Damage Radius

by Don Pendleton

  “That explains the tail,” Bolan said. “Not the Uzis or the attempt to kill us.” He leaned on the car lightly and this time, Jackson screamed. “Ahhh! Stop! Please!”

  The Executioner let up again.

  “Killing you…was my idea,” he said. “You’re…obviously working with Kunkle…not trying to kill him.”

  “And that would be a feather in your cap if you caught us together and killed us both, wouldn’t it?” Bolan said. “You might even get to quit being a punching bag for better fighters and step up in the ranks to take the place of whoever’s brain it was splattered all over McFarley’s office.”

  His range of motion was limited. But Jackson nodded as best he could. “I’m…getting too old…to fight,” he breathed out.

  Bolan nodded, more to himself than anyone else. The question he was about to ask next was, perhaps, the most crucial of all. “Have you talked to McFarley since you spotted Kunkle and me together?” he asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “Are you sure?” Bolan asked. “You spent a lot of time alone in this car with your dead friend.”

  “I didn’t call in…I swear it,” Jackson panted.

  “Well, you spent a lot of time with Westbrook, following Kunkle and me out here,” Bolan said again. “Then even more time waiting while we went on our boat ride.” He paused and cleared his throat. “You sure you didn’t make a cell phone call to McFarley to tell him what you’d found out?”

  “No!” Jackson tried to shout. “I promise! I was…afraid if I did he’d…just want you to come back…so he could kill you himself.”

  Bolan paused a few seconds, thinking. The story might well be true. This over-the-hill club fighter might, indeed, have wanted to bring in his and Kunkle’s bodies like trophies to impress the boss. And it would have been just like McFarley to prefer letting Matt Cooper believe his cover was still in place and reel him in like a fish. Before he killed Bolan, McFarley would want to find out who Cooper actually was, what law-enforcement agency he represented, how he’d manipulated his background check to look like a criminal, and exactly how much he knew about the Irishman’s overall operations.

  And that would have cheated Jackson out of the pleasure of killing Cooper in revenge for the humiliations he’d suffered first in the ring and then the office, the day before.

  “Please!” Jackson choked out. “Please…get this thing off of me!”

  Bolan glanced toward Kunkle. “I’ll lift this side of the car as much as I can. You pull him out.”

  Kunkle nodded his understanding.

  The soldier grabbed the door handle with both hands and squatted slightly, using his legs as well as his arms and shoulder to rock the Oldsmobile upward. He was unable to move the car more than an inch above Jackson’s chest, but it was enough.

  Kunkle pulled the man out.

  Bolan set the car back down as soon as the heavyweight was clear. He looked down to see the rips, tears, and grease and oil spots covering the man’s shirt. Jackson was lying on his back, coughing, still trying to catch his breath.

  “Stand up,” Bolan ordered.

  Jackson rolled over and came up onto his hands and knees. Bolan stepped back, expecting him to rise to his feet. But then the Executioner’s eyes fell on the Uzi only a few feet away.

  Both Bolan and Kunkle had holstered their weapons during the “under car” interrogation. The soldier’s hand shot for the butt of the Beretta in his shoulder rig as Jackson started to turn toward the Uzi. “Don’t do it, Jake,” the Executioner warned in a loud voice.

  The heavyweight either didn’t hear, didn’t care, or was so bent on revenge he was willing to give up his life for it. He lunged forward and grabbed the submachine gun with both hands.

  Bolan drew the Beretta. He had just enough time to say, “Don’t!” one more time before Jackson turned toward him with the weapon.

  The Executioner fired a lone, near-silent 9 mm round into the hump on Jackson’s much-broken nose, and the heavyweight hit the “canvas” for the last time.

  Bolan glanced down at his watch. People were going to start showing up around the marina any minute. They had left the Cajun dead on the dock. The other body—Razor Westbrook’s—was in plain sight in the parking lot. So was Jackson’s. And Bolan didn’t have the time or desire to try to explain it all to the parish sheriff after someone called the carnage in.

  Bending over Jackson’s corpse, Bolan patted him down until he found a cell phone in the man’s left hip pocket. Grabbing it, he jammed it into his waistband. “Get the cell phone off that other guy,” he ordered Kunkle. “We’ll dump them and see if he was telling the truth about not tipping off McFarley yet.”

  Kunkle turned toward Westbrook’s body.

  Bolan felt his eyebrows lower in concentration. They had taken a cab out here, and the Oldsmobile wasn’t going far with four blown tires. His eyes turned to the ancient and battered Chevy pickup the boatman had driven. It would have to do to get them back to New Orleans.

  The Executioner hurried back down the steps to where the man’s lifeless form still lay. He found the big key ring he’d seen earlier and located what looked like a Chevy key among the others.

  Meeting Kunkle at the pickup, Bolan slid behind the wheel and inserted the key. It took three tries, but the engine finally sputtered to life.

  A moment later, Bolan and Kunkle were hightailing it away from the marina with the humid air of the swamp blowing through the open windows onto their faces.

  8

  “I’m trying to do as much as I can to make up for the sins I’ve committed,” Kunkle said, bluntly breaking the silence inside the pickup as it bounced along the cracked asphalt road back toward New Orleans. “But I know that’s impossible. You can’t earn your way to heaven. It’s a gift you either take or refuse. The good things I’m trying to do are out of gratitude for salvation, not an attempt to get it.”

  Bolan paused before answering. Finally, he said, “I’d like to believe you, Kunkle. And so far it looks to me like you’re telling me the truth. But I’ve seen too many hustlers pretend to take on religion for their own selfish reasons in the past. You’re just going to have to be patient. It’s going to take some time before I fully trust you. And you need to know up front—even if this conversion of yours is real, you’re going to have to go back to face the crimes you’ve committed.”

  Kunkle’s smile looked genuine when he answered. “I know that, Mr. Cooper,” he said. “And in a strange way, I welcome it. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a clear conscience, and if it takes prison time to pay my debt, well, that’s just what it’ll have to be. After all, the Apostle Paul had to spend a good deal of time in prison, and if it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”

  Bolan was slightly surprised at the detective’s knowledge. “It sounds like you’ve been spending some time with the Bible,” he said.

  “I have,” Kunkle came back. “It’s all I have left. And like I said, I’m willing to pay for my sins. But before I do, I’d really like to help you bring McFarley and his whole empire down.”

  Bolan turned to look at the man. Sincerity seemed to bleed from every pore in his body, but the Executioner had known some extremely talented and convincing con men in his day. He’d trust this man—to a point—but he planned on keeping one eye on Kunkle for a while, ready for any surprises the detective might have up his sleeve. “Just one other thing,” he finally said.

  “What’s that, Mr. Cooper?”

  “Be very careful where you point your gun when we get into the next firefight.”

  “I will,” Kunkle promised.

  “Good,” Bolan said. “Because if I so much as suspect it might be aimed at me, I’ll drop you where you stand.”

  Reaching into his jacket, Bolan pulled out the cell phone he’d taken from Jackson’s body. “Take this one, and the phone you have from Westbrook, and dump them both,” he said. “First see if there were any calls to McFarley’s number ove
r the last few hours. I can’t imagine that Jake was telling us the truth.”

  Kunkle took the phone from Bolan, pulled out the one he already had and went to work as the soldier drove on. He was nearing the outskirts of New Orleans, and had just come over a small rise, when he spotted the parish deputy sheriff’s vehicle parked on the other side of the road. A radar gun was pointed out the window, and Bolan’s eyes automatically dropped to the speedometer. He was five miles under the limit, so there should be no problems here.

  Shouldn’t be, he realized as he watched the marked unit pull the radar gun back into the vehicle and roll forward into a U-turn. But it looked like there was going to be.

  Bolan waited until the red lights came on. There was no way he was going to outrun the parish vehicle in the ancient pickup, so he slowed, pulling the pickup over to the side of the road.

  In addition to the cell phones, Kunkle also had his police credentials out in his lap. “I can badge us out of this,” he said. “No problem.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” Bolan said as they pulled to a stop. “I wasn’t speeding, which means this deputy stopped us for some other reason.” He watched the uniformed officer in the car behind him get out, his hand unsnapping the retaining strap on his sidearm. With the same hand on the weapon’s grip, he walked slowly forward.

  When the man had reached the driver’s side of the pickup, Bolan could see that he carried a Beretta 92—not much different from his own 93-R, but lacking the 3-shot-burst mode and the fold-down front grip. It shot the same deadly 9 mm rounds, however. And the Executioner knew he was going to have to play this situation cool.

  Bolan didn’t kill cops. He was on the same side as they were, and it violated his own personal creed.

  “Driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance,” the deputy said, his eyes taking in Bolan and moving on to Kunkle. Clipped to his uniform blouse, opposite his badge, was the name Frantz.

  Bolan slowly retrieved the counterfeit Justice Department badge case from his inside jacket pocket. Keeping the badge hidden from the deputy’s eyes, he pulled out a driver’s license identifying him as Matt Cooper. As he handed the license through the window, he heard Kunkle rummaging around in the glove compartment for the other documents.

  Deputy Frantz stared hard at the picture on the license, then back at Bolan’s face. “Is this your vehicle, Mr. Cooper?” he asked.

  Bolan knew the registration and insurance papers would not be in his name. So he responded with, “No, we just borrowed it from a friend back at the marina.”

  “What’s the friend’s name?” Frantz asked.

  Kunkle had found the papers he was looking for and hurriedly answered for Bolan. “Jesse Durrosset,” he said, leaning across Bolan to hand the deputy the documents.

  Frantz stared down at the papers for a second, then suddenly stuck them into his back pocket and drew his gun. “Both of you!” he shouted in a deep voice filled with authority. “Keep your hands where I can see them and get out of the vehicle.”

  Bolan raised his hands, as did Kunkle.

  “You first,” the deputy ordered the detective. “Get out on your side, keep your hands in the air and walk around the front of the pickup.”

  Kunkle opened the door and got out. Keeping his hands high and in sight, he said, “I’m telling you, Deputy, we just borrowed this pickup from Jesse.”

  The deputy kept his pistol on the detective as the man walked around the truck. “Oh, really?” he said in a sarcastic tone. “Well, it just so happens that Jesse Durrosset is my second cousin, and he wouldn’t loan this truck to God if He asked to borrow it. It’s been his ‘baby’ for twenty years, and nobody drives it but him.”

  Bolan didn’t respond, silently calculating his next move.

  The deputy sheriff continued. “Now get down on the ground and interlace your fingers behind your head.”

  As Kunkle complied, Bolan glanced from the deputy’s face to the Beretta 92. He could almost reach the gun from where he sat, but he calculated that he would be a few inches short unless he lunged chest-deep through the driver’s window. And that might just give Deputy Frantz the time it took to react.

  And pull back to shoot him.

  “All right, now it’s your turn,” Frantz said, turning back to Bolan as he took another step back from the pickup. “Keep your hands up. Reach through the window and open the door from the outside.”

  “Just before you two topped that hill,” Deputy Frantz said as he shoved Bolan up against the side of the pickup, “I got a call about shots being fired back at the marina. Then here you come in Jesse’s truck, which he never loans out. Am I supposed to think that’s just a coincidence?”

  Bolan felt the muzzle of the Beretta 92 in the small of his back as Deputy Frantz started at the collar, patting him down for weapons with his other hand. That was a mistake. It let the soldier know exactly where the deputy’s gun was.

  Bolan also knew it was only a matter of seconds before the man found his sound-suppressed Beretta, and the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. And neither of the two weapons looked anything like a fellow cop’s gun. If Frantz overacted, Bolan and Kunkle might take bullets simply from the deputy’s nervousness.

  It was time to act.

  As Deputy Frantz’s left hand finished running the length of Bolan’s arm and started toward his armpit, the Executioner made his move. Twisting violently, he swept the Beretta 92 to his side. The weapon discharged a few inches from his body as Frantz pulled the trigger. But before he could react further, Bolan had sent the same right cross that had felled the heavyweight fighter, Jackson, into the man’s chin.

  Frantz was out cold before he fell to the asphalt next to the pickup.

  Kunkle got up from the ground. “Nice punch,” he said, hurriedly grabbing Frantz’s Beretta and then pulling a backup piece—a .38 S&W Chief’s Special—from the unconscious man’s Wellington boot. “Although I feel a little bit like a dog chasing cars. What does he do with the car if it stops?”

  Bolan already had the answer. Frantz had fallen onto his back. The soldier rolled him over, pulling a set of handcuffs from a pouch on the back of the deputy’s black Sam Browne belt. Quickly, he rolled him over again and cuffed the deputy behind his back, then lifted him in a fireman’s carry and walked him to the backseat of the patrol car.

  “We’re just going to leave him out here?” Kunkle asked.

  Bolan hurried back to the spot where Frantz had been and picked up the cowboy hat, which had fallen from his head. “No,” he said, placing it atop his own head. “He was liable to have radioed in to report the stop while the lights were flashing. If he did, then every other cop in the area will have the word about ‘Cousin Jesse’s’ pickup. And some other cousin, or nephew, or brother-in-law, or uncle might stop us again down the road.” Kunkle laughed.

  “So we’re going to take Deputy Frantz on a ride back to New Orleans in his own vehicle. That’s why I’m wearing this.” Bolan shoved the cowboy hat harder onto his head, then opened the driver’s door of the black-and-white patrol car and slid behind the wheel, hunching down slightly to obscure most of his upper body. “Go get the ice chest,” he ordered Kunkle.

  Kunkle hurried back to the pickup and returned with the chest. He didn’t have to be told to get in on the passenger’s side again.

  “We’ll dump this vehicle with Frantz in it as soon as we hit town and can find other transport,” Bolan said. “All that’ll be hurt is the deputy’s pride.”

  “I’d say his chin might ache a little, too,” Kunkle said as Bolan pulled the patrol car around the old pickup and started down the asphalt once more. “At least for a while. What do we do if he comes around again before we’re through with the car?”

  Bolan held up a big right fist. “I have more anesthetic,” he said simply, then floored the accelerator and sped on. “By the way, were there any calls from Jake and his partner to McFarley?” he asked Kunkle.

  “Only about a dozen,”
Kunkle said. “From both phones.” He rested an arm on the ice chest on the seat between them. “We’re going to have to come up with some kind of story as to why you took me out of O’Brien’s and brought me out to the marina.”

  “What do you mean, we?” the Executioner asked. “You’re dead, remember?”

  “Okay, I meant you’ll have to come up with a story,” Kunkle said.

  “I can cover it. But if you’re going to be hanging around me, we’re going to have to change your appearance, and you can’t ever be with me when I’m with McFarley or any of his other goons who know you.”

  Kunkle nodded. “That can be worked out,” he said. “Besides, most of the men who knew me by sight are already dead. I only dealt with, and got paid by, the top men in the organization. Before you even came on the scene I’d gotten word that McFarley killed Jo-Jo Gau. And the man you shot back at the marina with Jake was Razor Westbrook, another top gunman and enforcer.”

  “I’d met him,” Bolan said. “He and another goon were at McFarley’s when I had dinner there night before last.”

  “Right,” Kunkle said. “That would have been Felix O’Banion. As far as I know, he’s the only other one of McFarley’s men who knows me by sight. But I can’t be sure.”

  “Then we need to err on the side of safety,” Bolan said. “Have you spent any time out at the mansion?”

  Kunkle nodded, his face turning slightly red with shame. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been to McFarley’s office a time or two, and I’ve spent a little time with some of the girls on the floors below the office, too.”

  “They’ll know you then,” Bolan said. “And while I’m still keeping an eye on you to see if your change of heart is genuine, I think we’ve reached a point where you can drop the ‘Mr. Cooper’ name.”

  “Matt?” Kunkle asked.

  Bolan turned toward him and stared hard into the man’s face. “Make it ‘Cooper,’” he said. “We’ll keep working toward ‘Matt.’”

  Kunkle let a small smile curl the corner of his lips. “Okay, Cooper,” he said.