Chapter Four

Designs

Captain Tim Braddock, LAPD, stepped out of his car and kicked absently into the fine gravel of the parking lot as he surveyed the sprawling beach house. Carl Lyons, the young sergeant of detectives who had been with Braddock since the beginning of the Bolan Case, code-named Hardcase, walked around the corner of the building and approached the captain's vehicle.

"It's a sure score, Cap'n," Lyons intoned softly.

Braddock grunted and walked to the edge of the gravelled area, kneeling to inspect a deep impression left in the sand by a heavy wheel. "Would you say a semi-trailer?" he asked Lyons.

The young man knelt beside his boss and spread his hands over the wide track. "Uh huh. There's more of the same around at the side. Camouflage netting back there, that's how they concealed it."

"What else have you found?" Braddock asked, grunting as he pushed himself upright.

Lyons came up with him, smiling tightly. "Enough to convince me this was their headquarters," he said. "Two bazookas and about 20 rounds of AP. Explosives, grenades, smoke pots, every type of weapon you can imagine. Target range and armorer's shop set up back there under the cliffs, along the beach. Oh . . . and these." He reached into his pocket and produced an envelope which he handed to Braddock.

The Captain opened the envelope, and quickly glanced through the snapshots.

"The DiGeorge place, Beverly Hills," Lyons explained. "And from every conceivable angle. Bolan obviously plans these things with the thoroughness of a military field commander. It looks as though they did a thorough study of the terrain before they made their hit."

Braddock nodded his head in mute agreement. He started walking slowly toward the house as he placed the snapshots in the envelope and returned the packet to Lyons. "Get those marked and into the lab as soon as you report in," he instructed. "Should be some good latents there. We'll need hard evidence for a conviction . . . all we can get."

"How'd the arraignment go?" Lyons inquired.

They had rounded the corner of the building. Braddock was inspecting a large lean-to of camouflage netting. "Blancanales and Schwartz?" He grunted unhappily. "Got 'em bound over on a couple of misdemeanors. Possession of illegal weapons, illegal use of a radio transmitter. They're already out on bail."

Lyons had raised his eyebrows in surprise. "We had a list of charges a mile..."

"Charges are not convictions, Carl. You should certainly know that much. The fact is, they got old John Grant in their corner and . . . well, you know how it goes."

"Grant comes damn expensive," Lyons observed. He followed the captain onto the patio. Braddock picked up a set of punctured targets and studied them with interest.

"I'd say, the way these are marked, someone has been sighting-in a couple of rifles."

"Where'd they get the money to retain a lawyer like John Grant?" Lyons persisted.

Braddock sighed. "Hell, from their fairy godmothers, I guess. Don't ask me a dumb-ass question like that, Carl. We all know that Bolan's been taking the Mafia's money away from them."

"I was just wondering out loud," Lyons mildly replied.

"Well, wonder about this one, then," Braddock said. "We got it on the wire from Jersey that a large trust fund had been set up for the Fontenelli children. Fontenelli, in case you've forgotten, was the first member of the Bolan team to die . . . during that Beverly Hills hit."

"I hadn't forgotten," Lyons murmured. He was remembering a tall man, standing in the living room of the Lyons home, soberly passing the time of day with a tow-headed youngster. "Sounds like Bolan is keeping faith with the dead . . . and with the young."

"Yeah," Braddock growled. "And I'm not missing any bets. I've got inquiries out on the families of the other dead men . . . Bolan's dead, that is. I doubt that his tender sympathies would extend to the families of his victims. Anyway, if Bolan is spreading the money around, chances are he's doing it cute enough so that the beneficiaries have legal title to it. That means that he is going through certain legal formalities, and those formalities just might point the way right back to Bolan's present whereabouts."

Lyons nodded his understanding, but added, "After last night, I'd say his tracks are going to get fainter and fainter."

Braddock frowned and turned to stare along the winding drive which connected the house to the road. "How do you reconstruct the thing, Carl?" he quietly asked.

"Well . . ." Lyons hitched up his pants and stepped alongside the captain, one arm raised to point out various geographical features as he mentioned them. "We found electronic gadgets monitoring every possible entrance to the property. Schwartz's work, I'd guess. Anyway, the place is wired for sound, and I'd say that their security was top-drawer. I still have no idea how DiGeorge's people located Bolan here, but obviously they did. They tripped the alarms, though, and Bolan was ready for them. We found two burned-out parachute-type flares out there near the road. The lab men are still going over the wrecked vehicles. Preliminary findings indicate that he cut down on them with a high-powered rifle, undoubtedly that Mauser over there." Lyons led his captain to the end of the patio wall and showed him the machine gun. "But now, here's the kicker. Look at the way he has that baby wired up. He provided his own covering fire, see. Juiced this baby up, left it running, jumped into his car, and charged right through their middle to make his getaway. We found deep skid ruts where he tore up the ground getting around the burning vehicles."

Braddock swore softly and knelt to examine the firing lock on the machine gun. "Every day, in every way, I find this guy getting more and more dangerous," he said. He lifted his eyes to the face of his young sergeant. "Suppose we'd tracked Bolan down first, Carl. How many men would it have cost us to take this place?"

Lyons showed a startled frown. "I don't believe Bolan would resist arrest," he declared solemnly.

"You don't, eh?" Braddock grunted to an erect position and rocked back on his heels, hands gripping the backs of his thighs. "You worry me, Carl," he added thoughtfully. "Some day you're going to put your trust in the wrong . . ."

"It's not a matter of trust," Lyons curtly interrupted. "I've stood face to face with the man, I've talked to him. He's not the usual run of the mill . . . "

"Usual or not, Mack Bolan is a desperate man," Braddock cut in heavily. "You get him into a corner and he's going to come out shooting, just like he did here last night. Do you think he asked those people for a password before he started chopping them up?"

"I don't think . . ."

"Then don't talk either!" Braddock said angrily. "I'm trying very hard — very hard, Carl, to forget the fact that Bolan escaped us at Balboa in your vehicle."

Lyons flushed an angry red, spun on his heels, and went into the house. Scowling, Captain Braddock watched him disappear through the doorway, then he sighed heavily and said, sotto voce, "But I can't forget it, Carl. I just can't."

Another thing the captain could not forget was the goal he had been so meticulously pursuing for so many years. Most observers at the Hall of Justice were generally agreed that Big Tim would reach that goal. No other officer on the force seemed to be such a certain candidate for the Chief's chair. Some day, with the kindness of fate and the inexorable workings of the civil service procedures, Big Tim would be the Big Chief. Lately, however, an AWOL soldier who seemed to think he could bring Vietnam tactics to American streets was raising a large question mark around the kindness of Tim Braddock's personal fates. Braddock had to get Mark Bolan. A failure now, with the entire nation keeping score, would deal unkindly with a good cop's lifetime design. Braddock would get Mark Bolan.

Braddock returned to his car, opened the door, and slid heavily into the seat. He picked up the microphone for the two-way radio, punched the button for the special Hardcase network, and established contact with his operations center. "Braddock," he clipped. "Nothing but dead ashes here. I'm coming in."

"Lt. Foster has been wanting to talk to you," he was informed.

"Well, I'm still here," Braddock said wearily.

Andy Foster's monotone bounced back at him. "Definite make, Tim. Shoot-out up near Palm Village late last night. Our boy's handiwork, very plainly."

"Last night!" Braddock said savagely. "Why the delay in reporting?"

"The locals had the wrong slant. Tell you about it when you get in. Any instructions?"

"Yeah!" Braddock snarled. "Get a chopper out here to pick me up! You get on over there in a car — no! First, get hold of those people and tell them to keep their fumbling hands off! I don't want them doing anything until I get there!"

"Ten -four."

Braddock sat and fumed, his guts churning. Then he lunged out of the car and roared, "Carl! Sergeant Lyons!"

Lyons came running. "Yessir?" he asked breathlessly.

"Get someone to take my car in. Yours too. You'n me are taking a chopper ride."

"Sir?"

"I'm going to give you one more chance to corner the rat. The rat, Lyons. Not the new Robin Hood of the West. You understand me?"

"Yessir," Lyons replied meekly. He dropped his eyes and disappeared once again beyond the corner of the building.

Braddock fidgeted and nervously squeezed his hands together. Big Tim's grand design was not quite dead yet. Not, in fact, by a hell of a shot. Mack Bolan was going to be had.

Julian DiGeorge felt his self-control deserting him. He raised veiled eyes to his chief enforcer, Lou Pena, and muttered, "Listen, dammit, I don't want your damn crying excuses! Do you know how close Palm Village is to where I'm sitting right now? Don't give me any vomiting excuses, Lou."

"I don't know what else to say, Deej," Pena replied humbly. "I don't know how the bastard manages it. I just don't know. We got . . ."

"I know what you got," DiGeorge rasped. "You got an old defenseless farm hand and a decrepit old truck. And you lost three damn good boys. You lost, Lou, you didn't get anything!"

"I was going to say, we got a pretty good idea which way he's travelling now. I got people all up and down that highway and . . ."

"Sure we know which direction he's travelling. He's heading this way, Lou. Probably here already. Of course he is! He's here already."

"Hell, Deej, we got thirty boys out there on the grounds. He ain't gonna get through anything like that."

DiGeorge snorted nervously, lit a cigar, and blew the smoke toward the open window. "Just like he couldn't get out of that beach house, eh?" He slapped the chair with a flat palm, then did it again.

Pena's eyes followed the trail of smoke out the window. He uncomfortably shifted his weight, coughed, then got to his feet and stood uncertainly awaiting his boss' command. Presently he said, "What d'you think I oughta do, Deej?"

"You're outdated, Lou," DiGeorge said, his voice suddenly mild.

"Huh?"

"I think it's about time you retired."

"Aw hell, Deej, I don't want . . ."

"After you bring me Bolan's head."

"I'll get it, Deej,"

"You damn well better. You take five cars, Lou. Full of wild men. And you go over to Palm Village. You shake that place like it never thought of being shook. And you pick up Bolan's tracks. You hear me?"

"I hear you, Deej."

"And don't you come back here without Bolan. You hear me?"

"I hear you, Deej."

"I want Mack Bolan more than I want anything in this world. You understand me, Lou?"

"I understand you, Deej."

"Then get the hell out of here! What are you waiting for?"

Pena got out of there. The boss, he decided, was cracking up. First Bolan was about to walk in the front door, then he was clear over in Palm Village. What the hell did Deej expect of him? It was a senseless question, and Pena recognized it as such even as he thought it. What else? He expected Bolan's head, on a platter, that's what. And Pena, the new chief enforcer, had damn well better get it for him. If he didn't, maybe Pena's own head would end up on that platter. It was not a comforting thing to contemplate. Well, by God, Pena's head wasn't going to get on no platter! Deej said to shake the town apart. He'd shake it down, by God, if that's what it took. Lou Pena had to get Mack Bolan. There just wasn't any two ways about it. He had to, by God, get Mack Bolan!

Chapter Five

The plastics man

Jim Brantzen was one of a vanishing breed of men. Caring little for material wealth and not at all for personal prestige, his major passions of life revolved about dedicated service to those who needed his talents and to the advancement of his own particular branch of medical science. To Brantzen, though, cosmetic surgery was not just a science. It was also an art, and a highly creative one. The balding, middle-aged surgeon disputed the contention that "beauty is only skin deep." Beauty, he knew, is a totality of the personal image, a totality combining character, spirit, and physical appearance in a package that is pleasing to the beholder. He knew, also, the ravages of character and spirit which could be induced by an unpleasing exterior. His own mother had suffered a hideous disfigurement from an accident when Brantzen was a young boy, and in an age when cosmetic surgery was a bumbling science reserved for the very rich. He had seen a once beautiful and vivacious woman curl up and die inside and later die all over as an embittered and totally withdrawn member of society. Jim Brantzen knew the importance of physical beauty, and he knew how much deeper than skin that importance extended. After all these years, he still awoke sometimes from a cold-sweat dream with the muffled sobbing of his mother-in-seclusion tearing at his heart.

Jim Brantzen had heart, and plenty of it. Enough to volunteer for combat-zone surgical duties in Vietnam. Enough to set up his own makeshift hospital in unpacified territory to administer to the torn and disfigured bodies of Vietnamese children, as well as anyone else who happened along. There was a special place in Brantzen's heart for Mack Bolan, also. On various occasions, the tall and seemingly cold Special Missions sergeant had lugged damaged and bleeding children into Brantzen's small field hospital, often through miles of hostile country, and frequently remaining nearby to defend the small outpost against enemy trackers. Brantzen had recognized in Bolan the same sense of dedication to duty which kept the surgeon at his post. Though Brantzen was unalterably opposed to warfare and violence, he could still respect and admire a dedication in that direction. He had even admired the enemy and their tenacious do-or-die approach to their cause, though disapproving of their tactics and disrespect for human life.

Brantzen knew of Bolan's specialty, of course. He knew that the man had been programmed for murder, that he was a military assassin, and he knew how Bolan had earned that tag, "The Executioner." He could still admire him. Indeed, he had to admire him. He had seen him stand up to almost certain death on too many occasions; at the other end of the stick, he had seen the pain-of-soul in Bolan's eyes as he carried broken children into the field hospital. There was no swagger to the man, no story-book bravado; he was a soldier, doing a soldier's job, and doing it with precision and with courage and with dedication. Yes, Jim Brantzen had a deep and abiding admiration for Sgt. Mack Bolan.

He had known also, of course, of Bolan's homefront adventures since his return from Vietnam. He had followed the stories in the newspapers and had wagged his head sorrowfully over the television reports. Some men, Brantzen had decided, just had too much sense of dedication for their own good. If Vietnam had been an unwinnable war, then Bolan's one-man campaign against the Mafia could only be an impossible one. Hounded from both sides, by both the law and the underworld, there could be but one outcome for Mack Bolan. With one tug of his mind, Brantzen had half expected that Bolan would come to him. Another tug told him that it would not happen, that Bolan would stand up one time too many and die on his feet, without once thinking of the refuge which Brantzen could offer him. The surgeon had made a bet between the two sides of his mind, with the odds even as to whether Bolan would cut and run for a new face or stand and die in his old one.

Brantzen had been neither surprised nor disappointed, then, when the Executioner came calling on him. Their greetings were exchanged with an almost formal and subdued warmth, the handshake firm and prolonged, and with few words passing between.

"I've been haftway expecting you," the surgeon said.

"You know why I'm here," Bolan murmured.

"Right. You want me to make you beautiful."

"You could fall dead in the process."

Brantzen grinned. "It shouldn't be all that tough a job."

"You know what I mean, Jim," Bolan said. "My playmates don't like anyone else cutting into the game."

Brantzen had led him through the deserted lobby and into casual living quarters to the rear, small but adequate for the bachelor doctor. "You worry about the playmates," Brantzen told Bolan. "That face of yours is all the worry I can handle at once. Whom do you want to please with the new one, Mack — the old ladies or the young ones?"

Bolan sighed. "You can cut it that close?"

The surgeon smiled at the pun, picked up a sheaf of sketches from a table, and tossed them into Bolan's lap. "I've been working on these ever since I heard you were in the area," he said. "I can give you any of those. It's your choice."

Bolan was shuffling through the sketches. He stopped at one, smiled, passed on, then checked himself and returned to the one that had produced the smile. He laughed softly and tapped the sketch with an index finger. "Did you do this one from memory, or is it just an accident that turned out this way?"

Brantzen bent to study the sketch. He stroked his chin and said, "By gosh, it does look like . . . like . . ."

"My old sidekick," Bolan said. "And a spitting image. You could really make me look like this?"

The surgeon solemnly nodded his head. "It's not the prettiest of the lot, Mack, but I'll have to agree with your logic. I'd say it's far and away your best choice."

"How soon?" Bolan said, scowling at the sketch.

"If I call right now, my surgical nurse can be here by five," Brantzen replied. "We can be into surgery by six."

Bolan nodded. "The sooner the better," he murmured. "How long, then, before I'm up and around?"

"We can do it with local anaesthesia," Brantzen said. "You'll never have to go to bed, if you'd rather not. And if you're tough enough. I'd like to keep you around for a few days of post-care, though."

Bolan was thinking about it. He said, "I've been among the wounded before, Jim. It'll have to be that way this time. It's no go if I have to lay around here for days afterward. I have to keep moving."

"I suppose you could," Brantzen replied thoughtfully. "If you're tough enough," he added again.

"How long before the scars are healed?"

Brantzen smiled. "The technique I have in mind will leave only tiny slits here and there, Mack. Except, possibly, for the nose, and I'd say that would be the last to heal. It varies with individuals, of course, but I should say you'd be relatively presentable within a few days to a week. There'll be some sensitivity for quite a while beyond that, though. I'll be doing some plastics work, you know. There could even be some minor rejection problems."

Bolan glanced at his watch. "You say we can get started by six? No chance of an earlier start?"

"Are the hounds at your heels, Mack?" the surgeon asked softly.

Bolan grimaced. "Pretty close," he said. "And I can't hang around here for more than a few hours. I'll have to recuperate on my feet."

"There's going to be pain."

"I've lived with pain before."

"Yes, I'm sure you have. Well . . . I could hurry Marge along, I guess, but I'd rather not arouse her suspicions. Come to think of it, this face of yours has been pretty much in the public eye. I guess I'd better have you prepped and ready by the time she checks in. She could never recognize you then."

"We can't just go without her?" Bolan asked quietly.

"Well . . ." The surgeon wavered. "It's a . . ."

"I've seen you go it alone with the Cong howling all around us."

"Those were emergency conditions," Brantzen said fretfully.

"This isn't?" Bolan asked, grinning.

The surgeon stared at Bolan for a thoughtful moment. He smiled suddenly and said, "Okay, Sergeant, let's get the patient prepped for surgery. Come on, man, move, move, move."

Bolan got to his feet and thrust the sketch at Brantzen. "The patient is ready and waiting, Doctor," he said.

Chapter Six

The balance

Once a jumping-off spot for hopeful prospectors heading into the Death Valley area, Palm Village had until recently evolved uneventfully into a typical desert-edge trade center serving a sparse agricultural area. Removed from major highway routes and largely untouched by 20th-century progress during the first half of the century, the quiet village had found new life in the desert-land boom of the fifties and sixties. An invasion by promoters and developers had threatened to convert the tranquil community into a second Palm Springs until conservative city fathers invoked legislative powers to cool the pace of progress. As a result, Palm Village was moving calmly along the path of controlled development, retaining much of its original charm while swelling gently into a quiet residential community of retired folk and health-seekers.

The original village square, referred to as "Lodetown," had stoutly resisted all civilizing inroads of the 20th century. It was composed mainly of oldtime saloons and beerhalls which were frequented by farmhands and cowboys from the surrounding area, and was the chief source of Palm Village's crime statistics, most of the trouble developing on Saturday nights and limited to "drunk and disorderlies" and an occasional fistfight. Lodetown boasted a quite stable population of prostitutes, each of them well known by local authorities. All were arrested each Sunday morning, fined $21.20, and released. This was an effective arrangement, considered entirely fair by the girls involved, satisfactory to the demands of law and order, and consistent with the city fathers' concept of "logic and reason." Besides, the weekly fines easily covered the entire expense of policing Lodetown.

Robert (Genghis) Conn was still lean and hard at the age of 52. A tall man with a deeply lined, weathered face, he looked like a Gary Cooper version of the Western marshal. Actually, Conn was chief of the city's small police force and had been a law-enforcement officer since the end of World War II. He had attended the police academy at Los Angeles and had served briefly with the L.A. police, then as an Orange County deputy until recalled to military duty for the Korean conflict. He returned from Korea directly into the chief's job at Palm Village, replacing the one-man agency of Town Marshal in one of the initial acts of civic progress.

It had not been a progressive move for Conn himself, however, and none was more aware of this than Conn. The Palm Village job represented a retreat of the once-ambitious lawman, the desert town offering him the peace and tranquility which had suddenly become so important to him. Conn had seen enough blood and violence to last him a lifetime; he wanted no more of it. For almost twenty years now, he had managed to avoid the violent life. He and his wife Dolly had a modest home with no mortgages in the older section of town, and here they planned to live forever. In peace and tranquility.

On that hot desert morning of October 5th, however, "Genghis" Conn realized that his sabbatical had ended. The pace of progress had caught up to Palm Village; violent death had found its way to his peaceful city. Three dead hoods lay in the coroner's vault at the local funeral home, a hapless old farmhand was barely hanging onto life at Memorial Hospital, and now this big-deal L.A. cop was telling him that his quiet little town was harboring, for God's sake, the Executioner.

"Is it always this hot here?" Captain Tim Braddock complained. He passed a hand across his forehead and squinted into the cloudless sky. "How the hell do you stand it?"