Ivory Wave

by Don Pendleton

  “There’s your stuff.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Nada.”

  “Thanks,” Bolan said. “I know it was a pain.”

  Mott’s hard face broke into a grin.”You kidding? There’s not much I like to do more than flying, and the few things on that list, nobody will pay me for.”

  “Well, I appreciate it just the same. Would have been bad if that stuff had fallen into the wrong hands.”

  “You need anything else?”

  Bolan knew what he meant. Mott was a good guy to have on your side in a fight. He had plenty of combat experience, and he never backed down. But although he was good at it, that wasn’t what he loved. He loved being airborne, with the wind under his wings and the world spread out below him. Bolan thought it was a way of getting some distance from the things he had seen and done. Finding a new perspective. He didn’t respect the man any less for it. “No,” he said. “I think I’m good.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Yes,” Bolan said. “You spending the night?”

  “I’m all fueled up and ready to go,” Mott replied.

  “Time for dinner?”

  “Not if I’m getting home before midnight,” Mott said. “Besides, nobody should have to eat with you until you’ve had that shower.”

  Bolan couldn’t argue. He shook the big pilot’s hand and watched him go.

  * * *

  HE WENT BACK to the Devilweed warehouse after a shower, a meal and several cups of coffee. He felt sharper and cleaner and ready for action. He had on his blacksuit and fine black leather gloves, and though he wished he had a smaller, less distinctive vehicle, he had a zippered leather bag in the truck’s cab containing everything he thought he might need. He had already detached the trailer so he could use the tractor alone when he drove around town.

  Between the shower and dinner, he had called the distribution company and asked to speak to Mr. Fowler. The manager had come back from wherever he had gone, and Bolan had identified himself as Tom Kenner, a man who was planning to open a new smoke shop in the Chicago suburbs. He said he was in town only for the evening, and if Mr. Fowler could spare him a few minutes, he’d like to discuss opening an account with the company.

  When he arrived—again, parking the truck out of sight of the building—he brought his zippered bag and moved through the shadows. He didn’t really want to open an account, so it wouldn’t matter that when Fowler saw him he wouldn’t be dressed or equipped like any other head-shop owner in history.

  He reached the front door and tried it, finding it locked. Lights burned inside, though, and a car was parked outside the front door, so chances were Fowler was inside waiting for him, and wouldn’t have set the alarm. The lock was nothing sophisticated, and a minute’s effort with a rake and a tension tool took care of it. Bolan pushed the door open just enough to slip inside.

  The main bank of overhead fluorescent fixtures was turned off, but there were lights on upstairs in a couple of the offices. Bolan had seen only one car, and he hoped Fowler was here alone. If he wasn’t, then it would be a bad night for more than just the owner. Bolan walked between the shelving fixtures, spotting a section packed with boxes of Ivory Wave, waiting to be shipped out across the country.

  Satisfied, he climbed the stairs.

  At the top, the row of offices stretched away from the staircase. The door to the second office was open and light spilled from inside. Bolan heard voices as well, soft whispers. He moved silently to the door and looked in.

  A man was sitting at his desk, with a woman sitting on his lap, or near enough. He looked as if he might have been a hippie once—a recovering hippie, Bolan thought. His hair was mostly gray but with a few dark patches, and it was on the longish side, covering his ears and curling where it reached the collar of his company-logo polo shirt. He had a tattoo on his right forearm, mostly covered by dark tangled hair. Bolan could see that arm, because he had it wrapped around the woman and it faced the door. The other hand was lost inside her blouse. There was plenty of territory there to get lost in.

  She had dark brown hair and wore the pale pink shirt the man was mining beneath, and what looked like designer jeans. She was slender but curvy, and if Bolan was any judge of body language, everything that was going on between them was the man’s doing, and not hers. She was going along with it, but not by choice. Bolan’s guess was that the man was Fowler, the big boss, and she let him have his way with her in order to protect her paycheck.

  That was how it looked to Bolan, anyway. The guy moved his head in to nip at her neck and she flinched, then gave a phony-sounding giggle, as if to say she was only playing hard to get but didn’t really mean it when she tried to avoid his lips.

  Bolan stepped into the room, tired of the game. “Are you Fowler?”

  Startled, the man came up out of his chair, tipping the woman off his lap. She stumbled and hit the side of her head against his desk. “Who the hell are you?” the man asked.

  “Are you Fowler?” Bolan asked again.

  “Yes, okay, I’m Fowler. Are you Kenner?”

  Bolan ignored the question and knelt beside the woman, who was sitting up and rubbing her head. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, thanks,” she said. She had a sweet smile, with one front upper tooth that snagged her lip. “I’m such a klutz.”

  “My fault,” Bolan said.

  Fowler was standing up, staring at Bolan, who didn’t look at all like a customer. A scowl worked its way across his face. “What do you really want, Mr. Kenner?”

  Bolan helped the woman to her feet. “I think it might be a good idea if you left,” he said to her.

  She looked at Fowler, as if for permission. “Don’t bother with him,” Bolan said. She took his meaning and hurried from the office. In another moment, he heard her footsteps clicking down the stairs. He was quiet for another minute, until he heard the shush of the front door. Then he turned back to Fowler.

  “What the hell do you mean by showing up here like this?” Fowler demanded. “Peggy works for me. You don’t tell her what to do.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be an issue much longer.” Bolan said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ll be asking the questions from now on,” Bolan told him. “And I suggest you answer promptly and honestly.”

  Fowler reached for the cell phone on his desk. “I think I’ll call the police now—”

  Bolan moved faster than Fowler could even see, snatching the phone from his hand and hurling it against the far wall of the office. “Hey!”

  The soldier shoved him back down in his chair. “How much Ivory Wave do you move?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bolan smacked him across the mouth once. “Answer my question.”

  “I don’t know, a lot,” the guy said. “A couple thousand cases a year, anyway. I don’t know the total weight because I don’t know what’s in a package. Twenty-four packages per case, so whatever that is. I got a deal with my cousin to be the exclusive distributor for the Northwest. We’ll probably double before the end of next year.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “Should it? It’s a nice piece of change.”

  “It’s killing people, Fowler.”

  “Look, everything we sell is perfectly legal.”

  Bolan shook his head. “I keep hearing that, but what you have here isn’t exactly as legal as you guys have made it out to be, is it? I know about the drugs.”

  “Hey buddy, you got it all wrong. You can even bring dogs in here to search the place. Ain’t nothing that they’d find.”

  “Only because you’ve hidden it so well. It’s killing people, Fowler. Did you hear me?”

  “About killing people?”

  “Right.”

>   “Anything can kill if it’s misused,” Fowler said. “You can kill someone with a box of chocolates.”

  “You’re missing the point. You’re selling poison, and people are using it as intended, and they’re dying from it. The legality of it isn’t the issue. Just because the authorities haven’t caught on to your scam yet doesn’t make it a nonissue. Dead people in graves are the issue here.”

  “None of that’s my fault. If we weren’t selling it, someone else would.”

  “That’s the oldest excuse in the world,” Bolan replied.

  “You have a problem with free enterprise?”

  “Not at all.”

  “What, then?”

  “I have a problem with kids dying too young,” Bolan said. “Seems like something that every decent human being ought to understand.”

  Fowler’s expression was between fear and loathing, but he seemed to be trying to make himself look meaner than he felt. He crossed and recrossed his arms and swallowed hard.

  “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Is there something else you need, or do you want to get out of my place of business now?”

  “Oh, we’re a long way from done.” He hadn’t been able to determine, either from the packaging or the paperwork he had picked up in Makin, where the stuff was manufactured, and by whom. There was no brand name on the package other than IW Labs, which he guessed stood for Ivory Wave. He had asked the experts at Stony Man Farm to look into it, and even they had come up blank. IW Labs wasn’t a corporation or a registered “doing business as” anywhere. “Where do you get your supply?”

  “We buy it. I told you, I got a cousin,” Fowler said. Instantly he braced for impact, as if he knew that he had just earned another blow. Bolan stood back with his hands on his hips and a wry smile on his face.

  “Might be easier if I let you hit yourself,” Bolan said. “But that would deprive me of a certain amount of pleasure. You know what I mean. And if you buy it, that means you’ve got records, contact information. I need to know where it comes from.”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because if you don’t, then there’ll be nothing at all keeping you alive. Does that sound like a good reason?”

  “Bullshit! You’d actually kill me over that? I don’t think so,” Fowler said.

  “In a heartbeat.”

  “Look, my sources are confidential. There are certain people that like to remain anonymous. I do my job and I get paid.”

  Bolan slid open his jacket to reveal his Beretta 93-R and cocked an eyebrow.

  Fowler gestured toward a filing cabinet. “I’ve got their information in there.”

  “Get it.”

  Bolan moved close enough to grab the man if he needed to. He was sure Fowler had the information on his computer, too. If he wanted to pull a paper copy, that would be easier for Bolan to take with him. But if he went for anything else in the cabinet, like a gun, he wanted to be able to reach Fowler before he could use it.

  “That woman,” Bolan said while Fowler riffled through the files.

  “Peggy?”

  “Yeah. It appears that she doesn’t like you.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you force yourself on her anyway? How can that be worthwhile?”

  “That’s what makes it fun,” Fowler said. He couldn’t keep an ugly leer from his face. Bolan had to restrain himself from punching out the guy right then. If he needed to, he could find the paperwork. It would just take longer.

  But then Fowler said, “Here it is.” He drew a manila file folder from the drawer and handed it to Bolan. The tab had IW printed on it in black marker. He looked inside and found records of shipments received and checks cut, and an address in Cleveland of a company called IW Bath.

  “Do they deliver it to you, or ship it?”

  “They send down a truck,” Fowler replied. “We write a check as soon as we’ve processed the shipment, and put it in the mail.”

  “You know the principals?”

  “Never met them—just my cousin who sets it up,” Fowler said. Bolan didn’t think he was lying. “The truck driver is usually one of three guys, or sometimes a couple of them together. All my communication with the higher-ups is by phone or email.”

  Bolan unzipped his bag and started to put the file in it. “You want a copy of that?” Fowler asked.

  “No, this is fine.”

  “But I need that.”

  “No, you don’t,” Bolan stated.

  “What?”

  “You don’t need paperwork anymore, because you’re going out of the Ivory Wave business,” Bolan told him.

  “What the hell—”

  “Look at it this way,” Bolan said. “When I take that file with me, it’ll be the one thing that survives the fire.”

  “Fire? What fi—” A crestfallen look settled on his face. “Listen, I don’t know who the hell you are, but this has gone far enough.”

  “I’m just getting started,” Bolan said. He turned his back on the man and started for the door.

  He heard the rasp of a desk drawer and spun, dropping the heavy bag and snatching his Beretta 93-R from its shoulder holster. He expected to see a gun in the man’s hand, but instead Fowler had drawn a big knife, an ornately etched bowie knife. It was a showpiece, not a serious weapon, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t do some damage. Fowler charged him, mindless of the gun in Bolan’s hand. The soldier holstered the weapon as quickly as he had drawn it, and prepared for the man’s attack.

  Fowler ran at him, his right hand holding the knife in front of him. Bolan sidestepped the attack, letting the blade slide past him, and caught the arm on either side of the elbow. With the same motion, he pushed up on the man’s arm from both sides, snapping the elbow. Fowler shrieked and pulled away, stumbling as he went. As Fowler lurched through the open doorway, his feet looked for traction on the walkway outside, and a pained scream erupted from his lips. His legs got in each other’s way and he lost his balance, running into the railing. Bolan started toward him, but too late. The man tumbled over the side, arms pinwheeling, the scream full-throated now, piercing the silence of the warehouse. He hit the floor below with a wet, awful thump.

  12

  By the time Bolan reached him, Fowler had gasped its last and the sense of urgency to complete the mission was getting stronger.

  Bolan didn’t feel bad for Fowler. He had helped kill Angela Fulton, and who knew how many others, simply for the sake of his bank account. And the man had meant to kill him. The world was better off without him.

  The soldier reached into his bag to begin his real work for the night, placing incendiary devices in locations chosen carefully to inflict maximum damage to the supply of Ivory Wave. But he froze, listening intently, and eased the Beretta from its holster. He sniffed the air, but the smells of Fowler’s blood and death covered up anything else. Still, he was convinced he wasn’t alone.

  “Come on out,” he said. “With your hands where I can see them.”

  Peggy emerged from within the shelving units. “How did you know...?”

  “It’s just something you do,” Bolan said, “if you want to survive. I’m very good at surviving.”

  She waved toward the corpse of her employer. “You have no idea how many times I’ve fantasized about something like that,” she said. Bolan saw that her lips were parted more than they had been upstairs, where she’d clamped them together anxiously. There was a slight sheen on her forehead and cheeks.

  “You really should go,” he told her. “What I’m doing here could be dangerous.”

  “I’ve already got the impression that you’re a dangerous man.” Her voice was breathy. “Who are you?”

  “Please, Peggy,” he said. “You’ve got to go now. No more questions, no stall
ing. Just go.”

  “But—”

  “No,” he said. “Go. Now.”

  She looked as if she was going to offer up another argument—or something else—but she saw in his eyes that he meant it. “Whatever,” she said. “Just...thanks. For shaking up my world. I needed a kick in the pants, and you gave it to me. Don’t worry, I won’t say a word—for one thing, I don’t want anyone to know I was here when Jed died.”

  “Thanks,” Bolan said.

  “By the way, the security cameras record to hard drives stored in that last office.” She pointed up the stairs. “You’ll want to make sure you deal with those.”

  “Thanks for that, too.”

  “And if you change your mind, I...never mind. You look like a man who can figure things out if he wants to. If you change your mind, find me.”

  “I’ll do that,” Bolan said. He knew he wouldn’t. She might be a fascinating woman, but he didn’t have time for her now, and he didn’t expect to anytime soon.

  This time he watched her until she was actually out the front door. When she was, he went to it and threw the bolt, locking her out. Of course, she might have a key, but he didn’t think she’d be back this night.

  The next time she did come back, there wouldn’t be a warehouse here anymore.

  * * *

  HE STARTED UPSTAIRS, to the room she had pointed out. There were a few computers, and Bolan guessed that the business files were backed up to them, in addition to the security video. He yanked out all the cables and threw the equipment out the door. It sailed over the railing and crashed onto the floor below, shattering on impact. He tossed an armed white phosphorous grenade onto the pile. On his way past Fowler’s office, he yanked the pin on an incendiary device and tossed the canister under the manager’s desk.