Save the Children

17

Running gun battles on the streets and on the river, dead bodies all over the city, Detective Harry Laymon thought, any fool could tell that Bolan was back in town.

Laymon's throat felt dry. More coffee, that was what he needed.

As he and Griff walked back into the squad room set up for the Org Crime unit, he headed directly for the coffee maker.

Griff went to his desk and picked up the phone.

Laymon's eyes narrowed as he watched his partner dial.

The same number as before? he wondered. Something was eating at his partner, and whatever it was, it was starting to bug Laymon full-time, too.

Just what the hell was Griff up to? Laymon wondered one more time. The guy had been on the phone all night and still Laymon did not have a clue as to what it was about, which was unusual since he and Griff had formed something of an off-duty friendship as well, over the years that they had worked together.

They had just returned from the orphanage, where they had been dispatched to investigate the violence there.

They had found a lot of scared children and adults and dead bodies.

Bolan, for sure.

The description given to them by the wounded intern matched.

"He was like a stalking giant," the intern had said, even the pain not enough to mask the awe in his voice. "So it was Bolan, huh? I never believed one man could do all the things they say he's done. Now I believe!"

Griff had not taken an active role in the visit to the orphanage, Laymon remembered, but instead had stood around chewing on his dumb stomach tablets, his face expressionless, as if his mind was distracted by something else entirely. He had been the same on the drive back to headquarters.

Laymon sipped the strong coffee. He decided he could not put up with this any longer.

It was time for a showdown.

He swallowed the rest of the cup's contents, tossed the Styrofoam container into a wastebasket and stalked over to Griff's desk.

Griff hung up the phone as Laymon approached.

This did not surprise Laymon. Griff didn't want him to know whom he was talking to. Laymon's anger grew.

He leaned over Griff's desk and rested his palms on the cluttered surface.

"I think it's time we had a talk, old buddy."

Griff looked up.

"About what?"

"Come on, Les. Something's tearing you apart and I, goddammit, want to know what it is."

Griff shook his head.

"You're all wrong..."

"Don't give me that. You either tell me what's going on in that head of yours, partner, or we're taking a walk down to IAD to find out the hard way!"

That got through.

Griff, his face a taut mask, glared at Laymon.

"You think I've gone bad, is that it? You think I'm dirty?"

"I don't want to think that, Griff," Laymon countered quickly. "You've just been acting so damn weird lately, making these mysterious phone calls, and it's like you're not quite there half the time when I'm talking to you."

"You're supposed to trust your partner," said Griff, the sharpness of accusation and budding resentment in his voice.

"I want to trust you, Les. You're just making it so damn difficult, what with the Bolan thing going down and..."

Griff interrupted by putting his palms on the desk to push himself to his feet, his face only inches from Laymon's.

"It just so happens that I am ready to let you in on it, Harry. Or at least I was until you went all screwy on me."

"Me, screwy? What about you?"

"I had good reason for everything I've been doing. I can explain it."

"So let's hear it. I'm all ears."

Some of the other cops in the squad room were starting to look curiously at the obvious confrontation taking place between the two partners.

Laymon and Griff both pulled back, appearing to relax somewhat, but kept their voices pitched low enough so that no one else in the busy squad room could overhear them.

"You still think I'm on the take, don't you?" Griff grunted. "You jump to too many conclusions, old buddy. Come with me."

"Where to?"

"To the captain's office."

Laymon stared.

"The captain's office?"

"That's right. I've got something to tell him."

Griff turned and stalked away, heading toward the closed door of an office on the other side of the squad room.

Laymon watched him for a moment, then hurried to catch up, more curious than ever, wishing he knew what the hell was going on and knowing he was about to find out.

Griff was knocking on the frosted glass door.

A gruff voice called to them to come in.

Griff cast another look at Laymon, then turned the doorknob and strode into the office.

Laymon followed him.

The harried-looking captain looked up from a desk covered with paper. He frowned, which made him resemble a basset hound.

"What do you guys want? It better be good and it better be Bolan. The commish just finished chewing my ass, again."

"It's Bolan," Griff promised, "and it's the ugliest damn story you ever heard..."

David Parelli stood at the window of the trucking company office, staring into the night.

"That's not very smart, David," his mother admonished mildly from the desk where she sat. "You never know who's going to be lurking out there."

Parelli did not step away from the window.

The brittle cold area outside looked like any other such suburban shipping business, closed at this hour. Tractor trailer trucks and loading equipment were parked here and there in the dim illumination that made more shadows than light, but there was no trace of movement.

"You mean Bolan," Parelli said flatly.

"That's exactly what I mean," Denise said. "He could be out there with a rifle right now, the sights trained on your head. I didn't take so much time and trouble raising you that I want to see your brains splattered all over the wall, David."

Parelli grimaced.

"I don't remember you taking so much time and trouble raising me."

She glared at him and sighed wearily.

The office was uncomfortably cold, she thought. She was glad this would be the last shipment of children for a while. It was a profitable sideline, and she liked to take a personal hand in the running of this operation, as she did in all family business, but the Bolan presence in Chicago had changed everything.

They were alone at the moment, the night man of the truck yard having gone outside to supervise the hooking up of a tractor rig to a long trailer.

A trailer that would soon be loaded with human beings.

For the moment, the living cargo was under guard in the spacious warehouse next to the office building.

There were more guards, around the perimeter of the complex, patrolling barbed wire fence.

She glanced at her watch.

11:45.

They were running right on schedule. The brats would be on their way no later than midnight.

"I'll be glad when this night is over," she heard herself saying to her son's back.

He turned to face her.

"I don't know why. Bolan will still be around."

She picked up her purse and took a cigarette from a solid silver case. She waited pointedly, the cigarette poised in her fingers, for David to come over and light it for her.

"He won't have anything against us on this," she said. "You and I are going to keep a very low profile for a while, David. Bolan never stays in one place for very long. He'll be gone soon."

"Yeah, well, don't forget, Bolan came to town to get me. We've got this town wired, the cops are after him, but... well, I just hope you're right, Ma. We've taken all the precautions possible."

"Wallace is dead, Owens is dead." There was no regret in her voice as she mentioned the porn director's name, "and Dutton knows that he will be, too, if he doesn't keep his mouth shut and keep on going along with us, just like the others we've put in our pocket in Washington."

Parelli lit his mother's cigarette, then one of his own, blowing smoke toward the tiled ceiling.

"We can handle Bolan because we've got the leverage."

"The Garner bitch," Denise agreed. "Yes, I think that could make Bolan see things our way and leave us alone. We'll see, won't we? So far, so good."

The office door swung open and a heavy-jowled man in a baseball cap poked his head inside.

"The truck's ready to go, Mr. Parelli."

"Right," David Parelli snapped. "About goddamn time, too."

"Anything else I can do for you, sir?"

"No, just see that everything gets under way as soon as possible."

The foreman nodded, touched the bill of his cap and left.

Denise wondered if they should have him killed, too.

The man wasn't one of their soldiers; most of the time he was just a legitimate employee of a legitimate business. He did know, though, that the owners of this business sometimes used it for other purposes... purposes that were not so legitimate.

Like tonight.

It was something to think about.

She stood up. She wore an expensive dark blue dress that clung softly to her sleek figure, topped by a fur jacket. Jewelry glittered on her fingers.

She pulled on a pair of white gloves.

"Let's go say farewell to the children, David. I want to talk to Miss Garner again, too."

"She's not going to tell you anything about Bolan," her son said.

Denise Parelli smiled.

"Perhaps she will."

He held the door open for his mother and they left the office, crossing the asphalt area between the office and the warehouse, walking quickly because of the cold, raw wind cutting across the complex.

One of the Parelli soldiers was waiting at the door of the warehouse, Uzi in hand. He opened the door and stepped back with a deferential nod.

Denise swept through first, David right behind her. As the soldier closed the door behind them, Denise paused to let her son take the lead. Here among the men, she had to allow her son at least the pretense of leadership, she reminded herself.

David stalked over to the hardguy in charge of the detail guarding the kids.

"Everything all right in here?" Parelli snapped.

"Yes, sir, no trouble," the head cock replied. He gestured casually with the barrel of the shotgun he held cradled in his arm. "This bunch won't give us no trouble."

About twenty-five small children were huddled in a group along one wall, appearing incapable of giving anyone any trouble. They looked cold, miserable, scared and wholly submissive.

All of them were under ten, most of them about eight or nine years old. They were dressed warmly enough for the chilly warehouse; a sickly child would bring less in the markets they were intended for.

None of them had been abused other than a little slapping around.

A haunted look in their eyes, a look of hopelessness and despair, indicated that they had already given up.

Good, Denise thought. Her customers did not want kids who were strong-willed, who would give trouble when told by adults to do things. Her customers, and their customers, wanted kids who would obey, no matter what the orders were.

"Gus says the truck is ready." David nodded to the hardguy with the shotgun. "I'll tell him to have it back up to the loading dock."

"Whatever you say, Mr. P."

There were a half dozen or so soldiers in the warehouse.

Denise could feel them watching her.

No one questioned her right to be there, but she knew they had to sometimes wonder why David always brought his mother along with him.

There was probably perverse gossip of all sorts among the men about her relationship with her son, she knew.

Let them talk.

After all, when you came right down to it, the gun carriers, the soldiers, were nothing more than cannon fodder...

Bolan fodder was more like it, she told herself... and their opinions and idle speculation were worth less than nothing.

"Where's the woman?" Parelli snarled at the man with the shotgun. "I want to talk to her."

The guy jerked his head toward a small door in the wall opposite where he had lined up the children.

"We've got her tied up in the can."

"Get her out here."

"Right away, Mr. Parelli."

A moment later, one of the soldiers led Lana Garner from the small, smelly rest room.

Holding her right arm so tightly that she winced in pain, the hood led her over to where Denise Parelli and her son stood waiting.

Lana had been treated more roughly than the children, Denise could see at a glance. Her blouse was torn in several places, her right cheek bruised. A small trickle of dried blood encrusted the corner of her mouth.

She stared defiantly at the Parellis.

"I don't care what you do to me, I won't tell you a thing!" she blazed at them.

Denise smiled.

"My dear, what could you possibly know that would be of interest to us? There's only one reason you're still alive and it really has nothing to do with you."

Lana shook her head, more angry than afraid as she stared at the Parellis while the hood maintained his iron grip on her arm.

"You're crazy if you think holding me will stop Mack Bolan. He's going to find you and he's going to kill you!"

David slapped her brutally with an open hand across the mouth, spinning her around. The blow drove her to one knee. She would have fallen to the cement floor if the hardman had not yanked her back to her feet.

"You shut up about Bolan, bitch. That bastard's a dead man if he gets near this place. And there isn't much chance of that, is there? He doesn't have a clue where we are, now does he?"

She opened her mouth to shoot back a hot retort, then paused abruptly, grinning at him savagely.

"Oh, no you don't. You're not going to trick me like that! You just want to find out how much Bolan does know about you. You want to know if he's located this place. Well, you can just wait and find out, you slimebag!"

Denise stepped close to Lana until their faces were only inches apart. Denise lifted her gloved hand and softly stroked the fingertips along Lana's bruised cheek.

"You shouldn't call David names like that, dear," she said softly. "I am his mother, after all."

"I'm sorry." Lana closed her eyes. "I was wrong."

"That's more like it," Denise murmured sweetly.

Lana spit on the floor between Denise Parelli's feet. "I should have said that he's a son of a bitch!"

Denise sighed.

"My dear, my dear. I'm afraid you leave us no choice but to teach you some manners."

"The hard way," David chimed in.

His smile said he was savoring the experience. He nodded to a hood standing next to Lana.

The nearby soldier stepped up and slammed the butt of his shotgun into the small of Lana's back.

She cried out and fell to both knees, scraping them on the rough concrete when the man holding her released his grip.

Against the wall, the children saw this and began whimpering, a strange, eerie sound in the spacious warehouse, as if they knew that the brutalized young woman was the closest thing they had to a friend in this horrible nightmare.

David lifted his hand to the soldier who had struck Lana.

"No more." He looked down at the woman sprawled before him and licked his lips in anticipation. "Not yet, anyway. Business first."

He stepped over to Lana, reached down, cupped her chin in his hand. He jerked her head up so that she had to look at him.

"Don't touch me, slimebag," she snarled vehemently.

"When this is over," he told her with a reptilian smile, "we won't need you for anything. Except for maybe one thing... until you die. That oughta be lots of fun. For me, and for the boys."

Before she could respond, there was the rumble of a truck's engine outside and the loading dock door began to screech upward.

The big trailer rig had been backed up to the warehouse loading dock, its rear doors wide open.

The foreman walked in from the loading dock.

"We're ready to load, Mr. Parelli."

David lost interest in the woman sprawled before him. He looked at his mother and saw the barely perceptible nod. "Load 'em up and move 'em out." He looked back at Lana with a leer. "Then we fix you."