Bombshell Max Collins (best ereader for textbooks .txt) 📖

pointed toward the locked gates of the darkened Disneyland, the park’s train station looming beyond. Behind him, the brakes of the other sedans screeched, then car doors slammed like sarcastic hand claps in the night.

A uniformed policeman—a captain, according to his badge— approached Harrigan, as the State Department man scrambled out of his car. Big, burly, bucket-headed, the officer presented a comfortingly businesslike demeanor. At his side was a smaller, thinner cop, a lieutenant whose narrow face with close-set eyes and mouth-breather expression gave Harrigan no confidence at all.

In the background, milling around the squad cars, were half a dozen other uniformed officers, their casualness telling Harrigan that they were more than literally in the dark.

From out of the unmarked vehicle, a navy-blue Chevrolet, stepped a tall, rangy plainclothes officer in his fifties, his brown hair cut short and flecked with gray. He wore a brown suit and crisp, darker brown tie and looked like an executive, his badge holder tucked into the breast pocket of his suit coat, the shield gleaming in the moonlight. He, like the captain, had a reassuring air of professionalism.

Harrigan stepped forward to meet the man halfway. “Chief Coderoni, I presume.”

“You must be Agent Harrigan.”

They shook hands; the two had spoken a number of times on the phone, previously about the planning and then cancellation of the Khrushchev visit, more recently—less than half an hour ago—about the situation here at the park.

“How much do your men know, Chief?”

“My Captain here, Ed Keenan, and Lt. Willits, have been fully briefed. The other men, not at all. We get calls out this way from time to time, you know.”

“Yes, I understand there’s no security force at Disneyland.”

“Not after closing, not even a night watchman. We keep a pretty close eye, though—park’s a real boon to Anaheim.”

Harrigan had no time for small talk. “Gather everyone around,” he ordered.

The chief seemed to have no compunctions about relinquishing his leadership to Harrigan—that, at least, was a relief. Wasting time jockeying for position, pissing on trees to mark territory, was out of the question.

In a circle hastily formed in front of the locked gates of the amusement park—beneath a sign that read: To all those who come to this happy place, welcome … Walt Disney—Harrigan quickly told the diversified group about the attempt on Khrushchev’s life, and Marilyn Monroe’s involvement.

“We have good reason to believe they’re inside,” Harrigan finished. “And we have excellent reason to believe two assassins— probably Chinese—are inside, as well.”

“One of them is Lee Wong,” Munson added, and showed around a picture of the angular faced, dead-eyed Chinese hit man. “He’s freelance—ruthless as hell. He will kill you in a heart-beat, gentleman—your last. We don’t know who the other one is, but it’s not unusual for assassins to work in teams.”

The government agents took in all of this in stride, but the local cops, for the most part, looked like non-swimmers contemplating being thrown into the deep end. The chief and his captain, however, revealed nothing but a coolly competent manner.

That mouth-breather lieutenant, on the other hand, responded by dropping his jaw further, an appropriate enough response to the critical state of things, but then the man belatedly stammered, “You … you mean, the Marilyn Monroe?”

The captain stepped up, perhaps to draw attention away from his dopey crony. “Unless they climbed over, I don’t think anybody’s got inside this way,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the gate. “Lock’s intact.”

Harrigan nodded. “Is there another way into the park?”

“Uh, there’s a road goes around the back,” the lieutenant responded, attempting to redeem himself. “It’s a service entrance and some of the employees use it, too.”

Harrigan dispatched Krueger to go in the back way and keep in touch via walkie-talkie; that efficient, burly captain—“I know this park inside out”—volunteered to go along, and the FBI agent and a carload of support headed off, just as Chief Coderoni slipped up alongside the State Department man.

Speaking sotto voce, Coderoni said, “We may have another problem, Agent Harrigan.”

“Which is?”

The Chief grimaced, then whispered, “Mr. Disney was supposed to meet us here—to let us in … and there’s no sign of him.”

Harrigan processed that for a moment, then got Krueger on the walkie-talkie and informed him of the stray movie mogul who was somewhere inside the park, along with two assassins, a sex bomb, and the premier of Russia.

Harrigan instructed the chief to leave some of his men behind to watch the front gate. “They can raise us on this,” he said, handing Coderoni a spare walkie-talkie. “Gather ’round again!”

The G-men and local cops did so.

“We’re going in,” Harrigan said, “in four teams. Special Agent Krueger is already heading in, to take the back way—that’s Team Number One. The rest of us will split up at the end of Main Street. Team Number Two will head to the left, Team Three to the right, Team Four’ll continue on straight ahead. Place is set up like the points of a compass. We’ll converge at the rear of the park, at the midway.”

“How about a password?” the lieutenant asked.

“What?”

“So if we run into somebody, splittin’ up like this, we don’t shoot their head off.”

That wasn’t a bad suggestion, considering the source.

“Make it ‘Armageddon,’ ” Harrigan said.

Around back, Sam Krueger had discovered two parked cars in the bushes near the metal gate that half-heartedly barred further passage to Disneyland.

The captain was the first to reach the abandoned cars: a blue Buick and a green Ford, both late models.

“This one’s a rental,” the officer said, shining his flashlight on the back license plate of the Ford.

“This is Marilyn’s,” Krueger said, kneeling beside the Buick, noting that the tires had been slashed. Clearly these assassins didn’t want their prey to get away.

The captain assigned one of his men to stay with the cars, “in case the assassins return,” a tactic Krueger approved.

The FBI man used the walkie-talkie to bring Harrigan up to speed.

Harrigan took the info, and instructed Krueger to continue on into the park; right now the