"My son was born in this country. He knows nothing of Puerto Rico."
"Perhaps you could call him. Then we could talk."
"He never calls. He never visits...It is very difficult for an old woman when her children are so far away."
"Well, maybe I will see you again, Mrs. Commacho."
After the door's bolt locked, he waited. No voices. He heard her steps across the floor. A chair squeaked when she sat down. No other footsteps.
On his way back to the stairwell, he took a newspaper from a doorway, rolled it tight. He started down the stairs.
He smelled the cologne of the young men. He maintained his pace down the stairs, making his steps loud in the stairwell. There were no shadows, no places for concealment there. When he came to the second-floor landing, he passed the hallway fire door, took three more loud steps, then spun around.
Even as the Puerto Rican kid jerked open the fire door and rushed onto the landing, Blancanales brought the rolled newspaper down on the boy's revolver. The pistol hit the floor. The kid gasped as Blancanales rammed his knee into his crotch. Then stepping behind the boy, the hardman locked an arm around his throat, lifting him from his feet.
An instant later, a second boy tried to sprint up the stairs. Blancanales flung the first boy at him. They both tumbled down the stairs. Before they hit the next landing, Blancanales followed them, kicking one, then the other as they rolled. He jumped on them, slipped plastic handcuffs on them.
Stunned, the first boy lay still. The second attempted to twist from the plastic around his wrists. He couldn't. But his legs thrashed out at Blancanales as he tried to stand. Blancanales kicked the boy in the nose, breaking it. Blood poured from his face.
Someone moved behind Blancanales. Spinning, he dropped to the stairs as he pulled his Browning double-action and aimed.
Hands in his slacks' pockets, Lyons leaned against the wall, grinning. "An excellent demonstration! How to capture two suspects without getting your hands dirty... However, you died while you were playing football with that punk's head. The third man came up behind you and shot you all full of holes."
"There isn't any third man," Blancanales told Lyons as he stood up, returned his Browning to his shoulder holster. He dusted off his sports coat. "And these two aren't suspects. I don't suspect them of anything. I knowthey are FALN. Give me a hand, we've got to drag them down to the cab."
Blancanales jerked the belt from the pants of one of the youths, cinched the boy's feet to the banister. Then he and Lyons pulled the other kid to his feet, walked him down the stairs.
"Not the cab," Lyons told him. "They've got a Cadillac parked at the curb. Back door's unlocked. We'll stack them up in the back seat."
At the tenement's entry, a third youth lay on his face, unconscious. His hands were tied with his shirt. Blancanales saw the boy, started, then grinned almost foolishly at Lyons.
"Ignore that punk," Lyons said with a straight face. "You said he doesn't exist."
They followed the yellow cab to a street near the docks. The agent in the cabbie's uniform parked, then started back to the Cadillac. Lyons motioned him away, left the Cadillac. Blancanales stayed with the three FALN soldiers.
"Can't have those three getting a look at you," Lyons told the agent.
"Yes, sir. Of course. So here it is." The agent glanced towards the steel door of a warehouse. "I called ahead and they sent out a man to unlock it. You won't be disturbed in there. The previous tenants imported very illegal substances — they won't be back for ten to fifteen years. I'll be parked right here in case you need the secure phone. Anything else you need, I don't want to know about it."
"What do you mean by that?" Lyons demanded. The agent started away. Lyons grabbed his arm, jerked him around to face Lyons again.
"You do what you have to do in there," the agent told him. "But it's not on my conscience. I volunteered for this case. But I didn't volunteer for what you're doing."
"You think we're a death squad? You think we're going to take those three boys in there and torture them?"
"Why did you ask for this place? That's exactly what I think."
"Let's hope that's what they think, too."
Lyons went to the steel door, dragged it open. Blancanales drove the Cadillac in. Lyons secured the door, walked through the warehouse's dim, reeking interior, checking the side doors. All chained and padlocked.
In the office, he found the tools and electronic devices he had requested. There were pliers, tin snips, hammers, and a butane hand torch. Also several coils of wire. For a moment, Lyons marveled at Gadget's micro-electronic wizardry, then he took wire and pliers and returned to the prisoners.
Blancanales dragged the three young men out of the Cadillac. He dropped them on the concrete. Lyons looped baling wire around their wrists and ankles.
Their wallets told them the youths' names. Bernardo, whom Blancanales had choked and thrown down the stairs. Manuel, whose face was now a mask of clotted blood from his broken nose. And Carlos, barely conscious, who bled from a long, shallow cut on the side of his head.
Lyons paced around the three boys, his hands in his pockets. He grinned like a devil. "Now boys, we talk. What did you want with my friend?"
Blancanales sat on the Cadillac's hood, watching the three boys.
"We tell you nothing!" Bernardo shouted. "Do what you want with us!"
"That's right, Bernardo." Lyons laughed. "We'll do what we want. And it will be you first."
They dragged Bernardo to the warehouse office, shut the door behind them. Blancanales wired the youth to a chair while Lyons fitted together the components of the butane torch.
"I'm ready to die for Puerto Rico," Bernardo declared.
Lyons turned on the torch, lit it. He twisted the knob until the flame became a tiny blue point.
Bernardo watched Lyons and the flame, the young man's eyes looking from the tall hardman to the point of intense blue fire hissing from the nozzle of the torch. Bernardo drew a shuddering breath, closed his eyes. He forced his breathing to calm. But he began to shake, as if from extreme cold, first his thighs, then his jaw. He tensed his shivering legs, clamped his jaw.
Lyons waved the flame past the young man's shoulder, the acetate of his shirt shrivelling. Bernardo flinched, his eyes opened wide for an instant. He closed his eyes again, ground his teeth.
"Wait." Blancanales pushed the torch away.
"What?"
"Perhaps we can reason with the boy."
"Forget it. Don't have time."
"Just wait." Blancanales turned back to the youth. "Who sent you out to take me?"
Bernardo didn't answer.
"Why did they send you to take me? Wouldn't it have been easier to shoot me? You could have shot me. But they told you to take me alive. Why?"
"I do as my leaders tell me."
"You're a good soldier, you do as you're told. Now you're in real trouble, you know that?"
"Keep your talk! I'm no fool! I will tell you nothing! Burn me, kill me! I am only one soldier, millions fight for Puerto Rico. Viva Puerto Rico libre!"
"Enough of this talk," Lyons interrupted, playing the heavy. "It's time to get this barbecue in motion."
"No!" Blancanales pushed Lyons back. "Boy, this is the truth. I want to talk to your commander. You take me to him, and you live. Your friends live."
"I will not betray..."
"No one's asking you to betray..."
"None of this!" Lyons stepped between Blancanales and the youth. "No deals! We'll get the information out of him. We'll cook him alive. He'll talk!"
Blancanales shoved Lyons aside. "You and me, kid, we go to your commander. Look at me, you can trust me. No betrayal. You blindfold me, lock me in a trunk, whatever is necessary to protect your commander. Your friends stay here. When I come back, your friends go free. No jail, no prison, no torture."
"And what if my commander tells me to kill you?" Bernardo asked.
Lyons laughed, sneered at Blancanales. "What do you say to
that, nice guy?"
Taking the young man's possessions from his pocket, Blancanales found Bernardo's wallet and opened it. Inside there were photos of the boy's family, girl friends. Blancanales held up a photo of Bernardo standing with his mother, father, younger sisters and brothers.
"If I don't come back..." he pointed to Lyons, "...first he kills your friends, then he kills your family."
Lyons grinned, wickedly.
Bernardo looked from Blancanales to Lyons, then back. "Can I talk with Manuel and Carlos?"
Blancanales snipped the wires binding Bernardo to the chair, then the wires around his ankles. "Go talk with your friends. We'll wait here."
From the office, they watched Bernardo squat beside his friends on the floor, talking with them. Lyons twisted the butane valve, watched the flame shrink to nothing.
"Acting like that gives me the creeps," he whispered to Blancanales. "Next time, you're the sadist."
"But you're so Aryan, such a monster!" Rosario joked. "I thought you'd actually fry the kid if I didn't work something out. But a softhearted old Latin like me... he knows too well!"
Lyons looked at his watch. Thirty-eight hours, twenty minutes. He glanced out at Bernardo. "If he won't take you to meet his commander, then we have to get the man's name from him. Whatever it takes. Whatever has to happen."
In the silence of the warehouse, the three boys' Spanish echoed. Finally, Bernardo returned to them. He nodded.
They went to the steel door, shoved it open. As Bernardo followed Blancanales out, Lyons stopped him. He put his fist against the boy's chest.
"My friend comes back. You understand? Do you understand me?"
"Entiendo."
He snipped the wire from the boy's wrists. Lyons waited until they walked around the corner, then sprinted to the waiting taxi, abandoning the securely tied Manuel and Carlos.
"You saw them?"
"Following!" The cabbie whipped a turn, accelerated.
"No need to stay close, I've got D.F.'s and mini-mikes on my partner. And give me the phone."
Lyons dialed for Gadgets, got him on the first ring. "Hardman Two's out and running. The boy said he'll take him to his commander."
"How's the signal?" Gadgets asked.
"Checking." Lyons held the phone hand-set under his chin, pulled the directional finder out of his pocket, flicked the switch. A steady beep-beep-beep-beep sounded for a moment, then fell off, the intervals between pulses becoming longer.
"Up ahead," the cabbie called back to Lyons. "They just took off in a taxi. How much distance do you want me to hold?"
"Keep them in sight, but keep traffic between you and them. If they make a turn and we miss it, we can pick them up with the D.F."
"What about the minimikes?" Gadgets asked.
"Just a second! I'm doing three things at once." Lyons switched on the receiver. Faint voices in English and Spanish came from the speaker. "Can hardly hear it. How close do we need to be?"
"Depends. How much concrete between them and you, how much other electronic activity. Play it by ear, as they say."
"Are you free? Can you get in a mobile unit?"
"You think you need me right now?"
"Hey, Hardman Two's going right into the mouth of the beast. He needs all the back-up he can get."
"On my way!"
Lyons broke the connection and dialed Agent Smith, his driver and liaison man. "Where are you? What kind of car you got now?"
"At the intersection of Broadway and Fourth. I'm driving a red ten-year-old Dodge. I'm wearing white painter's coveralls."
"Be ready to move. You got my box of magnums?"
"Yes, sir. What's going on? Sounds like things are getting hot."
"Hot? My partner's walking into hell. And we're going in two steps behind him."
7
Turning every few seconds to scan the traffic behind them, Bernardo gave the cab driver directions that weaved through the financial district. At one corner, the NYPD's phony power company barriers were up. The WorldFiCor was only a block away.
Blancanales looked past the barricade, saw a utility vehicle. There were no workers in the truck. Further up the street, two men in utility workmen's uniforms leaned against a parked car. Two men in suits sat in the front seat of the car. Blancanales looked over at Bernardo, watched him. But Bernardo only glanced at the barricade and told the driver to make another turn.
Several blocks later, they stopped for a traffic light at the edge of Chinatown. The cab driver turned to Bernardo and asked him, "Boy, do you know where you're going? Is someone following you? Are you looking for someone? What's going on with you?"
"It does not concern you," Bernardo snapped. "You're a driver, drive!"
"Sure, kid. Anywhere you want."
"Stop!" Bernardo shouted. "We get out here." He gave the driver a 10-dollar bill, and they walked through traffic to the sidewalk.
Bernardo scanned the cars and trucks passing them, then led Blancanales across the intersection. Again, he watched the traffic passing them, looking at several cars, staring at the faces of the drivers and passengers. He turned from the street, looking at the shoppers and tourists and neighborhood kids on the sidewalks.
Across the street, Blancanales saw Lyons pass in the phony yellow cab. He glanced at Bernardo, winked to Lyons. Lyons raised his eyebrows slightly as he hid his face behind a newspaper.
"Where now?" Blancanales asked Bernardo.
"Wait here." Bernardo went into a corner luncheonette and moved to the phone. He dialed a number, watching Blancanales while he talked.
Blancanales leaned against a light pole, talked to himself. The minimike was in his inside coat pocket.
"He's making a call. I tell you, this kid is one very paranoid young man. But he doesn't know anything about counter-surveillance. I think he's just a street kid that they recruited. Also, when we went past the WorldFiCor, he didn't even notice."
Looking back to the luncheonette, he saw Bernardo hang up and step outside. "Talk to you later, he's coming back."
Bernardo returned and held up a hand for a taxi. "The meeting is set," he told Blancanales. "But first, we..."
"We must lose any surveillance?"
"My commander instructed me to be very careful."
They took a taxi to the next block, got out, ran through traffic to the entry of a tenement. Bernardo led him through the central hallway to a back stairway. Up the stairs to the second floor, through a window to a fire escape, down the fire escape to an alley. They crossed the alley.
Bernardo pulled open the unlocked rear door of a restaurant and hurried through the kitchen. The cooks and dishwashers turned their backs. Blancanales saw a waiter go to the rear door, lock it. Then they wove between the tables. The few patrons didn't look up from their lunches and conversations.
Out on the street, Bernardo flagged another taxi. "Where to, kid?"
"Drive." Bernardo pointed straight ahead.
"We're sight-seeing," Blancanales explained.
"Tourists, huh?" The driver commented. "Where you from?"
"My friend here's from New York," Blancanales said, "but I'm from California." .
"California! First time in the big city?"
"No. But it's the first time I've had time to look around. Any tourist attractions around here?"
"Hey, man! This is Little Italy. Unless you're into crime, you know, gangsters, the mob, Mafia, you got to go uptown for tourist action."
"This is Little Italy? This where Lucky Luciano grew up?"
"Out!" Bernardo interrupted. "We're getting out here."
They dodged traffic as they crossed the avenue. Bernardo led Blancanales around a corner, and without breaking stride, pushed him through the side door of a waiting florist's van. Bernardo slid the door closed, then got into the driver's seat. They were alone in the van.
There were no windows in the back of the van. As Bernardo started the engine, he leaned back and said tersely, "If you try to look outside, no meet
ing. If you try to signal anyone, no meeting. Understand?"
"Entiendo."
Bernardo jerked a curtain shut, then raced into traffic. Blancanales rode in the dark van, his companion a funeral wreath.
* * *
Cruising through the narrow streets of shops and tenements, Lyons watched the sidewalks and cars for his partner. The afternoon's heat had thinned the pedestrians. Kids sat on steps sipping Cokes. Teenagers gulped from bag-wrapped beer cans, passed wine bottles. But he saw no Latin ex-Green Beret in a business suit walking with a twenty-year-old FALN soldier. He glanced into the cars in traffic, trying to keep his face concealed behind the headlines of that afternoon's paper. He knew the boy would be watching the traffic for surveillance: for him to see Lyons might mean death for Blancanales. Lyons knew his threats had impressed Bernardo, but the boy was only one of the soldiers in this operation. The others might not give a damn about Bernardo's friends and family.
The D.F. signal faded.
"Go north a few blocks," Lyons told his driver. The secure phone buzzed. Lyons grabbed it.
"This is Hardman Three," Gadgets said.
"Where are you?"
"Driving north on Broadway. Where are you?"
Lyons glanced out at a street sign. "We're going north on Allen. The D.F. signal's picking up. Must be gaining on it. Do you have a D.F. receiver you can pass to Smith?"
"Sure do. I'll call him, arrange a pass. You have anything on the minimike?"
"Nothing. You ready for action?"
"I'm ready for anything. Things are popping all over. You got the news yet?"
"What now?"
"They made some demands. Finally. The Bureau has a negotiation team talking with them now."
"Give me the details in person. Keep moving, let's try to keep the D.F. between us."
Lyons broke the connection, punched the code for the phone with Mr. Smith in Little Italy. "You still parked, Mr. Smith?"
"Yes, sir. Waiting for instructions."
"We're driving north on Allen Street. Make some speed, come up behind us. I'm in the yellow cab. When you get here, Hardman Three has a D.F. receiver for you. Further instructions when you make it up here. Hit it!"
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