Clemenza himself sat at a table at the end of the line-weighing, packaging, and labelling the precious finished product.
The only light in the place was that provided at the tables-a small high intensity lamp for each of the chemists, plus two for the boss.
No one talked, except in grunts and monosyllables concerning the business at hand. Bolan counted eight gunners-and wondered if there were more and where they might be. The gossip placed them at an even dozen-but of course those things were often exaggerated.
He stood in frozen silence and watched his numbers tumbling away into infinite nowhere, looking for a handle and hoping for a miracle. Ten minutes moved like hours as he watched and waited, then fifteen… and then came the handle. One of the chemists raised his head and said something in a muffled grunt to Clemenza. The heroin king snapped a reply heavy with displeasure. The guy got up and walked away, the filter still in place over his nose and mouth. A gunner fell in behind the guy. Both disappeared at the edge of darkness. Bolan heard a toilet flush moments later.
And, yeah, there was the handle.
He watched the two reappear and take their places, then he made his move-maneuvering cautiously down the creaky stairway and blending quietly into the deeper shadows as he made his way across the no man's land and into the lighter area across the way.
The toilet was a mere closet, set into the corner of the building, forward. The door was latticed and the yellowish light filtering through was just enough to serve as a beacon to those in need in the darkness.
The man in black had a need of his own. He took a tactical position in the darkness and settled in to wait the need of others.
The wait was not so long, this time. Bolan had barely settled in when footsteps approached-two pair, moving casually-then a white coat materialized in the escaped light from the toilet-a tall, skinny guy-mask removed from the hawkish face and riding the throat. Right on his heels was the armed keeper, a real iron man complete with scowl and swagger.
"What's the matter with that guy?" the chemist growled quietly. "When you gotta, you gotta. Right?"
"The man is always right," replied the other-the voice flat, utterly devoid of emotion. "What you tell me, you're telling him."
They'd come to a halt, not an arm's length removed from Mack Bolan.
"I just meant-"
"He's right. You should shit on your own time. What's the beef? He told you okay, didn't he? So okay." Emotion crept in then. "Do it. And don't take all night."
The man in the white coat sneered and went on to the toilet. The guy with the burper slung the piece at his shoulder and went for a cigarette-probably as glad for the break as the other guy.
Bolan waited for the lighter to flare, then he said very quietly, from about three feet out, "Hold the light, eh?"
Those startled eyes flared in double-take and the guy choked on the inhalation as he tried to do too many things with too little time. The lighter dropped toward the floor, both hands fought the other over the strap of the burper, the glowing cigarette fell into the jacket, and the guy never got his breath back. A hand of real iron crushed the fragile windpipe as another bent the spine into an impossible contortion. He was a dead man even before his lighter reached the floor-and both man and submachine gun were over the Bolan shoulder and moving quickly into the blackness of the warehouse before the man in the toilet could remove his white coat.
The corpse was stashed and the Executioner was at the door as the coat was coming off. The guy never saw what had come for him. A two-hand chop at either side of the neck sat the guy down and shuttered the eyes without so much as a gasp of understanding.
Bolan tugged the coat back into position and secured the sash, then hoisted the unconscious man to his shoulder. Satisfied, now, that the most direct route was the best route, he headed straight for the front door, threw the double bolts, and stepped into the little security room which marked the final obstacle to a successful mission.
The guy in the room had both feet on the desk, a Schmeisser one lunge away. Both feet crashed to the floor as he tried for it-a mere heartbeat removed from instant fame and glory, but a heartbeat too late.
The Beretta spat once from the doorway, chugging its silent skullbuster toward a bone-shattering denial of fame and glory. The guy fell back into the chair and stayed there, the broken head slumped limply over the backrest.
Bolan rolled chair and all into the darkened interior of the building, then got the hell out of there with his prisoner. As he rejoined the night, he knew that it had been a successful mission. But he did not know what lay at the end of the numbers. And he had not yet reached that end. He jogged along with his burden, heading due north and into God knew what.
He still was not comfortable with this mission.
He still did not know what lay beyond the mission numbers. One thing he knew for sure, though. Whoever wore the spurs, Dandy Jack Clemenza was in for a decidedly undandy night. And that was enough right there to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Even if it should turn out that the spurs were into Bolan as well.
CHAPTER 2
The rendezvous point was a thousand feet due north of Delta Importers. The site was a ramshackle building awaiting demolition.
The nuttiest part of all was that Bolan did not know whom to expect to find there. There were no lights, no sounds of life about the place. He halted at twenty feet out and lowered his burden to the ground as he softly called out, "Okay, here's your package."
A shadow figure detached itself from the side of the building and moved slowly forward. Bolan growled, "That's far enough."
The figure halted. A small flashlight came on to illuminate the face of "Young David" Ecclefield.
He was honcho of a federal task force operating out of Atlanta -or, at least, that had been his role several Bolan lifetimes ago. They had worked together then, quietly, as obviously they were doing now.
Bolan sighed and called over, "This has to be clean, David. Just the way I set it up."
"It's clean," came the strained reply. "You have the goods?"
"I have the goods," Bolan assured the fed. The guy started to move forward again. Bolan halted him with a tight: "Stay there. Pick it up when you see my back, not before. Here's a scouting report. It's exactly the way the briefing called it. Except I count only nine gunners. Two of those have been scratched."
"You agreed-"
"I agreed to keep it as soft as possible. That's as soft as it would go. There's a Pinkerton or something out back, sleeping off a tranquilizer. You'd best count on two or three gunners concealed somewhere on board with automatics."
"Okay. Thanks." The voice was wry, strained. "What about Dandy Jack?"
"He's there."
"You're sure you have the goods?"
"I'm sure," Bolan said quietly. "There should be enough powder on this guy's clothing to make a dozen cases. That's the idea, isn't it?"
"That's the idea," Ecclefield replied, sighing. "Wait!-I have a late request."
"I'm waiting."
"Someone wants to talk to you. Someone high. They're on their way now. Can you wait a few more minutes?"
"I can," Bolan said. "But you can't. They'll be missing this guy and the other two. You have no numbers to waste."
"Well I-"
"I'll withdraw. Take your goods and seal it good. I'll be around. Tell your VIPs to show themselves. I'll find them."
The fed tossed him a little salute. Bolan faded to a tactical holding point and watched from the enshrouding darkness as two guys swept around Ecclefield and hurried over to the fallen prisoner. They hefted the chemist between them and quickly bore him away.
Ecclefield stood there for a moment longer, staring quietly toward the point where Bolan had stood. Then he turned abruptly and followed the others.