"Hey wait, wait!" he urged, in a voice quivering with sudden respect.
"You wait," Bolan countered. "Send those girls out here, and don't be cute about it."
"You uh, that's all you want, eh?"
"Right now, yeah," Bolan assured him.
"Shit, guy, they're not worth it."
"They are to me," insisted the death voice. "Send them."
The guy sent them. Panda and Cynthey scampered panting and sobbing into the waiting darkness behind the spots. In the momentary close-up, Bolan had received an instant understanding of what they'd been put through. Those cute faces were now welted and puffy, bloated from a combination of blows and tears, and terribly, terribly unhappy. A dried trickle of blood remained at the corner of Cynthie's mouth.
As they hurried past, he quietly instructed them, "The van, right outside. Mary's waiting."
He gave them until the door up there opened and closed, then he told the coalition of five, "Now you guys draw straws to see who'll be the first man out behind me. Or else lean together for awhile and live to remember."
He withdrew in a quiet backpedal, and apparently the coalition had decided to lean together. There was no pursuit. The warwagon was fired up and Mary Ching was riding the clutch in a slow crawl when he casually opened the door and slid in beside her.
"Go," he said.
The two kids were huddled together on the rear deck, alternately crying and laughing in mutual hysteria, and Mary had taken the corner and proceeded several blocks up Van Ness before Bolan could edge an intelligent word into it.
"Tell me a safe place to drop you," he demanded.
"Sausalito," Cynthey replied without hesitation.
"You sure?"
She bobbed her head in an emphatic reply. "Our friends will take care of us. I just dare those goons to..."
"Sure you wouldn't rather have police protection?"
Both girls shuddered at that suggestion, and Bolan dropped it.
He turned a sigh to Mary Ching. "You know the place?"
"I know," she said, and she made it sound almost like Bolan saying it.
He scowled, freshened the Belle, and the porno girls plus two headed for the Golden Gate.
The story did not need to be told, but they wanted to tell it, so Bolan let them. It was nothing new, the usual routine, an incautious word dropped in a dangerous place, a visiting delegation of hard-eyed and equally quick-fisted inquisitors. They'd closed the place down and sent everybody home... everybody but the two female "stars" — and two hours of mind-blowing hell had ensued.
They'd wanted to know everything the girls knew — which they got very quickly — and a lot of things the girls could never know. When the proper answers were not forthcoming, there were hideous threats and stories of mutilated young bodies floating out through the Golden Gate, and there were blows and various other physical indignities.
None of the delegation were ready to accept the truth that the girls actually knew nothing whatever concerning Mack Bolan's plans and/or present whereabouts. Apparently they had come prepared to spend the night — and no doubt would have — had not Bolan himself provided the answer regarding his present whereabouts.
Cynthey was effusively grateful for the rescue; Panda was surly and resentful of the fact that Bolan's shadow had entered and clouded their lives. As the story went on, it became apparent that Panda had been the one with the leaky mouth. She was clearly jealous of the impression Bolan had made on the other girl, and it was during an angry denunciation of "all men including your fancy Mack Bolan" at lunch time, when the wrong ears were listening and their hell began.
Bolan did not feel responsible, except in the sense that any human is responsible for another. He had neither sought their company nor given any moves to maintain it. He had warned them of the value of silence, and they had blown it. As a result, they had endangered not only themselves, but Mary Ching as well, and they could quite easily have become the instruments of Bolan's downfall.
On the other hand, he certainly felt no resentment toward the porno girls. They were, after all, just kids. He was just damned glad that he'd gotten to them in time, and that the thing had worked out as well as it did.
He did feel strongly responsible, however, for a pair of somewhat different people back East. They were tied to him by the invisible threads of mutual love and hazard, and their beloved lives had been plunged into a torment of furtive existence — hiding that they may live — and all because of Bolan's lousy war.
And the guy had the nerve to ask him if it was important!
Then there was that other responsibility sitting there coolly beside him, a China doll who had also become special and was dangerously compromised by Bolan's war. And he was dragging her deeper into it with each passing moment.
So it was a lot of baloney; a guy could not stand alone, not absolutely alone, not so long as he lived in a world of people. The people were what the war was all about. And some of them, here and there along the way, were going to get burned. There was no way around that idea; there was no way to stand absolutely alone.
Important? Yeah, Corporal Phillips, it was damned important.
He told Mary Ching, "Your humble pad is now death row. Avoid it, write it off, don't ever go back there again."
Mary's eyes found those pathetic kids in the rear-view mirror; they found the tortured misery in the Executioner's gaze; she nodded her head and told him, "Okay. Okay."
She knew, now, what Mack Bolan was made of.
Sausalito is a picturesque little village lying directly across from San Francisco on the Gate's north shore. Bolan had spent a weekend there once, shortly after Korea. Under another time and mood, he would have greeted the quaint beauty of "the Portofino of the West" with a nostalgic appreciation; on this trip he felt merely tense and anxious to have the bedsy twins off his hands and mind. His numbers were getting crowded and — although San Francisco was only minutes behind him — he was a bit irritable over the fact that he'd left the town behind just when all the numbers were beginning to come together.
The warwagon, under the sure guidance of Mary Ching, was picking its way clear of the bridge approach and winding onto a narrow shoreside road, circling onto the bay.
He should have received the initial ding when the first huge signboard blurred across his vision, proclaiming in red letters a foot high, SAVE THE BAY — but with everything else that had transpired that day, he wasn't as quick to draw the connection. Several signs and as many jogs in the road later, they came upon the houseboat, about a hundred yards off the road, snuggled into a cozy inlet and tied by heavy hawsers to a couple of accommodating trees.
It was small, as some houseboats go, but the letters blazed across it from stem to stern — BAYSAVERS — would be a difficult item for anyone to miss — and this time there was no miss inside Bolan's brain.
Already, though, Mary was swinging the van onto the little trail to the boat and Cynthey was on her knees directly behind him and proudly declaring, "That's it, that's the home where the heart is."
It was also a home where a lot of hell was likely to be unleashed, and it didn't even take an executioner's mentality to recognize that harsh fact of winner-take-all warfare.
He snarled at Cynthey, "Is this also the home of Baysavers Incorporated?"
Her eyes were baffled and recoiling from the savagery of his tone as she stammered, "S-sure, well n-no, I mean, Mr. Vericci gave us the boat. You've heard of him?" She shrank back all the way, reading the truth of Bolan's eyes, and wailed, "Oh, no!"
Oh yeah. He'd heard of him.
Bolan would never cease to marvel at the fantastic interconnections in the world of Mafia, and the way they always seemed to reach out and tie up a guy when he was least expecting it.
Touch one and you reach them all, that was the lesson the Executioner had learned many hot battles ago, but one which he apparently had not learned quite well enough.
A heavy car had already pulled crosswise onto the trail be
hind them, blocking the way out.
Movements, now — excitedly surreptitious ones — were taking place down there around that boat... and, yeah, all the numbers had crowded together on that narrow trail outside of Sausalito.
His leg pushed Mary's aside and his foot found the brake pedal to stand the warwagon on her nose.
He knew now, yeah, why he'd been feeling so irritable.
He had goofed, he had overlooked something, and that little sentinel of the inner mind had been screaming into his blindness that he had left something behind in San Francisco.
It wasn't his, heart, either.
He'd left his caution and his combat quick and maybe his whole damn lousy war.
He'd become weary of the stand alone.
He'd ridden blithely and blindly into the most outrageously obvious set-up of them all — and he'd come in stupid, deaf, and feeling sorry for himself.
In a voice quivering with self-disgust, he commanded, "Out Mary's side and into the dirt, all of you! Hit the water on my signal and stay the hell clear!"
And then Bolan tried for the only save he knew.
He came out shooting.
16
Style
Bolan exploded through the rear door of the war-wagon, a combat belt slung hastily across his neck and a blazing burpgun in his hands.
The immediate target was that rear guard vehicle with its six occupants, and it was obvious that they had not expected anything like this. The range was less than fifty yards, far less than the maximum effective for the combat machine gun. The assault caught them on the seat of their pants and clawing like hell to get out of that sitting target; their first few rounds were hasty and purely reactive.
Bolan himself was firing for cover, not for effect. He moved out behind the blazing attack and found the so-so shelter of a stubby tree before the boys could pull their wits back together.
By the time they had their doors open, he had snatched an ornament from the combat belt and base-balled an HE grenade along the course to facilitate their scrambling exit. It hit the ground a few yards shy and rolled on home, exploding directly beneath the vehicle and lifting it to full spring travel in a rocking-rolling motion.
Two guys were still inside at that instant, and the others were no more than a pace away. Two of the outsiders were flattened, hard, by the blast. The other two were reeling away from there and firing handguns at the moon. The burpgun cut them down before they could get their legs fully beneath them.
One of the guys still in the vehicle was screaming bloody murder... and then the secondary explosion came, the gas tank letting go with a horrible whooosh and sending a horizontal jet of fire streaking along the undercarriage like a flame-thrower. The car came up off its wheels, riding that cushion of fire, and the screamer lost it all in a final high-pitched gurgle.
That took care of the rear.
If you wanta play, guys, it's best to bring your own ball.
Bolan was already running along the treeline in a reverse course toward the houseboat.
As he passed the van he shouted, "Okay, hit the drink!" — and again he turned the burper loose, desiring only to attract all eyes to that flaming muzzle and away from the girls.
It was a successful diversion. He was drawing plenty of fire.
Something tore through the fabric of his coat and another sizzling chunk practically parted his hair.
Bolan dived in behind a rock, about midway between the warwagon and the boat, and he reloaded the heated burper while he ran a spot on the enemy.
Some clown was on the roof of the houseboat with a lever-action rifle. That boat had a flat, square roof, absolutely flat, with nothing more than a couple of 3-inch stovepipes and a TV antenna to serve as cover.
Another guy was kneeling just off the gangway, taking cover behind a trash barrel, and plinking at Bolan with a small caliber pistol.
The woods in front of the boat, now, were another matter altogether. Most of their firepower seemed to have been concentrated out there. Muzzle flashes were visible from about five widely scattered points, grouped in multiples, and they were laying a withering fire on him, keeping him pinned behind the rock.
Bolan risked a craning inspection of the bay, and he was partially satisfied to note two girlish heads bobbing around out there just offshore.
It was the two kids.
Mary Ching was nowhere in evidence.
Cynthey seemed to be stroking for the houseboat. As Bolan watched, she paused to tread water and cup her hands for a shout toward her goal. "Everybody out!" she screamed in a high falsetto. "Alla you kids get out of there!"
Somebody was thinking.
The guy on the roof levered a shot at Cynthey.
Bolan splattered him with a single burst from the burper, then he yelled, "Cynthey, stay under!"
It was an unnecessary direction. A glistening bare bottom rose to the surface as she went for depth, and she was gone in a flash. Panda, too, knew where safety was, and she immediately followed suit.
San Francisco Bay had cold, cold water — and Bolan felt a bit bad about that — but it was still the best place for them, especially since both seemed in pretty good control of their environment. There was no control over that other environment — not for the non-combatant — and Bolan had not wanted them in that fire zone.
He cast about for a glimpse of Mary Ching and came up with zero.
Behind him the plug vehicle was now in roaring flames and sending a dense cloud of black smoke soaring skyward.
It was a bad situation. He could have gone on out through that dissolved rear plug, sure, and left everybody to pick up their own marbles. But Bolan just did not play the game that way.
So here he was — pinned down. Probably 15 or 20 guns out there somewhere. Several more on the boat.
A Mexican stand-off could work no way but against Bolan. The heart of the village was less than a half-mile away; there would be an official reaction to that smoke and rattling firefight, and it could come damn quick.
On the other hand, no one man could successfully rush those woods, nor could he remain content for long with merely good cover, cops or not. Someone was probably already circling around to get behind him.
So...
Bolan put the burpgun aside and hauled out the big silver blaster. A sniping mission... with a handgun? Why not? The Auto Mag was certainly no ordinary handgun.
He showed himself and waited for a muzzle flash, and it wasn't much of a wait. Several came immediately. He tracked onto the most likely target and sent 240 grains right back at him, targeting right on the flash.
The guy behind that muzzle came immediately into full view, pitching sideways and down and out of the picture.
Bolan bobbed up again, and another exchange of fire produced a like result.
It was a hell of a grim way to play Russian roulette.
Somebody else out there was getting the same idea, and they were losing. There was movement out there — a shifting about.
Then a rattling burst sounded to Bolan's rear. He was swinging about to give the shortarm sniper a sniff of the situation when a guy fell away from the side of a rock, up on his flank, and the China doll stepped out from behind the van to sweep that entire side with a blazing machine-pistol.
It was too late to do anything but try to cover her.
Bolan rose to full height and extended the Auto Mag in a firing-range stance. The big piece boomed and belched fire in a rapid unload — and when the clip was empty Mary was up in the rocks on his exposed flank, in good cover now and firing selectively at specific targets.
She was good, she was damned good, and Bolan knew that the tide of battle had turned.
There was considerable movement out there now, quick movements in the direction of the boat.
Many heads were now visible in the water, Bolan reckoned about a dozen in the quick scan, and it seemed that Cynthey's buddies had joined her for the swim.
He called up to Mary, "Okay! Hold it!"
/> She called back, "Okay!"
The woodchucks were bailing out, and Bolan counted them as they scampered out of the woods and scurried across the gangway onto the houseboat. Eight left. Great. He let them go, giving them the boat, his mind already drawing upon a certain way to cut short the stalemate.
"Stay alert!" he warned Mary Ching.
She waved at him.
He thrust the Auto Mag into his belt and scooped up the burper, then moved into the trees and worked his way downrange toward the boat.
It wasn't really a boat, at all. It was just a big square raft with walls and a roof, a small porch which overhung the water in the gangway area, and a narrow walkway around the sides.
The idea was firmly crystallized now and, from a range of about ten yards, Bolan opened fire on the nearest mooring tree.
The big hawser popped dust and fuzz, then threads and strands; finally the cable parted with a groan.
One end of the houseboat immediately swung away from the shore and stretched itself toward the open bay, dragging the gangway with it.
Mary Ching, the China gunner, let out a whoop of delighted encouragement.
Concerned faces appeared at the windows of the boat, and someone in there yelled, "What the hell is this?"
Bolan was already circling toward the other mooring tree. He let it have another clip from the burpgun. This time the rope cable parted with a twang and an explosive pop, and BAYSAVERS quickly drifted away in an idle exploration of that which it would save.
A youthful voice from the water yelled, "Our boat, our boat!"
Another shouted, "Let it go! Bon voyage, freaks!"
Bolan didn't feel too badly about the kids' boat. The Coast Guard would drag it back to them... if something more disastrous didn't occur before they made the scene.
And there were more immediate problems.
A distant siren was wailing down on them, descending from the direction of Sausalito.
The crew of BAYSAVERS, now at a relatively safe distance from the fire zone, were manning the rail and staring back at the receding shoreline.
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