"I wonder what happens to the glove," Bolan mused, "when I chop off the hand."
"A glove without a hand isn't worth much," Grimaldi replied. "It'll find itself another one. That's what I meant. This war of yours is hopeless, man."
"Not until I'm dead," Bolan growled.
"You're already dead," Grimaldi said.
"Just sit there," Bolan told his newest ally, "and watch the dead walk again."
It was, after all, the land of the zombie.
The land of the living dead.
And Mack Bolan felt entirely at home.
The helicopter circled in a high, wide pass at "the mansion in the rocks" while Bolan studied the situation through binoculars. Lights were showing from every visible window, and a considerable number of cars could be seen in the vehicle area. Few other details were available, from this viewpoint.
"What's with this 'attack at dawn' jazz?" Grimaldi groused. "Is it just a tradition? They were always calling us out for dawn strikes in Nam, and I never could figure it out. Why dawn?"
Bolan continued the binocular surveillance as he replied, "Not entirely tradition. There's a psychological moment involved — also a biological one."
"Oh well, that answers my question entirely," the pilot said sarcastically.
"The human animal is a product of the planet," Bolan explained as he continued the scouting. "We've developed certain rhythms, both physically and mentally. Dawn is a sort of neutral area. For the guy that's been up all night, it means an inner letdown, a torpor."
"Really?"
"Yeah. In the jungle sense, it means a relaxation from the perils of the night — that is, for us daylight creatures. That hint of light in the sky means that we've made it through another night, and we can relax now."
"So you relax and attack," Grimaldi commented. "Sounds brilliant."
"No," Bolan said. "You attack the guy who's fallen into a false sense of security."
"You won't find any false security down there, buddy."
"We'll see," Bolan said. "Put her down."
"You really going to trust me to come back and get you?"
"Yep."
The pilot grinned. "Think you're a pretty good judge of flesh, don't you?"
"Have to be," Bolan clipped back. "Put me down."
Grimaldi put him down, hovering just off the coastal rocks less than a hundred yards outside the high walls of the estate.
Bolan opened the hatch, said, "Good luck," and slid to the ground, a drop of about five feet.
Grimaldi leaned over to secure the hatch, murmured, "Yeah, good luck, what's that?" — and sent the little bird into a heeling climb toward the sea.
Bolan watched him disappear into the dusky overhead, then he took a sighting on his goal, checked his weapons, and moved silently toward the wall.
He was in blacksuit, face and hands also darkened, a gliding shadow in a landscape of darkness.
The moon was gone, and the first faint streaks of morning grayness were edging into the eastern horizon.
The timing had been perfect. So far. It had to be. Ten minutes… that was all the time he had.
He scaled the wall and dropped lightly inside the grounds and moved swiftly on without pause, relying now entirely upon Jack Grimaldi's memories of things that had been — three months earlier.
Halfway across the compound Bolan was suddenly hit with the realization that things were almost preciselyas they had been on that earlier occasion of Grimaldi's visit.
The damn joint was overflowing with people.
Visiting type people.
A large-scale meeting of the mob was evidently in progress, and had apparently been going on all night.
Bolan did not know it yet, but the Caribbean Conclave was in session. He would soon recognize a familiar face or two, and he would wonder if he had dropped into an executioner's heaven… or into hell itself.
And he had less than ten minutes to discover which it was to be.
The dawn was on the march.
And so was Death.
Chapter Fifteen
The biggee
The layout almost perfectly coincided with Grimaldi's diagram. Bolan quickly located the telephone cable and took away their communications with the outside world. He then went directly to the security station at the east side of the courtyard.
It was an elaborate little structure made of choice Haitian wood and polished to a dark lustre, about the size of a large American outhouse but with standing room only inside.
A row of closed circuit television monitors were banked along one wall, providing various exterior views of the grounds — including the wall Bolan had just come over.
An athletically built black man wearing a tight-fitting white suit was standing in front of the monitors, his back to Bolan, yawning and stretching and scratching the back of his head.
The Beretta phutted a quiet Parabellum in to help relieve the itch. It scrunched in between the clawing fingers and the guy pitched forward against the monitors and slid into a squat beneath them.
Another sentry came strolling in from a flower bed a few yards away, fiddling with the fly of his trousers. Yeah, even overloaded bladders wanted to let go at dawn. Bolan let go another zap from the Beretta. The guy's head snapped back and he returned to where he'd been, lying in it now and not even knowing it.
Bolan grabbed the first guy by an ankle and dragged him into the flower bed and left him beside the other one.
He'd been a minute and a half inside the grounds. And not a peep from anywhere. No false security, eh?
Next on the agenda was the guard shack at the other side. Bolan crossed over on a soft run, avoiding the lighted areas near the house, and found the shack attended by a single guard who was in the act of pouring coffee from a thermos into a plastic cup.
He waited until the guy set the thermos down, then he reached inside with both hands and lifted the sentry out, one big hand over the mouth and a forearm clamped into his throat.
One violent twist and the guy stopped struggling and went limp. Continuing the initial motion without breaking stride, Bolan carried him on to an automobile in the parking area and tucked the body inside.
A door opened several car-lengths away, another white suite rose into hazy view, and a soft voice called out, "Henri?"
Bolan stood there behind the open car door and waited for the guy to come forward.
The prey came down hesitantly, halted at the front bumper, and again said, "Henri?"
He was a large one. Apparently he'd been goofing off in one of the cars, and now he was worried and wondering if he'd been caught.
Bolan did not have time to wait the guy out. He brought the Beretta up and closed the distance between them with a silent but shattering Parabellum cruncher.
Bolan fed that body in on top of the other one, closed the door, and went on to the house.
Except for the front gate, that should have taken care of the outside men.
Bolan did not give a damn about the front gate.
He went in through the French doors off the courtyard and turned into the east wing, passing through a darkened hallway and into the fully-lighted dining room.
A television eye glared at him from a wall station. He phutted a bullet through it and continued on past the butler's pantry and into another short hallway without changing pace. Over a door in the far wall was another eye. He moved swiftly beneath it and covered the lens with his hand, rapped on the door, and said, "Hey!"
A bored voice, mechanically reproduced through a speaker beside the television camera, responded with, "Yeah, what."
"You got some eyes out in there?"
"Well… yeah. I was just fixin' to call about it. What the hell is it?"
No false security, eh?
"Open the damn door and I'll fix it," Bolan growled. "What the hell you been doing, sleeping?"
"Hell no, I told you I was just..."
A buzzer sounded and the door opened to Bolan's pressure.