Desk job, you know. I juggle books for Lavagni, the numbers game.'
Bolan said, 'No kidding.' They were on the pier and moving swiftly along. The main group to the rear was holding at the entrance, two or three drifting on in casual pursuit.
'Yeah, no kidding. Most of what I picked up at Cal was football, you know. I mean, face it, I majored in football, man. Then I majored in war. Then I majored in disability, and then crime. Yeah. Wils Brown was born at zero and has been steadily descending ever since.'
'Don't say that.'
'Yeah I'm saying that. You know I guess what I dig about you, man, is your guts. You know you've got a weird combination there, Sarge — tough guts and warm heart. Most cats don't know how to carry both.'
'It seems that you do,' Bolan murmured.
The Negro laughed. The .32 was all but hidden in the big hand. He said, 'Well maybe you made me look at myself again, Sarge. You did it once before, in 'Nam — remember? Hey you better get set. There's a drop to your left, the sailboat. Watch that cat standing down in the cabin. The big boat ahead, with all the lights, that's where we're headed. The Viviane.' He chuckled tightly. 'That's French for last chance to live. You better make it work.'
They had slowed their pace. Bolan asked, 'Where do they make their move?'
'About twenty steps ahead. There's suddenly gonna be about ten guys standing there, then there's gonna be 'bout ten right behind you, and you're suddenly gonna be in a crowd.'
'This is another Dak Tung,' Bolan snapped.
'That's what it is.'
Bolan muttered, 'Thanks, Lieutenant,' and threw a sudden lunging block into the big guy, sending him crashing through the railing and into the water. The same motion carried Bolan onto the stern of a glistening pleasure cruiser. Thirty feet or so ahead, at the bow of the same boat, a group of men who had been in the process of moving onto the pier were now frozen and staring toward Bolan in obvious confusion over the surprise move.
Bolan's pistolet wiped away the confusion in a chattering message that sent men sprawling about the pier and the deck of the boat as he charged the group, firing on the run. Answering fire came from behind him as he leapt back onto the pier, projectiles thwacking into the side of the boat and chewing up wood about his feet. A searchlight came on back there and lasted through one squeeze of the Executioner's trigger finger.
An excited voice was commanding, 'Wing 'im, dammit just wing 'im, aim for the legs!'
Fire was coming in from all sides now. Bolan took a grazing hit on the left arm and another furrowed his thigh. He went down and pulled himself behind a mooring spool, jammed a fresh clip into the machine-pistol, and sent a searching pattern of fire toward the rear and the voice of command which was still demanding that Bolan be taken alive.
His search scored and the voice ended in mid-screech, and another one reported, 'Goddammit, he got Tony!'
The same voice then cried out, 'Hold your fire, hold it! Everybody back here, 'cept you boys on the Viviane! Wait 'im out, I think he's hit!'
Bolan was not waiting for anybody. Already he was wriggling along the pier, keeping to the shadows of the big yacht, Viviane, listening to the rustlings and scurrying sounds of the enemy regrouping into their holding position.
Another searchlight came on from a boat downrange and began sweeping the area Bolan had just vacated.
At the far end of the pier another movement was beginning, as police began hurrying toward the sounds of warfare.
Someone behind him announced, 'Cops are coming! How much longer can we wait, Sammy?'
Bolan had reached a point where the main deck of the yacht was level with the pier. To this moment, the firefight was barely a minute old. He could not give them time to regroup their senses, as well. He rolled swiftly onto the deck of the yacht, fell lightly into a deeper shadow, and pulled himself up in a test of the wounded leg. It held him okay, but the blood was oozing out and soaking his pantsleg. The arm wound burned like hell but was apparently bleeding very little and already clotting. He pressed the fabric of his clothing into it to help the process and moved quietly along the shadows of the deck.
Brown had said five guns aboard the yacht. If he could catch them bunched up, he just might...
Only the cabin lights were on now. Someone was cranking the engine. It caught, and rumbled into a soft purr. A voice from somewhere up above called out, 'Hold it, just hold it, don't get nervous.'
Bolan moved quietly to the outboard side and found himself peering through an open cabin window onto a handsome couple, a smooth-looking man of about fifty, a beautiful platinum blonde woman of maybe forty, both of them cringing low in the pilot chairs. The pistolet muzzle edged into the opening and Bolan softly commanded, 'Do not make one sound.'
The man's hands went up and he declared in a quavering whisper, 'M'sieur, I am not armed.'
The woman's eyes were haunted holes of terror. Her lips were forming words that would not come, and Bolan was hating these lousy wars more than ever.
He had recognized the man instantly, from a photograph on his battle order. He said, 'Okay, Vicareau, who else is aboard?'
'Four men, M'sieur.' The man's eyes rolled toward the overhead. 'Upon the flying bridge, all of them.'
'Okay, tell the lady to relax,' Bolan whispered. 'Maybe you've bought yourself something. Get this thing moving, high gear.'
'Impossible,' the man hissed. 'The mooring lines, M'sieur.'
'Never mind that. Just throw the power to it, all you've got.'
The man swallowed hard and his hand moved to a control. Seconds later the deck was quivering beneath Bolan's feet and the entire craft was vibrating in the strain to free itself from confinement.
A muttered curse drifted down from above and the sound of moving feet directly overhead sent Bolan spinning into the open. The four guns were crowding the rail of the flying bridge in an attempt to determine what was happening below. They saw Bolan at about the same instant, but he was readier, and he zipped them in a blazing criss-cross and they went down like wheat before a scythe.
Bolan allowed the pistolet to hang free and grabbed a fire-axe from the cabin bulkhead and moved swiftly to the bow. A voice down the pier was yelling hoarsely as he hacked the line free. The bow immediately swung outboard and another hail of fire came in as Bolan hurried along the shadows toward the stern.
There was a mixture of gunfire now, from far back; Bolan supposed that someone had opened fire on the police, and now a full scale battle was raging back there. He chanced a run to the open stern and delivered a smashing chop to the tautly quivering line. It parted halfway through, twanged into a rapid unravelling, and then gave altogether with a loud pop — and the Viviane was loose and surging away from the pier.
Two men ran into the open on the pier, blazing away at Bolan in a rapid discharge of weapons. His pistolet swung up from his side in a quick retort, the two went down, and Bolan dragged himself back along the deck toward the cabin, his thigh gushing blood again and the arm burning from the exertion with the axe.
Viviane was about fifty yards clear now and throttling back for better control into the channel, and up ahead two fast police cruisers with searchlights were whizzing toward the fleeing yacht, with a rapid interception already a foregone conclusion.
Then like out of a pleasant dream Bolan heard the hot-honey voice of Cici Carceaux calling, 'Stand-een, stand-een!'
She was pulling alongside in the sleek little cruiser which Bolan had last seen snuggled into the boat dock at the Cannes villa. As naturally as though he had been rehearsing the scene for years, Bolan climbed the rail and dropped into the cockpit of the cruiser. She went on around in a wide, power-off circle, swinging close to the pier as the yacht charged on into the channel — and as she idled about, Bolan noticed a floating figure in the water not ten feet away, a dark face turned toward the sky and white teeth gleaming in the moonlight in the most tranquil expression Bolan had ever observed on that big beautiful black face.
He touched Cici in a holding signal and leaned over the gun'l to hiss, 'Lieutenant — come on aboard!'
'Go on, man,' came the quiet reply. 'Don't go messin' me up now.'
Bolan gave him a grin and a restrained wave, and Cici notched the powerful engine into a quietly
