San Diego Siege te-14 Page 6

  Bolan stepped aboard and gave the sailors an impatient toss of his head. "We're late," he growled. "Cast off, haul that gangway in."

  A voice from above him snarled, "I give the fucking orders aboard here, sir."

  Bolan angled his gaze toward the flying bridge and told the little guy up there, "You'll be giving orders up your ass if you don't get this tub moving."

  The guy grinned at him and, in a much milder tone, asked, "Where's Mr. Danger?"

  Bolan did not return the smile. His voice was softer, though, in the reply. "Something's rumbling. There might be trouble. Tony's sitting this one out with th' boss. He shook the briefcase. "Do we go or don't we?"

  The man on the bridge raised a bos'n's pipe to his lips and tootled a shrieking command through it.

  Bolan grinned on that one and watched the crewmen scramble expertly through the casting-off exercises. A moment later the cruiser was moving smoothly through the smallcraft harbor and heading for open water.

  He went up and joined the man at the conn, watched him in silence for a moment, then told him, "I'm Frankie Lambretta. Who're you?"

  The guy gave him a dazzling smile and replied, "I'm Gene Tarantini. Mr. Danger started calling me "Turtle" — now everybody does. You may as well, too."

  "Okay." Bolan ran his hands along Tarantini's body in a quick frisk, then growled, "Hey, I told you there might be trouble. Where the hell's your hardware?"

  The guy glanced toward the chart case and said, "In there."

  Bolan commanded, "Wear it!"

  "Yessir."

  "Do your boys have hardware?"

  "Yessir, we keep it down in the quarters."

  "I can handle the wheel for a minute," Bolan said. "You go tell those boys to get dressed."

  Tarantini flashed another big smile, turned the wheel over to his passenger and descended quickly to the main deck. He was back seconds later, reaching into the chart case and tucking a revolver into the waistband of his trousers. He said, almost shyly, "You're a real torpedo, aren't you."

  Bolan relinquished the conn and growled, "Yeh."

  "I knew it the minute I saw you. I ain't seen a dude like you since Manhattan. You don't take no orders from Mr. Danger, do you?"

  Bolan made a derisive sound.

  "I thought not. You're class, Mr. Lambretta ... real class."

  "Thanks," Bolan said. He was silent for a moment, then he told the impressionable Mafioso, "Listen, Turtle, I might be sliding into something very uncomfortable. You know?"

  "Yessir. I already figured that."

  "I'll appreciate some close support from you and your boys, if things get to that."

  "Yessir, you can count on that."

  "Okay. You've got a sharp crew here. Stay that way."

  "You offer odds on that, Mr. Lambretta."

  Bolan punched the guy lightly on the shoulder and went below to the main deck.

  The Ventura Boulevard bridge was just ahead.

  In a few minutes they would be in open sea.

  Where to from there?

  It was a wild-ass play he was making. He knew that. So ... why change the name of the game now? His entire life had become a wild-ass play.

  He walked toward the stern and reached into his armpit to activate the miniature shoulder phone, then turned his face to the side and shielded his mouth with a hand as he spoke into the sensitive microphone. "Gadgets."

  "Yo."

  "Anything?"

  "Plenty. Are you clear?"

  "For the moment. What do you have?"

  "Our young lady called a lot of people and said a lot of screwy things. The one you'll be most interested in is a guy she called Max. You tie that?"

  Bolan replied, "I tie. Our VIP. That's a fast bingo."

  "Yeah. Faster than you'll follow until you've screened this stuff. It's too much for a quick report. Where are you?"

  "Aboard Danger's Folly, heading for open sea."

  "God! What's the tie?"

  "I decided to make that buy for Tony."

  "God! Hope you know what you're doing."

  "Me too, Gadgets. Off. Don't beep me. I'll check in soon as I'm back on dry land."

  "Do that. I'll be monitoring."

  Bolan repeated, "Off," and deactivated the radio. He lit a cigarette and strolled casually toward the bow.

  He noticed the two crewmen perched tensely at the rail on the starboard side, each displaying the butt of a revolver in the waistband of their bell-bottoms, watching him as though he were a prize exhibit at some zoo.

  He went on to the bow and leaned out to watch the water swirling past.

  Yeah.

  He hoped he knew what he was doing.

  In all truth, though, he had not the faintest idea of where he was going or what he would do when he got there.

  Danger's Folly, hell!

  It was very possibly going to prove Bolan's folly... and that was the brutal truth of that.

  8

  The buy

  They'd been underway for nearly an hour and — to Bolan's best calculation — on a due-west heading. There'd been no conversation between Bolan and the crew. He had not encouraged any, but spent the early time prowling the boat to get the feel of it.

  The main cabin — marked "Salon" with a brass plaque above the doorway — was done up for solid creature comforts. It was not overly large, but a lot of entertaining could be done in there. Couches and chairs, he noted, converted to sleeping arrangements for eight.

  The engine room was crammed full of the most impressive-looking power plant Bolan had ever seen. It was quietly and smoothly propelling the big boat through the heavy swells of the open sea at a very respectable cruising speed.

  The crews' quarters were housed in a small cabin behind the engine room. Four bunks, adequate headroom, small galley and lounge area — all of it clean and neatly shipshape.

  The familiarization completed, Bolan sprawled into a deck chair on the fantail and watched the churning wake billow out beneath him.

  They must have been twenty-five miles or so out when Bolan spotted the other boat. It was a classy speedster, deep draft, done up for sports fishing and flying a line of pennants from the mast.

  He left his chair immediately and headed casually toward the bridge. Tarantini was inspecting the other boat through binoculars. He lowered the glasses as Bolan walked up and handed them to him.

  "That's her," Tarantini announced. "And ready to deal."

  They were still about a mile away.

  Bolan growled, "How do you know?"

  "Those pennants. It's a signal meaning everything's okay. If the Coast Guard or anything else suspicious had been in the area recently, she'd be flying a warning signal."

  Bolan nodded. He said, "Okay, let's go."

  They were running on the other boat's beam, passing to the rear now.

  "We're going," Tarantini assured his passenger. "We don't just run right up to them, y'know. But you can relax. I don't see no signs of trouble."

  "You won't until we get there," Bolan warned. "Tell your boys to stay alert. And you run with my play. Understand?"

  The Turtle smiled soberly. "You expecting some kind of double-cross?"

  "Maybe something like that," the Executioner replied, and turned his full attention to a binocular surveillance of his target.

  Five minutes later Danger's Folly was coming alongside the other boat, sliding in from the starboard quarter. She was marked Pepe and, beneath the name, Ensenada. A Mexican registry.

  Undoubtedly the rendezvous was taking place in international waters.

  Bolan had to give Tarantini due credit. He knew his boat handling. It was a delicate maneuver; boats in open sea did not handle like rolling objects on a stable surface. They slid, wallowed, lunged and leaped. Both boats were maintaining sufficient headway for maneuverability, moving along at a speed of about ten knots. Horizontal separation was only about twenty feet, but both were maintaining station beautifully.

  Bolan counted four Mex
ican crewmen, including the guy at the wheel. Standing beside the Mexican skipper was a beefy, red-faced man wearing slacks and a gaudy sports shirt, no hat, partially bald. American ... or European.

  The sailors were throwing lines across and setting up a transfer operation, the usual nautical bit of pulleys and control lines.

  Tarantini's full attention was being absorbed by the demanding job at the wheel. Without looking at Bolan, he told him, "Okay, we're on station. You can do your thing now."

  Bolan had already noticed that his counterpart aboard the Pepe was moving toward the main deck. He took his cue from that and descended the ladder, dropping beside the two crewmen near the transfer lines. One of them silently handed him a battery-powered megaphone.

  Bolan growled, "Watch those bastards." The crewman nodded understandingly and stepped aside.

  The guy on the Pepe's dealing deck had a bullhorn also. He called across, in a strong French accent, "Where is M'sieur Danger?"

  "Couldn't make it," Bolan horned back. "You got the stuff?"

  "My arrangement was with M'sieur Danger." "Then go deal with him," Bolan replied. He raised the attache case. "But what counts is right here."

  "You have one hundred American?" "That was the deal, wasn't it," Bolan called back.

  "And five for the Pepe."

  "Yeah, sure. I gotta check the stuff first, though."

  The Frenchman dug into a rubberized bag and produced a small packet which he passed to a seaman beside htm. The sample went into a transfer basket and moved smoothly across the twenty intervening feet of Pacific.

  Bolan removed it from the basket and opened the small plastic bag. He touched his tongue to the white powder in there. It was pure heroin, or damned close to pure. A hundred-thousand worth of the stuff would produce a million-buck's worth of street junk.

  He raised the bullhorn and demanded, "Let's see the rest of it."

  "I would see the color of your American first."

  Bolan obligingly opened the attache case and pulled out a packet of bills. He dropped them in the basket and gave the signal to the sailors. As it was making the transit, he called over, "That's the five for the Pepe. The rest is just like it." The guy was already inspecting the money. He was smiling as he announced, "Okay. We have the deal. Send over the hundred." "You send over the stuff first." The smile evaporated as the Frenchman, visibly upset, called back, "This is not the way. M'sieur Tony Danger has never done business this way. You pay, I deliver. This is the way." Bolan replied, "So I'll pay." He reached into the attache case again, but this time his fist came out filled with a big silver pistol, the .44 AutoMag, and it spoke instantly in a big rolling boom as the magnum missile dissolved the distance between the Executioner and his target. The Frenchman received his payment at the rail and his head exploded in receipt.

  The Mexican seamen stood in stunned stupor and watched the lifeless body spin over the rail and into the water between the boats.

  The AutoMag was at full extension and staring down on them when Bolan's taut voice again crackled through the bullhorn: "You amigos have your five thousand American and that's all you were in it for! Do the smart thing and send that junk on over here!"

  The skipper of the Pepe, like the American skipper, had his hands full with the delicate job of maintaining station. He had undoubtedly seen little of what had transpired between the two boats, but obviously he had heard enough. A shouted command in Spanish came down from the bridge and the stunned sailors reacted instantly, stuffing the Frenchman's rubberized bag into the transfer basket and hauling away on the line.

  A Folly sailor snatched the precious cargo from the basket.

  Bolan yelled, "Cast off and haul ass!"

  Turtle was akeady into the play, however. The Folly swung suddenly to starboard and the lines parted with a twanging snap as they veered away from the other boat's course.

  A moment later, two unbelieving American sailors watched "Frankie Lambretta" slash packet after packet of high grade heroin and scatter the precious powders into the blue Pacific.

  "Trash," he told them, when the job was completed. "The guy was trying to sell us trash."

  And one hour later, when he was making his goodbyes to the admiring crew of Danger's Folly, he told Turtle Tarantini: "You run a tight ship, Skipper. Ill mention it to the boss."

  With a look approaching open adoration, the Mafioso told the Executioner, "Mr. Lambretta, you're the classiest guy I've ever had the pleasure to meet."

  Yeah.

  So okay.

  It hadn't turned into Bolan's Folly, after all.

  And the world would hardly miss an international junk salesman and a million bucks worth of human misery.

  The mob would, sure.

  And that, of course, was the name of the immediate game: Siege. He would lock them out and shut them out at every turn.

  And then, maybe, something interesting would come up over the hill. A target, maybe, in the Big Middle.

  9

  Discovery

  "Where the hell you been with my boat?" Tony Danger screamed from the pier as Dangers Folly came alongside.

  Tarantini ignored the emotional greeting while he completed the docking procedure, and not until she was tied-up and the engines secured did he move to the wing of the bridge to grin down at his boss on the pier.

  "Come on aboard, sir," he called down. "Mr. Lambretta left you a report."

  Anthony Cupaletto, or "Tony Danger" as he had become known in mob circles, was not a man given to vague fears or unreasonable worries. He had started in the business fifteen years earlier as a paid-gun guarding the person of Julian DiGeorge, then boss of the Southern California underworld. His cool efficiency and loyalty to the great man had not gone unnoticed or unrewarded, and Tony Danger had moved quickly along the happy road to wealth and prestige in the DiGeorge organization. The thirty-five-year-old was now regarded in ranking circles as the ambitious young man to watch out for in the ever-shifting power structures of the times.

  Cool, shrewd, hard, dependable — Tony Danger seemed destined to go a long way in the business.

  So, no, he was not normally a fearful or an anxious man.

  At this particular moment, however, he was both.

  He ignored the gangway which the crewmen were emplacing, leapt onto the deck of his pride and joy, then went quickly up to join his skipper on the bridge.

  "Mister who left me what?" he growled at Tarantini.

  "Mr. Lambretta," the Turtle repeated. The look on the boss's face was destroying his self-confidence and his voice was showing the stress. "You know ... Frankie Lambretta, Mr. Lucasi's hard arm. Hell, you should've seen that guy operate."

  The name meant something to Tony Danger ... Lambretta ... wasn't that ... ?

  It hit him then and — his worst fears suddenly surfacing in the pit of his gut — Danger covered his consternation by shoving a cigarette between his lips and leaning into the lee of the flying bridge to light it.

  Sure. That was what he'd called himself at Palm Springs. Frankie Lucky. Frankie Lucky Lambretta.

  Mack fuckin' Bolan!

  The San Diego caporegime exhaled a gusty cloud of smoke and quietly asked his skipper, "What the hell are you telling me, Turtle?"

  "You didn't know about it?" Tarantini asked nervously.

  "About what?" Tony Danger growled, working hard to control his emotions.

  "He said he was supposed to make the buy at the Pepe. He said there was trouble, and he was going instead of you. He said — "

  "Fuck what he said!" Tony Danger yelled. "What did he do?"

  Tarantini took a retreating half-step in the face of that rage and choked out: "Hell I thought you knew. I thought it was cleared through you. The Frenchman tried to pass some bad stuff. Mr. Lam-bretta drilled him and dumped the junk."

  "He did what?" Tony Danger screamed.

  Turtle Tarantini looked about ready to run. Instead he thrust forward a heavy manila envelope, pushing it towards his boss. "I guess it's
all in here," he said weakly. "He said give this to you."

  Tony Danger accepted the "report" but his eyes remained hot and unbelieving on his skipper. "Where is this guy right now?" he wanted to know.

  "He had us drop him on the other side. Said his car was over there."

  "When?"

  "Five, maybe ten minutes ago."

  Tony Danger did not wish to open that envelope.

  He knew, he thought, what was in there.

  He muttered, "He dumped the stuff?"

  "Yessir. It was trash. He paid the Pepe for their run, but he put a bullet right between the Frenchman's eyes. Mr. Danger, that guy knew what he was doing. Believe me."

  "Fifty kilos," Tony Danger muttered. "A million bucks on the streets. He dumped it?"

  "I told you, it was trash. I thought you knew all about that. I thought...."

  "You think too much, Turtle," Tony Danger told his uncomfortable skipper. He was opening the envelope — slowly, delicately. "You're gonna fool around and think yourself into an early grave. You think about that."

  Turtle Tarantini's eyes clearly did not understand his boss's reaction to the superb job Frankie Lambretta had done for him.

  "Too many people give orders around here," he muttered defensively.

  Tony Danger did not hear the remark. He was staring into the brown manila envelope. He dug a finger into a small sample of white powder in there and touched it to his tongue. "Trash, eh?" he commented miserably. Then he withdrew the little iron cross with a bull's-eye in its center and showed it to his skipper. "That's your Frankie Lambretta," he said in a flat voice.

  "I don't believe it," Tarantini whispered. "You'd better," Tony Danger quietly told him. "You'd damn sure better believe it."

  He turned away to conceal the quivering of his lips and quickly descended the ladder to the main deck.

  Damn right.

  Everybody had better start believing it.

  Hell had finally come to San Diego.

  Bolan established a radio contact with Gadgets Schwarz to set up a rendezvous where he could screen the intelligence from the telephone tap on the Winters residence, but Blancanales broke into the conversation with an urgent report of his own.