Okay. Lavagni would be moving in his screen any moment now. It was time for a bit of psychological warfare… something to jar the enemy, to slow them, to take away their initiative.
Bolan slung the Thompson across his chest and affixed the silencer to his Beretta Belle.
Right.
It was time to take the offensive.
* * *
Field Marshal Lavagni had his troops in place, and he was impatiently awaiting word that the plug crews were on station. A crude, hand-drawn map of the bay area lay on the sand in front of him, and this he was studying intently.
"How long d'you figure it'd take a guy on foot to cross this patch of jungle, Charlie?" he asked his chief gunner.
Dragone shrugged his shoulders. "Depend on the guy, I guess. It's probably slow going in there, though."
"Probably take me half a day," Lavagni admitted. "A guy who knew his way around, though…"
"You figure he's making for the back side?"
"Yeh. That's what I'd do." The Mafia boss tapped the map with a thick finger. "I'd head straight for this sugar farm here. I'd buy or steal me some wheels, and I'd high-tail it for San Juan."
"That's what he's doing," Dragone agreed. "He needs to make some connections. I'd say San Juan, yeah." The crewchief scratched absently at his forehead. "One thing though, Tony. I doubt if this boy know where the hell he really is. I mean, without a map…"
"He come in by plane, remember," Lavagni said, sighing. "Don't worry, this boy always knows where he's at. Did you tell Vince what I told you?"
"Yeh. I told him you want a complete rundown on all the civilians living in the area. He's sending a boy over, a native I guess, to talk to you. Soon as he can find him. Things are pretty lore up over there, Tony."
"They got things about under control?"
"Yeh, pretty much. But it's a mess. What the fire didn't get, the water did."
"Tell Latigo to send a couple of boys to the farm, this sugar farm here."
"Okay."
"Goodboys."
"Sure, Tony."
"How about those whirly birds?"
"Taken care of. Grimaldi says it'll take about an hour."
"An hour from when?" Lavagni wanted to know.
"Well… about fifty-five minutes from right now." Dragone heaved to his feet and motioned to a man in bathing trunks who was standing just down-range. "Bring that radio, Kelly," he growled.
The man hurried over with a small transistorized two-way radio and thrust it toward the chief gunner.
"Lavagni was saying, "Tell Latigo…" and Dragone was reaching for the radio when suddenly it took flight, propelled with a screech from Kelly's hand by a sizzling lump of hot metal.
Another sizzler came in a heartbeat ahead of any possible reaction, this one squarely between the startled Kelly's eyes, and the man in the swimsuit toppled over and slid toward the water without a sound.
The other two found themselves lying shoulder to shoulder on the sand, their weapons up and searching for a target.
"Where'd it come from?" Lavagni puffed.
"It just came," the crewchief replied in a taut voice. "He got Kelly."
"Fuck Kelly, where's that sonuvabitch at!"
"I don't see a goddam thing, Tony. I didn't even hear nothing."
"Bastard! He's using his silencer."
Silencer or not, the line of gun soldiers flanking the two men had become aware of the drama at their center, and all were sprawled in the sand and anxiously watching for some sign of the enemy.
Dragone said, "I guess he ain't making for no sugar farm, Tony."
"He shot up the damn radio, didn't he."
"Yeh."
Lavagni was building toward a huge rage. "Dammit, we just can't lay here. Listen. Now listen close! Work your way along your side of the line, but dammit keep yourself down! Tell your boys we move on my signal. I'll take this side and clue everybody in on the action. When I get to the far end I'll fire two shots. That's the signal to move it. Tell each boy this, he's to stay in sight of the man next to him, I mean looldn' toward the center. That's important, so tell 'em. Dammit!"
* * *
Bolan's angle of vision onto the beach had given him a limited choice of targets. It had been like looking through a twenty-yard length of two-foot diameter pipeline and seeing clearly only those objects which happened to pass by the far end. Another foot or two to the right and he could as easily have taken out Lavagni himself, instead of settling for an anonymous soldier and a radio. Just the same, the message had been sent and received, and this had been the primary consideration.
He wanted those guys to get the taste of sand in their mouths and a fresh vision of death in their consciousness. And he'd wanted them to eat sand long enough to allow him a chance to advance to the next firing line.
That objective had been accomplished also, and now he was lying at the very edge of the forest, in a prone firing position and with good cover behind the rotting remains of a fallen tree. The terrain dropped away sharply just beyond that point, with the beach sloping abruptly to meet the water. From his ground-level point of view, only the glassy surface of the bay lay directly ahead of him. Off to either flank, however, he had an excellent view of the activities underway on the beach itself.
To his right he saw Lavagni emerge from the blind spot, moving quickly in a low scamper along a line of rifle-toting gunners. The guys were flaked out there like a landing party in an amphibious assault, awaiting the signal to proceed inland. Then the other guy, obviously Lavagni's good right arm, appeared on the other flank in a similar movement.
Bolan precisely understood what they were doing.
He final-checked the Thompson and made a quick calculation of the firing angle which would be immediately available to him. He decided to set his limits at thirty degrees of horizon, then fed this into his observations of the enemy line.
They were spaced at ten or twelve feet. He would begin at dead center, and immediately sweep five degrees to either side. This should bring down the four or five closest threats.
His right flank was the most exposed, and the most vulnerable to an effective return-fire from the more distant points. So his second pattern would be sweeping out to fifteen degrees right, to at least minimize the retort from that angle. Then, if everything was on the numbers, he'd try to sweep some away from the left.
That was the battle plan. The entire fire mission should last no more than a few seconds. It had to be quick and brutal and over with, before the enemy fully realized that it was happening. If properly executed, the play would mean, in actual numbers of those engaged, reducing the odds of the firefight to about 10 to 1 at the very worst. With a good automatic weapon, jungle cover, and the element of initiative in his favor, Bolan would ride those odds any time.
He watched Lavagni reach the far end of the line, saw the revolver lifting into the air, and heard the double report signaling the game to commence.
And then the line was up and running in a ragged advance across the white sands. Bolan's impression was of about twenty men to each flank, plus two rising up from the blind spot.
He spotted them three strides into the soft stuff, then the heavy chopper began its guttural doomsday report. The two guys directly ahead were accorded the initial burst, each receiving a closely packed wreath of .45 caliber expanders in the chest. They went over backwards and out of view as the chopper swung on and the horrible sounds of automated death swept across the sands of paradise.
Bolan executed the fire mission to its planned parameters, no more and no less, and it was all over in a matter of seconds. Then he withdrew, back into the bosom of his home — the jungle, and left paradise to the company of the friendly dead.
Fire Mission number three was next on tap.
* * *
Lavagni and Dragone met at the center and reformed their line, under the cover of trees — minus eight gunners who had not made it that far.
"What do you figure the guy thinks he's doing, T
ony?" Dragone asked.
Lavagni was perspiring heavily from a combination of over-exertion in the tropical heat and strained emotions. "I don't know, Charlie," he replied disgustedly. "He's a hard case, that guy. If I was him, I'd have been halfway out of this place by now."
"Maybe he didn't get away clean. From the plane, I mean. Maybe he ain't ableto travel too well."
"It's something to think about," Lavagni admitted. "Anyway it don't matter. Look, I know what I'm doing, Charlie. Don't worry, the guy will run out of bullets before we run out of bodies."
"Don't let the boys hear you talking like that," Dragone cautioned in a hushed voice. "They're worried enough as it is."
Lavagni was about to make a heated comment to that when the chatter of the Thompson again erupted, this time from far along the line.
"Contact," Lavagni growled. Let's go."
* * *
Before the two Mafia leaders could close on the new trouble spot, however, that third fire mission had been completed and the Executioner was moving swiftly through the jungle toward number four.
Bolan's battle plan was a basic guerilla maneuver. It was meant to draw the enemy line forward along a course of Bolan's choosing, to widen the spaces between the teeth of the grinder, and to slip through them.
This objective was neatly accomplished during the confused aftermath of the next brief firefight. Bolan stood quietly in the branches of a giant tree and watched the shaken enemy re-form their line beneath him and sweep on northward.
He noted that they had carefully collected the weapons of their fallen dead — and he smiled at this, accurately reading Lavagni's game of numbers. Quick Tony was willing to give the prey a few dead bodies, so long as he continued spending his precious ammo for them.
But that game was ending now.
Bolan was no longer concerned with the acquisition of friendly dead, and he had all the breathing space he'd wanted.
He gave the meat-grinder time to chew up a bit more jungle on the sweep northward, then he slipped to the ground and set off for the next objective.
It was time for a closer look at Glass Bay Resort
Chapter Four
Game plan
The easiest and most direct route of retreat from Glass Bay would be through the jungle pocket, across the coastal plain, and into the mountains of the interior. From there, a guy on the run could probably commandeer a vehicle and make it into San Juan, a modern city of maybe half a million people. He could lay low for awhile in San Juan, then slip back to the states via ship or plane when the situation had cooled off.
There were two principal reasons, though, why Mack Bolan did not choose this avenue of escape.
First, the enemy would be expecting just such a move — and he did not wish to give them the added advantage of reading his game plan.
Secondly, Bolan did not choose to "lay low" in San Juan, nor did he have any intention of leaving the Caribbean until he'd completed his operations there.
The strategic route of retreat which he had selected lay directly across Glass Bay, past the enemy hardsite, and on beyond to one of the seaside villages. From there he would play it by ear and figure some way to strike at the mob's wheel of fortune.
The big problem of the moment was Glass Bay itself.
Bolan had moved cautiously to the eastern edge of the forested area and he was taking a quiet reading of the situation there. He was about two hundred yards inland and looking southeasterly onto the grounds of the hardsite.
The fire had apparently been brought under control but smoke continued to rise from several stubbornly smoldering pockets. He counted twelve men moving tiredly about the damaged structure, a few still on fire hoses but most of them now engaged in salvage operations. Furnishings and other objects were strewn about the lawn. Angled to one side and out of the way was the line of Glass Bay dead, neatly lined up and wrapped in sheets.
Bolan grimaced and consulted his wristwatch. It had been a fast and chaotic forty minutes at Glass Bay.
His point of view was toward the rear, of the house and across several hundred feet of open area. Four smaller structures were semi-circled behind the main building. None of them seemed to have suffered damage. Two were bungalows, one was a storehouse of some kind, the fourth appeared to be an office.
A VW sedan was parked between the bungalows. Behind these and set off at a right angle stood a long and narrow structure which provided carport parking for perhaps a dozen vehicles, with living quarters above. This would be the barracks, Bolan deduced, for lower echelon attendants of visiting big shots — the wheelmen, hardmen, etc. The place appeared deserted now, and there were no vehicles in the bays. So it followed that Lavagni's party had been airlifted in, not brought in by ground transport.
Continuing the visual inspection, Bolan noted an asphalt road looping in from the east-rear section of the property. An arched gateway marked that eastern boundary. The blacktop road traversed the manicured grounds to the carports and ended there in a graveled circle. A dirt road led from there to Bolan's side of the compound, skirted the jungle for a hundred yards or so, then angled off toward the rear perimeter.
A jeep was presently occupying that dirt road, parked at the midpoint of the jungle stretch not a hundred feet from Bolan's position. Two men with poised Thompsons were standing behind it and intently watching the forest line.
Occasional distant gunfire was coming from the interior of the jungle area, in singles and in volleys, as the Lavagni meat-grinder chewed on northward. The survivors were probably thoroughly spooked now and firing at anything that moved or seemed to move. This suited Bolan fine. Another five minutes of that and they would probably be shooting at one another.
Meanwhile the pressure was being lifted from this corner of the battle zone. The two plug men at the jeep had noted the audible evidence that the sweep had progressed far beyond their position, and they were relaxing.
As Bolan watched, one of them lowered his weapon to light a cigarette. The other man said something, to which the first one laughed and moved around the front of the jeep to hand over the cigarette. Then he lit another for himself and the two stood chatting in low tones, their backs to Bolan as their attention remained focused on the distant sounds of "battle."
That jeep was Bolan's ticket out of Glass Bay, and he meant to have it. He was calculating the precise range from his position and applying this to the ballistics characteristics of the Beretta. The firing range would be approximately thirty yards. The Beretta had been worked-in for a twenty-five-yard point-blank range, meaning no rise or fall of trajectory across that distance, and the finely balanced weapon had delivered consistent two-inch groupings at such a range. The silencer, however, altered all that — and Bolan needed silence as much as he needed the jeep.
He was mentally calculating the corrections required when his attention was diverted by a commotion near the house. The Volkswagen had lurched away from the bungalow area only to be halted at the graveled circle opposite the carports.
The driver, to Bolan's surprise, was a woman. A big guy in a rumpled Palm Beach suit had pulled her out of the car and was dragging her back toward the bungalows.
The two men at the jeep had also swiveled about to watch the little drama. One of them chuckled and called out, "Atta boy, Vince" — though not loud enough to be heard across the intervening area.
Bolan pondered this development for a moment. Anything which was out of the ordinary deserved his attention, and to find a female around a hardsite at such a time was certainly unusual. Who was she? What was she doing there? Why was she being prevented from leaving?
He tried to shrug it off, deciding that the woman's presence could have little bearing on his own problem. As for herproblem… well, maybe it was no more than a marital one. Maybe she was married to one of the Glass Bay wheels. Or she could be a girl friend, or the local whore-in-residence. At any rate, Bolan had enough of a problem already.
He pushed the woman from his mind and concentrated
on his own problem in survival. One of his targets had raised a two-way radio to his head and was speaking into it.
New instructions?
It looked that way. Each of the men dropped his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it, then they swung around to opposite sides of the jeep and climbed aboard.
The Beretta was extended and ready to blast, the ballistics corrections being meticulously programmed through mind, eye and hand.
Bolan was waiting for the driver to stow his Thompson and start the jeep. The sound of the engine would be a further masking factor in the attack, and Bolan wanted everything going for him that he could get
The finger squeezed home with the first crank of the engine, the Beretta recoiled with a soft cough, and the driver pitched forward across the steering wheel.
The other guy was turned in profile, caught in that microsecond of stunned realization before reaction sets in, when the Beretta Belle resettled into the second alignment and another hi-impact missile sizzled along the doomsday course. It splattered in just above the mouth and sent the guy sprawling onto the ground, the Thompson still cradled in his arms.
The Executioner waited cautiously for some sign of a reaction from the hardsite. Receiving none, he stepped out of the vegetative cover and strolled unhurriedly to the jeep.
The engine was idling in neutral. Bolan went first to the man on the ground and dragged him around to the blind side. There was no recognizing that face. Most of it was missing. He was wearing a new sports shirt with a sale tag still attached and clean white denim slacks. Bolan removed the clothing and put it on over his skinsuit, and the fit was good enough for the moment.
Next he pulled the driver out and rolled him to the ground beside the other man. The Parabellum bone-crusher from the Beretta had penetrated at the base of the skull and angled up for an exit through a slightly enlarged eye socket There was not much blood up front, and the departing trajectory of the bullet had cleared the jeep's windshield. Bolan tore the guy's shirt off and used it to sponge up the blood spatterings, then he retrieved the fallen Thompson from the roadway and added it to the growing arsenal in the rear seat.
Caribbean Kill te-10 Page 4