As the buses rolled away, Petoit picked up the rocket launcher and rested it across his shoulder with his index finger curled around the forward trigger. Blanski had assured him there was very little recoil, since the launcher's tube was open at the rear, much like the obsolete bazookas used in World War Two. The simple sights were accurate enough for fair precision work inside the RPG's effective range, and Jacques had shaved that distance by 150 yards, encroaching on the very tree line with his vantage point.
It couldn't be much longer, now. The last bus had rumbled out of sight, its cloud of dust already settling back to earth. The uniformed Macoutes were taking up positions along the perimeter, their numbers supplemented by the gunsmen from America. Petoit despised them all and wished them dead.
A moment longer, and he meant to see his wish fulfilled.
His palms were sweaty, and he wiped them on his camouflaged fatigue pants. The launcher resting on his shoulder seemed to weigh a ton, but he couldn't afford to lay it down. Not now, when Blanski's signal might be flashed across no-man's land at any instant.
His finger tightened on the rocket launcher's trigger, and he waited, smiling in the shadow of the trees.
* * *
Relaxing in the saddle of a Caterpillar tractor, Sonny Esposito watched Bartoli and the Haitian in the stiff new uniform as they proceeded toward the office, stamped the pale dust off their shoes and disappeared inside. He could imagine how the air-conditioning must feel and wished that he could join them, but the capo had decided Sonny's place was with the men, outside. If they came under attack, he'd be among the first to meet the enemy, and while Bartoli might pretend it was a plum assignment, Esposito saw the job for what it really was: a kiss-off.
He was being used for cannon fodder, plain and simple. Don Bartoli had decided that Sonny was expendable, like any other soldier on the line. The fact that Esposito had survived two confrontations with their common enemy appeared to count for nothing, and it might have worked against him in the capo's mind. Instead of treating Sonny as a fortunate survivor, Bartoli seemed suspicious, casting funny looks at Esposito from the corner of his eye and frowning.
More reason, Sonny thought, for stepping up his plan to dump Don Bartoli. It would require finesse, but Esposito knew that he could do it. Once the shooting started he'd slip back toward the office, ease his way inside and deal with all hands present. Marco Rizzi was already on his list, and if he had to drop the hotshot in the uniform as well, so be it.
When the smoke cleared. Sonny would be sitting in a rather different driver's seat, and anyone who wished to deal with the Bartoli Family — correction, with the Esposito Family — would have to come with hat in hand, prepared to pay up front for any favors they received.
The sun was setting in a blaze of orange and crimson, just beyond the tree line, and the temperature had begun to drop. In another hour, Sonny knew from personal experience, he'd need the jacket that he'd removed upon arrival at Liberté. For now, however, he was glad for easy access to the shoulder rig that held his.45 and extra magazines. If there was trouble coming with the darkness, every second would be crucial to his plan.
He watched Bartoli's gunners walking the perimeter, remaining carefully aloof from the Macoutes and whispering among themselves, their weapons carried at the ready. Esposito knew a number of them from Miami and Fort Lauderdale; they were efficient, lethal, but the jungle was an alien environment for soldiers raised on city streets. He hoped the darkness wouldn't put their nerves on edge, provoking them to fire at shadows in the trees.
He lighted a cigarette and pocketed the lighter, shifting in the tractor's seat to give his cheeks a breather. In the forest, night birds had begun their eerie serenade beneath a gibbous moon.
Instinct saved his life. The muzzle-flash on Sonny's left alerted him to danger, and he made his move before the whooshing sound had time to reach his ears. He never saw the rocket streaking across the open ground of no-man's land, for he was airborne, leaping off the tractor like a circus acrobat.
His hands and knees absorbed the impact, making Sonny thankful for the layers of dust he'd been cursing moments earlier. Behind him, an explosion rocked the Caterpillar, flinging shrapnel skyward, pushing his body to the ground with a violent shock wave.
Sonny's ears were ringing as he scrambled to his feet, and he could scarcely hear the small-arms fire on the perimeter. No matter. The fight was starting, and he had a job to do.
The would-be capo drew his.45 and headed toward the office and a date with Don Bartoli.
* * *
Bolan waited for the final bus to clear his line of fire. The RPG was resting on his shoulder, aimed downrange as he scanned the compound through its sights, appraising targets, making his selection as the numbers started falling in his mind.
He passed on Don Bartoli's office, since a rocket blast was bound to leave survivors, and he wanted to be certain of the capo's fate. His second choice, the actual casino structure, was considerably closer to Petoit's position, so he passed on that as well.
The tractor drew his full attention when he recognized the gunner in the driver's seat. Their meeting yesterday at the hotel had obviously left him fit enough for duty, and Bolan watched him light a smoke as he was lining up the shot. His finger tightened on the rocket launcher's trigger, and he watched the rocket streak toward its target, its back-blast scorching undergrowth behind him as the recoil spent itself among the trees. He caught a fleeting image of the gunner, scrambling from his seat, and Bolan had to give him target points for swift reaction under fire. His sleek projectile rocked the Caterpillar with a blast of heavy-metal thunder, raining shrapnel, as the forest suddenly erupted in a sheet of small-arms fire.
On Bolan's signal, the remaining rockets were unleashed. One rattled through the entrance of Bartoli's grand casino, blossoming with fire and smoke inside. Another struck the giant crane that had been parked nearby, a flash like lightning shearing off the arm and dropping it to earth in clouds of smoke and roiling dust. The final rocket struck Bartoli's office, peeling back a portion of the roof and raining hot debris on everyone inside.
By then the Executioner had raised his AK-47, sighting on the nearest clutch of hostile gunners, squeezing off a burst that dropped two in their tracks. Bartoli's people and the Haitian troops were scrambling for cover, managing weak return fire as they ran, but many of them were dropping to the ground, their bodies twitching in the dust.
Ironically a bank of automatic floodlights blazed to life just then, responding to the failing light of dusk, and so the killing field was brilliantly illuminated, framing human targets in the form of scuttling silhouettes. Unable to resist, the Executioner dropped two more of Bartoli's men before he left the cover of the trees, a gliding shadow moving toward the lights in search of more important prey.
Along the tree line, he could hear the rebels advancing, bellowing defiance with their voices and their guns. They broke the first line of Bartoli's troops and wheeled hard-left to bring a pocket of resistance in the main casino building under fire.
The Executioner pressed forward, pursuing targets of his own. Around him gunfire echoed like the crack of doom.
* * *
Bartoli heard the Caterpillar blow, though he couldn't have named the source of the explosion. Vaulting from his chair, he thrust Descartes aside and headed for the exit, pulling out his automatic pistol with a flourish. It was happening, by God, and he wasn't about to miss the action.
As the capo reached for the doorknob, he was flattened by a blast that rocked the building and blew off a portion of the roof as if it were constructed of cardboard. Slats of wood and twisted metal showered down around Bartoli, one piece opening a gash across his scalp before it slammed him to the floor. Descartes bent over him, his face an ashen mask of dust.
"Monsieur Bartoli! Can you hear me?"
"Help me up, goddamn it!" As he scrambled to his feet, Bartoli grabbed the other man by his lapels and pulled him close. "You've got a fucking job
to do!" he snarled. "Get to it!"
This time, when he tried the door, it came off in his hand and nearly knocked him down again. Disgustedly he flung it to the side and shoved Descartes ahead of him, down folding metal steps, to reach the battleground.
Before they took a dozen steps, the floodlights answered to a silent signal of their own and flared around the site's perimeter. At once Bartoli saw the full extent of damage from the rockets, witnessed darting shadows as they broke the tree line, automatic weapons raining lethal fire upon his troops.
"Get after them, for Christ's sake! They're about to break the line!"
Descartes staggered off through clouds of drifting smoke and left Bartoli on his own. From nowhere, Marco Rizzi turned up at his capo's side and seized his arm.
"Come on, boss! We've got no percentage waiting here."
Suddenly a small hole opened in Rizzi's forehead, spurting crimson, and he toppled backward in the dust.
Bartoli left him there and ducked behind the smoking wreckage of his office. Marco had been right, of course: there was precisely nothing to be gained by standing in the line of fire and waiting for some peasant marksman to get lucky. He'd leave Descartes to earn his paycheck, while Bartoli turned his thoughts toward looking out for himself.
His limousine was waiting out back, if he could make it there before the sneaky bastards cut him off. Don Bartoli got his second wind and started running for his life.
20
Reeling through the pall of smoke and dust that hovered over the construction site, Francois Descartes attempted to evaluate the tactical deployment of his men. It took a moment for him to remember that he wore a pistol on his belt, and when he drew it from its holster, he discovered that his hands were trembling badly.
Gunfire echoed all around him, and the blazing glare of floodlights made the battleground as bright as day. Descartes immediately understood the danger of the lights, which, at the moment, illuminated only the defenders, leaving their opponents safe in the surrounding darkness. Watching as Bartoli's men and his Macoutes sought desperately for cover, Francois made extinguishing the lights his first priority.
One of Bartoli's people staggered past him, one hand pressed against an oozing scalp wound. Descartes reached out to grab his arm. "The lights!" he shouted, anxious to be heard above the sound of battle. "How can I turn them off?"
"Main switch," the wounded gunner said. "It's on the power board, back there."
He pointed vaguely toward a group of sheds, half-hidden by the main casino's bulk. Descartes released him and struck off in that direction. With the floodlights blazing down, he felt exposed and helpless, like a cockroach in the middle of an endless kitchen floor.
Bartoli should have thought about the lights. It was insane to light the compound while his enemies were hiding in the forest, thereby making every person on the site a perfect target. Even if the rebels hadn't chosen to assault the place in force, their snipers could have had a field day firing from the darkness and the cover of the trees.
It suddenly occurred to the commander of the Macoutes that he might die tonight. The possibility had never seriously crossed his mind before — except for fleeting moments in his office, when he had been under sniper fire — but now he realized that death was all around him, drawing closer by the moment.
Panic seized him, and he ducked around a corner of the grand casino, seeking shelter from the light. It was a wasted effort, since the floodlights seemed to cover every inch of the construction site, and now he had been spotted by the enemy.
He realized the latter fact when bullets started gouging pockmarks from the concrete wall, a foot above his head. He dropped to his hands and knees. Another burst, from the direction of the shattered office building, and Descartes had found his enemy at last.
He triggered three quick shots in the direction of the muzzle-flashes, startled by the recoil of the pistol, which he'd never fired before. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted for the nearby sheds, less interested in turning off the floodlights now than in securing substantial cover for himself.
The first shed had a padlock on its door. Descartes cursed briefly and stumbled backward toward the second as a rifle bullet trilled the aluminum siding behind him. Number two was open, but the cramped interior was packed with shovels, axes, hoes and rakes, as well as an assortment of other tools he didn't even recognize.
In desperation he scrambled to the third shed, slipped inside and closed the flimsy door behind him. From the ceiling, low enough to scrape the peak of his cap, a single naked bulb had been suspended to provide illumination. It was burning now, and showed Descartes that he had accidentally achieved his purpose. He had found the master power board.
The «danger» warning had been printed in both French and English, above and below a gray metal panel alive with wires. One wall was lined with at least a hundred switches. One of them was larger than the rest and painted brilliant red, which he now took to indicate the master switch.
Success!
Descartes stood and was on his way to the power board when someone standing just outside the shed unleashed a burst of automatic fire. The heavy bullets punched through thin aluminum like cleats through cardboard, staggering Descartes as one round drilled a hole beneath his shoulder blade. The impact drove him forward toward the power board, hands thrown out to catch himself.
He would have screamed, had there been time. Instead he struck the power board head-on, amid a shower of sparks that left his body twitching, smoking, as the current rippled through his flesh.
Outside, the floodlights flickered once and died.
* * *
The office was a mess, but Esposito quickly realized that there was no one dead inside. Some speckles on the floor might have passed for blood, okay, but nothing in the way of bodies.
"Shit!"
He'd been counting on an easy kill, considering the rocket blast, but Sonny's follow-up had been delayed by sniper fire, and now he found his quarry had escaped.
"Goddamn it!"
How was he supposed to find Bartoli in the three-ring circus that was going on outside? For all he knew, the capo might be lying dead already, with a bullet in his brain. If he was still alive, he could have made it to the car by now, and… The limo!
If Bartoli was alive, he'd clear out as fast as possible. The waiting limo was his ticket, but he had to get there first, and if he hadn't left already, Esposito had a chance of pulling off his coup.
He left the shattered office, circling around back, and almost stumbled over the remains of Marco Rizzi.
"Good riddance," Sonny muttered. It was one less job that he would have to do himself. If he could only find Bartoli…
The capo had parked his armored limousine beneath a stand of trees that had survived the excavation, roughly twenty yards behind the office. If he found Bartoli there, the driver might be with him, but at this point, odds of two-to-one were nothing to lose sleep about. Surprise would see him through, if nothing else.
He stepped around Rizzi's body and headed toward the limo — and the lights went out.
"Goddamn it!"
He could hear the gunfire escalating behind him, drawing closer. Sonny glanced in that direction, momentarily distracted by the muzzled-flashes that winked like fireflies in the sudden darkness. It was impossible for him to plot the positions of his friends and enemies.
No matter. Sonny focused on his goal and struck off for the car.
From twenty yards away, he spotted figures huddled by the car — two men, from all appearances. He rushed forward, cutting the distance by half before one of them opened a rear door, his action automatically turning on the interior dome light.
Sonny grinned ferociously at the sight of Don Bartoli and his wheelman. Standing firm at thirty feet, he braced his.45 in both hands, sighting down the slide, and fired.
Too soon.
The heavy slug skimmed past Barton's face and flattened on the nearest windowpane, alerting both his targets to their pe
ril. As Bartoli ducked inside the limousine and slammed the door, his driver swung toward Sonny in a fighting crouch, a stubby Ingram submachine gun in his hands.
The Ingram's first burst should have done it, but the guy was nervous and fired high, giving Sonny a second chance. He squeezed off two quick rounds and one of them found flesh. The driver slumped backward, braced against the car.
But he didn't fall. The dying man unleashed another burst at his adversary, pivoting to grab the handle on the driver's door and swing it open. Once again, the dome light flared, and Sonny's target formed a perfect silhouette as he began to climb behind the wheel.
It was incredible. The man intended to drive his boss away before he died from shock and loss of blood. In desperation, Sonny tried another shot and nailed his target through the throat.
Smiling broadly, Sonny sauntered toward the car.
* * *
Bartoli watched his driver die, the final outburst from his Ingram muffled by a heavy plate of armored glass between the driver's seat and passenger compartment. With the doors locked, he was momentarily secure, but he didn't intend to play the role of sitting duck while his assailants looked for ways to smoke him out or set the limousine on fire.
From ten yards out, he recognized Sonny Esposito, and his vague, unformed suspicions were confirmed. The slimy bastard was a traitor, doubtless working hand-in-glove with the New York invaders to destroy the empire Bartoli had been building for himself. The fucking Judas had already cost him at least thirty men, and it was time to settle the tab.
Haitian Hit Page 21