Free San Diego Siege by Don Pendleton Page A

shoving a cigarette between his lips and leaning into the lee of the flying bridge to light it.
    Sure. That was what he'd called himself at Palm Springs. Frankie Lucky. Frankie Lucky Lambretta.
    Mack fuckin' Bolan!
    The San Diego
caporegime
exhaled a gusty cloud of smoke and quietly asked his skipper, "What the hell are you telling me, Turtle?"
    "You didn't know about it?" Tarantini asked nervously.
    "About
what?"
Tony Danger growled, working hard to control his emotions.
    "He said he was supposed to make the buy at the
Pepe.
He said there was trouble, and
he
was going instead of
you.
He said — "
    "Fuck
what he
said!"
Tony Danger yelled. "What did he
do?"
    Tarantini took a retreating half-step in the face of that rage and choked out: "Hell I thought you knew. I thought it was cleared through you. The Frenchman tried to pass some bad stuff. Mr. Lam-bretta drilled him and dumped the junk."
    "He did
what?"
Tony Danger screamed.
    Turtle Tarantini looked about ready to run. Instead he thrust forward a heavy manila envelope, pushing it towards his boss. "I guess it's all in here," he said weakly. "He said give this to you."
    Tony Danger accepted the "report" but his eyes remained hot and unbelieving on his skipper. "Where is this guy right now?" he wanted to know.
    "He had us drop him on the other side. Said his car was over there."
    "When?"
    "Five, maybe ten minutes ago."
    Tony Danger did not wish to open that envelope.
    He knew, he thought, what was in there.
    He muttered, "He dumped the stuff?"
    "Yessir. It was trash. He paid the
Pepe
for their run, but he put a bullet right between the Frenchman's eyes. Mr. Danger, that guy knew what he was doing. Believe me."
    "Fifty kilos," Tony Danger muttered. "A million bucks on the streets. He
dumped
it?"
    "I told you, it was
trash.
I thought you knew all about that. I thought...."
    "You think too much, Turtle," Tony Danger told his uncomfortable skipper. He was opening the envelope — slowly, delicately. "You're gonna fool around and think yourself into an early grave. You
think
about
that."
    Turtle Tarantini's eyes clearly did not understand his boss's reaction to the superb job Frankie Lambretta had done for him.
    "Too many people give orders around here," he muttered defensively.
    Tony Danger did not hear the remark. He was staring into the brown manila envelope. He dug a finger into a small sample of white powder in there and touched it to his tongue. "Trash, eh?" he commented miserably. Then he withdrew the little iron cross with a bull's-eye in its center and showed it to his skipper. "That's your Frankie Lambretta," he said in a flat voice.
    "I don't believe it," Tarantini whispered. "You'd better," Tony Danger quietly told him. "You'd damn sure better believe it."
    He turned away to conceal the quivering of his lips and quickly descended the ladder to the main deck.
    Damn right.
    Everybody had better start believing it.
    Hell had finally come to San Diego.
    Bolan established a radio contact with Gadgets Schwarz to set up a rendezvous where he could screen the intelligence from the telephone tap on the Winters residence, but Blancanales broke into the conversation with an urgent report of his own.
    "Been hoping you'd check in pretty quick," the Politician told his C.O. "All hell is breaking around here. My subject has had people coming and going ever since I reached station. It smells of a build-up and I want you to look at some pictures I took with the Polaroid."
    Bolan had a vast respect for the judgement of the combat-intelligence expert. His decision was quick and positive. "Change the game plan," he replied. "Remain on station and cover Gadgets for his intel run. Gadgets, start your drain operation in exactly ten minutes. Pol, follow him out. Ill be covering from Station Charlie. Regroup with all caution at Point Alpha."
    It was beginning to size up as a rather short siege.
    The enemy, it seemed, was already gearing for the break-out.
    The emergency conference had been