Don Pendleton - Caribbean Kill

Halfway across the compound Bolan was suddenly hit with the realization that things were almost precisely as they had been on that earlier occasion of Grimaldi's visit.

The damn joint was overflowing with people.

Visiting type people.

A large-scale meeting of the mob was evidently in progress, and had apparently been going on all night.

Bolan did not know it yet, but the Caribbean Conclave was in session. He would soon recognize a familiar face or two, and he would wonder if he had dropped into an executioner's heaven… or into hell itself.

And he had less than ten minutes to discover which it was to be.

The dawn was on the march.

And so was Death.

The layout almost perfectly coincided with Grimaldi's diagram. Bolan quickly located the telephone cable and took away their communications with the outside world. He then went directly to the security station at the east side of the courtyard.

It was an elaborate little structure made of choice Haitian wood and polished to a dark lustre, about the size of a large American outhouse but with standing room only inside.

A row of closed circuit television monitors were banked along one wall, providing various exterior views of the grounds — including the wall Bolan had just come over.

An athletically built black man wearing a tight-fitting white suit was standing in front of the monitors, his back to Bolan, yawning and stretching and scratching the back of his head.

The Beretta phutted a quiet Parabellum in to help relieve the itch. It scrunched in between the clawing fingers and the guy pitched forward against the monitors and slid into a squat beneath them.

Another sentry came strolling in from a flower bed a few yards away, fiddling with the fly of his trousers. Yeah, even overloaded bladders wanted to let go at dawn. Bolan let go another zap from the Beretta. The guy's head snapped back and he returned to where he'd been, lying in it now and not even knowing it.

Bolan grabbed the first guy by an ankle and dragged him into the flower bed and left him beside the other one.

He'd been a minute and a half inside the grounds. And not a peep from anywhere. No false security, eh?

Next on the agenda was the guard shack at the other side. Bolan crossed over on a soft run, avoiding the lighted areas near the house, and found the shack attended by a single guard who was in the act of pouring coffee from a thermos into a plastic cup.

He waited until the guy set the thermos down, then he reached inside with both hands and lifted the sentry out, one big hand over the mouth and a forearm clamped into his throat.

One violent twist and the guy stopped struggling and went limp. Continuing the initial motion without breaking stride, Bolan carried him on to an automobile in the parking area and tucked the body inside.

A door opened several car-lengths away, another white suite rose into hazy view, and a soft voice called out, "Henri?"

Bolan stood there behind the open car door and waited for the guy to come forward.

The prey came down hesitantly, halted at the front bumper, and again said, "Henri?"

He was a large one. Apparently he'd been goofing off in one of the cars, and now he was worried and wondering if he'd been caught.

Bolan did not have time to wait the guy out. He brought the Beretta up and closed the distance between them with a silent but shattering Parabellum cruncher.

Bolan fed that body in on top of the other one, closed the door, and went on to the house.

Except for the front gate, that should have taken care of the outside men.

Bolan did not give a damn about the front gate.

He went in through the French doors off the courtyard and turned into the east wing, passing through a darkened hallway and into the fully-lighted dining room.

A television eye glared at him from a wall station. He phutted a bullet through it and continued on past the butler's pantry and into another short hallway without changing pace. Over a door in the far wall was another eye. He moved swiftly beneath it and covered the lens with his hand, rapped on the door, and said, "Hey!"

A bored voice, mechanically reproduced through a speaker beside the television camera, responded with, "Yeah, what."

"You got some eyes out in there?"

"Well… yeah. I was just fixin' to call about it. What the hell is it?"

No false security, eh?

"Open the damn door and I'll fix it," Bolan growled. "What the hell you been doing, sleeping?"

"Hell no, I told you I was just..."

A buzzer sounded and the door opened to Bolan's pressure.

He stepped inside and a fat man with a face like red wine cried, "Whuuup" and made a lunge toward his shoulder holster.

The Beretta won the race by a lifetime. Blood and pulpy flesh and splintered bone splattered across the television monitors. Bolan stepped back to the hallway and clicked the door shut.

The next stop was the kitchen.

Only a night light was burning and no one was present there. He found the power panel and a thoughtfully-placed flashlight in a little alcove near the door and pulled the main disconnect, removed the cartridge fuses, and dropped them into a garbage can.

There were no lights — nor anything else electrical — operating in the big joint now.

Bolan was standing in total, choking darkness.

He stepped to the window and checked the progress of the sun, then he snapped on the flashlight and went quickly back through the dining room.

People were astir when he reached the entry hall at the front of the house. The sentry dog was growling uneasily and his handler was trying to calm the big animal. Several shadowy figures had stepped in through the doorway from the west wing, swearing and groping their way through the darkness.

Bolan was the man with the flashlight, and obviously the man with the answers.

A snarlingly unhappy face appeared in the spot and the guy asked, "What the hell happened?"

Behind that beam Bolan knew that he was practically invisible. He replied, "Power failure. Just relax."

"Relax hell," another voice protested. "You can't see your hand in front of your face in here. How long's it gonna be out?"

The rest of your life, Bolan wanted to say. Instead, he said, "Sun's rising pretty soon. If you're scared of the dark, go outside. It'll be light out there in a minute."

"Fuck that," somebody commented.

"Sounds good to me," someone else argued. "Where the hell's the door? Shine that light over on the door, huh?"

That ancient animal dwelling within man still found himself nervous and uncertain about the dark.

Bolan obligingly spotted the door with the flashlight.

He counted five men moving through the open doorway.

Then he told the man with the dog, "Take that bastard outside and shut 'im up…"

The guy did so, without a murmur, leaving the door open.

Bolan crossed over and into the west wing. It was set up with a hallway running the full length along the center, doors opening onto offices and rooms to either side.

One of those doors now stood open and people were loitering about in uneasy attitudes along the darkened hallway, and all eyes turned toward the beam of light from Bolan's flash.

Bodyguards, Bolan read it.

He announced in a loud voice, "Power failure. Don't worry, it'll be okay in a minute or two."

One of the men growled, "It's already been a minute or two."

Another door opened then, farther down, admitting a feeble seepage of yellow light into the hall. According to Grimaldi's diagram, that should be the conference room.

A large man moved through the open doorway, and a man close to Bolan hastened to explain to the new arrival, "Power failure, boss. It's being taken care of."