San Diego Siege

line.

A Folly sailor snatched the precious cargo from the basket.

Bolan yelled, 'Cast off and haul ass!'

Turtle was akeady into the play, however. The Folly swung suddenly to starboard and the lines parted with a twanging snap as they veered away from the other boat's course.

A moment later, two unbelieving American sailors watched 'Frankie Lambretta' slash packet after packet of high grade heroin and scatter the precious powders into the blue Pacific.

'Trash,' he told them, when the job was completed. 'The guy was trying to sell us trash.'

And one hour later, when he was making his goodbyes to the admiring crew of Danger's Folly, he told Turtle Tarantini: 'You run a tight ship, Skipper. Ill mention it to the boss.'

With a look approaching open adoration, the Mafioso told the Executioner, 'Mr. Lambretta, you're the classiest guy I've ever had the pleasure to meet.'

Yeah.

So okay.

It hadn't turned into Bolan's Folly, after all.

And the world would hardly miss an international junk salesman and a million bucks worth of human misery.

The mob would, sure.

And that, of course, was the name of the immediate game: Siege. He would lock them out and shut them out at every turn.

And then, maybe, something interesting would come up over the hill. A target, maybe, in the Big Middle.

9 Discovery

'Where the hell you been with my boat?' Tony Danger screamed from the pier as Dangers Folly came alongside.

Tarantini ignored the emotional greeting while he completed the docking procedure, and not until she was tied-up and the engines secured did he move to the wing of the bridge to grin down at his boss on the pier.

'Come on aboard, sir,' he called down. 'Mr. Lambretta left you a report.'

Anthony Cupaletto, or 'Tony Danger' as he had become known in mob circles, was not a man given to vague fears or unreasonable worries. He had started in the business fifteen years earlier as a paid-gun guarding the person of Julian DiGeorge, then boss of the Southern California underworld. His cool efficiency and loyalty to the great man had not gone unnoticed or unrewarded, and Tony Danger had moved quickly along the happy road to wealth and prestige in the DiGeorge organization. The thirty-five-year-old was now regarded in ranking circles as the ambitious young man to watch out for in the ever-shifting power structures of the times.

Cool, shrewd, hard, dependable — Tony Danger seemed destined to go a long way in the business.

So, no, he was not normally a fearful or an anxious man.

At this particular moment, however, he was both.

He ignored the gangway which the crewmen were emplacing, leapt onto the deck of his pride and joy, then went quickly up to join his skipper on the bridge.

'Mister who left me what?' he growled at Tarantini.

'Mr. Lambretta,' the Turtle repeated. The look on the boss's face was destroying his self-confidence and his voice was showing the stress. 'You know ... Frankie Lambretta, Mr. Lucasi's hard arm. Hell, you should've seen that guy operate.'

The name meant something to Tony Danger ... Lambretta ... wasn't that ... ?

It hit him then and — his worst fears suddenly surfacing in the pit of his gut — Danger covered his consternation by shoving a cigarette between his lips and leaning into the lee of the flying bridge to light it.

Sure. That was what he'd called himself at Palm Springs. Frankie Lucky. Frankie Lucky Lambretta.

Mack fuckin' Bolan!

The San Diego caporegime exhaled a gusty cloud of smoke and quietly asked his skipper, 'What the hell are you telling me, Turtle?'

'You didn't know about it?' Tarantini asked nervously.

'About what?' Tony Danger growled, working hard to control his emotions.

'He said he was supposed to make the buy at the Pepe. He said there was trouble, and he was going instead of you. He said — '

'Fuck what he said!' Tony Danger yelled. 'What did he do?'

Tarantini took a retreating half-step in the face of that rage and choked out: 'Hell I thought you knew. I thought it was cleared through you. The Frenchman tried to pass some bad stuff. Mr. Lam-bretta drilled him and dumped the junk.'

'He did what?' Tony Danger screamed.

Turtle Tarantini looked about ready to run. Instead he thrust forward a heavy manila envelope, pushing it towards his boss. 'I guess it's all in here,' he said weakly. 'He said give this to you.'

Tony Danger accepted the 'report' but his eyes remained hot and unbelieving on his skipper. 'Where is this guy right now?' he wanted to know.

'He had us drop him on the other side. Said his car was over there.'

'When?'

'Five, maybe ten minutes ago.'

Tony Danger did not wish to open that envelope.

He knew, he thought, what was in there.

He muttered, 'He dumped the stuff?'

'Yessir. It was trash. He paid the Pepe for their run, but he put a bullet right between the Frenchman's eyes. Mr. Danger, that guy knew what he was doing. Believe me.'

'Fifty kilos,' Tony Danger muttered. 'A million bucks on the streets. He dumped it?'

'I told you, it was trash. I thought you knew all about that. I thought....'

'You think too much, Turtle,' Tony Danger told his uncomfortable skipper. He was opening the envelope — slowly, delicately. 'You're gonna fool around and think yourself into an early grave. You think about that.'

Turtle Tarantini's eyes clearly did not understand his boss's reaction to the superb job Frankie Lambretta had done for him.

'Too many people give orders around here,' he muttered defensively.

Tony Danger did not hear the remark. He was staring into the brown manila envelope. He dug a finger into a small sample of white powder in there and touched it to his tongue. 'Trash, eh?' he commented miserably. Then he withdrew the little iron cross with a bull's-eye in its center and showed it to his skipper. 'That's your Frankie Lambretta,' he said in a flat voice.

'I don't believe it,' Tarantini whispered. 'You'd better,' Tony Danger quietly told him. 'You'd damn sure better believe it.'

He turned away to conceal the quivering of his lips and quickly descended the ladder to the main deck.

Damn right.

Everybody had better start believing it.

Hell had finally come to San Diego.