Blood Dues

'I'll take the chance.'

Omega smiled and settled on the edge of Sacco's spacious hand-carved desk. Another silent moment passed before the houseman made his reappearance. Sacco raised an eyebrow.

'Well?'

'No answer. Want me to keep trying?'

Sacco thought about it, shook his head.

'I want somebody over there. Take care of it.'

As he left, Cusamano spared another parting glance at the intruder. Phil Sacco waited for the door to close before he spoke.

'You sure?'

Omega nodded. 'So are you.'

'All right. So what's the story? Who's behind it?'

'You should know.'

He stiffened, biting off the first obscene retort that came to mind.

'I give my people room to breathe. They handle any trouble on their own.'

The ace responded with a crooked smile.

'I wouldn't say that Tommy Drake was handling it. He isn't even breathing.'

The capo did not have an answer and Omega was not waiting for one.

'We've been hearing you've got problems with the Cubans.'

Sacco snorted, downed another swallow of his whiskey.

'Everyone's got problems with the Cubans. I can handle it.'

'We hope so.'

We? A look of puzzlement appeared on Sacco's face.

Omega did not leave him guessing.

'You've got friends on the commission, Phil. They're concerned about your welfare. Most of them would like to see you pull it out.''

Most of them, right. The mafioso knew a few old bastards in New York who would love to see him take a fall. Uh-huh. A few of them would dance around his casket when he bought the farm.

But Philip Sacco was not buying anything just yet.

'You tell my friends up north that everything is fine.'

'They want a sign,' the ace informed him.

'They'll have one,' Sacco answered flatly.

'Good.' Omega slithered off the corner of his desk and moved in the direction of the door. He reached it, hesitated with his hand upon the doorknob. 'You ever deal with termites, Phil?'

Sacco frowned.

'Can't say I have.'

Omega shook his head reflectively.

'They get inside a house like this, you never see them till it's too damn late. There's only one way to get rid of them for sure.'

'Oh, yeah?'

'You torch the house, smash the ones that try to make a break. Kill everything that moves and start all over, fresh.' He paused, regarding Sacco from behind the shades. 'I hope you don't have termites, Phil.'

'I can handle things at this end,' Sacco said again, and he despised the sudden tremor in his voice.

'Okay.' The door was open now; the ace was halfway through it. 'You might start off with Jose 99.'

The capo arched an eyebrow.

'What the hell is that? Some kind of Cuban beer?'

Omega laughed, and Sacco felt the color rising in his cheeks.

'I like a sense of humor,' the stranger told him, growing serious again within an instant. 'Check it out, Phil. Find out what your boy was doing with his breathing room. Don't let the termites bring your house down.'

Philip Sacco clenched his teeth.

'I'm good at pest control,' he told the closing door. If the intruder heard him, he gave no sign.

And in Omega's absence, Sacco willed his muscles to relax, returning to the wet bar for another whiskey. Too damned early to be drinking, but hell, it wasn't every day an ace dropped by to threaten you and everything you had.

And it was a threat. All that talk about his friends up north, the Cubans, termites in the walls — he read it loud and clear.

Sacco had a budding revolution on his hands, and Tommy Drake was probably the first in line to fall. New York knew all about it — or enough, at any rate, to send their bloodhound sniffing — and the fact of Sacco's obvious ignorance marked him as a careless capo, one who might be easily unseated.

Well, the bastards had a fat surprise in store for them if they believed Miami would be easy pickings. Tommy Drake had bitten off a wad he could not chew, but Sacco had the muscle to avenge his first lieutenant.

He would find out what the hell was going on — among the Cubans or the Haitians, in his own damn family if it came to that — and he would put his foot down. Right on someone's throat.

As for this Jose 99 — he might be anybody. That was fine with Philip Sacco. He was smart enough and strong enough to root out anyone in southern Florida. It was a relatively simple job of pulling strings and pushing proper buttons.

Right.

And you could can that crap about an open city in Miami. All it meant for Sacco was an open grave.

His 'friends' up north were looking for a sign? Okay. Sacco had one ready for them.

It would read No Trespassing.

And anyone who crossed the boundary uninvited would be leaving in a body bag.

6

Mack Bolan — alias Omega — parked his rental car outside the storm fence of the medium-security detention camp. It was early yet for visitors, and Bolan knew the other vehicles in the parking lot would all belong to prison personnel. His four-door Dodge, the Firebird's temporary stand-in, made a perfect match for all the other family sedans around him.

As the vehicle had changed, so had Mack Bolan. He no longer wore the custom-tailored suit expected of a Mafia ace. Instead, a cheaper model, clearly purchased off the rack, would help him merge with lawmen who had seen more hours than income on the job. The only constant was his sleek Beretta automatic, minus its suppressor, tucked away in leather underneath his arm.

The warrior was a master of role camouflage, adept at changing his identity without elaborate disguise. Experience had taught him that the human mind most often saw what was expected, ordinary. The art of observation was neglected, often totally ignored.

The persona of a black ace was ideal for Bolan — shrouded as the Mafia's gestapo was in mystery, invested as it was with such a fearsome reputation that the doubters seldom voiced their questions openly. 'Omega' had been serving him from early in his war against the Mob, and he had served to rattle Philip Sacco — but for now, another face was needed.

Exit one Omega.

Enter Frank LaMancha, federal officer.

Bolan moved along a barbed-wire runway, mounting steps to enter the encampment's small reception building. At the desk, a beefy sergeant looked up from the newspaper he was reading, frowning at the new arrival.

'Early,' he remarked. 'No visitors till one o'clock.'