And now he was chiding himself for, perhaps, underestimating the threat of this man, for discounting the fabled prowess of this Mafiastalker as more legend than fact. He had known how the Italians exaggerated, how they worshipped at the shrine of image and reputation. And he had dismissed the man Bolan too quickly, perhaps.
Yes, much too quickly.
It was perhaps just as well that the guy was gone. Maximillia could absorb the losses and go on as though the guy had never come. A scent of embarrassment here and there, maybe, but not enough to really weaken anything. If the guy had stayed and kept battering away—well, even though Spielke knew in his heart that he would get the guy sooner or later, a lot of damage could be done in the getting. Was the work of a lifetime—a self-made lifetime—to be so recklessly spent?
The Capo Mexicana decided, then and there, that it was not. He was glad the guy was gone. Good riddance, and here was hoping he never came back.
His churning gut began to settle immediately, with that decision. He popped a couple more aspirins into his mouth and washed them down with flat beer, made a wry face at that, and signaled the hovering houseman for a fresh bottle.
When the guy brought the beer, Spielke told him, “Bring my stool, Pepe. I’m going to sit here awhile.”
“The sunset, yes, it is magnifico today, sir.”
The boss of Acapulco gave not a quick shit for all the sunsets in Mexico, though he was not likely to admit that to anyone. The sunsets were an Acapulco institution, not unlike a religious observance. Spielke didn’t need it.
He settled back onto the “stool,” a sort of high-rise recliner with footrest, and stared at the reddened skies without really seeing them.
The head was getting better, thank God.
Too Bad drifted over, with a clipped cigar and a ready lighter. The Sultan accepted the cigar and the light as the lieutenant reported: “They’re trying to locate del Gado for you. He left the office early and nobody seems to know where he went.”
“Forget it,” Spielke muttered. “It’s too much for too little.”
“Okay, I’ll cancel it,” Too Bad replied, his eyes flaring with surprise.
“What’s happening down below?”
The lieutenant took a quick look and replied, “Looks about the same. Sure is a mess, boss.”
“It’s insured,” Spielke said, trying to come to philosophical terms with the unchangeable. “So’s the helicopter. Those are the only losses we have had, Paul. Maybe we’re lucky, at that.”
“The Lear jet,” Too Bad reminded sourly.
“We’ll get it back. And if we don’t—well, it’s insured, too.”
“I have a thought, Mr. Spielke.”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe this Bolan guy is not our hijacker. We don’t have any real facts, yet. I think we better keep the guard up.”
“Oh, sure,” the boss quietly agreed. His eyes were closed, fingers lightly massaging the lids. “Keep in touch with the airport, Paul. Let’s stay on top of this thing.”
“Yes, sir. I have Juan covering that.”
Too Bad placed both elbows on the parapet and leaned out for another look below. The sun was a red ball just above the horizon, streaking the sea with several shades of red and casting long shadows across the bay from the west peninsula.
“Wonder if that could be our plane?” he asked whimsically.
“What’s that?” Spielke muttered.
“I’m kidding. A plane is heading in, just under the sunset.” A moment later: “Kind of low, though, isn’t it? That’s a big plane to be flying that low.”
Spielke opened his eyes and took a look. He straightened up and took a closer look. “Bring me the glass!” he commanded.
Too Bad lifted the telescope from its mount and hurried it to the boss.
Spielke placed it to his eyes, fiddled briefly with the focus, then whispered, “Well I’ll be damned!”
“Is it ours?”
“It’s a Lear jet. What the hell are they doing?”
From the conference table, Juan’s excited voice: “They lost radar contact! The plane is either down or flying just off the deck to avoid the radar!”
Too Bad exclaimed, “Holy …! They’re going to buzz the house!”
“Aw shit!” Spielke screamed.
It had suddenly become very obvious that the plane was not going to “buzz” anything, except perhaps a few scurrying small boats in her path.
She hit the waves at about two hundred yards out and hydraplaned for another hundred yards or so before settling into her own backwash.
Huge rippling waves, produced by the disturbance, were moving onto the shore and making things a bit uncomfortable for the boats and shore party around the Seaward.
“That did it!” Too Bad yelled. “Seaward’s yawing off!”
But Max the Man had temporarily lost interest in prideful possessions. Neither the yacht nor the executive jet, as material objects, rated very high in his interior list of priority interests—not at this moment, at any rate.
“The son of a bitch,” he commented in an awed whisper. “I don’t believe it. He sent me a plane.”
But he did. He believed it.
Max the Man had joined the ranks of the believers.
11: Death Hand
Yeah, the guy was a skilled pilot. The shock of impact came not too unlike a jarring landing on both feet after a leap from a rooftop, except that in this case most of the trauma was felt in the midsection.
Bolan was the first one to throw off the seatbelt and find his feet, though the cabin attendant was a close second.
The Mafia fatcats still had their heads between their knees and grunting with the shock when the pilot and copilot lurched into the cabin.
The steward had gone immediately to the hatch and thrown it open. Now he was fighting a limp inflatable raft, trying to feed it through the opening. The plane was tilted at an odd angle and settling fast; obviously it would not remain afloat for long.
Bolan tossed a silent salute to the pilots and stepped astride the open hatch.
“I’ll get it,” he told the steward, and paused there long enough to pull the rubber inflatable clear and pop the cylinder.
The raft whooshed into shape and fell to the water. He passed the securing line back to the steward then hit the water in a clean dive, surfacing some twenty feet from the plane.
Bolan oriented himself to the shoreline then slid beneath the surface again and stroked strongly toward his goal.
When he surfaced the third time, for air and orientation, he was halfway there and the Lear jet was showing only its tail. The plane disappeared completely while he got his breath, leaving only the rubber raft and five somber silhouettes against the setting sun to mark the spot.
Night was coming with a swiftness, the shoreline already dusky and shadowed. Several boats were bobbing around the stricken Seaward, and there was a lot of shouting and scrambling about in that general vicinity.
A larger boat, something on the order of a naval frigate, was slowly making for the rubber raft.
Bolan went down again, and again, and then he was precisely where he’d wanted to be—in the midst of the confusion ashore.
Straining and groaning men were staggering around with lines and pulleys, trying to make fast a doomed yacht which obviously wanted only to rest in peace. Some of these guys wore a sort of rough uniform; most seemed to be Indians.
One guy stood out from all the others. He was about Bolan’s size and coloration, wore an Australian bush hat cocked at a swagger angle, and looked like a man with authority. He was soaked from the waist down, although apparently he’d not been handling lines; an assault rifle was slung from his shoulder. And he seemed to be headed toward the stairway to fantasyland.
In the confusion, what was one more soaked, exhausted human being? Bolan rose up out of the water and strode forward to intercept the Sultan’s officer.
The guy turned to look at him just as Bolan unloaded one from the kn
ees—and that one was all it took.
He dragged the unconscious trooper behind a rock and traded clothing with him. The assault rifle was a Russian AK-47, very similar to the M-16. Bolan’s mind played idly with that fact while he got into the uniform. The blouse was a tuniclike affair, extending just below the hips and cinched at the waist with a braided belt. He cinched himself into it and cocked the hat at the same jaunty angle as the trooper had worn it, then he shouldered the AK-47 and sauntered up the stairway.
It was an impressive joint, yeah.
He paused briefly at the top of the stairs to get the lie and find an ear to play.
He had come not a’blitzing but a’looking.
There was plenty to be seen. A couple of servants in white outfits were setting up a buffet supper beside the pool. Lights were coming on, in various parts of the hotellike house. Another servant was moving through the garden area with a flaming stick, lighting hurricane lamps, or whatever—obviously for decoration effect; there was plenty of electric power available out here.
Six guys in casual civvies flanked an oval table with numerous telephones upon it. All were watching the buffet preparations with impatient appreciation.
The sun was fully gone, now—only its vivid rays making a spectacular light show along the horizon.
At the edge of the overlook, near a bricked safety wall, a chubby little bald-headed man sat quietly in an oversized chair. He was gazing solemnly out to sea, his back to the others.
Bolan set his ear and headed that way.
This edge of the soaring gardens was in semidarkness. Potted trees and flowering shrubs of exotic dimensions suggested a jungle atmosphere—but the entire effect was man-made.
The little man turned to Bolan’s casual approach. “Ramirez?” he queried in a tired voice. “Que pasa?”
Bolan swung the Russian rifle off his shoulder and leaned his back against the parapet. “It’s not Ramirez, Max.”
“Ah, hell,” the guy said miserably.
The Bolan voice was icy, low-pitched, almost confidential. “You said you wanted to discuss something with me, face to face.”
“This is nutty,” the Man said, matching Bolan’s tone. “You’ve walked into an armed camp.”
“Flew in,” Bolan corrected him.
“Yeah. I was trying to forget that.” He laughed quietly. It was the sound of a tired man who’d found peace with himself in that fatigue. “That plane looked big as an ocean liner when it hit the water. You’ve brought the navy and the tourists out again, Mr. Crazy. Now we’ll probably never get them home again.”
“Everybody likes a good show,” Bolan said. “How about you?”
“Oh, sure. I thought it was thrilling.”
“Take a stroll with me, Max.”
“I’m not going nowhere. Neither are you. Soon as you make a move, two hundred savage soldatos are going to run right up your silly ass.”
“I’ve been counting on it,” Bolan told him. “But you shouldn’t. Not with the muzzle of this Russian burper stuck down your throat. I doubt that your savages will get that anxious. Who would pay the bills with the Sultan gone?”
“Think you have the upper hand, eh?”
“I have the death hand, Max. That’s the one that counts.”
“You got a lot of nerve. I’ll give you that.”
“Call it desire. And, yeah, I have plenty of that.”
The guy was looking him over, taking his measure. “I guess you have,” he said, finally, with a deep sigh. “What do you ‘desire’ from me, Bolan?”
“I came for that talk.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But on neutral turf, not here.”
“You think I’ll just get up and walk out of here with you?”
“It’s what I desire, yeah.”
“Then you’re out of your head. The only hand I got is to sit pat. Right? I let you take me out of here …”
“Start thinking, guy. If I’d wanted just your head, you think I’d come in here to get it? I have you wired, Max. Surely you know that by now. I can take you any time, any way of my choosing. I wouldn’t choose this way.”
“You wouldn’t, huh?”
The guys at the oval table were getting to their feet and moving toward the buffet. It was chow time, and this seemed to be the priority item of the moment.
A big guy with beefy, sloping shoulders paused midway between the tables to toss an inquiry toward the shadowy figures at the parapet. “Snacks are ready. Can I get you something, boss?”
“Not just now, Paul,” Spielke called back.
“Ramirez?”
Bolan waved away the offer.
The big guy went on to the buffet table.
Bolan congratulated his captive. “So you started thinking.”
“Yeah, I started thinking before you got here, Nutsy. I don’t like all this trouble on my turf. I run a clean territory. I like to keep it that way.”
“Too much to lose, any other way,” Bolan agreed.
“Everybody loses,” the Man said.
“The dirt got here before I did,” Bolan pointed out.
“I been thinking about that, too.”
“I don’t want your turf, Spielke.”
“I figured you didn’t.”
“I just want your borders closed.”
The guy sighed. “Yeah, I figured that, too. To tell the truth, I’m kind of tired of this crap, myself. Never get a chance to enjoy myself anymore. What the hell have I worked for all my life?”
“Shut it down, then,” Bolan suggested. “I’ll go away happy. Your little mordida empire will have time for its daily siesta. And we’ll all live happily ever after.”
“How do I know you won’t be coming back—just to play your sick jokes on a tired old man?”
“I’ve learned to accept some things,” Bolan assured him. “There are those places where the game will go on, regardless of who’s pulling the strings. Like Mexico. I guess I can’t think of anyone I’d like to see in your place, Max.”
“You mean that, don’t you.”
“I mean it.”
“Well I think we’re getting somewhere. You know something? You’re a bright kid. Let me see what I got here. How many people did you kill today, on my turf?”
“I don’t count,” Bolan replied coldly.
“I do. Let’s see—the navy has the plane crew and the spaghetti suckers, Lambrighetta and Zolotti. That means you burned two, there. Nobodies, they don’t count—they’re not mine. You let my courier go. You let my boat crew go. You let my man down on the beach go, and all his house staff, while you were burning Fulgencio and Scapelli. I, uh, hey—that’s pretty clean. I lost just three men—those boys in the helicopter. You took them, huh.”
“I took them.”
“Ramirez?”
“He may have lost a few teeth.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty clean. I respect that. Okay. You got a deal.”
“That’s thinking,” Bolan congratulated him.
“You won’t shoot out my window glass or run any cars down off the cliff, huh?”
Bolan chuckled. “A deal’s a deal, Max.”
“Okay.” The little man slid to his feet. “I’ll walk you outside and get you a car. We had our talk after all, didn’t we. You want to meet Paul and the boys?”
Bolan said, “Thanks, I’ll pass. And you understand the deal isn’t sealed until I’m home clean. If it should go sour …”
“It won’t.” Spielke took his arm, and they strolled casually through the gardens, the host pointing out various prideful possessions and talking chummily about the pressures of having and holding.
Paul “and the boys” watched with casual disinterest as the Man steered the Executioner through a vaulted doorway and along a short passageway which bypassed the main mass of the house and led to the parking area.
There, he summoned another Bush Hat and ordered a car brought to the gate, then he and Bolan strolled on along the drive.
Disengagement could be a tricky business, even when all intentions were entirely honorable, and Mack Bolan was not the last man in the world to understand it. He ordered the vehicle outside and parked just around a bend in the drive, all the guards inside with weapons stacked at a respectable distance—then he tossed his own appropriate weapon into the bushes.
Spielke chuckled and voluntarily accompanied him to the vehicle.
“Remember, we have a deal,” the Man reminded him, as Bolan slid into the car.
“Let’s call it a death-hand pact,” Bolan said. “I’ll have you wired for the rest of your life, Max.”
“Or the rest of yours,” Spielke replied, laughing, and went back up the drive.
Bolan drove away from there with a feeling of real accomplishment. He had not shaken their house down, by any means, but maybe he had succeeded in bolting all doors. He would settle for that, things being as they were.
He had tested the Man’s strength, and found it resilient enough to accommodate an alternative to an all-destructive war. And he believed the guy was sincere; there would be no phantom Cosa Nostra operating from Mexico.
Yeah. Bolan was feeling pretty good about the whole thing.
But he did not know, then, what lay ahead of him along that brutal road to disengagement in Acapulco.
He could not have known, at that point, that the rampage had barely begun.
12: One More Time
Bolan was a man who respected his agreements and liaisons. He wanted to get back to John Royal and determine where the guy wished to go from this point, and to help him get there if he could.
And then there was the matter of Martha Canada and the six other girls. Bolan had purposely kept such matters out of his conversation with Spielke, feeling that the less said about the matter, the better.
But these were dangling considerations which had to be resolved before he could even contemplate a complete withdrawal from the Acapulco scene—and he had told Spielke that there would be “no deal” until Bolan was “home clean.”
“Clean” included Royal, Canada, and the Tampico kids.
He took the Spielke vehicle to Hornos Beach and left it there, then doubled back on foot, sans bush hat and tunic, to his “hard drop”—a small villa in the hills above the east bay.
Acapulco Rampage Page 8