San Diego Siege by Don Pendleton Read Free Book Online

Bolan's "warwagon," a Ford Econoline van, into a mobile electronics workshop — and this remained as his base of operations.
    Bolan himself was driving a "hot scout" — a speedy, high-maneuverable, European sports car.
    This was their first chance to regroup and report since the hit on Sammy Simonetti at the airport. Each man dismounted from his vehicle and they held a council of war beside Bolan's roadrunner while they pulled concealing coveralls over their combat outfits.
    "Sammy's bread is in the bread truck," Blancanales reported, grinning. "It counts out to exactly a hundred and five thousand. What do I do with it?"
    "Keep it for the warchest," Bolan replied. "That's one of your problems for this operation. Anything Gadgets and I need, we'll come to you. You make all the buys. Less chancey that way."
    Blancanales nodded. "Okay. How'd it go in Lucasi's palace?"
    "Damn near disastrous," Bolan said. "The little man walked in while I was sounding his bedroom. You guys did a neat job outside, thanks. Probably saved the day."
    "Did you get the bedroom bug planted?" Schwarz wondered.
    "Yeah." The man from blood smiled. "In the headboard of his bed, while his wife slept. He's married to a kid ... but oh, what a kid!"
    Blancanales snickered. "Maybe we could sell the tapes to an underground movie outfit."
    Schwarz, all business, wanted to know, "Where'd you put the relay stations?"
    "Window ledges, outside," Bolan reported. "All aligned at one-five-zero magnetic, per your instructions."
    "Then we should have him snookered," Schwarz said. The gadgets-genius glanced at his watch and jotted a note in his surveillance log. "I'll have to cruise by and drain those storage banks in four hours. That's maximum storage, sorry."
    Bolan had to grin. It was typical of Gadgets Schwarz to be "sorry" that he could not improve upon perfection. The little devices which he'd designed and built for this job were just about the ultimate in electronics surveillance, to Bolan's mind.
    The pickup unit, consisting of a mike and a miniature radio transmitter, was about the size of a lady's wristwatch. The life in the tiny power cell was sufficient to provide 72 hours of continuous operation.
    The "relay station," somewhat bulkier but still small enough for easy concealment, received and recorded the continuous broadcast from the pickup unit.
    Upon command, the transmitter in the relay station would "unreel" the entire recording disc in about sixty seconds. That command would come from Schwarz's mobile console in the warwagon; he could cruise casually past the house once each four hours and "collect" the intelligence stored in the relay station ... four hours of electronic surveillance compressed into a sixty-second transmission keyed from the warwagon.
    The re-recording, appropriately slowed and automatically performed within the master console, screened out all the silent zones or 'lapses" in the four-hour recording, preserving only the "audibles" for fast monitoring in the re-play. And Gadgets was "sorry" about that. They had followed Sammy Simonetti from the airport and used the courier's unhappy arrival at the Lucasi household as a diversion for their own penetration.
    While Lucasi and his palace guard focused on the implications of Simonetti's busted play, Able Team slipped quietly in and wired the whole joint for sound.
    "You've got four relays plus the phone tap," Bolan reminded Schwarz. "Can you collect them all on one pass?"
    "No," Schwarz told him. "I could probably squeeze in two per pass but I'd rather not. A hundred yards is about the maximum reliable range for those relays. That gives me a hundred coming and a hundred going away, strict line-of-sight. I read that as one collection per pass, unless I just pull up and park."
    "Pull up and park, then," Bolan suggested. "Change a tire, fiddle with your engine — anything that will cover. But I don't like five times past that house in the same vehicle."
    "Okay, I'll park and drain," Schwarz