing the first chance might just kill him.

  He could sense the rig starting to pull away. He sucked in air, let it out and reached for the handle on the trailer’s door. At the same instant that he closed his right hand around it, he got his left foot on the bumper and allowed his right one to leave the ground.

  He was clinging to the back of the big rig, rapidly approaching interstate highway speed. Wind buffeted him, threatening to tear loose his grip at any instant. And between him and the driver in the tractor, there was still a forty-eight-foot trailer to get past.

  Bolan had a feeling he was in for a long night.

  8

  Dominic Chiarello had continued earning while he was away—Nuncio and Artie kicked over to him, plus he had ongoing investments. But those earnings, while steady, had been static, if that. They didn’t grow much, while in twenty-five years, prices on everything had gone up. Annamaria needed e
ven more scratch just to keep the household running. If they’d ever had kids, it would have been worse yet.

  So while his financial resources hadn’t been entirely depleted, neither had they improved. And to launch a new operation—especially one that would, as he believed, lead to a full-scale war against his own brother—required cash.

  Since he had people in his little group who were in tight with Nuncio, peeling some green away from his brother had a certain poetic justice that he liked.

  The poker game was being held at a private home in Shaker Heights. It was a strictly middle-class ranch house in a strictly middle-class neighborhood. Nuncio had bought it years ago. Nobody lived in it full-time, but he let guys stay there if they were between homes, or if their girlfriends had kicked them out. And everybody used it when they needed someplace to go with a mistress, because it was cheaper and more discreet than a motel. As a result, it was definitely a guys’ place, rarely cleaned, the walls plastered with pinups. There was a big living room facing the fenced backyard, where the pool and hot tub got a lot of use during the warmer months, and the game was held there.

  On this night, eight guys were playing. Nuncio wasn’t one of them, but the players were either members of his organization or their invited guests. They were all men, ranging in age from about twenty-five to fifty-five. All white. They were drinking bottled beer and laughing at dirty jokes. A thick haze of smoke hung in the air, and there were piles of cash all over the table.

  Because they knew the layout, Artie and Nico went in through the front door, acting as if they had just come over to watch the action. At the same time, Chiarello, Dario and Massimo went around to the back. While Artie was regaling the players with a story about a stripper he had met, Nico feigned a coughing fit and unlocked the sliding glass door to the backyard, ostensibly to get some air.