"How do you know that for sure?" Franciscus barked.
"Common sense would be enough," Turrin replied loftily. "But I got more than that to go on. It's all-over the damn streets."
"What is?"
Turrin's tagman poked head and shoulders through the doorway and called in, "Hey boss."
"Come on in, Jocko."
The little guy had his hands cupped together, bearing a near overflow of quarter-size gadgets. He stepped up and deposited them on the bed, then went to stand behind his boss before reporting, "Chick sends it. He says he thinks it's clean now."
The Franciscus gaze jerked away from the embarrassing evidence. "What is all over the streets?" he asked, the voice dimming again.
"You have a guy named Helmann up here last night?"
A sick look briefly transited that military countenance.
Mathews jerked noticeably.
Turrin said, "Sure you did. The local cops know it. The feds know it. The whole damn town by now knows it. Bolan blitzed in here sometime last night and wired you. He recorded you and the Helmann guy in dark conference. The feds have that conversation, Johnny."
"Find that transmitter, Harve," the Captain quietly commanded.
Mathews moved quickly out of the room.
Franciscus showed his visitor a strained smile and said. "Well. I've heard of you, Leo. Mostly good. I'm very impressed. Just sorry to meet you for the first time with egg all over my face."
"It beats shit," Turrin replied, smiling sourly. "After a brush with this guy Bolan, most boys come off looking more that way — shitfaced, I mean. Look, it's your show. The men told me to stand by and assist. But you better do something quick. What's this I'm hearing about an island?"
The military gaze retracted then lashed across that room and seized Leo Turrin's lips. "What did you say?"
"God, you have a hearin' problem? You know what I said, dammit. My sources say that Bolan knows. He knows, guy. Have you studied this boy?"
"Not in depth, no. Nobody expected him to pop up here so soon. I'm getting a profile run on — "
"You better forget the damn profiles and concentrate on the guy. He has popped, see. And you better start scrambling. You better grab your balls. Translation: take care of the things you prize the most. The guy will be laying all over you before daylight. Take it from one who's been laid enough already to know."
Franciscus snapped an anguished gaze to his wristwatch. He whirled and went to the window. "He couldn't know," he muttered. "Nobody knows."
"The street knows, Johnny."
"Did the old men tell you about the island?"
"I never heard of it until an hour ago."
"What did you hear?"
"Just that. An island somewhere. Bolan hiring himself a fast boat. He's propping an assault of some kind. Buying weapons. Big ones. You better get set, bub. Or else tell me and let me. The men sent me out here for one damn reason. Protect the investment. We know what this boy can do. They sent me because I know how. Now I can't go back there and tell them I stood here and watched you piss it all away."
"You'll tell them nothing!" Franciscus snarled.
Turrin rocked on the balls of his feet and turned a deliberate gaze onto his tagman. "Tell the boys we go," he ordered.
The little guy nodded uncertainly and hurried out.
Turrin told the quivering Captain, "I don't work for you, bub. It's the other way around. You keep your ass in your hand and remember who pays your goddam bills. Either you got a firm grip or you ain't. If you have, then you guide that ass out of here and you by Jesus get something to moving. I mean now!"
It was obvious that Captain Franciscus was not accustomed to this kind of talking-to.
The muscles of his jaw were twitching and the eyes were blazing mad.
Harve Mathews loped into the room, defusing that confrontation with a breathless report.
"Got it! Had a hunch, Cap — that helicopter. Found it right there!" He was holding out a small box that could have been a cigarette case with a tiny antenna projecting from the top.
Either it was the final straw, or it served as an excellent face-saver for the Captain.
"Sound the alert, condition red!" he snapped. "Call the bosun, get the boats fired up! Reveille those new men, send some cars! I want a full formation at the pier within thirty minutes! Alert the armorer, get a truck to the pier, full combat weapons and rounds for two hundred men! Call the island! Talk to Presley personally. Tell him to double the patrols on the beaches! Get a weather report! Okay, move it!"
"That sounds more like it," Turrin said, sighing, as the executive officer double-timed it out of there.
"We know how to handle a situation," the Captain sneered. "Tell that to your old men."
Turrin swept out of the penthouse with his crew in tow, entirely pleased with himself. He would, of course, tell the old men nothing. The "hard work" was over. The rest would be up to Bolan ... and his direct solution to a very complex problem.
At that very moment, Harold Brognola was working a complex problem of his own, in the duty officer's office at the Bremerton Naval Barracks.
"You tell your C.O. that I'll have complete verification via the Pentagon — or the Joint Chiefs, if that's what he wants — before a single boat moves. Meanwhile, though, I want the cogs turning. If I don't have at least ten amphibians on the line and ready to roar in thirty minutes, somebody's tit will end up in a very tight ringer. You tell him that."
"Yes sir. The C.O. understands the urgency, sir. He'll be here personally in ten minutes, sir."
Brognola glowered at the young ensign for a moment, then clasped his hands together and moved away from there.
The weather was beginning to break. Forecast calling for an early general lifting, entire coastal regions.
Some break!
Tit in the ringer? It would be cock n' balls n' all, Brognola's — not somebody's — if Bolan didn't pull the thing just right.
God! Tactician, hell! The guy was carrying the whole burden, all of it. And all the nation's third cop could do was pace and sweat.
20
Hard touch
"Wish I could talk you out of this," Grimaldi groused. "You're even losing your weather cover. Ceiling's up to about a hundred feet now, in spots. NAS says rapid clearing."
"Worry about getting yourself in and out, Jack. If you think you can't, say so. We'll consider an alternative. But I am getting in there."
"Hell I can get in and out. I've taken these babes down in the middle of enemy encirclements many times. That's not the point. The point is — "
"I have to get in, Jack. That's the point."
"Okay, okay."
The little chopper was specially prepped for the mission. The personnel door on Bolan's side had been removed and left behind. His seat was gone, as well as a section of floor and outer skin beneath his feet.
Bolan was now crouched at the edge of the hole, gazing down through the skids at the choppy waters of Puget Sound. He was rigged for heavy combat, armed to the teeth, burdened with a load nearly equal to his own weight.
A backpack alone hauled fifty pounds of "goop" — plastic explosives. Double utility belts crossed the chest, supporting dangling grenades and other munitions of blazing warfare.