Don Pendleton - Exit Code

“What?” Trabucco said, reaching back and slapping DeLama’s face. “What the fuck do I look like to you, Joey? Do I look like Mumbo Jumbo the Mind Reader to you, or something?”

“No, boss, course not,” DeLama stammered, his face visibly reddened by Trabucco’s assault.

Trabucco looked at Bronco who was now fully awake and reaching beneath his jacket to check the load in his .45-caliber semiauto pistol. The guy was a strict professional and he loved to kill. The big son-of-a-bitch bruiser—bigger even than Maxim—with his pug nose and shaved head was the only one in the crew that actually intimidated Trabucco just a bit. There were a lot of opinions, mostly conjecture, as to where Huffman had earned the nickname of Bronco, but the widely accepted story was he’d gotten it from the ladies. Supposedly, they loved to ride him like a horse and they insisted he was hung like the same, and that he was a bucking bronco.

Joey DeLama was another story entirely. A young kid who was heir to a Newark crime Family, DeLama had been taken down a few notches because he’d been a big mouth and nearly brought down his entire Family. His father had decided that DeLama needed to go out and get some smarts, so he called his long-time ally, Nicolas Lenzini.

Serge Grano happily agreed to assign DeLama to Trabucco’s crew. He was a wet-behind-the-ears snot, too long spoiled by having a father who was one of the most powerful syndicate guys in Jersey, and yet he didn’t know shit. In Trabucco’s opinion, DeLama was capable of fucking up a wet dream, and the guy had little chance of becoming a made man, never mind heading up the Family business. Trabucco thought it would be better if old man DeLama just killed this spawn he’d sired, and try again.

But that was another story. For now, the important thing was for them to keep up with this government woman. Trabucco didn’t know much about her, beyond that; he didn’t even know her name.

“You don’t need to know her name!” Lenzini had barked at him. “You just need to keep on her ass. I’ve told you where she’s headed, and how to find her. You just make sure you don’t lose her, okay? You think you can handle that for me?”

“Yes, Mr. Lenzini,” Trabucco had said. “I understand perfectly, Mr. Lenzini. Consider it handled, Mr. Lenzini.”

It really jerked his chain that he had to kowtow, but he knew this was his station in life and he had no inkling he’d ever amount to being much more than a bull and at best someday, maybe a head bull. Yeah, maybe eventually he’d get Serge Grano’s job. At present, he was subjugated to lifelong service under a miserable half-breed like Lenzini. The old man’s father, Marcomo Lenzini, had been of pure Sicilian blood, but he’d never wanted to marry—feeling that his business was definitely a man’s business—and instead had chosen to dip his wick in anything that suited him, including one of the young Spanish maids cleaning his house. So in a sense, Nicolas Lenzini was illegitimate, and everyone knew it, but no other woman was able to give Marcomo a son, so he accepted this and made it official by marrying the maid, although they lived separately until Nicolas was born. The old man’s marriage proved short-lived; mother and child died during a second pregnancy.

Nicolas Lenzini was raised an only son, and he inherited his father’s empire when Marcomo Lenzini—a man among men and respected by all of his associates in la Cosa Nostra—died of lung cancer on the eve of his son’s eighteenth birthday. So it went, Nicolas Lenzini, barely out of diapers, took over the family business. He became a hard and embittered man, greedy and ruthless with his enemies. He was not temperamental; in fact, Trabucco never recalled Lenzini even raising his voice. Then again, he didn’t have to—when Mr. Lenzini talked, everybody listened or they’d wind up fish food in Boston Harbor.

“Where do you think she’s going, boss?” Maxim asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Trabucco replied, “but I’d guess into town. Maybe she’s shopping. Maybe she’s baking cookies and forgot something. Maybe she’s going to a bar to get drunk. Just drive, Maxi. Can you do that? Huh? Can you just drive and quit asking me stupid questions?”

“Sure thing, boss,” Maxim replied.

Trabucco knew he was being an asshole, but he didn’t care. He was in charge, and he could be anything he wanted. His men didn’t take it personally. They were still as loyal to him as ever. What really made him nervous about this whole thing was that what he’d been told about this woman. She was going to be instrumental to Mr. Lenzini’s plans, and they were there to insure that nothing bad happened to her. She was insurance, really, against retaliation by the rag heads.

Trabucco still thought that was a huge mistake. He couldn’t figure out why a guy with Lenzini’s clout needed to do business with a group like the NIF. Trabucco didn’t trust them, and he didn’t want to work with them. But Lenzini insisted that they could all get a lot richer and be a lot better off if they cooperated with them. Trabucco didn’t see it that way. He considered the NIF his bitter enemy, just as he considered the cops his enemy, and he wouldn’t hesitate to exterminate every one of them if he thought they were going to try to pull a fast one on the Family. This was his Family and his country, and he didn’t give a fuck about the foreigners and what they wanted. He was only doing this out of loyalty to his people.

So he’d sit and watch over this brainy broad and he’d do his job like a professional syndicate bull, and down the line he would hope there was some reward and appreciation for his work. Yeah, and also some damned consideration. There was nothing he hated more than when he didn’t get any consideration. He didn’t care how the rest of the plan fell out as long as Mr. Lenzini was successful. They had to make the boss look good, because when he looked good they looked good, and while he didn’t really think that much of Lenzini, the old guy did have a reputation for rewarding loyalty. And so Trabucco knew all he could do was his job. And then maybe, just maybe, he’d get some consideration. Yeah, that sure would be a treat.

TYRA MACEWAN PARKED her mother’s car in the lot of a large grocery store and climbed from behind the wheel. She slung her purse over her shoulder, feeling the added but comfortable weight of the .38-caliber Detective’s Special she kept in her bag.

She thought about her father as she walked toward the grocery store. He had taught her respect and appreciation for firearms, and given that a group of strange men were following her, she was all the more thankful for his training. She wished she could talk to him about her situation.

MacEwan also wished Jack or Matt Cooper were around. They would know what to do. She knew she could correct that with a single phone call, but she wouldn’t be able to do it from the store since the bank of pay phones was visible to the entire parking lot and that might look very suspicious to her followers. Cooper’s people had counseled her not to take her cell phone when she returned home, so she couldn’t use that, either. The only phone she’d brought was the emergency unit that allowed DARPA personnel to contact her directly, and she didn’t want to risk using it.

MacEwan got inside the store and immediately located a manager. A few seconds later, she had directions to the woman’s restroom—which she remembered was near a rear exit—and within minutes she was on the back side of the store and crossing a field overgrown with brush, garbage and beer cans.

MacEwan also knew there were an abundance of snakes and rusted metal from junked-out cars in the field. The area had been like this since she was a little girl, and the place really got little attention—except for the Friday and Saturday night police drive-bys—and it seemed the city and public in general had better things to do than worry about this freakish marriage of the natural with the man-made.