San Diego Siege (10 page)

Thornton again nodded his head. "It's foolproof," he murmured.

"And the stuff is hard to come by," Schwarz went on explaining. "You don't just walk up and ask a government contractor to make you one. You'd have the FCC all over your ass the second you tried to put it on the air — and in no time you'd have feds swarming all over your operation. What Max is saying is simply this: we gotta be patient while he carves one out of a contract. Right, Max?"

Thornton quietly replied, "Yes. Just like the last one."

"I guess I wasn't in on that one," Blancanales declared innocently.

"Just who are you people?" Thornton asked, his voice barely audible.

"We came with the man," Blancanales replied, dropping the street accent.

"What man?" Thornton asked wearily.

"Bolan," Schwarz said, soberly studying their victim.

The guy walked jerkily back to his desk and sat down. He poured several fingers of Haig
&
Haig into his glass and belted it, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

"I've been there and back," he declared quietly.

"But I sure talked myself into this one, didn't I?"

"Keep trying," Blancanales suggested. "Maybe you'll talk your way
out
of something."

"You're in deep shit, Max," Schwarz said gently.

The guy was trapped, and he knew it. He studied his empty glass for a moment, then raised resigned eyes to Gadgets Schwarz. "I was born in shit," he murmured.

"So now you got a chance to wipe yourself," Schwarz told him. "How about it?"

"Full redemption, huh?"

"We can't promise that."

"All right," the self-made millionaire muttered. "Pass the toilet paper."

Bolan's interrogation of Marsha Thornton was revealing very little in the nature of direct intelligence, but she was filling in quite a bit of background insight into the San Diego situation.

"Max is quite a bit older than I am, you know," she told Bolan in that curious turned-off voice. "I wouldn't mind that. I mean, I guess I love him. He's a perfect husband ... in every way but one. Gives me everything I want. Except himself. He… can't. So I have to go find that somewhere else."

"And Max just turns his head, eh."

"Yes. He understands. He just asks that I be … discreet. I guess I've caused him a lot of embarrassment, just the same."

"It figures," Bolan told her.

"Yes. Well, you'd have to know my husband to understand how
gross
all this could be for him. I mean, a man like him. Well... I have no apologies to make to anyone, except to Max I guess, and he won't let me. He simply understands. I've had a hunger ever since my boobs started budding, Mr. Bolan. I can't turn it off. Don't get the wrong idea. I'm no nympho. But when I'm hungry, I'm hungry."

Bolan murmured, "I can understand that." He was getting a bit of an itch, himself.

"You probably think I'm a nympho," she said, deadpanning a sidewise gaze in his direction. He got very few direct looks from this one. "It's okay, you may as well think it. Everybody else does. I've been in analysis. My analyst says I am definitely
not
a nympho."

Bolan said, "Okay."

"I hated those hoods. They just kept hanging around Max. Oh, they never came through the front door ... don't worry. But they were always around, always popping up, always underfoot. We'd go out to dinner, and there they'd be. We'd go to a club, and there they'd be." She sighed, a long painful effort. "I guess I figured they may as well be in the bedroom, too. Instant manpower."

Bolan told her, "You don't have to get into this if you'd rather not. I had the Winters telephone tapped. I heard your conversation with Lisa this morning."

That revelation drew not so much as a blink of the eyes. "Lisa's a good kid. We're about the same age, you know. Body age, not soul age. God, my soul must be a million years old."

Bolan could almost believe it.

"I guess, really, I was trying to punish Max by balling his underworld pals. I guess I was getting back at him."

"Humiliating him," Bolan suggested.

"That's what my analyst says. He calls it soiling myself in my husband's own dirt pile. Oh ... it's humiliated him, all right. But as soon as I realized it, I broke it off. You know, I cut out." The deadened eyes traveled to the dog. "That's when I got Thunder. Those hoods wouldn't take no as an answer, not from me. They'd just walk in and grab me by the ass, throw me a quick one, and walk out laughing. Boy. Talk about humiliation. Well, that was six months ago. Lisa was taking lessons at this kennels out on Cabrillo Highway, learning to handle the dogs. I decided to take the training with her, and I ended up with old Thunder here."

She surprised Bolan with a girlish giggle. "Today was the first time I ever ordered him to attack and wow, did you see him getting with it!"

He growled, "Yeah, I saw it."

"I'm really glad he didn't hurt you. You're a nice man, so far I guess. But I had to have Thunder, see. I found out those hoods were passing me around between them, giggling and snickering about me, and I'm sure it all got back to Max. His nympho wife."

The girl shivered and suddenly stood up. She was still clad only in the micro-bikini, bottom only, nothing else. She crossed her arms over the bare chest and walked out onto the sun deck. Thunder trotted along after her.

Bolan drifted out there, also. He stood behind her and gazed over her head at the impossibly blue Pacific with its foaming leading edges rolling onto the beach just below them.

It all seemed, suddenly, totally unreal.

These human moments stole up on a guy, surprising him in the midst of combat, reminding him of his mortality, his humanness.

At this moment, Mack Bolan felt entirely human.

He'd come to this town to blitz it, to wade through blood if necessary, to shake the rats out of their nests. He had not come here for a human experience.

But here he was in the presence of a lovely young woman, sharing her nakedness of body and soul.

He told her, very gently, "Look, Marsha ... all the perfect people are in heaven."

She tilted the shiny red head over her shoulder and smiled at him. Life was forming somewhere back there behind those glazed eyes.

Perhaps, he thought, she was having a human experience also. She asked him, the smile turning sober, "Do you have to kill my husband?"

He replied honestly. "At this point, I don't know. What can you tell me to help my decision?"

She shrugged, delicately. "I just wish you wouldn't. Maybe it's not too late. What can I tell you about Max? I can tell you how he likes his eggs, that he hates pretension and that he loves me very very much ... even at my worst. Is that enough to get him off?"

Bolan did not reply.

She shivered again and tightened the hold on her chest. "He's not like them, Mr. Bolan. Oh ... in his own way, he may be worse than them. More crooked, I mean. He'll admit that he's a crook, it's how he made his fortune. He's a real wheeler-dealer and he's kind of proud of it. But he's not like
them."
She shuddered. Her voice became tiny as she added, "He just can't get
loose
from them."

"What's their hold?" he asked her.

"Me, for one thing. But they already had him hog-tied before I came along."

"You how?"

"Oh, this rotten business. Do you know a man called Tony Danger?"

Bolan nodded.

"I went to a party on his yacht. A cruise to Ensenada. Two other girls. Two of Tony's hoods. We ... partied. While Tony took motion pictures of it. I was so stoned on grass, I...."

Bolan said, "Never mind, I know the routine."

"Yes, well, he showed Max some stills from that film. In
my
presence. Can you beat that? Max didn't say a word, didn't bat an eyelash. Tony told him the negatives were in New York. That they'd stay there in a special file. Just in case Max felt like busting out his britches, as Tony put it. Well, as rotten as I am, I guess Max would do anything to keep them from circulating something like that. I guess…"

Bolan muttered, "Maybe Max is making pilgrimages to the soiling grounds, himself."

She stared at him for a moment then said, "I hadn't thought of that. You mean maybe he's punishing himself for his inadequacy?"

Bolan shrugged. "I'm no psychologist. But it's a thought."

"Yes, isn't it," she agreed.

There was a definite luster in the girl's eyes now.

Bolan didn't want to spoil it, but he had to ask her. "Was Lisa Winters in that party — the boat trip to Ensenada?"

She wet her lips and told him, "Well, you'd have to ask her about that."

He replied, "Okay. I will."

She swiveled about and wrapped her arms about Bolan's neck in one swift motion, kissed him lightly on the mouth, then released him.

"Five minutes ago," she said breathlessly, "I was starved half to death. And hating myself for it. I'm not hungry now. You'd better go while you can."

"I'll want a rain check on about an hour of your time, at my demand," he told her. "And it has nothing to do with hunger."

"You've got it," she assured him. "Now split, before my monster awakens."

Bolan believed her.

And he split.

But his monster had already awakened, and he was hungry as hell.

"Howlie had been crumbling for months," Blancanales reported. "They got into him on little stuff, nickle and dime jazz, during his GHQ stint at Saigon. I guess he was a little bitter over the deal he got, you know, and he was ripe for the approach. You know how a guy like Howlin' Harlan must have felt at a
logistics
desk, God's sake."

"Yeah," Bolan agreed.

"Anyway, he was in a position to set them up for dumping contraband into the PX and service club circuits. Thornton was dragged into it from this end, via his transportation outfits. He even hijacked some of his own trucks and collected insurance on the loss. Anyway, he was able to provide bonafide shipping orders and such for the loot and he even had a couple of freighters in the play. They were running everything from shaving lotion to hootch. According to Thornton, Southeast Asia, for awhile there, was the prime dumping grounds for the hijack rings."

"Cute," Bolan commented.

"Yeh. When these guys do something, they do it big, don't they. Well, according to Thornton, he wasn't getting that much out of it. He figured the risk exceeded the profits, most of which was going to the mob anyway. But they had it into him, and he had to go along."

"What were you saying about Howlie?" Bolan reminded him.

"Well, he was nickle-and-diming it during his last few months at Saigon. After his retirement, Thornton helped him set up here. Thornton swears it and I don't know why he'd want to He about it now ... Howlie didn't know what he was getting into, not at first. Oh sure, he knew he was selling his influence at the Pentagon. I guess they all do it, most of these retired officers. Why not? It's legal, right? And it's about the only way they can make a military career pay off when things have gone sour for them. Who needs a guy who has spent his whole life deploying troops around a battlefield, right?"

"Go on," Bolan prodded.

Schwarz took it from there. "You know what a feeder horn is, Sarge? It's part of a radio transmission system, sort of like microwave but still operating at radio frequencies. It puts out a controlled emission that's beamed like a spotlight, only it's tighter than any spotlight. It's line-of-sight stuff. The other end of the system uses a dish-antenna for receiving, and you have to shoot directly into the dish or there's no reception."

"Radio point-blank," Bolan commented. "We had them in 'Nam."

"Right. Data links for radar, electronic counter-measures."

"Ultra-sophisticated," Blancanales put in.

"Absolutely," Schwarz agreed. "I have no idea what a rig like that costs, but you can bet it's mighty heavy. You can set them up for mobile use, and that gets even costlier. Besides that, if you're going to own a system like that then you've got to have people who know how to operate and maintain it. Now why. ..." He paused, grinned, and swiped at his nose with
a
balled fist. "Why would you think an outfit like the Mafia would want a million-dollar toy like that?"

Bolan showed the electronics expert a sober smile and said, "Data link, right?"

"Right."

"With Agua Caliente just a few miles across the border."

Schwarz looked disappointed. Bolan had spoiled his punch line. "That's it," he said. "The track down there has a complete foreign book betting service for tracks all over the world. These dummies are trying to set up a foolproof link between Mexico and Vegas. At mountain peak to mountain peak line-of-sight, do you know how many feeder-horn relays they'd have to have?"

Bolan commented, "They think big, Gadgets." He shrugged his shoulders. "And if it's costing them nothing...."

"Well yeah, but God what they have to go through to
get
the stuff. That's what finally stuck in Howlie's craw. He helped them get two systems already, without even realizing what he was doing. Then he stumbled onto it and tried to freeze them out. It was a neat racket and I'd like to meet the guy who thought it up. Thornton's electronics subsidiary is subbing on a military contract for a whole bunch of these rigs, complete systems. Thornton supplies various components used in the final assembly. One of Howlie's companies had the final inspection and quality assurance contract
for the military.
Through quality rejects and a lot of juggling, they managed to piecemeal-out enough rejected components to assemble two complete systems. They've got them holed up somewhere right now, Thornton swears he doesn't know where, until they get enough to complete the link to Vegas. But God, it was a sweet idea. I guess they marked the QC rejects as salvage, cancelled out the serial numbers, and buried all the records of the final transactions.''

"Or burned them," Bolan said. He was remembering a thick stack of ashes in the Winters fireplace. "Could those be the papers Lisa Winters was yelling about?"

"It's beginning to make sense," Blancanales said thoughtfully. "Howlie was a poor sap, a dupe. He dug up the records and took them home ... maybe to study them and confirm his suspicions. Once he knew, he told them to go to hell."

"He would do that," Schwarz said musingly.

"He'd have to have an edge on them somewhere," Bolan pointed out. "And his edge was the records. He could expose the whole scheme by publicly producing those records."

"Mexican stand-off," Blancanales said. "He'd also be incriminating himself. So he couldn't just haul off and let fire. But ... as long as he had those papers...."

"Right," Bolan agreed. "So why would he burn them? He had the boys over a barrel."

"Maybe he just couldn't keep them there," Schwarz said quietly.

"It's why he sent for Able Team," Blancanales decided.

"Too late," Schwarz murmured.

"Too late for the living," Bolan told them, ice creeping into his voice. "But not too late for the dead. Come on. We're moving out."

"Where to?" the Politician inquired.

"You
, to see a young lady. Concerning a stack of papers and
why
they were burned."

"Wait'll I comb my hair," Blancanales said, grinning.

Bolan stabbed Gadgets Schwarz with his eyes. "You've got the cold job," he warned him. "Find that stolen gear."

Schwarz's eyelids fluttered rapidly, but all he had to say about the assignment was, "Okay. So I'll bundle up good."

Bolan did not share the secret with his buddies, but he had saved the really cold job for himself.

It was time to spread the tar around.

He had to roust Tony Danger.

Even if it meant rousting him from a jail cell.