girls could never know. When the proper answers were not forthcoming, there were hideous threats and stories of mutilated young bodies floating out through the Golden Gate, and there were blows and various other physical indignities.
None of the delegation were ready to accept the truth that the girls actually knew nothing whatever concerning Mack Bolan's plans and/or present whereabouts. Apparently they had come prepared to spend the night — and no doubt would have — had not Bolan himself provided the answer regarding his present whereabouts.
Cynthey was effusively grateful for the rescue; Panda was surly and resentful of the fact that Bolan's shadow had entered and clouded their lives. As the story went on, it became apparent that Panda had been the one with the leaky mouth. She was clearly jealous of the impression Bolan had made on the other girl, and it was during an angry denunciation of 'all men including your fancy Mack Bolan' at lunch time, when the wrong ears were listening and their hell began.
Bolan did not feel responsible, except in the sense that any human is responsible for another. He had neither sought their company nor given any moves to maintain it. He had warned them of the value of silence, and they had blown it. As a result, they had endangered not only themselves, but Mary Ching as well, and they could quite easily have become the instruments of Bolan's downfall.
On the other hand, he certainly felt no resentment toward the porno girls. They were, after all, just kids. He was just damned glad that he'd gotten to them in time, and that the thing had worked out as well as it did.
He did feel strongly responsible, however, for a pair of somewhat different people back East. They were tied to him by the invisible threads of mutual love and hazard, and their beloved lives had been plunged into a torment of furtive existence — hiding that they may live — and all because of Bolan's lousy war.
And the guy had the nerve to ask him if it was important!
Then there was that other responsibility sitting there coolly beside him, a China doll who had also become special and was dangerously compromised by Bolan's war. And he was dragging her deeper into it with each passing moment.
So it was a lot of baloney; a guy could not stand alone, not absolutely alone, not so long as he lived in a world of people. The people were what the war was all about. And some of them, here and there along the way, were going to get burned. There was no way around that idea; there was no way to stand absolutely alone.
Important? Yeah, Corporal Phillips, it was damned important.
He told Mary Ching, 'Your humble pad is now death row. Avoid it, write it off, don't ever go back there again.'
Mary's eyes found those pathetic kids in the rear-view mirror; they found the tortured misery in the Executioner's gaze; she nodded her head and told him, 'Okay. Okay.'
She knew, now, what Mack Bolan was made of.
Sausalito is a picturesque little village lying directly across from San Francisco on the Gate's north shore. Bolan had spent a weekend there once, shortly after Korea. Under another time and mood, he would have greeted the quaint beauty of 'the Portofino of the West' with a nostalgic appreciation; on this trip he felt merely tense and anxious to have the bedsy twins off his hands and mind. His numbers were getting crowded and — although San Francisco was only minutes behind him — he was a bit irritable over the fact that he'd left the town behind just when all the numbers were beginning to come together.
The warwagon, under the sure guidance of Mary Ching, was picking its way clear of the bridge approach and winding onto a narrow shoreside road, circling onto the bay.
He should have received the initial ding when the first huge signboard blurred across his vision, proclaiming in red letters a foot high, SAVE THE BAY — but with everything else that had transpired that day, he wasn't as quick to draw the connection. Several signs and as many jogs in the road later, they came upon the houseboat, about a hundred yards off the road, snuggled into a cozy inlet and tied by heavy hawsers to a couple of accommodating trees.
It was small, as some houseboats go, but the letters blazed across it from stem to stern — BAYSAVERS — would be a difficult item for anyone to miss — and this time there was no miss inside Bolan's brain.
Already, though, Mary was swinging the van onto the little trail to the boat and Cynthey was on her knees directly behind him and proudly declaring, 'That's it, that's the home where the heart is.'
It was also a home where a lot of hell was likely to be unleashed, and it didn't even take an executioner's mentality to recognize that harsh fact of winner-take-all warfare.
He snarled at Cynthey, 'Is this also the home of Baysavers Incorporated?'
Her eyes were baffled and recoiling from the savagery of his tone as she stammered, 'S-sure, well n-no, I mean, Mr. Vericci gave us the boat. You've heard of him?' She shrank back all the way, reading the truth of Bolan's eyes, and wailed, 'Oh, no!'
Oh yeah. He'd heard of him.
Bolan would never cease to marvel at the fantastic interconnections in the world of Mafia, and the way they always seemed to reach out and tie up a guy when he was least expecting it.
Touch one and you reach them all, that was the lesson the Executioner had learned many hot battles ago, but one which he apparently had not learned quite well enough.
A heavy car had already pulled crosswise onto the trail behind them, blocking the way out.
Movements, now — excitedly surreptitious ones — were taking place down there around that boat... and, yeah, all the numbers had crowded together on that narrow trail outside of Sausalito.
His leg pushed Mary's aside and his foot found the brake pedal to stand the warwagon on her nose.
He knew now, yeah, why he'd been feeling so irritable.
He had goofed, he had overlooked something, and that little sentinel of the inner mind had been screaming into his blindness that he had left something behind in San Francisco.
It wasn't his, heart, either.
He'd left his caution and his combat quick and maybe his whole damn lousy war.
He'd become weary of the stand alone.
He'd ridden blithely and blindly into the most outrageously obvious set-up of them all — and he'd come in stupid, deaf, and feeling sorry for himself.
In a voice quivering with self-disgust, he commanded, 'Out Mary's side and into the dirt, all of you! Hit the water on my signal and stay the hell clear!'
And then Bolan tried for the only save he knew.
He came out shooting.
16
Style
Bolan exploded through the rear door of the war-wagon, a combat belt slung hastily across his neck and a blazing burpgun in his hands.
The immediate target was that rear guard vehicle with its six occupants, and it was obvious that they had not expected anything like this. The range was less than fifty yards, far less than the maximum effective for the combat machine gun. The assault caught them on the seat of their pants and clawing like hell to get out of that sitting target; their first few rounds were hasty and purely reactive.
Bolan himself was firing for cover, not for effect. He moved out behind the blazing attack and found the so- so shelter of a stubby tree before the boys could pull their wits back together.
By the time they had their doors open, he had snatched an ornament from the combat belt and base-balled an HE grenade along the course to facilitate their scrambling exit. It hit the ground a few yards shy and rolled on home, exploding directly beneath the vehicle and lifting it to full spring travel in a rocking-rolling motion.
Two guys were still inside at that instant, and the others were no more than a pace away. Two of the outsiders were flattened, hard, by the blast. The other two were reeling away from there and firing handguns at the moon. The burpgun cut them down before they could get their legs fully beneath them.
One of the guys still in the vehicle was screaming bloody murder... and then the secondary explosion came, the gas tank letting go with a horrible whooosh and sending a horizontal jet of fire streaking along the
