He stepped inside and a fat man with a face like red wine cried, "Whuuup" and made a lunge toward his shoulder holster.
The Beretta won the race by a lifetime. Blood and pulpy flesh and splintered bone splattered across the television monitors. Bolan stepped back to the hallway and clicked the door shut.
The next stop was the kitchen.
Only a night light was burning and no one was present there. He found the power panel and a thoughtfully-placed flashlight in a little alcove near the door and pulled the main disconnect, removed the cartridge fuses, and dropped them into a garbage can.
There were no lights — nor anything else electrical — operating in the big joint now.
Bolan was standing in total, choking darkness.
He stepped to the window and checked the progress of the sun, then he snapped on the flashlight and went quickly back through the dining room.
People were astir when he reached the entry hall at the front of the house. The sentry dog was growling uneasily and his handler was trying to calm the big animal. Several shadowy figures had stepped in through the doorway from the west wing, swearing and groping their way through the darkness.
Bolan was the man with the flashlight, and obviously the man with the answers.
A snarlingly unhappy face appeared in the spot and the guy asked, "What the hell happened?"
Behind that beam Bolan knew that he was practically invisible. He replied, "Power failure. Just relax."
"Relax hell," another voice protested. "You can't see your hand in front of your face in here. How long's it gonna be out?"
The rest of your life, Bolan wanted to say. Instead, he said, "Sun's rising pretty soon. If you're scared of the dark, go outside. It'll be light out there in a minute."
"Fuck that," somebody commented.
"Sounds good to me," someone else argued. "Where the hell's the door? Shine that light over on the door, huh?"
That ancient animal dwelling within man still found himself nervous and uncertain about the dark.
Bolan obligingly spotted the door with the flashlight.
He counted five men moving through the open doorway.
Then he told the man with the dog, "Take that bastard outside and shut 'im up…"
The guy did so, without a murmur, leaving the door open.
Bolan crossed over and into the west wing. It was set up with a hallway running the full length along the center, doors opening onto offices and rooms to either side.
One of those doors now stood open and people were loitering about in uneasy attitudes along the darkened hallway, and all eyes turned toward the beam of light from Bolan's flash.
Bodyguards, Bolan read it.
He announced in a loud voice, "Power failure. Don't worry, it'll be okay in a minute or two."
One of the men growled, "It's already been a minute or two."
Another door opened then, farther down, admitting a feeble seepage of yellow light into the hall. According to Grimaldi's diagram, that should be the conference room.
A large man moved through the open doorway, and a man close to Bolan hastened to explain to the new arrival, "Power failure, boss. It's being taken care of."
Another close voice demanded, "Hey you, guy, give the boss the flashlight."
The big man said, "Never mind, we got candles. Relax, it's not the end of the world. This is Haiti, not Baltimore. Things like this happen here. What's the matter? Can't you boys read your cards in the dark?"
Someone chuckled.
The big guy said, "It'll be daylight pretty soon. Relax." He spun gracefully around and went back through the doorway.
And then Bolan realized who he was.
Big Gus Riappi.
He called out, "Gus!"
The guy reappeared, looking edgy and disgruntled in the flickering yellow light, but the voice was smoothly controlled. "Yeah. Who is that?"
"Frankie. Tell Sir Edward a courier is here."
"A courier from what?"
"Hell I don't know. Came in by helicopter. He's in a hell of a sweat. Says we should tell Sir Edward he's here."
"Yeah, I thought I heard a chopper. Where is he?"
"Went upstairs, to the suite. Just before the lights went out."
"Okay, I'll tell him. We're almost through in here."
Riappi went back into the conference room. One of the bodyguards muttered, "It's about time they were through in there."
Another one said, "Shut up. They'll be through when they get through."
"I just meant, shit, since midnight chrissakes. How long does it take to shuffle a few heads around?"
"I said shut up."
So Bolan had another reading. As he had suspected, the Caribbean Carousel was being dismantled and put back together again — same game, same rules, different players. And it was being engineered from Port au Prince.
He kept the flashlight beam well in front of him and casually announced, "That courier must've just come from San Juan. He says they're having a party at Glass Bay."
The guy with the hard voice came to stiff attention and said, "What's that?"
"Glass Bay's celebrating. I guess they got reason to."
Bolan received a totally different reaction than the one he was expecting.
The guy spun around and walked stiffly to the door of the conference room, rapped lightly with his knuckles, and went in.
"That fuckin' Lavagni is the luckiest shit alive," someone muttered.
Bolan agreed, "Yeh, he's lucky."
Big Gus reappeared, the bodyguard in tow. Bolan thoughtfully put the spot on the floor at Riappi's feet. The big guy glared at the invisible entity behind the flashlight and growled, "What's this about Glass Bay?"
Bolan replied, "Hell, Gus, the guy just said they're having a wild celebration. That's all I know."
"Well I'll be a son of a bitch," Riappi said disgustedly. He pushed his chief bodyguard aside and returned to the conference room.
Bolan said, "What's he so steamed up about?"
"You'd be steamed up too if you'd just lost what he just lost," the talky one told him.
The other guy said, "Flukey, shut the hell up!"
"Well I just..."
"Get on back in the tank!"
"Well dammit, it's..."
"All of you! Back in the tank! Open the goddam drapes or something, shit — use your goddam heads for a change!"
Bolan watched as three hardmen filed into their watchroom — the "tank." The head man looked toward Bolan and growled, "What the hell are you waiting around for?"
Bolan waggled the flashlight and replied, "I'm waiting for Sir Edward."
The guy grunted and went into the conference room.
Bolan leaned against the wall and counted the seconds. Not many were left. Very soon now the sun would be sliding up out of the sea and the Executioner would be losing his invisibility.
Then that door down there opened, and a tall straight man emerged to stare coldly into Bolan's light shield.
And yes, this had to be the guy… and he was no black man. He was also no white man such as Bolan had ever encountered in the usual Mafia circles.
He had that soft antiseptic scrubbed chairman-of-the-board look, that Wall Street image of solid respectability and impeccable social background, the kind of guy you wouldn't expect to yell shitif he were drowning in it.
Bolan had never seen this man before, but he'd seen dozens of duplicates gazing benignly from the pages of national magazines and from the financial pages of big city newspapers.
He was Mr. Plymouth Rock, WASP of the ages, president of that corporation and director of this foundation and chairman of a dozen charity drives.
He was Mr. Good, protector of the nation's morals and preserver of a society's cultural treasures.
Or, at least, he must have been at one time.
And Bolan found himself filling with rage and shaking inside over this particularly revolting new look in "the criminal type."