"Дон Пендлтон. Caribbean Kill ("Палач" #10) " - читать интересную книгу автора

regard the latter alternative as an option worthy of the smallest
consideration. He would die as he had lived - to the point.
Though sought by virtually every police establishment in the nation,
Bolan never fought cops. His war was with the Mafia and - whether the police
accepted the idea or not - the cops were his allies, not his enemies. He
also exercised great care to keep non-combatants out of his battle zones.
There is no record of any innocent bystanders being caught in the crossfire
of a Bolan campaign. It is known that frequently, in fact, he scrubbed
missions and broke contact when it became apparent that bystanders would
become involved, and several of these occasions were at great peril to
himself.
It was at Chicago that Bolan finally came to grips with his own inner
turmoil and accepted once and for all his place in the universe. "A man's
character is his fate," said Heraclitus, the early Greek philosopher - and
Bolan discovered at Chicago that this same truth applied to societies as a
whole. He found there a city chained by its own character, and he left it
that way, though minus a few characters it would never miss, -and continued
along his wipe-out trail to Las Vegas, the city of chance and very nearly
the city of Bolan's last chance.
The Mafia counter-war reached its greatest proportions ever at Vegas,
and the national enforcers thought they had the Executioner sewed up for
sure in this town where the comfortable end of the averages perennially rode
with the house. Once again, however, the astute militarist uncannily read
the offense and turned it to his own advantage - and he left Vegas with all
the chips.
He also left with $250,000 of the mob's money, one of their
helicopters, a pilot and an accountant, or "bagman." The helicopter
represented but the first leg of a devious route to the Caribbean island of
Puerto Rico - the money, "skim" from Vegas casino profits, was but the
latest installment of a continuing cash movement onto the "Caribbean
Carousel," a new scene of intense activity for the international syndicate.
Thus Bolan's escape from Vegas was also his springboard to the next
battleground. It seemed a virtual certainty that the survivors of the Vegas
battle would recover from their stunning defeat early enough to read Bolan's
play and arrange a reception for him at flight's end.
Bolan was a military realist, not a wishful thinker. He had known that
the Vegas deception could last just so long, and was expecting the trap that
awaited him at Puerto Rico. It was another calculated risk, little different
than all the others. The important thing was that they had revealed their
hardsite to him.
The next move was up to him.
A tropical paradise lay just beyond that airplane window.
But the Executioner had not come to America's backyard playground to
gambol in the sun and sand.
He was living to the point, and he had come for the Caribbean Kill.
Bolan was blitzing into paradise.

Chapter One
Collision course