Don Pendleton - Blood Dues

"I see."

EAC.

Weapons, trucks and drugs.

The Mafia.

A link was not beyond the realm of possibility, Bolan knew, but he needed much more in the way of solid battlefield intel before choosing targets for elimination. Nothing was precisely what it seemed among the exiles; anything could happen, and the Executioner could not afford mistakes that might cost lives.

"What will you do?" the Cuban asked, his voice intruding on the warrior's thoughts.

"Start rattling cages," Bolan told him. "I don't have a handle yet, but somebody out there can give me one.''

"Raoul?"

The Executioner shrugged. "I recognize your claim," he said. "But if you shake loose something helpful..."

Toro spread his hands.

"Como no. Of course. You are my friend. I owe you my freedom."

"You owe me nothing," Bolan told him solemnly. "All debts are canceled. From here on out, I can't predict where this will take me."

Toro frowned.

"You fear that it will lead you to my people. Mis hermanos."

"I've considered it," the Executioner admitted candidly.

"And I." The Cuban leaned across toward Bolan, and there was a sadness mixed with pain in Toro's eyes. "I understand Ornelas, his soldados. They have spent a lifetime fighting Fidelistas. First encouraged by your government, then punished."

Your government. Mack Bolan read the none-too-subtle message loud and clear. It drove the meaning home — that they were different, he and Toro. Different warriors with — perhaps — different wars to wage.

"I feel the same anger," Toro was continuing. "But even so..."

He hesitated, struggling with a problem that had clearly nagged him long and hard.

"A man must know his enemies," the Cuban said at last. "The blood, it is not enough. In here..." he tapped his chest above the heart "...a man can die before his time. A brother can betray his blood."

The Executioner was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his tone was solemn.

"Blood doesn't always make a brother."

Toro nodded.

"Si. Comprendo. I will help you... if I can."

Bolan felt the shadow pass between them once again, but briefly. He dismissed it, knowing that he could not chart the Cuban's course of action for him. He trusted Toro's instincts, his sense of honor.

Bolan rose, prepared to leave.

"I'm on the numbers, Toro. Give you a ride somewhere?"

The Cuban shook his head and nodded toward the kitchen telephone.

"I make a call," he said. "There are soldados still that I can trust."

"Okay. Is there someplace I can leave a message?"

Toro thought about it for an instant, finally rattled off a number from memory, and Bolan memorized it.

"I'll be in touch," he promised.

Toro rose and clasped his hand in parting, wrung it warmly.

"Vaya con dios, amigo." And the Cuban's sudden smile was dazzling. "Viva grande, Matador."

Live large. Damn right.

The Executioner was out of there and tracking, leaving Toro to his own devices. They were separate soldiers, separate wars.

Mack Bolan hoped that they would meet again as allies, or at least as friendly neutrals. He had no wish to take the brave soldado's life, or risk his own in the attempt.

But he was moving now, and there could be no turning back.

Hunting.

Seeking out the savages in civilized Miami.

Rattling cages, right.

And living large.

The bolita handler shook his burlap bag filled with numbered Ping-Pong balls. He swung it twice around his head and let it fly. In the audience a planted "catcher" shouldered two smaller men aside and snatched the tumbling bag out of midair, holding it aloft and shaking it in triumph. Then he untied the bag and reached inside, drawing out one of the balls and barely glancing at it, tossing it up to the handler on the dais.

The handler made a show of staring at the ball, as if he had some difficulty reading the single digit painted on its surface. Finally he raised it between a thumb and forefinger for the small crowd to examine.

"Nueve. Number nine."

Down on the betting floor two or three patrons gave a halfhearted cheer; the rest stood silent or groaned softly, crumpling the numbered betting slips they held in their hands.

Three winners, maybe twenty losers. It was just about the right proportion for a crowd this size, Ernesto Vargas thought.

At thirty-six, Vargas was the boss and operator of a moderate but lucrative bolita territory covering Coral Gables and surrounding neighborhoods. Some three years off the boat, he was already doing better than he ever dreamed was possible in Cuba.

Connections had got him started in bolita and staked him to his first successful parlor — a debt that he had long ago repaid with interest.

Common sense would take him to the top in time, if he did not step on any lethal toes along the way.

Ernesto Vargas had been learning from the moment he set foot upon the mainland of America. Studying the people who had come before him, and the Anglos who were there before them all. He made a special study of the native laws and how to circumvent them with a minimum of risk.

It was simple, really. You bought a franchise from the Mob, you greased the cops... and generally speaking, you were free to operate in peace around south Florida, as long as you did not attract undue attention to yourself.

Ernesto Vargas knew the art of living inconspicuously. He might be known within Coral Gables as the man to see for certain favors, but his name had not been splashed across the headlines like the goddamned cocaine cowboys with their fast cars and machine guns, killing people in the streets like rabid dogs.

If Vargas needed someone taken care of... perhaps roughed up a little, or perhaps a lot... he took care of it privately, without the fanfare that attended so much of Miami's recent violence. A kneecap here, an elbow dislocated there. His debtors paid, for the most part on time, and life went on.

It was the American dream.

He had already learned to screw the peasants on bolita and the Cuban lottery he dabbled in, nickel and diming them out of a cool one hundred thousand a year. Not bad for an ex-convict who had been loaded on a boat at gunpoint, in Mariel harbor, not so long ago.

Seated on the dais, back behind his handlers, Vargas scanned the little crowd of players. It was daylight yet, with hours to go before the darkness brought the real money in, but for a morning shift the crowd was far from disappointing. With any luck at all, Vargas would clear an easy grand before lunchtime, half for himself, the rest divided up between his handlers, catchers and the muscle he maintained at every game to watch for trouble.

They were meeting in a private dwelling, one of half a dozen Vargas rented for his floating games. He rotated locations on a regular schedule, helping the Vice cops save face, keeping up the charade. For their trouble and the inconvenience of having strangers, often drunks, arrive and gamble in their homes, the actual tenants made a hundred dollars daily.

It was cheap insurance, a damn sight cheaper than his pad with the local sheriff's department. If there had been a way to eliminate the cops and politicians with their hands out, Vargas was convinced he could rake off another twenty-five percent of gross each month to keep for himself and to invest in other projects.

He dismissed the thought, half smiling to himself. The system had existed for two centuries, and it resisted the way a slab of granite stood against the wind and rain. In time, it might be altered, but to observe the changes in a single lifetime....

The handler was shaking his bag again, and bets were going down around the room. The writers were working quickly, pretending the handler was likely to throw before they had a chance to siphon every nickel from the audience. The all-male audience was noisy now, each man calling out his bets, some of them digging deeper for the cash than they had earlier, but still coming up with it just this one tune.