Poison Justice

by Don Pendleton

  “I don’t know, Tony,” he said, checking the front lot, then searching the wide boulevard of pink shops and boutiques.

  “What don’t you know?”

  “It don’t feel right. I got this itch in my back, like we’re bein’ followed.”

  “The only itch you got is between your legs, ’cause you don’t get laid enough.”

  “We should’ve run this by the boss. And don’t you find it weird we ain’t heard from New York the last day? Guys are like clocks up there, always callin’ down, checkin’ the store.”

  “Listen to me, both of you,” Bartino growled, glancing at Carmine, who was now doing a phantom search of his own. “The boss put me in charge of things in Miami while you two were still up north shaking down bookies. He don’t call, means he’s busy. Now. Can we do this?”

  Bartino shook his head, laughing as the door was held wide. “You guys.”

  BOLAN COULDN’T QUITE imagine the fine upstanding, middle- to upper-class citizenry of ritzy Coral Gables caring too much for a Mobbed-up strip joint planted in their midst. But, stranger things happened, and the warrior could pretty much picture the greasing of skid, or the blackmail dialogue that went on behind the public political podium.

  What wasn’t news in the least was that a social-security number and driver’s license could not only track down an individual, but could give anyone with time and interest enough information to unravel their life story.

  Welcome to the age of Big Brother. Bolan gave Price and the cybersleuths at the Farm a mental salute.

  Of course, Marelli knew her work schedule by heart, but since he’d taken a wake-up call to the teeth, and was looking mean and sullen during the whole flight to Opa-Locka, Bolan had him call Rocco’s, to double-check if Tina, a.k.a. Starr was dancing that night.

  The fluke came when Bolan spotted Tony Bartino and sidekicks stroll through the front doors. He had his blacksuit wheelman navigate their van in the direction from which the threesome had come. A roll down the service alley, and Bolan spotted Bartino’s Towncar in what appeared to be a small employee parking lot, flanked by palm trees. The Towncar faced the back end of the club, the driver dangling an arm out the window, working on a cigarette.

  “Keep driving,” Bolan ordered. “Park it where that Towncar’s driver can’t see you.”

  A perfect cubbyhole loomed at the edge of a pink stucco building. The blacksuit eased around the corner, braking.

  Mentally Bolan ran through his options. Have a chat at gunpoint with the smoker, or roll into the club with two of his three blacksuits, or wait for Bartino and trail him. Bolan believed Bartino had figured out the girl had the disk. But knowing the thug’s track record for murder, extortion and drug trafficking, to name a few of his crimes, smart money told him they’d take her for a ride.

  Bolan had shed full combat regalia for the Miami leg. Beneath the loose-fitting black windbreaker, though, the reliable Beretta 93-R with attached sound suppressor hung under his left armpit, a mini-Uzi under the right, the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding his right hip and two frag grenades in coat pockets rounding out the arsenal.

  “Now what?” Marelli growled from the back, sandwiched between the other two blacksuits. “We sit here, thumbs up our butts?”

  “No, that’s still your department, Marelli,” Bolan told the hit man.

  “How do you like that?” Marelli grumbled. “All I done for you, all I’m doin’ for you now. Smack me in the mouth, treat me like a punk. No respect.”

  “I know,” Bolan said. “What’s the world coming to?”

  Already understood by his blacksuits he would raise them by TAC radio only in a pinch, the Executioner opened the door and stepped into the hot Miami night.

  Time to meet Tony Bartino, just another shade, Bolan knew, of The Butcher.

  “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING about any damn disk!”

  Bartino loved it when they lied. It made working on them that much more fun, broads in particular. Already he was conjuring up pictures of what he would do to her. Oh, she would give up the disk, but he had half the night beyond that to make her forget all about her bullshit boyfriend hit man legend.

  Trailing his soldier for the service door, Bartino kept a tight grip on Tina’s arm, checking out the whole package. She was a looker, no doubt about it, black pumps accentuating long taut tanned legs, white panties hugging an apple rump, a frilly lace top holding back the melons. The face could have belonged to a model, topped off by natural blond hair, though he couldn’t be sure about that until he took a peek. That would come soon enough.

  “You tellin’ me, Tina baby, Rachel and Frankie had it all wrong?”

  “Damn straight they do.”

  As Carmine thrust open the door, Bartino manhandled his plaything into the lot. He found his driver enjoying a smoke, lost in thought. “Goddammit, Jackie, stop beatin’ off. Get the car started.”

  His troops falling in beside him, he was checking the lot when he saw the figure in black weaving through the palm trees. Great, he thought, watching as the guy fumbled a pack of cigarettes, staggering their way, a drunken bum, probably wanting a light.

  “Hey,” Bartino heard the guy say. “Anybody got a light?”

  “Get lost!” Bartino snarled, angling for the Towncar.

  “Hey, mister…all I want…”

  Bartino couldn’t believe this nonsense. His future in the Cabriano Family was, quite literally, in his hands. Walking out the door with his ticket to a bigger tomorrow, and a drunk was going to force him to make a scene. Was upper-crust Coral Gables going down the toilet like the rest of Miami?

  “Goddammit, take a hike, you drunk, before I kick your ass all the way back into your mama’s womb!”

  Bartino was thinking the guy didn’t listen too good, or was too juiced on booze, when a warning bell began ringing in his skull. He pulled back on Tina, guts coiling.

  The answer came a fraction of a second too late. Bulges beneath the windbreaker were the initial tip-off, then there was the sudden shift in attitude, a feral look in the big man in black’s eye that told him this was an act all along.

  The who, what and why shelved, Bartino was clawing for his .45 when the first two burps hit the air from the big guy’s way. Carmine and Calebria were crying out, toppling before he cleared leather. He heard Tina scream, his ticket to greatness thrashing in his hold when the big guy, moving like a flash of lightning, chugged out two more bullets. Glass shattering, Bartino snatched a look toward the Towncar. Garpo’s face rammed the steering wheel, a black spray hitting the windshield. Whoever the mystery shooter, Bartino knew when some bastard had come knocking to punch his ticket. Animal reflex took over, as he locked an arm around Tina’s throat, choking off her scream. The .45 was out, the big guy rolling on like a wraith of doom, Bartino tracking, shouting, “Back off!”

  He was about to embellish the threat, the muzzle of his .45 up and pressed to Tina’s skull, when he heard that awful chug, and the lights snapped off.

  “SIR, WE HAVE A PROBLEM.”

  “I don’t want to hear about problems.”

  There was a long pause on the other end, Grogen silently cursing the dead air, the TAC radio with secured frequency suddenly trembling in his hand.

  “Well?” Grogen asked.

  “Sir, we have an unidentified player who just terminated Bartino and three of his soldiers, and took the girl. A big guy, sir, from our surveillance. I would say he was a professional of some type, probably military.”

  “One of us you’re trying to say?”

  “It wasn’t as if I had the chance to have a conversation with the man, sir.”

  “You’re in no position, mister, to get a smart tongue.”

  “Yes, sir. He used a Beretta with sound suppressor, so that furthers suspicion he’s more than maybe a Cabriano rival. The van in which they left the scene is similar in make and color to ours, with a satellite dish I would assume is for tracking, perhaps intercepting police bans. I ran the plates, civilian, b
ut—”

  “But nothing turned up on your trace. Limbo. Dead end.”

  Which told Grogen a covert unknown had jumped into the picture.

  “Sir, we are presently tailing their vehicle.”

  “Head count?”

  “Undetermined. The unidentified, the female target and driver that we know of.”

  Grogen felt his blood pressure rise, his heart thundering in his ears. He began pacing in the office, glaring down into the hangar, dreading bad news more than he did the cargo being guarded by the other half of his eight-man team.

  “You were supposed to have grabbed the girl,” he said, checking his watch, “an hour ago. Explain yourself.”

  “We were pulled over by a policeman in Coconut Grove.”

  “What? You gotta be shitting me!” he exploded. The rare outburst briefly made him think he’d been spending too much time with low-life hoods, his usual cold professional demeanor contaminated by the company he’d kept.

  “A taillight was out.”

  If the mission wasn’t so serious, poised now to spiral into the abyss, Grogen would have laughed. Only in Miami, he thought, the drug capital of the country, would a cop stop a vehicle for the flimsiest of reasons. Unbelievable.

  “And I bet you’re going to tell me,” Grogen said, “he pulled his weapon, wanted the four of you to step out of the vehicle when he saw your hardware.”

  “The government plates, our bogus DOD credentials should have kept the incident from happening.”

  Grogen choked on his rage. “Are you telling me you were forced to dispatch him?”

  “I’m afraid we had to, sir.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “I can’t say for absolute certainty, sir.”

  This was no time to come unhinged, Grogen knew, and any damage control was now gone with a dead Miami cop.

  “It would appear, sir, they are now heading in the direction of the female target’s condominium on Bayshore.”

  “You have half an hour to complete the mission or abort. Check back in thirty minutes. Given your situation, all resistance from this point on is to be dispatched. You copy?” Grogen said.

  “Roger.”

  Grogen marched out of the office, seething. They needed to be wheels up, ten, fifteen minutes ago if they were to stick to schedule. Four of his best shooters, sent out on what should have been an easy task, and now they had a dead cop, a mystery shooter on the loose, who may or may not be black ops, and…

  What next?

  The flight to Cali, even riding nearly on top of the radioactive stew, was suddenly looking preferable to finding his team getting snapped up by MPD, or engaging local cops in what would prove a suicide stand, at best. Either way, Grogen knew a bloodbath, maybe even a hurricane of slaughter, was about to hit Miami.

  Time to bail, he decided. They didn’t need the disk that bad. Not when he considered the bottom line, or weighed the risk of personal exposure.

  12

  “Jimmy, what kind of jackpot have you put me in? What the hell is going on here? Are these some more of your hoodlum buddies, like Bartino and the others that guy gunned down?”

  “Look, Tina, all you gotta do, just give this guy the disk, keep your mouth shut…”

  “Keep my mouth shut? I nearly had my head blown off back there!”

  Despite his previous warning, Bolan was again forced to put an end to their romantic reunion. He twisted in the shotgun seat, pinned them both with an icy stare. “Both of you, be quiet, cooperate, obey me, and you might leave Miami breathing.”

  “Breathing? Obey you? Leave Miami? Jimmy, what’s he talking about leave Miami?”

  Bolan had other problems than playing referee to their squabbling. He checked his sideglass, found the same nearly identical black van, still shadowing their bumper, four car lengths or so back, as they navigated north against the glittering resort skyline of hotels and condos in Bayshore.

  “Jimmy, I’m not leaving Miami, I’m not—”

  “Listen to me,” Bolan growled at the woman. “Men are coming to kill you. They want the disk. Your options are slim and none unless you hand me the disk, then enter, at least temporarily, the Witness Protection Program.”

  “The what? You gotta be kidding me! I’m no gangster.”

  “No,” Bolan told her. “What you are is in deep trouble if you don’t do what I say when I say.”

  He held her look, Marelli giving his woman the nod.

  “How far, Marelli?” Bolan asked.

  “Comin’ up another few blocks. You got someone on your tail, don’t you?”

  Bolan hated having no plan, particularly now that the woman’s life was tossed into the equation. Another long look, and the warrior watched as they eased up another car length. Bristling with antennas and bearing a satellite dish, he knew that was no Mob van.

  Professional trouble was on their bumper.

  It was one thing, he knew, to cut down criminal thugs who often packed more mouth than punch. But the men behind them were black ops, stone-cold killers, with the training, expertise, experience and technology to ruin Bolan’s night. More times than he cared to remember, he’d dealt with faceless black ops, men who took blank checks from various intelligence agencies, had no identities, were ghosts in the routine machinery of society. Whether DOD special, NSA, CIA, they seemed to believe they were not only above the law, but they were the law. They wrapped themselves up in what they considered to be the holy shroud of national security. No life was too innocent to spare if that meant protecting or furthering the agenda of their shadow masters.

  In a way, they were much like himself, Bolan thought, but with one glaring difference. They didn’t care about collateral damage, even if that meant wantonly spilling blood on American soil.

  As far as the Executioner was concerned, they weren’t much of a cut above Marelli.

  And he would treat them likewise.

  A plan, desperate and dangerous for all concerned, came to mind, and Bolan began laying it out.

  “WHO ARE THESE GUYS? That’s the broad, but where’s Tony? I thought Tony was bringing the broad?”

  Mike Lambrisi watched as two big guys in black escorted Marelli’s girlfriend through the front door, thinking their wheelman, Timoli, had posed questions for which there was one obvious answer.

  Bartino and the others had been bagged by the law. Or had they? The two men in black didn’t strike him as officialdom. Something in the way they moved, predatory maybe, or perhaps too cool, like they had grenades in their bellies, violence inside that could suddenly erupt. They acted sure of themselves, but not in the arrogant way of a wise guy, or a cop, either thumbing their noses at the law, or using a shield to back up their every play.

  Lambrisi palmed his cell phone and punched in Bartino’s number. His agitation—more with his partners than the mystery—mounting. From the back seat, Lou Gamboni, all three hundred plus pounds of him, wheezed, “What do we do, Mikey? You think the cops grabbed Tony? You think the cops know about the disk? What the hell could be so important about this disk anyway we need to be sitting on the broad’s place round the clock? Man, I ain’t eaten in hours. I gotta take a leak.”

  “Quiet,” Lambrisi grated. “Both of you.” Timoli nearly blotted out the windshield with a rolling wave of cigar smoke. “You’re givin’ me a friggin’ headache here.”

  He hated this stakeout duty, too, but he was more sick and tired of their bellyaching than the interminable hours.

  Lambrisi cursed and dumped the cell phone on the seat.

  “No answer from Tony?” Gamboni huffed.

  “Sound to you like I got through?”

  “Damn, Mikey, what’s with all the hostility?”

  “Okay, I got an idea,” Timoli said, sounding to Lambrisi as if he thought he’d just invented the lightbulb. “We already gave the guy at the desk his money to let us in.”

  “And?” Lambrisi posed, wondering what blinding light Timoli would hit them with.

  “We
go in, make our bones, so to speak.”

  “Cowboy the action, other words,” Lambrisi growled. “Without Tony’s say so?”

  “Why not? He wants the disk, hell, everybody wants this disk, kinda makes me wonder what Marelli put on it.”

  Lambrisi scowled, but saw where Timoli was headed. “You thinking glory or a cash contribution from New York for its safe delivery?”

  “Maybe both.”

  “Maybe neither, if you hold out on New York, assuming we get our hands on it.”

  Timoli picked up his Ingram MAC-10, the glint in his eyes shining behind the cloud. “Only one way to find out, Mike. Are we men or are we mice?”

  Lambrisi grunted. The crews these days were packed with glory hounds, out for themselves, building reps, chasing their pleasure more than taking care of business. But Timoli made a good point, he conceded. If they sat there, did nothing, and New York found out they maybe didn’t have the stones to do the dirty work when necessary, there wouldn’t be enough left of them for the rats to chew on.

  Lambrisi was on the verge of cutting them all loose when he saw two more figures in black walk up to the front doors.

  “Who the hell are these guys?”

  Lambrisi wished Timoli would stop asking questions that had no ready answers. They were doing something to the door. Lambrisi thought they could be picking the lock, but the one doing the work didn’t move a muscle.

  They were in. Lambrisi watched in disbelief as one of the men in black pulled out a pistol with sound suppressor. It didn’t take much imagination for Lambrisi to count their deskboy out.

  “You see that?” Gamboni puffed. “He shot our boy!”

  This was more than Lambrisi could comprehend. Two sets of men in black, one marching in right on the heels of the other, the second pair just blasting away.

  Lambrisi gathered up his own Ingram and stuffed two spare 30-round clips in his waistband.

  “At least we’ll be hitting both of them from behind,” Timoli said, as if that would make the bloody chore of waxing four guys any easier.

  Now that it was decided, Lambrisi heard Gamboni rack home a 12-gauge round in his Ithaca shotgun.