“Yeah, sure he will.”
“Daggett, you’ve only just met me, but do you have any doubt of my resolve?”
The trucker paused and stared long and hard at Bolan. “No.”
“Expect the call.”
* * *
AROUND THREE IN the morning, Bolan pulled off the highway at a lonely rural exit. Farm roads ran straight through the fields forever, as far as he could tell in the light cast by the sinking moon. There might have been nobody alive for a hundred miles in every direction.
He followed one of those roads until he found a smaller one, dirt, leading to a fallow field that had been plowed under and waited to come back into some farmer’s rotation. Maybe it wouldn’t produce for the farmer this year, but Bolan could get some use out of it. The ground was hard-packed enough for him to drive on, so he did, getting the rig out toward the middle of the field, far from anything flammable.
That part was key.
He stopped the truck, went to the back and removed the jerry-rigged strap he had tied on to hold the door closed. He shoved the door up its tracks, opening the trailer wide. Then he climbed back up and threw all the boxes of merchandise out into the field. They landed in a haphazard pile, and the more he tossed out, the higher the pile became. That was the idea, because fire liked to climb.
Bolan had a couple of gasoline containers on board that he’d stopped to fill up. He’d found a length of rubber hose, and he used it to siphon off more gas from one of the farmer’s work trucks that had broken down at some point and been left for dead. He soaked the boxes, paying special attention to the ones containing Ivory Wave. When he’d used up his supply of fuel, he moved the truck a hundred feet away from the pile and walked back. He found a well-soaked small box, one that would burn fast but could be easily thrown, and carried it a dozen feet away. He lit it and hurled it onto the pile.
Then he hit the dirt, facedown.
The gasoline ignited like an incendiary device, with a whoosh and a wall of heat and flame that hit with force. Bolan felt it pass over him. Within moments it was more concentrated, rising from the boxes, a fiery updraft that carried sparks and embers into the sky. He had hoped he was far enough removed from civilization that no one would see the fire, but looking at it now, he realized that it was a bigger, brighter flame than he’d expected.
No matter. The Ivory Wave would burn first, and if someone wanted to battle the flames enough to get a brass pipe or a bong, it was his or her funeral. He got back into the truck, started it and headed for the highway.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER Bolan pulled into a roadside rest area. Other trucks already filled some of the long, slanted spaces, so his wouldn’t stand out. He needed sleep and sustenance, even if it was just snacks from the vending machines. Sometimes food trucks—”roach coaches”—worked rest areas in the mornings, so he might be able to grab something more closely resembling a meal then. Whether he did or not, he planned to be back on the road around sunrise. Someone from Stony Man Farm would alert him if Daggett went back on his word and reported the truck stolen, or if the people at Vandyke realized it was on the move. Unless that happened, he needed to keep covering the miles.
He climbed into the truck’s sleeper. Long years of combat experience had taught him how to fall asleep fast, whether he slept for fifteen minutes, an hour, or more. Most people in the civilian world had at least some idea of how long they would be able to sleep at a stretch, and when the next opportunity might come along. The same wasn’t true for Bolan. He had a couple of hours until the sun came up, and he would use them to recharge his batteries. After that, he had no idea when he would be able to close his eyes again.
10
Nuncio Chiarello stood in the living room of his Shaker Heights pad, his fists clenched in rage that had nowhere to go. Morning light streamed in through the sliding glass doors, illuminating a scene out of a nightmare.
There were eight dead men in the room, most of them friends and business associates. In earlier days, he would have referred to them as “soldiers,” but he had tried hard to put that era behind him. He was a businessman now, not a Mob boss. These men were employees and colleagues, not gun-toting thugs. Yet although he and they had forsworn violence, it had found them anyway.
The walls around the poker table were pocked with bullet holes, plaster torn apart and crumbling, blood painting every surface. Some of the fine sprays had run, creating fringed arcs of red like something out of an abstract painting. In other spots, the blood had hit in thick swatches, as if someone had been trying out paint samples.
The bodies were similarly haphazard. They were sitting in chairs or sprawled on the floor. One man was missing so much of his face that Nuncio couldn’t recognize him; slugs had torn his jaw off his face and obliterated both eyes. Flesh hung in ragged flaps over shattered bone and glistening muscle. He had dark blond, curly hair, leading Nuncio to think that it was a guy named Spratt who owned a regional chain of discount appliance stores that Nuncio had an investment in. His stocky build backed up that belief.
Brendan, who had skipped the game but called one of his buddies to check in around midnight, and then come over to see why he wasn’t answering his cell, said that none of the corpses had wallets on them. And there were no winnings on the table, just a few bills scattered here and there. It was always possible that Brendan had pocketed all the cash before he made the phone call that had awakened Nuncio and left him with several hours of restless sleep. Come morning, as soon as he’d had a shower and a cup of rich Italian roast, he had come over. Now that coffee was mixing with his stomach bile, turning into acid that threatened to eat right through organs and bone and flesh and slosh out onto the floor.
Nuncio’s sons, Gino and Massimo, stood off in the kitchen with Brendan, talking in low tones and letting Nuncio see the carnage for himself. These were men Nuncio trusted, but then, so were the dead. Again, in days gone by, the dead men would have had heaters of their own, probably sitting on the table next to their stakes, and the heist might not have ended the same way.
“How the hell did they get in?” Nuncio called. “The fuckers who did this?”
Brendan emerged from the kitchen. “When I got here, the back door was wide open,” he said. He crossed the room, careful to avoid walking in blood, and pointed to a trail leading to the glass doors. “Look here, a cat or something came in after it happened. His footprints led out onto the grass in back before I lost them.”
“I don’t care about a damn cat,” Nuncio said. “I want to know who did this.”
Brendan shrugged, a casual gesture that infuriated Nuncio. “Could have been just about anybody, I guess,” he said. “Anybody who heard about the game would know there was gonna be some cash in play.”
“This wasn’t a major-league game,” Nuncio countered. “It wasn’t penny ante, but these guys played for twenties and fifties, not serious coin. Whoever did this probably got away with a couple grand, if that. Nothing worth eight lives.”
Brendan’s shoulders started to move again, but he caught himself in time. “Junkies, maybe,” he said. “Couple grand to them would seem like a big payday.”
“How would junkies hear about the game? Besides, everyone in town knows that you stay away from the product. The most they would find is a dime bag of weed or maybe a line of coke.”
“I don’t know, Nunce. I don’t know what to tell you. Somebody found out about it and they hit it. You’re gonna need CSI or some shit to figure out who.”
“Go to the cops? Are you kidding me? I don’t want anyone looking at the business.”
“Hey, you’re a legitimate businessman. You own this house. Some guys who were staying here decided to play some low-stakes poker—that’s not your fault. But this is a multiple homicide. I don’t even know how you would keep it quiet. Some guy’s wives are gonna start wondering why th
ey haven’t come home. Might as well report it and get out in front of the problem. Otherwise it’s likely to bite you on the ass.”
Nuncio went to the glass door and opened it again, putting his own fingerprints on the handle, he knew, but he had already done that without thinking, when he’d first arrived. As if the killers might still be out back, taking a dip in the pool, maybe, or relaxing in the hot tub. He stepped outside, inhaled the brisk morning air and pondered Brendan’s suggestion.
Calling the police wasn’t a decision that came easily to him. The way Brendan laid it out, though, seemed to make sense. Even a guy with some history, which he couldn’t deny he had, could be a victim of a crime. In this case, it was more to do with his house, anyway—a house in which he didn’t even live. His guests, who were also employees, legally on the company’s books, taxes withheld, the whole deal, had been killed. Brendan was right. The law would have to know.
Still, inviting cops into his life could only bring trouble. He turned back to the door. “You guys!” he called.
The three men came through the open door.
“Go over this house, top to bottom,” Nuncio instructed. “If there’s anything that even hints at illegal activity, any dope or anything, get it out. I want this place as anonymous as a motel room. And nothing, I repeat, nothing that leads back to our production.”
The men nodded their understanding and went to work. Nuncio’s businesses were, as Brendan had said, legit. But many of them had roots in less legitimate soil, and many of his employees were, not that long ago, simple thugs. These three, Brendan, Massimo and Gino, still carried everywhere they went—and Nuncio didn’t like to step out his door without at least one of them by his side. He didn’t carry a piece himself, because that being revealed would undermine his claim on legitimacy. But his own house was still a virtual armory, and not all of those weapons had been legally acquired.
He had become, by and large, a legitimate businessman. He didn’t really consider adding a little something special to make his product stand out too ambitious, just profitable. That didn’t put him above taking shortcuts, though. The habits of a lifetime—literally, of lifetimes, since his had been a multigenerational crime Family—were hard to break.
He went back into the house and found Brendan in one of the bedrooms, carefully checking dresser drawers for anything that might be incriminating. “Just toss the place,” Nuncio said. “It’ll look like the robbers did it.”
“There are eight bodies in the house,” Brendan said. “If the cops think the killers went past the living room, they’ll look for evidence in these other rooms. I don’t want them to find my prints and nobody else’s. Better we tell them the other rooms weren’t touched.”
Nuncio considered his argument. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. How much longer you figure this’ll take? I got other stuff to do.”
“Not today,” Brendan said. He pulled a drawer out of the dresser and checked the bottom.
“What do you mean?”
“When the cops get here, you gotta be here. Your prints are all over the place, on top of any prints the killers might have left. You try to convince the law that you came in and saw that mess, then went to work, they’re not gonna buy it. If you’re not here, you become suspect number one.”
“But if I am here, I’m not?”
“If you’re here with witnesses, and no piece, and no powder residue on your hands or clothes, it’ll look a lot better.”
Brendan was a smart kid, and Nuncio knew he was right. Time was, he would have thought of all that himself. But now his head was full of invoices that had to be paid and bills that had to be collected, of payroll and inventories and taxes and license renewals. One thing he had never realized about the straight life was how much more complicated it was than the alternative.
If they got a line on who had done these murders, he would have to revisit old ways, at least for a while. Nobody could be allowed to get away with an all-out attack on his interests that way. And letting the courts deal with them wasn’t good enough.
Blood had to be answered with blood. Some traditions didn’t die.
“I’m glad I got you guys at my back,” Nuncio said to Brendan. “You and my boys. Makes me feel a whole lot safer, I’ll tell you that.”
“Safer?” Brendan echoed. “You think there’s gonna be more?”
“I don’t know,” Nuncio replied. “But in the old days, a hit like this only meant one thing. Someone was starting a war.”
11
Devilweed Inc.’s warehouse was on Adams Center Road, where the sprawl of Fort Wayne, Indiana, began to thin as it stretched out toward New Haven. There was a barnlike auto-parts store next door. The warehouse was a plain concrete block building, two stories tall, with a steel roof. Bolan had parked the Vandyke truck a few blocks away and walked over to check it out.
The bills of lading he had found at Flat Water Smokes-n-Stuff and in the truck all pointed him toward Devilweed. It wouldn’t be the original source of the Ivory Wave, he was convinced. The distribution company no doubt ordered from dozens of businesses, and took orders from dozens more. The proprietors of Devilweed were probably middlemen taking their cut from the toxins they peddled while hiding behind the wall of legality, but how deep the connection went was about to be revealed.
“Legal” and “right” went out the window when Hal Brognola came through with the content information. If the warehouse honchos were oblivious to what was in the crates they were shipping, Bolan would simply get rid of the offending substance; if not...Bolan intended to teach the folks at Devilweed the error of their ways. He wouldn’t be able to cut off all avenues for the drug until he hit the manufacturer, but he had no problem putting up a giant roadblock to slow it.
From the outside, the warehouse looked like a single-story structure, because there were no windows on either level to provide scale, just a double steel-and-glass door facing the street. But he figured that while it would have high ceilings, it might also have a loft area, maybe even ringing the whole interior. Keep the offices off the warehouse floor, give the bosses a bird’s-eye view of the help. The left side of the building—the north side—was one big loading dock with multiple bays. The right was as blank as the front. Bolan couldn’t see the back without walking around, and the security cameras mounted at the roof line and pointed at the parking lot gave him pause. And he couldn’t see inside from here, which was a disadvantage. Bolan always liked to study the lay of the land if he could, before that knowledge—or its lack—turned into a life-or-death matter.
As he stood there watching workers load two Vandyke trucks at the loading docks, the soldier had an idea. He had fought and slept in his clothes, and hadn’t showered for some time, so he figured he looked the part. He shrugged, as if he had just reached a decision—not that it appeared anyone was watching him, but why take chances—and walked straight to the nearest loading dock. There he hoisted himself up onto the dock platform and started toward the first truck. Bay doors were open between here and there, so he glanced inside as he passed each door.
The layout was pretty much as he had expected. The main floor was full of steel shelving units, on which cardboard boxes of merchandise were stored. He saw a ball-bearing conveyor along the far side and curving toward him, leading toward a packing area. That butted up to the shipping area, which was close to the doors. On the far side was a loft-type arrangement with a steel gridwork and what looked like a concrete walkway running past offices.
One of the employees, a scrawny, long-haired guy in a Devilweed T-shirt and ragged jeans, came out an open door. “Help you?” he asked.
“I was just wondering if they were hiring in there,” Bolan said.
“Not that I know of.”
“Anybody I could ask? Who would know for sure? A manager or something?”
“The owner’s Jed Fowl
er,” the guy said. “But he’s out right now.”
“I could check back later. There a good time to catch him?”
“Can’t really say. Sometimes he’s here, sometimes he ain’t. But I would have heard if we had any openings.”
“Okay,” Bolan said. “Thanks anyway.” He dropped off the side of the platform and walked back to the street, then away in the same direction he had been heading originally. Even if a security person was watching the monitors, nothing he had done would look particularly suspicious. He had hoped the guy would invite him inside the warehouse while he looked for a manager, but the glimpses he did get were better than nothing.
Besides, he couldn’t stay too long, because he had an appointment.
* * *
THE MOTEL, IT turned out, wasn’t far away, on East Tillman. There was a large parking area behind it, hidden from the street by a building that wrapped around an inner courtyard with a pool. Bolan parked the truck there and dialed a phone number. “Room 103,” he was told. He hung up, got out of the truck and crossed the parking lot. The room faced toward the back of the building. When he reached it, the door opened and Charlie Mott stood inside.
“Striker,” he said. “Good to see you.”
“You don’t want to smell me,” Bolan said. “The water hot in this place?”
“So far.” Mott still had his military bearing, though he had allowed his hair to grow out a little. His face was clean-shaven, and Bolan could see the tracings of fine scars around his nose and mouth. Mott had seen combat, and plenty of it.
Inside, Mott pointed to three bags on the floor, two of Bolan’s and one other. The Stony Man pilot had flown into the Greenfield Municipal Airport in Iowa, rented a car and raced to Stuart. There he had emptied out Bolan’s rental, then called the rental company and told them where they could pick it up. After driving back to the airport, he had flown into Fort Wayne, bringing with him a few other items Bolan had requested, from Stony Man’s armory. While Brognola couldn’t officially sanction the mission, he wouldn’t leave Bolan out in the cold, with a cop’s daughter dead and justice to be served.
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