Then someone yelled from inside the house, "Captain, we've got a live one in here!"
Bolan was seething inside, tortured by jumbled emotions, damning himself for an entire series of miscalculations and imagined weaknesses. How could he have failed to spot the tail on him, by a jeep of all things! How could he have ignored the repeated indications of stealthy movements all about him, in the yard, in the alley, all around the damn place! She had reconned his recon— then lain back to protect his flank — and for what? She was a soldada— that was for what. A female soldier who could handle the weapons of warfare but not her female heart. Damn damn damn — and Bolan had failed her — he'd gone for the cop at the expense of the soldada— he'd turned away and consigned her to the Taliferi, and god knew what they would do to her — she couldn't even speak English!
He was speeding along the back streets, recklessly daring each intersection to halt his progress, flashing through with head snapping from side to side in a quick scan in the forlorn hope of spotting a likely movement somewhere, anywhere. He was cutting a zig-zag intersection of the back-city, feeling in his bones that the Taliferi would not risk an open run on a major street in that shattered vehicle — and he felt that he was at least angling in the logical direction of travel, toward the upper beach where stood two luxury hotels of conventioneering Mafiosi.
Something in the street attracted his attention as he flashed across his dozenth intersection. He hit the brakes in a squealing slide, powered into reverse, and went back for a closer look. Several pieces of broken glass in sizeable pieces were lying dead center just up the intersecting street. He wheeled about and lunged to the location, got out of the car and walked the area looking for skid marks, other broken glass, any evidence of a collision, and found none. Then he picked up the cobwebbed pieces of glass and inspected more closely. Safety laminated! Windshield glass!
Bolan leapt into his vehicle and laid rubber in a screeching takeoff. He knew now where he was headed, and to hell with the back streets. He angled east at the next intersection and made a power run for the beach drive. Possibly, he could beat them there. He had to beat them. Once the Taliferi reached the guarded palace walls of the Beach Hacienda, it would be adios, soldada.
Perhaps, he thought, this was what they wanted. Something to drag him in, to lure him on — maybe it was already too late for the girl, and they were carting a dead body along just to insure Bolan's continued interest in their whereabouts. Well, they could be sure of that, all right. Bolan was intensely interested. He was deadly interested.
Harold Brognola had come a long way in an attempt to satisfactorily engineer a highly delicate and top secret operation closely involving Mack Bolan. In the very top drawer of the department's strategy against organized crime lay a smouldering and politically dangerous piece of intrigue on which Brognola held the principal mortgage; it was his project, conceived and underwritten by him, delicately maneuvered through the top echelons of government by him, and now entirely dependent upon his ability to bring the ends together into a firm package. He had tried twice earlier to complete that package,1 and both times failed by a hair's shadow to tie the knot. The problem lay in Bolan's elusiveness and understandable reluctance to tarry in the shadow of the law.
The "inside man" who was conventioning with the family in Miami held a possible entrance to Bolan's presence. Brognola had not come to Miami to "rescue an undercover agent, though it was convenient for others, even those in the local field office, to think so. Brognola did feel it imperative that he contact the inside man. This man had known Bolan, had worked beside him with each of them unaware of the other's duplicity until a showdown came,2 and was perhaps the one man in the world who could approach Bolan safely without a gun in his hand.
And so it was, in the late evening hours of November 5th, that Harold Brognola was quietly meeting with a Mafia caporegime in an alleyway several hundred feet removed from the Beach Hacienda, a luxury hotel at the edge of Miami Beach's glamor strip. The two men solemnly shook hands and Brognola asked, "How are things in Bolan's battleground?"
The Mafioso smiled and replied, "That guy is something else, isn't he. He's got them jumping at their own shadows. And that includes me."
Brognola raised his eyebrows and said, "He wouldn't throw down on you, would he?"
The other man rocked nervously on the balls of his feet. "You never know, with Bolan." Then he chuckled and added, "I've had that guy's steel against my neck — but that was before. If he takes time to look, I'm O.K."
Brognola nodded. "I want a meet with that guy. I don't know how you could assist, but he runs more in your circles than in mine. I was scouring Southern California for him when he turned up down here. Guess I should have known. So what do you think? Any ideas?"
"Well . . . it's just a million to one shot, Hal. I won't ask why you want the meet, and I don't want you to tell me why."
"Don't worry, I hadn't intended to."
"I guess we could come face to face before it's all over down here. I can't promise anything, Hal. What's the drop?"
Brognola handed over a scrap of paper with a telephone number written on it. "Memorize that and give it back," he said.
The Mafioso glanced at the number and passed it back. "Okay, I'll see what I can do."
Brognola said, "This is really hot stuff, and I can't-" He stepped against the other man suddenly and shoved him into a darkened doorway as an automobile wheeled suddenly into the alley, lights out and cruising slowly. They stood there, hardly breathing, as the car eased past them, an alert and grimfaced man behind the wheel.
Brognola gasped, "God's sake! Wasn't that Bolan?"
The other man shook his head, frowning. "Can't say for sure, Hal. I've never seen him in his new face."
The automobile was powering in a sudden acceleration into the next street, heading west, away from the beachfront. Brognola said, "Dammit, that was him! Come on!"
The two men ran to the corner, paused, then hastened up the street after the disappearing vehicle.
His heart was thudding against his ribs in the certain knowledge that he was probably too late, although a quick reconnoiter of the hotel area had produced no sign of the prey. Possibly, he was thinking, he had misread the signs entirely . . . maybe they weren't even headed for the hotels . . . maybe they were hotting it for the boat, and Bolan had not the faintest idea where that boat lay or even the approach to it.
He would try one more quick pattern through the back streets . . . maybe they had ditched the car and were footing it. He eased through an alleyway just above the Hacienda determined to give it one last desperate shake.
A barricade lay partly across the street, two intersections up from the beach. Apparently a demolition job had just been completed there. One lane of traffic had been closed down and a wooden wall, still partially standing, extended halfway to the centerline to fence off a rubble-filled vacant lot. He was about to go around when another vehicle swerved in from the street above, running with one headlamp and rumbling along on a flattened tire.