Читать книгу Damage Radius - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

As the rat-tat-tat of the speed bags filled his ears like machine-gun fire, Bolan walked from the ring to the glass wall of his new office. Tossing the gloves he had just removed to a man on his way to the water fountain, he pushed the door open and left the gym proper. Through the glass, he could still hear the speed bags, the crunching of the canvas bags and the tapping of jump ropes as the door swung closed behind him.

The Executioner looked at his desk as he moved toward it. It was cluttered with the personal effects of Sy Lennon, the former manager of McFarley’s New Orleans gym. But Lennon would not be back to collect them.

He, along with a middleweight named Bobby “the Killer” Kiethley, was dead. Their bodies had not yet been found, and Bolan suspected they never would be.

The rumor was that three of Tommy McFarley’s henchmen had dropped them out of one of McFarley’s private aircraft somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. Their crime? Not throwing a fight that McFarley had “fixed,” and upon which he had consequently lost close to a million dollars in bets.

Bolan spied an empty cardboard box thrown carelessly into the corner of the office and quickly retrieved it. Without ceremony, he used his forearm to sweep the desktop clear. Papers, paperweights, a brass clip in the shape of a whale and a small plastic “Snoopy” wearing boxing gloves fell into the box. Returning the carton to the corner of the room, the Executioner dropped it and took a seat behind the desk.

For a moment, he stared out through the glass at the men still working out in the gym. New Orleans was the center of McFarley’s operations, but his chain of boxing and body-building/power-lifting gyms stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They were the “front,” and the money-laundering operations, for his real businesses, which included international drug trafficking, arms dealing, gambling and white-slavery prostitution throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Bolan glanced at the scarred black rotary telephone that was now the sole object on his desk. It was a throwback to an earlier era, and the chances of it being tapped by McFarley were slim. Still, there was no sense in taking unnecessary risks, so the soldier leaned down to the gym bag he had dropped by the desk chair when he’d first arrived a few hours earlier. Fishing through the clothing and other contents, he found a smaller, zippered bag that contained both cell and satellite phones. Choosing the cell, he pulled it from the bag and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm, the top-secret U.S. site that fielded counterterrorist teams and trained specially picked soldiers and police officers from America and its allied nations. The call was automatically routed through a number of cutout numbers on three continents on the offchance that someone—someone like McFarley—had stumbled onto the frequency.

Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, answered the phone. “Hello, Striker,” she said. “How’s training?”

Bolan chuckled softly. “Barely worked up a sweat yet,” he told the beautiful honey-blonde. He pictured her briefly in his mind. He and Price had a “special relationship” reserved for those rare occasions during which he was out of the field and spent the night at the Farm. But both were true professionals, and they never allowed that relationship to interfere with their work. “Had to prove myself a few minutes ago,” Bolan went on.

“I doubt it lasted a full round,” Price said.

“About a minute or so,” the soldier replied. “I didn’t see any reason to show off.” He paused, then got to the point of the call. “Can you buzz me through to Hal?”

“I could,” Price said. “But it wouldn’t do you much good. He’s at Justice today.”

Hal Brognola wore two hats. In one role, he was the director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm. But in another, he was a high-ranking official within the U.S. Department of Justice. “I’ll call him there, then,” Bolan told Price.

“Good luck and be careful.”

“Always,” he said and ended the call.

A moment later he had dialed the numbers to the big Fed’s direct line at the Justice Department. A gruff voice answered. “Brognola.”

“Striker here.”

“Hello, big guy,” Hal Brognola said after turning on the scrambler. “How’s the new job?”

“Terrific,” Bolan answered. “If you like starting at the bottom. I’m in, but I’m still a long way from McFarley’s real action. Unless we can figure out a way to speed things up, it’s going to take me a lifetime to get next to the man.”

“You haven’t met McFarley, himself, yet, have you?” Brognola asked.

“No,” Bolan said. “I was interviewed and got hired by one of his goons. It seems the big man doesn’t dirty himself with small jobs like hiring gym managers.”

“Well,” Brognola said, “I’ve got something else working right now that ought to lead to a meeting. The same undercover DEA agent who’s managing McFarley’s gym in Cleveland—the guy I went through to get you in there in New Orleans—has let a few things ‘slip’ about your less-than-spotless past. It shouldn’t take long for loose lips to reach McFarley’s ears that you’ve run both guns and dope in the past, and that you’re just trying to keep a low profile by managing boxers for a while.”

“Your DEA man in Cleveland,” Bolan asked. “How much does he know?”

“Not much. He’s a good man. He understands the need-to-know concept and realizes he doesn’t need to know anything past recommending you, alias ‘Matt Cooper’ of course, for the New Orleans job.”

“You think this rumor-passing stunt is going to work?” Bolan asked.

“I think so,” Brognola said. “Guys like McFarley are always on the lookout for men with Matt Cooper’s experience.”

A tap on the glass door to his office caused Bolan to look up. When he did, he saw a man wearing striped overalls and a tool belt, with a paint can in his hand. Bolan knew what he was there to do, and he nodded.

The man in the overalls set the can down, pulled a razor-bladed paint scraper from his tool belt and began scraping Sy Lennon’s name off the glass door. In its place, he would paint Bolan’s undercover ID—Matt Cooper.

“Okay,” Bolan said, turning his attention back to the phone. “I guess all I can do right now is wait.”

“It shouldn’t take long,” Brognola came back.

Without further words, Bolan disconnected the line.

He looked up again just in time to see a blurry form through the glass. It shoved the man in the overalls aside and pushed through the door.

Jake Jackson, the fighter the Executioner had KO’d only a few minutes earlier, strode angrily into the office. A cotton ball was shoved into his left nostril and flecks of dried blood still stuck to the skin around his nose. A welt was forming on his forehead between his eyes, and while he’d lost the boxing gloves from his hands, dirty-white tape was still wrapped around his palm and wrists.

“Something more I can help you with, Jake?” Bolan said as he set down the cell phone.

“Yeah,” the man across the desk said. His lips were curved down in an angry frown, and his eyes shot daggers through Bolan. “I don’t like getting whipped by a trainer,” he growled.

Bolan glanced at the man’s midsection. He was a heavyweight, but there was a thin layer of fat covering his abdominal muscles. “I don’t blame you,” the soldier said. “So if I was you I’d train harder, drink less beer and get into fighting shape.”

The words only angered the man further. “I grew up here,” he said in a heavy Cajun accent. “In the back streets of the French Quarter.” He paused and eyed Bolan even harder. “And I can’t help but think there’d be a much different outcome if you and I were to fight without gloves and rules.” By this point Jackson had inched his way around the side of Bolan’s desk.

The soldier swiveled slowly in his chair to face him. “There’s only one way to find out, Jake,” he said with a pleasant smile on his face.

The heavyweight lunged suddenly with both hands aimed at Bolan’s throat. Still seated, the Executioner flicked his foot up and out, catching the other man squarely in the groin with the top of his flat-soled boxing shoes. The cup Jackson wore cushioned a lot of the blow, but not enough to keep him from grunting in surprise and pain.

As he rose from his chair, Bolan drove a forearm into the man’s face. Blood spurted from the heavyweight’s nose, shooting the cotton from his nostril like a tiny rocket and driving his head back upward. In his peripheral vision, Bolan saw that most of the other fighters had gathered around the glass front of the office to watch.

Jackson had obviously announced his intentions to “teach Matt Cooper a lesson” before he’d come into the office.

Bolan reached forward and clasped his hands together behind Jackson’s neck. As he bent the man forward again, he drove a knee upward into his belly in a classic Muay Thai movement. Dropping his foot to the ground, he lifted his other knee and struck the groin area again.

By now, Jackson’s plastic cup had cracked in two. And with the third knee strike, the fighter’s groan became a scream.

Bolan stepped back and drove the same right cross into the man’s chin that had knocked him out in the ring.

The effect was the same, and Jackson fell to the floor next to the desk.

Bolan didn’t hesitate. Grabbing a handful of the man’s sweaty hair with his left hand, he dragged him back around the desk and opened the door with his other hand. Then, pushing the unconscious man through the doorway, he let him fall on his face against the concrete.

The Executioner looked up. “I’m getting sick of this,” he told the stunned fighters who had watched the encounter. “How many times do I have to knock this guy out? Let’s get it all over with right now. I beat him in the ring, with rules. And I just beat him in a streetfight, without rules. Does anybody want to wrestle? Karate? Judo? Maybe do a little head-on tackling practice like in football?” He paused to let his words sink in. “Like I said, I’m through proving myself. If any of the rest of you want to fight, in any way you want, step up now.” He paused again because he knew his next words would fall on the ears of his audience as the most important. “But I’m warning you,” he finally said. “The next time, I’m going to kill my challenger.”

The gym grew even more silent than it had been earlier.

Finally, a man who looked to be around welterweight size stepped forward. He had the coffee-colored skin of the true Creole, and was wearing sweatpants and bag gloves. He smiled at Bolan, then turned to face the other men. “I think it’s high time we welcomed Mr. Cooper as our new manager,” he said.

The rest of the heads nodded. Some enthusiastically, others grudgingly. But one way or another, they all affirmed Bolan’s leadership.

The soldier nodded back to them also, then turned back into his office. A door at the rear of the room led to the small sleeping quarters that had served as Lennon’s home, and would temporarily house the Executioner—at least during the beginning of this mission.

Just before he stepped into the small bedroom, Bolan glanced back over his shoulder.

The men around the gym were working out even harder than before. And the painter in the striped overalls was just beginning the second T in the name “Matt Cooper.”