Save the Children

13

"Get in! Hurry!" a woman's voice urged from inside the Camaro.

Lana Garner had turned up again, just as Bolan had thought she would.

He ran to the driver's side of the car.

"Move over," he rasped.

In the shadows of the alley, he could not see her face but he had the feeling for a second that she was going to protest, then she climbed over the center console, letting him slide in behind the steering wheel.

He slammed the door, dropped the gearshift lever into drive and stomped on the accelerator.

The Camaro catapulted down the alley, picking up speed as Bolan swerved around the dumpsters.

He palmed the wheel into the turn at the end of the alley, shooting into a small gap between cars.

An irate driver honked on the street somewhere behind him.

Glancing at the woman, he saw in the glow from the instrument panel that her face was taut, expressionless.

"How did you know where to find me?"

"I didn't. I wasn't looking for you. I was just there in that hotel and spotted you, then security people started chasing you. I went back to my car and cruised around the hotel, looking for you."

He grinned at her spunk.

"That's easy. Senator Dutton. Nice to see you again, Lana."

"Nice to see you, too. You saved my hide earlier tonight. I'm glad I could return the favor."

Traffic had thinned out somewhat while Bolan was in the hotel, but the taxicabs changing lanes erratically and pedestrians everywhere made clear navigating impossible.

He steered the Camaro east, onto the Eisenhower Expressway, for a place to drive aimlessly for a while and talk.

"It's time to level with me, Lana. Just who are you and what's your connection with Dutton and all the rest of this? I know your name and that you plant homing devices in senators' cars. I do know your real name, don't I?"

The young woman took a deep breath.

"And I know yours, Mack Bolan. Your fame precedes you. When you were in the hotel tonight, did you see a man named Wallace, Floyd Wallace?"

Bolan nodded.

"I saw him. He was sitting at the podium with Dutton. Is he mixed up in this?"

On the face of it the possibility seemed farfetched to Bolan. He remembered the mild-looking Wallace.

"He's involved somehow," Lana said slowly, staring straight ahead through the windshield at the city lights as she spoke. "I'm just not sure Wallace ties in with the rest of it... or even what the rest of it is, if you want to know the whole truth."

"I want to know nothing but," Bolan told her.

"Until four months ago, I worked for Floyd Wallace," said Lana Garner. "I was the manager of one of his day-care centers."

Bolan's eyes narrowed. He rolled down his window several inches, letting the cold night air blow into the car. It felt good.

"What happened four months ago?"

She hesitated before answering.

"Three of the children at the center... disappeared," she finally went on. "It was terrible, having to face those heartbroken parents and tell them that their kids were just... gone."

"Wait a minute," he cut in. "What happened, exactly?"

She seemed to be staring into the past, upon that day again, as she spoke.

"The children were having their naps. I was watching them. We were a little shorthanded then, so I was the only one there. The phone in the office rang. I went to answer it. It was Mr. Wallace, and when I told him I was by myself, he told me to go back and watch the kids, that he would call again later. I went back into the other room, where the children were, and... and three of them were gone. Two little boys and a little girl."

Her voice broke, racked with emotion.

"It was horrible. I woke up the other children, but of course they didn't know anything. Whoever it was who came in there and got those kids, they knew what they were doing. And the worst part is I'm sure that wasn't the first time. I'm positive they'd done it before I came there!"

A coldness grew inside Bolan that had nothing to do with the icy night.

"What happened then?"

"I called the police, but then... they seemed to think that I had something to do with it.

"Mr. Wallace showed up and he was suspicious, too. He pretended to be sympathetic but he said that under the circumstances he'd have to let me go. He said he couldn't keep me on or all the other parents would pull their children out of the center. He was probably right about that. There was news coverage of the disappearances and my picture was on TV and in the papers."

She began to cry quietly to herself.

Bolan could not afford himself the luxury of comforting her, not when there were demons driving him and precious time lost by the second.

"What makes you think that other kids have disappeared from Wallace's facilities, besides the professionalism of that one job?"

Lana brushed her eyes with a finger.

"You've got to understand, I couldn't just leave things like they were. I've been working in the child-care field for years. The police lost interest in me soon enough, and that was virtually the end of it. So when I saw that the authorities weren't going to do anything, I started investigating on my own."

Bolan kept quiet, knowing it would be better to let her work her way through the story on her own.

"I started with Mr. Wallace. I don't know why exactly, but I just felt that something was wrong with his operation.

"I went down to the Hall of Records and started trying to trace the deeds on his properties. I found out that Mr. Wallace doesn't really own them."

Bolan raised an eyebrow. "Who does?"

"Some corporation I'd never heard of. A post office box operation called Tri-State, Inc. I did some more digging and came up with some interesting information on them. The corporation has more than a few underworld connections. It's just a front, in my opinion, for the Mafia.

"This corporation owns the buildings where Wallace operates. The day-care centers, the orphanage, everything. What does that tell you?"

"Nothing good," Bolan growled.

The dark-haired woman nodded emphatic agreement.

"That's not all. Tri-State, Inc. also happens to own the New Age Center and several other profitable business concerns. The principal stockholder and chairman of the board is none other than David Parelli.

"That's how I got interested in Senator Dutton. He's on the board of directors of the New Age Center."

"You were on the right scent," Bolan told her. "Dutton is in Parelli's pocket. Parelli's got an ironclad hold on him."

And not only that, Bolan thought, but Dutton had lied to him about simply being a member of the health club. Dutton was in this whole thing a lot deeper than he claimed to be. Maybe giving the guy a break had been a mistake...

"I won't ask what that hold is," Lana said. "I don't think I want to know. To get back to Wallace, once I uncovered all of this, I went after something even more concrete."

"You live dangerously," Bolan noted.

"I live honorably," she countered. "After tonight, I know how careful I'll have to be."

"What about Wallace?" he pressed.

"His main office is at the orphanage," she went on. "I used to work there sometimes, filling in when somebody was sick or on vacation. When Mr. Wallace fired me, he forgot to get the key to that office and the one to the side door back from me."

"You went right into his office?"

"Maybe it was dangerous. I was mad, I was out of a job and there were three kids missing.

"Anyway, I ended up walking out of there with an armload of files, enough to tell me what was really going on. Up to a point, anyway. There were all these kids, dozens of them, unaccounted for. It was like they were just systematically dropping off the face of the earth!"

Bolan felt fear gnawing at his gut.

Not fear for himself.

Fear that he stumbled onto the most repulsive form yet of Cannibal Man in all his savagery.

"Could there be any other explanation?" he asked.

"I... don't know. My instinct says no. Those kids are being kidnapped and Wallace is part of the scheme. He knew I was at the day-care center by myself. He called to get me out of the room where the children were sleeping, out of the way. That's why I said the kidnappers had done it before; they've been working with Wallace."

"It all hangs together," he said softly, half to himself. "I wish it didn't, but it does. Who's going to report orphans missing? It would have to be a big operation, then they got cocky and got you suckered into it. What did you do when you put it all together? Whey didn't you go to the police?"

She emitted an unladylike snort.

"You saw Wallace at that banquet tonight. I'd be the sour grapes out to smear the good-hearted employer who had to let her go, and even if the police did follow through, Wallace would have enough connections to know what was coming and doctor the records, and I'd be left there looking like a bigger fool than before.

"At the first sign of an investigation he could play enough tricks with his computers to cover up anything, even something this bad. Phony adoptions, you name it. He'd find some way."

"So you went after Dutton, trying for another angle of attack."

"It seemed to be the only thing I could do. I knew if I could find some weak point somewhere in the puzzle, I'd have a good chance to put together something the police could really use, maybe even pressure the senator into helping me."

Bolan shook his head.

"He's been pressured by experts. You wouldn't have gotten anything but dead. You've been playing out of your league, Lana."

She turned to him.

"But I've been doing all right, haven't I?"

He grinned in spite of himself.

"Yeah, lady, you've been doing all right. But no further."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean from here on out, I do it alone."

"Do it? "she echoed.

"Put it together and take it apart," he growled. "You've helped me a lot, Lana. I came into this wanting to take out Parelli, you came into it wanting to get something on Wallace, and we connected at Dutton.

"A Mob boss, a dirty politician and a scumbag you think is dealing wholesale in missing children. That group needs to be taught a few lessons."

"I can help you."

"You won't help me by getting killed. I've lost too many people I cared about because they wanted to help me. I don't want that to happen to you."

"It's my fight too, goddammit," she snapped angrily. "I knew how dangerous this was when I started. I didn't ask for this, but when I saw what I had and that the police weren't capable of doing anything about it, I couldn't put it down and you're not going to take the fight from me."

Bolan believed what she said because in her voice he heard fragments of his determination and beliefs.

He made his decision, knowing he could very well regret it.

"All right, up to a point, you're on," he told her. "Until the shooting starts, or until I think it's about to start. Then you do as I say, Lana. You have to promise me this."

"Is that so?"

"That's so. Take it or leave it. Decide now."

She saw that he wasn't joking.

"I'll take it," she said.

For a few moments Bolan remained silent, thinking.

His thoughts raced to the children whose faces he had never seen, who were in trouble, who had been torn away from those who cared for them.

And now some demons out of hell were masquerading as human beings and ripping that security and love away.

Bolan knew now with a cold certainty that he had at last identified the undercurrent of this Chicago setup that had been bugging him since this strange night began.

Not the dirty senator.

Not vague talk of a Mafia Godmother running the show.

Not even the elusive target of Mr. David Parelli, himself.

Every one of those angles combined to make this an unusually touchy operation for a man on the run from all sides, but here at last was the thread that tied all those diverse elements into one tight package marked for termination.

The warrior shook his head sadly.

Stealing children, the true innocents of the earth.

But there would be a reckoning.

And more hellfire and killing to back it up.

Tonight.