The next move was up to him.
A tropical paradise lay just beyond that airplane window.
But the Executioner had not come to America's backyard playground to gambol in the sun and sand.
He was living to the point, and he had come for the Caribbean Kill. Bolan was blitzing into paradise.
Chapter One
Collision course
They circled low over the breakwater and dropped smoothly onto the glasslike surface of
'End of game, Grimaldi,' the Executioner announced coldly.
The pilot swallowed hard past the outside pressure of cool steel and muttered, 'I don't get you, Mr. Vinton.'
'Sure you do,' Bolan told him. 'When the engine dies, you die.'
He divided his attention to lift the binoculars into a close scan of the shoreline. A signboard on the pier loomed into the vision-field:
GLASS BAY RESORT PRIVATE
Beyond the pier lay neatly landscaped grounds and a rambling structure resembling an oversized plantation house — a two-story job with verandas at top and bottom levels. Colorful cabanas lined the beach. People in bathing suits sprawled about here and there in the sand — all male-type people, Bolan wryly noted. Others strolled casually about the grounds or lounged at the railings of the verandas. Say, thirty people in plain sight. Two guys in white ducks and sneakers waited on the pier to dock the plane.
It all would seem perfectly innocuous, to the casual observer.
Mack Bolan was not observing casually.
Not a native Puerto Rican was in sight. No females, no relaxed frivolity, no fun or games anywhere in evidence. It was a set stage, sloppily done — no doubt, Bolan mused, the result of haste. They hadn't had time to get all the props out. Something inside a beach cabana was giving off telltale flashes as it reflected the strong rays of the midday tropical sun — a telescopic lens, maybe. The beach towels of the 'bathers' revealed oblong lumps of just about the proper size and shape to suggest concealed rifles or shotguns.
As the plane steadily closed the distance, clumps of men on the lower veranda of the house began drifting down the steps and disappearing into the vegetation.
Yeah, Glass Bay was the hardsite. And it was primed and waiting for a gate-crasher in masquerade.
It was, of course, time for the official unmasking. Bolan had known in his bones, for several hours now, that his little game was over. And now the time had come to pay the fare for that wild-ass exit from Vegas.
By the numbers, now, very carefully. A single moment would decide life or death for Mack Bolan — a very precise moment in psychological time.
The pilot had been with Bolan through three exchanges of aircraft. He was a versatile flyer, but hardcore Mafia all the same, and he knew all the tricks of illegal evasion. Here was one situation that could not be evaded, however, and the knowledge of that truth was pasted all over the guy's face. He nervously cleared his throat and said, 'Look, Bolan, it's all in a day's work, eh? Nothing personal. I just follow orders.'
Bolan said, 'Yeah.'
'I didn't know it was you until the switch at Nassau. And I still didn't know for sure, I mean nobody told me. They just said Glass Bay instead of San Juan. That was the tip-off, I mean I knew something was up. And I put it together myself.'
'Sure.'
The guy was reaching for life. 'You got to believe me, I wasn't in on the setup.'
'I believe you,' Bolan muttered.
A strangled sound from the rear announced that the bagman was not quite ready to die, either. He was cowering against his bags of bucks and trembling as he croaked, 'Me, too, Mr. Bolan. Honest to God I didn't know until just now.'
'Okay, get out,' Bolan groaned.
'Right here?' the accountant warbled hopefully.
Bolan nodded. The pier was less than fifty yards ahead now. 'Not the money, just you.' To the pilot, he commanded, 'Pre-set those controls for a quick lift-off. Then you follow Lemke.'
'Too late,' Grimaldi replied, sighing. 'Can you fly this crate?'
'Watch me,' Bolan told him.
'You'll never make it out of here now. They'll blow this thing out of the water before you can get it turned around. You waited too long, Bolan.'
'Just set it up,' the Executioner commanded.
Lemke pushed the hatch open and gazed apprehensively at the water slipping gently by just below, then he jumped and disappeared from view. The two men on the pier reacted immediately, and a sudden film of perspiration appeared on the pilot's brow.
'Okay she's set!' he yelled, and pushed himself clear of the seat.
The people on shore were beginning to look alive. A man on the pier cupped his hands and shouted something toward the house. A clump of men wearing bathing suits and openly displaying, weapons broke into a run for the seaplane dock.
Girmaldi threw himself through the hatch and Bolan swung around behind him to punch a pair of Parabellums into the two agitated figures on the pier. They went over backwards, their own weapons firing reflexively and wildly, and Bolan made a lunge for the throttle.
That precise moment had arrived.
He gave the little craft full throttle, swung the nose around to the desired course and locked the controls in that position, then he moved swiftly to the blind-side hatch as the seaplane hunched into the sudden acceleration.
He had no intention of trying to fly that water bird out of there. The intention was to make the opposing troops
A startled moment of confusion was all he'd been bidding for. And he got it, sliding into the calm Caribbean depths just as the reaction-fire came crashing into the speeding craft.
Bolan remained shallow and concentrated on achieving maximum underwater distance. By the time he surfaced, the pilotless plane had reached nightspeed and was just beginning a rather ragged lift-off. It broke land with only inches of clearance between pontoons and beach, then rose swiftly in a steady pull for treetop level, winging through a sustained and withering fire that was reaching out from every spot about that lagoon.
He had miscalculated the guns at Glass Bay. For each obvious one noted during that hasty landing recon, three and maybe four were now unloading in a massive and determined effort to abort the 'getaway.'
The trajectory of that speeding airborne missile must have suddenly become obvious to all who watched; the gunfire ceased as abruptly as it had begun and Bolan could see energetic bodies hastily disembarking from the second-story veranda. All along the beach, men were erupting from places of concealment and sprinting toward the house.
Hell was winging into paradise, and everybody there seemed to know it.
The men who had raced onto the pier were now stampeding back toward land, and the grounds surrounding the big house had come alive with frantic figures lunging about in diffuse patterns of escape.
The plane itself seemed poised motionless in the air, like a football in a stop-action forward-pass replay on the Game of the Week, with the plantation house representing the only eligible receiver downfield, and with the chagrined defenders hoping to God that the pass was going wild but knowing in their sinking hearts that it was directly on target.
And then the plane hit, slicing in just above the second-story porch and punching on through into the house
