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"That Bolan!" Lavangetta spat. "He just shived Georgie Aggravante!"

Di Carlo ran over to corroborate the story. "He swung up on the roof," he excitedly reported. "I think maybe I hit 'im!"

One of the Talifero twins snapped a vaguely disbelieving glance at his partner and said, "Let's check."

The other brother waved his arm in a signal to the quickly approaching hardmen and led them in a running sweep through the main building and toward the street. The remaining brother touched Lavangetta's elbow and said, "Come on, Ciro, let's look at that roof."

Bolan had quietly dispatched three of the galleon's sentries and was working his way toward the fourth when the pandemonium erupted in the courtyard, some twenty yards distant. The hardmen of the beach area congregated in a loose knot, then began spilling slowly toward the disturbance. Some one yelled, "Bolan's on the roof!"

From the darkness just ahead of Bolan, a galleon hardman softly called over, "You guys back there stay put. Me'n Happy are gonna go see."

The only one remaining "back there" was Bolan. In a softly slurred voice, he replied, "Sure, sure."

Two men ran down the gangway and up the beach toward the hotel. Bolan quickly reconned his position, assuring himself that he was alone on the galleon, and immediately swung his 16/79 into firing position. The M-79 rounds had been carefully mixed in the ammo belt, with HE, buckshot, and tear gas, in that order then repeating.

A tight clutch continued to hold forth on the beach directly below Bolan's position. He decided that he should take them first. He checked the clip on the M-16, positioned the switch for automatic fire, and swept 30 rounds of tumbling projectiles into the group at 700 rounds per minute. They went down like pins in a bowling alley, and then the heavy weapon was swinging over and up and Bolan's hand was moving onto the pistol grip of the M-79.

Chapter Seventeen

Holideath Inn

The bell tower exploded and rained debris into the courtyard, the heavy bell itself crashing down onto the balcony of the penthouse. Augie Marinello froze and cried, "My god, what . . ."

A calm voice from the roof called down, "He's firing from the pier. How the hell did he get-" The speech ended abruptly with another detonation and a sweeping spray of ballbearing-size buckshot, and the Talifero swung himself recklessly over the edge of the roof and into the courtyard, landing jarringly on his feet.

"On the roof, eh?" he yelled at Salvatore Di Carlo.

Another projectile impacted several yards to the side of Marinello and released a cloud of smoke. Someone coughed and exclaimed, "Tear gas!"

The courtyard was in a state of unrestrained panic now as another round of high-explosive sailed in, this time directly on target into a crowd of scrambling men. Instantly-mangled bodies were hurled in all directions and a cry of consternation swept the Spanish gardens. Talifero was swearing loudly and trying to lead a pack of hardmen through the confusion as round after round of grenade, buckshot, and tear gas continued to pelt the bawling mob. Men were leaping into swimming pools and lily ponds, crowding into cabanas, and racing for covered walkways as the panic reached peak level and the assault continued without letup.

The Talifero squad reached the edge of the gardens, almost in the shadow of the galleon, and tried to take cover behind a foot-high wall. With the first volley from their pistols, the chatter of a light machine-gun answered back, interspersed with the whoomps from the galleon, and four Taliferi learned the hard way that a foot of wall was not wall enough. The man in the now-dishevelled Palm Beach suit commanded, "Back, back, this is no good!"

Bolan had been preoccupied with the galleon sentries and had therefore not known of the rush of men to the street when the oddball shooting broke out at the hotel. He had been, in fact, puzzled by that outbreak though thankful for it and more than willing to twist it to his own advantage. He was even more puzzled, then, when at the height of his strike men began moving up over the roof areas from the street-side of the building, and he was strongly curious as to why they were firing at something down in the street rather than into Bolan's position.

There was no time to ponder the question, though — he was being challenged from the wall just below. A rain of bullets punched into the bulkhead just behind him. He moved his triggerfinger onto the M-16 and gave them a quick burst. Three or four of his challengers toppled over backwards and the rest immediately began to fall back.

He had gone through an entire belt of M-79 ammo, and there was but one belt left. He would have to make a tactical decision very shortly; for the moment, there were those characters on the roof inviting his attention. He kept raking the courtyard with sporadic bursts from the M-16 and dragged over his final belt of M-79 heavy stuff, then slipped a round of HE into the red-hot breech of the grenade launcher, sighted carefully toward the roof, and let fly.

Hannon's riot force had roared up into a startled eyeball confrontation for which neither side was really quite prepared. The guys had come tearing out of the hotel with blood in their eyes and obviously looking for something to shoot at, and it had been just their damn tough luck to have found the Dade Force instead of whatever it was they'd been looking for.

Hannon later admitted that perhaps it could all have been resolved peacefully except that in that first tense moment when the two startled forces were eyeing each other over their hardware, something exploded in the bell tower directly overhead and large chunks of adobe rained down upon both forces. A young trooper several feet to the side of Hannon overreacted with a spontaneous buckshot blast from his riot gun at pointblank range into the astounded men from the hotel. Someone fired back, perhaps also reflexively, and one of Hannon's uniformed men fell.

From there it was a spontaneous shootout, with both sides diving for cover and not awaiting directions from anyone. Added to this was the unsettling sounds of open warfare and general pandemonium from beyond the walls, and it is doubtful that any of the men outside the hotel, Captain Hannon included, had any large idea of just what was happening or why.

The Hacienda men did have presence of mind enough to bolt clear of the light spilling from the hotel entrance. By the time the Dade Force had reached protective cover behind their vehicles, the others had melted into the shadows of the windowless building; two uniformed officers and five members of the other force lay wounded in the no-man's-land between.

Hannon got to his bullhorn and bawled, "Throw out your weapons and come forward with hands raised." The instructions were all but drowned out in the booming explosions and rattle of small-arms fire beyond the walls. He threw down the PA and told his sergeant, "Hell, this is impossible. Pass the word to hold fire and await further instructions. Fire only if fired upon."

"What the hell is going on in there, Cap'n?" the sergeant asked.

"How the hell should I know! You wanta go in and ask?"

The sergeant's reply was lost in another booming explosion beyond the walls. He shook his head and slipped away to pass on the captain's instructions.

Moments later men began to appear on the roof, snaking furtively up the sloped tiles and slipping over the peak to the courtyard site. Hannon shouted through his PA: "You men on the roof! Halt or be fired upon!"

Scattered shots came back in reply. Harmon grabbed a plainclothes officer and ordered, "Get those spotlights going, back along the building there. There must be an emergency ladder to the roof. Seal it off. Get some men along that wall down there. Shoot anything that moves across that roof!"

At that precise instant, the area of Harmon's concern was subjected to a shattering explosion. Two bodies and a sizeable section of the roof were ejected and hurled off somewhere into the darkness.