But then perhaps that was looking too far ahead.
King Fire, maybe, was all the forward look he could handle, at the moment.
King Fire, yeah. It did sound like Bolan’s kind of place. Certainly that name, whatever it meant, did not have the ring of paradise.
7: Contact
Patterson was at the large wall chart in the tac room when the call came—and he was totally unprepared for it. Later, he would tell a close friend, “I felt like a nervous kid on his first date. It was terrible. My knees went weak and my hands got clammy. I knew I was reacting too much, too heavy—but I just plunged on without giving a damn. The guy just affects you that way. I believe I would have handled a call from the President with more cool. The nerve of that fucking guy—I guess that’s what got to me.”
Mack Bolan had never been above fraternizing with the law—not when it seemed important to do so. It was all in the record—the guy had done it many times before. All the same, the homicide lieutenant who had suddenly become the focus of the worldwide stop-Bolan campaign came very close to missing the contact entirely.
“Get out of here!” he snarled at the cop who brought news of the call.
“Seriously, Lieutenant,” the cop insisted. “The guy says he’s Mack Bolan. He asked for you by name.”
Patterson heaved a disgusted sigh and seized the telephone as though grabbing a miscreant by the nape of the neck. “Yeah, what th’ hell is this all about?!” he growled into the instrument.
A cool voice replied, “Hellfire in paradise, maybe. Are you Patterson?”
“I am. They tell me you’re Mack Bolan. Should I laugh now or later?”
“Better do it now while you can. This is important. Give me a quiz if you’d like, but let’s confirm the identity quick.”
“Bolan, huh? You’re the guy?” Patterson had already decided, deep in his gut, that it was Bolan. It was at this point that he lowered his weight to the desk and felt the moisture forming in his palms. “Where’d you get my name, huh?”
“Easy,” came the instant reply, the voice warming some. “I simply asked for it. I was told that you’re the one who drew the short straw. But I didn’t call to wish you luck, Lieutenant. Just observing protocol.”
Patterson flashed a desperate glance at another cop in his tac force and made a frantic signal with his free hand, even though he knew that the chances of getting a trace on the call were practically nil. “What do you mean by that?” he asked the nervy bastard at the other end. “What protocol?”
“I have some intelligence to pass along. Figured you’d be the one to handle it intelligently.”
“You’ve got a hell of a goddamned nerve!” Patterson snarled.
“That’s my strong point,” the guy replied, chuckling. “You’ve got a weak one. It wears a badge and plays friendly games with a guy called Chung. I guess you’ve heard of Chung.”
“Of course I’ve heard of Chung!” the lieutenant roared, fuming at himself more so than at the caller. “Don’t play cute with me, mister. If you’ve got something to say, come right out and say it!”
“I’ve said it. I don’t know his name but he’s young, tall, skinny, sandy hair worn low on the ears. Drives a new blue Plymouth. Should be easy to identify. You can run him down as the first to report the hit on Angliano. He was ordered to the scene by Oliveras, to check it out. Later he carried the news about Oliveras to Chung. Thought you’d like to know.”
“Sure,” Patterson snarled. “And we’ll take your word for the whole thing, Bolan—sure we will. I’ll even—”
“Talk to me intelligently, guy, or I’m hanging up,” that voice warned, very icy now.
The lieutenant rubbed a sweating hand on his pants leg and rolled his eyes at the staff of tac cops who’d gathered at his desk. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he told the caller. “I lost my cool, I apologize. I appreciate the info. We’ll check it out, of course. Look, uh—Bolan? You still there?”
“I’m here.”
“We’re going to nail you, mister.”
“Congratulations. Do you mind if I do a bit of sightseeing first? It’s my first trip to paradise in quite a while.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Sure, many times. In uniform. I did a few months at Schofield once.”
“I guess you know the island pretty well, then.”
“Like my back yard at home,” the most wanted man in the world replied chattily. “Used to love the big waves up at the north shore.”
“You rode the big ones?”
“I enjoyed trying,” the guy replied with a chuckle.
“You’re still trying the big ones, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I keep trying. What else, Patterson, except to sit down and have a good cry. Crying doesn’t get much, does it?”
“I don’t cry much, Bolan.”
“You don’t get much either, Patterson.”
The son of a bitch!
The lieutenant cleared his throat and worked diligently at civility. “We do better than a lot of tourist towns.”
“Better isn’t enough,” the cool bastard replied, the voice cold and serious again. “At the moment you’re entertaining a whole task force of visiting undesirables. Guys like Odono, Dominick, Flora, Rodani, half a dozen more.”
“We know they’re here.”
“But you don’t cry much.” The caller chuckled suddenly, heading off a heated retort from the cop. “Okay, I’m out of line. You didn’t invent the game—you’re just stuck on the rules. I’m not.”
“You’re going to be. There’s no way off this rock for a fugitive, Bolan. We’re going to nail you.”
“Well, I still think I’ll take in a few sights first. You could do the same. Keep an eye on Oliveras. Your cracked badge was given a contract on him.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah. In all justice, the guy didn’t like the assignment. But my guts say that he took it. Chung doesn’t accept negative responses.”
The hand that held the phone was shaking again. “Hell, I don’t get you, mister!” Patterson growled. “Why should you give a damn about Oliveras? You tried him twice yourself. Now you’re calling here all worried about his fat hide!”
“No, I didn’t try him, Patterson. I’ve been saving Oliveras. For the same reason that Chung now wants him wasted. Put a good watch on the guy. And get that cracked badge the hell out of the picture. I don’t want to start shooting at badges—not even cracked ones.”
“Let’s set up a meet,” Patterson suggested, controlled again. “A white-flag meet. I believe you’re a decent guy, deep down. I’d like to help you. Let’s meet and talk it over.”
The guy laughed at that, but it was a pleasant laugh. “Good try, Patterson. Tell you what. I feel the same about you. Deep down, you’re a decent cop just trying to do his job. I’d like to help you, too. So I’ll finish my work here as soon as possible, and I’ll vacate your Garden of Eden before you have to nail me. Meanwhile you can help me by keeping Oliveras alive. By the way, Lieutenant, do you know who Chung really is?”
Patterson found himself stammering, “He’s a—he—I don’t know if—”
“He’s a genuine general in the Red Chinese army. Why do you suppose an honest-to-God general would be playing muscle games with the mob here in your Garden of Eden?”
“What? What are you—Bolan? Bolan!”
The line was buzzing; the guy was gone.
“Well, can you believe that nervy bastard!” Patterson said quietly, as he hung up his own instrument.
“I got it on tape,” said one of the tac cops.
Another one laughed nervously as he caught the lieutenant’s eye and informed him, “There’s a mainland call holding on line four. It’s Washington, Justice Department. Guy named Brognola.”
“Guy, hell!” Patterson snorted, lunging back toward the telephone. “Do you know who Brognola is?”
Patterson knew for damned sure, and this was a call he did not have to be
persuaded to accept. Harold Brognola was the number two cop in the country. He was also chief of the federal anti-Bolan forces.
After chatting with the target of it all, however, Brognola came as something of an anticlimax.
“Can you tell me, Mr. Brognola,” Lieutenant Patterson asked, right off the bat, “why Mack Bolan should be gunning for a genuine Chinese general? He tells me, just a minute ago, that this genuine general is the Hawaii enforcer for La Cosa Nostra. Now does that make any sense to you?”
“I will be there,” Brognola replied curtly, “on the fastest jet I can commandeer.”
“Maybe you’d better do that,” the HPD lieutenant said with a sigh, just before he hung up on the nation’s number two cop. “And you’d better do it damn quick if you want a piece of the action. The guy is on a hellfire tour. He just told me so.”
Then the commander of the Honolulu tactical force turned to his crew with a grim face. “General quarters!” he commanded. “Let’s get it up. Let’s get it all up!”
8: From the Woodwork
Bolan located Tommy Anders at one of the luxury hotels along the beach at Waikiki. The comic had a nice two-room suite rigged for light housekeeping, with a balcony overlooking the ocean.
“Hell Jesus, you walk around with more cool than I do,” Anders greeted the latest sensation of Oahu. “Do you understand that every cop on this island has been mobilized to look for you? And if that isn’t enough, the Oahu Cove has been taken over for the goon squads. They’ve cancelled the shows through tomorrow and hung out a closed sign. There’s more torpedoes in there right now than you’d find at the sub base in Pearl Harbor.”
“Yeah,” Bolan said, “I just came from there. A guy tried to recruit me. The going price for a hot gun, in case you’re interested, is fifty bucks an hour.”
Anders smiled and rolled his eyes at that. “Take my advice and hold out for a hundred. What—are they crazy? Guys are actually signing up to die at that price?”
Bolan grinned soberly. “You’re forgetting the head money. It’s up to about half a mil now.”
“It’s still a lousy contract. Those recruits should have been standing with me in the lobby when the whitecoats started rolling the stiffs through, a while ago. I counted ten, man—ten all in a row.” The comic shook his head with the memory of it. “I thought maybe you were bullshitting me. I didn’t really expect you to go up there. Why do you do it? For God’s sake. How long do you think you can keep this up?”
“Until I die,” Bolan replied lightly. He handed over the papers from Chung’s office. “Somebody told me to get this into the right hands. I guess you’re as right as I can get.”
Anders dropped onto a couch and rapidly shuffled through the papers. A moment later he quietly asked, “Where’d you get this stuff?”
“Smiley gave it to me.”
The little guy just sat there with a dumb look on his face for a moment, then a smile appeared and spread from ear to ear as he began to chuckle. It was Anders’ way of handling heavy emotion; Bolan understood that. The moment passed, and the little guy solemnly declared, “You’re a loving Lourdes miracle. Know that? Where is she?”
“She’s okay,” Bolan assured him. “Full of smiles and mining the mother lode. She’s staying put.”
“Uh huh. Chung, eh?”
“Yeah. Place up near the head of Kalihi Valley. Trans-Pacific Cultural Association.”
Anders was frowning now. “I’ve heard of that. What are they culturing?”
Bolan’s gaze snapped to the papers on the couch. “Martial arts, I’d say. That’s the inventory.”
“Yeah, but …” The frown deepened as Anders’ attention returned to the intelligence. “Half of this is in Chinese.”
“That’s the connection,” Bolan told him. “Those are training manuals. For military hardware.”
“They have this stuff up there? At Kalihi? The hardware, I mean.”
Bolan shook his head. “According to Smiley, no. She gave me the same shove you did. Toward Hilo. She called the place King Fire, said it’s somewhere in the Volcanoes Park area.”
Anders exclaimed, “Oh hell, I have to tell …” He rose abruptly from the couch and strode across the room toward a connecting door, then halted at midpoint and pivoted about to give Bolan a solemn smile. “I, uh, didn’t mention—I believe you’ve met my road manager. He’s with me permanent now. Mind if I bring him in? This is going to knock you over.” He chuckled, adding, “I don’t mean literally. Okay if I surprise you?”
Bolan shrugged and returned the smile, but the eyes were wary.
A guy in Bolan’s position did not like surprises.
Anders went on to the connecting door and rapped on it lightly.
Bolan went to the balcony and turned his back on the ocean. The moon was holding forth nicely here at leeward, but the balcony was shielded from its direct glow. If he had to be deliberately surprised, he preferred it this way, in semidarkness and with all the available light riding on the object of that surprise.
Anders was speaking into the open doorway to the connecting suite. “Hey, hell, come on in here. It’s old home week. Look who I got here.”
A tall, athletic young man stepped through that doorway, moving almost as warily as had Bolan. He wore slacks and a rumpled white shirt with a tie pulled down into a loose vee at the throat. He wore, also, a gun harness across the chest.
Bolan’s gun hand was hovering at the Beretta when recognition flared. The night had been full of echoes; this one came from beyond Vegas, from almost the very beginning of the Executioner’s home-front war. The surprise was Carl Lyons, the L.A. cop who had figured so prominently in Bolan’s Southern California campaigns. Later, at Vegas, Bolan had spirited the guy from death’s very door.
“It’s a hard kick from L.A.,” Bolan called gruffly from the balcony.
The cop did a little comic dance and called back, “Get in here, Pointer, before you give the neighborhood a bad name.”
The cop and the fugitive, who had shared so much of life and death together, met at the center of the room with a warm four-hand clasp. “Figured it must be you,” Lyons said quietly. “Tommy told me about your meeting earlier this evening.”
Bolan said, “You’re a long way from home turf. You L.A. cops do get around.”
“I’m on indefinite leave,” Lyons explained. His gaze flicked to the smiling Anders. “Managing the hottest comic in the land.”
“With gunleather,” Bolan observed, smiling.
“Yeah,” Anders put in drily. “Actually, I believe the guy is under orders to shoot me first time I bomb.”
Lyons said, “I’d have shot you a hundred times by now.”
“Aw, come on,” the comic protested. His face fell suddenly into sober lines as he updated his partner to the latest news. “Mack located Smiley. She’s infiltrated the Chung organization and doing great.”
An expression of relief spread over the cop’s face. He lit a cigarette to cover the emotion, then squeezed Bolan’s arm and stepped into a small service kitchen. “Coffee, anyone?” he asked lightly. “Sit down. I’ll serve.”
Bolan removed his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, then sat down across the table from Anders. He was watching Lyons as he quietly inquired of the comic, “You said permanent—you’re a team, now?”
“Yeah. My boss signs his paychecks. Please don’t ask any more.”
Bolan nodded and lit a cigarette. Lyons came over balancing three cups and carrying an electric percolator.
“You told me there was nothing in the woodwork,” Bolan pointedly reminded Anders.
“Carl isn’t in the woodwork,” Anders replied, his face blankly innocent. “He’s right out in the open, with me.”
“How many more are not in the woodwork?” Bolan asked lightly.
Lyons chuckled and shoved coffee at him, then took a chair between the two. “It’s a pretty heavy operation, Mack,” he explained.
“Smiley used the word sensit
ive,” Bolan said.
“Okay, that’s a good one.”
Bolan tasted the coffee and took a long pull at the cigarette. A heavy, almost embarrassed silence ruled that table for a moment. Bolan sent the cigarette smoke spiraling toward the ceiling and said, “Then it’s no time for cozy games. You’d better level with me.”
“Wish we could,” Lyons muttered.
“Show him the intelligence, Anders.”
The comic said, “Oh. Yeah.”
Moments later, Lyons was lighting his second cigarette while directing a troubled gaze at the pile of papers. “Okay, so you’re onto it,” he commented heavily to Bolan. “Where’d you get this?”
“Smiley passed it to me.”
“I see.”
“I don’t,” Bolan said.
Lyons and Anders exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“We can’t discuss this, Mack,” Anders said, very softly.
Bolan replied, just as softly, “Bull.” He stood up, put on his jacket, said, “Stay clear,” and headed for the door.
Lyons protested, “Hey, dammit!”
Bolan had the door open. He turned back with a sober smile. “It’s okay,” he said, and went out the door.
He was halfway to the elevator when a door opened behind him and a commanding female voice called out, “Okay, Captain Hard! Your way, then. To the rear march, and doubledamnquick!”
Bolan came around grinning.
He was beyond surprise on this night of echoes.
And Toby Ranger, brass mouth and all hundred pounds of bristling womanhood, looked good enough to die for.
The game in Hawaii had abruptly taken on an entirely new dimension.
9: Sogging It
There were no embraces this time, nor was there any casual camaraderie or light humor. This was a business meeting, in the strictest sense. And it was quite evident that Toby Ranger was the outranker here.
The meeting was held in the suite that connected to Anders’. This was, obviously, the working suite. Tools of the trade were scattered about everywhere—road maps, aeronautical charts, tourist brochures of the various islands, an imposing rogue’s gallery of glossy mug shots, weapons, graphs, official papers.
Hawaiian Hellground Page 5