'Get off it!' he growled with false anger. 'It's time you learned what I am all about. You think my work is so casual that my decisions come from my loins? Think again, kid. And cover yourself up. I'm not all that damn immune to invited rape.'
'You'd rape my heart, though, without a thought. Yes, I know what you're all about, Mack Bolan. You have a grim reaper complex.'
'Call it any way that comforts you,' he replied coldly. He put the vehicle in motion. 'And get dressed. I'm dropping you at the first opportunity.' But, yeah, his heart hurt for her.
It always hurt for such as these, the innocent victims of jungle justice. But Mack Bolan's combat decisions came not from the heart, either. They came from the injured seat of a kicked cosmos. The Executioner was simply kicking back.
Chapter 17
Rift
Yeah, the Arizona game was winding down quickly, for sure. Bolan's intelligence computer was fairly running over with collections from the automated monitoring station and the big problem of the past twenty minutes had been to simply sort and assimilate the fast pace of events.
Weiss and Kaufman provided a say-nothing shouting match via telephone, followed by a promised eyeball meet at Weiss's home 'damn quick!'
Paul Bonelli, 'heir' to Arizona, and his forty fighting guns from Tucson had gone to ground near an old airstrip in the desert, waiting only for the night to cloak their 'mop-up' movements.
Hinshaw and company were maintaining the diggings at their own base camp, bolstered now by a thirty- man 'reserve force' of fully equipped combat troops awaiting nightfall.
Old man Nick Bonelli was flapping his wings and threatening to fly to Phoenix to take the entire operation under his personal command.
There was obvious bad blood developing between Hinshaw and the younger Bonelli — and it sounded as though the old man was actively promoting some sort of iron-handed show of strength by his kid. Interesting as hell though, was the obvious fact that neither Bonelli knew of Hinshaw's secret reserves.
Bolan chewed that for several minutes, trying to Pull Hinshaw's motives into focus and trying also to come up with a quick but viable play to exploit that possibility of rift in the opposing forces.
He finally opted for a frontal approach, spinning back to a telephone contact wherein the Phone number of Paul's encampment was recorded. Then he called that number from the warwagon's mobile equipment and told the answering voice, 'It's urgent. Get Mr. Bonelli.'
A moment later, he had the heir to Arizona on the horn. 'The name is Lambretta. I'm connected ... east. You may remember a guy, Billy Gino.'
'Yeah?'
'Billy's my cousin. I came down from Vegas a few days back.'
'So.'
'I owe, uh, I owe Don Bonelli an old favor. You may not remember ... the South Bronx rumble back in uh ...'
'I remember, sure. What'd you say your name was?'
'I'm using Lambretta right now, Mr. Bonelli. You understand. Listen, what I got is this. I just came from a joint on the east side, a very weird joint, Mr. Bonelli. Out in the damn sand, you know. Looks like it got blasted pretty bad, and not long ago. There's a guy there calls himself Morales — a greaser, acting like a head cock. Does any of this sound like anything you know?'
'Maybe and maybe not,' Bonelli replied cautiously. 'What are you getting to, Lambretta? Let's get there.'
'This Morales tried to recruit me. He wouldn't say for what, but he dropped your name. He offered me five thou for a night's work.'
'What the hell!' Bonelli growled angrily. 'You call me urgent to confirm a lousy job offer?'
'No sir, that's not why I called. Like I said, I owe Don Bonelli. The greaser don't know I'm calling you.'
The guy's reply to that was mixed with irritation and open curiosity. 'How the hell did you get this number then?'
'Hey! Mr. Bonelli! I been connected a long time. You don't need to ask a soldier of the blood how he-'
'Okay, okay! What've you got?'
'Something very cutesy about that joint, sir. The guy has a damn combat force out there ... must be forty or fifty boys with heavy heat. Not a damn one is a made man ... no connections there anywhere. He says-'
'Wait a minute, wait! How many you say? Forty or fifty!? How long ago was this?'
'Not an hour ago. What I was gonna do was ... well ... nobody's connected, except me. He wants me out front. He says for identification. He says so Mr. Bonelli will know it's the right place. It stinks, don't it? It Just stinks to me.'
'Maybe it does, yeah,' Bonelli replied, the tone thoughtful. 'How'd you say you come to get out there?'
'This Morales came looking for a connected man. He found me through a, uh, mutual friend.'
'He's pretty damn stupid then, isn't he?' said the heir. 'He doesn't understand the blood, does he? You say forty or fifty boys under arms out there? How'd you happen to get loose?'
'I told him, sure, I'd take the job. But I had some business in town first. I'm supposed to be back by sundown.'
'Don't go back,' Bonelli said softly.
'Don't worry.'
'If this checks out, you look us up in Tucson someday. If it don't, well ...'
'I gave you what I got, Sir. Exactly.'
'He says you're up front for identification, eh?'
'Yessir. The idiot. Any man with connections knows what that means. Right?'
'Right, right. Thanks, uh, Lambretta. You look us up in Tucson. We'll show you the town.'
Bolan hung it up and made an imaginary mark in the air above his head, then immediately called the other force.
Hinshaw himself answered the ring, identifying with a curt, 'Hinshaw. What?'
'This is Bolan.'
A brief silence, then: 'Well hello. How'd you find me?'
'You were easy,' Bolan said pleasantly.
'When did you tumble it was me?'
'I caught a glimpse of Worthy and Morales. Put it together. What are you trying to do to me, soldier?'
The guy chuckled. 'I might ask the same of you.'
'You're screwing me up,' Bolan said, the tone still entirely pleasant.
'I guess that's the idea. Beans are beans, you know. Makes no difference who cooks them or serves them.'
'So how much is he paying you?'
'You want to make a counter-offer?'
'Right.'
'I'm getting 200 a day plus.'
'Plus what?'
'All I can steal,' Hinshaw replied laughing. 'What are you prepared to offer?'
'Guess I can't top that,' Bolan said. 'Not the plus, anyway. Forget it. All I can offer is about twelve hours.'
They were getting down to business, and Hinshaw's tone reflected an understanding of that fact. 'Twelve
