Chapter Six

The Ambush at the Buttes

"Has that station wagon been behind us all the way or hasn't it?" queried the nervous young man with the briefcase.

"Off and on, sure he has," Giordano replied smugly. "You just now catching on?"

"Well, I thought at first ... well, there was this Ford sedan back there for a while, and now the station wagon is back. It looks like the same one."

Giordano chuckled and slumped contentedly into the plush upholstery. "Games," he said. "They like to play games. Okay. Let 'em play."

They had left the freeway some minutes earlier and were powering smoothly through gently lifting countryside on a smooth blacktop road, the big cars eating the pavement at a steady eighty-mile-per-hour clip. Soon they would drop onto the desert-like flats bordering the city of Riverside and swing north into the rocky buttes. Giordano's groves lay in there, in a sheltered valley between the stark rock formations. Grapefruit, lemons, tangerines, and avocados were grown there, but hardly in sufficient quantity to support the rich Giordano appetites. Actually, the groves had proved to be an excellent deduction for income-tax purposes; Giordano made money by losing money in his farming operation. As a legitimate business venture, the farm was a minor item in the varied Giordano interests, but it tied in neatly with his more secretive activities, serving as a sort of central clearing house for an underworld empire.

The Rolls was slowing for the turn onto the backroad approach to the groves. Giordano frowned and punched the intercom button. "What happened to our hide-and-seek pals?" he growled.

"He kept falling back," the driver reported. "Lost sight of him about a mile back."

"Pull onto the back road and stop," Giordano commanded.

They made the turn. The heavy car came to a smooth halt. The black Continental proceeded on for several hundred feet, then halted also and backed down to within a few yards of the Rolls.

"Keep your eyes open," Giordano snapped. "Dumbhead can't even play hide and seek. Soon as you see him coming, start up again, but slow. We don't want him to lose us."

The driver poked his head out the window and shouted instructions to the car ahead. They waited. Giordano chafed. He lit a cigar after several minutes and growled, "Dumbhead! Dumbhead! How could he lose us on a country road?"

"Maybe he had car trouble," the young man ventured.

"Aaagh! So where the hell is Bruno! Eh? Where the hell is Bruno?" He punched the intercom button. "So where the hell is brilliant Bruno, who knows the goddamn route, eh?"

"Someone's coming up!" the driver announced.

Giordano's head snapped to the window. He squinted down the road they had left minutes earlier, then made a disgusted sound deep in his throat. "A truck! A goddamn truck!"

A huge blue-and-white diesel van was sweeping up the road toward their position, a thin column of dark smoke ejecting from the overhead exhaust. Giordano watched its approach, his disgust growing. Two men were in the cab. As it thundered by, the driver sounded a salute on his air horn.

"Some ambush," Giordano muttered. "Two dumbheads. One can't even play tag, and the other can't remember the route two times In a row." He punched the intercom button. "Awright, go on. Go on, goon!"

Bolan had fallen off into a leisurely forty-mile-per-hour advance moments after leaving the freeway. Blancanales had remained at the cutoff to await the horse, which was several minutes behind.

"Heading into my kind of country," Loudelk had reported. "Good place for a hit."

"Play it cool," Bolan instructed. "Rotate the track."

"Okay. I'm falling back. Come on up, Zit."

"Roj. Those bastards must be doing ninety. This old wagon is shaking apart."

"Just eighty," Loudelk reported. "Can't you overtake me? I'm dropping off to seventy . . . sixty. You'll have to push ninety, Zit, or you'll lose them."

"I'm doin' a flat hunnert right now!"

Bolan grinned and stayed out of it.

"Bye-bye, Birdie," Loudelk sang a moment later. "You're looking great. Hang in there, white eyes."

"Okay." Zitka's voice was strained with excitement. "I have them in sight. Don't get too far behind, Brother. Those cats are flat moving out."

"Affirm. What's that up there on the left? Buttes?"

"Yeah." Moments later: "Uh-oh. There's a fork up here. They're swinging north, into the buttes."

Bolan jumped into the conversation at that point. "Tailor made for you, Brother. Pick a good spot to eagle for us. Say when and where."

"Affirm," responded Loudelk's cool whisper.

"Somebody better get on me then," Zitka advised. "This old bomb may not hang together much longer."

"Coming up," Bolan reported. He power shifted the little car into a smooth leap forward, the tach climbing steadily toward the max line.

The voices of Harrington and Washington took over then, signaling the Horse's arrival on the Riverside cut-off. Bolan picked up the radio and said, "Welcome aboard. Close on me with all speed."

"Gotcha," Harrington replied.

"Have you been following the play?"

"'Firmative. Understand, north at the buttes wye."

"You know this area, Guns?"

"Like my own little sandbox."

"What's up in those buttes?"

"Not much. A few citrus farms. Couple of ranches."

"Okay. Continue closing. Tracker, I've got you in sight now. What the hell happened to Brother?"

"Dunno. Saw a cloud of dust in my rear view a minute ago. Think he took a dirt road."

"Tracker Two, report," Bolan commanded. "Bloodbrother!"

An agonizing silence followed. Bolan was now deep into the buttes and casting anxious glances onto the terrain to either side of him. The Corvette hurtled on, maintaining the visual track on Zitka. Presently Loudelk's smooth baritone boomed in loud and clear: "Eagle is on station. Situation magnificent. Instructions."

"Do you have quarry in sight?" Bolan snapped.

"Affirm, and half the country from L.A. to Riverside."

"Report terrain conclusions!"

"Dirt road, leading east, about . . . three miles beyond present position of quarry. Greenery at end of road—trees, I guess. No other exits visible."

"Break off ground track!" Bolan immediately commanded. "I want a wilco."

"Wilco, and just in time," Zitka responded. "I'm heating up."

Bolan slowed his vehicle. "Where are you from my present position, Eagle?" he asked.

"You passed me "bout a minute ago."

"Good. Maintain eagle watch and report developments. Backboard, you and Horse pour on the coals, get up here as quick as you can."

"Roger."

Zitka had pulled the Mercury onto the shoulder of the road and was standing beside it. Bolan stopped and picked him up, then resumed a leisurely advance. He thumbed on the transmitter and said, "Backboard, one of you transfer to the wagon. It's on the side track just ahead of you."

"Roger," Washington replied. "I'll take it."

"Horse, keep closing until further instructions."

"Roger."

"You cooled it right, Maestro," Loudelk came In. "They just pulled onto the dirt road and stopped. Like they're waiting."

Bolan grinned and allowed the Corvette to begin coasting to a halt. "Good show," he told Loudelk. "Maintain watch." He swiveled about and looked behind him. "I can see your smoke, Horse. Keep rolling. Quarry has gone to ground about three minutes ahead. Proceed on beyond them, then come about at first convenient spot and hold. Backboard, fall back to the wye with both vehicles and look innocent. Report all passings onto this road."

"Gotcha."

"Backboard, roger."

"Now," Bolan said to Zitka, "we will separate the foxes from the hounds."

Emllio Giordano was in a very nasty mood. Nothing could possibly be right at the ranch on such a day. He fired two of the freight handlers who were engaged in a playful slap fight at the loading dock; then he chewed on the ranch manager for not having an up-to-the-minute inventory of the warehouse. A few minutes later he physically attacked the nervous young man with the briefcase and told the world at large, in loud and certain terms, what he was going to do to Bruno "when and if he ever finds his way here!"