These human moments stole up on a guy, surprising him in the midst of combat, reminding him of his mortality, his humanness.
At this moment, Mack Bolan felt entirely human.
He'd come to this town to blitz it, to wade through blood if necessary, to shake the rats out of their nests. He had not come here for a human experience.
But here he was in the presence of a lovely young woman, sharing her nakedness of body and soul.
He told her, very gently, "Look, Marsha ... all the perfect people are in heaven."
She tilted the shiny red head over her shoulder and smiled at him. Life was forming somewhere back there behind those glazed eyes.
Perhaps, he thought, she was having a human experience also. She asked him, the smile turning sober, "Do you have to kill my husband?"
He replied honestly. "At this point, I don't know. What can you tell me to help my decision?"
She shrugged, delicately. "I just wish you wouldn't. Maybe it's not too late. What can I tell you about Max? I can tell you how he likes his eggs, that he hates pretension and that he loves me very very much ... even at my worst. Is that enough to get him off?"
Bolan did not reply.
She shivered again and tightened the hold on her chest. "He's not like them, Mr. Bolan. Oh ... in his own way, he may be worse than them. More crooked, I mean. He'll admit that he's a crook, it's how he made his fortune. He's a real wheeler-dealer and he's kind of proud of it. But he's not like them." She shuddered. Her voice became tiny as she added, "He just can't get loose from them."
"What's their hold?" he asked her.
"Me, for one thing. But they already had him hog-tied before I came along."
"You how?"
"Oh, this rotten business. Do you know a man called Tony Danger?"
Bolan nodded.
"I went to a party on his yacht. A cruise to Ensenada. Two other girls. Two of Tony's hoods. We ... partied. While Tony took motion pictures of it. I was so stoned on grass, I...."
Bolan said, "Never mind, I know the routine."
"Yes, well, he showed Max some stills from that film. In my presence. Can you beat that? Max didn't say a word, didn't bat an eyelash. Tony told him the negatives were in New York. That they'd stay there in a special file. Just in case Max felt like busting out his britches, as Tony put it. Well, as rotten as I am, I guess Max would do anything to keep them from circulating something like that. I guess…"
Bolan muttered, "Maybe Max is making pilgrimages to the soiling grounds, himself."
She stared at him for a moment then said, "I hadn't thought of that. You mean maybe he's punishing himself for his inadequacy?"
Bolan shrugged. "I'm no psychologist. But it's a thought."
"Yes, isn't it," she agreed.
There was a definite luster in the girl's eyes now.
Bolan didn't want to spoil it, but he had to ask her. "Was Lisa Winters in that party — the boat trip to Ensenada?"
She wet her lips and told him, "Well, you'd have to ask her about that."
He replied, "Okay. I will."
She swiveled about and wrapped her arms about Bolan's neck in one swift motion, kissed him lightly on the mouth, then released him.
"Five minutes ago," she said breathlessly, "I was starved half to death. And hating myself for it. I'm not hungry now. You'd better go while you can."
"I'll want a rain check on about an hour of your time, at my demand," he told her. "And it has nothing to do with hunger."
"You've got it," she assured him. "Now split, before my monster awakens."
Bolan believed her.
And he split.
But his monster had already awakened, and he was hungry as hell.
"Howlie had been crumbling for months," Blancanales reported. "They got into him on little stuff, nickle and dime jazz, during his GHQ stint at Saigon. I guess he was a little bitter over the deal he got, you know, and he was ripe for the approach. You know how a guy like Howlin' Harlan must have felt at a logistics desk, God's sake."
"Yeah," Bolan agreed.
"Anyway, he was in a position to set them up for dumping contraband into the PX and service club circuits. Thornton was dragged into it from this end, via his transportation outfits. He even hijacked some of his own trucks and collected insurance on the loss. Anyway, he was able to provide bonafide shipping orders and such for the loot and he even had a couple of freighters in the play. They were running everything from shaving lotion to hootch. According to Thornton, Southeast Asia, for awhile there, was the prime dumping grounds for the hijack rings."
"Cute," Bolan commented.
"Yeh. When these guys do something, they do it big, don't they. Well, according to Thornton, he wasn't getting that much out of it. He figured the risk exceeded the profits, most of which was going to the mob anyway. But they had it into him, and he had to go along."
"What were you saying about Howlie?" Bolan reminded him.
"Well, he was nickle-and-diming it during his last few months at Saigon. After his retirement, Thornton helped him set up here. Thornton swears it and I don't know why he'd want to He about it now ... Howlie didn't know what he was getting into, not at first. Oh sure, he knew he was selling his influence at the Pentagon. I guess they all do it, most of these retired officers. Why not? It's legal, right? And it's about the only way they can make a military career pay off when things have gone sour for them. Who needs a guy who has spent his whole life deploying troops around a battlefield, right?"
"Go on," Bolan prodded.
Schwarz took it from there. "You know what a feeder horn is, Sarge? It's part of a radio transmission system, sort of like microwave but still operating at radio frequencies. It puts out a controlled emission that's beamed like a spotlight, only it's tighter than any spotlight. It's line-of-sight stuff. The other end of the system uses a dish-antenna for receiving, and you have to shoot directly into the dish or there's no reception."
"Radio point-blank," Bolan commented. "We had them in 'Nam."
"Right. Data links for radar, electronic counter-measures."
"Ultra-sophisticated," Blancanales put in.
"Absolutely," Schwarz agreed. "I have no idea what a rig like that costs, but you can bet it's mighty heavy. You can set them up for mobile use, and that gets even costlier. Besides that, if you're going to own a system like that then you've got to have people who know how to operate and maintain it. Now why. ..." He paused, grinned, and swiped at his nose with a balled fist. "Why would you think an outfit like the Mafia would want a million-dollar toy like that?"
Bolan showed the electronics expert a sober smile and said, "Data link, right?"
"Right."
"With Agua Caliente just a few miles across the border."
Schwarz looked disappointed. Bolan had spoiled his punch line. "That's it," he said. "The track down there has a complete foreign book betting service for tracks all over the world. These dummies are trying to set up a foolproof link between Mexico and Vegas. At mountain peak to mountain peak line-of-sight, do you know how many feeder-horn relays they'd have to have?"
Bolan commented, "They think big, Gadgets." He shrugged his shoulders. "And if it's costing them nothing...."
"Well yeah, but God what they have to go through to get the stuff. That's what finally stuck in Howlie's craw. He helped them get two systems already, without even realizing what he was doing. Then he stumbled onto it and tried to freeze them out. It was a neat racket and I'd like to meet the guy who thought it up. Thornton's electronics subsidiary is subbing on a military contract for a whole bunch of these rigs, complete systems. Thornton supplies various components used in the final assembly. One of Howlie's companies had the final inspection and quality assurance contract for the military. Through quality rejects and a lot of juggling, they managed to piecemeal-out enough rejected components to assemble two complete systems. They've got them holed up somewhere right now, Thornton swears he doesn't know where, until they get enough to complete the link to Vegas. But God, it was a sweet idea. I guess they marked the QC rejects as salvage, cancelled out the serial numbers, and buried all the records of the final transactions.''