"Aaagh! So where the hell is Bruno! Eh? Where the hell is Bruno?" He punched the intercom button. "So where the hell is brilliant Bruno, who knows the goddamn route, eh?"
"Someone's coming up!" the driver announced.
Giordano's head snapped to the window. He squinted down the road they had left minutes earlier, then made a disgusted sound deep in his throat. "A truck! A goddamn truck!"
A huge blue-and-white diesel van was sweeping up the road toward their position, a thin column of dark smoke ejecting from the overhead exhaust. Giordano watched its approach, his disgust growing. Two men were in the cab. As it thundered by, the driver sounded a salute on his air horn.
"Some ambush," Giordano muttered. "Two dumbheads. One can't even play tag, and the other can't remember the route two times In a row." He punched the intercom button. "Awright, go on. Go on, goon!"
Bolan had fallen off into a leisurely forty-mile-per-hour advance moments after leaving the freeway. Blancanales had remained at the cutoff to await the horse, which was several minutes behind.
"Heading into my kind of country," Loudelk had reported. "Good place for a hit."
"Play it cool," Bolan instructed. "Rotate the track."
"Okay. I'm falling back. Come on up, Zit."
"Roj. Those bastards must be doing ninety. This old wagon is shaking apart."
"Just eighty," Loudelk reported. "Can't you overtake me? I'm dropping off to seventy . . . sixty. You'll have to push ninety, Zit, or you'll lose them."
"I'm doin' a flat hunnert right now!"
Bolan grinned and stayed out of it.
"Bye-bye, Birdie," Loudelk sang a moment later. "You're looking great. Hang in there, white eyes."
"Okay." Zitka's voice was strained with excitement. "I have them in sight. Don't get too far behind, Brother. Those cats are flat moving out."
"Affirm. What's that up there on the left? Buttes?"
"Yeah." Moments later: "Uh-oh. There's a fork up here. They're swinging north, into the buttes."
Bolan jumped into the conversation at that point. "Tailor made for you, Brother. Pick a good spot to eagle for us. Say when and where."
"Affirm," responded Loudelk's cool whisper.
"Somebody better get on me then," Zitka advised. "This old bomb may not hang together much longer."
"Coming up," Bolan reported. He power shifted the little car into a smooth leap forward, the tach climbing steadily toward the max line.
The voices of Harrington and Washington took over then, signaling the Horse's arrival on the Riverside cut-off. Bolan picked up the radio and said, "Welcome aboard. Close on me with all speed."
"Gotcha," Harrington replied.
"Have you been following the play?"
"'Firmative. Understand, north at the buttes wye."
"You know this area, Guns?"
"Like my own little sandbox."
"What's up in those buttes?"
"Not much. A few citrus farms. Couple of ranches."
"Okay. Continue closing. Tracker, I've got you in sight now. What the hell happened to Brother?"
"Dunno. Saw a cloud of dust in my rear view a minute ago. Think he took a dirt road."
"Tracker Two, report," Bolan commanded. "Bloodbrother!"
An agonizing silence followed. Bolan was now deep into the buttes and casting anxious glances onto the terrain to either side of him. The Corvette hurtled on, maintaining the visual track on Zitka. Presently Loudelk's smooth baritone boomed in loud and clear: "Eagle is on station. Situation magnificent. Instructions."
"Do you have quarry in sight?" Bolan snapped.
"Affirm, and half the country from L.A. to Riverside."
"Report terrain conclusions!"
"Dirt road, leading east, about . . . three miles beyond present position of quarry. Greenery at end of roadtrees, I guess. No other exits visible."
"Break off ground track!" Bolan immediately commanded. "I want a wilco."
"Wilco, and just in time," Zitka responded. "I'm heating up."
Bolan slowed his vehicle. "Where are you from my present position, Eagle?" he asked.
"You passed me "bout a minute ago."
"Good. Maintain eagle watch and report developments. Backboard, you and Horse pour on the coals, get up here as quick as you can."
"Roger."
Zitka had pulled the Mercury onto the shoulder of the road and was standing beside it. Bolan stopped and picked him up, then resumed a leisurely advance. He thumbed on the transmitter and said, "Backboard, one of you transfer to the wagon. It's on the side track just ahead of you."
"Roger," Washington replied. "I'll take it."
"Horse, keep closing until further instructions."
"Roger."
"You cooled it right, Maestro," Loudelk came In. "They just pulled onto the dirt road and stopped. Like they're waiting."
Bolan grinned and allowed the Corvette to begin coasting to a halt. "Good show," he told Loudelk. "Maintain watch." He swiveled about and looked behind him. "I can see your smoke, Horse. Keep rolling. Quarry has gone to ground about three minutes ahead. Proceed on beyond them, then come about at first convenient spot and hold. Backboard, fall back to the wye with both vehicles and look innocent. Report all passings onto this road."
"Gotcha."
"Backboard, roger."
"Now," Bolan said to Zitka, "we will separate the foxes from the hounds."
Emllio Giordano was in a very nasty mood. Nothing could possibly be right at the ranch on such a day. He fired two of the freight handlers who were engaged in a playful slap fight at the loading dock; then he chewed on the ranch manager for not having an up-to-the-minute inventory of the warehouse. A few minutes later he physically attacked the nervous young man with the briefcase and told the world at large, in loud and certain terms, what he was going to do to Bruno "when and if he ever finds his way here!"
Bruno and the other four occupants of the rearguard Continental did show up about thirty minutes after Giordano's arrival. The grillwork of the expensive automobile was misshapen here and there, and the glass was missing from the headlamps.
"We got into an accident," Bruno reported, his voice muted in the face of his employer's towering rage.
"We got into an accident," Giordano mimicked in a mealy-mouthed twang. "You son of a bitch you! I oughta kill you! I oughta kill you!"
"Christ's sake, 'Milio, it could happen to anybody," Bruno protested.
"It don't not supposed to happen to you!" Giordano screamed in tongue-twisting rage. "What if those bastards'd jumped me? Huh? Huh? Where was Bruno when those bastards jumped 'Milio, eh? I oughta ..." He stepped forward and delivered a stinging slap to Bruno's face, then hit him with the other hand.
The bodyguard stoically accepted the indignities, though paling somewhat with suppressed anger. "I couldn't help it," he muttered. "We got into a tangle on the freeway, and we got hooked onto a cop's rear bumper."
"A cop? A cop?"
"Yeh. That's why we were delayed so long. Had to show our licenses for the hardware; then they had to make out this full report on the accident, and ... well, the cops were pretty damn pissed off, too. I thought for a minute there..."