Free San Diego Siege by Don Pendleton

stood in stunned stupor and watched the lifeless body spin over the rail and into the water between the boats.
    The AutoMag was at full extension and staring down on them when Bolan's taut voice again crackled through the bullhorn: "You
amigos
have your five thousand American and that's all you were in it for! Do the smart thing and send that junk on over here!"
    The skipper of the
Pepe,
like the American skipper, had his hands full with the delicate job of maintaining station. He had undoubtedly seen little of what had transpired between the two boats, but obviously he had heard enough. A shouted command in Spanish came down from the bridge and the stunned sailors reacted instantly, stuffing the Frenchman's rubberized bag into the transfer basket and hauling away on the line.
    A
Folly
sailor snatched the precious cargo from the basket.
    Bolan yelled, "Cast off and haul ass!"
    Turtle was akeady into the play, however. The
Folly
swung suddenly to starboard and the lines parted with a twanging snap as they veered away from the other boat's course.
    A moment later, two unbelieving American sailors watched "Frankie Lambretta" slash packet after packet of high grade heroin and scatter the precious powders into the blue Pacific.
    "Trash," he told them, when the job was completed. "The guy was trying to sell us trash."
    And one hour later, when he was making his goodbyes to the admiring crew of
Danger's Folly,
he told Turtle Tarantini: "You run a tight ship, Skipper. Ill mention it to the boss."
    With a look approaching open adoration, the
Mafioso
told the Executioner, "Mr. Lambretta, you're the classiest guy I've ever had the pleasure to meet."
    Yeah.
    So okay.
    It hadn't turned into
Bolan's
Folly, after all.
    And the world would hardly miss an international junk salesman and a million bucks worth of human misery.
    The
mob
would, sure.
    And that, of course, was the name of the immediate game:
Siege.
He would lock them out and shut them out at every turn.
    And then, maybe, something interesting would come up over the hill. A target, maybe, in the
Big Middle.

9
Discovery
    "Where the hell you been with my boat?" Tony Danger screamed from the pier as
Dangers Folly
came alongside.
    Tarantini ignored the emotional greeting while he completed the docking procedure, and not until she was tied-up and the engines secured did he move to the wing of the bridge to grin down at his boss on the pier.
    "Come on aboard, sir," he called down. "Mr. Lambretta left you a report."
    Anthony Cupaletto, or "Tony Danger" as he had become known in mob circles, was not a man given to vague fears or unreasonable worries. He had started in the business fifteen years earlier as a paid-gun guarding the person of Julian DiGeorge, then boss of the Southern California underworld. His cool efficiency and loyalty to the great man had not gone unnoticed or unrewarded, and Tony Danger had moved quickly along the happy road to wealth and prestige in the DiGeorge organization. The thirty-five-year-old was now regarded in ranking circles as the ambitious young man to watch out for in the ever-shifting power structures of the times.
    Cool, shrewd, hard, dependable — Tony Danger seemed destined to go a long way in the business.
    So, no, he was not normally a fearful or an anxious man.
    At this particular moment, however, he was both.
    He ignored the gangway which the crewmen were emplacing, leapt onto the deck of his pride and joy, then went quickly up to join his skipper on the bridge.
    "Mister
who
left me
what?"
he growled at Tarantini.
    "Mr. Lambretta," the Turtle repeated. The look on the boss's face was destroying his self-confidence and his voice was showing the stress. "You know ... Frankie Lambretta, Mr. Lucasi's hard arm. Hell, you should've
seen
that guy operate."
    The name meant something to Tony Danger ...
Lambretta
... wasn't that ... ?
    It hit him then and — his worst fears suddenly surfacing in the pit of his gut — Danger covered his consternation by