Sure. There was only one way to play it. Since he could not provethat Mack Bolan had crashed with that plane, he would have to assume that he had not.
Lavagni tried to ignore a little chill that was quivering at his spine. He rejoined the others, who were standing locked in a stiff silence, and he quietly announced, "Bolan swam for it. So let's go find him."
Dragone sighed, cast a melancholy eye on the burning house, and asked, "Where do we start?"
"We start right where he wants us," Lavagni replied heavily. "The guy's a jungle fighter, Charlie. That's where hell go. I want Paul — and Duke… get Joe, too. And they better have those maps in their pockets."
"Plug crews," Dragone decided.
"Yeh. And get those boat crews over here, they get a piece of this too."
"Can I go now?" Grimaldi asked quickly. "I need a drink."
Lavagni ignored the pilot's request. "Jack, you'll know who to contact, I want a couple of whirly birds out here. I wish I'd kept a couple here, now. Dammit, why the hell didn't I think of that..."
Dragone was walking away. The Caporegimecalled after him, "Don't forget the walky-talkies." To Grimaldi, he snapped, "Well, move it, move it!"
"Yessir," the pilot said, and hurried off.
Lemke's eyes flashed uncertainly between Lavagni and the retreating figure of the pilot.
"Go help fight the fire!" Lavagni barked.
The accountant fled, leaving Quick Tony Lavagni, the terror of the Atlantic Seaboard, to stand a lone vigil on the waters of Glass Bay.
Yeh. What a hell of a note. Here was Quick Tony, again, with a goddam contract on Mack the Blitzing Bastard. Mack the Jungle Cat. And in his own element now.
A tumbling gut just couldn't be wrong. Quick Tony was on a collision course with his own fate. Yeh. What a hell of a note.
Chapter Two
The crown
Bolan sat casually in the top of a coconut palm at the western rim of the bay and field-stripped his Beretta, cleaning away the corrosive salt water he'd picked up during that long swim to shore. He reassembled the finely-tuned weapon and gave the same careful attention to the spare clips of ammo, finishing off with a close inspection of the muzzle silencer — then, satisfied that the Beretta Belle would serve upon demand, he allowed his mind to ponder the present predicament.
He was in an unfamiliar land, and with only the most general sort of geographic orientation. He knew that Puerto Rico was bounded on the north by the Atlantic, and on the other side by the Caribbean. It was the outer — most island of the West Indies. Hispaniola, the island shared by both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, lay to the west — also Jamaica and Cuba. The Bahamas were due north, Venezuela was south. To the east were the Virgin Islands.
All this he had quickly assimilated from a wall map at the private airport at Nassau, while the seaplane was being readied for this last leg of travel. For whatever it was worth, he at least knew approximately where he was located with respect to the rest of the world — and with respect to the new super operation which the mob was calling The Caribbean Carousel. It was small comfort at the moment.
Realistically, here was the situation: he had two full eight-round clips of ammo, plus six rounds in the service clip. He was literally up a tree, soaked to the slid with sticky salt water. He was hungry, and he was just about physically exhausted.
Less than a quarter-mile away, an army of some fifty to seventy-five guns was methodically sweeping the periphery of the bay in a determined hunt for his person.
He would very probably die in this jungle. And a grinning Mafiosowould drop his head into a paper sack and deliver it to the grinning old men back home.
That was the situation.
Except that he was not dead yet.
Okay, he was alive and breathing. And it had not gone all that badly. He had broken out of the trap at Vegas and crashed the heart of the Caribbean operation all in one motion. And he was not dead yet.
Bolan raised his head and sighted along the beach toward the flaming house, trying to orient himself with respect to the birdseye view he had gained while in the plane. He was west of the house, about a thousand yards. Behind him, then, through maybe a half-mile of dense jungle, should lie the plantation he'd spotted from the air. The seaside villages lay in the opposite direction, with all of Glass Bay and its legion blocking the only practicable route of access.
Four motor launches were making a cross-grid search of the bay itself, another was just then disembarking a head party on the southwest tip of beach. These, about a dozen, would be working their way back toward Bolan's position. The main body of gunners were sweeping down from the house area. A pincers movement. With the jungle at his back and the open bay in front. And they were closing fast.
Bolan smiled grimly to himself and wondered who was commanding the Glass Bay forces. Whoever, the guy knew his business. And he had not been long fooled by the diversionary play with the seaplane.
The Executioner was going to have one hell of an interesting survival problem on his hands.
What could a dead man lose?
Bolan slid silently to the ground and quickly divested himself of the soggy suit of clothing he'd worn from Vegas. The fancy threads would be a hard liability now. He stripped down to the skintight black outfit which had become a trademark of the Executioner's war on the Mafia, transferring necessary personal items from the pockets of the discarded suit. Bolan was not impressed by trademarks. His interest was combat-readiness, and he knew the importance of appropriate garb.
He was not, by God, dead yet.
In a survival problem, a seasoned warrior would take every possible advantage, anything and everything which could make that hairline of difference between Me and death. And a seasoned junglewarrior would push that difference to the limit.
The enemy was pushing ever closer. Bolan could hear their excited comments to one another as they swept along the beach. Apparently someone had spotted the point where he'd left the water.
He bared his teeth in a humorless grin and quickly arranged the wet suit of clothing against the trunk of a young tree. Under jungle law, the best man always won. That meant the quickest, the quietest, and the deadliest — and there were no juries to sway or clouted judges to appeal to. Here it was simply Man the Beast, reduced to his most basic elements and the rage to survive.
Bolan had been there before. He knew the rules.
He attended to final details, then he faded into the thick jungle growth, and merged with it, and became a living part of it.
They were allies now, he and the jungle.
And the Caribbean kill was finally underway.
At the time of his first run-in with Mack Bolan, Quick Tony Lavagni had been a lieutenant in the Washington-based family of Arnesto "Arnie Fanner" Castiglione, and he had been coasting comfortably toward old age with a so-so position in the national hierarchy of organized crime. But Bolan had brought many changes — dramatic ones — into Tony Lavagni's comfortable life. First had been that disastrous headhunting expedition to France, and Tony damn — near died in France. He had actually been reported dead.
Next had come actual death, for Castiglione himself, in England. Bolan, sure — who else?
What had followed was Family history, and not very pleasant stuff either, with Arnie's heirs jockeying for position in the new family line-up.
Lavagni had never seriously regarded himself as a candidate for Arnie Farmer's vacant throne. A wishful thought or two, sure, any guy would think about a thing like that. But Quick Tony had been not quite so quick to reach for those heady reins of power. For one thing, he was convalescing from that close scrape with death in France. Also, there were a couple others clearly above him in the line of succession, very capable others whom Lavagni did not really wish to cross. He preferred to play it cool, and almost surely he would be moved into an underboss spot regardless of who eventually succeeded to Amie's crown. Tony was content to leave the scrambling to Weeney Scarbo and Big Gus Riappi, the major contenders.