Damage Radius

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan couldn’t afford to leave such confusion in Kunkle’s brain. Confusion brought about hesitation, and hesitation could get both of them killed.

  “Let me put this in terms you might understand better,” Bolan said. “Do you think it would be right, or wrong, to go into a church, tear it up and start beating everyone there with a whip?”

  “Well, of course it’d be wrong,” Kunkle said without hesitation.

  “Well,” Bolan said. “Jesus did it. The synagogue had turned into a regular flea market where the money changers were ripping everybody off. Does it seem wrong now?”

  “No,” Kunkle said, his eyebrows furrowing deeply.

  “Why not?” the soldier persisted.

  Bolan could almost see a switch click in Kunkle’s head. “Well, Jesus wasn’t doing it for his own personal gain, I guess,” the man said slowly. “He was doing it for the good of the people, and to glorify God.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re doing, Kunkle,” Bolan said. “Stealing the Jets collection is a means to a higher end.”

  “You’re saying there’s a time to fight fire with fire,” the detective said.

  “Exactly. We’re stealing from a thief who probably stole at least part of his collection himself. Even if he paid for it, he used money he’d obtained through murders, prostitution, and a variety of other illegal and immoral means. You understand?”

  Kunkle nodded slowly.

  Bolan continued to stare into the man’s eyes. “Then there’s one more thing you need to prepare yourself for,” he said. “We’re extremely likely to be discovered inside Bill Dill’s house tonight. And if that happens, we’re either going to have to kill men or let them kill us.” He stopped speaking to let the reality of the situation sink in for the detective.

  “You did just fine during the gunfight at the boat dock,” he finally said, “but I need to make sure you haven’t been second-guessing yourself in regards to killing bad guys since then. Have you? Or are you prepared to shoot more men tonight?”

  “Like you just said,” Kunkle told Bolan. “I did it at the boat dock.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking you,” the soldier said. “Except for that one incident—which happened so fast you acted out of instinct—that’s the only gunfight you’ve been in since the revival you went to. And the ones you were in before that—you were operating in a state of mind where you didn’t care about your fellow man. That made it easy. But now you tell me you’ve had this religious awakening. And you’ve had plenty of time to think about the boatman, Jackson and Westbrook, back in the swamp. So are you going to be able to cover my back or am I better off leaving you here in this room?”

  “If we have to shoot tonight I can do it,” Kunkle said, his eyes glued to Bolan’s. “I didn’t like shooting the men at the boat dock, but it had to be done. It was self-defense. Us or them.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “I believe God expects us to protect the lives he gives us. And I think he expects those of us who are able—like you and me—to protect the lives of weaker men and women who can’t do it on their own.”

  The Executioner nodded. It was exactly what he’d hoped to hear. “Then let’s get back to business,” he said, pointing to the drawing of the house again. “Dill very well may have bodyguards who spend the night inside his house. McFarley thinks he does. So, like I said, we’ll have to deal with them if they see us. And the man is bound to have a high-tech security system.”

  “Can you defeat the system?” Kunkle asked.

  “Given enough time to study the setup, yeah,” Bolan said. “But we don’t have that much time.”

  “Well, don’t look at me,” Kunkle said. “I’m no good with that techno-geek stuff at all.”

  The soldier laughed softly. “Actually, I think you’ve got a better chance of circling the alarm system than I do,” he said. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  Then, with Kunkle’s face a mask of confusion, Bolan pulled out his cell phone and handed it to the detective.

  11

  The meeting took place at the Dixie Diner, two blocks south of the Hotel Lafitte on a small side street. Bolan didn’t think anyone had followed him to the hotel, or was watching it, but there was still no point in taking the chance of being spotted with a man who was supposed to be dead. At least not when he didn’t have to.

  “Give me a five minute head start,” he told Kunkle as he stood by the door to the hallway. “You say the guy’s name is Foreman?”

  “Ernie Foreman.” Kunkle nodded. He glanced at his watch. “He should be there by now, and he’ll probably be in uniform. If not, just take a seat somewhere and I’ll find him when I get there.”

  Bolan nodded, twisted the doorknob and left the room.

  The sidewalk was crowded as Bolan left the hotel through the front entrance, but his eyes skirted every face he walked past, looking for any sign of interest on the part of the other pedestrians. Twice, at the corners, he stopped as if he was trying to decide which way to go, and used the ploy as an excuse to look behind him.

  It was impossible to be sure. But he didn’t think anyone was tailing him either on foot or in any of the automobiles that passed in the street.

  The diner’s neon sign had just lit up when Bolan crossed the street and hurried toward it. A moment later, the streetlights up and down the block flickered on, then off, then on again as dusk turned into nighttime. Bolan stared at the words painted on the glass front of the café, noting that their specialty was something called the Big Easy Cheeseburger. But like most every other restaurant in the city, they also had po’boy sandwiches and fresh oysters on the half shell.

  Bolan spotted the uniform in one of the back booths the second he stepped inside. A sign next to the cash register asked him to Please Wait to Be Seated. He had barely halted when an attractive waitress wearing a short white skirt and matching blouse hurried up to him and said, “Just one?”

  “I’m meeting a couple of friends,” Bolan replied. “And I think I see one of them in the back, there.”

  The young woman looked up at him and batted her eyelashes. A wide and sexy smile curled the corners of her lips as she made no pretence of looking Bolan up and down. “Well,” she almost purred in a low but strong Cajun accent, “if you ever need any other friends, my name’s Yvonne.”

  Bolan smiled back at her. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said as he started toward the back of the café.

  Kunkle had described Ernie Foreman as a somewhat overweight, slovenly officer who was assigned to silent alarm alert duty for the NOPD. What that entailed was essentially answering the phone when an alarm in someone’s house or place of business went off and the owners or proprietors didn’t enter the code to turn it off within the allotted “grace period.” Which was usually thirty seconds to one minute. When that happened, the security company tried calling the site. If no one answered the phone, or whoever answered couldn’t give them the right code, they called the police.

  So it was here where Ernie Foreman entered Bolan’s plan.

  As he drew near the booth, Bolan saw that Kunkle’s description of Foreman as somewhat overweight and slovenly had been a vast understatement. The man was sitting, but he didn’t look as if he was over 5’6” tall. And he had to tip the scales at over three hundred pounds. His uniform, both pants and shirt, were spotted with food stains and gray ashes, and a half-smoked cigar stuck out of the top of one of the chest pockets of his uniform blouse.

  The sight made Bolan recall one other fact which Kunkle had brought to his attention: the man’s nickname was Dirty Ernie, and it had nothing to do with Clint Eastwood or the Dirty Harry movies.

  Between the stains, Bolan saw the name tag opposite his badge. It read Foreman. So Bolan sat down across from him.

  Foreman looked up, his tiny little eyes set deeply in his fleshy face, and stared at Bolan with a ferretlike gaze. He was in the middle of a huge bite of a po’boy and he didn’t bother to swallow before saying, “Where�
�s Kunkle?”

  “He’s on his way,” Bolan said. “He should be here in a minute or two.”

  Foreman nodded, and Bolan watched a huge lump of half-chewed sandwich go down his throat, causing the Adam’s apple, which had previously been hidden by fat, to finally peek into sight. In his mind, Bolan couldn’t help picturing a boa constrictor swallowing a small pig. Before speaking again, Foreman opened his mouth wider than Bolan would have ever thought possible, stuffed at least a quarter of the long sandwich inside, and bit it off like one of the hungry alligators that had been in the swamps during the airboat ride.

  The loud smacking sound Foreman had exhibited on the previous bite returned.

  The same dark-haired, dark-eyed Cajun waitress who had greeted Bolan earlier—Yvonne—suddenly appeared at the table. She gave Foreman a quick disgusted glance, then turned to Bolan. “Can I give you something?” she asked. Then, with horribly fake exaggeration, she corrected herself. “Sorry. I meant can I get you something?”

  “How about a cup of coffee and one of your Big Easy burgers?” Bolan said.

  Yvonne smiled again, then turned and wriggled her hips back and forth as she walked away.

  Foreman still had food in his mouth and covering half of his face as he watched the woman walk away. “I’m gonna get me some of that one of these days,” he said with half-chewed lettuce, cold cuts and yellow mustard spilling out of his mouth onto the table.

  Bolan kept a straight face as he said, “I have absolutely no doubt you’ll be successful.”

  Before any more could be said, Bolan heard the door open at the front of the café and Kunkle walked in. He saw Bolan and Foreman as quickly as the Executioner had spotted the uniformed officer, and walked directly to the table.

  “Kunkle, I almost didn’t recognize you,” Ernie said, in reference to Kunkle’s recent makeover.

  “Hey, Ernie,” he said, simply nodding as he took a seat across from the man next to Bolan. “I see you two have already met.”

  “Not officially,” Foreman said. He had finished the po’boy and was currently cramming French fries into his face.

  “Well, then,” Kunkle said. “Ernie Foreman, meet Matt Cooper.”

  Foreman extended a big padded paw across the table. It was streaked with bright red ketchup, and Bolan said, “There’s no need for formalities.”

  The filthy hand was more than happy to retract itself and dig back into the French fries.

  “Let’s get right to the point,” Bolan said, glancing at Kunkle. Then, turning back to the slovenly figure across from him, he said, “Kunkle will explain it to you, but basically, what we need is your help. And we’re willing to pay for it.”

  At the sound of the word “pay” the uniform cop’s attention suddenly turned from his meal to Bolan and Kunkle.

  The detective cleared his throat. Then, in an almost whispered voice, he said, “You’re working tonight, right, Ernie?”

  Foreman nodded. He was still eating his French fries but at a slower and less vulgar rate than before. “Graveyard,” he said, and a piece of brown and white potato dribbled out of his mouth onto his uniform. “Eleven to seven shift.”

  “That’s perfect,” Kunkle said. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Somewhere around midnight, you’re going to get a call from Bill Dill’s security system contractor. We need you to squash it and put it down as a false alarm. Don’t dispatch any officers to the house.”

  Foreman had finally finished his French fries and glanced in the direction of the waitress. She was in the process of loading Bolan’s order onto a tray in the window that led to the kitchen.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Foreman said. “Bill Dill?”

  A second later Yvonne was setting the burger and a cup of coffee in front of Bolan. She still had her eyes on Bolan, but she smiled and said to Kunkle, “What can I get you?”

  “Same as my friend’s having will do,” Kunkle told her.

  “And bring me some chocolate pie,” Foreman chimed in. “Two pieces. No, wait. Make it one piece of chocolate, the other pecan.”

  Yvonne rolled her eyes in revulsion at the order, glanced back seductively at Bolan, then turned and strutted away again.

  “So,” Foreman said, his mouth finally empty. “You want me to kill the call on Bill Dill’s house. Well, that’s easy enough. But what am I supposed to do if he calls in later? Or comes in tomorrow wondering and asking questions as to why no officers showed up?”

  Kunkle looked at the man with stone-cold eyes. “Ernie,” he said, “we’re talking about Bill Dill here. He’s not your average, hardworking, tax-paying Joe Blow citizen. Do you really think he’s going to want cops traipsing through his house to investigate what’s going to be a relatively minor burglary?” He paused a second, then glanced at Bolan.

  Bolan reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a plain white envelope, shoving it across the table to Foreman. “There are five hundred-dollar bills inside,” he said in a voice so low it was almost imperceptible. “You can count them if you’d like to.”

  Foreman grabbed the white envelope and stuffed it into his breast pocket next to the half-smoked cigar. “Are you crazy?” he said. “You’re supposed to hand me that kind of thing under the table.”

  “Sorry,” Bolan said, “but it’s been my experience here in New Orleans that everything’s pretty much out in the open.”

  Yvonne returned with another cheeseburger and coffee for Kunkle, and two pieces of pie for Foreman. Bolan was halfway surprised when the man across from him didn’t just shove his face into the pie plates like a hog at the feeding trough. But Foreman’s mind was on money at the moment, and he said, “I’m taking a chance doing this. I think another five hundred is called for, don’t you? Let’s make it an even grand. One large.”

  Bolan had expected this and he leaned into the table, pulling his jacket open to reveal another white envelope sticking up out of the inner pocket. “There’s five more in here,” he said as he closed his coat and sat back again. “But like I said, you don’t get it until tomorrow. After the job’s done and we’re sure you did your part.”

  Foreman didn’t like waiting, but he nodded in agreement.

  Bolan and Kunkle began to eat their burgers and Foreman started in on his pie. The cop had downed the piece of chocolate pie before the other two men could swallow their first bite of burger. And before they took their second bite, the pecan pie was gone as well.

  Foreman wedged himself out of the booth and stood up. His lips and one cheek were smeared with chocolate. “I’ll expect to hear from you tomorrow,” he said to Bolan and Kunkle. Then, with a final glance toward Yvonne—who was bent over at another booth, wiping it off with a damp cloth—he waddled out of the café.

  “There you have it, Cooper,” Kunkle said, shaking his head in embarrassment. “New Orleans finest.”

  “There’s still more good cops than bad,” Bolan said.

  “I hope so,” Kunkle said. “And I’m praying that I can become one of them.”

  12

  The first line of defense they encountered was the wrought-iron fence that surrounded Bill Dill’s mansion. It wasn’t hard to climb over, but the pair of barking and growling Doberman pinschers who came sprinting toward them with death in their eyes were another matter.

  Bolan drew the tranquilizer pistol from an unzipped pocket in his blacksuit and fired twice. The pffffftt sound coming from the gun was similar to the whisper that came from the sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R. Both dogs stopped in their tracks. They whined for a moment, then lay down and closed their eyes.

  “How long will they be out?” Kunkle whispered to Bolan.

  “Two hours. Maybe three.”

  “We should be long gone by then,” Kunkle said.

  “One way or another,” Bolan whispered. Crouching slightly, he began jogging past the dogs toward a swimming pool behind the house.

  Kunkle ran next to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” the detective ask
ed.

  As the two men continued to cross the meticulously manicured lawn toward the swimming pool, Bolan answered. “It means that even though we’ve got a drawing of the house, and Ernie Foreman plans to ignore the alarm when it goes off, there are always surprises.” He veered to his left, circumnavigating the chain-link fence around the swimming pool and cabana house, and headed toward a rear porch they had seen on the drawing.

  Bolan glanced toward Kunkle. The man wore one of Bolan’s extra blacksuits—a skintight, stretchy battle ensemble with multiple pockets. The suit was slightly large on the smaller man, but the elastic throughout the garment helped the fit. Around his waist, Kunkle had fastened the old Sam Browne belt from his uniformed days, which held both his 9 mm SIG-Sauer and his backup NAA .380 auto along with magazines for both weapons.

  Bolan, of course, wore his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle on a black nylon web belt. The extra magazine carrier—also of ballistic nylon—rode opposite the big pistol. The 9 mm Beretta 93-R, complete with sound suppressor, was housed as usual in his shoulder rig. And an extra pair of 20-round magazines helped balance the machine pistol’s weight under his right arm.

  But it was to his most silent of all weapons that Bolan turned to first as soon as he and Kunkle had reached the screened-in porch. The door was locked. So Bolan drew the huge Cold Steel Espada from his blacksuit, snagging the opener on the corner of its pocket and letting it click open on its own. The click as the blade locked into place went unnoticed—the night sounds of the birds in the trees and the crickets hidden in the darkness masking the noise.

  Seeing no signs that this door was wired to the alarm system, Bolan thrust the point of the big folder’s blade through the screen just above the knob. He cut downward. Then, reaching inside, his hand found the simple “hook and eye” lock and lifted it.

  A moment later, Kunkle had been ushered inside and the Executioner quietly closed the door behind them.

  Bolan pulled the small ASP laser flashlight from another blacksuit pocket and flashed it on briefly. In the center of the back porch was an iron table and chairs, all painted white. The wall against the house had come from the same white brick with which the house itself had been built, and a floor-to-ceiling fireplace sat in the center.