“Thanks for taking care of Thunder for me,” he said quietly.
“I figured you left it for me,” she told him. “And I do appreciate it. I was scared to death, Mack. Really scared.”
He said, very quietly, “Yeah.”
“You’re mad at me. Why?” She patted the bed again. “Let’s bury that,” she suggested.
“It’s buried,” he assured her. “Where were you when JR went down?”
Those lovely eyes flared and the gaze went abruptly down. “That was horrible. I was—I was—I can’t talk about it, Mack.”
“Try,” he said harshly.
Those eyes blinked at him, hurting, pleading.
“I have to hear it, Marty.”
She sat up and clasped herself in her arms, as though trying to keep it all together. “I was outside. In the pool. When the men came, I mean. I hid beneath the diving board until they left. I-I didn’t have anything on. And I hid beneath the diving board until they left. Then I-I went inside … and then I saw it. And I panicked. I just ran away, Mack. Oh, God, I needed you. I was so scared.”
“You hid in the pool, eh.”
“It seemed … the smart thing.”
“What time was this?”
“Oh, just—just—I don’t know. I woke up feeling very down, you know. Very out of it. The sleeping pill, I guess. It seemed that I was the only one there. And I thought a swim would bring me out of it. And so I … did.”
“And you found Thunder when you came out of the pool.”
“Yes.”
“And came straight here.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t go into town, first, and buy a pretty new slack suit. You didn’t go to the red quarter for a meet at Cantina Lola. And you didn’t go from there to the Mariah for another series of meets.”
That face was absolute innocence, bafflement, and abused feelings. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told you. I came here. Hoping you would think to look for me here.”
The magic of the place was still there. Bolan was finding it very difficult to firmly establish the undeniable.
He stepped to the bathroom door and pushed it open. The lights were off and a couple of damp towels lay just inside the door.
He hit the light switch and pushed on inside.
The magic left that place, then, flung free by a great lurch of Bolan’s stomach.
“Oh, no,” he groaned, and tossed a sick look over his shoulder to the beautiful lady on the bed.
Another gorgeous blonde was in that bathroom. Also naked. But in a hell of a shape.
She lay on her back, in the tub—legs elevated, lashed together and tied to the shower plumbing, hands tied behind her. The bathtub drain was open, but the effluent was not quite keeping pace with the influent; that tub was slowly filling. The cold water was running full force through the shower head, which had been adjusted to play a steady stream onto the girl’s face.
She’d taken quite a battering from that water, besides which she had little more than a nose to go before total submersion—and already she was snorting and struggling in panic.
Bolan turned off the water and cut the cord at her feet to haul her out of there. He lay her gently on the floor beside the tub and removed the other bindings. A rolled-up stocking had been jammed into her mouth and lashed in place with its mate.
She was only about half conscious, but she knew where she was and what was happening. He rubbed and patted her to further the consciousness, then helped her roll to her side and made sure that she was breathing okay.
“Stay loose,” he told her. “I’ll be right back.”
Marty was standing at the dresser, the big silver pistol up and looking at him. She was holding it with both hands, bent slightly forward with legs spread apart the way they teach you on the shooting ranges.
The AutoMag was designed for a man with a big hand and a strong pull. It was not a lady’s weapon, simply because there was not stretch enough in the normal female hand for a comfortable trigger pull and for most ladies, even the athletic ones, not strength enough to properly handle the fantastic muzzle velocities developing in front of that pull.
Bolan figured, with all that, he was spotting the lady to an even chance.
He coldly told her, “You had the world and all its magic, Marty. Why did you blow it?”
Big Thunder roared and bucked, staggering her, its 240-grain missile crunching into the floor three feet under and two feet wide on the left.
“It’s a big difference from ten feet out, isn’t it. Come and lay it against my head, Marty, the way you did it to JR.”
She tried it again, with even worst results, then threw herself toward him with an enraged scream.
He blew the lady away then, with a quiet little chug from the Belle. It caught her at mid-stride and squarely between the eyes, expanding immediately to lay that whole beautiful face open, punching her back and flopping her down.
The AutoMag hit the wall behind Bolan.
He went to one knee to retrieve the piece and stayed there for a moment—then rose up with a weary sigh.
Soul-weary, yeah.
So much for feminine idealizations.
So much, also, for equality between the sexes.
The other blonde was leaning weakly against the doorway to the bathroom. “That bitch!” she gasped. “That lousy bitch!”
“Not anymore,” Bolan said quietly. He turned a somber eye that way and asked her, “Who are you, honey?”
“I’m Angie Greene,” she replied, still seething. “I’m with the FBI, Bolan, so you keep your lousy paws off me.”
He showed her a small smile and told her, “Now that’s what I call a lady.”
20: The Man
“So I lied a little,” the shaken beauty admitted. “I’m not an agent. But I do make reports.”
“A paid informant,” Bolan suggested.
“Call it what you like. I work for a living, the same as everyone else.”
“And you were working on John Royal.”
“Right. This jerk bitch got the wrong slant. She thought JR was the leak in the plumbing.”
“So why did you wind up in the bathtub?” Bolan asked.
She made a face and said, “Call it dumb devotion to duty.” She delicately shrugged her shoulders. “Or to JR, maybe—who knows? He whisked us away from that airport, and we were headed back to his villa. Then he decided that we girls should not hang around any longer than necessary. He was really a sweet guy, did you know that? Well, he got out of the car a short distance from the villa and told us to go on to Mexico City, leave the car, and take a plane back to the States. The other girls did that. I started to. But then after we’d gone about a mile, I jumped out and walked back to the villa. Straight into hell.”
“They’d been waiting for him,” Bolan guessed.
“Yes. Shortly after I got there, poor Carlos blundered in. They took him outside, and I didn’t see him again.”
“Carlos was …?”
“Part-time houseboy.”
“They drowned him in the pool,” Bolan informed her.
“The rotten bitch!” she spat.
“Marty was the queen lady, huh?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it. Listen. Cassiopea worked for her. How’s that? She was the control. He was a nothing, a front, a cover.”
“Yes, that’s kind of weird,” Bolan agreed.
“For the mob, it sure is. Champs of the male chauvinist league. But there’s a new wind a’blowing across our land, Mr. Bolan. Or hadn’t you noticed.”
Sure. Bolan had noticed. Women were showing themselves as equal to men in almost every sense. Even in savagery.
“Win a few, lose a few,” he muttered.
“Does that mean good or bad?” she asked archly.
“Good, in your case,” Bolan told her. “They need to make you a full agent. Tell them I said it. You beat the mob’s alert by a full hour.”
“What do you mean?”
“You put out the location report on me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. For all the good it—I mean—okay.” She showed him a winning smile. “Nothing personal, huh?”
He sighed and said, “Nothing personal, Angie. Except for that, I might have never tumbled to the lady. I knew she figured somewhere, but I was trying to fit her into your role. But none of the numbers computed. There was no way she could have run up the flag before six o’clock. And six o’clock is when the mob’s flag went up the pole. That gave me a lot of discomfort.”
“You must have a pretty good telegraph system yourself,” the girl commented.
“The best,” he said, giving her a sober show of teeth. “Why didn’t you, uh, tell the lady what she wanted to know?”
“I told her every damn thing I knew, and a lot of things I dreamed up on the spur of the panic. The dizzy bitch! I think it gave her kicks to truss me up that way.”
“Girl adventurer,” Bolan said sadly.
“You kind of liked her.”
“Kind of. For a little while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” Bolan brushed the girl’s forehead with his lips and told her, “Okay. This is the place. Get in there and lock every door and window. Call the American consulate—or whoever your contact is—and don’t move a muscle or even sigh loudly until they come for you. Got that?”
“Got it,” she said. “Thanks, Bolan. I’ll never forget you.”
She kissed him full on the mouth and quickly took her departure.
And, yeah, that’s the way it was.
Marty had been the “controller.” In charge of the bedroom detail. She had a couple of torpedoes based in Acapulco, as well as at other strategic points around the globe, to back her up and provide any needed muscle.
And apparently she’d been doing all right. Even Cass Baby was playing the second fiddle, and he was a guy high on the visibility list. It had not been Marty’s fault that things suddenly soured along the New Mafia trail. She’d been riding high and handsome until the inevitable events within her dark world began to conspire against her. Very probably she had not even known of the furtive movements against the Spielke clan until she suddenly found herself enmeshed in them. Even then it would have been smooth sailing—and probably even more power for herself—if Bolan had not stumbled into the thing via his own bullish plans for the Mexican empire.
Maybe she’d just panicked and overreacted. That was one of the problems inherent with girl adventurers. They simply did not have the background for violence, and there was no way to condition them for the shoot-out.
Bolan did not know, nor did he really care, where she’d stood vis à vis the head parties from New York. She had good representation at the council, apparently. Perhaps the visiting hoods had simply been told to observe protocol—to work with the lady in every way possible so as to not unduly compromise her own operation in the area.
No, Bolan really did not care about any of that.
It was behind him, thank God. That which lay ahead would seem like a busman’s holiday in comparison. He was a soldier, not a detective. And a soldier’s job was awaiting him.
He drove on around the bay and up the hill toward the Throne of Mexico. The wrist chronometer beeped at him as he reached the check point and pulled into the bushes.
And, yeah, the timing was very close.
He’d figured about thirty minutes was the time required to break that camp, to load the trucks, to lay the plans and execute that tactical withdrawal to the Costa Chica. It was a military outfit, after all, and Bolan’s own military mind was rather well attuned with like minds everywhere.
There was very likely to be a shooting war on the Costa Chica, unless Bolan’s own timing worked to invalidate the necessity or sanity of such a confrontation.
Such considerations did not, however, particularly interest the man in black. He sought primarily to simplify his own task. The rest would take care of the rest.
And, yeah, he still had a job to do in Mexico.
The point truck rumbled through the gate and down the drive, and the military parade began.
He did not wait for it to end, but used that exodus as a cover for his own entry onto the palace grounds.
Big Thunder rode the honor spot, at right hip. Belle was snuggled into the left armpit. And that was all of his personal weaponry. It was all he could afford. Heavy packs at chest and back occupied the balance of his load capability.
A few of the troops, probably hand picked, had been retained as a skeleton palace guard. They were spread much too thin, of course, and posed no real problem to a penetration expert such as Bolan.
He was over the wall and deep into the grounds before the final truck of the convoy lumbered through the gate. He knew exactly where he wished to go, and he had at least a fair idea of the best way to get there.
It took him less than ten minutes to outwit the physical security of the place and to arrive at his goal. Then it required an hour to read the stress points and make the proper applications from the stuff in his twinpacks; another five minutes for setting the detonators, properly sequenced for a “staggered go.”
He left the empty packs behind and hoisted himself onto the overhanging gardens.
“I figured you’d come,” the Man said softly as Bolan dropped over the parapet.
It was dark out there—very dark. Bolan could have been no more than a soft shadow upon the night. So the guy must have been sitting there quite a while in that darkness, waiting for him to show.
“You’re a true believer,” Bolan congratulated him.
“Well, you sent me a boat, didn’t you. Then you sent me a plane. I just couldn’t wait to see what you were going to send me next.”
“An ocean,” Bolan quietly told him.
“A what?”
“I came to send you an ocean, Max.”
“Aw, shit. I don’t think you can do that.”
“The mountain wouldn’t come to Mahomet, Max.”
“So Mahomet went to the mountain. So what?”
The sultan was on his throne, at the parapet, barely visible there, a shotgun resting casually across his lap.
“I’m not going to no fuckin’ ocean, mister. I’m going to burn you down. Right here. Right now.”
“You’re already on your way to the ocean,” Bolan told him.
“What’s that mean?”
“I put charges on the mountain.”
“You put what?”
“I gooped your mountain, Max. In a few minutes, the whole crazy fantasyland will fall into the sea.”
The guy was a believer, yeah.
And he’d placed his love in more than a yacht. He lost his concentration for one staggering heartbeat, those shrewd eyes flaring into the rising recognition of a truth and seeking reassurance in the physical object of his love.
Bolan burned him with the silent Belle as those eyes swept the beloved gardens. Quick and clean, death flew faster than any possible signal of pain or reaction, and the Capo Mexicana slid from his throne without a murmur of protest.
“God save the king,” Bolan muttered—and went in search of loyal subjects.
He found Too Bad Paul facedown in a potted plant, blood from a slashed jugular feeding rich nourishment there.
And he found a couple of other guys with fear on their faces and hardware a few sad millimeters too far removed from frozen fingers. “Relax,” he told them. “The Man is dead and the joint is set to blow. There’s nothing left to fight over, so get everybody out—and I mean especially the servants. All the way off the hill and as far as you can get. Do it!”
The guys did it, racing into the interior and setting up a clamor.
Bolan went back through the gardens and to the parapet, onto the stairway.
He looked down from there and wondered briefly what went through the minds of the miracle divers of La Quebrada as they flung themselves from heights such as this.
Then he went on down, t
he hard way, onto the small rocky beach below. An Indian with a ragged headband, the lone sentry left at that post, gave him a strange look but offered no challenge.
Bolan asked the guy, “Comprende Espanol?”
Not everyone did, in this land of many languages.
But the guy nodded and replied, “Si, poquito.”
“Vamos!” Bolan advised. “Retumbo-retumbo!” He pointed to the cliffs. “Comprende retumbo?”
“Boom-boom!” the guy replied.
“You got it, pal. Vamos!”
Bolan walked into the water and started swimming. He swam straight out, as far and as quickly as lungs and limbs would take him, without rest, and then he crushed the compressed air cartridges in the belt at his waist and allowed the flotation to take over, turned onto his back, and continued the withdrawal at all possible speed.
He was about two hundred yards out when the first retumbo shook the night.
The others followed in close sequence, cutting that whittled headland into a series of stepped slabs with all the cantilevers dissolving.
The gardens went to the ocean first, sliding as a single piece onto the sheer facing, then breaking up and tumbling in leaping fragments of a kingdom in quick destruct.
Level by level they came, grinding and shrieking in the slow descent to the free-fall line, then plunging to build a new floor for the ocean—a floor of shattered glass, cement blocks, adobe, and all the rich embellishments of a palace never really earned.
Clouds of dust and explosive debris concealed the final agony of the beloved structure. Giant waves of displaced ocean swept outward again and again to lift the floating man in black and set him farther away with each rising.
And when it was done, he was grateful just to be alive and sentient.
“I actually never meant it in a literal sense,” he confided to the night.
But he’d done it, yeah.
He’d shaken their damned house down.
Epilogue
“Who was that Virgin of Guadalupe,” the underboss of Pittsfield wanted to know, just for the hell of it.
“It was an inside joke, pal,” replied that tired voice from the southern connection. “She was the only one in the house who wasn’t for hire by the pound. Think of a virgin madam, and take it from there.”
Acapulco Rampage Page 12