Don Pendleton - Caribbean Kill

A guy didn't have to grow up in a ghetto to develop a criminal mentality. The neighborhood punks could never have brought it off without the assistance of that other criminal type — the business-man without a conscience, the politico without a soul, the lawyer with nothing but contempt for human justice.

There were some strange bedfellows beneath that Fourth Power sheet. There were, it seemed, entire government administrations, corporations, international financiers, "nice" people of every race and religion and political philosophy, hoods, punks, thugs, psychopaths — yeah, it was the little United Nations, all right. An entire fourth society brought together under one common banner: greed.

And they were eating the world.

Bolan was aware that his war was expanding. The battle fronts were extending in all directions at once, and into infinity.

What the hell could one man do in the face of all that?

Bolan knew that his was an extreme case of reaction. He could not expect others to follow his example, to abandon their own quests for happiness and fulfillment in exchange for unrelenting and unlimited warfare. But he could expect no less of himself.

He had been taught to kill. It was his trade, his profession. And he was good at it. He had the tools, the skills, and an awareness of the enemy. He could do no less than all-out war.

So what could one man do?

He could kill. He could cover himself with blood and offer up his own for the taking. He could stand up to the appetites of that voracious Fourth Power and shake his fist in their bloated faces. He could stay alive as long as possible while continuing the opposition. He could remind them that not every man had a price — that principle and dedication and audacity and guts were still alive in the human race.

He could remind them that there was a higher reason and purpose behind the forward spiral of human evolution, and that the universe would be kind to those who continued to reach beyond themselves toward the higher goals. He could tiog them every step of the way, and hold up a mirror to their gross distortions of the estate of mankind, and show them that they were, by God , not going to get away with it

And it was this overlying rationale that sent Mack Bolan into a foreign republic, with stealth and in darkness, to kill a man whom he had never heard of until a few hours earlier.

Jack Grimaldi's reasons were perhaps a bit more personally defined. He quit simply admired Mack Bolan, and he was thoroughly disgusted with the unadmirable course his own life had taken.

As they scuttled across the Haitian landfall in the helicopter, Grimaldi told Bolan, "When my cousin came to me with this proposition, I figured what the hell. I had the Italian name, I may as well live in the image."

"What image?" Bolan asked, though he knew.

"What the hell, if you're Italian you've gotta be Mafia. Right?"

Bolan grinned and replied, "Yeah I know, Jack. I grew up with Italians. I know them, as a people. It's a shame that a speck of dirt is able to tarnish the whole image."

"You like wops?" the pilot asked, smiling.

"Sure." Bolan patted his belly. "My stomach even remembers. It knew every kitchen in the neighborhood."

Grimaldi chuckled. "You got your strength from pasta ."

Bolan replied, "Yeah, I..." then fell silent when his companion tensed suddenly and craned his head into a scan of the higher altitudes. "What is it?"

"The fuzz, I fear."

The earphones crackled then from an outside carrier wave and a breathless foreign voice delivered an officious announcement.

"You understand that?" Bolan asked the pilot.

"It's French Creole, no. But I know what he wants." Grimaldi touched the throat mike and announced, " Helicoptere Americain, voyageur permettre Port au Prince, Sir Edward numero cinquante et un ."

A propellor-driven military fighter plane buzzed them, flashing past in the darkness as a well-enunciated reply came in English.

"Welcome to Haiti." He pronounced it high-tie. "Please conform to established flight paths."

"Roger. Thanks."

Bolan showed his companion a tense grin and commented, "Real class."

"Oh they're classy as hell," Grimaldi told him. "Until they decide they don't like you."

"What was that number you gave him?"

"It's the one I was given to use last time. I don't know, maybe it's a standard code. Anyway, it worked."

"Anyone visiting Sir Edward can come and go without worrying about customs inspections?"

"That's the idea. I told you, man. He's a hand in their glove."

"I wonder what happens to the glove," Bolan mused, "when I chop off the hand."

"A glove without a hand isn't worth much," Grimaldi replied. "It'll find itself another one. That's what I meant. This war of yours is hopeless, man."

"Not until I'm dead," Bolan growled.

"You're already dead," Grimaldi said.

"Just sit there," Bolan told his newest ally, "and watch the dead walk again."

It was, after all, the land of the zombie.

The land of the living dead.

And Mack Bolan felt entirely at home.

The helicopter circled in a high, wide pass at "the mansion in the rocks" while Bolan studied the situation through binoculars. Lights were showing from every visible window, and a considerable number of cars could be seen in the vehicle area. Few other details were available, from this viewpoint.

"What's with this 'attack at dawn' jazz?" Grimaldi groused. "Is it just a tradition? They were always calling us out for dawn strikes in Nam, and I never could figure it out. Why dawn?"

Bolan continued the binocular surveillance as he replied, "Not entirely tradition. There's a psychological moment involved — also a biological one."

"Oh well, that answers my question entirely," the pilot said sarcastically.

"The human animal is a product of the planet," Bolan explained as he continued the scouting. "We've developed certain rhythms, both physically and mentally. Dawn is a sort of neutral area. For the guy that's been up all night, it means an inner letdown, a torpor."

"Really?"

"Yeah. In the jungle sense, it means a relaxation from the perils of the night — that is, for us daylight creatures. That hint of light in the sky means that we've made it through another night, and we can relax now."

"So you relax and attack," Grimaldi commented. "Sounds brilliant."

"No," Bolan said. "You attack the guy who's fallen into a false sense of security."

"You won't find any false security down there, buddy."

"We'll see," Bolan said. "Put her down."

"You really going to trust me to come back and get you?"

"Yep."

The pilot grinned. "Think you're a pretty good judge of flesh, don't you?"

"Have to be," Bolan clipped back. "Put me down."

Grimaldi put him down, hovering just off the coastal rocks less than a hundred yards outside the high walls of the estate.

Bolan opened the hatch, said, "Good luck," and slid to the ground, a drop of about five feet.

Grimaldi leaned over to secure the hatch, murmured, "Yeah, good luck, what's that?" — and sent the little bird into a heeling climb toward the sea.

Bolan watched him disappear into the dusky overhead, then he took a sighting on his goal, checked his weapons, and moved silently toward the wall.

He was in blacksuit, face and hands also darkened, a gliding shadow in a landscape of darkness.

The moon was gone, and the first faint streaks of morning grayness were edging into the eastern horizon.

The timing had been perfect. So far. It had to be. Ten minutes… that was all the time he had.

He scaled the wall and dropped lightly inside the grounds and moved swiftly on without pause, relying now entirely upon Jack Grimaldi's memories of things that had been — three months earlier.