Caribbean Kill

Chapter Six The parallels

The Escadrillo kids were obviously very much in love and caught up in the adventure of establishing home and family — as humble as the home and as tentative as the family might be. The girl appeared to be about six months pregnant. She was a pretty little thing with long black hair and glistening eyes — and beginning to move a bit clumsily with her extra burden. Rosalita, the little rose, was the perfect name for her, Bolan decided. She spoke very little English and at first seemed a bit awed with Bolan's presence in her home. He bridged their communications gap with an occasional complimentary phrase from his limited knowledge of her language, and they got a thing going with the eyes which transcended language barriers.

It was a simple meal, but the food was plentiful and tasty — and there were no social tensions in the Escadrillo household by meal's end.

The cabin was a single large room with a sleeping loft. It was spotlessly clean. The furnishings and decorations were minimal and inexpensive, but the end effect was surprisingly attractive and comfortable.

They had inside plumbing and electricity, a few modern gadgets in the kitchen area, a television set that didn't work and an impressive looking multi-band radio that did.

The bathroom was a mere closet with a toilet fixture. A small porcelain-enameled bathtub was plumbed to a corner of the open living area and shielded from public view only by a thin curtain on an overhead rod.

The fancy radio had been a gift from Evita. Juan was a short-wave addict. He kept a log of foreign broadcast stations and their schedules. He was also an informal student of languages and had spent many hours at that radio. Evita had provided him with a collection of language textbooks, which showed evidence of heavy use.

The lads had purchased the five-acre truckfarm via a government-subsidized loan program. Part of Operation Bootstrap, Bolan assumed. They also owned an ancient one-ton flatbed truck which Juan used to haul his produce to the marketplaces of San Juan. He did not plan to be a fanner forever, though. "One day," he told Bolan, "I will work as a linguist — an interpreter. Maybe I will work for the United Nations."

The young couple were aware of Bolan's situation. Evita had explained the problem at the outset; still, they had welcomed him as an honored guest and seemed to be planning on him remaining for an extended stay.

But Bolan was not so certain that they fully understood all the implications of his visit. As the women cleared the table, he caught Juan's eye and stepped outside to light a cigarette.

The youth followed him through the doorway and told him, "It is all right, SenorBolan. You may smoke inside."

"I want to talk to you," Bolan explained. "One guy to another."

"Si. Talk."

"I'm leaving pretty quick. Don't misunderstand. I appreciate your hospitality. But I'm a walking plague, Juan. The hounds of hell are after me. Sooner or later they'll find me. I don't want them to find me here."

The boy fidgeted and stared at the ground. "I will help you," he stated quietly. "Show me how to shoot the big gun."

"No good," Bolan said. "There's more to making war than shooting a gun. When death is staring at you, or when blood starts flowing, you suddenly lose everything that's human. If you're not trained for that sort of thing, you're left with nothing but blind reaction. A trained soldier is programmed into certain instinctive actions. I can't program you, Juan, simply by showing you where the trigger is on a gun."

"I can be of help," the boy insisted.

"Sure you could, but not enough," Bolan told him. "If the headhunters find me here, blood will flow. And not just yours and mine." He jerked his head toward the cabin. "Their's too. So I've got to move on."

"I will help you to move on, then. Unless it is that you do not trust me."

"You know better than that." Bolan looked into the sky and tried to estimate the angle between the sun and the western horizon. "We're pretty close to the equator, aren't we," he murmured.

"Si, about 20 degrees north latitude." The boy smiled and somewhat slyly added, "I do not know this until I study my radio propagation tables. It is a good thing to know, yes?"

Bolan sighed. "Yes, Juan, it's always a good idea to know where you are. And 20 degrees north also happens to be where South Vietnam is at. Isn't that a hell of a parallel." He grimaced and added, "Would you say we have about two hours of daylight left?"

"Yes, this is true."

Bolan was trying to weigh the thing in his mind, but Juan beat him to the decision. "You will stay at least until darkness comes," the Puerto Rican insisted. "And then I will guide you wherever you wish to go."

"That makes sense," Bolan agreed. His attention swiveled northward. "I saw an open pit mine or something a few miles onto the high ground. What are they mining?"

Juan shrugged his shoulders. "I think construction materials. Gravel, maybe. Maybe cement."

"They do any blasting?"

"Blasting? Oh, explosives. Si, sometimes."

"If you were going to charter a boat," Bolan asked, quickly changing the subject, "how much money would you figure you'd need?"

"What kind of a boat, senor?"

"Something capable of inter-island travel, a deep water job with a motor."

"As cheaply as possible?"

"That's the idea. A small fishing boat, maybe."

"You wish to have such a boat?"

"I'm considering the idea, Juan."

"For to escape with?"

"Yeah."

"I will find this boat for you, senorBolan. At the price you say."

Bolan dug inside his shirt and through the sunsuit to the chamois money belt at his waist. His Vegas "winnings" were secure and dry there. He worked several bills free and handed them over.

"Do what you can with this," he said.

"Thousand dollar bills," Juan observed in a hushed voice. They are real?"

"Genuine Grover Clevelands," Bolan assured him. "Liberated from occupied Vegas just last night. Don't worry, it's cool money. Can you spend it without attracting the wrong kind of attention?"

The kid was dazed by the sudden wealth in his hand. "I would spend it at the very gates of hell," he muttered.

"Okay, but be very careful. Get the best deal you can on the boat and keep the change for yourself. How..."

"I could not keep your money, Mack Bolan."

"The hell you could not. Call it a birthday present from me to the kid, if you'd rather."

"But I will need less than half..."

"The better for the kid," Bolan said brusquely. "Shut up about that and listen, to me, Juan. I don't want anything new or touristalooking. Understand? I want something old and decrepit looking, but seaworthy and with enough fuel reserves to at least island-hop."

"Island hop?"

"You know… travel from island to island."

"Oh, yes. A diesel would be better."

"I leave that to you. But find someone you can personally trust — that is, if you have any choice. If not, then do the best you can and leave the rest to me."

"I must be very quiet with this," the boy reflected.

"Very."

"I think I know the right man. Do not worry, senorBolan. I will findthe right man."

Bolan grinned. "I thought you were going to call me Mack."

"Ok, Mack. I will leave right away."

"Take Rosalita."

"Senor..."

"Take Rosalita with you. Stay gone until this mess blows over. Is there some place you can take her for a couple of days?"

"We have family in Puerta Vista," the boy replied. "But…"

"Then do it. Take her there first. Evita, also. Then make the arrangements for the boat."

"Okay yes, and I will then return..."

"No, don't come back here. Chances are I'll be slipping out shortly behind you. Let's go talk to Evita and work out a time and place for a meet. Then you get those women away from here."

That was the plan.

It did not work out quite that way, however.

Evita adamantly refused to even consider the suggestion that she accompany Juan and Rosalita to Puerta Vista. "You will need me to get you through the police lines," she told Bolan. "I stay with you, and that is final."

So it was final. Bolan shrugged his shoulders and walked to the truck with the kids.

Take care," he instructed Juan. His eyes warmed on the girl, and he added, "Guard your treasures, Juan."

The youth solemnly nodded his head and translated the parting words for his wife's understanding. She did the thing with her eyes, and she brushed Bolan's cheek with her lips as he helped her into the vehicle.

"Good luck," she whispered, in perhaps the only Inglisaat her command.

He watched the departing truck until it was out of sight, realizing that friendship was a quality of caring — not a duration of acquaintance. Bolan cared. And he wanted those kids out of his shadow of death. The girl had understood this. She, apparently, had cared also.

He entered the cabin to the sound of water running into the bathtub. A dainty pile of feminine things was on a chair just outside the curtain. He could see the shadowy outline of Evita the Woman bending over the tub and it was quite an outline.

The noise from the plumbing chugged to a halt. The lovely Spanish-Borinquen head appeared over the top of the curtain. "Excusame," she sang out. "Una momento, por favor, while I scrub away Glass Bay."

Bolan snatched up a primed Thompson and made a strategic retreat.

It was time for another recon, anyway. He went to the high ground and prowled about for a few minutes, then he sat down with his back against a tree and lit a cigarette.

How long had it been since he'd slept? Two weeks? Three? It seemed that long. A guy on his last mile of life could pack a lot of living into a single day. Barely more than twenty-four hours earlier, Bolan had risen from a bed in Las Vegas and gone out to test the odds against him on Sudden Death Strip. And what a hell of a time it had been. And now here he was in Puerto Rico, of all damn places. Bone weary, emotionally exhausted, scared out of his Goddamned skull. How many men, he vaguely wondered, had he killed this week? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?

The odds had to catch up sooner or later. Why not sooner? Why not right here, in Puerto Rico, at 20 degrees north latitude. Wasn't that the equatorial parallel which had given birth and first breath to The Executioner? Sure, sure, that was where the monster was bom — at 20 degress north, not at Pittsfield. The Mafia hadn't been the midwife, but Life itself. The Executioner had been born to Mom Nature. Dad Society had knocked her up — and along came Bolan the Bold, a breech birth, a monster in military cloth. Pittsfield merely represented the inevitable coming-of-age for this bastard child nobody wanted. The Executioner.

How many men had he killed this week?

Bolan sighed and got to his feet.

Not enough.

But that was enough self-pity to last for several weeks. He crushed out the cigarette, called out his energy reserves, straightened himself up, and went back down the hill to the cabin.

Evita was standing at the kitchen sink, peering into the only mirror in the place, and brushing out the shiney raven hair.

And she wasn't wearing a goddamned thing.

Bolan set the Thompson against the wall and told her, gruffly, "You can't get away with that."

Her eyes met his in the mirror. She replied, mimicking his gruffness, "Who says I wish to get away with it?"

If that tiny nipped waist was her equatorial zone, then she owned one hell of an interesting…

"20 degrees southlatitude," he mumbled. "That's a swinging parallel, Evita."

She wrinkled her nose at him in the mirror. "Take your bath," she commanded. "You also have the stink of Glass Bay."

The stink he had, Bolan thought, would never yield to mere soap and water. But he smiled and began undressing. Maybe at least he could wash away an accumulated film of self pity.

That 20th parallel south had already taken care of his fatigue problem. He had that certain feeling, though, that it was going to greatly add to it in just a very little while.

How many beautiful women had he loved this week?

Not enough.

And that wasn't self pity talking.

Bolan was still living to the point.