Blood Dues (4 page)

Mack Bolan — alias Omega — parked his rental car outside the storm fence of the medium-security detention camp. It was early yet for visitors, and Bolan knew the other vehicles in the parking lot would all belong to prison personnel. His four-door Dodge, the Firebird's temporary stand-in, made a perfect match for all the other family sedans around him.

As the vehicle had changed, so had Mack Bolan. He no longer wore the custom-tailored suit expected of a Mafia ace. Instead, a cheaper model, clearly purchased off the rack, would help him merge with lawmen who had seen more hours than income on the job. The only constant was his sleek Beretta automatic, minus its suppressor, tucked away in leather underneath his arm.

The warrior was a master of role camouflage, adept at changing his identity without elaborate disguise. Experience had taught him that the human mind most often saw what was expected, ordinary. The art of observation was neglected, often totally ignored.

The persona of a black ace was ideal for Bolan — shrouded as the Mafia's gestapo was in mystery, invested as it was with such a fearsome reputation that the doubters seldom voiced their questions openly. "Omega" had been serving him from early in his war against the Mob, and he had served to rattle Philip Sacco — but for now, another face was needed.

Exit one Omega.

Enter Frank LaMancha, federal officer.

Bolan moved along a barbed-wire runway, mounting steps to enter the encampment's small reception building. At the desk, a beefy sergeant looked up from the newspaper he was reading, frowning at the new arrival.

"Early," he remarked. "No visitors till one o'clock."

Bolan kept it deadpan, slid his wallet with the fake ID across the desk top.

"I'm here to see Antonio Esparza."

"Nobody told me anything about it," the sergeant said irritably.

"Why don't you check it out? I haven't got all day."

A spark of anger in the washed-out eyes, and there was color rising in the oval face. A massive hand searched briefly for the telephone and found it.

"Hold your water, buddy. This could take a while."

The sergeant's call produced a neatly pressed lieutenant who examined Bolan's papers, finally returning them.

"We usually get a call," the slim lieutenant said.

"It came up overnight, but if you wanna check it out..."

The watch commander hesitated, finally shook his head.

"Guess not. What is it you want from Toro, anyway?"

"We're checking out his group for terrorist connections interstate. My boss thinks we can turn him."

The lieutenant chuckled to himself.

"Good luck. The bastard's hard as nails."

Bolan followed the lieutenant through a set of double gates and down a narrow corridor. A guard and more iron gates were waiting for them at the other end.

"You packing?" the lieutenant asked.

Bolan nodded, slipped the spare Detective Special from its holster on his belt and handed it across. The gate man locked it in his desk; they did not search Bolan for any other weapons.

They walked through the final gates and out across a kind of grassy courtyard ringed by prison buildings. Bolan recognized the mess hall, laundry, workshops. Barracks ranged behind the central buildings and beyond them, men in faded uniforms were working in the cultivated fields, observed by mounted guards.

He followed the lieutenant to a squarish blockhouse, and they went inside. The sterile lobby, with more small rooms opening on either side, revealed it as the visitation building. The lieutenant flagged a guard and issued curt instructions.

"Bring up Esparza, number 41577."

"Yessir."

Bolan trailed his guide into the nearest conference room, finished with a simple wooden table and a pair of folding chairs.

"They'll bring him up directly," the lieutenant said. "And if there's anything you need..."

"Just Toro," Bolan told him. "And some privacy."

A few minutes later a shadow filled the narrow doorway. Bolan's chair scraped concrete as he rose and turned to face the man he knew as Toro.

Time had changed Antonio Esparza, lined his face around the mouth and eyes, but Bolan recognized him instantly. The hair was still jet black, the eyes still level, hard, the jaw still firm. In prison whites, the olive of Esparza's skin appeared to be a deep suntan.

And the man still moved like the commander he had been, with back straight, shoulders squared. The prison had not broken him; it never would, no more than Castro's jails had broken him in younger days.

El Toro was a fighter.
Hard as nails,
the young lieutenant said. Damn right.

But there was something new about the man that Bolan had not seen before. An edge of bitterness, perhaps. An anger simmering in the cauldron of his soul.

The Executioner offered him a hand and Toro brushed on past him, homing on an empty chair across the narrow table from him. Bolan nodded at an escort guard and he retreated, locked the door behind him, leaving them alone. Bolan sat down opposite the Cuban, watching him in silence for a moment prior to speaking.

"Do they bug these rooms?" he asked.

The Cuban raised an eyebrow, finally shook his head.

"No more. The civil-liberties attorneys threaten lawsuits."

Bolan took a chance.

"It's been a long time, Toro."

His companion's face was changing, melting into a reflective frown, his dark brows knitting. He was studying the Executioner, examining the altered face that he had never seen, as if to look behind the flesh and into Bolan's mind. Another moment, and the Cuban seemed to come to some conclusion.

"A face may change," he said at last, "but not the eyes, the soul. I hear that you are dead."

The warrior grinned, beginning to relax a fraction.

"That's a small exaggeration. Maybe wishful thinking."

"And the war?"

"Today it's in Miami."

"It was always here."

The soldier nodded, glanced around at their surroundings.

"Hard to carry off the fight from here. What happened?"

Bolan knew the answers, or a part of it, but he was interested in Toro's version.

"Someone says I have explosives, guns."

"I see."

The Cuban frowned.

"You do not ask?"

"No need to."

Toro shook his head disgustedly.

"It is ironic, no? For years I handle weapons, smuggle refugees, strike blows for
Cuba libre.
Now, they say I hide explosives in my home, where any fool can find them.
Esta loco
."

"Someone set you up."

The Cuban spread his hands.

"Como no.
Policemen come with warrants in the night. They know exactly where to look and what they may expect to find."

"You have a candidate?"

The freedom fighter's smile was unexpected and disarming.

"There is someone I suspect," he answered vaguely. "Ten months, perhaps a year, and I will visit him."

"You may not have the time to spare.''

The Cuban studied Bolan, frowning, finally rocked back in his metal folding chair.

"Explain."

The soldier gave it to him, fragmentary as it was — the stolen trucks and arms, the rumbles of a Cuban exile tie-in with the Mafia drug machine, and the attempt upon John Hannon. When he finished laying out the scrambled jigsaw pieces, Bolan waited, hoping that the Cuban might be able to make sense of them, provide him with a handle.

Toro's words were not encouraging.

"This Jose 99, he might belong to anyone. Your friend — the captain — is he certain his informer was a Cuban?"

The warrior nodded.

"Sure as he can be. They never met."

El Toro leaned across the table, lowering his voice conspiratorially.

"You have to understand,
amigo
... the intrigue... it has become a way of life... a cause unto itself. For twenty years, we fight to free our homeland. First, your government supports us — then it tells us to be patient, wait until
manana.
The CIA recruits our people, trains them... and it introduces them to leaders of the Mafia. Then come the
marielistas
and their drugs...."

Bolan felt him winding down.

"I need a handle, Toro. Anything at all."

The Cuban hesitated, finally spoke.

"There may be something I can do," he said. "But from in here..."

His shrug was eloquent, and Bolan got the message. Loud and clear. He scanned the possibilities in something like a second flat, arriving at a swift decision.

"We can work it out," he said.

John Hannon set the telephone receiver down and kept his hand on top of it, as if to keep it from escaping. Or to keep his hand from trembling. He had been expecting anything, but even so the deep familiar voice had sent a tremor down his spine.

It was a voice from somewhere out beyond the rim of Hell.

A warrior's voice.

There had been doubts, despite the blood-and-thunder meeting that had saved his life, but Hannon was not doubting now. He was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He had just been talking to a dead man.

Hannon had pursued the soldier's holy war in the urban jungle of Miami. He had followed the commando's hellfire course across a continent and back again, until the fiery climax on a sodden afternoon in New York's Central Park.

The former captain of detectives had expected some reaction, anything — except the sudden sense of loss.

The soldier's death had left a void behind... in Hannon.

But the soldier was not dead in faraway New York. He was alive and fighting in Miami. Fighting, very probably, for life itself.

And for what else?

The morning call had been abbreviated, cryptic. The warrior had dropped a code name, listened stoically as Hannon came up empty, promised he would keep in touch.

Oh, yes. John Hannon had no doubt on that score.

In the meantime, all he had to do was trace a faceless Cuban hiding somewhere in Miami or environs, pinpoint his location, set him up — for what?

He frowned. No doubt on that score, either.

This commando was not known for taking prisoners.

Hannon pushed the morbid thought away. The war had come to him; he had not sought it out, but once involved, there was a single course available. The captain of detectives would continue until he caught a glimpse of daylight at the other end or hostiles stopped him dead.

Right now his limited objective was a Cuban stoolie known as Jose 99. And finding him could be a problem, unless...

He lifted the telephone receiver, punched a number up from memory, identified himself and waited while the patch was made. Another moment and a second strong familiar voice addressed him.

"Morning, John. How are you?"

"Hanging on. Taking it easy."

"That's a good way to take it," Captain Robert Wilson told him earnestly.

It was apparent Wilson would have liked to ask him more about last night's fiasco. Hannon had worked long enough with Wilson out of homicide division to interpret tones, inflections in his voice. His was a homicide detective first and foremost, but he was also Hannon's closest friend.

"I need a favor, Bob."

"So, shoot."

"I'm looking for a Cuban, and he may be in your files. I've only got a street name."

"Yeah?"

"He goes by Jose 99. It isn't much, I know..."

Suspicion crept into the homicide detective's voice. "Would this have anything to do with last night's shoot-up?"

Hannon hated lying to his friend, but it was unavoidable. He tried to sound sincere.

"It's unrelated. I've been working on a skip-trace and I'm getting nowhere fast."

"I see." The skepticism carried in his voice across the wire. "I'll run it through, but don't expect too much."

"Appreciate it. Listen, Bob, I wish I could help you with this other thing."

"Well, if you don't have any information...."

Wilson left the statement dangling, giving him a chance to spill, but Hannon held his peace.

"You know if there was anything at all I'd let you in on it."

"I hope so, John."

And there was something very much like sadness in Bob Wilson's voice.

"If you come up with anything on this Jose..."

"I'll call you," Wilson told him. "In the meantime, why not take some time off? Get yourself some rest."

"I'm way ahead of you. Just have to clear a few things up before I take the time."

"Uh-huh. John?"

"Yeah?"

"Watch your ass."

The former captain of detectives smiled.

"I always do."

Bob Wilson rocked back in his swivel chair and glowered at the silent telephone. He felt an urge to call John Hannon back, but dismissed it. There was no time for playing wet nurse, not with metropolitan Miami in the middle of a sizzling crime wave. Manila folders piled on his desk bore mute testimony to the work load facing Homicide these days.

It used to be John Hannon's desk... John Hannon's office. Wilson owed the older man a lot, he realized. The former captain of detectives taught him most of what he knew about survival on the streets — the things they never mentioned in police academies. And Hannon literally saved his life on one occasion. Yes, there could be no forgetting that.

They had been working on a string of hooker killings that made Jack the Ripper look humane. The evidence was slim, but through a string of lucky breaks they had finally narrowed the field to one substantial suspect: big and bad, a six-time loser, psychopathic woman hater with a string of brutal incidents behind him. Rumors on the street said he had taken up the knife to do a little twisted civic renovation on his own.

They had traced him to a seedy rooming house and Hannon took the front, with Wilson riding shotgun, uniforms staked out to cover the retreats. Before they had a chance to reach the subject's room, he met them on the dingy, narrow stairs, a psycho's sixth sense warning him of danger, driving him to the attack.

The memories of that desperate battle in the darkness still made Wilson queasy. He had been moving up the stairs, a step ahead of Hannon, when a snarling human monster loomed ahead of him, airborne. Talon-fingers had locked around Wilson's windpipe, and the butcher knife was flashing toward his face when Hannon's roaring Magnum brought the curtain down.

So he owed John Hannon, right. He worried when the old man courted danger. Not that Hannon could not pull his weight, but this time his ass was hanging out a mile. He was dabbling in some deadly business now, and never mind the crap about some hoodlums trying to avenge an old arrest. Bob Wilson was not buying that one for a second, and if Hannon had been lying to him, there must be something he was bent on hiding.

Now this Cuban thing — what was it? Jose 99. A street name, sure, designed to hide the true identify of someone who was dealing weapons, drugs, or simple information. Any one of those commodities could' get you butchered in a hurry.

The Cuban scene these days was lethal. Sprinkle in the Haitians and Colombians, a hefty dash of coke and heroine, and start the blender. What came out the other end was sudden death, and there were bodies filling up the county morgue to prove it.

Hannon could get blown away without even trying. All he had to do was ask the wrong question — or the right one, of the wrong person. He could wind up in a gutter or feeding 'gators in the Everglades. It happened every day around Miami.

Still, he owed the captain one, and Wilson would inquire about the Cuban for him. If he stumbled over something he could use along the way, well, so much the better.

He would do that much for Hannon, right. And, maybe, with a little luck, he could preserve a friend's life in the process. Maybe.