Bolan saw the shadows spread over Judson's face and twist it up like a fist.
"One of the local glory boys you cut into this operation almost cost us big tonight by opening fire before the bikers got clear," Silverman yelled. "I want you to remember that. And if you don't, by God, I will."
"Careful, Silverman," Judson warned in a low voice, "you're treading awfully close to insubordination here."
"I can tread closer, Judson. I can tread insubordination all the way up to the review board if I have to. You either pull your head out of your ass on this operation now, or I promise you that's exactly where I'll head."
Bolan watched the tension between the two people escalate, showing in the solid jawline Silverman presented and in Judson's measured smoking motions. A small group of policemen had drifted nearby to overhear the heated debate, trying in vain to appear uninterested.
"You're out of line here, Silverman," Judson said in a soft voice Bolan had trouble hearing. "I suggest you remind yourself you're a responsible field agent and not some lovesick girl."
For a moment Bolan thought the woman was going to strike Judson. But the moment passed, and she jammed her fists in her coat pockets forcefully.
"Get fucked, Judson," she said through clenched teeth, then turned and strode away toward the yacht.
Judson grinned without mirth. He flicked ash from his cigar as he watched her walk away, then shifted his attention back to Bolan. "Coast Guard, huh?"
"Yeah. I'm on vacation." He hurried on before the DEA man could say anything else. "Gal's rough as a cob, ain't she?"
"She likes to think so."
"She was giving me hell just before you got here."
"Had every right to. What the hell is the Coast Guard doing involved in this?"
"It isn't exactly the Coast Guard. It's just me. I wandered into this by accident."
Judson rubbed his jaw as if trying to swallow the lie. "Yeah, yeah. Belasko, right?"
Bolan nodded affirmatively.
"You shoot Duncan?"
"Didn't give me a choice. Ask Silverman. Pissed off as she is right now, I think she'll still vouch for me."
"You better hope so, champ, because if she don't, I'm going to own your ass. And if it's not regulation Coast Guard equipment, I'm going to boot it just as high as I can. You understand me?"
"Yeah."
The DEA man blew out a lungful of smoke and choked on a sudden cough. When he regained his breath, he said, "You stay right here with the body, Belasko, and don't you shift your ass away from this scene till I say it's okay."
Judson clamped the cigar between his teeth again and sucked it into flaring life for effect, letting the warm orange glow drift across his craggy features. Then he turned and stalked off to trail in Silverman's wake through the crowd of law enforcement people.
Bolan glanced at the crowd held at bay by the yellow-slickered policemen, noticing that crews from the local media had begun arriving on the scene. One reporter was being pushed bodily from the cordoned area after slipping through the ranks of the police. His voice was keening and shrill, protesting about First Amendment rights. The policeman escorting the reporter was the same sergeant Silverman had addressed earlier, and he wasn't being gentle.
Shifting the Uzi out of sight under the folds of the trench coat, Bolan saw the interest of the onlookers gradually veer toward him and the corpse at his feet. Minicams aimed at him as camera flashes splashed against the dark water in the periphery of his vision. At this distance he knew the pictures would be vague concerning his features and his identity, but that could change in a handful of seconds if the media people ever broke the police lines even for just an instant.
He reached into his pocket for his wallet as a yellow-slickered policeman walked toward him with a hand gripping the upper arm of a handcuffed, bikini-clad woman from the Swift Tiger. He dropped it open as the policeman drew even with him. "Fields," he said. "I'm with the DEA." He shut the wallet before the policeman could glimpse the dark emptiness it held.
"What do you want?" the policeman asked.
"I'd like to change prisoners," Bolan replied, indicating the corpse at his feet.
The cop smiled and shook his head. "No way, Jack. I got a live one — I don't need a dead one. This lady's my ticket to a nice, warm and dry squad car while you guys sort everything out in the rain. I'm not interested."
"This isn't what you'd call a request, guy," Bolan said in a firm voice as he stepped to prevent the policeman from moving on. "Judson is going to want to talk to all the people from the yacht and wants us to see to it they're kept separate instead of being crammed into squad cars like cattle."
"Fuckin' DEA assholes," the cop mumbled.
"What was that, officer?"
The cop looked up at Bolan and glared. "Not a goddamn thing, sir. I'll be happy to exchange prisoners, sir, happy to stand out here in this goddamn rain for hours on end guarding this scumbag's body."
Bolan grinned as he slid his arm through the woman's in place of the cop's. She looked up at him doubtfully, flinching at his touch. She was young and dark haired, with the kind of lean body that complimented the bikini rather than being complimented. "Spoken like a trooper," he said as he guided his charge away.
"Horseshit," the cop said. "Sir."
"Look at it this way — maybe you'll get lucky and get your face plastered across People magazine or Newsweek."
"And take a chance on getting my ass blown away while I'm off duty by some two-bit pusher who recognizes me and thinks I'm an undercover officer? No, thank you."
Bolan led the woman up the steps to the parking area, searching the crowd down by the yacht for Silverman or Judson.
"Hey!"
Bolan looked over his shoulder at the young cop standing over Duncan's body.
"I want them cuffs back when you're through with them, ace. The DEA ain't so damn hard up they can't spring for the cost of a pair of their own."
Bolan waved at him reassuringly and hustled the woman through the police ranks. He paused by an unmarked car and drew the attention of the uniformed policeman standing in front of it. "I'm supposed to take her to the hospital," he told the cop. "She's tripping on something and Judson wants to make sure she stays alive. Somebody iced Duncan, and Judson figures she might be able to give us a line on Duncan's connections." He guided her inside the car as he talked.
"She looks okay to me," the officer said, peering after her.
"I wasn't aware we had any doctors moonlighting at the local PD," Bolan said dryly. "Just give me a minute and I'll go tell Judson you think it's just a false alarm." He settled behind the wheel and shut the door, rolling the window down.
"Get in the damn car," the officer said. He glared balefully.
Bolan smiled and dragged the flashing red light from the top of the car. "I'm in. Now, you want to see about getting me out of here?"
The cop put his hands on the door. "I'll be glad when you DEA shitheels clear out of the area and let us get back to real police work. If I'd been running this show, we'd have busted those bikers, too. What kind of arrangement you guys got with them anyway?"
"Ask Judson."
"Judson ain't telling nobody shit."
"You want to see about getting me out of here before it gets any more crowded?"
The cop made a face and shook his head. "Sure. Why the hell not? We done everything else for you guys we could. I tell you one thing, though — this is the first time I ever been on a bust with the DEA, and it's been a hell of a letdown. Next time I'm asked to put in some overtime to help cover one of these things, I'm going to try to call in sick."
Bolan shook his head in sympathy and watched the cop move away from the unmarked car as he rolled up the window. The yellow-slickered arms waved in opposite directions, like a raincoat-clad Moses parting a human sea. The Executioner hit the ignition and tapped the accelerator, placing the big car's bulk behind the cop to emphasize the man's commands. People moved and a path was made. He edged forwa
rd, taking time to glance at the small group gathered by an ambulance, parked near the yacht, with its doors open. Evidently the Swift Tiger hadn't been taken without cost. The whirling cherry-red slashes fell across the faces of Silverman and Judson, illuminating the fact that their personal argument still raged.
"Who are you?" the woman asked. She sat with her back against the passenger door, her arms cuffed behind her. Her dark eyes kept darting nervously from the crowd surrounding them to Bolan.
"For right now," Bolan said as he steered the big car around a news van, "I figure I'm maybe the best friend you got."
"You ain't no cop, guy. I saw your wallet when you buzzed the cop you took me from. You might've fooled and browbeat the junior woodchuck into believing you, but I know I didn't see no tin inside your wallet."
Bolan paused, waiting as the policeman cleared pedestrians to one side, then tapped the accelerator impatiently to slide through the brief opening. He watched it close behind him immediately in the rearview mirror.
"Ain't you going to answer me?" the woman asked.
"No."
"How about if I roll down this window and scream my lungs out?"
Bolan gained the street and made his way back toward the warehouse where he'd left Cullen bound and gagged. The area was hot, roasting even, but it was still wide open for infiltration. And he was betting neither enemy camp in Miami would be looking for him to stay in the marina area. Especially not when both were looking to recoup the losses suffered during the night.
"They're your lungs," he said as he dropped the window a couple inches to let in some of the cool night air. The car was stuffy and hot. "But you might ask yourself if you really want to spend the rest of the night answering questions for the local detectives and the DEA." He glanced at her and saw the indecision twist her features. "I figure you're a smart girl."
She slumped against the door and watched the wipers swish across the windshield. "I hope you're right," she said, then turned back to face him. "You aren't with Hunsaker, are you?"
"No." Bolan turned the name over in his mind, trying to find a niche for it unsuccessfully.
"In case you didn't know, Hunsaker is Duncan's boss. Was, I guess I should say. Duncan's dead now. But I guess you knew that."
"Yeah."
"It's funny," she went on. "I knew you weren't a cop the minute I laid eyes on you, but I don't figure you for one of Hunsaker's boys, either."
"I'm not." Bolan looked at her, stared into the dark eyes and watched her wet her lips nervously. "Hunsaker was Duncan's boss?"
"Yeah. I thought you knew that."
"No."
"That's why I figured you were one of Hunsaker's boys at first. Hunsaker's too used to dealing with people in the straight world, too used to hiring people to watch the people he hires. He figured Duncan would have fucked him over if he got the chance. He was right. Only Duncan never got the chance."
"Who's Hunsaker?"
The woman looked at him in wide-eyed disbelief. "Who the hell are you, mister?"
"A guy looking for answers," Bolan responded. "And I need them fast because the cops are going to be moving on this even faster."
"Aren't you some kind of competition? Duncan had told some of us that the local Mafia families were getting pissed off about the deal Hunsaker had set up with the Colombians. Then when I saw you take this car from the cop as bold as brass, I thought maybe you were one of the hard guys from the families. Duncan'd had some shit with them over the last few weeks, but he wasn't worried about it."
"Maybe he should have been."
"Yeah. Maybe he should have."
Bolan turned off the highway and coasted down a twisting road leading back to the marina. He came to a stop in a dark section of the black-topped parking area and switched off the ignition. The sailboat was a little over a couple of klicks back the way he had come. It wouldn't take long to get back there, and maybe most of the law enforcement teams would be gone by then. He knew he'd need some of the hard-punch ordnance he had stored aboard the boat once he got his sights refocused. The battle for Miami's newest high-profit shipping line was only heating up. When he looked back at the woman, he saw bright tears filling the dark eyes.
"So, what's it going to be? You going to leave me handcuffed and drop me in the ocean somewhere?" Her voice cracked as she spoke.
Bolan reached inside his trench coat.
The woman's eyes widened in fear as she glimpsed the hardware strapped across his body.
Taking a lock pick from the kit in an inside pocket, Bolan said, "Let me see those cuffs."
The woman moved as if she was made of disjointed sticks held together by baling wire. She trembled under his touch as he picked the lock, then she rubbed her wrists once he'd removed the handcuffs and tossed them into the rear seat.
Putting the lock pick away, Bolan retrieved five hundred dollars in big bills and spread them out on the seat between them. He smiled. "The deal is this — you tell me what you know about Duncan and the cocaine operation, and you get the five hundred and you walk. If I get the feeling you're lying to me, I'll handcuff you to this car and give the local cop shop a call and tell them where to find you."
"Hey, man, you won't get nothing but the straight shit from me. You can bank on it."
Bolan indicated the five hundred-dollar bills. "I already am."
4
Piper Silverman studied the fat lazy bubbles trapped inside the five-gallon bottle sitting on the water dispenser in the hallway of the police station. As she filled her plastic cup, she watched them form, slowly oozing free from the neck of the water bottle to wobble unsteadily upward. Rolling, sleekly fat, they floated out of control to smash against the top of the almost-full bottle. At the moment it seemed to her that her career was just like one of those bubbles, kicking free of the earthly shackles that made up most of her workdays to smash helplessly against the vicious upper crust of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Against Frank Judson.
She drank the water, so hyped-up on the events of the past few hours that her senses seemed to hover close to the point of overload. The coldness flooded her mouth in unaccustomed intensity, bringing a brief, biting pain to her throat as she swallowed. The smell of the plastic cup was rank, cloying, and gave the water an unpleasant aftertaste.
But the aftertaste was nowhere near as sharp or unpleasant as the one she got every time she thought of Judson.
She crumpled the cup and dropped it into the small basket beside the watercooler.
"Bad day?" a man's voice inquired.
She turned to face the speaker, logging his name with difficulty because everything else was on her mind so much. Roger Baskins was the local DEA agent and would have been running the Miami operation if Judson hadn't insinuated himself into it as coordinator for the group. She gave the man a wan smile. "More like a bad life," she responded with more feeling than she'd intended. Her hands still quivered when she thought how close the violence had come to reaching out for the innocents at the Swift Tiger. Too often her mind continued to play tricks on her, transposing the features of the dead biker with the ones of the man she'd feared had been lying there. She could still taste the bile at the back of her throat from having thrown up after achieving a brief respite from Judson's attention.
Baskins slipped a plastic cup from the supply mounted on the wall and filled it. "You got a real asshole for a supervisor, you know that?"
"Yes. I think half of the Florida law enforcement agencies know that by now."
Baskins's green eyes twinkled. "1 really doubt the numbers are that high. Truth to tell, Judson's keeping a pretty tight lid on what went down at the marina."
"Too bad he couldn't control things there a little better, though."
"Are you talking about Duncan getting wasted?"
The image of the dead biker flickered through Silverman's mind again, causing goosebumps to race up her arms. She hugged herself, willing her mind away from the possibilities that had existed there and trying in vain to m
ake herself believe those possibilities weren't increasing every moment. She nodded in response to the man's question. "None of it was worked out very well ahead of time, Roger. You were there. You saw how everything seemed to go down the tubes at once. Duncan's death is going to curtail the activity Judson promised the local heroes, and it's easy to see they're not going to take that lightly. The Miami PD has put a lot of man-hours into developing the Swift Tiger connection themselves."
"I know. Have you met Carruthers?"
"The guy heading up the local vice section?"
Baskins nodded. "The very one. He's not a nice man to screw around with, kid, and I don't think your supervisor has realized how thoroughly he's worn out his welcome in these parts."
"Carruthers isn't a happy camper, right?"
"Carruthers isn't anything but livid right now, Piper." Baskins refilled his plastic cup and glanced down the hallway.
Silverman followed his glance, listening to the clack of heels passing across the tiled floor of the hallway. Men and women in plainclothes and uniforms drifted in and out of different doorways. Most of them looked tired, and she knew the majority of them had been involved in the containment of the Swift Tiger, whether by being there in person or by covering extra shifts so others could be. Part of her, the part she tried to keep hidden when she worked in districts other than her own, felt sorry for them. The yacht's capture hadn't yielded much in the way of contraband — hardly enough to warrant mention in the media. Except that three officers fell in the brief exchange of gunfire. One of them wouldn't be getting back up.
She looked back at Baskins and saw hesitation move across the worn face of the older man. She picked up the uneasiness from the agent instantly, feeling it pierce her like icicles. "This isn't a chance meeting at the office water-cooler, is it, Roger?"
He looked at her briefly, then looked away, speaking over her head but only at a volume loud enough for her to hear. "I got a friend in vice, Piper, who tells me Carruthers has organized a war party for the bikers who got away tonight. My friend tells me Carruthers is figuring on regaining some media points tonight by rounding them up."
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