Don Pendleton - Caribbean Kill

"Give."

"They just call it 'the island.' Somewhere in the Med, I don't know where. Someplace around Italy, I think — or maybe it's Greece. Hell, I don't know. The international Commissione meets there, I hear. It's like a little UN. But it's more than Mafia, bigger than Cosa Nostra. I don't know just how it's structured. But it's a cartel, Bolan. The world monopoly on organized crime. And it's big, daddy, it's damn big."

"And Tel Aviv?"

Grimaldi smiled sourly and said, "Shit you do have big ears. That guy is officially retired, I hear. He requested and received political sanctuary under the Israeli charter. You know, the inviolate home of the international jew. The Israeli government doesn't like it, I hear… I mean, giving refuge to a guy like him… but they're stuck with it, gored by their own constitution."

" Is he retired?"

" That guy?" Grimaldi snickered. "Does a shark turn into a goldfish in its old age?"

Bolan muttered, "It just goes on and on, doesn't it."

"Make you feel like you're trying to dam the tide with turds?"

Bolan growled, "Sometimes, yeah. But then I remember."

"You remember what?"

"I'm not here to cure, just to kill."

Grimaldi shook away a shiver and said, "Well, you do that pretty well. And Sir Edward is next on tap. Right?"

"Right. You get me in there, Jack. That's all I ask."

"You don't want me to get you out?"

Bolan grinned. "I'd consider that a bonus. But yeah. Yeah, I'd like to get back out, Jack."

"That's my specialty. But tell me, Bolan. Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why this Mil? Why any of them? What the hell are you winning? I mean, realistically now. You know the score. You pop one, he falls over, another steps up, you pop him, up comes the next guy. They're too big for you, fella. You're fighting a machine that fixes its own hurts. So why?"

"Crime pays," Bolan replied quietly. "It pays damn big."

"So what else is new? Was that supposed to answer my question?"

"Yeah. I'm not fighting a machine. I'm fighting people. People who intend to profit from crime. I'm showing some of them that there is no profit. Okay?"

Grimaldi said, "Okay. Maybe you're right. If you can stay alive and keep it going, then maybe so. Maybe you'll make it too damn hazardous for the next guy to step to the head of the line. But I doubt that you'll live that long, Bolan."

"I'm going to try."

"By trying a hit on the hell hole of the Caribbean? So keep trying that hard, buddy, and… aw, what the hell. Let's go do it."

"You got everything straight in your mind?"

Grimaldi glanced at his watch. "We have plenty of time, let's run through that floor plan once more, just in case I forgot something."

Bolan shuffled the map to one side and laid out the diagram of the cliff side, mansion near Port au Prince, as reproduced from Jack Grimaldi's memory of a brief visit three months earlier.

"Okay," he said. "North wall here, gate to the west, guard shack over here. Bedrooms..."

"Hell I'm glad I looked again," Grimaldi interrupted. "There's a courtyard between the east and west wings."

"Right here?"

"Yeah. Flower gardens and stuff. Uh, I think — yeah, French doors into the house, ground level. Security station down here at the corner."

"Hardmen?"

"Hard black men. Civilian clothes."

"Weapons?"

"Sidearms, concealed."

"How many at that station?"

"Two, I believe. Yeah, two."

"Okay, let's take the whole thing again, detail by detail. First floor, reception hall — a man and a dog. Right?"

"Right."

"Winding stairway up to the left, library to the right, ballroom straight ahead."

"Yeh, but they don't ball there."

"Kitchen, dining room, butler's pantry, security cell. Right?"

"Right. The cell is manned day and night. Electronically locked."

"Any idea about the duty shifts in that cell?"

"I think three. I saw them changing at midnight."

"Okay. Now. The guy in the cell. He monitors all three floors."

"Right. The television cameras are all over the place. They might even have hidden ones in the bedrooms. I wouldn't put it past them."

"Anything else about that first floor? Anything at all?"

Grimaldi pondered for a moment, then replied, "That's all I can draw."

"Okay, upstairs. Sir Edward's suite."

"I never got in there."

"Think of it from the outside."

"Well… yeah, I told you… uh, come to think of it, he must take the whole damn corner there. Let's see, the doors are…"

"Think about it."

"I'm thinking. The guard in the hall and one in the inner security room. Let's see… oh, all the inside guards are hard Mafia, I mean wops like me. Uh, I'll bet he has about three large rooms in that suite. I mean, not counting the security jazz."

"Women?"

"I never saw one on the whole place."

"Okay. Over to the west wing, now. Offices, conference rooms, a vault."

"Yeah."

"Second floor. Is this all the windows there are on the second floor west?"

"Hell I didn't build the damn place, I just spent an evening there."

"If you think hard enough, Jack, you could tell me all about your mother's womb. Are you saying there are just two damn windows on that whole floor?"

"Well now wait, no — I've got the stairs in the wrong place. Look. Gimme the damn pencil. Here's the way…"

And so it went, toward the dawn.

The Caribbean Kill was definitely not over.

The big one was yet to come.

The Republic of Haiti is slightly larger than the state of Maryland and has a population estimated at close to five million people. Discovered by Columbus in 1492, it became a French colony in 1677, achieved independence from France in 1804, and has been a constituted republic since 1820. The ore-rich and agriculturally productive country has had a turbulent history, especially during the 20th century. Following a five year period of political tumult and violence, U.S. forces occupied Haiti in 1915 to restore order, this occupation lasting until the mid-1930's.

A surface calm prevailed over this troubled land until 1950, and then five successive governments rose and fell until the election in 1957 of "Papa Doc" Duvalier. That administration undertook a program of severe political repression and engineered a constitutional "reform" in 1964 which established Papa Doc as President of Haiti for life. The Duvalier years were marked by official terrorism, internal strife and rebellion, and open hostility between Haiti and her island neighbor, the Dominican Republic.

Through all of this tense history, the plight of the ordinary Haitian citizen seems to have shown little improvement. Illiteracy in the republic is common, wretched poverty a way of life.

It was not difficult for Mack Bolan to understand why Haiti had been selected as the hub of the Caribbean Carousel. A government which showed no official respect for its people would certainly be amenable to the influences of an "international invisible government" trafficking in the same brand of human exploitation and organized greed. They made a pair, Bolan decided — and he had to wonder how many other small and vulnerable countries around the world were being setup for invisible domination by the international cartel of crime.

The situation seemed a bit ironic. The giant "world powers" had been locking horns and cold-warring for international influence for most of three decades. They'd rattled rockets at one another, maintained huge armies, raced into outer space, fought or backed brushfire wars, and tried to woo the world with dollars, rubles, and yens.

And quietly, through it all, the street-corner hoods of all the lands had been nickle-and-diming their way toward the formation of that brooding and overlying conglomeration which could certainly be called The Fourth Power . Without armies or foreign aid or space programs, they had invisibly welded themselves onto the throats of their societies and interlocked their tentacles in a whole new and devastatingly effective political idea — the new politics — the politics of rape and robbery — and they were making it work.