"Gotcha." Harrington was already rolling the ramps into the van. Andromede hastened to assist him. Bolan and Zitka sprinted to the Corvette.
Zitka was reaching for the radio as Bolan spun the sportster around. "How do you say, Eagle?" he demanded into the transmitter.
"Clean, man, clean," Loudelk's drawl came back. "And I missed all the fun."
"Okay, split," Zitka told him.
"Affirm, I am splitting."
Bolan glanced at Zitka and said, "Tell Deadeye about the wagon."
Zitka nodded and again spoke into the radio. "The wagon goes in the horse," he said. "Backboard regroup in the Mustang and head for the stable."
"Roger," responded a strained voice. "Is anything wrong with Maestro?"
"Naw, I'm just riding shotgun and radio for him. God, it went great, great, and I think we got another boodle."
"I see your dust," Washington reported. "Glad it went good. Next time I want up front."
Bolan grinned and reached for the radio. He depressed the transmitter button and said, "Good show, group, all of you, but play it cool now until we're home clean. Radio silence, beginning right now, except for emergencies. Read?"
"Read," replied Deadeye Washington.
"Gotcha," said Harrington.
"Affirm," reported Bloodbrother Loudelk.
"Wilco," Blancanales responded.
Chapter Seven
Face to Face
Captain Braddock was perturbed. Worse than that, he was beginning to feel a bit unsure of himself. He turned away from the large map on the wall of his office and faced his Hardcase-detail leaders. The two lieutenants and four sergeants who stared back at him had been carefully selected for this project. Each was an outstanding officer with an unblemished record of police efficiency.
"All right," Braddock said quietly, "what went wrong?"
Lieutenant Andy Foster cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. He and Braddock had been friends since police-academy days. "We underestimated the guy," he flatly declared.
"He did it so smoothly, I didn't even realize I'd been sucked in," spoke up a young sergeant, Carl Lyons. "Not until I started putting the pieces together."
"There was a confusion factor," Foster explained, as though to soften Lyon's admission. "First off, Giordano comes out in two vehicles. Somewhere along the line, God knows where, he added a third. Carl had no way of identifying the players. Cars were jumping into that procession all the way down to the freeway. It was pretty obvious that Giordano was trying to provoke a fight, and we simply had no way of determining which of those vehicles were Giordano's, which were Bolan's if any, and which were just unwitting participants. I ordered Carl to simply stay on Giordano's tail and report developments."
"I kept looking for a sudden strike," Lyons admitted. I guess I really wasn't thinking in terms of a Bolan tail. I was just trying to hang in there on Giordano. We hit the freeway, and I tried to tighten it up some. Then, zot!I'm trapped into the cloverleaf of the interchange with another car hung on my rear bumper."
"And you immediately reported your trouble?" Braddock inquired.
"Sure. I was in contact with Lieutenant Foster the whole time."
"I realized we'd lost Giordano," Foster said. "It was 3:30 the peak period was beginning, and the freeways were beginning to pack. We're spread too thin, Tim. If we'd had three times our capability, we still couldn't have covered all possibilitiesnot short of a general alert. I had to cover the Golden State, the San Bernardino, the Santa Ana, and I couldn't even positively write off the harbor."
"Yeah," Braddock grunted. His guts were faintly churning.
"And remember, we had no way of knowing that Bolan was even interested in Giordano at that particular time. If I'd punched the panic button and sent all the Hardcase vehicles scurrying after Giordano, that would have left the rest of the possibilities free and clear for Bolan to tap. You said he was a brilliant tactician. I had to assume that..."
"Of course, Andy," Braddock interrupted. "You played it right. No criticism there."
"I played it safe, not right," Foster muttered. "I alerted the neighboring communities and asked them to put out a soft watch for the Giordano vehicles, and then I stewed and chewed my nails and waited for a contact report."
The other lieutenant present, Charlie Rickert, joined the discussion at that point. The man unofficially referred to as "the twenty-four-hour cop" said, The biggest goof was our failure to tail Bruno Scarelli. I think that was dumb. He was our one sure lead to Giordano's destination."
Carl Lyons flushed a deep scarlet. "I had to make a decision, and I made it," he said. "I detained Scarelli as long as I could, without tipping our hand. Couldn't tail him myself, not with that rear fender buckled in on the wheel. When one of those big cars tap your butt, you damn well know you've been tapped." He rubbed the back of his neck and scowled at Rickert.
"I sent a car to cover Scarelli," Foster reported, tight lipped. "Got there about thirty seconds late and lost him right back at that same damn interchange."
"I still think..."
Rickert's knife-twisting rejoiner was interrupted by the appearance of a uniformed officer in the doorway. "Got that report from the Riverside lab, Captain," he announced.
"Let's hear it," Braddock clipped.
"It was an armor-piercing projectile, all right. Probably fired from a bazooka. Slammed into the Rolls just forward of the doorpost, angling in from the rear. Instant death for the two men in front. The other scars were made by steel-jacketed slugs from a fifty-caliber machine gun. Each of the vehicles was pretty thoroughly worked over by that fifty."
"Thanks, Art," Braddock replied. The uniformed officer smiled and went away, shaking his head. "Full-scale warfare," Braddock growled.
"And the neatest ambush I've ever ..." Foster commented, his voice trailing off into quiet speculation.
Rickert reached into his pocket, withdrew a long metallic object, and tossed it onto Braddock's desk. "There was a small mountain of these fifty-caliber casings in the rocks over against the butte," he said.
Braddock picked up the casing and absently turned it end over end in his big hand. "They had that jeep out there, that's certain," he concluded. "Now somebody tell me how they can run around in an armed jeep without arousing curiosity? Where are they getting this heavy stuffthe bazooka and all that crap? How the hell did they move that heavy boulder onto the road? How the hell ... ?
Lieutenant Rickert sighed heavily and produced a small notebook from his jacket pocket. "I may have some answers," he said. "I spent the past three hours sifting through the various reports, and . . . well, just listen. From the Bel Air investigation: The jeep was last seen proceeding north on Skylane Drive. Yet two witnesses at the next intersection, swear that no jeep came past them. Aside from the police and fire-department vehicles, the only moving thing reported through that intersection, in that time period, was a large diesel semitrailer van. The witness paid it very little attention, and couldn't recall any identifying decals, or even the color." Rickert glanced at Sergeant Lyons. "Next I quote from Carl's report: ' and I was forced to follow a slow-moving semitrailer into the cloverleaf.'" Rickert smiled wryly. "You did not specify, Carl. This wouldn't have been a van-type trailer, would it?"