“Okay. But you confirm the time. It flew at five, Acapulco time.”
“Right. Now the black one. It came in on the New York express. I talked to the guy that took it. Are you ready? It originated from a ship at sea.”
“How romantic,” Bolan wryly commented.
“Yeah. It was a radio telephone hookup via RCA.”
“Okay, thanks, Sticker. Maybe it’s starting to come together. That, uh, special Rover detail. Could they be using associates?”
“You mean like foreign connections?”
“I mean like whatever,” Bolan replied. “I just can’t read Rovers in this picture down here. The smell is wrong. I need your feel on this, friend, for a very special reason which I can’t go into here. What’s your feel?”
“How about Rover mercenaries?” Turrin suggested.
Translation: FBI informants, unencumbered by the “law of the land.”
Bolan said, “Okay, that smells possible. It’s worth a thought or two, anyway. By the way. I’ve had six lost loves down here, already.”
Turrin’s voice sounded a bit out of it as he replied, “That’s the price of valor, soldier.”
“Well they’re lost but not forgotten. Have you heard anything?”
“The number is six, huh?”
“One half-dozen, right.”
“You lose ’em in bunches, don’t you. No, I haven’t heard. It’s the sort of thing that comes as pure gossip, and usually much later. They don’t talk much about lost loves up here. I mean, like, it’s too lowbrow. But I can hang another ear out, if you’d like.”
“Never mind,” Bolan said tiredly. “I’ve got about all I can handle, as it is. You know a guy named John Royal?”
“Who doesn’t?” Turrin replied immediately.
“Play a song for the guy, Sticker.”
“Aw, no. Really? Were you there?”
Bolan sighed. “No, I wasn’t there. Someone tried to make it look that way, though.”
“What the hell is going on down there!” Turrin said angrily.
“There simply isn’t time to tell you, friend. What’d you learn about Spielke’s ears?”
“Just a confirmation of what you told me,” reported the incredible two-headed marvel from Pittsfield. “They’re definitely on—but get this. They’re both white and black. You figure it, friend. Put it together with everything else, and I guess you’ve got some kind of heat going down there, pal.”
“Oh, we have plenty of that,” Bolan assured him.
“Don’t get too close to the flames, Striker.”
“You know me,” Bolan said quietly, and killed the connection.
Flames, yeah. Like from several blowtorches all flowing together.
It was confirmed. This town, yeah, was going to be engulfed in a firestorm. Unless Bolan could stop it.
And he hardly knew where to begin.
17: Night Sounds
He was dressed in the blacksuit—the fabled skin-tight night combat outfit which had become such a symbol of the man and of his war. Even the hands and face were touched up with a black cosmetic. The gunleather was black, as was the weapon itself—the standard “quiet piece,” a nine-millimeter Beretta Brigadier, dubbed the Belle, loaded with hi-shock Parabellum rounds and equipped with a unique silencer engineered by armorer Bolan himself.
He left all extraneous gear in the vehicle and moved into the night as a moving extension of the darkness. The moon had set, and the stars were filtered by scudding islands of fractured cumulus playing above the mountains.
The time was two o’clock. This end of the town was quiet. Occasional voices, raised in laughter and merriment, drifted across the quiet waters of the bay. Gentle waves lapped at the docked boats, slapping softly with unsteady rhythms.
Bolan slipped into the water and swam softly to the Mariah. He rested himself on the anchor chain and listened for the sounds of that small world, placing his ear to the wooden hull and working his way aft. There were no sounds from within, and no lights—but certainly something aware and conscious was aboard that boat.
He spotted the guy then. Topside aft, lying out on the deck with a pillow beneath his head, one knee raised and fingers playing upon it in time to some inner music.
Bolan took the lookout from behind, sliding up out of the water with a nylon garrote poised into the attack. He brought the guy with him as he settled back into the water, holding him there until the grimly silent struggle found its inevitable end. He removed the garrote then, and let the guy sink as he quietly hauled himself aboard.
The deck hatch was open. He lowered head and shoulders into the utter blackness of that tiny cabin and tarried there a while as his senses peaked into an absorption of that dark hole.
Lungs in motion and the occasional restless movement of a limb were the only perceptions of a full one-minute vigil, then the blackness began gradually separating into faint patterns of spatial structures. He identified a small cookstove directly below and to the right, a bunk to the left along the bulkhead. Another blob farther forward slowly resolved as another bunk—and, just beyond it, a bulkhead athwart ships. Beyond that forward bulkhead should lie another small compartment with extremely low overhead, suitable only for stowage or sleeping.
He lowered himself to waist height, then flipped on inside, landing lightly on his feet. The noose found its second victim in the first bunk aft. The guy died straining into total darkness and hearing perhaps nothing more than his own tongue vibrating against the roof of his mouth and the soft slapping of bay water against the boards beside him.
The one amidships did not even struggle. He simply rolled his eyes up into his head and settled quietly into the final darkness.
Bolan then returned to the small galley section, found a match and lit it, discovered the battery-driven lantern clipped to the bulkhead and turned it on.
He stood silently with the lantern behind him, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim but relatively harsh light.
The forward cabin featured a sliding panel for a door. It was fully open, to allow maximum flow-through of air. The decking in there equaled about knee-height of the main cabin. A bare foot was showing in the open hatch. It moved, and a muffled voice complained, “What’s with the light, babe? Aw, no! It’s not four o’clock already!”
Bolan moved forward and seized the guy by the ankle and dragged him out of there. The guy hit the deck of the main cabin with a crash and a howl. Bolan stepped back to the rear, hauled out the Belle, affixed the silencer.
“I’ll kill you, you screwy—!” Sleeping beauty was fighting mad. He was a powerfully built guy in his late twenties, wearing only jockey shorts. Sweat-matted hair was thick across his chest and down his belly.
He had come to his knees, prepared to beat the hell out of some jokester, when he became aware of the tall figure in executioner black. Then he saw the bug-eyed corpse in the bunk beside him—and he knew, he knew.
A small metallic object sailed the length of the cabin and dropped to the deck at his knee.
“You know the choices,” Bolan said in an icy, impersonal tone.
The guy took a deep breath and held it for a moment before slowly letting it out.
Yeah, he knew the choices.
There were but two—life and death. The mere fact that he was alive and looking at Mack the Bastard was evidence enough that the choice was open.
The guy stared at his hands for a moment, then he sighed and dropped onto his butt. “Okay,” he quietly decided.
Bolan reminded him, “I’m not a prosecutor and I’m not a cop. I’m just a guy with an ear for the truth. The minute I hear otherwise, the truce is over. And there will be no second thoughts or ‘I forgots.’ So go.”
The guy went—calmly, quietly. He’d chosen life.
“I’m Renato. Pete Renato. I’m by way of Mike Talifero—the late Mike Talifero, as you know. I don’t decide these things, I just do them. Okay. The men decided. You know—the men, the board. They put it together this way
, see—nobody else can run Mexico so smooth. We need Max. We need him. But he acts like he don’t need us. He’s getting tougher to handle all the time. So this is the way it went together. We take him down to size, that’s all. We make him need us.”
“You kill the kingdom but leave the king.”
“You got it.”
“But it went sour.”
“Thanks to you, yeah. Threw off the timing. Max calls in his army. He’s got an armed fort up there now. All we found in the boonies was a village of women and kids.”
“That’s very sad.”
“We thought so.”
“So you’re trying to cool it now. How long?”
The guy shrugged. “I don’t make those decisions. Until the army goes home, I guess.”
Bolan said, “Until you can catch them asleep with their women and kids.”
The guy shrugged.
“Why Royal?”
“I swear I don’t know. I think that was a foul up.”
“Who fouled up?”
“I swear I don’t know. That was all done before I got here. I asked no questions. I was told no answers.”
“You don’t like taking orders from a woman, either.”
The guy gave Bolan a strained look and a level reply. “No, I don’t. But I don’t make the decisions. I just do the doing.”
There were limits to these “truth truces”—limits which were largely proscribed by the man himself. Bolan had learned to respect those limits. He got more, that way. Some men would die rather than humiliate themselves or violate their own deep codes of personal honor. This man had gone his limit.
Bolan growled, “Go back to bed, Renato. Come dawn, all your troubles will be over. If you’re a real wiseguy, you’ll play it that way.”
“My mama didn’t raise any dummies,” Renato replied calmly. He gave Bolan a limp salute, crawled back into his cabin, and slid the panel shut.
Bolan extinguished the lantern, stood quietly in the darkness for a few seconds, then rejoined the night.
He did not have it all. But he had enough.
At least he now knew where to begin.
18: Stage Center
“Did I get you out of bed, Max?”
“Fat chance,” the Capo Mexicana growled. “I told you to stay out of my hair, mister.”
“I made you a deal, Max, and I’m trying to keep it. Don’t make it any harder for me than necessary.”
The Man sighed heavily into the telephone. “What the hell is going on, Bolan?”
“It would take a book, and there’s no time to retell the history of the world. I have to change the terms of the deal. You’ll have to cash out completely. Out of the country, Max, for good. I think you’d like Rio. You’d feel right at home there.”
“You’re a real nutsy,” the Man replied disgustedly.
“I thought we had this understanding,” Bolan said drily. “I thought you’d learned to believe in me, Max. If I say it, you can believe it. Right?”
“Just like the One God, huh?”
“I don’t claim to be infallible. But I know my business. I’m telling you the only way I can honor my deal with you is for you to leave the country. If I have to spell it out for you …”
“Why don’t you do that?” the boss of Mexico said faintly.
“They’re taking you over, guy.”
The Man laughed bitterly at that. “They’re welcome to try, rooster.”
“They’re already trying.”
“So I’m ready. Send them.”
“You don’t have the picture, Max. They’re going to burn just your kingdom, not your throne. They’ll keep you there, guy, with wires all over you. They pull an arm wire, you salute. A waist wire, you bend over and kiss ass. Have that picture?”
The guy laughed again, but the mockery was a bit uncertain, this time. “Why’re you so kind to me, Mister Nutsy?”
“It’s not because I love you so,” Bolan assured him. “But I do worry about you, Max. I can’t honor the deal if you’re not going to be your own man. I’ll have to burn you down, sir. Once they get their wires on you, it will be too tough to do that. I’ll have to do it now. Tonight, I guess.”
Bolan had expected a blustery royal outrage at that kind of talk, but it seemed only to set the guy’s mind.
“You’re very serious about this,” the Man observed quietly.
“Everything I do is very serious,” Bolan told him.
“You think they’re going to make a puppet out of me, eh.”
“I know it. I’ll tell you a professional secret, Max. They’ve got three head parties down on the veldt right now—a very hard force, with all the machinery it takes to sustain it, and their bayonet is poised above your village at this very moment. Other parties are standing by along the coast, ready for a clean sweep inland. They’ve got you outgunned and outflanked. I’m a soldier, guy, and I can tell you: they’ve got you by the balls. All they have to do now is squeeze down and you’re out of the game.”
“How do I know this is—how do I …?”
“I thought I’d made you a believer,” Bolan quietly reminded his listener.
“Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Let ’em burn the damn veldt all the way to the coast, I don’t care. You saw my people. They’re here, with me. Let ’em try my hill, Bolan.”
“You think it’s a standoff?” Bolan said. “Think again. They can afford to sit and wait, which is what they’re doing. You would have gotten wired tonight, though, except for me. I danced in and rearranged the stage a bit. Except for that, your army would be on the veldt right now, and they’d be waking up at dawn beneath the bayonet. You’d be waking up with a whole new palace guard—and fully wired. So now you put yourself at their table, Max. What would you do now? Rush the fort? Or burn the village and take hostages. Force the sultan’s army out of the fort—via desertions, if nothing else. Your mestizos and Indians, Max—how long will they squat inside those walls with their wives and kids over the bayonet?”
“Aw, shit,” the Man commented raggedly.
“It’s no Mexican standoff, you know. It’s a sure thing. So, you see, I have to ride with the sure thing. They’ll get their wires on you, okay. I have to either pack you off or burn you down, Max. You can understand my position.”
“You go get yourself screwed,” the guy growled.
“Okay. Just so we understand it. By the way—did you find the bugs?”
“Go to—yeah, I found some. So what?”
“So how do you think they got there? Where did Too Bad Paul go tonight, Max?”
“He went nowhere.”
“Sure he did. Ask him about the Mariah—and a guy named Renato.”
“What’re you saying?”
Bolan gave a theatrical sigh as he replied, “You surprise me, Max. How does a Capo Mexicana get so naive? You think I’m the only guy in town who might decide to ride the sure thing? Don’t be too hard on the guy, though. He’s just playing the game the way it was written. You could ask him, also, about the Cantina Lola. I think that’s been their field headquarters for the past few months.”
“It’s been going that long?” the guy asked tiredly.
“Longer, probably. You’ve been around, Max. You know how long it takes to set up something like this. All the meetings, the quiet wheeling and dealing, the offers that are just impossible to refuse. You know, Max.”
Sure. Max knew.
“You think I should bail out, huh. Well don’t you be naive, mister. And don’t you try me again, either.”
“We have no deal,” Bolan announced, and hung up.
So okay.
Another stage setting should begin to materialize very quickly.
Bolan gave it about thirty minutes to the first curtain.
He marked the time on his quartz chronometer, and set off for Las Brisas. It was time to mount another stage.
19: The Lady
The terraced hillside was softly enfolded in the quietness of the hour, totally darkene
d except for the small nightlights placed along the walks and drives.
Bolan went through the hedges and tried a soft recon of the interior situation. All the draperies were drawn, the total closure lessened only by a soft illumination at the bedroom window.
He went to the front door and quietly used the key to let himself in. The room was dark, empty.
From beyond the closed bedroom door issued the soft sounds of Mexican music—muted, hardly audible—from the bedside radio, probably.
He moved silently across to that point and carefully opened the door.
A small lamp on the nightstand was providing the illumination.
She lay on the bed with both pillows propping her head high, a partially eaten tropical fruit in one hand, eyes closed.
And she was raw naked.
It was, yeah, one hell of an electrifying sight.
The door to the bathroom was closed and no light was showing beneath it, but water was running in there.
Bolan stepped inside the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind him, deliberately producing an audible click in the mechanism.
Those eyes flew open and she stared at him through a momentary silence as the gaze swept his full length a couple of times. Then she kicked both legs and dropped the fruit, arms raising to him in warm welcome.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t think to look for me here,” she declared huskily.
He stayed where he stood as he replied, “You were afraid of that, eh.”
“Oh, wow, that is a groovy outfit. It’s really far out.” She seemed to become only now aware of her own nudity. “Oh! Am I embarrassing you?”
“Not at all,” he assured her. “But you’d better see to your bath water.”
“I bathed,” she told him, running both hands along that glistening torso as though to call attention to the cleanliness awaiting him there. “The thing is broken. Let it run.” She patted the bed. “Sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing.”
He saw the AutoMag, then. It was leathered and belt-wrapped, lying on the floor beside the bed.
He went over and picked it up, sprang it and checked the action, then restored it to leather and carried it to the dresser, where he set it down.
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