Thompson was ushering Bolan toward the office while telling him, “The captain’s regrets—he had to step out for a minute. He asked me to work the problem with you. He’ll try to get back before we’re finished.”
Bolan moved into the small office and asked, “What is the problem?”
The real problem, he knew, was entirely his own. He was deep in enemy territory, surrounded by a couple of miles of hostile forces, pretending to be someone he was not—and with almost total ignorance as to who the enemy really was.
Thompson was saying, “It’s just a couple of hot spots in the interrogation of Mr. Rickert. Or, actually, a possibility of error in the interpretations. The captain merely wants you to verify the interpretations. Make yourself comfortable, please. I’ve prepared a transcript of the questionable areas.”
Bolan took a seat and Thompson handed him a clipboard with some typewritten sheets attached. The guy was so damned militarily correct, so proper, so …
He was saying, “You’ll see that these are particularly critical to the Mack Bolan question. The captain desires no possibility of misinterpretation in those areas. Especially in view of the accelerated timetable.”
Very drily, Bolan replied, “Of course.”
The guy excused himself and stepped out of the office. The transcript sheets were divided into two columns by a heavy black line down the center. To one side appeared the “testimony” of the “subject.” The other side was headed Interpretation, and provided concise summaries of the emotional babblings of a ruptured soul in torment.
Bolan confined his attention to the summaries, having already acquired all the familiarity he desired with the other side. The transcript dealt entirely with Bolan’s involvement in the Los Angeles fall. From Rickert’s point of view, of course. And it was fairly accurate. Jordan had taken the poor bastard through it over and over again, going on to other matters and then returning abruptly to rephrase the same questions time and again. The guy may have been a medical student with a Ph.D. in psychological systems, but he was also a skilled interrogator with all the finesse of a good trial lawyer.
And, yeah, these people were damned concerned about the interests and activities of one Mack Bolan.
The one and only Mack Bolan got to his feet and dropped the transcripts to the desk. He was in a perilous and indefensible position. It had been a critical error to come out here cold, this way. This entire place smelled of Philip Jordan and his style of intrigue. It was not a typical Mafia operation and therefore not subject to the rationale that allowed Bolan to masquerade as Jordan. This “captain,” whoever he was, could be a bosom buddy of the dead man. Any of these people out here could be intimately familiar with the renegade DOD executive.
Thompson was speaking in low tones to the other two men when Bolan stepped into the equipment room. He looked up with a smile and said, “That was quick.”
“Your interpretations are brilliant,” Bolan told him. “Run it that way.”
The guy smiled and said, “Great. Would you like some coffee? The captain should—”
Bolan brushed the offer away with an imperious wave of the hand. “My regrets to the captain, there just isn’t time for sitting around. I have a thousand things to do.”
The smile gave way to a troubled frown. “Well, yes sir, but I believe he wanted to skull over this Bolan problem with you.”
“Tell him I’m working that problem,” Bolan said, firmly moving out of there.
Thompson stepped quickly to get the door for him.
But another guy was coming in.
This one wore flashy civvies. His age was forty-two and his pedigree was third-generation Mafia by way of the Manhattan junglelands. Bolan had him made in a flash, the mental mug file clicking to an instantaneous readout on one Marco Minotti, kid brother and heir to the late Marinello Family lieutenant, Frank Minotti, whom Bolan had executed in his “command strike” against New York.
This guy had never placed eyes on Mack Bolan, but that was not the present worry. The present worry involved the masquerade as Philip Jordan.
Bolan was ready to play quickly to Minotti’s reaction, but Thompson moved in to take the play for himself. He told Minotti, “Well, this is good timing. Have you gentlemen met?” His gaze shifted quickly to Bolan and he went right on with the introduction, as though the question had been purely rhetorical. And Bolan took note of the protocol: deference was to Doctor Jordan. “Architect, this is Banker.”
They had code names yet—great. There was special significance in the manner of introduction, as though Thompson was now revealing a long-kept secret. So if Jordan was the architect and Minotti was the banker, then presumably “the captain” and his synthetic military command would be “Builder,” or some such.
And Bolan was getting a hell of a sinking feeling as to the identity of this so-far nameless captain.
Minotti was shaking his hand and growling something derogatory about “this CIA jazz.”
Thompson smiled indulgently and said to Bolan, “Banker arrived last night. You were, uh, busy at the moment, so—”
The young lord of Manhattan had a very direct way about him, and his manner clearly stated that he did not like word games. He extended a paw toward Bolan and brusquely cut off Thompson’s chatty update. “Name’s Minotti,” he growled.
Bolan accepted the hand and murmured, “Philip Jordan.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. What’d you get out of them tapes?”
“It’s cool,” Bolan replied quietly. “No cause for panic.”
“Panic, hell,” the Mafioso snorted. “Speak for yourself, Doc. I hope the bastard is around. I got a score to settle with that guy.”
“Let’s settle it elsewhere,” Bolan suggested frostily. “First things first.”
“Go to hell,” said Minotti. “You guys can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. And I’ll let you in on a little secret, CIA. If that guy is around, you damn sure better put him on top of your list of things to do.”
Bolan-Jordan stiffly replied, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The warlord turned to Thompson to growl, “So where’s Harrelson?”
The sinking feeling reached bottom. The captain or the builder, or whatever, had stood up absentia to be identified: Franklin P. Harrelson, ex-Captain, U.S. Infantry, now soldier of fortune and master of intrigue, last encountered by Bolan in the Colorado Kill-zone.
And it was, yes, definitely time to be moving along. Before Thompson could reply to Minotti’s query, Bolan said, “Good to meet you, Banker. We’ll get together later today and firm everything up.” His eye caught Thompson’s. “Do I walk or ride?”
“I’ll get you some wheels,” Thompson replied quickly. The look in the eye said that he understood and sympathized with this cultured man’s desire to quit the present company without delay.
Bolan said thank you, and stepped outside.
He hardly had time to light a cigarette before the jeep and same driver reappeared and took him aboard.
It was a tense ride out of that joint, and Bolan was sending up a special word of thanks when he got into his own vehicle and put it all behind him.
It would not remain behind, of course.
In the deeper understanding, that joint—or what it represented—lay smack across Mack Bolan’s lifelines. There was nothing to the rear, now. All of it lay just ahead—and each beat of the heart was bringing it that much closer.
It was not a beautiful day.
It was Wednesday—and it was quite possibly the last day of the rest of his life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SPREAD
Perhaps the greatest peril ever faced by Mack Bolan during his crimefighting career, and certainly the most daring and imaginative caper, had come by way of Frank Harrelson. The guy had an audacious and savvy mind. He could have been among the finest combat commanders to emerge from the Vietnam experience; instead, he came home under a cloud, in semidisgrace, doomed to a dubious military future.
; They’d been friends in ’Nam—of a sort. Harrelson was a commissioned officer, of course, and Bolan was not—so there had always been that artificial barrier standing between them. Even without that, however, they would never have been true friends. Bolan respected the man’s military expertise and combat instincts; he did not particularly approve of Harrelson’s personal ethics. There was no particular need to do so. Their personal contacts had been few and fleeting. They were not even in the same command. But there had been a time when “Harrelson’s Houdinis”—the tag conferred upon his specialty combat teams by an admiring soldiery—had formed the major cutting edge of the army’s pacification program in Vietnam. They were a “hit and git” outfit and their successes were the stuff on which legends are built. The outfit was officially known as Pre-Pac Charlie. It had been Pre-Pac Charlie’s task to drive wedges into enemy-held territories in advance of the pacification specialists. Sgt. Bolan’s tiny PenTeam Able was another of those legend-building units. Able Team’s missions were sometimes at the spearhead of the Pre-Pacs; they functioned as scouts, saboteurs, executioners—always operating deeply in enemy country and usually in total isolation from friendly forces.
There were those times, then, when the PenTeam combined for joint operations with the Pre-Pacs—and it had been inevitable that Bolan and Harrelson were thrown together from time to time.
So, yes, they knew each other. And respected each other. And they had fought each other in Colorado, in a war of a far different sort.
Bolan had stopped Harrelson in Colorado.
He was not that sure that he could do so here, in New Mexico. The Colorado thing had been pure “caper”—bankrolled and sponsored by the mob, sure, but a caper nonetheless.
New Mexico was looking like something quite different. The old partnership was evidently still there, sure—the Mafia-military combination. But something quite new had been added to form a trinity of intrigue and very possibly a nightmarish result. The new element was, of course, one Philip Jordan. Even though the guy was now dead and out of it, perhaps that had come too late to effect the outcome.
And this guy Harrelson was bad news enough by himself. It was doubtful that he would recognize Mack Bolan in any casual encounter. Bolan was not wearing the same face he’d worn through Vietnam; there had been no personal confrontation in Colorado. All that was beside the point. The guy was a soldier, and a hell of an effective one; whatever else he might be lacking, it would not be guts, genius, or military capability.
He had shown Bolan in Colorado that he could weld the same disciplined, crack combat outfit from civilians as from genuine army personnel. Of course his civilian troopers had doubtless been recruited from veterans of the Vietnam experience. They were not underworld street punks, but battle-tested, disciplined, able warriors—guys who’d found the realities of peace a bit harder to live with than the realities of war—some of them, maybe, simply male romantics to whom the appeal of living dangerously overrode the prospect of humdrum lives.
Some of these people, maybe—like Harrelson—had been Bolan’s comrades in that other war, soldiers of the same side. But that fact could have no meaning here, now. They had chosen their “way to go” and Bolan had chosen his.
Thompson … now, there was a guy whom Bolan could have known and maybe liked in Vietnam. He was about Bolan’s age—educated, intelligent, competent, likeable but with a hard cutting edge, bet on it, where that edge was needed. Bolan was reading Thompson as Harrelson’s chief of staff. And, yes, Bolan had served with many like this one.
There would be no joy in fighting such men.
As for all the damned equipment and official trappings—well, Bolan had seen in Colorado, also, the audacious masquerade that had even the Pentagon confused and sucked in. He was probably seeing it again here, in this highly sensitive area of the nation’s military resources—but this time, no doubt, greatly enhanced by the special touch of the late Philip Jordan.
A trinity: the architect, Jordan; the procurer, Harrelson’s Houdinis; the buyer, Mafiadom as personified in Marco Minotti.
It could be a hellish combination, yeah, whatever the game.
Whatever else this operation might be, it certainly was nothing like the quasimilitary attempt in Arizona via the renegades Hinshaw, Worthy and Morales. Those guys had been no more than street punks, whatever their other experiences, and their thinking had never risen above that level. Harrelson was a different item entirely. So was Jordan. Whatever was going on down here in New Mexico, it would most certainly be something extravagant, audacious, and maybe even world-shaking.
It was tied in somehow to the California thing.
It was happening in an area where secret military technology was the chief commodity.
So what the hell was the product?
What was the mob buying in New Mexico?
So what the hell else, Bolan?
Here was the “pie”—the “picnic spread.” Right here, all of it. Here was White Sands, Los Alamos, Holloman Air Force Base, Fort Bliss and God knew how many other exotics.
These guys were going for the arsenal.
In a world where power was the key, this had to be the pie of pies.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A CONTRACTION
Bolan stopped at the first public telephone and worked a combination to Hal Brognola. “It’s time to regroup,” he told him. “Send everything to Holloman. Do it quick and keep a low profile. That is, a very low profile. How soon can you be here?”
“Sounds heavy,” Brognola said.
“Heavier than you may believe,” Bolan warned him.
“You don’t want to say it on the phone.”
“No.”
The fed sighed and said, “I can be airborne in ten minutes. You want everything, eh?”
“All you’ve got, yeah. And, Hal—don’t report your movements to anyone.”
“I should sneak, eh?”
“You should, yeah.”
“Okay. Your cruiser should just about be touching down at Bliss at this moment. I’ll divert it on.”
“Do that. Tell her to bring it into town the minute—wait … is Holloman the only field that can handle that C-One Thirty-five?”
“I don’t know about that,” Brognola replied. “Something wrong with Holloman?”
“Maybe. How far is Fort Bliss by highway?”
“Eighty miles or so,” the fed said. “You want her to roll it from there?”
“That would be best, yes. She should bring it on into town and wait for me at the junction of highways Seventy West and Fifty-four.”
“Okay. What about me?”
“What’s the flight time from there, Hal?”
“It’s about six hundred miles, Striker. Say an hour and a half.”
Bolan said, “That would put the two of you here at about the same time. Hit the floater when you arrive. We’ll work out a meet.”
“Good enough. Uh … can you give me a clue?”
“Remember the guy in Colorado? The presidential caper?”
“You mean the soldier?”
“The same,” Bolan said. “And this one is shaping up to make the first one a damn tame game, James.”
Brognola said, “Tally ho, I’m on my way,” and hung up.
Bolan grinned soberly and called the Jordan apartment. Mary Valdez picked up on the second ring. He told her, “This is the friend. Everything’s off. Clear out of there. Right now. Do you have a good car?”
Her voice was quivering a bit as she replied, “Good enough. Why?”
“I want you to get in it and drive, far and fast. Don’t stop anywhere you’re known and, for damn sure, don’t go home.”
“I don’t understand what you want me to do,” she said breathlessly.
Bolan explained, “I want you to find a hole and crawl into it. At least several hours away from here. And don’t come back until you know it’s okay.”
“How will I know that?”
“Just read the newspapers,” he repl
ied.
“You think I’m in danger?”
“I know damn well you are,” he told her.
“Well, so are you,” she said nervously. “Two men are here waiting to see you.”
“Waiting where?”
“They’re parked right outside. They came to the apartment and asked for you. I mean, for Phil. I told them you’d gone out. But they’re still out there, waiting in their car.”
“What do they look like?” he asked her.
She described the Mafia torpedoes, “Bean” and “Nick.”
“Driving a dusty station wagon?” Bolan inquired.
“That’s right. You know who they are, then?”
“Yeah,” Bolan said. “They’re bad news. Okay. Change of plans, friend. Don’t try those guys. Slip out the other way. Leave your car and hoof it out of there. I’ll pick you up. Go to the Seven-Eleven store on—”
She cried, “They’re coming back!”
“Don’t answer the door,” he instructed her. “Bolt it and stall them as long as you can. Make them bust in, if they want in that bad. I’ll be there in three minutes.”
“Hurry!” she gasped, and hung up.
He would hurry, yeah. But he had a hell of a sick feeling in the gut. There was no figuring a logic where guys like those were concerned. They were capable of any rash action, and it had not taken the brief run-in with Marco Minotti to remind Bolan of that grim fact of Mafia life. But illogical action was not the only worry. It was just as possible that some aspect of that meeting with “the CIA guy” had stirred up something in Minotti’s own guts. In that savage world, Bolan knew, instincts and hunches were the stuff of survival.
If Minotti’s guts were quivering with Philip Jordan—then, yes, the guy would be following up on those quivers.
And if those torpedoes had been dispatched to deliver Jordan for a more prolonged parley, but found Mary Valdez instead, then Valdez could be seen as something of a gut-calmer herself. And that could be the beginning of the end for that lady.
Wednesday’s Wrath Page 4