Caribbean Kill

Chapter Three Home and the dead

A living shadow quietly watched as the two Mafiosihurried from the presence of sudden death, and a mental mug-file review clicked to a decisive halt against the name of Quick Tony Lavagni.

Bolan knew, now, the identity of his chief opponent at Glass Bay, and the revelation gave no cause for a celebration. The crafty old Washington triggerman had built an impressive box for the Executioner on the French Riviera, and it had been as much luck as anything that had seen Bolan out of that trap. Lavagni was nobody's damn fool. He operated like a meat-grinder with radar control, quietly and efficiently bringing in all the corners of a battleground and wrapping them around a guy.

At least, though, Bolan had a fair idea of what to expect now, and he could respond accordingly.

Lavagni would be bringing his boats in to stand just offshore, appropriately spaced along the beach. He would send flankers around to cover the open ground at all sides of the small jungle area. Then he would mount a massive frontal movement, sieving in from the bay, and then… well, it would be the meat-grinder routine once again.

In France there had been a friendly black face in the enemy camp and the soft hand of providence in the person of a dazzling French movie actress to spell the difference for Bolan. Even in Vietnam there had always been the hope of making it back into home territory, or of making contact with a friendly force.

Where was home territory now? And where in all the world was a friendly force?

Bolan knew better than to even ask the question. "Home" was wherever he could find space to breathe. "Friendly forces" were the ones whom he could make dead.

So at least he knew where he stood. He was in the center of Lavagni's meat-grinder, somewhere between homeand the dead. The Thompson submachine gun which he had appropriated from his latest "friend" would make little difference in any pitched battle with the forces at Glass Bay. There could be but one final result. Someone would walk away with Bolan's head in a sack.

The Executioner's combat-conditioned mind began quickly searching for a higher rationale to the situation. First, what was the enemy thinking?

They were thinking, probably, that Bolan had sniffed the trap at the last minute, and was intent only upon escape. They had him outnumbered, with the odds at about 100 to 1, and with one of their best field marshals leading the chase. And the field of play was very limited. They could afford to play the meat-grinder game, continually closing the sides of the box until they had him completely contained.

Secondly, what about Lavagni himself? Bolan knew enough about syndicate operations to be almost certain that Quick Tony was not the resident triggerman at Glass Bay. He had been hurried in from the states to arrange the reception and… yes, he would have brought his own force with him. Which meant a hasty recruiting job, probably among free-lance rodmen swept up from the street and jails of some American city.

Uh huh, so here was that larger rationale. The mob was expecting Bolan to spend his blood in an isolated jungle of America's back yard, against a ragtag army of mercenaries, while their prized little playground carousel continued merrily and un-threatened along its profitable course.

That, Bolan decided, was not the name of his game. He had come south to harass the syndicate and end their Caribbean operation if he could. If he had wanted to simply confront them and quickly spend his blood, he could have done so at any point along that escape route from Vegas.

The problem now, the immediate objective for Bolan, was to break out of that trap at Glass Bay. And to do so in such a way as to advance him toward the long range objective, the busting of the Caribbean Carousel — the kill.

Okay. Lavagni would be moving in his screen any moment now. It was time for a bit of psychological warfare… something to jar the enemy, to slow them, to take away their initiative.

Bolan slung the Thompson across his chest and affixed the silencer to his Beretta Belle.

Right.

It was time to take the offensive.

Field Marshal Lavagni had his troops in place, and he was impatiently awaiting word that the plug crews were on station. A crude, hand-drawn map of the bay area lay on the sand in front of him, and this he was studying intently.

"How long d'you figure it'd take a guy on foot to cross this patch of jungle, Charlie?" he asked his chief gunner.

Dragone shrugged his shoulders. "Depend on the guy, I guess. It's probably slow going in there, though."

"Probably take me half a day," Lavagni admitted. "A guy who knew his way around, though…"

"You figure he's making for the back side?"

"Yeh. That's what I'd do." The Mafia boss tapped the map with a thick finger. "I'd head straight for this sugar farm here. I'd buy or steal me some wheels, and I'd high-tail it for San Juan."

"That's what he's doing," Dragone agreed. "He needs to make some connections. I'd say San Juan, yeah." The crewchief scratched absently at his forehead. "One thing though, Tony. I doubt if this boy know where the hell he really is. I mean, without a map…"

"He come in by plane, remember," Lavagni said, sighing. "Don't worry, this boy always knows where he's at. Did you tell Vince what I told you?"

"Yeh. I told him you want a complete rundown on all the civilians living in the area. He's sending a boy over, a native I guess, to talk to you. Soon as he can find him. Things are pretty lore up over there, Tony."

"They got things about under control?"

"Yeh, pretty much. But it's a mess. What the fire didn't get, the water did."

"Tell Latigo to send a couple of boys to the farm, this sugar farm here."

"Okay."

"Goodboys."

"Sure, Tony."

"How about those whirly birds?"

"Taken care of. Grimaldi says it'll take about an hour."

"An hour from when?" Lavagni wanted to know.

"Well… about fifty-five minutes from right now." Dragone heaved to his feet and motioned to a man in bathing trunks who was standing just down-range. "Bring that radio, Kelly," he growled.

The man hurried over with a small transistorized two-way radio and thrust it toward the chief gunner.

"Lavagni was saying, "Tell Latigo…" and Dragone was reaching for the radio when suddenly it took flight, propelled with a screech from Kelly's hand by a sizzling lump of hot metal.

Another sizzler came in a heartbeat ahead of any possible reaction, this one squarely between the startled Kelly's eyes, and the man in the swimsuit toppled over and slid toward the water without a sound.

The other two found themselves lying shoulder to shoulder on the sand, their weapons up and searching for a target.

"Where'd it come from?" Lavagni puffed.

"It just came," the crewchief replied in a taut voice. "He got Kelly."

"Fuck Kelly, where's that sonuvabitch at!"

"I don't see a goddam thing, Tony. I didn't even hear nothing."

"Bastard! He's using his silencer."

Silencer or not, the line of gun soldiers flanking the two men had become aware of the drama at their center, and all were sprawled in the sand and anxiously watching for some sign of the enemy.

Dragone said, "I guess he ain't making for no sugar farm, Tony."

"He shot up the damn radio, didn't he."

"Yeh."

Lavagni was building toward a huge rage. "Dammit, we just can't lay here. Listen. Now listen close! Work your way along your side of the line, but dammit keep yourself down! Tell your boys we move on my signal. I'll take this side and clue everybody in on the action. When I get to the far end I'll fire two shots. That's the signal to move it. Tell each boy this, he's to stay in sight of the man next to him, I mean looldn' toward the center. That's important, so tell 'em. Dammit!"

Bolan's angle of vision onto the beach had given him a limited choice of targets. It had been like looking through a twenty-yard length of two-foot diameter pipeline and seeing clearly only those objects which happened to pass by the far end. Another foot or two to the right and he could as easily have taken out Lavagni himself, instead of settling for an anonymous soldier and a radio. Just the same, the message had been sent and received, and this had been the primary consideration.

He wanted those guys to get the taste of sand in their mouths and a fresh vision of death in their consciousness. And he'd wanted them to eat sand long enough to allow him a chance to advance to the next firing line.

That objective had been accomplished also, and now he was lying at the very edge of the forest, in a prone firing position and with good cover behind the rotting remains of a fallen tree. The terrain dropped away sharply just beyond that point, with the beach sloping abruptly to meet the water. From his ground-level point of view, only the glassy surface of the bay lay directly ahead of him. Off to either flank, however, he had an excellent view of the activities underway on the beach itself.

To his right he saw Lavagni emerge from the blind spot, moving quickly in a low scamper along a line of rifle-toting gunners. The guys were flaked out there like a landing party in an amphibious assault, awaiting the signal to proceed inland. Then the other guy, obviously Lavagni's good right arm, appeared on the other flank in a similar movement.

Bolan precisely understood what they were doing.

He final-checked the Thompson and made a quick calculation of the firing angle which would be immediately available to him. He decided to set his limits at thirty degrees of horizon, then fed this into his observations of the enemy line.

They were spaced at ten or twelve feet. He would begin at dead center, and immediately sweep five degrees to either side. This should bring down the four or five closest threats.

His right flank was the most exposed, and the most vulnerable to an effective return-fire from the more distant points. So his second pattern would be sweeping out to fifteen degrees right, to at least minimize the retort from that angle. Then, if everything was on the numbers, he'd try to sweep some away from the left.

That was the battle plan. The entire fire mission should last no more than a few seconds. It had to be quick and brutal and over with, before the enemy fully realized that it was happening. If properly executed, the play would mean, in actual numbers of those engaged, reducing the odds of the firefight to about 10 to 1 at the very worst. With a good automatic weapon, jungle cover, and the element of initiative in his favor, Bolan would ride those odds any time.

He watched Lavagni reach the far end of the line, saw the revolver lifting into the air, and heard the double report signaling the game to commence.

And then the line was up and running in a ragged advance across the white sands. Bolan's impression was of about twenty men to each flank, plus two rising up from the blind spot.

He spotted them three strides into the soft stuff, then the heavy chopper began its guttural doomsday report. The two guys directly ahead were accorded the initial burst, each receiving a closely packed wreath of .45 caliber expanders in the chest. They went over backwards and out of view as the chopper swung on and the horrible sounds of automated death swept across the sands of paradise.

Bolan executed the fire mission to its planned parameters, no more and no less, and it was all over in a matter of seconds. Then he withdrew, back into the bosom of his home — the jungle, and left paradise to the company of the friendly dead.

Fire Mission number three was next on tap.

Lavagni and Dragone met at the center and reformed their line, under the cover of trees — minus eight gunners who had not made it that far.

"What do you figure the guy thinks he's doing, Tony?" Dragone asked.

Lavagni was perspiring heavily from a combination of over-exertion in the tropical heat and strained emotions. "I don't know, Charlie," he replied disgustedly. "He's a hard case, that guy. If I was him, I'd have been halfway out of this place by now."

"Maybe he didn't get away clean. From the plane, I mean. Maybe he ain't ableto travel too well."

"It's something to think about," Lavagni admitted. "Anyway it don't matter. Look, I know what I'm doing, Charlie. Don't worry, the guy will run out of bullets before we run out of bodies."

"Don't let the boys hear you talking like that," Dragone cautioned in a hushed voice. "They're worried enough as it is."

Lavagni was about to make a heated comment to that when the chatter of the Thompson again erupted, this time from far along the line.

"Contact," Lavagni growled. Let's go."

Before the two Mafia leaders could close on the new trouble spot, however, that third fire mission had been completed and the Executioner was moving swiftly through the jungle toward number four.

Bolan's battle plan was a basic guerilla maneuver. It was meant to draw the enemy line forward along a course of Bolan's choosing, to widen the spaces between the teeth of the grinder, and to slip through them.

This objective was neatly accomplished during the confused aftermath of the next brief firefight. Bolan stood quietly in the branches of a giant tree and watched the shaken enemy re-form their line beneath him and sweep on northward.

He noted that they had carefully collected the weapons of their fallen dead — and he smiled at this, accurately reading Lavagni's game of numbers. Quick Tony was willing to give the prey a few dead bodies, so long as he continued spending his precious ammo for them.

But that game was ending now.

Bolan was no longer concerned with the acquisition of friendly dead, and he had all the breathing space he'd wanted.

He gave the meat-grinder time to chew up a bit more jungle on the sweep northward, then he slipped to the ground and set off for the next objective.

It was time for a closer look at Glass Bay Resort