Firebase Seattle

by Don Pendleton

  He stepped from the elevator and into the rough hands of a reception committee, by whom he was frisked, then unceremoniously led into the apartment and shoved onto a chair in a small reception hall. The men promptly withdrew, leaving him there alone. The room was a mere cubicle, windowless, with a massive door at either end. The hard chair on which he sat was the only piece of furniture. A heavy mirror was set into the wall opposite the chair. Puli gazed into the mirror, then quickly averted his eyes as a chill seized the nape of his neck with some instinctive awareness that eyes other than his own were staring back at him from that “mirror.” He fidgeted, lit a cigarette, put it out, returned both hands to his pockets—then, on impulse, he produced the medal and began examining it.

  Immediately, the inner door opened and two stony-faced men entered. Torpedoes, these—it was stamped all over them.

  Puli was roughly frisked again and one of the men snatched the medal.

  “Hey, wait,” the islander complained weakly. “That’s for—”

  “What’s your name again?” asked the one who had taken the medal.

  “Puli, Joey. I work for—I worked for—”

  “What do you want here?”

  “I got to see Mr. Oliveras. It’s okay, I’m connected. I worked for Angliano. That’s what I got to see Mr. Oliveras about. Angles is dead.”

  “So what?”

  Puli’s gaze shifted nervously between the two men. “So I was there, that’s so what. The guy blasted his head away.” Uncomfortable eyes fell to the bull’s-eye cross which was resting on the torpedo’s palm. “He left that behind.”

  The men exchanged glances. The one with the medal said, “He left you, too.”

  “Yeah,” Puli said, shuddering.

  “Why?”

  The little guy shuddered again. “I guess he figured I wasn’t worth the price of a bullet.”

  The silent torpedo snickered coldly. The other said, “Baby-sit him, Charley,” and departed.

  “Sit down,” the other sneered.

  Puli returned to the chair.

  A full minute passed—a very uncomfortable minute for Joey Puli, under the glassy gaze of his “baby sitter.” Then the voice of the other man came from a speaker concealed somewhere in the wall: “Charley. Meet us in the office.”

  The visitor was escorted through a succession of darkened rooms, across a small garden-terrace patio, and into “the office.” It was a large, oblong room with two entire walls of glass, obviously situated at the corner of the building, providing a spectacular view of both the beach area and the open sea. A huge mahogany desk was set across the corner, between the windows. Someone was seated at that desk, but Puli was looking directly into the bright glow of a desk lamp which was angled his way, and he could see only an indistinct form back there.

  A rasping voice from that direction asked, “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Joey Puli. Are you Mr. Oliveras?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Yessir.”

  “You just tell what I ask you.”

  “Yessir.”

  “What’s this about Angliano?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Why?”

  Puli continued to gaze stoically into the blinding lamp as he explained, “I’d just brought in the evening receipts. Mr. Angliano was putting them in the safe when this guy came busting in. He was a—God, I don’t know how to describe him. He wasn’t no street-corner junkie, that’s for sure. Big tall guy. Black gun with a silencer—and he sure knew what to do with it. Come to think, he was black all over. I mean, his clothes and everything, not his skin. White man. Didn’t say anything, just raised that black gun and put a bullet between Mr. Angliano’s eyes. Then he threw that medal on the desk and turned the gun on me. I talked him out of it. But he got Tommy Dragon before he came in—I mean, into the office. Tommy was on door duty. I saw him laying there with his brains oozing out, and I knew right away this guy was kill crazy. Anyway, I just cooled it, and—”

  “What kind of medal, Joey?” the man at the desk rasped.

  “Some kind of soldier’s medal. The guy took it away from me, the guy that—”

  “A marksman’s medal.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “No sir, I never was in the army. I don’t know—”

  “Who’d this guy say he was?”

  “What guy? You mean the guy that took it or—”

  “Dummy! You’re a dummy!”

  “Sir?” Things were getting out of hand. Joey Puli was beginning to sweat. This was crazy. These people were pure crazy.

  “Did you really expect to get away with this kind of shit?”

  “What? Aw no, no! You got me wrong, Mr. Oliveras! I’m giving you this straight on the level! What d’you think I did? You think I did this myself and just made up a story? You think I’d come here after I done something like that?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Well, I just—”

  Someone stepped up from the rear and slapped Puli with an open hand across the back of his head. The runner caught his breath and closed his mouth with a snap.

  The rasping voice from the desk was telling him, “You know how many times this has been tried, dummy? You know how many punks have tried cashing in on this guy’s reputation? You think we just automatically start shaking and shitting if somebody just says the guy’s in town? What do you take us for? You must take me for some—shit, you don’t even think you have to mention the name! You just come dancing in here with this goddam piece of junk in your hand, and I’m gonna kiss you like a hero!”

  “What name?” Puli moaned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! The guy came in and shot up the joint! He gave me the damned medal and told me to bring it here! That’s all I know!”

  “You’re a punk! So now you’re saying he told you to bring it here!”

  “Yessir, I thought I said that already. I didn’t want—listen, I was scared to come here. But the guy said it was my only out. He said I either bring the thing here and give it to you or I die with it myself. I don’t even know what’s going on, I swear.”

  “This so-called guy says you’re to bring it to me? By name, he says me?”

  “If you’re Mr. Oliveras, yessir, that’s right. He says you.”

  “Who’d he say he was?”

  “God, sir, he didn’t say. He acted like he didn’t need to say. He just says I should take it to Oliveras or die with it myself.”

  “Yourself?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You mean, like, instead of myself!”

  “Well … maybe. I don’t r’member. God, look, I’m standing there in Mr. Angliano’s brains. The guy turns the gun on me.” The little runner was beginning to crumble under the strain. His eyes rolled as he continued, “Hey, God, you gotta see this guy to believe him. I was scared shit! I mean I never been so scared in my life! You gotta see this guy! You never saw such eyes! And cold—listen, that guy was solid ice. He—”

  “Big guy, you say?” asked a calm voice behind him. It was the torpedo who’d taken the medal.

  Puli half-turned to the sound of that voice as he replied, “Yessir, very tall. Big, but not fat. I mean—across the shoulders, the chest—powerful, big, but—and all dressed in black. Eyes like … like …”

  A heavy sigh came from the desk to punctuate Puli’s awed search for words. “What do you think, Oscar?” Oliveras rasped.

  “It sounds straight, sir,” the torpedo called Oscar replied.

  “Sounds like Bolan to me,” said the other.

  Something highly discomfiting was finally coming together in Joey Puli’s mind. One knee buckled under that onslaught of revelation and he nearly toppled over. “Oh God!” he moaned. “Was that—was that …?”

  “You saying you didn’t know?”

  “I swear I didn’t know,” Puli weakly insisted. “I didn’t finger you, Mr. Oliveras. The guy did, he already knew. He says, ‘
Pick that up and deliver it to Oliveras.’ You just gotta believe that. I didn’t even know who the guy was. He just says—”

  “Shut up!”

  “Yessir.” Puli steeled himself for another blow from the rear, but none came. He stood with shoulders slumped, staring at his toes in abject contrition.

  From the desk: “Oscar.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You better check this out. Not direct. Call the guy over at HPD. Tell him to verify this. I want to know damn quick.”

  The guy moved to a telephone somewhere to the rear.

  “Charley.”

  “Sir.”

  “Put this kid on ice until we know what’s going on here.”

  The escorting torpedo grabbed Puli’s arm and spun him around, moving him out. Oscar was standing at a small table near the window, speaking into a telephone. From the corner of his eye Puli saw a huge bulk of a man moving away from the desk in the corner.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The big picture window at the north wall popped and vibrated as something sizzled into that room and exploded into the face of Puli’s escort, jerking the guy like a rag doll and sending pieces of him spraying everywhere. The window popped again before the little runner could fully comprehend what had occurred, and with that one the guy at the telephone was flung across the room in another shower of blood.

  Puli instinctively hit the floor and hugged it as the window continued to erupt and a seemingly eternal fusillade of heavy bullets demolished everything within reach.

  Some other guys came charging in, only to be screamed back by Oliveras who—Puli noted—was also as flat on the floor as his huge girth would allow.

  And when it was over, the silence was even more ominous than the preceding chaos. Two men lay gruesomely dead almost at Joey Puli’s outstretched fingertips. The entire room was a wreck. Puli was aware that his fingers were stiff and aching, and that he had wet himself.

  Then, behind him, the quivering rasp of Frank Oliveras’ voice sounded off with a seemingly endless stream of solemn obscenities.

  That desk back there was splintered beyond belief. It was a miracle that Oliveras was alive to cuss about it.

  And another miracle was quickly borne in on Joey Puli’s trembling awareness—he, Joey Puli, was a very, very lucky man. He had lived through two hits by the most fearsome son of a bitch in Puli’s dark world.

  The Executioner had come to Hawaii.

  And the bastard was on the rampage.

  2: Moving Up

  The evening was just beginning to swing at the Oahu Cove, a gaudy supper club which was operated in conjunction with the apartment complex owned by Frank Oliveras. Headlining the entertainment at the club for “the third big week” was the man who’d become accustomed to being billed as “the hottest comic in the land,” Tommy Anders. It was the first time since Vegas that these two trails had crossed, and Bolan had mixed feelings about this occasion. It was nice to see old friends, sure—but friends had an uncomfortable facility for becoming liabilities to a one-man army; Bolan had learned to shun personal contacts whenever possible. This one seemed necessary, however.

  He had changed into casual evening wear and was seated at a back table at Oahu Cove as the comic concluded his first show of the night. Anders was a satirist and had come a long way poking fun at the nation’s ethnic sensitivities. He hadn’t changed a bit since Vegas.

  “I’m not no ethnician—I’m just a lost wop without a Godfather—but I gotta say it, these people here in Five-Oh state are beating the devil with his own stick. It’s a majority of minorities here, and I don’t believe these people even know the difference anymore. They’ve got a Jap in the state house, a Chinaman in Congress, and a Polynesian in their supreme court. How ridiculous can you get? They’re men! Every one of them. Chauvinist minority pigs! Why the hell don’t they send some hula girls to Congress? A little grass shack up on Capitol Hill—what’s wrong with that? I’m telling you—I’m not no ethnician, but … Prostitution used to be legal, back when this state was a territory. That came in somewhere between the missionaries and the Honolulu Hilton—back during those great old days of WASP rule, remember Pearl Harbor, and Mamie Stover. Now that they got home rule with a majority of minorities running things, the only lay a guy can get on this island is the one they hang around your neck when you arrive. Everything’s illegal now. You can’t even pee on the beach without getting fined. Pers’nally I don’t care. Like I say, I’m not no ethnician—and all this law and order sets things up perfectly for my people. I don’t care who they put in politics in this country as long as everybody understands that it’s the Italians who are really running things. This is Tommy Anders, also known in dark alleys as Guiseppe Androsepitone, proudly saying good night and may the Godfather smile on you all.”

  The little guy left the stage with a good hand, then reappeared for a brief bow as the curtain raised behind him and a troop of westernized hula dancers took over.

  A few minutes later he was sliding onto the chair opposite Bolan, his eyes dancing with restrained excitement and his breath coming hard. “God Jesus, it is you,” he exclaimed in a muffled voice. “What the hell are you doing on this island!”

  Bolan grinned and took the comic’s hand in a warm grasp. “Same as you, I’d guess,” he replied, assuming more than he actually knew. It seemed a pretty safe bet, though, that Anders had been involved in a federal undercover operation while at Las Vegas. “Which way are the hounds running?”

  Anders chuckled as he signaled the waiter. “In circles, right now, I’d say. The word is sweeping the island like the big waves up at Makaha. I figured it was just a wild rumor but … well, here you are, right?”

  The waiter was waiting. Bolan covered his glass with the palm of his hand and shook his head in response to the lifted eyebrows of his friend. Anders ordered a drink. The waiter departed. The little guy picked it up again right on the beat. “I got your envelope backstage just now and I thought, God Jesus, it’s true, the goddam guy is really here and storming. Man, you do love suicide details, don’t you. How do you figure to get off this damn island?”

  “Maybe I won’t need to,” Bolan said, smiling. He lit a cigarette while Anders stared at him, waiting for more than that.

  “That’s a hell of an attitude,” Anders replied presently. “I thought you always had these things so damn well planned.”

  “Just the openers, Anders. The end can take care of itself. What do you have going here?”

  “Third and last big week,” the comic said, smiling sourly.

  “Baloney.”

  The guy laughed out loud. “Okay. I guess I owe you honesty, at the very least. Right now you’re seated in company property.”

  Bolan said, “I know. I just hit upstairs a little while ago.”

  The comic’s face went blank. “You did what?”

  “I gave Oliveras a little sneak preview of things to come.”

  “When was this?”

  Bolan glanced at his watch. “Little less than an hour ago.”

  Anders rolled his eyes at that. He glanced nervously about them as he said, “So that’s what all the flap was about. I didn’t connect it with the other rumors—mainly because I just couldn’t see you committing yourself to this small arena. Well … after Vegas, I guess nothing should surprise me where you’re concerned. But you’d better get on your bicycle and pedal the hell away from this joint, right quick. This whole damn place is an armed camp. I could point out to you ten very unfriendly torpedoes without leaving this table. And they—”

  “I have them spotted,” Bolan said quietly.

  The comic’s eyes warmed and a smile worked at his lips. “I’ll bet you do, at that. Tell me something else, phantom. How come they never have you spotted?”

  Bolan chuckled drily. “Dead men do not draw pictures. The others are working at role images. You should know all about that game. But I don’t play it their way.”

  Anders was giving the big man a s
earching gaze. “Yeah,” he said. “Who’d you hit?”

  “Couple of Ollie’s boys. Right now I don’t want the man himself. The trail ends at him. I need the next connection, the next man high. You know who that might be?”

  Anders shook his head. “You hear rumors all the time, but they’re not worth a damn. The only word I can believe says that Oliveras himself is the top card.”

  Bolan said, “It doesn’t fit. Too many outrankers coming in. It’s been a regular tourist flow the past few months. Rodani from Detroit. Topacetti from Chicago. Benvenuti from St. Louis and Pensa from Cleveland. New York has sent Dominick and Flora—Boston, Tommy Odono. That’s too much firepower for a guy like Oliveras to crew. He’s a junk runner, period. Something bigger than junk is brewing on these islands. What is it?”

  The comic shook his head with a doleful grimace. “Nobody knows.”

  “That’s why you’re here?”

  “One reason, yeah.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “You remember those Ranger Girls.”

  Bolan flinched. Sure, he remembered. How could he forget? “I saw Toby in Detroit a while back,” he replied.

  “I hear you saw Georgette, also,” Anders said quietly.

  Sure. Bolan had given the Canuck bodybomb a merciful death. “I did,” he said.

  The comic was staring into his drink. “This is a high-risk business,” he muttered. “We all know that. We accept it as a fringe benefit when we take the job.”

  Bolan said, “Yeah.”

  “Smiley accepted that, too.”

  Smiley Dublin, sure—the beautiful kid who, even in Vegas, seemed to have lost all her smiles long ago. “What are you saying?” Bolan growled.

  Anders sighed. “We’re looking for her.”

  “I see. And the trail gets cold right here.”

  “Yeah. It ended here four weeks ago.”

  Bolan closed his eyes, very tightly, fighting back a surge of emotion. He was trying to call up a vision of a divine body, saucy head and elfin face, a lovely kid with talent enough to storm the world but also possessing guts enough to tackle its nether regions. And all he could summon up was a pitiful wreck of a human being who pleaded only for death’s release from a back porch of hell in Detroit one terribly dismal night.