"'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 road—trees, 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..."
"Spare me," Giordano groaned. "Spare me the dumbhead details. Get inna car. Get inna goddamn car! We're goin' back. Well start all over again." He summoned the briefcase bearer with a wave of his hand, then shoved him roughly toward the Rolls.
The ranch manager was standing nearby, a strained expression on his face. "Lookit this," Giordano fumed, turning to the manager. "I go to all this planning, I even bring my shakin' bookkeeper with twenty-five thou just to make the armed guard look legit for the cops, we come all the way out here—and for what? For what? For Bruno the Brilliant to lock bumpers with a cop car? Huh? Is that what it was all for?" His rage was quickly wearing itself out. "How much is in the exchange box?" he asked the manager.
"Seventy thou," the manager replied. "You want to pick it up?"
Giordano nodded. "With my luck today, sergeant dumbhead will wander in here lost, an hour after I leave, and decide to knock the joint over." He swiveled about and called Bruno. "Hey, Brains. Go get the box."
Bruno got out of the car and followed the manager into the office. Giordano called after him, "Try'n carry it to the car without having an accident, eh?"
Minutes later, the small caravan was headed back along the dirt road, the white Rolls sandwiched between the two black Continentals, and this time with Bruno's vehicle leading. The bookkeeper sat quietly alongside Giordano, the briefcase on his lap, a small metal box between his feet.
"Hey, kid, I'm sorry I lost my temper, eh?" Giordano said quietly.
"Sure, Mr. Giordano. I understand."
"Just one of those damn days, I guess," Giordano muttered. "Guess it couldn't get much worse, eh?"
"I guess not, sir."
But it did, very shortly.
"Motorcade on the trail," Loudelk reported calmly.
"Roger," Bolan replied. "Anything to our rear?"
"Negative," Loudelk said, from his high observation point. "All clear."
"Last thing through the wye was the dented Detroit black," Washington reported.
"Roger. You set, Horse?"
"Horse is set," Harrington's voice reported.
Then roll it."
The whine of a motor-driven winch broke the stillness. A big boulder at the side of the roadway began to dance with vibration, then tilted and rolled abruptly onto the roadway. The winch was silenced. Zitka and Andromede ran out to the boulder, freed a network of cables, and dragged them into the shadow of a high butte.
The death squad could not have found a better location for an ambush. They were about midway between the blacktop county road and the citrus grove, at a point where the private dirt road curved abruptly to thread between two high-ridged rock formations. The roadblock was dropped directly into the eye of this needle, halfway through and just beyond a ninety-degree curve. The jeep had been unloaded from the horse and was angled into the shadow of the butte just beyond the roadblock, with its big fifty caliber commanding the situation there. Andromede was manning the fifty.
Zitka had the left flank, Bolan the right, both with light automatic weapons and with good cover on high ground that allowed a good triangulation of firepower.