Fire Eaters Read online

  Frustrated, Drake grabbed a leg of the smashed chair and tore after Grady, swinging the leg like a Viking warrior wielding an ax. Dave blocked a couple of blows with his briefcase. Finally, tiring of the sport, Dave threw his briefcase into Drake's face and, with a maneuver so quick that Noah South almost missed it, he locked Drake's arm behind his back with one hand, and squeezed with two fingers at the base of Drake's skull. Drake dropped to his knees, paralyzed.

  "It's easy if you know how," Dave said. "Pinch these nerves at the medulla oblongata, and your victim can't move without excruciating pain." He bent Drake's head onto the desk until the big man looked like someone waiting for the guillotine blade to drop.

  "Can't move, boss," Drake croaked.

  "You've made your point, kid," Noah South said. "Let him go."

  "Not quite yet," Dave replied. He reached across the desk and picked up the stapler. "Relax, Mr. South. No need to step on that hidden button. If I'd wanted you dead, I could still kill you before your boys made it through the door."

  Noah South kept his foot in place, but didn't press the button.

  "Let me up," Drake said. "Let me up or I'll get you."

  "That's your problem, Drake," Dave said. He pinched the nerves and Drake felt a fireball of pain searing through his brain. He sagged, almost blacking out. "You see, Drake, you don't know when to talk and when to listen. That's the key to being a good student."

  Dave Grady worked the stapler around Drake's thick lips and quickly clamped the stapler together. The metal wire pierced the soft flesh, stapling the lips together. Drake screamed, pulling the staple free, but tearing his delicate membranes in the process. Blood sprayed across Noah South's desk.

  "Stop it," Noah South said to both of them. "You're messing up my desk."

  Dave Grady pinched the nerves again and Drake passed out, banging his head on the edge of the desk as he fell.

  Noah South reached under his desk and pulled out a leather briefcase. He handed it to Dave Grady. "It's all here."

  Grady shook his head. "I hate to be so predictable."

  "We're all predictable. That's how come guys like you can do so well."

  "I see you're something of a philosopher, Mr. South."

  "I'm a businessman. I buy value. If you hadn't been smart enough to ask for more money, I wouldn't have wanted you on the job. Now take it and get out. All that we know is written down inside the case with the $250,000."

  "I've got a paper to finish tonight. I'll get right on it first thing tomorrow."

  "Fine. That's enough money to put you through ten universities."

  Dave Grady stepped over Drake on his way to the door. As he pulled it opened, he hesitated, turned back to face Noah South. "Just out of curiosity, how many other briefcases do you have under your desk?"

  "Negotiations are over, kid."

  "Accepted. Just curious."

  Noah South smiled. "Two. One with a hundred grand."

  "The other?"

  Noah South's smile expanded to include a few more sharp teeth. "Five hundred thousand dollars. That's just part of growing up, kid."

  Dave Grady nodded and left. What Noah South didn't realize was that Dave Grady would have gone after Mack Bolan for free.

  * * *

  "Watch this," Chuck Henderson whispered to Bill Rollins at the desk next to him. Henderson twisted the huge paper clip into a minicrossbow, hooked a rubber band over the prongs and loaded it with a straight pin. He nodded at Grover, who was hunched in concentration over his desk ten feet away, underlining key passages in a French pornographic magazine. Occasionally he would enter a phrase from the magazine into the computer on his desk.

  Henderson grinned at Rollins. Rollins stifled his laughter with his hand.

  Henderson steadied his hand on his own CRT terminal. He pinched the tip of the rubber band, pulled it back, aimed at Grover and let it fly. The pin snapped out of paper clip, zipped through the air-conditioned office and stuck in the back of Grover's neck.

  Grover jerked slightly. Then, without stopping what he was doing, he reached back, plucked the pin from his neck and continued underlining phrases in his magazine.

  Henderson and Rollins laughed, slapping their hands on their desks.

  Suddenly Grover leaped to his feet and spun around, a huge thick gun in his fists. He pointed it at Henderson and Rollins.

  "Christ!" Henderson gulped and ducked behind his desk. Rollins was so alarmed he fell backward off his chair.

  Grover pulled the trigger. Water squirted into Henderson's frightened face.

  Section Chief Dennis Daniels walked into the office at that moment and shook his head. "Knock it off, okay? This is the goddamn CIA, not the YMCA."

  Henderson climbed to his feet and pulled Rollins's pudgy body up.

  "Just having some fun, Dennis," Henderson said.

  Grover grinned, sat back down, continued working on his magazine.

  "Yeah, sure, fun," the section chief said. "If you wanted fun you should have joined the FBI. We may only be a decoding section, but we're the best damn decoding section in the world, except maybe for those Chinese bastards. Can't beat them for figuring codes."

  "It's the manpower," Henderson said, winking at Rollins. They'd heard this all before.

  "Damn right it's the manpower. They've got a billion people to pick from. Take the best. And as many as they need." He looked at Henderson and shook his head. "And look what I've got to work with. Juvenile delinquents. Now that Colonel Danby's dead, the only one around here with any brains is Grover. How's it coming, Grover?"

  Grover looked up from his French pornographic magazine. The others could see the photos of two naked women in various positions of intimacy.

  "I'm sure I've found something here. This magazine is distributed in all the major European countries, the very ones the KGB has most of its agents in. This is the perfect way to communicate with them. The articles are free-lance mostly, so I don't think we'll find much there. I've also done some mathematical calculations according to the positions of the bodies in the photographs, comparing the degree of angularity with some alphabetical probabilities."

  He picked up a compass and a right-angled triangle, showing how he plotted the angle of the girl's legs.

  "But nothing there." Now he let a smile spread across his face. "It's the captions. They're all written in-house at the magazine, probably by the same guy. The wording is oddly phrased. I think we should put a man on him at the French end while I continue feeding this into the computer."

  "Excellent job, Grover," Section Chief Daniels said. He turned to Henderson and Rollins. "Now maybe you two clowns can get to work."

  "Shit, Chief," Henderson complained, "I didn't join the CIA to measure how far some porn queen can spread her legs."

  Section Chief Daniels smiled. "They can't all be glamour assignments." He started to walk out of the room, then stopped just as he neared the door. "Oh, by the way…"

  "Uh-oh," Henderson said.

  Grover and Rollins stopped what they were doing and faced Daniels. They all recognized his clumsy ploy whenever he had bad news.

  "Someone from Washington will be coming by to ask some questions about Colonel Danby. I want you to cooperate fully."

  "Who?" Henderson asked. "Headhunter?"

  "They're not headhunters, Henderson. They're special agents assigned to investigate whenever we lose any personnel."

  Henderson snorted. "They're killers. They find out who did it, then those people disappear."

  "They going to kill Danby's kid?" Rollins asked. "They've already got him in jail."

  Daniels didn't even try to argue. They were right. When the headhunters showed up, someone disappeared. "Well, I'd like a volunteer to show the special agent around, answer all the questions."

  "Paid release time?" Henderson asked.

  "Yes."

  "All right!"

  "Who is the special agent?" Rollins asked cautiously.

  Section Chief Daniels hesitated, clea
red his throat. "Christopher."

  The three CIA cryptographers moaned in unison.

  Grover swiveled back to his magazine.

  Rollins picked up his chair and fussed with the adjustments.

  Henderson sat down and shook his head. "No way."

  "Come on, guys," Daniels said. "Christopher will need your help. It's for Danby."

  Grover turned around. He spoke in a soft, controlled, reasonable voice. "Leland Danby was one of the few men I've ever respected. Not only was he the best cryptographer I've ever seen, but he was a man of great strength, compassion and…"

  "Ethics," Henderson provided.

  "Yes, ethics. When he was around, he gave you the feeling that things made sense. That what we did had importance."

  "He had character," Rollins added.

  "Exactly," Grover continued. "Character. So, sir, we would like his death cleared up, also. It's hard for us to accept that Gregg could have killed his father. Okay, once the kid was a little wild, but nothing too serious. And since he'd been going to Ridgemont Academy he's been a model kid. We saw Leland and Gregg together on several occasions. They were very close."

  Daniels nodded. He knew what was coming next.

  "But we've all heard of Christopher before."

  "Damn straight," Henderson said.

  "Christopher is the one who wiped out a whole section in Langley because the leak couldn't be pinpointed. Killed two innocent people just to make sure."

  "That's a rumor," Daniels protested. "Officially that was just an accident. We don't work that way."

  Henderson snorted. "Yeah, so Christopher got a six-month suspension with no pay. But when they needed someone for more dirty work, they went right out and got Christopher again."

  Daniels's answer was halfhearted. "Christopher is supposed to be the best."

  "Yeah, the best," Henderson said. "Just don't expect us to do anything more than answer questions."

  The section chief looked at the three men. They stared at him, united in their resolution. Looking at them now he felt that same rush of pride and protection that he always got when working with them. They played around, they pulled pranks on each other, but they truly were the best goddamn decoders in the world. They dealt with the pressure their own way.

  Hell, even Colonel Danby had his zany moments, putting rubber cement on the toilet seat. But pick on one of them and the others were right in there to back their buddy. They were not only accomplished professionals but they were also good, decent men. And that was the highest compliment Daniels could pay anyone.

  Like the others, he'd heard all about Christopher. The CIA was like any other large corporation — it had its grapevine. The reports on Christopher were disturbing. Deadly. Efficient. Driven. Once Christopher was assigned, the case wasn't done until there were a couple of funerals.

  The door Daniels was standing in front of opened suddenly and Special Agent Christopher walked in with a plastic id tag and a big grin.

  "From the cheery expressions, it looks like you boys were expecting me. Now, who wants to become a big hero and doesn't mind spilling a little blood? Let's see some hands, okay?"

  4

  Bolan leaned forward, pressing one hand against the thick glass partition. The young orangutan, no larger than a two-year-old child, waddled up to the glass, plopped down, rolled over and stared at Bolan.

  About ten feet away, the mother orangutan played on two dangling ropes. She swung and twisted and somersaulted, seemingly lost in her acrobatics. But Bolan noticed she always kept an eye on the little one near the glass enclosure.

  "They're very spoiled," the voice behind him said.

  He turned. Maria Danby stood stiffly beside him, her dark hair mussed by the gentle breeze. She wore jeans and a sweater. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed.

  "Hi, Maria," Bolan said, smiling.

  "Hi, yourself, Mack. Can I call you Mack in public?"

  "Just this once."

  She smiled at him and suddenly they embraced. Her arms squeezed Bolan's ribs with a desperate strength. Her husband murdered, her son arrested for that murder. For Maria, the world had gone crazy. He hugged her back, felt her silent sobbing against his chest.

  She pushed herself away, turned to look at the baby orangutan, who was still on his back, staring at them. "It's true, you know. They are spoiled. For the first four years of their lives, their mothers carry them almost everywhere. And they can really get into things, too. But no matter what they do, they rarely are disciplined." She looked up at Bolan. "Is that what went wrong, Mack? Leland and I spoiled Gregg?"

  Bolan cupped a hand under Maria's elbow and guided her up the wooden stairs to a bench. The sun was hot and bright, a perfect day for strolling about the San Diego Zoo, and people wandered about with smiles on their faces. Bolan kept his eyes open for the ones without smiles; those would be the ones looking for him. They sat on the bench.

  "I'll give you the short version, Mack," she said. The wind sifted her hair and Bolan noticed some gray for the first time. "We were home. We'd just come back from the movies, I don't remember the title. Funny, you'd think I'd never forget it."

  "It's all right," Bolan said.

  "Gregg was home for the weekend."

  "Was that usual? Gregg coming home?"

  "Not really. He usually came home once a month, but he'd just been home a couple of weeks earlier. Still, Lee and I were so happy that we didn't question it."

  "Was Gregg disturbed, brooding, anything like that?"

  She shook her head. "Nothing to indicate what he was about to do. For God's sake, we laughed together, the three of us. Had pie after the show and sat there and laughed at how bad the movie was."

  Bolan rested a calming hand on her arm.

  "Then we went home. Lee said he had some work to do and went into his study. Gregg and I watched some TV, played backgammon, and then I went to bed. Next thing I knew there was a gunshot. I woke up, noticed Lee wasn't in bed and went running down the hall toward his study. When I got there, Gregg was standing over the body holding Lee's old army .45."

  "He admits shooting the colonel?"

  She started to speak but the words were strangled in her throat. She nodded.

  "Why?" Bolan asked.

  "He doesn't know."

  "What do the cops say?"

  She shrugged. "What can they say? Murder. Gregg's lawyer is thinking about diminished capacity or something. But he's not crazy, Mack. He's not! Okay, Lee and I spoiled Gregg a little. But you have to understand, Lee and I were so happy to be together, to have each other alive and still in love after the war that maybe we were a little too lenient with Gregg. I don't know."

  "Did you have trouble with Gregg?"

  "Nothing much. Kid stuff mostly. He'd been suspended from school once for coming in drunk. And he'd been hanging around with some of those punkers, you know, kids with purple hair and safety pins through their ears. He and Lee were constantly arguing, yelling. When the school suspended him a second time for drugs, we decided to try Ridgemont Academy."

  "The military school."

  "We were afraid it would either be that or jail."

  Bolan nodded. He remembered these same concerns back in the sixties, parents worried about their sons' long hair. Now it was colored hair. Bolan didn't mind either one. They'd outgrow it, just like the kids he'd grown up with who'd wanted tattoos. But the self-mutilation, the booze, the drugs — that was something else. Some would outgrow it, if they survived. Others would sink into something even worse.

  "He didn't approve of what you were doing, Mack," Maria said. "Lee was a great believer in law and order, but also in the process of our system. He didn't condone taking the law into your own hands the way you do. But he still rooted for you, Mack, he still cared."

  "I figured," Bolan said. "Maria, you went through a lot of trouble tracking me down."

  "I pulled some strings. I couldn't be Daredevil Danby's wife this long without learning how to do a few things. Even
so, you're a hard man to get to."

  "That's what keeps me alive."

  "I know, thank God." She looked Bolan in the eyes, her own blue eyes watery but firm, determined. "Mack, I need your help. I've lost my husband, there's nothing that can be done about that. But I'm not going to give up my son. Not without a fight, damn it."

  Bolan nodded. "You haven't changed, fortunately. But I don't see what good I can do you. I can suggest a good lawyer."

  "I've got a good lawyer. That's not enough. I want to find out what happened. What really happened."

  Bolan wanted to tell her the truth: there wasn't anything he could do. The cops would investigate and so would the CIA. If there was any way to prove Gregg innocent, they would. But there was a look in her eye, a pleading beneath the dignified gaze. He was afraid if he refused, what little strength she had left would crumble. He owed the colonel better.

  "I'll look into it, Maria. But only for a few days. If nothing turns up, I'm gone. You understand?"

  "I understand." She smiled gratefully. "Thanks, Mack."

  They got up, started walking toward the main gate. Bolan kept raking the crowd for anyone following him, but no one seemed to be.

  "Gregg went through a lot of changes lately," Bolan said. "And they all started at Ridgemont Academy. What's your opinion of the place?"

  Maria Danby hesitated. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. "They helped Gregg a lot. Turned him around."

  "But?"

  "You know me too well." She smiled. "But the place gave me the willies. I don't know, maybe it was just seeing all those kids in uniforms marching around and saluting. I don't know."

  "One other thing," Bolan said. "They do a drug test on Gregg after they arrested him?"

  "Yes. But they didn't find anything. No PCP, nothing. Not even any alcohol. He was clean."

  Bolan stopped, faced Maria with a level expression. "Three days, Maria. I'll give it three days."

  "Where will you start?"

  "Ridgemont Academy. Let's see exactly what's going on up there."