Dixie Convoy Read online

  A sleepy-eyed punk was slouched on a wooden chair at a closed door about halfway along the upstairs corridor. He snapped upright and reached for the coffee as Bolan approached.

  “Hey, thanks,” he said thickly. “I need that.”

  “So do I,” Bolan said coldly. He showed the guy his calling card instead, and told him, “Mick wants you downstairs, kid—on the double.”

  The youngster’s eyes did a cartoon-character roll at sight of the black ace. He scrambled to his feet, upsetting the chair and apologizing under his breath as he backed away from there—pausing at the head of the stairs for a clumsy wave before hurrying below.

  Bolan was strictly playing by ear and had been since the moment he stepped onto this enemy turf. Every word and action, to this point, had been dictated by sheer instinct plus the vibrations of the place. There was no coherent plan of action, other than to get into that house and run with the vibrations. He was doing precisely that.

  A small bed lamp was providing muted illumination to a luxuriously feminine apartment. The bed itself was rumpled and empty. Miss Superskate, he presumed, was reclining comfortably on a large chair near the window. She was softly svelte, stunningly blonde, and glowing in the semi-darkness … utterly naked.

  The great eyes were wide open, alert, and seemingly quite unperturbed by the invasion of her privacy.

  Bolan placed the coffee on a table and went to the window.

  “You’re a new one,” declared the soft voice behind him. A nice voice, yeah, interested and alive—not frightened, not angry, but not exactly relaxed either.

  “I’m the last one,” he told her, “if that’s the way you want it. I can take you out of here.”

  She had made no move toward modesty.

  “Where would you take me?”

  He flexed his eyes and said, “Just out. The rest would be up to you.”

  She sighed. “At long last my prince has come. Is that the new routine? Don’t you people ever get tired of this?”

  He turned to look her over, doing so quite honestly and thoroughly. And, yeah, there should have been a lot of truck accidents in this region.

  She did not shrink from nor respond to that inspection.

  He bent over to place a gentle hand on that soft belly, and still there was no response.

  When the hand came away, a medal remained to cover the navel impression.

  He told her, quietly, “I’m tired of it already. There’s no time for a hard sell. You either trust me or you don’t, leave with me or you don’t.”

  Her hand moved to the bull’s-eye cross and she held it to the light. “What is this?”

  “It’s a marksman’s medal.”

  Something crossed that fixed gaze, some emotion, a flicker of something. She said, quietly, “How can I believe this?”

  He shrugged and told her, “I can’t help you with that.”

  “How will you get me out?”

  “We’ll walk—quiet and easy—out the door and into the night.”

  “Just like that.”

  He displayed a half-smile. “Just like that.”

  “What about my sister?”

  “What about her?”

  She sighed again. “Forget it. She won’t leave him.”

  “Your sister is Mrs. Sciaparelli?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  Bolan experienced one of those shivery moments when the self seems to partition into two, with one part standing aside and viewing the self from a completely detached point of view. The experience itself was weird enough; that which was being viewed was even weirder. There he stood, at the chair of a naked golden goddess whom he had just chanced upon while strolling through a strange house, the life or death decision at each heartbeat, chatting inanely, neither behaving as though they knew the lady was naked.

  The moment flared and died, and Bolan heard himself saying: “No, but it explains a few things. I have some unpleasant news for you. They got to Shorty. He’s dead.”

  Those great eyes recoiled and took a dive, the chin falling with them onto that magnificent chest.

  Bolan said, “I’m sorry. I felt that you should know.”

  When the eyes came up again, they were moist and pained. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I was half resigned to it.”

  Irrationally, perhaps, the statement irritated him. He said, “Good for you. Now Shorty can rest easy.”

  “I know how it sounded,” she said with a quick sigh. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just—”

  “My numbers are gone,” he said coldly. “I have to go, with or without you.”

  She immediately slid from the chair, moved catlike to a closet, selected a simple dress, and dropped it over her shoulders. It was all she put on. “Let’s go, then,” she said.

  Bolan tossed her a pair of sandals. “You might be glad you wore these,” he told her.

  She gave him a brief, thoughtful gaze and then put the sandals on. He took her hand, and they went into the corridor.

  “I need to tell Suzy,” she whispered.

  Bolan shook his head at that. “Call her later,” he suggested, and led her on along the hall and down the stairs.

  They were halfway home when Sciaparelli stepped into the foyer. He was a guy of about forty—lean and hard, very mean in the eyes. That cold gaze bounced from the girl to the man as he asked, “What is this?”

  “You know what it is,” Bolan replied coldly, still playing to the vibes. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

  The guy stood his ground. “What do you want with her, Frankie?”

  “You know what we want, Ship. Don’t worry about it. She will get all the respect you deserve. We just want a few gentle words.”

  “You can have the words, Frankie. But you take them right here. She stays.”

  “This doesn’t look good, Ship,” the black ace said quietly.

  The girl was beginning to appear confused, shaken. She asked her brother-in-law, “Who is this man, Charles?”

  “He’s from the gestapo,” Sciaparelli muttered. The guy was caving in. “Cooperate with him. You’d better. He’s not married to your sister.” The guy spun away and walked quickly toward the conference room.

  Bolan moved the capo’s sister-in-law on toward the front door. “Good girl,” he said softly, lips at her ear. “You played that perfectly.”

  But she hadn’t been “playing it.” The young lady was terrified now. She planted her feet and tried to twist free of Bolan’s grasp, sobbing with the effort and making a hell of a fuss.

  Mellini ran into the foyer and rebuked the lady. “Stop that, Jenny! Behave yourself!” He gave Bolan a sympathetic wink and opened the door for him.

  Bolan winked back as he lifted the lady off her feet and carried her outside. The struggling had ceased, but he could feel her pounding heart.

  “You’ll need some wheels,” the house boss said, following them through the doorway to the porch. “You want to use her car? It’s a real boat.”

  Bolan replied, “Okay. Bring it around, will you?”

  The guy happily trotted away, returning a moment later, with a screech of tires, revving the powerful engine. He held the door for them as Bolan placed his load inside then closed it and stood guard while the visiting V.I.P. went to the other side.

  Their eyes met across the convertible roof. The house boss reminded the black ace: “It’s getting thinner here, Frankie.”

  “It’ll be okay,” the visitor reassured him. “My boys will be along soon.”

  “What do I tell them?—when they ask about you, I mean.”

  “Tell them not to ask,” Bolan said. He climbed in, meshed the gears, and put that joint behind him.

  The girl was subdued, silent, sullen.

  As they were crossing Peachtree Road, Bolan asked the lady, “What did you expect me to do, Jennifer? Show the guy a marksman’s medal and shoot our way out? I told you we were walking.”

  She said, tiredly, “It’s very confusin
g.”

  “If you think you’re confused,” he replied, “how do you think those people back there are going to feel when they begin to wake up?”

  She was evidently thinking about it, and the thought was giving her the quiet giggles.

  He put a gentle hand to her and said, “That’s better.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t stop.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She seized his arm with both hands and clung to it.

  It was okay, sure. Mild hysteria was a far better consequence than that suffered by the late Shorty Wilkins. And Bolan was quite positive that this beautiful young woman had been a prime candidate for the same fate.

  “It’s okay,” he told her again.

  It was a promise, not a mere comforting remark.

  She snuggled to him, flowing across the console to bury her face in his shoulder.

  And that, it seemed to the warrior, was a promise of quite another sort.

  It was, yeah, promising to be a hell of an interesting war.

  6: Contact

  Bolan brought the lady some coffee in a paper cup then watched her through the glass of the telephone booth as he made his call to an unlisted number in Washington.

  A sleepy voice responded to the fifth ring.

  Bolan told it, “This is Striker and it’s hot.”

  “Hold it,” was the quick response, that voice alert now and cautious. “Give me a number and let me call you back.”

  “No way,” Bolan replied. “If your own bedroom isn’t clean, what is?”

  “We never know, these days,” was the tired response. “It’s okay, Striker—hold it just a minute. I can switch it over from here. Hold on.”

  Bolan held on while the Number Two Cop in the country played his games with communications security. The caution was understandable. The relationship between Mack Bolan and Harold Brognola was a strictly unofficial one—even a perilous one, for the Justice Department high-ranker.

  “Okay,” Brognola said, following a series of squeals and clicks on the line. “I’m on the clean line. How are things in Georgia?”

  “You’ve heard then.”

  “Oh, sure. Every shoe you drop, friend, is a shot heard round the world. To what do I owe this direct contact with the esteemed King of Swat?”

  Bolan chuckled soberly as he told his friend, “I don’t like these contacts any more than you do, Hal. But I need a favor and I need it quick.”

  “Name it,” Brognola said. “Anything but my wife, my job, or my life.”

  “I need a direct line to someone in this area. Do you have a local who would play the game and keep it quiet?”

  A brief silence preceded the JD man’s reply. “I think—maybe, yeah. But you’ll have to set it up yourself. If the guy tells you he’ll play, then you can believe him.”

  “FBI field-office type?”

  “No, hell no. There’s too many layers between me and those guys. Do you have pencil and paper?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  Brognola passed him a name and a telephone number, adding, “He’s young, he’s bright, and he’s hot to trot. Just might be your man. But you can’t mention my name, Striker. So do it carefully.”

  “Understood,” Bolan assured him. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’ll be watching that area with great interest. Let me know if this contact doesn’t pan out for you.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “This seems to be my night for illicit calls. Sticker called a couple of hours ago. Says he’s been trying to reach you.”

  “I’ve been off the floater for a while,” Bolan explained. “What’s he got?”

  “Sticker” was one Leo Turrin, another Bolan buddy with sensitive connections. Turrin was underboss of a powerful Eastern family. He was also an undercover cop working directly under Brognola.

  “Just the usual warnings,” the JD man growled. “The old men are fielding another elite force to defend Atlanta.”

  “Did he pass you the info?”

  “Yeah. The headman is a black ace who is currently known as Domino. He’s bringing a crew of headhunters from the special corps, scheduled to land down there about six o’clock. That’s less than an hour from now. You’re on Eastern time, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, they’re looking at you, friend. Sticker says to expect about two dozen guns—all top hands.”

  “How are they traveling? Private plane?”

  “Company jet, yeah. You want the registry number?”

  “Why not?” Bolan took the number and said, “Thanks, Hal. I’ll see if I can shake a plum loose for you down here.”

  “Everything you shake is a plum for me, friend. Just cover your butt.”

  “It’s not my butt they want, Hal. I’m not that pretty.”

  “Well, cover the other end, too. And get in touch with the Sticker as soon as you can. He worries, you know.”

  “Not like us, eh.”

  “Right. Not like us.”

  It was the typical end of a conversation between the two. Bolan grinned into the disconnect and hung up, rejoining the lady in the superskate.

  It was a Corvette, after all—though not a stock model—with more direct power than any car ought to have. It was the only car in Bolan’s experience that seemed to have a head and heart of its own. It did not like to idle or dawdle. It wanted to roar, and actually seemed to resist any effort to restrain it.

  He smiled at the lady, fired the engine, and roared away from there. When they had climbed into a cruising gear and the G-forces had fallen away, he asked her, “What’s the running time from here to the airport?”

  “Are you sending me away?”

  He shook his head. “I’d like to be there for a six o’clock arrival.”

  She consulted the dashboard clock, then suggested, “Jump over onto 285. Uh, turn right at the next light.”

  The surface streets at this hour of the morning seemed entirely deserted. They made it to the interstate bypass route in three minutes flat, with a minimum of conversation along the way.

  “How did you do it?” she asked him.

  “Do what?”

  “You just walked into that house and took it over. You had them bowing and scraping, jumping to your slightest wish. Even Charles called you by another name. How did you do that?”

  He explained it to her as succinctly as possible. “It’s hocus-pocus, sleight of hand. You give them what they expect to see and hear. And you’re playing to their own secret rituals. It’s the price they pay for their own dumb intrigue.”

  “But they were looking right at you and didn’t even recognize you.”

  “What’s to recognize? A face is just a face—until you connect a personality to it. That’s where the sleight of hand comes in.”

  “I’d never forget that face,” she quietly observed.

  He chuckled and told her, “I’ll never forget that body. I admire your sleight of hand, too, lady breaker.”

  She giggled, and confided to him, “Well, it kept them at a distance. After all, I do have a certain status around that house.”

  It explained, to Bolan’s satisfaction at the moment, the household nudity—but all the disturbing questions had not been put to rest.

  And as they headed up the ramp to join the light traffic of the freeway, the lady turned on her CB radio and picked up the mike.

  “Okay?” she queried him. “I’ll use a false handle. And we can find out where the Smokies are. We don’t want a traffic cop at a time like this.”

  Bolan grinned and said, “Why not?”

  Her voice sounded quite different, and even the facial expression underwent a total transformation as she depressed the mike button and went to work on the knights of the road. “Break, nineteen,” she cooed. “How ’bout a northbound eighteen-wheeler on this 285.”

  A guy came right back, in a singsong style peculiar to truckers with long, boring hours behind the wheel.

  “Hello there
, sweet thing. You’ve got the Howling Owl, trucking north from Orlando with the pedal to the metal. Bring it on back and brighten my life for a short-short.”

  The girl grinned at Bolan as she responded to that in a shivery little voice. “Just loving you for that comeback, Howling Owl. You’ve got the Evening Star, running light and sassy on the southbound and looking to spread my light in every heart. Take a look over your shoulder there, lover boy, and tell me what you see.”

  “Mercy me!” the guy drooled back. “I said brighten my life, sweet thing, not blind me off the superslab. What are you driving, Evening Star?”

  “Business first,” she insisted. “What’ve you got over your shoulder, lover?”

  “Mercy goodness, I think I forget, for sure. Aw, naw, I wouldn’t fool you, darling. I haven’t seen a Smoky all night. You’ve got it clean all the way to the Florida line—unless you’d like to coffee break with me. You want to sugar my coffee before you face that lonesome road again?”

  The sexy lady giggled into the mike as she told the Howling Owl, “I’ll catch you on the flip-flop sometime, lover. I could kiss you for that info, so consider it done. The Evening Star is clear and on the side, sallying south.”

  “Thank you for the short-short, darling, and here’s all those good numbers back at you. We gone. Bye-bye.”

  She put the mike down and told Bolan, “Punch it. You’re clean.”

  He said, “So I gathered.” But he was giving the ’Vette all the “punch” he wanted her to have. “We have plenty of time.”

  “Chicken,” she said playfully, “you didn’t like my radio personality either, did you?”

  He shrugged and told her, “It must sound great on the other end.”

  “It’s just a fun game,” she said, turning away from him to stare soberly at the windshield.

  “Hey—it’s your radio and your car,” he told her soothingly. “You don’t need my approval.”

  “That’s right, I don’t. Nor anyone else’s. But what’s wrong with it? Tell me. It’s a game, and everyone knows it’s a game. Why, I could never talk to a man like that, face to face. I’d bust out laughing if I tried. But this way, see—it’s anonymous. The handle is just another form of alias. And that’s what makes it fun. Do you use the CB much?”