"Yes. I told them you had arrived."
"And this is is the conversation Triesta overheard?" the conversation Triesta overheard?"
"Yes."
"Okay, so what was the game plan from that point?"
"I was to report back... when you were dead."
"What else?"
"As insurance... in case you should break free... a containment network would be established."
"Uh huh. This is the police line you mentioned?"
"Yes. Their only interest is Mack Bolan.* She said it with a sigh. "They do not wish to show their hand at Gla.s.s Bay. Not yet Too much work has gone into___"
He said, "All right, I have the picture. Now let"s talk about the lady cop. What was your Mack Bolan a.s.signment?"
"None, but to report your death. Or your escape."
"And everything between you and me has been strictly on the level."
"This I swear, yes."
He said, "Okay, I believe you. Now. Other than the headhunters, exactly what is waiting for me out there, Evita?"
She shrugged daintily. "I do not know. I know only that they are very determined that you die in Puerto Rico."
"Yeah, I got the same reception in Vegas," Bolan muttered. "The Bolan kill is on. They don"t even want me in court. They just want me dead."
"They?"
"The feds. The political heat is on."
This is not just," she whispered.
"Sure it is," he told her. "n.o.body gave me a hunting license." He shrugged. "A guy takes his ride and pays his fare. It makes no sense to scream about the high cost of riding. Anyway, this is the way I want it. I don"t want a free ride. That would make me just another contract killer."
"You are a man unique," Evita murmured.
"I am a man realistic," Bolan argued. He smiled. "Don"t forget Adam and Eve. If they hadn"t paid their fare the world would have seen nothing more than a population explosion of hairless apes. The human race is more than a tribe of naked apes, Evita."
"That is most profound," she commented, eyes sparkling.
He kissed her, with tenderness, and then he quickly went down the ladder and began getting into his clothing.
Evita followed a moment later, as he was harnessing into the Beretta"s sideleather. She watched him briefly, warmly, then she sighed and began rounding up her own things.
Bolan grabbed her from behind and kissed her again, then he picked up a Thompson and went outside, clad only in the black skinsuit.
The sun was setting at 20 degrees north lat.i.tude. He stood quietly on the high ground for a couple of minutes and watched the surrounding countryside and thought of Evita while his ears tuned themselves to the sounds of the land.
She was a h.e.l.l of a gal. The name itself was the Spanish diminutive for Eve. Little Eve. Not her, h.e.l.l no. Big Big Eve. Very soon now he would be saying goodbye... to this land, to this woman, to the eternal part of himself which he would be leaving there. Eve. Very soon now he would be saying goodbye... to this land, to this woman, to the eternal part of himself which he would be leaving there.
Yes, there were rewards for living large. There were also heavy taxes. He thought of another Big Eve, a Cuban lady soldier he"d met and left forever at Miami Beach... large Margarita. She had died large at Miami Beach, and she"d left a h.e.l.l of a large marker in the memory of Mack Bolan.
He remembered her stirring poetry, also... stirring for a guy in Bolan"s shoes.
"The world dies "twixt every heartbeat, and is born again in each new perception of the mind." Yeah. Right on, Margarita. "For each of us the order of life is to perceive perceive and and perish perish and perceive perceive again." again."
The battle battle order, Margarita. Life is a battle, from womb to grave, if there is any meaning to it at all. "And who can say which is which- for every human experience builds a new world in its own image- and death itself is but an unusual perception." order, Margarita. Life is a battle, from womb to grave, if there is any meaning to it at all. "And who can say which is which- for every human experience builds a new world in its own image- and death itself is but an unusual perception."
Right on, little soldada soldada.
You too, Evita, little policia policia, right the h.e.l.l on. He left the hill and circled to the far side of the cabin, continuing the soft recon. Another twenty minutes and it would be dark enough to move out, to keep the rendezvous with Juan Escadrillo, and to go on to the next horsie of the carousel.
He stopped to inspect the jeep, then stiffened suddenly and released the safety on the Thompson. A vehicle was coming along that road.
Bolan threw a quick look toward the cabin, then stepped into the timber and moved swiftly along a parallel course with the roadway.
The Executioner felt another unusual perception coming on.
It was, he knew, time to go out of fairyland.
Chapter Eight.
THE CHOICE.
It was a Chevy, one of the small economy models, about two years old, and it was carrying a fresh acc.u.mulation of plateau dust. It also carried four men, each of whom seemed very much out of place on this Puerto Rico back-road.
They were total strangers to Bolan. They were also, he quickly deduced, strangers to the land. The vehicle had come to a quick halt at first sight of the cabin, then quietly reversed its track and came to rest around a bend in the road.
AH four men stepped outside and stood conversing across the roof of the vehicle. They spoke quietly, too softly for Bolan"s ears to pick up more than a word here and there-but definitely English words.
The car was radio equipped. One of the men leaned inside and said something into a mike. A responsive squawk from the radio receiver confirmed that English was the language in use, but again without sufficient clarity for Bolan"s understanding.
The problem, from Bolan"s standpoint, was the question of identification. If the guys were cops, he could simply fade out. Evita would be left in good hands and Bolan himself would be in no worse shape than at any time since he"d hit the island.
If they were not cops though... 95 "
One of the men was pulling a sawed-off shotgun from the rear seat. Another was spinning the cylinder of a heavy revolver and checking the load. The guy at the radio swung back to the outside and pa.s.sed a soft command to the others.
They split up.
One remained with the vehicle. Another advanced along the road toward the cabin. The other two went to opposite sides and disappeared into the brush.
They were closing on the house.
Bolan would have preferred to take them while they were bunched up. If the guys turned out to be some of Lavagni"s scouts, there could be h.e.l.l to pay now. A guy on the short end of the odds could not afford to allow such a situation to get out of his direct control.
Bolan had done so.
But there was that nagging question of identification... another of the built-in handicaps to the Executioner"s war effort He moved on deeper and circled back for an approach from the rear, then he stepped onto the road and came in with the fiery red sun setting directly behind him.
The guy was leaning against the car, his attention focused in the direction of the house, when the quiet jungle cat moved in behind him and the heavy steel muzzle of the Thompson dug into his spine.
He stiffened, and froze there, and Bolan could almost feel the tumbling energies of that suddenly electified mind.
"Okay, okay," the guy said, in a voice with all the moisture suddenly gone out of it. "Don"t, for G.o.d"s sake."
It was a matter of blind reaction versus conditioned instincts, and Bolan had his identification. The guy was no American federal cop; he was no kind of cop.
Without wasting another precious second of time, Bolan whipped the stock of the heavy gun up and against the back of the soldier"s skull in a lashing slap. The guy crumbled without a sound and sprawled face down in the dust. Bolan turned him over and gave him another vicious jab to the throat, then he stepped over the lifeless remains and hurried on along the road toward the cabin.
Big Eve was alone up there and definitely not about to fall into good hands.
The one with the shotgun was moving into the yard as Bolan rounded the bend, another was stepping out of the bushes to the right.
The front door to the cabin was standing open, and he saw a flash of motion across that open doorway.
"Hold it!" Bolan yelled, more for Evita"s benefit than for anything else.
The guy in front whirled, bringing the shotgun around with him, and the Thompson"s opening argument caught him in mid-turn and laid him down in a convulsive sideways sprawl. The shotgun boomed, sending its double-oughts spraying harmlessly into the air.
And then Evita was standing there in that doorway, clad only in a bra and a half-slip, and a Thompson was in her arms.
She screamed, "Mack!" as her chopper erupted, the fire going toward a point on Bolan"s blind left side.
The weapon was too much for her and she was fighting to keep that bucking muzzle down, but to no avail. Her fire-track was a chaotic sweep skyward -but it was evidently soarey enough to send her target diving for cover after one wild shot at Bolan. Meanwhile the guy on the right had gone for Evita. He was running across the yard and firing from the hip, the heavy slugs from the revolver chewing up the doorjamb behind her.
Living large, a lot of life could be packed into a single second.
And a lot of death.
All of the foregoing had been playing upon the background of Bolan"s consciousness, reeling out in frozen sequences of peripheral awareness; perhaps, he reflected later, it was the awareness of that submerged human side of man-in-combat.
From the moment of first blood, however, back at the vehicle, Bolan"s single overriding consideration was for the safety of Evita Aguilar, Big Eve. The combat order was as single-minded, and the panoramic action outside that cabin was telescoped into a single moment in time and as a continuous movement in attack-mode.
His first burst caught the front man and sent him beyond the lens of that mental telescope. The second burst unfalteringly found its track onto the gunner at the right, and the guy"s last couple of rounds toward Evita were probably no more than the dying reflex of his trigger-finger. He was stopped in mid-stride and punched back for several yards loss before touching down-and already Bolan was swinging into the threat from the left.
The guy over there was diving away from that harmless confrontation with Evita"s Thompson, and Bolan"s next burst added measurably to that move-ment, sending the guy into a somersaulting roll into the bushes.
A snap-glance toward the cabin a.s.sured Bolan that the girl was okay. He went quickly from body to body, verifying the results, then he slung the heated Thompson across his back and went to the woman.
Her eyes were wild but exhilarated as she let the heavy weapon droop and then fall to the steps. She crumbled into his arms and he pulled her in close.
"You okay?" he asked anxiously.
"Yes, yes, okay," she panted.
"You were great," he told her.
"Great, no. Out of mind, yes. Why would anyone build a loco loco gun such as this one?" gun such as this one?"
Bolan strangled off a chuckle as his fingers encountered the unmistakable sticky warmth of blood. "You"re hit," he announced calmly, and spun her about for inspection.
"It was Wee a sting of the bee," she said raggedly. "It is nothing?"
He grunted and replied, "Well, almost nothing. But you"ll have a souvenir to show your grandchildren."
A .38 slug had plowed a shallow furrow along the soft underside of her left arm, just below the armpit Another inch toward center and it would have been a fatal wound. By such insignificant dimensions of ma.s.s were the measurements of life and death.
He pulled her into the cabin and quickly washed the wound with soap and water, then he applied a disinfectant from the kitchen cupboard and bound the arm with gauze.
"We have to hurry," he said rightly.
am all right," she a.s.sured him.
"Okay, get your clothes on. Those guys are part of a coordinated sweep."
Evita nodded her understanding and finished dressing, wrinkling her nose at the torn blouse. "I put back on the stink of Gla.s.s Bay," she commented lightly.
Bolan did also, hastily donning the slacks and shirt he had worn, there. Then he told the woman, "Go through this place with a fine comb. Make sure there"s nothing left behind to show I"ve been here."
He started for the door but she reached out and stopped him, laying her cheek against his chest and encircling him with her arms.
Bolan said gruffly, "It"ll be okay."
"Mack, I... all this death. It does not bother you?"
Of course it bothered him. He told her, "How much choice is there, Evita?"
She shivered and lifted the troubled face to peer into his eyes. "I am just now realize... this terror, this b.l.o.o.d.y struggle... it is all of your life. It is never ending, is it? I can give you a choice, Mack. Surrender to me. Go with me to San Juan. I promise you, there is feeling for you in this commonwealth. I have friends, high friends. I will fight to keep you in Puerto Rico."
Bolan sighed and told her, "You"re not thinking straight, Evita. First item, you told me yourself that the law wants me dead in Puerto Rico. I"d never see the inside of a police station. Second-"
"I will guarantee you differentlyl" she cried. "I swear!"
"All right, even if you could guarantee something like that-I"ve never heard of a jail or a prison that was secure against the reach of the mob. They"d love nothing better than to have me boxed in and defenseless, and they would would get to me, Evita." get to me, Evita."
"There could be designed a suitable protection," she replied stubbornly.