Fire Eaters

by Don Pendleton

  "They seemed friendly enough," Denise said.

  "Uh-huh," Bolan said.

  "Quite the show-off, though, weren't you. All that Civil War jazz."

  "Can't hurt to cozy up with the bosses," Bolan said, winking.

  She laughed. "Somehow I don't picture you as the brown-nosing type."

  Bolan walked with Denise to the cafeteria. Meeting the two colonels had only convinced him further that something was wrong at Ridgemont Academy. He was also convinced that he needed to know more than he was getting playing Philip Cummings, teacher. He needed to get back to Mack Bolan, Executioner.

  Starting tonight.

  * * *

  "Too many coincidences," Colonel Fowley said, knuckling his runny eyes. "Too goddamn many."

  "Relax," Colonel Dysert said. "You worry too much." Dysert stood up from the leather sofa, walked to the antique mirror on the wall and fussed with his uniform, tugging his creases straight. "Man, I love these things," he said, polishing a brass button. "I feel like I could walk into the Pentagon and order the whole place around."

  Fowley snorted. "I wish you could. It would save us the trouble of dealing with these brats."

  "These brats have already put half a million bucks in a Swiss account for us, Ed. And there's a lot more where that came from."

  "If we live to spend it. That Russian ape is pressing me for more information."

  "Stall him. The process is very delicate." Dysert grinned into the mirror. "We shall serve no secret before its time."

  Fowley stared out the French windows. "There goes that broad and Cummings. They're awfully chummy."

  Dysert leaned over Fowley's shoulder and looked out over the balcony. "I don't blame him. She's a fox. Wouldn't mind some of that myself."

  Fowley shook his head disgustedly. "You should hear yourself sometimes, man."

  "What?"

  "That bitch threatened to sue our asses unless we gave her a job. She could have brought this whole operation down around our heads. The publicity would have driven away the parents, the parents would have pulled their kids, and without these kids, we'd have been back in some urban high school hoping our tires would still be on our cars at the end of the day."

  Dysert remained at the French doors staring at Denise Portland's behind, a lusty grin on his face. "Like I said, Ed, you worry too much. We gave her a job. She's happy, we're safe."

  "But that Cummings guy. Don't you find it strange that we lost Mr. Lister a couple of days ago after he'd been teaching survival here for eight years?"

  "I checked out the offer. It was legitimate. He's already started. Besides, we picked Cummings."

  "At Forsythe's recommendation."

  "Christ, now you think Forsythe is out to get us?"

  Fowley ran his fingers along his pockmarked cheek. "I just don't like that tin soldier."

  "That tin soldier practically runs this place without us. Which gives us the time to pursue our little hobby of becoming millionaires."

  "I still don't like him. And I still think there have been too many coincidences around here."

  Dysert looked at his partner and was struck once again by how much he looked like some giant insect. He remembered the roll-down charts he used to use in the classroom to show the parts of the insect. He pushed it out of his mind. With half a million U. S. dollars in Switzerland, he'd never have to dissect another frog for a classroom of squirmy giggling louts again.

  "Tell you what, Ed," he said, "I'll warn the security guards to be particularly alert from now on. Tell them we've had threatening letters from some child-molesting pervert and to shoot anybody prowling around. Okay?"

  Fowley shrugged. "Just until the Danby thing is over. I don't want anything to happen that will tie us in to that kid killing his father."

  Dysert smiled, the smile he knew people liked most, the big toothy one that made them relax. "Everything's under control, Ed. I'll talk to the guards myself. Meantime, I think it's time we had another one of our little sessions with one of the kiddies."

  Fowley gave him a flat look. "All those years you were teaching, it's a wonder you never got a police record."

  Dysert laughed. "Clean living, Ed."

  11

  Dave Grady pressed the telephone receiver into the modem. He flipped a switch, booted up his personal computer and slipped the special disk into the disk drive. He scooted his chair closer to the desk and pulled the keyboard toward him. His wrists rested in their usual place against the edge of the desk, where little gullies had been worn into the wood from the rubbing of his cuffs.

  Grady's fingers tapped across the keyboard. This was where he felt most powerful, sitting at his keyboard, sensing the current of electricity flowing under the keys like an underground river. And if he hit the right keys, he could know anything about anything. All the world's knowledge, and secrets, suddenly here in his apartment on his small gray screen. Pulling a trigger on a rifle was a burst of delight like sex; but sitting here at his Apple II was extended pleasure, more like love.

  The disk itself was a special creation, one Dave had been working on for years. He'd programmed in every piece of data, Mob gossip and news clippings that he had run across since he'd begun looking for Mack Bolan. Much of the information on the disk was government classified, but Dave had managed to break into several key military computers and siphon the necessary information.

  A flashing red light on the telephone told him he had an incoming call. He plucked the receiver from the rubber suction cups. "Hello?"

  "Hey, Dave. It's Gary."

  "Hi, Gary." Dave was surprised. Gary had never called him before; his voice was agitated.

  "Listen, man, sorry to bug you, but have you seen Libby anywhere? I've called just about everybody she knows. You're my last hope."

  "Sorry, Gary. I saw her at the library last night, but not since. What's up?"

  "Oh, man," he moaned. "My Mustang is in the shop again. That goddamn transmission needs more work. I've got this date with Shawna tonight — we're driving into Vegas for a couple of days — and Libby promised I could borrow her car."

  "You and Shawna, huh? Stranger than fiction."

  "Thanks, pal. You've just never been exposed to the Gary Shonberg charm, that's all."

  "No one has."

  "Listen, man, I'm serious. Libby's roomie said she didn't come home last night."

  "Isn't it romantic."

  "Hey, more power to her, right? Thing is, she promised me her car and no way am I blowing this date with Shawna. Can you help me out?"

  "Sorry, Gary. Haven't seen Libby."

  "What about your car?"

  "Yeah, I've seen that."

  "Come on, Dave, you know what I mean. Let me borrow it."

  "It might make it to Vegas, but not back again."

  Gary chuckled. "So?"

  "Forget it. Take a bus."

  "Yeah, that should impress the hell out of Shawna. Well, thanks anyway. If you run into Libby, have her give me a call."

  "Right." Dave stuck the phone back into the modem. He rolled his desk chair backward until it bumped into something. He twisted around and looked.

  Libby's arm.

  He swiveled, kicked her arm out of the way and rolled backward to grab a legal pad. He moved the chair back to the desk and began typing out commands.

  It took hours. He checked for any relatives that Bolan might have, but none lived in the San Diego area. No known associates there, either. He checked the motel and hotel registrations and car rentals for matches, phoned a couple of hotels for descriptions of new guests. Everything was a dead end.

  After three hours of typing and phoning and sifting through other people's computers, he spun in his chair with a big sigh. Libby Jenson still lay sprawled out at his feet. Behind her left ear was the hole where he'd plunged his knife into her brain. It was small and thin, as if from the bite of a snake. There was surprisingly little blood, just a trickle of dried and crusted red zigzagging down her neck.

  "So
where is the hotshot Executioner?" Dave asked her. "He has to be staying someplace. Okay, he could have changed his appearance, lightened his hair, gotten a different cut. Yeah, that's possible, right?" He nudged Libby's corpse with his foot. "Huh? What's that? I'm missing the point, am I? Maybe you're right. Okay, what is the point? The point is that a man as smart as Bolan is still hanging around after doing a job on Danzig, knowing damn well that this is Noah South's territory and that Noah would be sending someone like me after him."

  His eyes widened. He turned back to the computer. His voice was controlled, but excited. "All right! What keeps a smart man like him in a danger zone when he doesn't have to be there? Business? Nah, he can do that anywhere there's a Mob, which is everywhere. He doesn't follow a system or pattern. No, it has to be something personal. A friend of some kind."

  Grady typed a command. The list he'd compiled earlier that showed anyone Bolan might know in the San Diego area appeared. The list contained more than three hundred names of crooks, cops and people Bolan had run into over the years.

  "A friend," Grady repeated. He typed, and two-thirds of the list disappeared. What remained were people who were pro-Bolan, though there was no way of knowing from this list just how close Bolan was to any of these people. Grady stared at the screen, the green letters glowing at him. Slowly he smiled, typed another command. The computer struggled, clicking for a while as it searched its data for Vietnam veterans only. "The military was the last place Bolan had friends, the kind you risk everything for." The screen went blank, then scrolled a list of twelve names. People Bolan had served with in Vietnam.

  Next, Dave used the modem to call and illegally enter the computers of all the local hospitals. Perhaps one of people listed on his screen was sick or dying and Bolan came to pay last respects. But none of the hospitals shared a familiar name. Back to the in-trouble angle.

  He called the San Diego Star's computers. He entered the names of the ten men and two women Bolan might have known. If the trouble this person was in was enough to make the Executioner stay around, it might be serious enough to appear in the newspaper. The computer clicked some more, searching.

  Finally a name appeared on the screen: Leland Danby.

  The name was followed by the news stories the reporter had filed in the word processor at her desk. Dave Grady read each one of the stories, jotting down key information. Then he searched his own files for whatever he had on Leland Danby. It wasn't much. Back to the modem. He phoned a local Army recruiting computer, using its lines to trace back to Washington, D. C. and into classified personnel files.

  Two hours later he had his connection. Colonel Leland Danby, murdered by his own son, was Mack Bolan's ex-commanding officer.

  He stood up, shut off all his equipment. Maybe this was another dead end, but it was the best lead he had. With the husband dead and the son in jail, Maria Danby should be open to a little persuasion. He looked down at Libby's body. "I suppose we can find a nice scenic place between here and San Diego to dump you."

  He tore Maria Danby's address from his yellow pad and stuffed it in his pocket. If she knew anything about Bolan, he would make her talk. Then Bolan would be his.

  12

  Bolan heard the dogs barking and the men running toward him and threw himself down the sandy embankment.

  "Over there!" one of the guards shouted. Bolan saw light from the boys' dormitory glint off the rifle barrel the guard was carrying. Shotgun.

  Bolan bellied farther down the embankment, finally nestling in behind some dry shrubbery. He reached into his pack, pulled out two cans of beer, shook them vigorously then popped the tops. They sprayed and hissed, but the sound was drowned out by the yelping dogs.

  Bolan tossed both cans up to the top of the embankment. They landed next to the security fence, where they fizzed and gurgled as the beer drained into the dirt.

  Bolan ducked back into the darkness and waited.

  "Shag your ass, Gordy," one of the guards called. He arrived at the fence first. Bolan could see the black Doberman straining at the leash, baring teeth in Bolan's direction.

  Gordy trotted up to his partner, huffing and wheezing, his ample gut spilling over his belt. His Doberman yanked him another few feet so that both animals stood together, sniffing and growling at the fence, their pointed ears pricked straight up. "Anything?" was all that Gordy was able to gasp.

  "Yeah. What we in the security field call 'evidence.' " He pointed his shotgun at the two beer cans sitting in puddles of spilled liquid.

  "Aw, Terry. A couple of goddamn kids dicking with the fence again."

  "Real desperadoes." Terry gave a short yank on the leash and said to the growling dog, "Enough already. You'll go hoarse." The Doberman sat quietly, but still stared down the embankment toward Bolan.

  "Maybe we should go down there," Gordy said. "Find those kids and beat the daylights out of them. Just for making us run like this."

  Terry laughed. "No way am I going on a chase with you. I'd have to carry you back."

  "Hey, man. I can outrun a couple of brats any day of the week."

  "Look at yourself, man. You eat like a pig, drink like a fish and pop more 'Ludes than a rock band. You couldn't catch your own ass with both hands."

  "Colonel Dysert told us to look out for that child molester. Maybe that was him."

  "There are two cans of beer. They don't travel in packs, Gordy."

  "Yeah, well, if he slips past us and attacks one of our little campers, you and I will be out on our asses."

  Gordy pressed his bulk up against the fence and played his flashlight down the embankment, searching the sand knolls.

  "I still say we find somebody and beat the shit out of them. Just to show the colonels that we're doing our job."

  Terry shook his head. "Let's go back to rounds."

  Gordy hesitated, sweeping his flashlight over the area again. Finally he clicked it off, tugged on the dog's leash and said, "Come on, mutt."

  Bolan waited until they'd gone before climbing the embankment, snipping the wires and squeezing under the fence. Once on the other side, he jumped to his feet and ran toward the dorm, flattening himself against the wall, waiting for the sound of attacking dogs or shouting guards. None came.

  He moved slowly, his AutoMag gripped tightly, his black nightsuit scraping the brick facade of the building. It felt good to be back in action. The undercover work was crucial, he knew, but his old impatience for results nagged at him constantly. He felt he was at least moving toward the ultimate conclusion of finding out about Gregg Danby's murdering his father. Something was wrong at this school. Years of experience told him that much. But what exactly was going on and who was involved, he didn't yet know. But he would.

  Bolan slid past an open window. He heard girls giggling, then a familiar voice.

  "He's not that bad," Jennifer Bodine said.

  One of the other girls snorted. "I heard he made you go over that dumb clothesline at the same height as the boys."

  "Yes," Jennifer said. "Isn't that neat?"

  "It's stupid. What if you fell?"

  "What if a boy fell?" Jennifer said.

  "It's not the same. They like to fall. If they fall and get a scar on their face, even better. If we get a scar, no one asks us out until the plastic surgery is done."

  "You're nuts, Amy," Jennifer said.

  "You just like him because he's cute."

  Another girl spoke up. "He is kinda cute, you know, if you like the cowboy type."

  "But he's old!" Amy said.

  "Yeah," they all agreed.

  Bolan smiled. Well, he'd have to drag his old bones through the night without getting his ancient butt shot off.

  He made his way to the administration building without any trouble. The locks were difficult, slowing him for a few extra minutes, but eventually he wound up in Colonels Fowley and Dysert's offices. He used his tiny penlight to guide him to the filing cabinets.

  He didn't know what he expected to find. Maybe nothing.
But he had to start somewhere. Time was running out, both for Gregg Danby and himself. He couldn't afford to hang around this area indefinitely. Not with that junior hit man on his trail. Yet if he left without discovering what happened, Gregg Danby would go to prison or an institution and Maria would have lost both a husband and a son. Bolan owed Colonel Danby's family a better life than that.

  Bolan pulled open the file drawer with letter D on it. He read Gregg Danby's file. Nothing unusual. Sure, the kid had a minor record of offenses, but nothing drastic, nothing that might not be expected from someone trying to live up to his father's example. And since attending Ridgemont Academy, Gregg's grades had improved, he'd joined the Drama Club, had come in second in a boxing tournament.

  Bolan pulled open another drawer: B. He leafed through Jennifer Bodine's file. Her mother was dead. Her father was a top corporate executive in the aerospace industry. He traveled a lot. The letters he wrote to the school indicated he was suspicious of the "fancy girls' schools that taught more about drugs and sex than academics." He wanted someplace where his "little Jenny" could be safe. Bolan frowned. Apparently Mr. Bodine looked on the academy as a kind of modern-day convent.

  Bolan replaced the file and opened the C drawer. He felt the slight buzz of adrenaline through his stomach. Something was wrong. There was the Philip Cummings file, but it was askew, as if hastily jammed into the drawer. And it wasn't in the right order. It belonged between Corning and Cuthbert. But it was in front of Corning. A clerical error?

  The file contained the job application Bolan had filled out, confirmation of recommendations and previous employment, a photograph he'd had taken in one of those dime-store photo booths. There were also notes indicating that someone had phoned the landlords of the addresses that Bolan had listed as previous residences. Fortunately, all had confirmed Philip Cummings as a punctual rent-payer and quiet tenant. Thank God for Hal Brognola's efficiency, Bolan thought. Still, it was unusual that they would go to such lengths. Apparently they were nervous. About what?