Point Blank

by Don Pendleton

His secret weapon was the brash American, assuming he took the bait and rushed off to Tropea. Any injury inflicted on the ’Ndrangheta would help Lanza, and if the wildman decimated Magolino’s troops, so much the better. Dealing with a single enemy, or a handful of stunned survivors, would be preferable to a gangland replay of Gallipoli, with Lanza and his soldiers cast as the Australians.

  Lanza could not see himself in the Mel Gibson role, no matter how he squinted at his bathroom mirror.

  Ugly little gargoyle. Lanza’s wife had called him that after imbibing too much wine shortly before she had had her accident. Even a drunken woman should know better than to keep a hair dryer plugged in and resting on a bathroom counter near the tub where she enjoyed her ninety-minute bubble baths. The marble tub had definitely been a hot tub that day, and if anyone asked Lanza, he would have to say replacing the bathroom’s burned-out wall socket ranked among his best investments ever.

  Back to business.

  Every soldier in his service was riding with Lanza toward what might be their last great hurrah. He’d also phoned Palermo to report his plan, in case it all went wrong. Don Bevilacqua could decide what action was required, if any, after Lanza and his men were shoveled under. Maybe he would pull out of Calabria entirely, making all of it an exercise in sheer futility.

  But that would not be Lanza’s concern.

  Win or lose, live or die, his problem with Gianni Magolino would be solved today.

  An old Sicilian proverb said Sangue lava sangue. Blood washes blood. That might not always be the case, but in the present circumstance, blood-letting was required.

  The only question now was whether Lanza and his men were equal to the task.

  Tropea

  ON THE TOWN’S OUTSKIRTS, Bolan slowed to match the pace of traffic. He drove southwestward through what passed for suburbs in a smallish coastal town then back into open country as he left the tourist traps behind.

  Five minutes more and Bolan’s hilltop target was visible, lording over the landscape like a feudal manor house. The view from Magolino’s third-floor balcony must be fantastic, but Bolan hadn’t come to ogle scenery or shop for souvenirs. Bolan would chart the best daylight approach, merging his on-site observations with the details on his laptop, and plot his entry to the hostile property.

  A fortress now, beyond much doubt.

  A fortress and a prison.

  Allowing for the possibility of CCTV cameras on the walls surrounding Magolino’s grounds, Bolan drove past, resisting any urge to dawdle, and continued on a mile until another hill blocked any view of where he’d leave the car. He was fortunate to find an access road nearly overgrown with weeds—which proved it was rarely used—that led him off the provincial road a hundred yards or so to reach a shady copse of trees.

  He parked there and waited, listening and watching for a sign of human life in the vicinity, but none was evident. Ten minutes crept past on his watch before he stirred, climbed from the car and started changing clothes.

  No night gear for a daylight probe, but he had forest camos with him and made the switch in nothing flat. He’d seen that Magolino’s grounds were wooded, though the trees had been clear-cut for twenty yards or so around the looming house. He would take full advantage of the terrain as long as possible, and after that...

  Well, he would simply have to see what happened.

  Chaos and bloodshed, in a nutshell, but the way it unfolded was unique to every skirmish, every battle, every great campaign. He was prepared to improvise, adapt and soldier on, no matter what went down once battle had been joined.

  For this round, Bolan carried every weapon he’d purchased in Calabria. He wore the ARX across his back and carried the silent Spectre M4. His Beretta 93R was slung in armpit leather, while the ebony-handled stiletto went into a cargo pocket of his pants. Weighed down with ammo magazines, a bandolier of 40 mm rounds and all his remaining frag grenades, he might have rattled when he walked, except that all the gear was well secured.

  Was he a dead man walking or grim death itself?

  The next hour or so would tell.

  Trees, gullies and boulders on the landward side of Magolino’s property covered the Executioner on his approach. The mile and change he covered, most of it uphill, would have been daunting for a sometime weekend hiker, but it proved no challenge for a man who kept himself in fighting trim year-round. The trick, in fact, was going slow enough to watch his step, wary of traps set for potential trespassers and cameras or other gear that may have been installed on the perimeter.

  Time might be running out for Mariana—if she wasn’t dead already—but it wouldn’t help her if he walked into an ambush before he reached Gianni Magolino’s rural palace. She would have to wait a little longer, bear a little more, before her knight in camo armor made his final move.

  Make that the final move for Magolino and his family.

  The only end Bolan allowed himself to contemplate.

  Chapter 12

  Via Vittorio Butera, Catanzaro

  Captain Basile parked his unmarked car a block from the café his anonymous caller had specified. He sat behind the wheel, watching foot traffic on the street. No passing pedestrian looked any more or less suspicious than the next; none of the cars parked up and down the street seemed to be occupied.

  What am I doing here? Basile asked himself not for the first time since he’d received the breathless call.

  It was a measure of his desperation, he supposed—and his guilt at failing Mariana Natale and the friends who’d died defending her. Basile knew he was grasping at straws and understood the anonymous call was most likely a hoax or a trap, but what else could he do?

  I could have brought backup, he thought, but the caller had insisted he come alone or lose his opportunity to rescue Mariana. It was madness, plain and simple, taking orders from a stranger on the telephone, but he’d felt compelled to roll the dice. For Mariana and himself.

  Or maybe I’m just tired of living, he considered, shrugging off the morbid thought a second later. Stepping from the car, Basile reached inside his jacket, adjusting the thumb break holster where his Beretta 84BB nestled snugly. In addition to the pistol, he carried a steel telescoping baton that would extend from six to eighteen inches with a flick of his wrist.

  Not much, perhaps, but he’d done his best. Taking the shotgun from his Fiat Bravo’s trunk would only cause a panic on the street and frighten off his contact. If there was a contact.

  Stupid, said the small voice in Basile’s head. Call backup.

  He ignored it and struck off toward the café. When no one intercepted him, Basile chose a sidewalk table, ordered coffee and prepared to wait. It gave him one more chance to scan the street and check its overhanging windows, looking for a sniper or some sign he was being watched. Other than the fact that he was there alone and waiting for a stranger to approach him, nothing seemed out of place.

  His waiter brought the coffee and retreated. As Basile sipped it, he observed two men emerging from a shop across the street, both broken-nose types, most unlikely to be browsing the establishment’s racks of maternity wear. Sweeping his eyes along the street, he saw another pair of thugs exit a copy shop that doubled as an Internet café.

  Damn! He had, as feared, walked straight into a trap.

  But set by whom?

  Basile drew his pistol and held it in his lap, his index finger curled around the double-action trigger. Sipping coffee with his left hand, he pretended not to see the goons advancing on him in a pincer movement, crossing the street against traffic while horns blared around them.

  So subtle.

  It was difficult, pretending to be blind and stupid—though, indeed, he felt that way. His mind raced as he tried to decide who’d set him up, always returning to a single suspect.

  Carlo Albanesi.

  Who else
would—

  Basile raised his gun and fired when the gorillas on his left were twenty feet away. His first shot ripped into a flabby, stubbled cheek and rocked the target on his heels. Basile shifted for his next round, putting a .380 ACP bullet near center of mass on the first man’s hulking companion.

  Down, now!

  Basile tipped his table, diving to the pavement as the shooters on his right pulled guns and opened fire. Their first rounds were too high, but they kept trying, steadily advancing. Aiming through a knee-high wrought-iron fence that framed the café’s outdoor dining area, Basile shot one of them in the thigh and saw his thick leg buckle, spouting blood. The shooter fell, cursing, but tried to fire again until Basile’s fourth round clipped one of his yellow peg incisors, blowing out the back of his skull.

  Number four was getting desperate, shouting and blazing away, his bullets cracking off concrete and metal chairs around the spot where Basile lay cringing. Swallowing his fear, Basile sent a double-tap down range, drilling the final gunman’s groin and setting loose an eerie howl of pain. Basile’s seventh shot silenced the wailing, then he turned back toward the face-shot goon he’d wounded first.

  The man was breathing raggedly, blowing wet crimson bubbles through the vent in his right cheek. He might be dying, but Basile could not tell and didn’t care. He palmed his cell phone to report the shooting and began rehearsing how he would explain the incident.

  Before he went to find a certain lieutenant.

  Tropea

  BOLAN PAUSED AT the tree line, still hidden by shadows, to check out the wall surrounding Magolino’s property. He saw no CCTV cameras, but with surveillance gear today, a fiber-optic fish-eye lens could watch him from a tiny hole drilled through one of the cinder blocks. Another option would be cameras directed from the hilltop house, but Bolan thought the wooded grounds would interfere too much with spying from a distance.

  He would take advantage of those trees—but first, he had to cross some thirty yards of open ground and scale the eight-foot wall.

  He had two options for the last few yards of his approach: rush to the wall, or take it slow and easy. Bolan knew it wouldn’t matter if a camera had spotted him; observers would be tracking him whether he ran or crawled. But if there was no camera...

  He thought of Mariana as he broke from cover, springing through bright sunshine to the shade of Magolino’s outer wall. Bolan angled toward a spot where trees grew thick on the inside of the barrier, obstructing the view from the big house. Sheltered there, he waited for another moment, just to see if any guards came swarming out to meet him. When they didn’t, he prepared to climb.

  Slinging the M4 SMG over his shoulder, Bolan leaped to catch the topmost row of cinder blocks, hoisted himself onto the rough concrete and lay prone while he got a closer look at Magolino’s grounds than any satellite could offer.

  First, he looked for guards and dogs but spotted neither. Before that changed, he dropped over the side, landed in a fighting crouch and unslung the Spectre, ready for whatever challenge might present itself.

  His next problem was getting to the house itself and then making his way inside—assuming he could do all that without meeting at least a few of Magolino’s men. His M4 and Beretta offered quiet ways of dealing with the property’s defenders, but he couldn’t count on any of their weapons being silenced, and it took only one shot—one shout—to bring the full weight of the home team down on top of him.

  And so far, Bolan didn’t even know how many soldiers he was up against.

  One more thing he would have to learn before it was too late.

  Guardia di Finanza Headquarters

  LIEUTENANT ALBANESI FELT a prickling on his scalp as he half whispered into his cell phone, “What? Who blew it?”

  “How should I know who they were?” Pietro Nardi replied. “The men you sent to do it.”

  “I sent no one,” Albanesi hissed. “Remember that!”

  “Whatever. Someone sent them, and they screwed it up. All four of them are dead.”

  At that, the phone almost escaped from Albanesi’s sweaty, trembling hand.

  “He killed four?”

  “As I said. I saw it happen.”

  “Shit!” Albanesi had believed it would be easy to remove Captain Basile from the picture. He’d left the dirty work to Magolino’s men after the trap was baited, but he’d obviously been mistaken. Now...

  “And he escaped unharmed?”

  “Without a scratch,” Nardi replied. “Maybe he got a little dusty, rolling on the sidewalk.”

  “Did he see you?”

  Nardi thought about it for a moment, then replied. “Impossible. I watched it from a block away.”

  “And the police are there?”

  “Like flies on shit. I’m getting out of town.”

  “No, wait—” But he was gone, the dial tone blowing its raspberry into Albanesi’s ear. “Bastard!”

  He was getting nowhere, cursing empty air, so Albanesi put his phone away and left his claustrophobic office, heading for the elevators and the underground garage. His plan to get rid of Basile had been desperate, fueled by the captain’s obvious suspicion, but the scheme had blown up in his face. How long before Basile came for him or sent a flying squad of officers to start interrogating Albanesi?

  He’s got nothing, the lieutenant told himself, but it rang hollow. The shooters might be dead, and Nardi was leaving town, but once Basile got a notion in his head, he couldn’t let it go. If he was after Albanesi now...

  How would it happen, if they met at headquarters? Basile was a stickler for procedure—what the Americans called a “straight arrow”—but if he thought Albanesi had plotted to kill him, would he lose control? Albanesi was younger but hardly in shape for a brawl with a madman, and if he pulled a gun on Basile in front of their fellow officers, he might as well present the prosecutor with a signed confession.

  Which would be irrelevant if he was dead.

  He reached the elevator without being intercepted and whipped out his phone after the doors closed. A voice he did not recognize answered Aldo Adamo’s phone.

  “What?”

  Albanesi identified himself and said, “I need to speak with him.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Where has he gone?”

  “Tropea, with the others.”

  Damnation! Albanesi cut the link without responding and pocketed his phone as he arrived in the garage. What should he do? Who would protect him now?

  His only hope had been Magolino, gone to ground now in Tropea. Albanesi saw his only option laid before him. It meant leaving everything—his home, his job, his life, such as it was—but if he stayed in Catanzaro, what was left to him? Arrest, disgrace and prison. Likely death, when Magolino realized the weak lieutenant might betray him.

  No. A show of loyalty to his padrino might go far toward saving Albanesi in his darkest hour. And if not, it simply meant death would find him that much sooner.

  Either way, Albanesi thought, he would be out of his misery.

  Tropea

  ONE OF PEPPINO LANZA’S men had scouted Magolino’s country hideout weeks ago, preparing for a strike in case the opportunity arose. He’d reported that the house and grounds seemed pretty well secured, a high-risk target unless Lanza could assemble overwhelming forces. That was not the case today, but never mind.

  Lanza was running out of time.

  The road to Magolino’s country mansion offered no concealment, but Lanza had a plan to compensate for that. He’d called ahead and rented two delivery vans, each large enough to carry half his men in back and heavy enough—he hoped—to ram their way through Magolino’s wrought-iron gates. Once they were in, the rest came down to raw audacity and fighting spirit, both of which his men had in abundance.

  And, of course, it would not
hurt if they could catch a break.

  Lanza went through the motions of examining both vans, leaving his two appointed drivers to examine what was underneath their hoods. He was not mechanical, beyond some skill at field stripping a gun, and saw no benefit to learning now that he had skilled subordinates.

  His hasty plan would either work or it would not. In one case, he would be a hero to the Bevilacqua family; in the other, he would be a corpse. There was no in-between.

  At least if it went badly, Lanza knew he would not die alone.

  “All ready?” Lanza asked his drivers when they finished checking out the trucks. One simply nodded, while the other said, “They’ll do, padrino.”

  Lanza removed a wad of euros from his pocket, gave it to the rental agent and waited, none too patiently, as they were counted. When he was satisfied, the other man asked Lanza, “They will be returned in good condition, eh?”

  “Certainly. In good condition,” Lanza said, “or not at all?”

  Now the rental agent wore a worried look.

  “A little joke, my friend,” Lanza replied. “Your property is sacrosanct to me.”

  What was another lie, after the thousands—maybe millions—he’d told? The trucks would likely be abandoned, shot to hell, perhaps with Lanza’s bullet-riddled body. Either way, the agent did not have his true name or address, and if he tried to follow up with legal action, he would run head-on into the Bevilacqua family.

  The ultimate dead end.

  “Load up!” Lanza commanded, and his men began climbing into the cargo vans. Some of their weapons showed, as they got in, and that was fine. It would intimidate the rental agent and, if he was wise, ensure his silence, come what may. Calabrians were almost as inured to syndicated crime as were Sicilians, raised to understand omertà and the cost of speaking out of turn.

  His men were quickly stowed away. Lanza considered joining half the team in the first truck’s cargo compartment, then decided it would look like cowardice. He took the empty seat beside his driver, feeling bulkier than usual in a Kevlar vest. It would do nothing to protect his face from bullets coming through the windshield, but, he thought, you can’t have everything.