Washington caught a fleeting glimpse of an infuriated face behind the wheel of the police car as tires squealed and the heavy car lurched back into position behind the horse, brakes grabbing in the abrupt forced slowdown. Washington heard but did not see the Continental smack the rear of the police car. It was a light tap, accompanied by more squealing of tires and the sounds of crunching metal and shattering glass.
The horse was now curving gracefully onto the cloverleaf, the two vehicles following in jerky confusion. The vehicles of the Death Squad, less horse, picked up speed and hurried to close on the quarry.
Bolan's elated voice came through the radio: "Beautiful, beautiful—that's playing it by the numbers."
"That's playing it by your quivering ass," Zitka shot back.
"Playing, hell," Harrington sang in. "Where the hell am I headed? How do I get this big sunabitch back on the track?"
"Follow the cloverleaf on around," Bolan snapped back. "Just follow the signs and come on around. We're taking the . . . yeah, the Santa Ana. Rejoin with all possible speed. How did our friends make out?"
Harrington was chuckling into the radio. They're out of the game. Locked bumpers, looks like. Madder... than... hell!"
"Better than we hoped for," Bolan replied. "Okay—good show, boys. Resume positions and tally-ho."
Washington grinned at Blancanales and shook his head. "Hell, this is some damn outfit, isn't it?" he commented quietly.
Blancanales nodded as he fell into formation several positions behind the Corvette. Zitka's Mercury was burning rubber up the inside lane to close on Loudelk.
"Light me a cigarette," Blancanales requested. I'm afraid to take my hand off the wheel. I'm afraid it'll shake off at the shoulder."
Washington guffawed, lit the cigarette, and shoved it between his partner's lips. "Yeah, man, it's some damn outfit," he repeated. "Sure glad I joined up. How "bout you?"
"Just wait," Blancanales murmured. "Do you know how close we came to having a twenty-jillion-car smashup?"
The big Negro was grinning merrily. "Wait for what, man?"
"Wait 'till we finish this mission. If I'm still alive then... well, yeah—I guess I'm glad I'm in."
"If you're dead, man, you won't know the difference. You better be glad now, while you got time."
Blancanales flashed his companion a sudden smile. "You're right," he said. "It's a hell of a squad."
Chapter Six
The Ambush at the Buttes
"Has that station wagon been behind us all the way or hasn't it?" queried the nervous young man with the briefcase.
"Off and on, sure he has," Giordano replied smugly. "You just now catching on?"
"Well, I thought at first ... well, there was this Ford sedan back there for a while, and now the station wagon is back. It looks like the same one."
Giordano chuckled and slumped contentedly into the plush upholstery. "Games," he said. "They like to play games. Okay. Let 'em play."
They had left the freeway some minutes earlier and were powering smoothly through gently lifting countryside on a smooth blacktop road, the big cars eating the pavement at a steady eighty-mile-per-hour clip. Soon they would drop onto the desert-like flats bordering the city of Riverside and swing north into the rocky buttes. Giordano's groves lay in there, in a sheltered valley between the stark rock formations. Grapefruit, lemons, tangerines, and avocados were grown there, but hardly in sufficient quantity to support the rich Giordano appetites. Actually, the groves had proved to be an excellent deduction for income-tax purposes; Giordano made money by losing money in his farming operation. As a legitimate business venture, the farm was a minor item in the varied Giordano interests, but it tied in neatly with his more secretive activities, serving as a sort of central clearing house for an underworld empire.
The Rolls was slowing for the turn onto the backroad approach to the groves. Giordano frowned and punched the intercom button. "What happened to our hide-and-seek pals?" he growled.
"He kept falling back," the driver reported. "Lost sight of him about a mile back."
"Pull onto the back road and stop," Giordano commanded.
They made the turn. The heavy car came to a smooth halt. The black Continental proceeded on for several hundred feet, then halted also and backed down to within a few yards of the Rolls.
"Keep your eyes open," Giordano snapped. "Dumbhead can't even play hide and seek. Soon as you see him coming, start up again, but slow. We don't want him to lose us."
The driver poked his head out the window and shouted instructions to the car ahead. They waited. Giordano chafed. He lit a cigar after several minutes and growled, "Dumbhead! Dumbhead! How could he lose us on a country road?"
"Maybe he had car trouble," the young man ventured.
"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?"