flashed on outside the central building and a screen door was opened. A familiar voice said, 'Well . . . are you going to stand out there all night, or are you going to come in?'
Chapter Four
Designs
Captain Tim Braddock, LAPD, stepped out of his car and kicked absently into the fine gravel of the parking lot as he surveyed the sprawling beach house. Carl Lyons, the young sergeant of detectives who had been with Braddock since the beginning of the Bolan Case, code-named Hardcase, walked around the corner of the building and approached the captain's vehicle.
'It's a sure score, Cap'n,' Lyons intoned softly.
Braddock grunted and walked to the edge of the gravelled area, kneeling to inspect a deep impression left in the sand by a heavy wheel. 'Would you say a semi-trailer?' he asked Lyons.
The young man knelt beside his boss and spread his hands over the wide track. 'Uh huh. There's more of the same around at the side. Camouflage netting back there, that's how they concealed it.'
'What else have you found?' Braddock asked, grunting as he pushed himself upright.
Lyons came up with him, smiling tightly. 'Enough to convince me this was their headquarters,' he said. 'Two bazookas and about 20 rounds of AP. Explosives, grenades, smoke pots, every type of weapon you can imagine. Target range and armorer's shop set up back there under the cliffs, along the beach. Oh . . . and these.' He reached into his pocket and produced an envelope which he handed to Braddock.
The Captain opened the envelope, and quickly glanced through the snapshots.
'The DiGeorge place, Beverly Hills,' Lyons explained. 'And from every conceivable angle. Bolan obviously plans these things with the thoroughness of a military field commander. It looks as though they did a thorough study of the terrain before they made their hit.'
Braddock nodded his head in mute agreement. He started walking slowly toward the house as he placed the snapshots in the envelope and returned the packet to Lyons. 'Get those marked and into the lab as soon as you report in,' he instructed. 'Should be some good latents there. We'll need hard evidence for a conviction . . . all we can get.'
'How'd the arraignment go?' Lyons inquired.
They had rounded the corner of the building. Braddock was inspecting a large lean-to of camouflage netting. 'Blancanales and Schwartz?' He grunted unhappily. 'Got 'em bound over on a couple of misdemeanors. Possession of illegal weapons, illegal use of a radio transmitter. They're already out on bail.'
Lyons had raised his eyebrows in surprise. 'We had a list of charges a mile...'
'Charges are not convictions, Carl. You should certainly know that much. The fact is, they got old John Grant in their corner and . . . well, you know how it goes.'
'Grant comes damn expensive,' Lyons observed. He followed the captain onto the patio. Braddock picked up a set of punctured targets and studied them with interest.
'I'd say, the way these are marked, someone has been sighting-in a couple of rifles.'
'Where'd they get the money to retain a lawyer like John Grant?' Lyons persisted.
Braddock sighed. 'Hell, from their fairy godmothers, I guess. Don't ask me a dumb-ass question like that, Carl. We all know that Bolan's been taking the Mafia's money away from them.'
'I was just wondering out loud,' Lyons mildly replied.
'Well, wonder about this one, then,' Braddock said. 'We got it on the wire from Jersey that a large trust fund had been set up for the Fontenelli children. Fontenelli, in case you've forgotten, was the first member of the Bolan team to die . . . during that Beverly Hills hit.'
'I hadn't forgotten,' Lyons murmured. He was remembering a tall man, standing in the living room of the Lyons home, soberly passing the time of day with a tow-headed youngster. 'Sounds like Bolan is keeping faith with the dead . . . and with the young.'
'Yeah,' Braddock growled. 'And I'm not missing any bets. I've got inquiries out on the families of the other dead men . . . Bolan's dead, that is. I doubt that his tender sympathies would extend to the families of his victims. Anyway, if Bolan is spreading the money around, chances are he's doing it cute enough so that the beneficiaries have legal title to it. That means that he is going through certain legal formalities, and those formalities just might point the way right back to Bolan's present whereabouts.'
Lyons nodded his understanding, but added, 'After last night, I'd say his tracks are going to get fainter and fainter.'
Braddock frowned and turned to stare along the winding drive which connected the house to the road. 'How do you reconstruct the thing, Carl?' he quietly asked.
'Well . . .' Lyons hitched up his pants and stepped alongside the captain, one arm raised to point out various geographical features as he mentioned them. 'We found electronic gadgets monitoring every possible entrance to the property. Schwartz's work, I'd guess. Anyway, the place is wired for sound, and I'd say that their security was top-drawer. I still have no idea how DiGeorge's people located Bolan here, but obviously they did. They tripped the alarms, though, and Bolan was ready for them. We found two burned-out parachute-type flares out there near the road. The lab men are still going over the wrecked vehicles. Preliminary findings indicate that he cut down on them with a high-powered rifle, undoubtedly that Mauser over there.' Lyons led his captain to the end of the patio wall and showed him the machine gun. 'But now, here's the kicker. Look at the way he has that baby wired up. He provided his own covering fire, see. Juiced this baby up, left it running, jumped into his car, and charged right through their middle to make his getaway. We found deep skid ruts where he tore up the ground getting around the burning vehicles.'
Braddock swore softly and knelt to examine the firing lock on the machine gun. 'Every day, in every way, I find this guy getting more and more dangerous,' he said. He lifted his eyes to the face of his young sergeant. 'Suppose we'd tracked Bolan down first, Carl. How many men would it have cost us to take this place?'
Lyons showed a startled frown. 'I don't believe Bolan would resist arrest,' he declared solemnly.
'You don't, eh?' Braddock grunted to an erect position and rocked back on his heels, hands gripping the backs of his thighs. 'You worry me, Carl,' he added thoughtfully. 'Some day you're going to put your trust in the wrong . . .'
'It's not a matter of trust,' Lyons curtly interrupted. 'I've stood face to face with the man, I've talked to him. He's not the usual run of the mill . . . '
'Usual or not, Mack Bolan is a desperate man,' Braddock cut in heavily. 'You get him into a corner and he's going to come out shooting, just like he did here last night. Do you think he asked those people for a password before he started chopping them up?'
'I don't think . . .'
'Then don't talk either!' Braddock said angrily. 'I'm trying very hard — very hard, Carl, to forget the fact that Bolan escaped us at Balboa in your vehicle.'
Lyons flushed an angry red, spun on his heels, and went into the house. Scowling, Captain Braddock watched him disappear through the doorway, then he sighed heavily and said, sotto voce, 'But I can't forget it, Carl. I just can't.'
Another thing the captain could not forget was the goal he had been so meticulously pursuing for so many years. Most observers at the Hall of Justice were generally agreed that Big Tim would reach that goal. No other officer on the force seemed to be such a certain candidate for the Chief's chair. Some day, with the kindness of fate and the inexorable workings of the civil service procedures, Big Tim would be the Big Chief. Lately, however, an AWOL soldier who seemed to think he could bring Vietnam tactics to American streets was raising a large question mark around the kindness of Tim Braddock's personal fates. Braddock had to get Mark Bolan. A failure now, with the entire nation keeping score, would deal unkindly with a good cop's lifetime design. Braddock would get Mark Bolan.
Braddock returned to his car, opened the door, and slid heavily into the seat. He picked up the microphone for the two-way radio, punched the button for the special Hardcase network, and established contact with his operations center. 'Braddock,' he clipped. 'Nothing but dead ashes here. I'm coming in.'
