Concentrated.
Squeezed the trigger.
The report of the big gun was deafening. His shoulder throbbed from the massive recoil. The bullet hurled the man in red across the terrace and tossed him like a rag-doll on the steps.
Bolan snicked the Husqvarna’s bolt and swung the barrel slowly sideways until Fat Boy was in the center of the scope. The cross hairs sank until the junction was steadied above his shoulders on the column of his throat.
Bolan fired again. The 150-grain slug slammed into the guy’s neck and almost tore his head from his body. He catapulted back against the stoop post and slid lifeless to the ground.
“Okay!” Jean-Paul shouted. “In for the kill now!”
Someone near the house fired a long burst from an SMG, and the searchlight faded to orange and died in an explosion of smashed glass. Now there were men running toward the house from all sides, zigzagging among the long pasture grass, firing as they came. Half a dozen spilled from the bushes lining the driveway; a couple more gave them covering fire; a survivor of the RPG-7 crew ran with Delacroix; Smiler and his companions raced around the corner of the barn. The sound of gunfire rose to a crescendo.
Jean-Paul dropped from his command post in the tree and followed. Bolan, obeying instructions, left the Husqvarna in the ruined cabin and brought up the rear. He unleathered the 93-R deathbringer, flipped off the safety catch and ran.
He was level with the sheep pens, dodging between the troughs when the hidden gunman fired.
He must have been lying low, waiting for the chance to bring someone down from behind. Bolan was less than ten yards away when the gunner triggered a 3-shot burst.
The Executioner owed his life to a tussock of coarse sheep grass, which tripped him the instant the killer fired.
He pitched forward as the triple report rang in his ears, momentarily deafening him. He felt the wind of the heavy slugs stir the hair on top of his head... and at the same time a searing pain across his left shoulder.
Bolan hit the ground, rolled over and lay still.
The Beretta, knocked from his grasp by the unexpectedness of the attack, had spun out of reach. If he moved, the hidden gunman could hardly miss a second time. He used the oldest trick in the trade: he played possum.
Lying on his back at an unnatural angle, the injured arm doubled beneath him, he allowed his jaw to drop, breathing as shallowly as possible and forcing his eyes to remain open. He hoped that any movement he made would be mistaken for a trick of the red light flickering from the burning house.
Ten seconds passed... twenty... half a minute.
Slowly a bulky silhouette rose into view from behind a fallen tree to one side of the pens. Cautiously, his gun close to the hip to minimize recoil, he advanced on Bolan’s supine figure.
Bolan held his breath, hearing the shots and the shouting at the ranch as if from a great distance. He knew that he was very near death. If the gunman was not satisfied...
The man stood over him, staring down.
Would he fire a final shot, just to make sure?
Inserting a toe beneath the Executioner’s waist, he began levering the body over onto its face. So it was to be the neck.
Pain streaked through Bolan as he moved, but he kept on rolling, fast, and the shot was deflected as he went for the guy’s wrist. Stooping over a man he thought was dead or dying, the killer was off balance and unprepared, and it was not too difficult for Bolan to take him by surprise.
The hood was big and strong. But a man in fear of imminent death is desperate. Bolan worked on his attacker with the strength of a crazy man. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, he hurled the two of them across five yards of rough earth and bent the mafiosi backward over one of the troughs.
The shallow wooden trench was still half full of the chemical-smelling dip. Bolan locked his good arm around the guy’s neck and forced him around. Then the Executioner struggled with all his strength until the man’s head was down and his face touched the disinfectant.
His head went under the surface of the tar water and a shrill bubbling sounded over the distant gunfire. His legs kicked convulsively and he scrabbled to bring up his gun arm, but Bolan felt for the thumb and bent it back until it snapped and the killer screamed under the liquid.
Bolan increased the pressure on the neck lock, freeing the hand on his wounded arm to feel for the weapon. The hardman’s fingers were nerveless and Bolan pried them away, jerking the gun clear. It splashed into another trough behind them.
The hood bucked violently, kicking his legs and twisting his body so that he fell entirely into the trough.
The killer’s arms flailed uselessly, his hands clawed for a purchase, his breath gargled in his tortured throat as the fluid in the trough foamed and splashed.
Bolan wrenched his neck again, remorselessly forcing his nose and mouth beneath the surface, holding the man there until the bubbling deathscream subsided and the body went limp.
He left the corpse in the trough and hurried, still panting, up to the house. The flames were dying; the fight was over.
Jean-Paul was sitting on the steps. He looked up as the Executioner approached. “Good shooting,” he said. “Once those two were down it was just a matter of time.”
Bolan grinned. It was the first time since Vietnam that he had fought a battle under another’s orders... and the first battle in which he had fired only three shots.
“How many did we lose?” Bolan asked Jean-Paul.
“Three under that blazing hay wagon. Two when we rushed the house. One on the driveway. And there’s two wounded, one badly.”
“So counting those two, if Smiler junks the car, that still leaves ten to make it across the Agriates, take the dinghies and get back to the trawler?”
“That’s right,” the gang boss agreed cheerfully. “It all works out fine in the end, you see.”
“There’s one more question,” Bolan said, rising to his feet. “You said this was a sheep farm. Where are the sheep? And the shepherds?”
Jean-Paul laughed. “Summer pastures. They take them up into the mountains for three months while the weather’s hot. I wouldn’t want to run the risk of this kind of operation if there were animals around that could get hurt.”
10
“Perhaps now,” Jean-Paul said to Bolan the following afternoon, “we can go ahead with the amalgamation I was telling you about. There are a few details for you to take care of, and then it should be plain sailing all the way.”
They were sitting in the enormous sun lounge of the mobster’s house, which was cantilevered out from the cliffs to the east of Marseilles. A high stone wall surrounded the property, and closed-circuit TV monitored the electrically operated gates, but otherwise there seemed to be no special protection for the acre and a half of rare shrubs and exotic flowers landscaped around the steel-and-glass building. A white Mercedes convertible stood outside the closed doors of a three-car garage.
“What details did you have in mind?” Bolan asked.
“Four contracts,” Jean-Paul said. He had given Bolan a brief rundown on the KGB project and the difficulties they had encountered. “Four guys who could still louse up the deal by shooting off their mouths in the wrong place.”
“Who?”
“A lawyer, a newspaper columnist, a cop and a local television personality who’s obligated to me and wants off the hook.”
“You want to give me the details now?”
“Okay. Sooner the better. But what about your shoulder?”
“No problem,” Bolan said. “It was hardly even a flesh wound. It’ll be okay tomorrow. In any case, the Husqvarna kicks the other shoulder!”
There was a look of admiration in Jean-Paul’s eyes as he watched the hired hit man.
“The lawyer’s name is Maitre Delpeche. Too damned smart for his own good. He made the mistake of advising an adverse party while he was representing me, at the same time, on the same case.”
“He lives here in Marseilles?” Bolan
asked.
“Oh, sure. The TV guy’s name is Michel Lasalle. But he works out of the local Number 3 channel studios down here. You’ll have no trouble locating him; he loves to be seen in public. You probably heard of the columnist. Georges Dassin. He’s syndicated, likes to run after high-school girls — pays them to pose for nude photos! Trouble is, he was once a foreign correspondent in Moscow and he knows Antonin. If he sees the Russian here — and the guy has his sources — he might just put two and two together and run some damn fool piece trying to stir the cops on our payroll into action, and that could be embarrassing.”
“Who’s my cop?” Bolan asked. “A guy who’s not on the payroll?”
Before Jean-Paul could answer, the sound of a diesel engine in low gear penetrated the glass. J-P stood and crossed to the window. “It’s a cab,” he said. “Looks like Antonin himself sitting in back. What the hell does he want this time of day?”
Bolan cursed under his breath. The last thing he needed was a confrontation with the Russian. The guy had been dubious, something stirring in his memory, the second time he’d seen the Executioner at La Rocaille. This time, wearing no wet suit, Bolan was certain he would be recognized.
“Maybe I’d better go,” he said hastily. “You’ll have business to discuss... and, anyway, there are a couple of calls I have to make...” he glanced at his Rolex “...before five.”
“You can phone from here,” the mobster said. “Besides, I’d like you in on this if he’s going to talk about...”
“I don’t have the numbers here. And they’re unlisted,” Bolan improvised. “You want quick service on these contracts, I have to get back to my hotel, check out those numbers, and...”
“Darling?”
The two men swung around. Jean-Paul’s pretty dark wife, Severine, was standing in the doorway. “J-P, darling, may I borrow Herr Sondermann for two minutes? Coralie’s with me and she’s got a problem with a passage of Hegel she has to translate for one of her test papers. If Herr Sondermann wouldn’t mind?..”
“Of course, I’d be glad to help,” Bolan said quickly. He looked enquiringly at the gang boss.
“Oh... very well.” Jean-Paul shrugged. He found it hard to refuse his young wife. “Don’t keep him long.”
Walking through the black-and-white checkerboard marble hallway, Bolan saw through the armored glass entrance doors that the Russian was getting out of his cab.
But he wasn’t paying the driver; he was asking him to wait. Bolan hoped the quote from Hegel was a long one.
Following Severine along a corridor that led to the back of the house, Bolan passed Raoul, one of Smiler’s lieutenants, in a white linen butler’s jacket, on his way to answer the doorbell.
Coralie was in a den, sitting at a table strewn with textbooks and papers. “Surprise,” Bolan said. “What seems to be the linguistic trouble?”
“As you’re being paid, anyway,” the girl said dismissively, “I didn’t see why you shouldn’t do some work for me.”
“Coralie!” Severine sounded shocked.
“It’s okay,” Bolan said, smiling. “Mademoiselle Sanguinetti and I are old adversaries!”
In fact there were very few translation difficulties in the Hegel passage, but Coralie managed to keep the questions coming until they heard the distant slam of a car door, and Antonin’s taxi drove away.
She accompanied him back to the sun room to apologize to J-P for the length of time she had kept him.
“Why did you do it?” Bolan whispered as they crossed the hallway. “That was a put-up job, wasn’t it? You had Severine come in and ask for me deliberately, to keep me out of the way of the Russian? Thanks — but why?”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I think they call it woman’s intuition,” she said demurely. “I saw your face when you had to pass near him the night of my father’s... party. I figured anyone who looked that apprehensive must be in need of care and protection.”
Before Bolan could think of a suitable reply, they were back in the sun room.
“It was of no importance,” J-P told Bolan when the girl had made her excuses and left. “Antonin’s going to be away a couple of days, that’s all. He wanted me to know: he’s been recalled for consultations.”
“To Moscow?”
“Hell, no. To his base. They fly him here in a chopper from one of those so-called Soviet factory ships — they’re electronic surveillance vessels really — outside the twelve-mile limit.”
“You were going to tell me,” Bolan said, “about the contract for your cop.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jean-Paul said, “The cop. His face has been seen around here too much recently, A wise guy, asking questions. I figure he’s dangerous to the project, so he must go. You can waste the others any way you want, but this one I want shot down in public. As a warning to others.”
“What’s his name?” Bolan asked. He could see the muscles in Jean-Paul’s jaw working before he almost spat the word.
“Telder.”
11
The phone calls that Bolan made were urgent. Antonin would be back in a couple of days. He would expect to find the mafiosi ready to sign on the dotted line. With all their internal problems settled. Which meant that Jean-Paul would expect his highly-paid German hit man to have wrapped up his first four contracts.
The Executioner had no wish to massacre four innocent men, but to contrive the satisfactory “death” — or at least disappearance — of the columnist, the lawyer and the TV personality, with or without their cooperation, depending on how scared he could make them, would be difficult enough in two days.
The “murder” of Telder would be something else.
“There’s a convention of cops and criminologists and special services meeting in Avignon,” Jean-Paul had told Bolan. “It ends tomorrow. Your man Telder is one of the guys on the platform. I’d like you to take him out during the windup session.”
Bolan knew about the convention. The last call he’d made had been patched in to a secret number in the city. Ironically, the experts had been called together to discuss more effective measures against terrorism, skyjacking, juvenile delinquence and the increase in organized crime. “I want to make a point,” J-P said. “Go chase the Arabs, the Armenians, the Libyans and all the other bomb-happy crackshots, but leave us alone. Do that and we leave you alone: otherwise... well, see what happens.”
“You want this guy Telder wasted as an example of what we could do?” Bolan asked.
“Right.”
“But... in the conference hall itself? While they’re all there?”
The gang leader nodded.
“How many at the convention?”
“Around two hundred. Security’s tight, of course. But we can get you an official pass. And we have friends inside.”
“You’re kidding,” Bolan said. “This is a 561 Express that I use. Hell, the barrel’s two feet long! I can’t hobble in there with the gun stuffed down my pant leg, pretending I got too close to a bomb in Beirut!”
“So?”
“So I have to find some way of zapping the guy inside while I’m on the outside. If it has to be while he’s on the platform.”
“It does. That’s the way I want it. But I don’t see why you have to use the rifle. Why not go in close and use a handgun? We can get you in there, gun and all.”
“It’s getting out that has me worried,” Bolan said. “I don’t want to be lynched by a couple of hundred mad cop lovers. And that’s what would happen if I tried anything from that close.”
“I don’t see how it could be done from outside.”
“Let’s go see the place,” Bolan said. “If I’m the triggerman, I decide where; you just decide when. Okay?”
Jean-Paul shrugged. He glared at the hired gun. Goddamn nerve. “I’ll drive you there,” he said curtly.
They went in the white Mercedes convertible. Like a spoiled child refused a second ice-cream, J-P ventilated his ill temper via the car. They covered the sixty
-odd miles of expressway between Marseilles and the Avignon turnoff in twenty-nine minutes, hitting an average of just over 120 mph. And that included two stops demanded by highway patrolmen who handed out speeding tickets. Bolan was amused.
The convention was being held in the lecture hall of a modern high school, which was closed for the summer vacation. The hall was a large free-standing rectangle with a serrated, asymmetrically pitch roof like a factory workshop. The shorter, near-vertical slope of each serration was glass, to capture the north light and minimize the glare of the sun.
Behind the hall were the school buildings; in front there was a parking lot — glittering now with ranks of expensive cars — and the main gates that opened off a traffic circle fed by five broad avenues.
Bolan was interested in a narrow side street that led off one of the avenues, north of the school and less than one hundred yards from the intersection. The street was fronted by tall nineteenth-century houses with gray slate roofs and iron balconies on each of the six floors. Each building was ranged around a central courtyard with an archway that led to the street. Between the archways, small shops shaded their display windows against the sun.
Bolan walked through to the cobblestone yard behind the third archway and looked up at the apartments stacked on each side. The facade opposite the arch had been modernized: wide picture windows, flower-strewn concrete terraces, a flat roof. “Who owns that part of the building?” he asked.
“Friends of mine, as it happens,” J-P said.
“And this side, backing onto the street?”
“Friends of friends.”
“Great. Is there anyone in either of those two blocks that you or your friends could lean on a little? Anyone you have a lever on? I don’t mean for muscle; just a helping hand for a few minutes.”
“Listen, Sondermann,” said J-P, “there isn’t anyone in this town, or my town, that I can’t get some kind of a lever on.”
“Better still.”
“What do you have in mind?” the gang boss asked curiously.
Bolan told him.
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