And his passenger was there, one arm outstretched to grasp the helping hand that Bolan offered. Jack Grimaldi saw the Cuban come aboard, and the pilot reacted instantly. The ship lifted off, ascending vertically, the altered angle of their rotor blast dispersing smoke and gas.
Below them riflemen were searching for the range and finding it. A bullet whispered next to Bolan's ear and drilled an exit port behind him, through a pane of Plexiglas. Another twanged against the fuselage and spun away.
Grimaldi took them out of there, the Bell responding to a master's hand and climbing, banking, rising in a spiral that would get them out of rifle range.
The Executioner and Toro scrambled into seats and buckled up, riding out the storm. Grimaldi soon had them running true and arrow straight above the scrublands, with the prison compound dwindling, behind them.
Across from Bolan, Toro was beginning to relax, but his deliverer could not afford to share the feeling. They were flying out of momentary danger into greater peril, and the heat would follow them inexorably. The spark that he had struck that morning might ignite a lethal conflagration in Miami.
Fine.
Warrior Bolan was familiar with the heat; he thrived on it.
And he was carrying the fire this time, a cleansing flame to scorch the savages and drive them underground.
A number of his enemies had felt the Bolan heat already. More would follow. Hell had come acalling in Miami, and the purifying flames would have to run their savage course.
A skillful hand could fan the flames, attempt to channel and direct them, but the end result would be in doubt until the final shot was fired. There was every chance that warrior Bolan would be counted with the fallen, but he knew the long odds going in, and they did not deter him.
The Executioner was blitzing on.
9
Toro stood before the open kitchen window, leaning on the sink and staring out across a scruffy yard in the direction of a peeling clapboard fence. The nearest neighbor was an auto graveyard, its rusting hulks piled high above the fence.
"Sorry we couldn't set up something with a view."
Grinning, the Cuban turned to face Mack Bolan.
"The view is fine, amigo. I was getting tired of open spaces, anyway."
He retrieved a mug of coffee from the kitchen counter, sat down at a narrow dining table to face the Executioner.
"I have not yet thanked you for delivering me."
"No thanks are necessary," Bolan told him.
"Ah. Without the need, then. Gracias, amigo."
"Welcome."
They were seated in the combination dining room and kitchen of a rented bungalow in Opa-locka, a Miami suburb. It was five minutes from the Opa-locka airport and well removed from Little Havana. And Bolan knew that it was there the main heat of the coming search for Toro would be concentrated. With any luck the hunt should pass them by completely.
Not that Bolan or the Cuban planned on hiding out while the search went on around them. Far from it.
They were pausing at the rented safehouse only long enough to coordinate a course of action.
There was work to do yet in Miami, and before proceeding with it, Bolan needed information.
"You mentioned a suspected sellout in your group."
Toro glanced up from his coffee cup, a frown etched into his forehead. He hesitated, and when he spoke, his voice was solemn.
"I will deal with him myself."
"I understand your feelings."
Toro raised an eyebrow.
"Do you?"
Bolan nodded.
"Faint-hearts... traitors... they injure all of us."
He did not speak of April Rose or of the mole who had done everything within his power to scuttle Bolan's Phoenix program. Good lives down the drain, and changes driving Bolan back into the cold and giving back his name, his lonely war.
The Cuban was consumed with private thoughts, his own grim memories, but Bolan's voice cut through the fog.
"I need your help," he said. "If this connects, I can't afford to go in firing blind."
Another hesitation, then Toro finally nodded.
"Raoul Ornelas." He pronounced the name as if it left a sour taste on his tongue. "My right-hand man. Mi hermano." Disgust was heavy in his voice. "You know I worked with Alpha 66?"
Bolan nodded. The computer files at Stony Man had kept him current on a host of paramilitary groups, their personnel anything and everything related to the covert war of terrorism. While it lasted, he had followed Toro's progress through the Cuban exile underground, had been relieved when he affiliated with a moderate faction, had seen him rise into a leadership position, helping to direct the energies of soldiers who might otherwise have run amok.
"Raoul, he was not satisfied. More action... always more. He blames your government for all our problems. FBI or CIA, they're all the same with Castro to Raoul."
The Cuban downed his coffee, then got up to refill his mug.
"We quarreled over policy. I learned Raoul was acting independently, recruiting others. Bomb here, there... all the same to him.''
"He challenged you?"
The Cuban's eyes flashed back at him.
"I threw him out." The sudden smile was almost wistful. "No use. There is always somewhere for a man to go."
"Ornelas set you up?"
A casual shrug.
"Raoul, or one of his soldados," Toro answered. "Before the trial, he is already meeting with my men, reminding them they cannot trust the government, inviting them to join him.''
Bolan saw the picture clearly, all the ugly pieces falling into place.
"You know the EAC Exiles Against Castro?"
"Yes."
The Executioner was only too familiar with the exile splinter movement. Known to law-enforcement agencies since 1975, EAC was a tiny clique numerically fewer than one hundred hard-core members had been publicly identified but it exerted influence beyond proportion to its numbers.
EAC drew support from leading members of the anti-Castro bloc. Successful exile businessmen supported the guerrilla band with money, arms, a well-timed word in certain ears.
And for their efforts, they got action, right.
The soldiers of EAC had been linked with bombings from Miami to Manhattan, random acts of violence and intimidation. They were indiscriminate in choosing targets: federal, state or local offices; the homes and businesses of opposition spokesmen; foreign embassies and airlines. Voices raised against the terror were silenced by the bomb or sniper's bullet, and EAC won grim recognition as the most savage, most secretive faction of the splintered Cuban exile movement.
Freedom of expression had a fearful price in southern Florida, and everyone was paying. Everyone, that is, except the Communists and Fidelistas whom EAC was presumably established to combat. Strangely, and despite the rising tide of Cuban violence, little of the action seemed to be directed at the classic goal of liberating Cuba from the blight of Castroism.
"Raoul is influential in the group. Some say he leads it now, except in name."
"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..."