Caribbean Kill

Chapter Twelve The deal

The impact bomb had come in at dead center, instantly disintegrating the superstructure and lifting the entire cruiser out of the water. Her restraining lineswere ruptured and the once-flashy speedster resettled at a crazy angle and drifted slowly into the channel, ablaze from stem to stern.

Nothing could have remained alive in that flaming wreckage. Bolan's attention had instantly swerved to the threats from other quarters, and the trusty Beretta had dispatched two gunners from the roof of the warehouse and another who had come running along the wharf.

And then he was aboard the old salvage boat and helping Juan cast off the stern lines. The ancient rig was made of stronger stuff than the Glass Bay cruiser. She had absorbed the blast shock with hardly a quiver and rode out the resultant minor tidal wave like a true queen of the seas.

Juan told Bolan, "The engine is turning. The moment I step aboard, I instruct the captain to make ready."

That was not all Juan had done the moment he stepped aboard. Sprawled out beneath the gangway was a guy in Glass Bay uniform, a gun in his clenched fist, the eyes wide and staring in surprise and fixed that way in death. Buried in his chest to the hilt was a heavy knife. The gun was a Beretta Brigadier, same model as Bolan's.

Bolan took the Beretta and shook several spare clips from the dead man's waistband, then he picked up the body and heaved it over the side.

There was a lot of running around and yelling farther up the pier, but no one seemed ready to venture down for a closer look.

The boat was heading into the channel. A guy with a big handlebar mustache and a very worried face thrust his head out of the cabin and yelled something aft in very rapid Spanish.

Juan looked up with a grimace and called back, "Gracias, Capitain. Vamos ustedes, con todo velocidad!"

He reported to Bolan, "He says the bow lines are clear and we are underway. I tell him to get the hell out of here."

Quickly, Bolan said, "Ask him if we can hook onto that pile of junk and haul it clear before the whole port is in flames."

Juan nodded and hurried forward.

Bolan remained aft to guard their rear, but no further hostile actions seemed impending — and soon he was assisting the three-man crew and Juan in the delicate business of grappling and towing a flaming marine disaster out to sea. They left the burning hulk wallowing in its own ashes a mile offshore.

They headed west then, Bolan instructing the skipper to remain within sight of shore. "Alert me immediately," he requested, "if any other vessels seem to be closing on us or crossing our course."

The captain signaled his understanding. Bolan and Juan went into the main cabin — a low-headroom affair with four bunks, a small galley, mess table, and various rough conveniences.

The mate came in behind them, grinning, to serve a half-and-half mixture of rum and hot coffee. Bolan tasted it and decided against it. He got out of the uniform which Evita had borrowed from the town constable and carefully folded it and placed it on a bunk.

The mate was very taken with the black combat suit He grinned at Juan, murmured, "Magnifico, magnifico" — and went back on deck.

Juan stared into his cup and announced, "I killed a man, SenorBolan."

How many had Bolan killed?

He said, "Yeah, I noticed," and spread out a map which Evita had given him during those tense moments at Puerta Vista. He sat at the table with the map, gave Juan a close scrutiny, then added, "A man has a right to protect his treasures. No, he has an obligation."

"If I had your skills, senor," Juan replied quietly, "I would kill them all. They are scum, filth — they are wild beasts with no humanity in them."

"That's what I keep telling myself," Bolan muttered.

"My Rosalita. You think she is safe now?"

"She's entirely safe, Juan. Don't worry, she's in good hands."

"She told me, before, at the first, that you would come. But she also hoped that you would not. She was fearful for you, senor."

Bolan said, "How're you feeling?"

"Fine. I am feeling like a man. I envy you, senor."

"Don't," Bolan growled. "You have life where it's all at, amigo. Place of your own, a decent life, a good woman to share it with, a kid coming to give it all meaning. What is there left to envy?"

"You are right.''

Bolan fell to studying the map. He shoved it toward Juan and tapped a spot with his finger. "Tell the captain to put me in there at precisely midnight."

The boy finished his rum-coffee and moved toward the door.

Bolan said, "Juan… I'm damn proud of you."

This drew a flashing smile. "You rest," Juan told him. "I will take the watch on deck until midnight."

"Thanks. To tell the truth, I'm about out of my head. I can't remember the last time I slept."

"Sleep now, Senor Magnifico. I have never myself felt more awake in all of my life."

The kid went out, and Bolan tumbled onto a bunk.

Yeah.

Sleep now.

Kill later.

It was not over yet.

Jack Grimaldi eased the company car into Glass Bay and pulled up behind the office. The blackened hulk of the main house stood grimly deserted but both bungalows were blazing with light and some sort of noise contest seemed to be going on between the two. The boys had come back with booze and women, and quite a party was underway. The amplified throbbing of recorded rock was blasting from both camps above the hubbub of male voices and the gay shrieks of hired women.

As Grimaldi stepped out of the car a nude cutie burst from a doorway above the carport and ran laughing down the stairs with a guy in jockey shorts chasing close behind. They ran past him without a glance, headed toward the beach.

It was a celebration. A wake for Bolan, Grimaldi guessed.

He avoided the bungalows and went to the grassy area behind the carports. Air Two sat there gleaming in the moonlight, deserted and forlorn with her work all done. The pilot from San Juan was no doubt partying it up with the hardmen, celebrating a death which all Mafiosi been working toward.

Grimaldi slid inside and checked the fuel situation.

It was terrible.

He returned to the carport and found a five-gallon can, took it to the gas pump, and began the laborious process of refueling the copter.

Grimaldi did not feel like partying.

Nor did he feel like hanging around Glass Bay any longer than was absolutely necessary.

It was a thirty minute job of pumping, lugging, and filling — over and over again — and the party had lost no steam at all during that period.

He made an extra trip, for future contingencies, and secured the five-gallon spare inside the cabin of the helicopter.

Grimaldi was getting the hell out of Puerto Rico, as fast as those rotors would carry him.

It had been a hell of a day, though, and he needed one final item for the road. He entered the end bungalow through the kitchen door, shoved a clinched half-nude couple out of the way, and snared a bottle of bourbon from the open case on the table.

The guy was a total stranger and the girl was drunk. She mumbled something like "For favor"and Grimaldi muttered, "Yeah, same to you," and went back outside.

The moon was high and Glass Bay was basking in its soft radiance. A paradise, sure. Under somewhat different circumstances, Grimaldi could have really enjoyed the joint. But those sheet-wrapped bodies were still laid out over there. By morning they would be stinking. He shivered and went the other way. Couldn't they at least dump their dead before the orgy?

He went on around to the front and gazed out across the bay as he opened the bottle. Bahia de Vidria, the bay of glass. Yeah, broken glass, shattered, and nobody would ever put the pieces back together again. Not for Jack Grimaldi, that was for sure.

He heard a boat chugging along somewhere in the distance, and he wondered how ordinary people made the pieces of their lives fit, how they used their mundane lives, how they bridged the awful gulfs between hope and despair, dreams and disillusionment, challenge and failure.

Jack Grimaldi's life had been failing steadily since birth.

Life itself was one big schtick.

But Grimaldi was not yet quite ready to write it all off. He had not even reached the midpoint yet… he hoped. In a few more months he'd be thirty. Maybe. Twice this day he had stared into death, and twice he had walked away from that unsettling view. It was enough to make a guy think.

He took a deep pull from the bottle, choked, wiped the spillage away, and looked at his watch. Ten minutes past midnight.

Yeah, it had been a hell of a day.

He stared back around the bumed-out hulk and walked straight into the big mean bastard in the black suit.

He was wearing one of those tight, mirthless smiles, and he said, "Enjoying the party, Jack?"

Goodbye, thirtieth birthday. So the son of a bitch had made it through, after all.

Grimaldi sighed and said, "Okay, where do you want to go this time?"

The guy chuckled — like a skeleton clearing its throat. "You got some wings?"

"Sure." He uncorked the bottle and handed it over. "The windmill type. Gassed up and ready to fart. What the hell are you doing here, Bolan?"

The guy refused the bottle. "Looking for wings," he said. The bastard didn't waste many words. "And a pilot."

"You don't want to hang around and crash your own party?"

"That's my party?"

"Sure. I guess I never got around to correcting an erroneous impression. But let's not tell them now," he added hastily. "I figure let 'em live a little. You know? Or no, I guess you wouldn't know. I, uh, I caught your fireworks at Puerta Vista."

The guy had him by the arm and they were walking quietly toward the rear, skirting close beside the end bungalow. He said, "Yeah?"

"Yeah. But I, uh… I guess I jumped to a hasty conclusion. Well, I guess the curtain was for Lavagni, huh?"

"Buried at sea," the guy said.

"Uh huh. It figures better that way. Uh, after you turned me loose I circled back along the waterfront. Sat there on a damn rock just outside of town, and I guess I was thinking about a lot of things. Then I heard the baloom and I saw the flames, and I said, 'Contact, there goes Bolan.' I guess I should have said, 'Ho ho, there's Bolan!' Well anyway, I sat there a little while longer, then I went on into town and found one of the company cars. I hotwired the ignition… and here I am with a lonely bottle at a false wake."

He didn't know why he told the guy all that. He wasn't talking for his life, and this realization came with quite a shock. He didn't give a damn anymore; that was the shocking part. He just didn't give a damn.

They reached the helicopter and they stood there for a moment, the big guy just sort of looking around, then those icy eyes lit on Grimaldi and he said, "I've noticed you don't pack hardware, Jack."

"Never," the pilot replied unemotionally. "My only crime, Bolan, is carting these clowns around. It brings me two grand a month and an unlimited credit card for expenses. The price of a soul, eh? But it beats anything else that turned up after…"

"After what?" the guy asked, as though he was really interested.

"Well… you don't know the routine. I mean, you never really tried the returning serviceman routine. You just went from one war right into another. No employment problems, right?"

"You were at 'Nam?"

"Yeah. Flew everything from single-engine scouts to Huey close supports. Enlisted pilot, later a warrant officer. You know what kind of jobs I got offered when I got home?"

Bolan said, "I can guess."

"Well, a cousin got me this job. And I kissed his shoes for it. But I guess…"

"You guess what?"

"Nothing. Where're you hijacking me to this time?"

A soft hardman staggered across the yard about twenty feet from where they were standing and disappeared around the carport.

The big guy watched him out of sight, then he dug inside his suit and fumbled around with something at his waist and came out with a lot of green. He counted the stuff out, twelve Clevelands, and laid it in Grimaldi's palm.

"No hijack this time," he said gruffly. "I came looking for you specifically, Jack. I want to take you up on that suggestion that we laughed about earlier. I'd like to pay your salary for a day. That's what's left of my war-chest, twelve thou."

Yeah, the guy was too much. Grimaldi mumbled, "What the hell, all you gotta do is point the gun, I'll fly you anywhere."

"Special mission," the guy said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Not the kind you take a guy into with a gun at his head. I need you. Your skill and your guts. I mean, cooperatively. What do you say?"

The fuckin' guy was insane!

"Do I have to handle a gun?"

"Not unless you want to."

"This a kill mission, Bolan?"

"Yeah."

"A biggee?"

"A hell of a biggee."

"Suppose I say no?"

The guy shrugged. "Then the hit is off, I hijack you back to the mainland, we go our separate ways."

"A real biggee."

"A hell of a biggee."

So what the hell. It was the end of schtick.

Grimaldi counted off six of the Clevelands and gave them back to Mr. Death. "Split it down the middle," he said quietly. "And call it a deal"