Blood Dues (11 page)

Bolan pulled his car into a scenic turnout off Ocean Drive and parked facing the Atlantic. Out beyond the beach the water was already dark, forbidding in its vastness. At his back, behind the skyline of Miami, a tropical sunset was burning out in hues of pink and lavender. In his rearview mirror, the dying rays glinted off the hustling cars that flowed along the drive.

He sat there, smoking, glancing frequently at his wristwatch, a loaded Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun on the seat beside him. There was no such thing, he knew, as being overcautious these days in Miami. Not when half the underworld was working overtime to find and kill you.

The Executioner was more than ready when the Cadillac turned off, separating smoothly from the flow of traffic, headlights dancing as the driver guided her carefully over a series of speed bumps. The glare of headlights momentarily filled his rearview and Bolan averted his eyes, concentrating on the side mirror now. He stubbed out his smoke in the dashboard ashtray, then casually reached for the Ingram, lifting it into his lap. He kept one hand around the stubby weapon's pistol grip and watched as the Caddy rolled into an empty parking space beside him on the passenger's side.

The other driver killed his lights and engine, remained seated behind the wheel and stared straight ahead. Inside the Caddy other faces were turning to examine Bolan now, checking out his car and the surroundings, hesitant, cautious.

The car was ten years old, reminiscent of a bygone era. Somehow it seemed to fit its occupants that way. They, too, were out of sync with history, living anachronisms who refused to compromise with changing times. They reminded Bolan of the samurai, devoted to a code of honor; a military life-style that had become passe to everyone around them.

Still they carried on the fight and Bolan felt for them, aware in his heart that their own unending battle was as hopeless as his own.

It had taken several calls to make connections with El Toro and arrange the meeting.

A back door on the Caddy opened, and one of the gunners inside covered the dome light with his palm as Toro climbed out. Glancing around at the night, he crossed to Bolan's car and got in, sparing a look for the Ingram clutched in the Executioner's lap. Toro settled into the passenger seat and closed the door behind him.

"How goes the rattling of cages?" he asked.

"It goes. And you?"

"I traced Raoul's lieutenant." Toro flashed a little conspiratorial smile. "He was reluctant to confide in me at first. I had to be quite harsh with him."

Mack Bolan knew how harsh the Latin
soldado
could be, and he could almost sympathize with Ornelas's second-in-command. Almost, right, but not quite. He waited silently for Toro to continue in his own way and time.

"You still have interest in this Jose 99?"

Mack Bolan felt the involuntary prickling of his scalp.

"I do."

Toro paused briefly, then said, "He is Raoul."

And Bolan saw a couple of the pieces fall together, snapping soundly into place. He recalled the words of Captain Wilson as they stood together at the scene of Hannon and Evangelina's murder.

"The FBI says it has something on him from a routine wiretap on the Cuban embassy. He calls the cultural attache there from time to time."

Then Bolan replied, "I see."

The Cuban raised an eyebrow.

"You are not surprised?"

"Let's say it fits."

He briefed Toro quickly on what Wilson had told him, and the Cuban's face was going through some changes of its own as he digested Bolan's words. When the Executioner had finished speaking Toro made a disgusted face.

"I underestimated this one's treachery," he said.

He spent a moment staring out across the beach at darkened water, watching the moon rise.

"This cultural attache that you speak of, Jorge Ybarra, he is DGI."

Bolan stiffened even though he wasn't surprised to hear what he had already begun to suspect. Still, he was angry at himself for not putting the pieces together sooner, in time to save a few good lives along the way.

The DGI, of course. Castro's secret service — basically a Spanish-speaking adjunct of the KGB.

It fit, damn right.

It fit too well.

"Raoul has the trucks and weapons that your friend is looking for," Toro said absently. "Raoul is responsible for stealing them."

Bolan resisted an urge to put John Hannon in the past tense, to tell Toro all about Evangelina. They were running on the numbers, and every second counted now. There was no time to waste in agonizing over battle casualties.

"For weeks now," Toro continued, "this
pendejo
has recruited gunmen. Omega 7 hides them, but they have a special mission. I believed it was Raoul, but now I see that there is more."

"What mission?" Bolan prodded.

"Key Biscayne."

Something turned over sluggishly in Bolan's gut, but he held himself in check, waiting for Toro to continue.

When the Cuban spoke again his voice was emotionless as he began to spell it out.

"One truck filled with explosives, to blow the causeway,
si?
Three, four others with the
marielistas,
weapons. All in position early while the people are asleep."

And Toro did not have to say any more. Mack Bolan had the picture clearly in his mind, and any way he looked at it, it came out as a bloodbath in the streets.

"When do they move?"

"Tomorrow. Dawn."

The warrior felt a headache start to throb behind his eyes and raised one hand briefly to massage his temples, clearing his mind for what lay ahead.

"We've got a lot to do," he said simply.

Toro turned to face him, his features lost in shadow inside the sedan's darkened interior. His deep voice seemed to emerge from a bottomless pit.

"My men are working on Raoul," he said. "I'll have him soon, I think."

Bolan nodded curtly.

"Okay. He's yours. I have some stops to make. We'd better synchronize."

"Agreed."

They spent the next quarter hour laying plans for the approaching battle. It was completely dark by the time they went their different ways. A darkness of the soul as much as anything.

It captured Bolan's killing mood precisely, as he pushed the rental car through Stygian blackness, following the coastline, with the wild, untameable Atlantic on his right-hand side.

In his heart the warrior knew that the only way to drive the darkness back was with a purifying flame, bright and fiercely hot enough to send the cannibals scuttling back underground where they belonged.

He had the fire inside him now, and he was primed to let it out, to strike a spark that might consume Miami in the end, before it burned away to ashes.

The Executioner was carrying his torch into the darkness.

The raid on Key Biscayne made ghoulish sense to Bolan. As a master tactician himself, he could appreciate the plotters' strategic perception. It was a tight plan, well-conceived, immensely practical despite its loony overtones.

Like something from a madman's nightmares, right. But this nightmare was coming true tomorrow in broad daylight.

The fact that it was clearly suicidal for the troops involved meant nothing. The planners would be counting on high casualties, and every man they lost before the final curtain would be one less talking mouth to help police backtrack along the bloody trail of conspiracy. Whatever happened to the shock troops once they were engaged, there would be time enough for them to wreak bloody havoc in the streets before the last of them could be eradicated by a counterforce.

Time enough to orchestrate a massacre, damned right, and throw Miami's affluent society into a screaming panic.

Hell, it was almost perfect.

Bolan did not spare more than a passing thought to motives in the plot. In the end, it mattered little whether Raoul Ornelas was an opportunist seeking ransom for himself, a dedicated rightist striking back somehow at Castro and America, or a turncoat working hand in glove with Cuban agents. Whichever way it cut — a hostage situation or a random massacre — the end result, inevitably, had to be a bloodbath.

Ornelas was committing criminals and addicts, all the human dregs that he could muster, as his front-line troops. There was no way on earth that he could hope to rein them in once they had scented blood. Ornelas
had
to know that much, and from that grisly certainty, Mack Bolan knew a massacre was what Jose 99 had planned from the beginning.

The DGI and its controllers in the KGB would profit doubly from the holocaust. The chaos, killing, violence — the goals of global terrorism — all of these were ends in themselves, but there were greater potentials there.

Supposing that Ornelas was exposed, revealed in court and through the press as the mastermind of the plot, it would, if handled carefully, reflect upon the anti-Castro movement rather than upon the Communists who hatched the plot. The end result, disgrace for any Cuban exiles who were militant or even vocal in their opposition to the current Havana regime, would bring oppressive crackdowns at the state and federal level, doubling security for Castro at no expense to the Cuban government itself. Castro's chief enemies in the United States would be surveyed, perhaps incarcerated... and years would pass before the anti-Castro movement won back any small degree of visible respectability.

Mack Bolan, at the moment, had no interest in the politics involved. His mind was on the countless lives that would be lost unless he found a way to short-circuit the plan in its initial stages.

Geography and economics helped the terrorists select their target. Key Biscayne's sixty-three hundred affluent residents lived on an island barely four square miles in area. A former U.S. President maintained his winter White House there, but nowadays the majority of tourists headed straight for Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, to see the historic lighthouse. And they came in whopping numbers, right.

Key Biscayne connected to the mainland by a single causeway — and its demolition as described by Toro would destroy it, or at least render it impassable for hours, even days. With that route cut, relief would have to come by water or by air... and either way, relief troops would be landing in the face of hostile guns once terrorists controlled the island.

Bolan knew that if the terrorists gained a beachhead on Biscayne, there would be no stopping them before they had a chance to wreak their vengeance on a sleepy populace.

If possible, Bolan and the troops that Toro might be able to recruit had to stop the juggernaut before it started bearing down upon its target.

So far, the Executioner was hampered by a lack of battlefield intel. He did not know the number of his enemies, their firepower or their precise location. Every piece of information that he lacked made it more likely that the small defensive force would fail.

But the very things that made Biscayne a tempting target also worked in Bolan's favor. Using trucks for transport, the invaders were restricted to a single avenue of entry to the island: over Rickenbacker Causeway to Virginia Key, then over Bear Cut Causeway to the killing ground itself on Key Biscayne. With that in mind, Mack Bolan could map out the different approaches to the causeway, narrow down the hostiles' route to half a dozen possibilities.

And then what?

By himself or with Grimaldi flying cover, even with the guns that Toro might be able to recruit, he could not cover all of the approaches with sufficient force to turn an armed brigade around. The roadblock must be inconspicuous enough to slip past the notice of police, yet strong enough to stop the killer convoy cold, without allowing even one of them to reach the target zone.

Clearly, Bolan needed reinforcements in a hurry.

The sudden inspiration struck him, and it was simplicity itself.

Suddenly he knew exactly what he had to do and where to find the reinforcements that he needed. It would require audacity and nerve — two qualities the Executioner possessed in abundance — but if Bolan could pull it off he might be able to bring down two vultures with a single shot.

All he had to do was change identities again in mid-stride, without losing his momentum. Just a simple probe inside the enemy encampment, right.

That, and then get out again intact, with time to spare before he had to meet the final strike on Key Biscayne.

A simple matter, right.

No sweat.

Except that he could lose it anywhere along the way, with one false step.

And if he lost it... then he would die along with others, and the savages would breeze through unobstructed to their target area. There would be hours or days of mayhem.

Mac Bolan pushed the thought out of his mind and concentrated on his actions of the next few moments.

Defeat was not an acceptable alternative.

He would have victory, or death in the attempt. And if he died, a lot of savage souls were going with him.

Phillip Sacco did not have his usual nightmare on the night after Omega's visit. You have to sleep in order to have nightmares, and for the aging
capo,
sleep was suddenly in very short supply. For the first time in his adult life he doubted his ability to control his own environment.

And it was a frightening sensation.

After twenty-four hours he still hadn't been able to get a line on Tommy Drake's assassins. Omega was out there, but Sacco's calls to New York City, Chicago and the West Coast had been unable to confirm or deny the black ace's standing with
La Commissione.
And worst of all, Sacco's town was blowing up around him, dreadful rumors circulating.

Rumors about marksman's medals, damn right, and stories that Mack The Bastard Bolan might be back in town, goddamnit.

Now
there
was a recurring nightmare — one that Sacco could not seem to wake himself up from no matter how he tried.

Phil Sacco had been convinced, like all of his
amid
in the honored society of Mafia, that Bolan had finally died in his New York flame-out some time back. It had not been smooth sailing with him gone, of course; he left the brotherhood in an unholy shambles when he faded from the scene, and there had been a recent wave of state and federal offensives — but anything was better than going to bed with the fear that you might not wake up in the morning.

Anything was better, sure, than jumping every time a shadow moved around you, any time a man in black might cross your path.

Anything, yeah, except maybe not sleeping at all.

If Mack Bolan was back, Sacco told himself, the frigging guy had made a critical mistake by coming back to southern Florida right now.

Phil Sacco meant to see that Bolan paid for this mistake with his life.

The telephone in his study started ringing, but Sacco did not answer it. He waited while Solly Cusamano, the houseman, took care of it, picking it up on the third ring.

Sacco figured that any call at this hour of the night just had to be bad news — unless, perhaps, it might be one of his hunter crews reporting with information on the bums who took down Tommy Drake.

There was a long moment's delay, then Solly knocked on the door of his study, poking his head in at Sacco's summons. Cusamano looked worried and apologetic.

"It's that Omega, boss. You wanna talk to him?"

Sacco stared at the silent telephone for a moment, allowing himself the luxury of pretending that he had a choice.

"I'll take it, yeah. Thanks, Solly."

Cusamano ducked back out and closed the door behind him. Sacco lifted the telephone receiver, listening silently until the houseman hung up on the other extension.

"Okay."

The black ace's voice came back at him across the line, deep and graveyard cold.

"I'm glad to hear your voice, Phil."

"Yeah?"

Omega chuckled, making a reptilian hissing sound.

"I had an idea I might be too late."

"Too late for what?"

Sacco did not try to hide the irritation that was slowly creeping into his voice.

"To say goodbye," the ace responded.

Irritation blossomed into full-blown anger now.

"It's too damned late for playing games," the
capo
snapped.

"You're wising up."

"Goddammit..."

Omega did not raise his voice, but still his words managed to override Sacco's outburst.

"Tommy Drake was pissing on you, Phil. He was setting you up."

"That's bullshit."

But the doubt was planted in his mind now. Sacco had lived too long in the Mafia's paranoid jungle to automatically rule out any treason, any treachery.

"You know he was connected with the Cubans," Omega responded, sounding almost disinterested. "Do you know what they were working on?"

"Of course, I knew," he blustered, bluffing. "What kind of question..."

"Then you know about the move on Key Biscayne."

There was momentary silence on both ends of the line, Sacco racking his brain, loathe to admit ignorance, but coming up with nothing that made sense.

Omega went ahead without his answer, reading everything he had to know into the
capo's
strained silence.

"It's a psycho proposition, Phil. The feeling is your boy came up with it to pacify the Cubans. On the side, he's had them laying trails that lead right back to you."

Sacco's hand was white-knuckled now on the receiver, so tight his hand was shaking.

"I... guess I don't know what you mean."

And Omega told him a horror story, speaking in dry, clipped tones, the weight of his words bearing down into the leather-upholstered cushions of his easy chair. When he heard it all, Omega offered him an out, explained how he could save it — part of it, at any rate — if he moved quickly and decisively enough.

"You think that you can handle all that, Phil?''

Sacco scowled at the receiver in his hand, hating the man at the other end, hating Tommy Drake for putting him in this untenable position.

"I'll handle it, all right."

"I hope so. Everybody's counting on you."

Sacco stiffened, knowing the reverse side of the coin.
Everybody's waiting to see you screw up; waiting to divide your operations when you 're dead and buried.

"Tell them that it's in the bag."

Omega hung up on him without another word, and Sacco cradled the receiver briefly, glaring at it, not moving his hand. Then he lifted it again and started dialing rapidly.

Sacco was calling in the troops, damn right.

And the
capo mafioso
of Miami did not have a lot of time to lose.

Captain Robert Wilson drained the last few dregs of coffee from his mug and pushed it away from him across the cluttered desk. He rocked back in his swivel chair, stretching, deliberately closing his eyes as he turned toward the clock on the wall, refusing to acknowledge the hour and how little he had achieved this night in concrete terms.

Beyond the glass partition that contained his private office, a skeleton crew was manning the Homicide squad room on the graveyard shift. The hackneyed gag was often used to get a laugh from officers in Homicide, but Wilson did not feel a bit like laughing at the moment.

The first reports of Hannon's death were open on the desk in front of him. He could recite them almost word for word by now and still they told him nothing.

Everything was there, of course, in terms of the procedures. Ballistics and trajectories, points of entry and exit. Wilson knew precisely how John Hannon died, and he had a fair idea of who was responsible... but none of it had put him any closer to solution of the crime.

He had pursued LaMancha's lead on the dead girl and struck surprising pay dirt at the federal building. Her name had been Evangelina, and her file at Justice had included information on familial relations — on a sister, in particular.

Deceased.

And
that
had been a shocker, goddamned right. It raised some ghosts for Wilson, dating back to other days when Hannon was the captain, and a soldier newly home from Vietnam was settling a family score against the Mafia. The Bolan hunt had been an education in itself; it showed Robert Wilson a side of Hannon — and a side of himself — that he had never quite suspected.

A side that, yeah, could be damned frightening at times.

And Wilson had not overlooked the ominous parallels between that other time of killing and his present situation.

One sister, Margarita, murdered by the syndicate the first time Bolan was in town; the other ambushed now, with Hannon, just when someone had been knocking over mob concessions, leaving marksman's medals as a calling card.

Not
someone,
Bob Wilson corrected himself. It was Mack Bolan. He was still alive, somehow, against the odds. It was confirmed by FBI and press reports.

The bastard was alive and he was back, no doubt about it. And he was Wilson's responsibility this time.

The telephone jangled on his desk and Wilson grabbed for it absentmindedly, his thoughts still focused on his problem of the moment as he answered.

"Captain Wilson, Homicide."

"You're working late.''

He recognized Frank LaMancha's voice although they had spoken only once before. There was something in the tonal quality that sent a little chill along his spine.

"I've got a lot to do," he answered.

"You'd better wrap it up. The curtain's coming down.''

"That right?"

There was skepticism in the homicide detective's voice, but he tempered it with caution.

"Bet on it. Sacco and Ornelas are about to tangle. You'll want to be there.''

Wilson searched around in the debris heaped upon his desk, finally coming up with a pencil and note pad.

"Where and when?"

"Not yet," LaMancha told him. "We need to let this run its course."

"I see."

The image in his mind was grisly, littered with the dead and dying.

"You're telling me a shooting war's about to break, and asking me to sit on it."

"You won't be missing anything, unless you try to put the lid on prematurely.''

"Better I should wait until the county morgue is standing room only? It doesn't work that way around Miami, mister."

"Easy, Captain. All I'm saying is that you could blow it if you get too eager.''

"Maybe that's a chance I'll have to take."

"I don't. Goodbye."

Wilson felt a sudden rush, akin to panic, as he saw his chance begin to slip away.

"Hold on there, dammit! I'm still listening."

The "federal agent's" voice was cautious in its own right now.

"No specifics yet. You'll have to trust me."

"That's a rare commodity." Wilson hesitated, thinking it over briefly. "I'd like to take a look at what I'm walking into."

"Fair enough."

LaMancha briefed him quickly, sticking to the basics, but it was enough to put a sour taste in Wilson's mouth and set his stomach rolling. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, he had a hunch that blossomed into inspiration, revelation.

LaMancha was about to hang up, and the captain blurted out, "Hey, Mack!"

A heartbeat's hesitation, barely noticeable, on the other end of the line.

"The name's still Frank."

"Oh... right." Wilson suddenly felt foolish, asinine. "Uh... listen... thanks for the tip, okay?"

"No sweat. Just don't be late."

The line went dead and Wilson cradled his receiver, puzzling over his hunch for a moment, finally dismissing it. He set about his business, waking people and making sure they would be exactly where he needed them, precisely when their services were called for.

Like Phil Sacco on the other side of town, Bob Wilson was calling in his forces, right, preparing for a good old-fashioned shooting war.

Toro's driver braked the Cadillac beneath some trees, partially sheltering the car from the nearest streetlight. Inside the car the faces of his troops were lost in shadows.

It was almost dawn, and yet the sunrise had not touched the northern part of Miami. It lingered on the ocean, painting beaches gray, then pink and gold, finally creeping in past the beachfront hotels, and only then descending on the residential districts with its warming touch, bringing the world to life.

This morning, in the vanguard of the dawn, Toro and his men had come not with life, but with death in their hearts. They were on a military mission and the setting made no difference, tactically, to their procedures or their goals.

They had come for Raoul Ornelas, and they would have him, or all six of them would die in the attempt.

The target was a ranch-style home in a fashionable part of the North Miami suburb. Sitting in the Caddy with a weapon in his lap, Toro reflected bitterly that Ornelas had not only betrayed the cause but he had also physically deserted his people, putting himself beyond their reach from the stews of Little Havana. Ornelas was a man apart, attempting to eke out a place for himself above the battle.

But this day, El Toro meant to bring him down.

The place was built for status and appearances instead of defense. A six-foot decorative wall surrounded the acre of grounds, and the house was set well back behind a manicured lawn, partially screened by trees. But this was not a fortress. They could encounter danger there, even death, but not before they made their way inside.

In seconds, all of them had left the Cadillac and scaled the wall, regrouping in the shadows and waiting for instructions from their leader. Toro went through all of it again, to be on the safe side, substituting hand gestures for words whenever possible, keeping his eyes and ears alert for the danger of dogs or watchmen.

He had deliberately timed the raid to coincide with sunrise, from knowledge of Ornelas's plans for the morning, and because the early morning brought a natural sluggishness to men on watch. A sentry's natural defenses lagged at sunrise, and with his meager force behind him, Toro knew he could use every single advantage available.

Ornelas had sentries posted, but they were all immediately around the house, and they were not alert enough to save themselves from death as it came creeping toward them through the morning mist.

Toro and his five warriors fanned out, moving low and fast across the lawn like silent shadows, gliding in the face of sunrise, closing on the house with lightning strides.

Emiliano took one sentry with his silenced Ruger automatic. One shot, with the bulky suppressor almost touching the base of the target's skull, and the little .22-caliber round cored through bone and muscle, clipping the stem of the brain.

Toro made the second kill himself, slipping a noose of piano wire over a young man's head and bringing it tight around his throat. The wire bit deep, cutting off his wind and releasing a Niagara of blood as the soldier struggled briefly in Toro's grasp, finally relaxing into death.

Toro's group circled back around the house, encountering no more resistance, and they found a service entrance in the rear. Ornelas was coming up in the world, the Cuban warrior thought. High time that someone put him back in touch with the grim realities of their unending war for freedom.