Inside, a softly humming air conditioner relieved the afternoon’s heat and humidity, drying the sweat on Bolan’s face and neck. The rec room—he’d been right about it, playing the percentages—was empty when he entered, balls neatly racked on a green baize billiard table, electronic games on the east wall silent and dark. He moved past easy chairs and sofas to reach another door across the room.
Each step he took from there on led him deeper into Magolino’s home.
Gripping the silent Spectre SMG, he listened at the door for voices but heard none. Next, Bolan cracked it, peered into the hall beyond and found it as deserted as the rec room. Bolan eased into the corridor, leaving the door ajar for a swift retreat. He had a choice of going left or right and picked left because he heard the sound of muffled voices from that direction.
Discovery, at this point, meant more killing, a warning to the other soldiers spread throughout the house and grounds. If he could find a Magolino flunky on his own, Bolan still had a chance—however slim—to reach Mariana without setting off a general alarm.
All it would take was nerve, some luck and possibly a miracle.
One soldier, on his own, as careless as his buddies in the woods had been. Was that too much to ask?
A toilet flushed behind the next door to his right. Bolan froze in his tracks and waited for the door to open, then stepped forward and pressed the Spectre’s silencer against a skull covered with oily, slicked-back hair.
“Where is the woman?” Bolan asked.
“What woman?” came back to him in a squeaky, nervous voice.
“Wrong answer. Say good-bye.”
“Wait! I can take you to her!”
“One more chance,” Bolan told him. “Lead the way.”
* * *
PEPPINO LANZA SAW the imposing gates as his truck rounded a final curve and growled its way up the hilltop in low gear. His driver kept the pedal down, fighting the grade. Their truck rocked drunkenly from side to side, making him wonder if his men were getting sick in back. If one threw up, Lanza thought, the nausea could spread like wildfire in the stuffy, claustrophobic rear compartment.
Almost there.
Lanza cradled a Beretta M12 submachine gun in his lap, drawing comfort from its solid weight across his meaty thighs. The little weapon, less than seventeen inches long with its metal stock folded, was chambered in 9 mm Parabellum. The forty-round mag he had loaded was the largest available; smaller ones, twenty and thirty-two rounds apiece, bulged from the pockets of his suit.
Today, fashion was taking a backseat to practicality. And to survival.
Two guards, both armed with automatic rifles, were eyeing Lanza’s trucks as they approached. They would be suspicious, certainly, but Lanza had no reason to believe the pair would recognize him as an enemy on sight—at least, until he opened fire on them.
But first...
“Slow down and let me out,” he ordered, and the driver grunted in response, downshifting and easing on the brake.
The guards were on alert as Lanza’s truck rolled to a stop six feet in front of them. He smiled and waved through the windscreen, then opened his door and began to step out, shielding his submachine gun with the cab’s open door.
“Hello, friends! Can you tell me if I’ve reached the right address?”
“Unlikely,” one of them replied. “We’re not expecting a delivery.”
“Well, damn! Is this not the home of...just a minute, please....”
Lanza stepped down to the pavement, then revealed his weapon, firing from the hip before they could react. Some of his bullets struck the wrought-iron scrollwork of the massive gates, but most of them passed through, whipping the guards into a jerky tarantella, blood exploding from their wounds as they collapsed onto the driveway’s asphalt.
Lanza vaulted back into the truck’s cab and shouted at his driver, “Go! Go!”
The truck lurched forward, struck the gate and powered through it, metal screaming as it snagged, ripped free and clawed across the fenders, doors and cargo van behind. Lanza was worried for a moment that they might stick fast, block the opening and get trapped inside as Magolino’s soldiers ran to meet them, but they broke free with a monstrous twang that sounded like the largest mouth harp in creation.
“Head for the house!” Lanza ordered. “Faster!”
Grinning like a jackal now, his driver ground the truck’s gearbox, speeding down the driveway toward the mansion. Lanza saw someone on the front porch staring at them, then the figure darted inside.
So much for his surprise. They’d kicked the hornet’s nest, and soon the swarm would be upon them, stingers poised to strike. He snatched the walkie-talkie from his belt and started barking orders to his soldiers in the cargo vans.
“Be ready! We are almost at the portico! Now, jump! For Cosa Nostra and the honor of our family!”
Before the truck stopped moving, Lanza hit the pavement and sprinted toward the house.
* * *
“EASY,” BOLAN SAID, when he felt his captive fidgeting. “Do you want to live?”
“Yes,” the soldier said. “I’m taking you right to her.”
“How much farther?”
“We’re just coming to the stairs.”
So, it would be the basement, as he’d guessed. “We get there,” Bolan said, “and you go down first. One slip, you’re history.”
They reached the next-to-last door on their right, and Bolan’s point man turned the knob. It opened inward on a flight of stairs descending steeply into semi-darkness. Dim light was showing at the lower level, but the soldier flipped a switch and turned on two caged bulbs above the staircase, letting them descend more confidently. Bolan stayed two steps above his prisoner, in case the mobster turned or tried to bolt, his finger steady on the Spectre’s trigger as they made their way downstairs.
“You know the lady, eh?” his captive asked.
“Shut up!” Bolan cautioned him.
“Okay. I only thought—”
A sharp rap with the Spectre’s silencer cut off the soldier’s running patter. At the bottom of the stairs they moved along a spacious corridor chilled by the mansion’s air conditioning. It lacked the normal cellblock smell but had a prison feel about it all the same. Bolan counted six doors along the right-hand side.
“Which one?” he asked.
“The third one down, I think.”
“Be sure. Your life depends on it.”
“Okay, I’m sure.”
When they reached the door in question, the soldier stopped, muttered something and stood still with his shoulders slumped.
“What’s that? Speak up!” Bolan commanded.
“I don’t have the key, sir. Only il padrino can unlock this one.”
“I guess we’re done then,” Bolan said and put a silent round behind his ear, dropping the mobster’s carcass at his feet. He dragged it clear, stepped up to the door and rapped sharply on its surface with his knuckles. “Mariana?”
“Who is that?” the muffled voice came back.
“Scott Parker.”
“Thank God! Hurry, please!”
“I have to blow the lock. Stand clear,” he told her.
“I can’t stand at all,” she answered. “I’m tied up on the bed.”
“And where’s that in relation to the door?”
“Directly opposite.”
“Okay then. Close your eyes and turn your face away if you can manage it.”
“Hurry!” she said again. “He’s coming back soon!”
Bolan blew the dead bolt from its mooring, tried the knob—still locked—and gave the door a solid kick that smashed it open and swung it back against the nearest wall. He spotted Mariana on the bed a second later, crossed to reach her there and opened his stiletto with a
snap to cut her bonds. When she was free and on her feet, she threw her arms around him, trembling, sobbing out her gratitude.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Bolan said. “Right now, we have to move.”
“Of course. But where—”
Excited voices in the hall outside cut short her question. Bolan went to check the doorway, saw two burly mobsters rushing toward him, then ducked backward as they opened fire with pistols. The gunfire echoed like thunder in the corridor.
Chapter 14
Peppino Lanza’s soldiers charged the mansion like a gang of madmen—howling and shooting—and it nearly worked. Lanza himself was on the porch and had nearly reached the tall front door before windows to either side of him erupted with a scalding blaze of gunfire, toppling half a dozen of his men in seconds flat.
The capo ducked and rolled, fetched up against the stucco wall with thunder ringing in his ears and watched as his surviving raiders scattered. Some ran back to crouch behind the trucks they had arrived in, seeking cover; others broke to left and right, trying to outrun bullets and escape the line of fire.
Lanza sat rock-still with his Beretta SMG pressed to his chest, afraid to move in case he drew attention to himself. The little stutter gun was empty, slide locked open on a smoking chamber, but reloading it meant pulling out the empty magazine, taking another from his pocket and inserting it, then drawing back the cocking handle. All of that meant noise, and at the moment, any sound could get him killed.
Instead, he slowly slipped a hand inside his rumpled jacket to retrieve the pistol holstered underneath his arm. It was a Beretta Px4 Storm, chambered in .40 S&W and loaded with ten hollow-point rounds. Not much in the face of a hostile army, but if Magolino’s soldiers ventured onto the porch where Lanza sat, at least he could take a few of them with him.
This was what it came to, finally, and Lanza guessed no one would ever know that he’d done his best, had nearly penetrated Magolino’s home before his soldiers either died or cut and ran. All that Alessandro Bevilacqua would remember of this escapade was that the leader of his Catanzaro crew had failed.
So be it. If he was condemned, Lanza decided, then he might as well make the most of it.
Setting his pistol down beside him, he withdrew the submachine gun’s magazine and tossed it across the porch steps toward the driveway, where it clattered on asphalt. He drew another from one of his pockets, this one holding thirty rounds, and snapped it into the M12’s receiver with a sharp metallic click.
Inside the house, behind the nearest shattered window, someone called attention to the sound. Another Magolino soldier answered. Lanza heard them shifting, moving toward the bullet-scarred front door.
“Come on, then,” Lanza muttered. “Come and get me.”
Noisily, defiantly, he cocked the submachine gun. Lanza clutched it in his right hand and retrieved the pistol with his left, then clambered to his feet and moved to stand before the mansion’s entrance. Someone’s bullets, possibly his own, had sprung the lock and left the door ajar an inch or two.
Smiling and mouthing prayers he hadn’t uttered since he was eight or nine years old, Peppino Lanza kicked the door inward and followed through, guns blazing in both hands, trying his best to make each bullet count and feeling giddy from the chaos he was causing.
Some of Magolino’s startled soldiers reeled and ran away from him, whereas others stood their ground. He shot them all impartially, watching the blood explode from stunned faces and lurching bodies, breathing in the heady reek of burnt gunpowder. When return fire started ripping into him, he barely felt it, living in a Scarface moment where the world was his and enemies must fall or bow before him.
He was laughing when the head shot came and all of it went black.
* * *
BOLAN UNCLIPPED A frag grenade, removed its pin, and held the striker lever down. Once he released it, he’d have about four seconds to get rid of the grenade, and that could vary by a full half second either way. No time to lose, in either case, as the two shooters kept advancing, spacing out their shots to keep Bolan from firing back.
He made the pitch, feeling a bullet pluck the cuff of his extended arm, then crouched and waited for the blast. It came on schedule, more or less, engulfing anguished screams from Magolino’s dying men. When Bolan checked the corridor, he found it painted red, the smell of high explosives in his nostrils vying with the visceral aroma of dismantled human beings.
“Follow me,” he ordered Mariana. “Never mind the smell or what you see.”
“Good.”
Despite her seeming confidence, there was a tremor in her voice, and Bolan heard her breath catch in her throat as she emerged into the charnel house.
“Remember that they kidnapped you and would have killed you,” he advised her. “You’re alive, and they’re not. That’s all.”
“I understand,” she answered, nearly choking on the words.
They reached the staircase, Bolan pausing to sling his Spectre, switching to the ARX-160. The time for stealth had passed. From now on, it was simple blast-your-ass-to-hell-and-back all the way.
But Mariana remained a problem.
He had rescued her a second time—or, rather, was attempting to—but if he tried to get her off the property, that meant truncating his assault on Magolino’s family. Assuming it was even possible for both of them to make it out, an early retreat left Bolan’s work unfinished.
And he likely wouldn’t get another chance.
“You know where the garage is?” he asked Mariana, standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“I do.”
“I want to stash you there for now. I still have work to do.”
“You’d leave me?” Panic in her voice.
“Listen—”
Before Bolan could finish, voices near the doorway overhead forced him to take his own advice, ears straining to make out the words. Someone had heard the gunshots and grenade blast, obviously, but the comment Bolan caught was curious.
“How did they get inside, downstairs?”
Before another voice replied, he heard the muffled sounds of battle coming from a distance, probably outside the Magolino mansion. His thoughts skipped to Peppino Lanza and his mafiosi and Lanza’s comment about going after Magolino and the best man winning.
Unexpected help? He’d take whatever he could get.
“Stand back,” he cautioned Mariana, then squeezed off a 40 mm round that lofted through the upstairs doorway, struck the wall directly opposite and detonated with a crack of smoky thunder. “Now! Come on!”
He hammered up the stairs, with Mariana close on Bolan’s heels, into another scene of carnage. Three men had been standing in the hallway when his HE round went off, and one of them was still alive, though barely hanging on, riddled from knees to throat with shrapnel. His companions both lay twisted where they’d fallen, weapons scattered on the bloodstained carpet, and the sounds of gunfire from outside were louder now.
“This way,” Bolan said, turning to his right and leading Mariana toward an exit, which, he hoped, would place them reasonably close to the garage.
Or in the middle of a gangland firestorm.
Either way, he had to take the chance.
* * *
CAPTAIN BASILE BROKE every speed limit en route to Tropea, blue lights flashing the whole way from Catanzaro to the smaller town’s outskirts, clearing slower traffic from his path. He met no State Police along the way and passed most of the other traffic as if it were standing still.
The trip was short at that speed, windows open, wind-rush nearly drowning out his thoughts. Basile had switched off the Bravo’s two-way radio as soon as he decided on a course of action, severing his only link to headquarters. He might regret it later—part of him regretted it already—but he wouldn’t let himself be interrupted now.
<
br /> His Benelli shotgun lay across the empty seat beside him, braced on its boxes of spare cartridges to keep the gun from sliding.
Whatever else happened today, he would repay the pig Albanesi for the ambush that had nearly claimed his life, and in doing that, he’d wipe at least one small stain of corruption from the agency he’d served most of his adult life. If it cost Basile his career and pension—even if it cost his life—he thought he would be satisfied. As for the Magolino family, he was content to leave their fate in Scott Parker’s hands.
Unless they tried to interfere with him.
The location of Magolino’s country home was on file, and his GPS led him to the very gates of the estate. Basile was prepared to drive by casually, checking out the premises, but on arrival he discovered that the wrought-iron gate had been destroyed, apparently by impact from some large and heavy vehicle. Two bodies lay inside the yawning portal, asphalt darkened by their leaking blood.
Basile drove through, maneuvering around the bodies as he slowed for a closer look. Both men were obviously dead, their weapons left beside them on the pavement. Basile stopped on impulse, set the Bravo’s parking brake and stepped out of the car to grab the two Kalashnikov assault rifles.
What could it hurt? More firepower increased his flagging confidence, and he didn’t wish to find someone else aiming the rifles his way if he had to beat a swift retreat from Magolino’s property.
He would have been trespassing, but the corpses gave him legal cause to investigate their slaying and search for other victims. Normally, he would have called for help from headquarters, both reinforcements and forensics experts to assess the evidence, but he was off the grid now, operating on his own initiative, unsanctioned. Nothing he did from that point on would qualify as by the book.
And damn it, that felt good.
As he was climbing back into the car, he heard echoes of gunfire from the general direction of the Magolino mansion straight ahead. Some kind of battle had been joined, and this would be the time to radio for units of the GDF’s Rapid Response team if he wasn’t going it alone. Even now, he could still call for help and explain the case later, but Basile was a stubborn man.
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