Sicilian Slaughter (8 page)

She had driven to within sight of the last street lights on the road out of Reggio when they took her.

A man came from each side of the road, out of the shadows, and in the same instant, two climbed over the endgate; all had guns. One, who looked like a frog, laid his gunbarrel upside her jaw and in reflex action she slammed him in the face with her fist, putting her shoulder and all hundred-forty pounds of work-hardened farm girl behind the punch. Frog went off backwards and landed on bis head in the street, convulsively clenching his hands, and shooting the left horse of Alma's team through the heart. The horse lunged, sprayed blood through both nostrils, then dropped in his tracks. The other horse spooked, lunging and kicking, almost upsetting the wagon.

One of the gunsels lost his head and clubbed Alma across the top of her skull with his pistol, just as Ragno shouted, "No!" But it was too late.

Alma went slack as a dead and toppled out of the wagon.

Ragmo caught her, but her weight bore his gangly frame to the ground. A car pulled from a narrow street and two men jumped out, grabbed Alma and threw her inside. Ragno, The Spider, rose shakily to his feet and climbed in behind them. The driver knelt beside Rana, feeling his pulse. He shrugged and picked up The Frog's gun, and started back to the car. The gunsel, still on the wagon seat, shouted, "Hey, what about me? I got her. I got pay coming."

From the car a voice issued a command.

The driver turned and aimed with Frog's gun and shot the gunsel through the head. "Paid in full, stupid."

In the car, pulling away, the wheelman asked, "She dead?"

"No, damned lucky for us. Astio'd have our balls roasting over a slow fire."

"She broke Frog's neck, knocking him off right on top of his head."

"You sure she's the one?"

"Who helped Bolan? Who the hell knows? She
is
the one the boss said watch for. From that farm just beyond where he left the truck."

"Okay, hook it up. The boss is getting antsy as hell."

The wheelman drove toward the dock.

Bolan went into the water a mile and a half above the ferry dock, swimming easily in the warm waters of the Strait. His clothing and the weight of the weapons and extra ammo hindered him, but he'd given himself plenty of time and swam without tiring himself.

The ferry was still hull down on the horizon of the sea when he entered the water, only its truck light showing, but as he swam, the running lights came into view, then the lighted deck, and Bolan began easing in toward the ferry's course. He was almost a mile offshore when he turned and added power to his even strokes and came across the bow, treaded water and let the boat pass, then fell in its wake, pouring it on. The same line he had observed three times earlier in the day still trailed carelessly in the water off the port stern, and Bolan caught it. He worked his way up the rope, hand over hand against the force of the boat pulling him through the water, wrapped his right leg around the trailing slack, drew the leg up and caught the slack, and in a moment had a bowline-on-bight in the line. Mack slipped his right foot into the non-slip loop, passed the line under his right arm, across his back, under his left arm, and in a sort of cradle, he rode along buffeting in the foaming wake.

When the ferry slowed, Mack instantly used his right hand as a rudder and swung his body out to the side and looked past the ferry. The Reggio landing was less than two hundred yards away.

Bolan went hand over hand, fast, up the rope to the side of the ferryboat, placed his feet against the slippery sea-slick hull, and climbed. As he knew they would — it was only natural — everyone aboard faced the dock and the city. What was there to see back across the Strait? In a moment, he was aboard.

Thanks to his
ragazza,
his girl Alma from Reggio, Bolan was on the ferry to Sicily, and in a few minutes his warchest, the Bohemian Magician's crate, would also be aboard. A mile or so out of Messina on the crossing, he would drop over the side and swim ashore, then cut inland to the Messina-Catania road, flag a bus or wagon, or hire a taxi, hole up in Catania until his warchest arrived, then across the island along the base of snowcapped Mount Etna, to Enna, then the road southwest from the junction at Caltanissetta, through Canicatti and Naro, and then —

Then he would have to see. Another long-range penetration behind enemy lines. He would be in Indian country at Naro, Agrigento Province, and somewhere back in the convulsively upthrust mountainous and canyon-slashed boondocks, he would find Don Cafu's
Scuola As-sassino,
School for Assassins.

It was becoming so ridiculously easy, Mack Bolan felt the hair on his neck bristle in warning. It had become
too
easy.

He was a known and hunted man in a foreign country on a mission of death and destruction, and since leaving Naples airport it had all gone his way, virtually without a hitch. Bolan was good and knew he was good and he'd survived because he was better than good, because he was The Executioner, man with a mission, and incomprehensibly efficient, to the Mafia's bitter knowledge and experience. He was so good that more than once the "membership" had sent the word out: come and reason with us, join us.

When you can't beat 'em, join 'em....

Bolan knew he'd have lasted inside the Mafia about as long as a crooked cop in the regular jail lockup. Until he was exhausted and had fought as long as he could. Then they would make pulp of his head with their heels.

For the cons in the tank, the cop had to go just on general principles.

Inside the Mafia, identified, Bolan had to go because no man, no organization, including the United States Government — and all its enforcement agencies, FBI, Bureau of Narcotics, Customs, Alcohol & Tobacco Tax Unit, and the Department of Justice Organized Crime Task Force — none of them, nor all of them combined, had taken down as many
mafioso
as this one single man, Mack Bolan, The Executioner.

The bastard Bolan was an earthquake, a timebomb, an off-duty cop, a drunk driver bent upon suicide all in one package — totally unpredictable and no way, no-fucking -way! To get handles on the guy. To figure him. His next move. Christ, how do you make plans for a bastard who goes through San Diego like water through a hose and a couple of days later wipes out Frank Angeletti's soldier barracks in Philadelphia? Then shows up
inside
Don Stefano's home impersonating Wild Card Cavaretta so well the son of a bitch sleeps, actually
sleeps
in the don's house, before taking the whole fucking place down!

Perhaps the "members" could have understood better if one of them had ever had a look at Mack Bolan's journals!

I'm already dead. In old Norse mythology, so I understand, there is a place called Valhalla. All the great warriors gather there nightly to dine and drink and be entertained, and then fight to the death. Guts ripped out, heads lopped off, blinded and maimed
— 
And yet the next night, they return whole and well, to dine and drink and fight again.

They are dead but don't know it.

Am I in my own personal Valhalla...?

It doesn't matter. I will keep on fighting until I can fight no more, the way I have always fought, and for the same reasons. The Law cannot do the job, hamstrung and handcuffed by red tape, rules, regulations, books, court decisions. I am not and will never be. So long as 1 last, I will continue the fight.

Bolan found the portside aft head, stepped inside and stripped off after locking the door. He wrung out his outer clothing, checked his weapons and ammo and found them safely dry, dressed again, then came out on deck as the ferry slowed and began swinging around, stern toward the dock, using the Mediterranean moor, a device the U.S. Navy had made so popular. When ships tied-to with their sterns to the dock, they could get underway in seconds, without delicate dockside maneuvering or using tugs to come alongside or depart. The "Med moor" also saved a hell of a lot of docking space, quayside.

As the ferry swung around, stern toward dock, Bolan moved toward the bow. He let his narrowed gaze rove over the crowd, picking out the
mafiosi
and the gunsels he'd spotted earlier in the day. He spotted the gunsels as easily as before. A gun gave some types of guys a lot of balls. He felt his hackles bristle again. Where was Rana, the frog-faced dude? He'd been obviously in charge of the dockcrew, all during the day while Bolan watched from the hayloft room. Now he was gone.

Then Bolan saw them.

Alma had a huge jawbust lump on the left side of her face, and a glob of red showed on the top of her bonnet. On her left stood a gangly spiderlike man with his hand in his right pocket, bulging. On her right stood Astio, and Bolan saw his lips moving.

Alma shook her head.

As though there were no one, much less the more than a hundred people on the dock, disembarking and waiting to board the ferry, Astio turned and almost casually drove his right fist into Alma's face and broke her nose. Blood sprayed, and Bolan saw her buckle at the knees under the force of the deliberately smashing punch. Then she shook her head, raised her chin, and spat a mouthful of blood into Astio's face.

Somehow, someway, Mack Bolan vowed to himself, he would make it up to that girl. He would find a way, by God. Alma, it meant
soul;
and she had it, from the core out.

First, though, he had to save her life. Astio would never stand for that spitting in his face.

Almost reluctantly, Mack pulled the Beretta, checked that the silencer was screwed firmly in place, rested his elbows on an engine-room blower stack, sighted, and shot Astio Traditore through the head. He swung a fraction to his right and shot Spider between the eyes.

Immediately, the wheelman leaped from the car, gun drawn, staring around. He moved around the front of the car and Bolan shot him through the throat.

Without discipline, eager only for heroics and a big payday, the gunsels came to Astio's "rescue." Then stood in a muttering gang, looking about, seeking a target.

The people of Reggio paid them no attention. Since time began, the old stories and even the Bible itself told of such happenings in the streets of Reggio, Rome, Bethlehem, along the ancient Appian Way.

There were people in the crowd who would have traded places with the deads, despite their abject suffering poverty.

The priests had warned them that pain and torture and suffering beyond imagination awaited those who suicided themselves. So the people of Reggio plodded onwards, unseeing. That men had achieved a walk on the moon meant absolutely nothing to them. Most of them did not know. Of those who knew, nearly all did not believe. Blood running in the streets was Reggio. Was Calabria. Italy. They walked on past, looking neither right or left, minds purposely blank.

The dockworkers, too, accustomed to oppression by Mafia labor bosses, knowing the less seen and heard the better, simply went about their work as though three dead men and the gunwaving gunsels did not exist. Mack watched, and saw the
bustarella,
the little bribe, tip, had worked. Bolan's crated warchest was first aboard.

Then it was tune to break it up and let Alma out. The cheap gunsels had started some big behavior. In a ludicrous imitation of the real merchandise, one gunsel twisted up a handful of Alma's hair and jerked her head back so the cords in her neck stood out like cables and her outsized bosom seemed ready to burst through her dress.

Bolan saw the longshoremen return to dockside after loading his crate. He holstered the Beretta and drew the .44 Automag. He shot the gunsel holding Alma. The big, high-impact slug went in just under the gunsel's chin, hit with crushingly expanding force, and tore the man's head from his body. It rolled down the slight incline toward the dock, and became lost among the shuffling feet of the people who refused to look, refused to acknowledge they walked between the front lines of a war between two opposing forces.

Bolan fired again, twice more, shooting lower now, taking the guts out of the cheap thugs who'd come ganging around Alma. He wanted them to have a look at what it was all about, this hiring out cheap, packing heat, strutting before the girls, bragging it up. Bolan wanted their brothers and sisters and all their relatives to see what it cost. Working a dirt farm in Calabria wasn't much of a life, and grubbing for coins along the waterfront little better; but they did not get you dead like mixing with "that thing of theirs" did. It didn't get your bloody yellow guts slopped out on the quay with a hole the size of a football in your back where the .44 Magnum emerged, spraying bone splinters, sticky wet red, slimy yellow.

Bolan got them all, a
cleansweep.
A Reggio Repulisti!

In Messina, in Catania, and for damned sure in Agrigento the "membership" awaited him, Bolan knew. But right now he was on the way ... to the Mafia's homeground, its birthplace. Sicily. Because he went into the wheelhouse and told the captain, "Get underway."

The captain shouted just three words, slowly, so there would be no misunderstanding. "Cut all lines."

He looked at Bolan, and The Executioner nodded. With the "Med moor" all the captain had to do was call the engine room and order, "All ahead flank."

It was like putting a car in passing gear. Going past full-speed-ahead, asking for maximum revs the engines could make.

Mack picked up the captain's binoculars and looked back at dockside. He saw brave Alma standing among the littered deads, waving. Bolan owed that girl plenty, and somehow he would see she got paid. He knew that by now if the "members" or the gunsels had not looted her milkcan, the street punks of Reggio had. He vowed to square it with her.

In the meantime, thanks to his
ragazza,
his girl Alma, he'd made a cleansweep:
Reggio Repulisti!

No more than fifty passengers had managed to board the ferry before Bolan ordered the lines cut and all-ahead flank. There was one policeman aboard, an "airplane" as the
carabinieri
were called because of their hats, which looked like slick shellacked sailplanes about ready to lift into flight on the outspread wings. Bolan had determined that the captain of the ferry spoke passable English, the kind of English many fishermen working boats out of San Francisco, California spoke.

That was to say, he understood every word, and the inflection Bolan placed upon every word; but he did not speak good English because he was ashamed of his accent.

At Bolan's command, the captain called the airplane to the wheel house. When the carabinieri stepped into the cramped quarters, still quite neat and stylish despite his ordeal, Bolan put the cold wet muzzle of the .44 Automag in the airplane's ear. The man stiffened and raised his hands high above his head, and Bolan disarmed him of his submachine gun and belt pistol.

Bolan asked the captain. "You have a raft?"

"Certainly."

"Are these waters dangerous this time of year."

"Not at all."

"Have a man break out a raft. Supply it well with water and some food. Drop it over the side on a tow line. Put this airplane into the raft safely, then proceed."

Bolan smiled nonchalantly. "I'll kill the first man moves wrong. You first, Captain."

"Not worry!"

Three minutes later a furious, disarmed
carabinieri
wearing nothing but his underwear and his hat floated alone in the darkness of the Strait of Messina. In an enraged fury of anger, the policeman ripped off his hat and threw it with all his strength. To his amazement, the hat flew like a goddam airplane! All his career he'd resented the whispered defamatory term, "airplane," and now in the moon and starlight he found it true.

The goddam hat skimmed out across the dark water, caught an updraft, spun round and round, rose to a hundred, then perhaps a hundred-and-thirty feet, sailed, and finally vanished from the policeman's sight in the darkness. The only thing he could see was the diminishing lights of the ferryboat. With the magnificent Latin philosophical attitude, knowing he could do nothing whatever about the ferry and the huge man who'd taken command, the airplane got to his feet, steadied himself, and peed over the side.

Finished with his business, he lit a cigarette and made himself comfortable. It was a long time till daylight.

Mack Bolan wished for a night fifteen hours long, instead of one so short as this night in late spring so near the equator. He spoke to the captain. "How long for the crossing?"

The captain shrugged, with the kind of Lathi eloquence Bolan tried earlier to imitate, not especially successfully.

"It depends, signor, upon the wind, the seas, the tide."

Bolan showed the captain the Beretta.

"There are no tides in the Mediterranean."

"Ah, so, yes. But in the Strait, she is different. Huh? Meeting our Tyrian Sea with the Med."

"Old man," Bolan said flatly, ruthlessly, without remorse, "I can see the island now. Sicily. The big vast dark shape rising out of the sea." Bolan paused, and laid the icy cold iron along the side of the shipmaster's face. "There is no way I can miss it. Agreed?"

"Si, signor."

"Surely you have no stupid idea of dying on my account. I've harmed no crewman, set the airplane free, have not even inquired about your safe, correct?"

"Assolutamente, signor!
Absolutely, sir!"

"You have valuables in the safe?"

The captain hesitated just a fraction of a second too long, so when he answered, Bolan knew the captain lied. "No, no valuables."

"You lied. But no matter. Take them for yourself and blame it on me." Bolan laughed coarsely. "What else, eh?"

The captain did not reply.

"Now, you are on course, correct?" Bolan asked. Then sarcastically — "Allowing for the tide and winds and so forth, naturally."

"I am on course."

"Stay so and you have nothing — listen to me! Nothing to worry about, understand?"

"Si, signor."

"I am leaving the wheelhouse now, scouting around; but you saw the devastation of this gun I hold. Now, you son of a bitch are you going to maintain course for Messina or what?"

"Straight on course, absolutely."

"Or the ship has a new captain."

And before the ship's master was sure the black-clad big man was gone, he was alone.

Bolan slithered across hatches and found the aft hold. He lifted the cover and squirmed down inside. With a penlight he located his crate. Sweating and struggling, he shifted the cargo so the crate would be first unloaded, then he went back topside. The lights of Messina had come into view.

Bolan found his peasant clothing, rolled it into a bundle and covered it with a large plastic bag, moved to the port railing, drew the .44 Automag and sent a thundering shot through the wheelhouse, deliberately wide, missing the captain, but sending along the message.

Then he rewrapped the Automag in protective covering and secured it and fell off the port rail, landing on his back. Twenty minutes later Bolan was ashore. In the brittle starlight and late cast of the dying moon, he could look almost straight up and see the snow-capped towering loom of Mount Etna.

He found a hidden cavelike cove amongst the rocks, dragged in driftwood and built a fire. He stripped off his skintight black combat garb, removed the ammo, maps, emergency rations and other equipment, and stood before the fire to warm. He checked his watch. Plenty of time. He broke open a kit of rations, ate the concentrated vitamin/high-protein bars, then allowed himself the luxury of a single cup of coffee while he smoked a cigarette.

Then he lay on the sand with his feet to the fire, set his mental never-fail alarm, and slept until an hour before dawn. In six minutes Bolan was up and moving, having erased every trace of his landing, of his existence. As the blood-red rising sun rose upward across the eastern horizon, Bolan squatted in hiding beside the Messina-Catania road, wearing the rough, ill-fitting, impressed peasant costume over his weapons and black combat suit.

There was hardly any traffic. Bolan had to accustom himself to that. As he'd done in Calabria. Christ, back in the states in Metropolitan New England/New York/D.C. — all along the Atlantic Seaboard between Boston and Virginia, it was a lousy 24-hour-a-day scramble. He'd seen people who couldn't afford a $7 taxi fare to Manhattan wait two and a half hours in a stone buzzard at La Guardia for a bus: fare, two bucks.

On the other hand, it simplified Bolan's problem.

He knew the name of the freighter. He had the manifest wrapped in oilskin in his pocket. He had chosen the crest of a long grinding grade for his watchpoint. Bolan chuckled to himself, remembering when he'd done his research on Sicily. Some professor writing for one of the encyclopedias dismissed the Mafia with a single sentence:

"The Mafia as such, and organized brigandage, no longer exist on the island."

Bolan had a lunch of cheese and wine. He did not smoke. He waited. At two in the afternoon he drank another slug of the wine. He waited. During the whole day nine cars and eleven trucks passed.

Shortly before sundown he saw a truck coming that bore both the name and the colors of the hauler who was supposed to have The Bohemian Magician's gear aboard.

Bolan crept out of hiding, staying concealed by roadside vegetation, caught the tailgate of the truck as it passed. He climbed inside, knife ready, slashed the ropes and quilted coverings ... and found nothing.

He eased back and dropped off the truck, returned to his hiding place and waited, wondering. Would the cartage company send a night truck?

There was not that much business on Sicily.

Bolan felt a little sick.

He felt as though he'd been had.

He felt his neck hair bristle again. Okay, they had him made. No matter who. The cops, the "members." The next truck would have his gear, and a load of empty boxes. Inside each box, if large enough, would crouch a soldier, armed, ready, eager to collect the bounty on Mack Bolan.

Bolan eased back into concealment and checked his map. The plan sprang instantly to the front of his agile mind, but it depended entirely upon his own physical stamina and capability.

At first he felt completely confident. Hell, he could do
anything!
A moment later his combat senses took control and he worked it out.

It was just possible.

Just.

As the gloom of night descended, Bolan stripped to his black commando uniform, darkened his face and hands. And just as twilight settled in, the sun lowering behind the ten-thousand-plus feet of Mount Etna, Bolan heard the truck laboring up the hill toward him.

He let the truck go by, watching the cab. A soldier from Naples, an insignificant punk called Rapa, The Turnip, sat behind the wheel. Alone.

Like hell, Bolan thought, watching. Turnip was crammed against the far door, as though he had six guys out of sight in the cab with him.

Bolan let the truck go past, then fell in behind it at a slow jog, all it took to keep up on the steep grade. He flashed his penlight on the freight. One case, his own with the MAGO marking, showed evidence of being solidly nailed down. Five other large wooden boxes....

With a fingernail a man could lift the lids!

Okay, figure a minimum of two hardmen to the box. That made ten. The Beretta held eight 9mm Parabellums in a pistol-grip magazine, and one round chambered, a total of nine shots. Nine deadly crunchers.
Phutting
death. With the silencer, the Beretta made the sound of a smothered cough.

Still, ten men … nine shots. That was with a full magazine of eight and a round chambered. A man left over. An armed man.

All right. Then four shots each in the first two boxes. Change clips, three each in the remaining three boxes.

Then you are empty, Bolan told himself.

I am empty of silenced pistol shots. I still have a huge, bucking, silvered .44 Automag. I will not be exactly defenseless.

Bolan jogged along behind the truck as it slowed to a crawl near the top of the high ridge, then started down the other side, gaining speed rapidly, bouncing and swaying and when the rear wheels hit an unpaved rough spot, Bolan swung aboard. He kept low on his belly. Rapa, the driver, had either been given instructions or figured for himself he wanted the rearview mirror operable, giving him a view out through the covered back of the truck.

Bolan kept to the left and crawled forward. When he reached the first box, he rapped on it with bis knuckle and muttered.

The box moved squeaking, and Bolan rapped again. The lid suddenly popped open and two men stood up. Bolan shot them both between the eyes, one, one, and let them collapse back into the box. He squirmed around, got his back braced against his own heavy MAGO crate, placed his feet against the other and shoved.

The box containing the two deads went off the tailgate and shattered, dumping the two limp bodies across the road.

Bolan simplified matters for himself and reloaded his Beretta clip. Then he rose to his feet, leaned a hip against the side of the swaying truck, drew the .44 Automag with his right hand after taking the Beretta in his left, and shot all the packing cases besides his own full of holes.

At the first crashing report of the .44 Automag, the truck swayed violently, walked back and forth across the crude highway, nearing the precipice on one side, the high cliff wall on the other.

In swift succession, while the driver still whipped from side to side in panic, Bolan shoved and pushed the other crates and toppled them end over end, and sent them off the tailgate, shattering to kindling, leaving bodies strewn.

Bolan punched the magazine release buttons on both weapons and reloaded.

Sidling up to the back window, Bolan looked into the cab.

Besides Turnip, two other armed men crouched in the floor board. Bolan shot them both in the top of the head, one, two. And through the shattered window shouted, "Pull up!"

Turnip switched off the key and with trembling hands guided the truck to a stop. Turnip proved himself not only a man with a ridiculously descriptive nickname and a fan— truckdriver but also a fool. He went for the gun inside his shirt and Bolan blew the front of Rapa's face off, catapulting him down the steep seaside of the highway.

Bolan climbed into the cab, dragged the other two bodies out and tossed them over the cliffside toward the grumbling surf below. He got in under the wheel, switched on, let the truck roll, slipped into high gear on the downgrade, popped the clutch loose and let the engine catch.

In the light of new day, he filled with gas in Catania and turned west.

Beachhead established and consolidated. Issue no longer in doubt.