San Diego Siege by Don Pendleton Read Free Book Online Page A

agreed.
    "Pol, you stay on Lucasi. Keep a log on his every move outside that house."
    "You'll have it," Blancanales quietly replied.
    "Did you get those zoom lenses for the camera?"
    The Politician nodded his head in reply. "I could probably get a flea from a block away."
    "Great. Try to get a picture of every one entering that house, plus every one he meets away from the house. Unless you're really tied into something fantastic, we meet back here in exactly four hours."
    "What do I do in the meantime?" Gadgets wondered. "So far I've got a five minute job."
    "Run over and drain the phone tap at Howlin' Marian's," Bolan instructed him. 'If you pick up something useful there, don't save it. Beep me on Able Channel."
    "Okay. Where will you be?"
    "I think I'll be at the Mission Bay marina."
    "Who do we know there?" Politican asked.
    Bolan smiled. "I hear that Tony Danger keeps a deep-water boat berthed there."
    "I guess I never heard of Tony Danger," the Politician murmured.
    "One of Lucasi's lieutenants," Bolan explained. "Narcotics, mainly."
    "That's the guy," Schwarz commented, "was supposed to get the hundred grand."
    "That's him," Bolan confirmed. "I believe he was setting up for a buy. Heroin or cocaine, probably. They usually time the black money shipments for a fast in and out. And I saw Tony Danger at Lucasi's awhile ago, pacing around and wringing his hands over the loss of that shipment. He was wearing a yachting cap."
    Blancanales chuckled. "That was Tony Danger, eh?"
    "That was him."
    "He turned green when I laid that autopistol on him."
    "When he's got it all together he can be pretty mean," Bolan warned. "He was one of DiGeorge's favorite triggermen."
    Schwarz was wearing a faint frown. He asked, "How does all this tie into the colonel?"
    "Maybe not at all," Bolan replied. "I'm just hoping to stir the pot a bit. No telling what might float up off the bottom."
    Blancanales suggested, "Maybe some very straight big daddy with a dirty backside."
    Bolan nodded. "That's what I'm hoping for. A hell of a lot of mob money is moving into the legit pipelines in this town. That's what put Winco in business ... black money. But it didn't move directly from Lucasi to Winters. There's a middleman somewhere, a guy with plenty of clout. If we're going to find Howlin' Marian's lost soul, then we've first got to find the Big Middle."
    "Okay, I guess that makes sense," Schwarz said.
    "The same guy is providing the umbrella for Lucasi and his hoods," Blancanales added.
    "Probably," Bolan said. "It takes a certain kind of environment to support a Mafia entrenchment. If you find that entrenchment, then you know the environment is there also. So well try to knock some holes in the entrenchment. Maybe well get a glimpse of the environment as it rushes in to plug the holes."
    "This is different than the L.A. operation," Schwarz decided.
    "Quite a bit," Bolan agreed. "L.A. is a big roaring city, liberal, free-wheeling. That's enough natural environment right there to cover routine mob operations. This is a different sort of environment. Much smaller. Conservative, strong civic spirit, a proud town. Somebody in a position of power and trust within that establishment has to be dirty if the mob is operating here on the scale I suspect."
    "Or maybe a bunch of somebodies," Blancanales growled.
    "Maybe. Whoever or how many, we have to shake them up, get them churning, worrying. We already have a possible." Bolan stared for a moment at Schwarz. "After you've collected the Winters' intelligence, if you have time, find out what you can about a local wheel named Maxwell Thornton."
    "Pretty big guy?" Blancanales inquired. Bolan replied, "Yeah, pretty big. Let's examine our problem here for a minute. We know the mob people in this area. We know pretty well where their interests lie and the type of routine operations they're running. We could blitz them ... just lay all over them ... and we could do that very well, I think. But that wouldn't put us any