Detroit Deathwatch te-19

by Don Pendleton

  The guy's mouth opened and closed. He swayed to the desk and sat on the corner, slumping across it. Perspiration began to appear on the forehead and upper lip. He was transfixed by the medal of death.

  "I know what that is," he declared in a shaky voice.

  "Then you know who I am."

  Cassiopea nodded his head as though it were too heavy to be moved. He said, in a voice gaining control, "Yes. I know you. But I cannot understand why you are here. What can I possibly do for you?"

  "You could die for me, Cass Baby."

  The guy was a smoothy, and he was getting his second wind. He came right back at Bolan without blinking. "That makes no sense whatever. I've been following your, uh, crusade with great interest. I understand your motivations. Sympathize with them. And let me assure you, Bolan, I have no part in them."

  Bolan hit him — flat of the hand — a haymaker from the knees, connecting that handsomely chiseled jawline with a splat that echoed around the room. Cassiopea spun off the desk to land on hands and knees, against the wall.

  Bolan went to the windows and looked down. Toby was just pulling into the drive.

  Cass Baby was hauling himself upright, both hands groping at the desk, shaking his head as though trying to clear it of bothersome foreign matter.

  Bolan allowed him to get to the desk drawer and open it before springing the Belle. She chugged once and spat destruction into the wood of the drawer.

  Cassiopea flung himself away from there, bounced off the wall once again, then made a lurching run for the open door.

  The Beretta sighed twice more. A pair of streakers won the footrace, punching the door with a fast and loud one-two, slamming it shut in Cass Baby's face.

  He turned about in full wilt, defeated now by his own trembling legs, crumbling to a kneeling position, arms raised in terrified supplication. "God's sake, man! Why are you playing with me?"

  The guy wanted logic in a world of lunacy.

  "It's your game, guy," the ice man told him. "Just tell me when you're through playing."

  It was the moment of final truth for Bobby Cassiopea. Pulsing into that climactic heartbeat — gazing, perhaps for the first time, into what Bolan called the "cosmic sprawl" — a man knows when the masquerade is ended, the posturing and swaggering is done, the party is over. With Death gazing upon him, every man sees the end of dreams. All of the maybes and might-have-beens have run out of time, and the man sits alone with precisely what he has become, no more and no less, the savings account of the soul at full maturity.

  And Bobby Cassiopea's soul was, obviously, sweating blood.

  He was bagged, and he knew it.

  20

  Bought

  Toby swung the car into the drive and glided to the portico with power off, fluffing out her hair and damning herself almost immediately. She should have hesitated for a few precious seconds out there at the edge of the drive, playing for every second of indecision and wonderment that could possibly be worked on those watchers out there.

  She heard the mechanical action of a car door and then feet moving swiftly along the pavement, and she damned herself again.

  They were closing on foot.

  A minute and forty seconds. That was all she had given him!

  The difference between life and death was often a matter of a split second!

  Good God, what had she done?

  She leapt from the car and ran to the center of the small lawn, wild thoughts tearing at her.

  The slap slap of cautiously hurrying shoe leather galvanized her and sent her mind leaping. They were advancing along the drive.

  She tripped over something on the lawn, bent to peer at it through the darkness, and knew immediately what she had to do. She snatched the thing up and hurled it toward the street with all her might.

  It was a piece of a broken lawn ornament, a cement dish or something, shaped like a discus. The heavy object hit the pavement with a crash and skittered loudly on, veritably thundering through the quietness of that tense moment.

  The footfalls ceased abruptly and a startled voice quietly called, "What the hell!"

  "On the street!" another man barked in a hoarse whisper.

  Heavy bodies floundered into dense shrubs.

  Toby ran back to the vehicle, dived in, started the engine, floored the gas pedal, and jammed the gearshift into driving range. The car roared from beneath the portico as though shot from a catapult, door open and swinging shut with a crash as momentum overtook it.

  Headlamps flared, showing her the way in a tire-screaming swerve. She momentarily lost pavement and spun into soft turf, fishtailed, leapt back with another loud shriek from protesting rubber, hit the end of the drive at full pedal — swerving again, fishtailing down the street and struggling for stability.

  At the rear edge of pulsating consciousness came the ba-loom of a shotgun and then another mixed with the rapid-fire banging of a pistol. The window behind her disintegrated, and something like an icepick punching through a tin can was playing upon the rear of the car.

  Headlamps flared to the rear as a vehicle roared into pursuit.

  She was moving strongly and eating pavement at a flat 80 mph as the first intersection north leapt into her probing headlights and something very ominous swept across her line of sight. It was a procession of vehicles, moving fast, wheeling through that intersection and coming her way.

  And, in the lead, was a heavy armored riot car, beacon twirling, hunching into a fast slowdown and crabbing slowly, slowly, directly across her line of travel.

  "Dumb!" she screamed at the night. "Dumb dumb dumb!"

  But she'd given the man his two minutes. And, perhaps, considerably more than that.

  "Damn it, just damn it!"

  At that very moment a greatly disturbed Mack Bolan was dragging an even more disturbed "playboy of the western financial world" down the stairs and out the rear of the house — dragging him by the tail of his fancy silk smoking jacket, flat on his butt and wailing to an audience under the stars.

  Bolan had heard the commotion out front, of course — and he knew, he knew. The greater sounds of the night were now swirling about the entire neighborhood — and they could have but one reading.

  He curled both hands into the silk at Cass Baby's throat and shook him like a panther would shake his catch. The normally icy tones were heated with the rage of hopeless frustration as he told the quivering blubber before him, "The cost has gone too high, guy. For a miserable slaver — a pimp at the court of kings, you lousy ..."

  "Gods sake, get it over with!" Cassiopea screamed.

  "So Sal gave her a punishment to fit the crime, eh?" Bolan raged on. "I'm giving you the same, guy!"

  He ripped the pants off the guy and flung him to the grass flat on his back, pinning him there with a foot on the throat while he sprang the wicked stiletto.

  The guy gurgled, "What? What? No, God, no — not that!"

  "What's wrong, Eunuch Baby? Doesn't the punishment fit?"

  "My God, I don't think she's dead! I'm sure she's not! Just look where I told you. God, don't do this!"

  Bolan buried the stilletto into the ground between the guy's quivering legs. "Next time," he promised, "your stinking sperm will be spilling. If you've lied to me, guy … this is your last chance to fix it."

  "I swear! Swear!"

  Bolan left Cass Baby there, half-swooning and stewing in his own bitter juices.

  It was no fun baiting a guy that way. Necessary, sure, but not fun. Necessary because the truth had suddenly become so damned important. And Bolan's own rage at the unhappy turn of events out front made the baiting only about half sham. And he was at least 99% certain that he'd squeezed the bleeding truth from the guy.

  But that "victory" was not so sweet. Not at all sweet. As Toby had said, during those last moments when they were together, the goal may not be worthy of the cost of the search.

  A bag of bones did not a victory make.

  And a snappy lady fed who just damn it
had to think for herself had obviously decided to pay the supreme price.

  If she had ... damn it, if she had ...

  Yeah. Men could cry, too.

  21

  Sold

  Holzer had been en route home for a quick cleanup, a bite of chow, maybe even a brief nap, when he intercepted the contact alert from Strike 8.

  It had been a damned long day, with strain enough during the past eight hours alone to wring a guy dry.

  He had been up with this case for almost twenty hours — but the flash from Grosse Pointe Woods was like a magic wand waved above his head.

  He felt as giddy as a teen-ager chasing a fire truck when he sighted the task force beating it along the shore drive — downright exultant when he saw them take the turn up Vernier.

  This was his territory, by damn — he knew a better and quicker way that should put him on the scene a couple of ticks ahead of the pack.

  He flashed on past the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club and took a death-defying turn onto Hawthorne, letting out his siren and running with lady luck in a balls-out sprint to Matter, then screaming north into the stretch for Yorktown Parkway.

  Straightening into the parkway, he killed the screamer and went it on beacon alone. He damn near creamed a putt-putting Volkswagen at the first intersection, immediately thereafter shakily deciding to sacrifice a bit of speed in the interest of survival. Sure as hell he wanted to at least be there for the wrap-up of this case.

  As he would later recall, that slowdown was primarily responsible for the weird things that followed.

  Holzer was approaching the scene on a westerly course. The destroyer force should have been pounding northward from Vernier on a right-angle course to his. But, obviously, they had made a circle-around for some tactical reason, and now he could see them swinging onto the parkway just ahead to run westerly along his same approach ... and leading him by a good two hundred yards.

  So Holzer swung south, then west again, fuming over being beat out in his own backyard and damned if he would run up their tails.

  Another spine-tingling turn and he was now running northward, approaching the scene on the path that had apparently been rejected by the roving detail.

  He did not have their tac channel on his radio and therefore could not understand the play.

  All he could do now was lose the race.

  But he heard the double ba-loom of a riot gun and other firing far ahead, and he was close enough to see that plunging vehicle careening into the trap — and now he understood the maneuvers of the Tac Force — damn it — just a flash too late, he understood them.

  Another vehicle had been parked broadside in the street just beyond the intersection. It was now wheeling about in hot pursuit of the fleeing vehicle.

  Holzer could not brake his charge from ninety to zip in the time required to avoid running up on the chase vehicle, but he gave it the old college try, suddenly painfully aware that he was interfering with a closely coordinated trap set.

  He hit brakes and wheel together and locked them in, spinning dizzily for a moment, then recovering to careen into the intersection and plunge eastward along the side street.

  Well, almost.

  His front wheels jumped the curb, and he plowed through shrubs and saplings for about two hundred feet before wrenching loose and going into a skid toward the other side.

  He hit a fence over there, and his bumper must have caught on something immovable. It popped him around like the snap of a whip, pushing him into a sidewise skid that quickly became a roll, and Holzer in his seat strap inanely thought of those kid days at the fair and the rollo-plane when he chucked up meatballs and spaghetti in a spray onto the onlookers below — at the same moment wondering if that was to be his dying thought, the sole flashback of a life he had thought so memorable … what a hell of a way to go.

  He blacked out. For how long, he could not guess — probably no more than a matter of seconds. He came out of it with the awareness of flames strong in his consciousness and mixed with the stark realization that he was pinned immobile in a collapsed vehicle that could blow sky high at any moment.

  In the licking of flames he saw a devil dancing in the street just outside — but then he immediately decided that this was merely another "death flashback." It was not a devil dancing.

  It was Mack Bolan, that same face that had grinned at him so winningly and framed the words: "Let's see, it's John Holzer, isn't it?"

  Yeah, and even at that it was better than meatballs and spaghetti in upchuck.

  But the vision was not holding to the script. What it was saying was, "Don't move. Stay calm. I'll get you out."

  Shit! No flashback!"

  The goddamn guy was out there, in the flesh.

  Holzer tried his own mouth and found it working. And, of course, it came up with something appropriately stupid. "How'd you get here so quick, Stryker?"

  "Just happened along," the big, cool bastard replied. "Listen now. It's a bad situation. The windshield has come down on you. There's a jagged edge poised right at your jugular vein. I can't move it. The roof is buckled in. The gas tank could go any minute. If I raise that roof, you're liable to get it in the neck. If I don't raise it, you're sure to either fry or fly. So I've got to raise it. Soon as you can get your hands free, protect your throat all you can."

  "Got you," Holzer said, surprising himself with his own detachment. "How're you going to raise it?

  "The only way I know," the guy said.

  And then he was in there with Holzer, on hands and knees in that wreckage. Holzer could see the veins popping in the guy's neck, could almost feel the surge of vital juices flowing into challenged muscles as the guy groaned and strained to straighten himself.

  "Watch it!" the guy grunted.

  And then John Holzer felt the impossible occurring, the roof moving off of him, an arm loosening — and the guy strained on.

  "It's coming," Holzer whispered. "Hold it ... wait! ... my throat — ungh — okay, got it. Shit, man, let's go."

  Thinking back on it, Holzer realized what a fantastic feat it had been; at the moment it seemed as easy as smoothing a piece of rumpled Reynold's Wrap.

  Suddenly the guy had him by the armpits, tugging him loose, pulling him free, grunting and damning and dragging in a mad frenzy — and then it went, the gas tank.

  The heat from that towering fireball singed the hairs of Holzer's head, and all he could do was lie there and grunt, aware of being alive and thankful.

  A hoarse voice close to his ear whispered, "Spit in her eye, Holzer."

  The message did not register at first; he was transfixed by the staggering proximity and undeniable majesty of flaming death. When he did turn groggy eyes toward he sound of that voice, here was no one there.

  He began crawling, and he called out, "Stryker! Are you okay? Stryker!"

  That was when the sergeant from East Detroit came running up. "Oh, Jesusl" the cop yelled. "Is anybody in there?"

  "Just John Holzer," Holzer replied. "I'll be in there for the rest of my life, amen."

  "Who was that you were yelling for? Who was with you?"

  Holzer struggled to his feet, surprised that he could stand. His hands were cut where he had grabbed the shattered windshield — but the damage was negligible and seemed to be his only visible injury.

  "Who was with you?" the East Detroit cop yelled again.

  "God," Holzer mumbled. "God was with me, man."

  22

  Fulfilled

  Dumb? Dumb screaming providence, that's what it was!

  She had hesitated for one frozen moment, the image of Bolan strong upon her peaking perceptions of this possibly final glimpse of life — hesitated... then again plunged the accelerator to full stomp and leaned into the wheel with everything she had.

  The car leapt the curb at full throttle, becoming airborne momentarily, the rear end heeling over and striking the front corner of the armored vehicle, then swinging wildly out of that impact — pivoting while poised o
n front wheels only, the transmission freed and whining in full rev.

  Then the rear wheels slammed into soft lawn and the wild gallop resumed, totally out of control now, goaded on by the unrelenting pressure of a tiny foot upon a willing accelerator — a mustang snorting its defiance against entrapment, rearing and pawing the earth in a plunging circle toward certain doom.

  She was into the house before she saw it, crashing through boards and glass and plaster, pushing couches and chairs and draperies ahead — and, sure, it was like a mad dream of a crazy women's libber — FUCK HOUSEWORK in ten-foot flaming letters on a poster no artist could draw.

  She briefly experienced the sensation of flight and knew that she had been flung from the belly of the arrested beast.

  And she found herself in bed beside a startled elderly man who kept croaking, "What? What? What?"

  Toby muttered, "You're dreaming, go back to sleep."

  Her back hurt, and as she scrambled away from there, she felt like an oversized Raggedy Ann — all flopping legs and arms — but she seemed to be moving fairly well, so she kept going.

  Through the shattered wall she could see cops in riot togs moving cautiously forward, while another cop, out of her range of vision, was insisting, "A woman, I'm telling you. Or a blond hippy. I saw the occupant clear as ..."

  Toby was moving swiftly in the opposite direction, giving not a damn about how clearly the officer had seen her.

  She let herself out the back door and ran across the yard, hurtled a low fence, dashing through the adjoining property and emerging on the next street east at full flight.

  She did not stop running until she saw the bulk of that familiar vehicle parked in the alleyway several blocks along, though her belly was busting and her lungs were afire.

  Her first reaction to sighting the war wagon was one of elation, but that disappeared under the immediate onslaught of a new anxiety.

  Why was it still there?

  He should have been miles away by now!