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  “Very loose, yeah,” Boland agreed, and went out for a parley with the kids.

  They were obviously ready to parley. All scrambled to their feet at his approach and showed him expectant, tense faces. He asked, quietly, “Everyone okay?”

  It was not what they had expected to hear; the question threw them, momentarily. The tall blonde girl was the first to respond vocally. She said, small voiced, “We’re okay, sure. We’d just like to know what’s going on.”

  A lanky boy beside her added, “Are we under arrest, or what? And what about Luke?”

  “Luke” was the sixth partner in the enterprise.

  Bolan quietly informed them, “Luke’s okay. He’s in Key West. And no one is under arrest. I’m not a cop.”

  “Then what are you?” asked the blonde.

  Bolan ignored that question to ask one of his own. “Which one of you is David Johnson?”

  The lanky one shifted his feet and raised a hand to about shoulder level.

  Bolan opened his shirt and produced a packet of cash which he handed over to the youth. “That covers your investment in the product,” he told him.

  The kid looked stunned. “What … wh …?” he stammered.

  “I’m buying you out,” Bolan explained.

  The others were a bit mind-blown, too. The blonde girl said something unintelligibly exclamatory but she was the only one with a vocal response.

  Bolan told them one and all: “You’re out your expenses. I won’t cover that. But count your blessings. You got out cheap. If you try it again then you’re plain stupid. Now go home, beat it. You’ll find your boat on the west shore.”

  He turned his back on them and returned to the office. When he turned back from the doorway, all were gone … almost. The tall blonde girl had followed him. He looked at her closely for the first time, realizing only then that she was a bit different from the others. A bit older, for one thing. Much more deeply tanned, for another—the mark, perhaps, of one who’d been in sunny Florida much longer than a casual visitor.

  Bolan growled at her, “I told you to beat it.”

  “Nuts to that,” she replied evenly. “I want to know what your game is. Are you a federal narc?”

  “Are you?” Bolan countered.

  She smiled and shook her head. “I’m just a gal looking for a game.”

  “You wouldn’t like this one,” Bolan assured her.

  “I’ve liked it great, so far,” she replied spritely.

  “Then you’re insane,” he said.

  The girl kept right on smiling as she responded to that. “Maybe. And maybe I just like my men big, strong, brave, and slightly insane.”

  “Save it,” he said harshly. “If you don’t want to be stranded on this clot of dirt then you’d better hurry and catch your friends.”

  But she wasn’t giving it up … and apparently she knew what she was about. “You’re Mack Bolan, aren’t you,” she asked, though it really was not a question.

  “Who?”

  “Who, hell,” said the blonde, blithely, as she moved past him and into the office.

  And it seemed, yeah, that “the game” had suddenly grown more complex.

  4

  HANDLES

  Her name, she said, was Jean Russell. But she could not produce identification to verify that and her story was not particularly convincing. The lady claimed that she had met David Johnson at a house party in Fort Lauderdale just one week earlier and that she had accompanied the group into the ’glades “just for kicks.”

  Grimaldi, who was just concluding his contact with the federal force when the girl entered the office, was greatly irritated by her presence in there. He did not like the way she was eyeing his aeronautical chart nor, obviously, did he like much of anything about the lady. He folded the chart and put it away, telling Bolan, “She stinks.”

  The girl smiled tolerantly at the open insult and said to Grimaldi, “I’ve been in the swamp all night without my Dial. What’s your excuse?”

  “It’s not your body that stinks, honey,” the pilot growled.

  She flashed brilliant blue eyes at Bolan and said, “Well thank God for that. What’s your verdict, Strong and Silent?”

  Bolan showed her a tight grin as he replied to that. “Same as my partner’s. But it really doesn’t matter. We will be leaving in a few minutes. So there’s no need to form friendships, is there?”

  “You wouldn’t leave me out here,” she said soberly.

  “No,” Bolan agreed. “We wouldn’t. We’ll take you back to civilization. Then we say goodbye.”

  “Oh, nuts,” the lady said with a sigh, lowering her well rounded backside onto the desk and slumping forward dejectedly.

  “Never should’ve said hello,” the pilot growled, though his voice softening just a bit.

  “You’re right about that, good-looking,” she said. “You’ve been right all along. I do stink. Whoever said I could make it as an actress, anyway.”

  “What’s the name of the act?” Bolan inquired softly.

  “Jean Kirkpatrick, songs and dances. But I’m not acting, now. And you don’t remember me, do you.”

  The name brushed the tendril of an old memory cell in the Bolan brain but nothing was focusing. He replied, “Surely I would. If we’d met.”

  “If we’d met,” the girl echoed, smiling wistfully at Jack Grimaldi. “The man saved my life. Then turned it completely around.” The gaze skipped back to Bolan. “I don’t mean today … this time around. I mean … you’re supposed to have a photographic memory. I’ve been keeping a scrapbook on you, ever since that—well, no, that isn’t fair. I don’t look the same. I wasn’t a blonde.” She bent her head and quickly popped a blue-tinted contact lens into her palm. “I don’t even feel the same. And it has been a long time.”

  Bolan’s gaze was dissecting the lady, now, taking her apart and reconstructing the features with different hair, different clothing, different …

  The tendril flared suddenly, igniting an entire bank of submerged memories.

  “Johnny Portocci,” Bolan said quietly.

  “Right,” she said, smiling and stretching the word into several syllables. “And later you came to see me.”

  “Palmetto Lane, Miami.”

  She flashed a triumphant glance toward Grimaldi. “He does have a photographic memory.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me straight off?” Bolan inquired. “Why the game?”

  “Well, I …” The eyes fell to an inspection of her hands. “In the first place, I have been playing a game—ever since you left your mark on Miami—and on me, too. The police helped me establish a new identity, a new life. My legal name really is Russell, now. But I wasn’t testing your memory, not really. I was hoping to beat it.”

  “Why?”

  She clasped her hands and rocked around a bit on the desk before responding. “I was afraid you’d think I was still—you know—I was still working for them.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Grimaldi asked quietly.

  “It’s okay to tell him,” the girl said, still looking at her hands.

  Bolan said to his partner, “It was early in the war, Jack. Before you, even. Miami was the fourth campaign.”

  “Sure, I know,” said Grimaldi. “Everyone in the outfit heard about that one. But I was there, myself. I flew Ciro Lavangetta to that meet. But he flew out in a pine box. Him and a bunch of other bosses. But where was she in all that?”

  Bolan said, “She was one of Vin Balderone’s party girls for that meet.”

  Grimaldi made an “O” with his lips. He retreated to a chair at the back wall and dropped into it, removing himself from the reunion.

  Bolan asked the lady, “So what are you doing out here in the ’glades?”

  “I told you I had a new life,” she replied soberly.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a narc.”

  “That’s pretty close.”

  “How close?”

  “I take assignments from a coup
le of state narcotics officers. Not, uh, I’m not a cop. I work with undercover officers, sometimes, when they need cover reinforcement.”

  “For pay?”

  “Sure, for pay. What else?”

  “How’d you get into that?”

  She sighed and rubbed an eye then reinserted the contact lens. “It’s clear glass,” she explained. “I mean, there’s no vision correction. Purely cosmetic.”

  “How’d you get into that?” Bolan repeated.

  She sighed again. “Remember the detective who got shot up that night, outside my house?”

  “Wilson,” Bolan recalled.

  “Right. I visited him in the hospital a couple of times. We became friends. One thing led to another. I met these other friends of his. Things kept leading on. Incidentally, Bob Wilson is strongly aware that he owes you his life. And he’s keeping a scrapbook, too.”

  “Who were you covering for, this morning?”

  She said, “Can I have a cigarette?”

  Bolan gave her one and held the light for her. She took a deep pull and made an unhappy face as she exhaled the smoke. “These damn things will kill you, Mack,” she said softly.

  “I’ll worry about it,” he replied, matching her tone.

  “See what you mean,” she said, glancing about the drab surroundings. “You do have a grim life, don’t you.”

  “Why aren’t you answering my question?” he asked her.

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Or thinking something up?”

  She gave a sober little giggle and replied, “No, I’m through trying to game you. It’s just that it’s sort of involved and … well, I do have certain obligations. You can understand that.”

  He said, “Sure, I can understand that. And you can understand, I’m sure, why I’ll be dropping you at the first airport.”

  “But I can help you,” she said quietly.

  “Help me do what?”

  “Bust the pirates. Isn’t that the game?”

  Bolan stared at the lady for a moment before replying, “That’s part of it. But I’m not overly interested in burning ants. I want the hill.”

  “That’s what I figured,” she said soberly. “And that’s why I want a piece of the action.”

  “You said you’re not a cop.”

  “Right.”

  “And this has nothing to do with cover.”

  “That’s right. This one is personal.”

  “But you can’t say why.”

  “No, I really can’t. Not yet.”

  Bolan said, “Stay.” He jerked his eyes at Grimaldi and stepped outside the office.

  The pilot followed him into the hangar. “Are you buying that?” Grimaldi muttered in a troubled voice.

  “Did you talk to Brognola?”

  “Not personally. But I filed the report. I get the idea they’re moving up.”

  “Dammit!” Bolan quietly exclaimed.

  “Are you buying this chick?”

  Bolan sighed and said, “I’m willing to play the face value. How about you?”

  “I still don’t like the smell,” Grimaldi replied. “But you’re the man. I guess if we play it cool … we do have a ways to go. And your timetable doesn’t allow much time for shadow boxing. So it’s your decision. But, Sarge, you know—a lot of guys still have a hell of a hard-on for you. If that honeypot is still tied to the boys … well, need I say, she could write her own ticket anywhere in the world with your blood. How do you know she hasn’t been spotting for the devil forces? I mean, lay it out, that would be the logical way to explain her involvement with those kids.”

  “It would,” Bolan agreed. “But what you said about shadow boxing is also very true. We need a handle, Jack—a firm handle. Lay it out another way: true or false, friend or enemy, this girl could be that handle.”

  “It’s a hell of a dangerous game,” the pilot nervously pointed out. “But if you have a gut feeling …”

  “I don’t,” Bolan told him. “That’s the problem. The guts are telling me nothing. I guess I just have to take it and run with it. But this could affect you, too. You rate a vote in the matter.”

  “I quit voting long ago,” the pilot said with a wry grin. “In Puerto Rico. I’ve been keeping a scrapbook, too, guy. Besides, all I do is drive. You’re the man.”

  Bolan smiled and gripped his friend’s shoulder as he told him, “Get ready to drive, then. I’ll go collect the baggage.”

  “Are we hitting Santelli’s hammock?”

  “Not yet. First, we look at his sugar cane.”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know—”

  “With Jean Kirkpatrick.”

  “Double don’t know. I was afraid you were thinking of something like that.”

  “You want to exercise your voting rights, now?”

  The pilot grinned sheepishly as he replied, “You’re the skipper. I’ll get the plane ready.”

  “And I,” said Bolan, “will get the baggage.”

  And he would need, he knew, every damned ounce of it.

  5

  THE SCREW

  It was the first sour note in a so-far perfect operation—so it seemed to Project Chief Guido Riappi that he was taking far too much heat for this little foul-up. He said as much to his hard-arm boss, Carlo (the Pip) Papriello, adding almost sadly, “The outfit is getting soft, Pip. I can remember the hard times—I mean the really hard times—when you measured your profits by what you had in your hand at the end of the day. Then you sat up all night and watched it. These guys today—I tell you—these guys do a lot of crying over little things.”

  Riappi was fifty-five. Which did not exactly qualify him as an elder statesman. Papriello, at thirty-seven, was but a single generation behind, yet he’d been hearing these “hard times” stories all his life, forever told as though occurring during some prehistoric era remembered only by the one telling the story. As far as the Pip was concerned, things had always been the same and always would be. But he replied to his boss, “Yeah. I know. That’s just the way it goes, Guido. You should try to don’t take it pers’nal. So what do they want us to do about it? Hold a wake?”

  “They say we should stop everything.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Stop everything.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until they, quote, evaluate, unquote. I guess that means we get a screw crew.”

  “Uh huh. So who’s going to get screwed?” Papriello asked sullenly.

  “Guess,” said the boss.

  “A couple of tenderfeet got lucky,” Papriello growled. “It’s no big deal. It don’t call for a screw crew. Did you tell ’em that?”

  “Sure I told ’em.”

  “So who’re they sending?”

  “Didn’t say,” Riappi replied quietly. He rolled the chair back and crossed his feet atop the desk. “Didn’t even say, really, that they were sending anyone. But they didn’t have to say it, Pip. I could read it. You can read things like that, you know.”

  The Pip lit a cigar and crossed to the window where he pulled aside the heavy drapery and gazed stonily at the nothingness that lay outside that window. “It’s okay by me, Guido,” he growled softly. “To tell the truth, I’m sick of this joint. This whole operation. May as well be in Siberia.”

  “I ain’t heard you complaining about the split,” Riappi replied.

  “I’m not saying it don’t pay well. But, hell, nothing ever changes, does it? The rich just get richer. The poor get older. I don’t want to grow old in this joint, Guido. To tell the truth, I been thinking about asking for another slot, somewheres else.”

  His boss chuckled at that idea. “They might give you one, Pip,” he said, with heavy accent on the double meaning. “If I was you, I wouldn’t be giving ’em any ideas.”

  Papriello chuckled also. The implication of Riappi’s double meaning was ridiculous. Or was it? He muttered, “It’s not that serious, is it, Guido?”

  “You never know,” the project chief
replied, sighing. “You just never know where you stand with these guys, these days. I tell you, Pip, it’s not like the old days.”

  “You know better than that, Guido,” Papriello replied softly. “Things never really change.”

  Riappi sighed again as he said, “Maybe they don’t, at that. Maybe they don’t. Lookit what the Marinello bunch did to my cousin, Gus. Without cause. Without cause, Pip.”

  The Pip knew all about cousin Gus Riappi. And there’d been cause, all right. Plenty of cause. But he said to his boss, “I didn’t say the outfit hasn’t been going to hell for a long time. I just said nothing ever changes, not really. But if they think they’re going to send a screw crew down here to rake us over the coals every time a tenderfoot gets lucky—” He stopped talking abruptly and craned his head for a better view of the sky. “Hear that?” he asked Riappi.

  “Sounds low,” said the boss, getting to his feet and joining Papriello at the window.

  It was low, yeah. Circling for a landing. A small, two-engine jet.

  “Is that a company plane?” Riappi asked tensely.

  “Same kind, looks like,” the Pip replied. “A Cessna, I guess.”

  “That’s too damned quick,” said Riappi, glancing at his watch. “I just—they couldn’t—unless these guys were already on the way when …”

  “Guess I better get down there and meet them,” Papriello decided with a sigh.

  “Stop worrying,” Riappi said lightly. “This could be anybody. Maybe the farmers. Things are never as bad as they seem.”

  But the Pip knew better. Things, in this outfit, were always worse than they seemed. And things, the Pip knew, never really changed … not for the better.

  He left his boss standing at the window and grabbed a wheelman who was tinkering with a lawnmower in the backyard. “Didn’t you see the plane, dummy?” he growled at the guy.

  “Yessir, I seen—but I didn’t—”

  “Better use the limo. These may be very important people. Shit, man, you reek of gasoline—and look at those hands! Never mind, dammit! I’ll get ’em, myself!”

  He left the guy with his damn greasy hands to play with the lawnmower and personally drove the gleaming Cadillac to the air strip to greet the VIPs. He knew they would be VIPs. They had to be VIPs. Trouble always came in bunches.