Firebase Seattle

by Don Pendleton

  “I wonder … I just wonder,” Brognola mused. “Could they use subs to make underwater transfers?”

  Bolan shrugged. “Why not? It sounds wild, I know—but the whole damn idea is wild, so why pose limits?”

  Turrin said, “Right. For that matter, they could be putting vaults right out there under the water. Why not, eh? What could be better than a secret bank beneath the waters of Puget Sound?”

  Brognola muttered, “How much of a work force do they have out there?”

  Bolan shook his head. “I don’t know, Hal. The only people actually staying on the island are the hard force. I did get a bit of intel that leads me to believe that they’ve even brought their workers in from somewhere outside the country.”

  “Sandhogs,” Turrin said. “It would take pro’s for this.”

  “Must have some good powder men, too,” Brognola observed. “There’s plenty of the stuff stored here.”

  “Good thing it wasn’t stored by the door,” Turrin said with a chuckle.

  Bolan cocked an eyebrow and asked, “How much powder?”

  “Oh hell, I’d say … tons, maybe. How much is in a keg?”

  Bolan shrugged. “I’ve never used it in that form.”

  “Well there’s twenty kegs to those crates.” Brognola glanced at his notebook “I just made a rough estimate on the number of crates. I guessed forty.”

  Bolan said, “That’s interesting.”

  “How interesting?” Brognola asked.

  “There must be a good supply on the island, too.”

  “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  Bolan smiled. “There has to be a solution, Hal.”

  “I guess I better call my marshals in,” Brognola decided. “I don’t know about you two, but I’ve had enough of this place.”

  Bolan said, “We still have a lot to discuss, Hal. But you may as well get the guys started. In this weather, it will take them a while to get here.”

  Brognola nodded and moved forward to the mobile phone. Turrin called after him, “Have ’em bring a meat wagon, too. I counted four bodies out there, in bits and pieces.” He turned to Bolan with a sigh. “Hal’s pretty well shaken by all this. I guess you’ve noticed that, too. Theories are one thing. Seeing is something else. How do you really read this, Mack?”

  “It’s the Thing, all right,” Bolan quietly replied.

  “I’m sure it is, yeah. I didn’t mean that. I mean, what the hell do you do about it? It’s already beyond Hal. He knows it, and that’s what has hold of his guts. He needs a naval task force, not a platoon of marshals.”

  “Hal stays clear until I’m done,” Bolan said frostily. “That understanding is implicit any time we come together. You know that.”

  “Sure. You do have a plan, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I ask …?”

  “If I get lucky,” Bolan told him, “I’ll blow the whole works out of the water. That won’t turn the world around, exactly, but at least it’ll confuse the hell out of things for a while. In the meantime, maybe Hal and his people can get something going.”

  Leo Turrin was not convinced. “Hey, you know, we’re all in this. I mean, it’s my world, too. I got a wife and kids, right? And this thing is just too big. Too big, Mack. I think you should let Hal skull it through from here.”

  Bolan stubbornly shook his head. “I don’t know whose world it is, Leo, but it’s my game. Hal will get completely bogged down with the legalities of the thing. Meanwhile the enemy dances lightly away and pops up again another day to try again. No. I’ve got to show them the cost, Leo. And it has to be heavy.”

  “Yeah,” Turrin said, grudgingly agreeing.

  “How about those two hundred hardmen? Where are they?”

  “Stashed around town somewhere. We’ve got a meet for eight o’clock this morning. Not the Indians, just the chiefs. But they were all checked in before midnight.”

  “Do you know any of those troops, Leo? I mean, know.”

  Turrin shook his head in a slow negative. “Not even the chiefs. I gather they were all recruited directly by Franciscus. He has the Seattle contract for your head, by the way. Combat guy. I guess he’s dangerous. The old men love him.”

  “Get those guys on the island for me, Leo. Get them there before dawn. All of them.”

  “What? You crazy? If you’re—oh! I get. Clean sweep, eh?”

  “That’s the general idea. So far I’m not sure how. But can you get them there?”

  “Oh, well … that’s my element, Tactician.” Turrin grinned sourly. “I’ll get them there. All I have to do is tell the truth, or shades of it.”

  “Here’s a kicker for you. You can show Franciscus the minipak I implanted on the roof. Parapet, outside railing, south wall. Also the whole joint is strung with micropickups. But dammit, Leo—don’t go on too strong. This guy is pretty sharp.”

  “Yeah, well, let me worry about the hard things. You take care of the easy ones. Go blow up the damn island, will you?”

  “She blows at dawn,” Bolan promised.

  19: DOMINO SET

  Leo Turrin bit down savagely on his cigar and spoke around it via the side of his mouth to snarl, “What the hell is this, guy? Don’t tell me you’re laying around here on your dead ass in fancy pajamas while this Bolan is romping all over your town!”

  The Captain could not believe his ears. He shook a sleep-fogged head, zeroing attention onto his executive officer, Harve Mathews. “What is this, Harve? Who is this guy? Get him out of here!”

  “This is Mr. Turrin, Captain—our liaison. He insisted—I didn’t know—he says it’s urgent. Just busted right in.”

  “I’m gonna bust some asses, too,” Turrin raged on. “I never saw such a disgraceful—what kind of a junior commando outfit is this, anyway? Get outta that fuckin’ bed, you looneytune! The fuckin’ guy is taking your whole thing apart for you!”

  Franciscus threw back the covers and leapt to his feet. “What?” he howled.

  “You don’t lay on your ass while this guy’s” in town! He’ll jerk it right out from under you while you’re liftin’ your leg to pee! While you lay here sleeping in fancy pajamas, he’s got the whole damned joint wired for sound! Don’t you ever shake it down? Don’t you have any goddam electronic security, for crissakes!”

  Franciscus was stunned, dazed by the verbal attack. He directed a wavery gaze toward Mathews and commanded, “Coffee, Harve. Lace it good. Give some to the mouth here, too. Then sound reveille. Roll everybody out.”

  “Mr. Turrin has people running all over the penthouse,” the exec reported as he moved toward a bar in the corner of the bedroom.

  “He has what?”

  “Damn right!” the liaison shouted. “We’re shaking you down, jake! I was told that you limberdicks out here knew what you were doing! Listen, boy scouts in my town know better.” He tossed a small, plasticized sphere, roughly the size of a quarter, onto the bed. “I walked right in outta the cold and picked that off one of your chandeliers! You know what that is, dammit? Do you know?”

  “Bugged!” the Captain said in a hollow voice.

  Turrin cried, “Ahhh shit!” and swaggered to the window, stuck both hands in his pockets, and turned his back to it all.

  He had the guy shook, yeah. It could be an unnerving experience, awakening to something like that. It’d happened to Leo Turrin a time or two; he knew.

  He lit his cigar and gazed into the night for a while, giving the “elite” time to compose themselves. When he turned back to them, Franciscus was dressed in pants and shirt, had a cigarette going, held a coffee cup in one hand and Bolan’s bug in the other. Mathews stood stiffly to the side, eyes on the floor.

  In a much milder tone, Turrin called over, “Ay. I’m sorry, eh. I shouldn’t come in like that. I get too excited. Sorry if I fucked up the protocol or what d’you call it. But hey, I’ve had my boys out for hours, running this thing down.”

  “What do you mean?” F
ranciscus asked, the voice crisp, now—but not unfriendly.

  Turrin waved the cigar in a circle and moved slowly back to the center of the room. “I can’t expect a guy with your—I mean, you know, my boys knew all that crap before they got ten years old. Otherwise they’d never reached ten years old. Know what I mean? Street ways. You should get your boys to shaking this joint. Check the window ledges, inside and out. Even the walls outside. This’s a top floor—right? Better check the roof. There’s a relay rig somewhere around here.”

  “How do you know that for sure?” Franciscus barked.

  “Common sense would be enough,” Turrin replied loftily. “But I got more than that to go on. It’s all over the damn streets.”

  “What is?”

  Turrin’s tagman poked head and shoulders through the doorway and called in, “Hey boss.”

  “Come on in, Jocko.”

  The little guy had his hands cupped together, bearing a near overflow of quarter-size gadgets. He stepped up and deposited them on the bed, then went to stand behind his boss before reporting, “Chick sends it. He says he thinks it’s clean now.”

  The Franciscus gaze jerked away from the embarrassing evidence. “What is all over the streets?” he asked, the voice dimming again.

  “You have a guy named Helmann up here last night?”

  A sick look briefly transited that military countenance.

  Mathews jerked noticeably.

  Turrin said, “Sure you did. The local cops know it. The feds know it. The whole damn town by now knows it. Bolan blitzed in here sometime last night and wired you. He recorded you and the Helmann guy in dark conference. The feds have that conversation, Johnny.”

  “Find that transmitter, Harve,” the Captain quietly commanded.

  Mathews moved quickly out of the room.

  Franciscus showed his visitor a strained smile and said, “Well. I’ve heard of you, Leo. Mostly good. I’m very impressed. Just sorry to meet you for the first time with egg all over my face.”

  “It beats shit,” Turrin replied, smiling sourly. “After a brush with this guy Bolan, most boys come off looking more that way—shitfaced, I mean. Look, it’s your show. The men told me to stand by and assist. But you better do something quick. What’s this I’m hearing about an island?”

  The military gaze retracted then lashed across that room and seized Leo Turrin’s lips. “What did you say?”

  “God, you have a hearin’ problem? You know what I said, dammit. My sources say that Bolan knows. He knows, guy. Have you studied this boy?”

  “Not in depth, no. Nobody expected him to pop up here so soon. I’m getting a profile run on—”

  “You better forget the damn profiles and concentrate on the guy. He has popped, see. And you better start scrambling. You better grab your balls. Translation: take care of the things you prize the most. The guy will be laying all over you before daylight. Take it from one who’s been laid enough already to know.”

  Franciscus snapped an anguished gaze to his wrist-watch. He whirled and went to the window. “He couldn’t know,” he muttered. “Nobody knows.”

  “The street knows, Johnny.”

  “Did the old men tell you about the island?”

  “I never heard of it until an hour ago.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Just that. An island somewhere. Bolan hiring himself a fast boat. He’s prepping an assault of some kind. Buying weapons. Big ones. You better get set, bub. Or else tell me and let me. The men sent me out here for one damn reason. Protect the investment. We know what this boy can do. They sent me because I know how. Now I can’t go back there and tell them I stood here and watched you piss it all away.”

  “You’ll tell them nothing!” Franciscus snarled.

  Turrin rocked on the balls of his feet and turned a deliberate gaze onto his tagman. “Tell the boys we go,” he ordered.

  The little guy nodded uncertainly and hurried out.

  Turrin told the quivering Captain, “I don’t work for you, bub. It’s the other way around. You keep your ass in your hand and remember who pays your goddam bills. Either you got a firm grip or you ain’t. If you have, then you guide that ass out of here and you by Jesus get something to moving. I mean now!”

  It was obvious that Captain Franciscus was not accustomed to this kind of talking-to.

  The muscles of his jaw were twitching and the eyes were blazing mad.

  Harve Mathews loped into the room, defusing that confrontation with a breathless report.

  “Got it! Had a hunch, Cap—that helicopter. Found it right there!” He was holding out a small box that could have been a cigarette case with a tiny antenna projecting from the top.

  Either it was the final straw, or it served as an excellent face-saver for the Captain.

  “Sound the alert, condition red!” he snapped. “Call the bosun, get the boats fired up! Reveille those new men, send some cars! I want a full formation at the pier within thirty minutes! Alert the armorer, get a truck to the pier, full combat weapons and rounds for two hundred men! Call the island! Talk to Presley personally. Tell him to double the patrols on the beaches! Get a weather report! Okay, move it!”

  “That sounds more like it,” Turrin said, sighing, as the executive officer double-timed it out of there.

  “We know how to handle a situation,” the Captain sneered. “Tell that to your old men.”

  Turrin swept out of the penthouse with his crew in tow, entirely pleased with himself. He would, of course, tell the old men nothing. The “hard work” was over. The rest would be up to Bolan … and his direct solution to a very complex problem.

  At that very moment, Harold Brognola was working a complex problem of his own, in the duty officer’s office at the Bremerton Naval Barracks.

  “You tell your C.O. that I’ll have complete verification via the Pentagon—or the Joint Chiefs, if that’s what he wants—before a single boat moves. Meanwhile, though, I want the cogs turning. If I don’t have at least ten amphibians on the line and ready to roar in thirty minutes, somebody’s tit will end up in a very tight ringer. You tell him that.”

  “Yes sir. The C.O. understands the urgency, sir. He’ll be here personally in ten minutes, sir.”

  Brognola glowered at the young ensign for a moment, then clasped his hands together and moved away from there.

  The weather was beginning to break. Forecast calling for an early general lifting, entire coastal regions.

  Some break!

  Tit in the ringer? It would be cock n’ balls n’ all, Brognola’s—not somebody’s—if Bolan didn’t pull the thing just right.

  God! Tactician, hell! The guy was carrying the whole burden, all of it. And all the nation’s third cop could do was pace and sweat.

  20: HARD TOUCH

  “Wish I could talk you out of this,” Grimaldi groused. “You’re even losing your weather cover. Ceiling’s up to about a hundred feet now, in spots. NAS says rapid clearing.”

  “Worry about getting yourself in and out, Jack. If you think you can’t, say so. We’ll consider an alternative. But I am getting in there.”

  “Hell I can get in and out. I’ve taken these babes down in the middle of enemy encirclements many times. That’s not the point. The point is—”

  “I have to get in, Jack. That’s the point.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  The little chopper was specially propped for the mission. The personnel door on Bolan’s side had been removed and left behind. His seat was gone, as well as a section of floor and outer skin beneath his feet.

  Bolan was now crouched at the edge of the hole, gazing down through the skids at the choppy waters of Puget Sound. He was rigged for heavy combat, armed to the teeth, burdened with a load nearly equal to his own weight.

  A backpack alone hauled fifty pounds of “goop”—plastic explosives. Double utility belts crossed the chest, supporting dangling grenades and other munitions of blazing warfare.

  The .44 AutoMag rod
e position of honor at his right hip. Numerous reload clips for the weapon were grouped to either side of the holster within easy reach.

  Head weapon for the mission was Bolan’s favorite heavy piece—the M-16/M-79 over n’ under combo. The ’16 spat a hot trail of 5.56 mm tumblers in auto or could be fired as a semiauto. The 79 was a hard-punch piece, breechloaded and versatile, handling rounds of high explosive, fragmentation, smoke, gas, flare, or double-aught buck. With any load, she was hell in hand. For the moment, the double weapon was strapped across the back of his shoulders, secured.

  Grimaldi fiddled with his headset and announced, “Ceiling now is one fifty and sloping high. We’ll have to drop through at least two hundred feet of clear to set you down. It’s going to be tense.”

  Bolan replied, “I leave it to you, Jack. Scrub it if you must.”

  “No, hell no. I’ll get you in. Rather do it this way than drop you from four thousand feet.” He chuckled nervously. “I was always a sucker for grunts, especially you teeth-baring gung-ho types. I’m climbing up top, now. We’re getting close.”

  Bolan smiled at the guy in complete understanding, then began mentally reorienting himself to the lie down there.

  A moment later the phones crackled with a report on the air/ground channel. “Low Boy to High Boy. Anybody there?”

  It was Leo Turrin, in the warwagon.

  Grimaldi punched the channel selector and gave Bolan a visual go-ahead.

  “Go ahead, Low Boy,” Bolan replied.

  “Okay, they’re sprung and scrambling. Give it about one hour from this moment for them to organize and get there.”

  Bolan punched the mark on his wrist chronometer. “Roger, understand one hour from now. Thanks, Low Boy. We’re going.”

  “That’s good. I’m about went. Now moving the vehicle to backdrop position.”

  “Roger.”

  “Tally ho, man.”

  “Thanks, stay hard.”

  Grimaldi returned the setup to intercom and asked, “Who’s our friend?”

  “Best left nameless, Jack,” Bolan replied.

  “Gotcha. Okay, get set. We should be about a thousand yards uprange. ’Bout time to hit that flare. Your wind is … yeah, okay, right on our tail. Let it go at my mark.”