Blowout

by Don Pendleton

  If the gunman could see that well, down both aisles, he must be high up, above the stacked material, perhaps balanced on top of the skins on one of the trolleys.

  The count was now five.

  Bolan vaulted up onto the bales. He saw a darker blur against the pale, ridged metal side of the container. Letting loose a three-shot burst, he was rewarded with a cry of pain, a single round that flew wide and the clatter of a body stumbling to the ground.

  He leaped down into the aisle, scooped up the penlight and raced for the trolleys. The man was sitting on the floor with his back against a stack of skins. Blood welled between the fingers of the hand clenched over his left shoulder. The revolver was a couple of yards away. Bolan swung the penlight beam.

  No surprise. It was Hugo.

  The Executioner crouched down beside him and jammed the muzzle of the Beretta into the soft flesh at one side of his throat. "All right, you little snake," he growled, "now's the time to talk if you want to live long enough to get that shoulder mended."

  Terrified eyes blinked against the flashlight glare. Hugo's mouth opened, but no words came out.

  "You sold me out to Hansie. Now you work for Asticot. What the hell are you playing at?" Bolan grated.

  Hugo swallowed. "A man has to live," he choked. "Sure, a fellow has to go where the money is."

  "You mean anyone can buy you? You don't even feel loyalty to the scum whose dirty money you take?"

  "I took your money, didn't I?" he said craftily. "When you wanted to locate Dagmar."

  "Sure you did, and you passed on the information that I was looking for her to Lattuada, so he had plenty of time to frame me for the killing when he wanted to get rid of her. People like you don't deserve to live," Bolan said disgustedly.

  "No, no. You got it wrong. You don't understand why…"

  "1 understand about the dope inside those skins. I understand Asticot is using them, and the East German importer, as a front to get the stuff over there, and that Lattuada, or his friends, will hijack it once it's there and start a new market in the East. I understand why a two-faced bastard like you has been hired to watch over the consignment in case any honest customs man tumbles to the dirty deal that's planned." Bolan's voice rose as his disgust was fueled by anger.

  Hugo's eyes were staring. He shook his head wildly, flinching as the gun barrel cut into his flesh. "You got it all wrong!" he cried. "You don't understand. It ain't like that at all. The way they doped it out…"

  His words were cut off by a thunderous explosion, a concussion whose blast threw Bolan to the floor and sent reverberations echoing around and around beneath the high roof of the customs shed. To Bolan's stunned senses the searing orange flash seemed to come later.

  He shook the ringing sound from his blocked ears and sat up groggily. He had been blown ten yards away from the trolleys and was now in among a collection of individual packages. He heard the tramp of many feet, a squeaking metallic rumble as the shed doors were rolled back, a subdued issuing of orders. Combat-honed, his fighter's instinct told him that what he had heard was the detonation of a rocket grenade, probably fired from an RPG-7 launcher or something similar, which had destroyed the locks and bolts securing the shed doors without buckling them so much that they could no longer be pushed open. He could see, in the light from a spot on the quay outside, the brownish-yellow smoke that was still roiling in the entrance.

  A dozen men ran down the aisle to the trolleys. Two more stood in the shattered doorway, cradling submachine guns. "Move it!" one of them snapped. "Fucking grenade'll have the cops here any time, for Chrissakes. You know which ones. Move your goddamn asses."

  Torchlight flickered on the trolleys. They rolled this way and that. Men panted and strained. Then one of the trolleys separated, three of the men shoving it toward the entrance. It was followed by a second, and then the last two of the quartet with doctored skins. The first two were already out on the quayside.

  Bolan stayed where he was, down among the packages on the floor. He had heard no sound from Hugo. The Executioner wondered if the weasel had been knocked out by the blast or fainted from loss of blood.

  What puzzled the Executioner even more was the raid itself. He was pretty sure the guy at the door was Hansie Schiller, and that meant the Team, which meant Lattuada.

  So why would the mafioso hijack his own stuff, for which he had just fixed trouble-free transport to the far side of the Iron Curtain? Unless, of course, it wasn't his stuff. Unless, despite the hotel meeting, Asticot was playing a lone hand on this deal and Lattuada was muscling in.

  If that was true — and Bolan recalled that Hugo was telling him he had it figured wrong when the grenade had exploded — then the East German he had seen in Asticot's suite had to know about the dope in the skins after all. Because he would have to be the distributor for the Eastern bloc.

  Another alternative: the East German was the principal. He had negotiated with Asticot for the dope supply, inspected it, paid for it and was about to take delivery, collecting it for transfer to the East. But Asticot had taken the money, and then hired Lattuada to steal the stuff back for him before the East German boat arrived.

  That figured all right. On the whole, it was the most likely. It would be typical of Asticot. That way — Bolan smiled involuntarily — the bastard would have his coke and eat it!

  But where did it leave him? What were his priorities now? Eliminate Asticot. Nail Lattuada for Dagmar's murder and get himself off the hook. Somehow stop the hell cargo buried in those skins from being distributed, East or West. But in what order?

  And where the hell was the wounded Hugo?

  The last question was soon answered. All four of the trolleys were now out on the quayside. The second man with the SMG had gone with them. Only Hansie remained. He took a couple of steps inside the shed. "Hugo?" he called. "You there, Hugo?"

  "Here," a voice answered weakly from the far side of the shed. "I was told to stay put while the stuff was bein' shifted." He limped up the aisle toward the entrance. "I have to tell you, Hansie, that bastard plugged me, but the boss said to keep my mouth shut until…"

  "Quite right, Hugo," Hansie interrupted softly. "The boss still wants you to keep your mouth shut… for a very long time."

  Flame stabbed the darkness, and the earsplitting yammer of the SMG spit out as Schiller raised the weapon and emptied half the magazine down the aisle at the approaching Hugo. The man was knocked off his feet by the terrible impact of the 9 mm slugs and slammed against a stack of wooden crates. He slid lifeless to the floor. The hood walked out onto the dock, and Bolan heard his voice calmly issuing orders once more.

  Seething with anger at the unnecessary slaughter, he hurried over to the dead man. The whites of Hugo's sightless eyes still gleamed in the half-light. Bolan thumbed them shut, and shook his head.

  From the shadows inside the smashed doorway he stared out at a bizarre scene. Two flatbed trucks stood beside the shed, and twelve men were frantically transferring the skins from the trolleys to these, tearing each one off its stack and hurling it up onto the flatbed while the torpedoes with the SMG's stood guard.

  For the second time, witnessing a raid that didn't directly concern him, Bolan heard the approach of distant police sirens.

  Right now he had written himself out of the scenario. He didn't know the full story. It would be pointless, taking on fourteen armed thugs with a single Beretta whose magazine was partly exhausted. And even if by some miracle he defeated them all, he had no means of annihilating their lethal cargo before the police arrived. Apart from which, if he was caught on the scene, he'd end up with the whole thing pinned on him, especially when they found out who he was. He had decided to try to inch away, pick up the BMW and follow the trucks when the unexpected happened.

  There was a shout from the far side of the wharf. A clatter of feet, and a party of men in dark combat fatigues erupted from the stone stairway that led to the landing stage and fanned out over the quayside. They were armed wi
th machine pistols and they started firing as soon as they hit level ground.

  Hansie and his partner yelled. The spotlight, mounted on the cab of the truck nearest the shed, was cut. The members of the Team scattered, ducked down behind the vehicles, flung themselves flat. But already several somber shapes lay prone on the whiteness of the snow carpeting the dock.

  The newcomers found cover behind posts, a crane gantry and the stacks of lumber off-loaded from the Finnish freighter as Hansie's men blazed out return fire from handguns and SMGs.

  From one end of the wharf to the other there was pandemonium beneath the fast-falling white flakes. The noise of gunfire was deafening. Muzzle-flashes sketched a hellish pyrotechnic display between the berthed ships. Sailors crowded the bridge of the Aegean Queen and bawled drunken encouragement from the deck of the Finnish freighter. Gunners advanced, retreated, screamed, fell.

  Beneath one of the trucks two guys set up the grenade launcher. There was a hiss, a roar, a streak of flame and a violent explosion among the lumber stacks where most of the attackers were concentrated. It was then that Hansie gave the order to split.

  The truck engines roared to life. One of the trolleys was still only partially unloaded, but the remaining members of the Team leaped up onto the flatbeds, firing from behind the heaped skins as the vehicles started to move. The last to jump aboard were the two men with the RPG-7. They launched a final round as the truck moved out from over them, scrambling up over the tailgate seconds after the finned five-pound terror bomb burst among a group of attackers advancing from the lumber.

  The soldiers in the black combat suits spilled sideways like pins in a bowling alley. One bundle of bloodied rags flopped a few yards and then lay quivering in the snow. Another rose half upright and fired a single shot before collapsing. The bullet took one of the RPG-7 duo between the shoulder blades. He fell backward off the tailgate and lay with out flung arms as the truck accelerated away.

  And then suddenly there was no more firing, just the whine of gears, shouting from the boats and an angry bullhorn voice over the dying groan of sirens down at the entrance to the wharf. There were three green-and-white patrol cars there beneath an arc light, with a line of grim-faced cops barring the exit, each with an SMG held ready.

  The trucks rumbled toward them. Nearer the customs shed, three of the attackers — the only ones still left on their feet — ran for the abandoned trolley, snatched a couple of skins each and raced for the steps that led to the landing stage. A moment later Bolan heard the bellow of an exhaust, and a powerboat nosed out from the dock and arrowed away into the snowfall over the sound.

  The voice from the bullhorn blared again, but neither of the trucks slowed. Bolan saw twinkling points of flame as the cops opened fire. Automatic arms rasped as the hoods fired back.

  And then the police were scattering. The leading truck slammed into a four-foot gap between two patrol cars, sending each one crashing over onto its side in a fountain of snow. The driver of the second flatbed must have been hit, because the vehicle veered suddenly out of line, rammed a stone post, slewed sideways and tipped over the edge of the quay. At the same time a red glow from beneath the hood burst into a blazing fireball, suppressed at once when the truck hit the water with a noise like an exploding rocket. A column of steam and white water rose into sight over the quayside and then subsided.

  Bolan was already running.

  Flames from burning gasoline still licked the dark surface of the water and breathed lurid red light over swirling snowflakes. Five of Hansie Schiller's soldiers lay dead on the quayside and at least three more would have perished with the burning truck. Three of the attackers had gotten away; the rest were strewn about the dock or decimated among the splintered lumber stacks.

  The Executioner was sprinting for the lumber, too, where his tracks would be lost among the carnage staining the trodden snow. He had no time to try to work out what the hell had happened. He only knew that he had to get out before the cops waded in to clear up the mess, and that Hansie Schiller had successfully busted through the cordon with three out of the four loads of concealed dope stacked safely on his truck.

  Bolan wanted to be free to follow that truck.

  Beyond the lumber stacks, he crossed a strip of virgin white, swarmed down a ladder into the empty dry dock, climbed out the far side and headed for a wall that flanked the street where his BMW was parked. There was a tar-paper shack built against the wall, and it was no sweat hoisting himself onto the roof, straddling the brickwork and dropping to the cobblestones below. Three minutes later he was parking the BMW beneath the hotel.

  Since there was no direct access to the hotel from the garage, he walked up the ramp to the street. Treading through five inches of freshly fallen snow to the entrance, he happened to glance upward at the fourth-floor corner of the building where his room was situated.

  He stopped. Light was showing through a crack between the curtains. He had left the room in darkness, and no hotel personnel would be checking out the sheets, the towels or the soap in the bathroom between one and two in the morning.

  For the second time that night the Executioner made use of a fire escape — up this time rather than down. The door at the end of the passageway was no problem for a professional. The door to Bolan's room was closed. Locked.

  With the Beretta in his right hand, he unlocked the door, kicked it open and leaped into the room in a combat crouch. He flattened himself against the wall, the muzzle of the autoloader questing left and right.

  Nobody.

  Bolan rose to his feet, trod softly to the far wall, sidled to the bathroom door, flung it open.

  There was nobody.

  He listened, but heard nothing. Large flakes of snow patted soft paws against the windowpane. The heat was up high, the air too dry to breathe.

  Bolan pulled up the bed covers. There was only a three-inch gap between the bottom of the bed and the floor. He opened the door of a huge old-fashioned wooden clothes closet.

  The door was pushed wide against his hand. A limp body slid halfway out and lay with head and shoulders on the carpeted floor. A short man with thinning hair, protuberant eyes and a lizard mouth. The blackened Kascara-edge of a close-range bullet hole stared like a third eye from the center of his forehead.

  Arvell Asticot had played both ends against the middle once too often.

  Chapter Sixteen

  So what the hell had happened? Okay, some person or persons unknown had jumped the gun and done the Executioner's job for him. But why transport the body to Bolan's room? Clearly because they wanted it to look as if he had killed the man himself.

  Plenty of folks would want Asticot killed, and obviously he had been deeply involved in some kind of double cross tonight. But how many of those folks would want Bolan blamed for it? And of those, how many would know he was in Lübeck? And the hotel where he was checked in?

  How many would have the means, and the nerve, to smuggle a corpse into a hotel room in the middle of the night?

  For Bolan was certain Asticot hadn't been killed there. Sure, the body was still warm and there was no rigor mortis. But there was no smell of gunsmoke, either. And he could find no slug embedded, no trace of blood, although there was a fist-size exit wound in back of the murdered drug baron's head.

  Those questions suggested a shortlist of one — Lattuada. The mobster would have had the opportunity; he hadn't shown up at the dockside during the hijack scene. He had the necessary callousness, and the nerve. It would suit him to have the murder pinned on Bolan: the fact that the Executioner was already tagged as a killer would deflect any suspicion and take the heat off Lattuada himself. It was conceivable, if he had the kind of spy network Charlie Macfarlane had described, that he could have been tipped off that Bolan was in town, and where.

  The stumbling block in his case was motive. Because it was clear as a bell that, tonight at least, he had been working with Asticot. It must have been Asticot who had filled him in on the East German drug dea
l, who suggested, or ordered, the hijack. So why would he want to take the guy out? To avoid sharing the spoils, maybe, and keep all the profit for himself? That, of course, was always a possibility.

  Otherwise the only believable candidate was Kraul. And he only qualified because he probably knew or guessed Bolan would be in Lübeck. There were no links between him and Lattuada, certainly none with Hansie Schiller. And if he had wised Bolan up on the fact that Asticot and the mafioso were both in the northern seaport, it was precisely because he hoped Bolan himself would eliminate Asticot. Why then should he suddenly decide to do the job himself?

  Not for the first time on this screwball mission the warrior's head was spinning. Too many alternatives and not enough evidence. Meanwhile he had to get out. If the killer was Lattuada, it would be in line with his normal MO to tip off the law again. Hastily Bolan started to gather his stuff.

  He was scooping up shaving gear from the bathroom when he heard the noise. What was it? A footfall? The creak of a door? A garment brushing against furniture? No way of telling, but something, some small unexpected sound alerted him. He ran back into the bedroom.

  He had searched no farther once Asticot's body was revealed. Now he saw his mistake: an alcove where extra clothing could be hung on a rail was hidden behind a heavy velvet drapery. He hadn't pulled back that drapery, but it was pulled back now. The bedroom door was open, and the polished surface of the night table, where he had laid out a leather wallet containing all his papers, was bare.

  Bolan swore. He ran through to the hallway. The hotel's one ancient elevator was groaning down to street level. He dashed to the end of the passage and raced down the back stairs.

  No wonder the body had still been warm: he had actually interrupted the thugs who had delivered it! But why had they stolen his papers? They couldn't have been instructed to do that, because it was only by chance that Bolan had left them out on the night table those few seconds.

  Spur-of-the-moment decision, then? Could be, although that presupposed one of the bosses had been there, because the hired help didn't customarily mess with that kind of deal on their own.