He did not step into the road in an effort to stop the horses, but only moved a couple of steps, removed his cap politely and said, "Buon giorno, signorina."
With trembling hands and a flutter in her breast, Alma pulled the team to a halt. "Buon giorno."
She could not trust herself to say more. Her throat choked, and her chin felt unsteady. Never in her life had she seen such a man, not even in the cinema. Except, perhaps, Raf Vallone? No, not even he.
The man gestured toward the truck. "Ma la mia baratto ha un guasto."
Broken down, I should think so! Alma thought. A miracle he came so far. What a peculiar accent he had. Was it Sicilian? He also spoke with his eyes. She said, "E possibile rimorchiarla?"
Bolan shrugged with what he hoped was authentic Latin eloquence. He thought the girl asked if it were possible to tow the truck. He couldn't hack it that well, so he returned to his deaf-mute act, modified version, as though he had a serious and humiliating speech impediment. The comely girl's instant sympathy made him feel almost ashamed. With gestures and guttural words, he made her understand the possibility of transferring his crate from the truck to her wagon. Once she understood, Alma expertly handled the team, backing the wagon, then pulling alongside the truckbed, tying the lines, climbing up and with a strength that astonished Bolan, helped him lift the heavy crate up and slide it off the truck onto the wagon.
Bolan shook his head in wonderment, smiling, mumbled, "Grazie," and flexed his bicep, then touched her upper arm. "Potente!" he said, indicating her strength. Alma blushed so hard she felt as though she might go up in a sheet of flame. And her knees felt weak as smoke when the vast blue-eyed man took her arm gently and turned her, jumped to the ground and pulled her so she fell off the wagon into his arms, feeling her strong heavy breasts against him. For a moment he held her, then in three long effortless strides carried her to the seat and placed her upon it as though she were a child and not a one-hundred-forty-pound farm girl whose usual day began with milking seven cows, forking feed to them, carrying water to the house, plowing, cultivating, harvesting as the seasons came and went, trapping her endlessly in a poverty of bare existence. More than once she had lain awake at night and thought of leaving, even if she fell into the life nearly all girls of her class did when they went to the cities. She did not believe she would mind the men so much, that was only a natural thing, making love; but Alma had heard too many stories about the other things, the drugs and cruelty and unbelievable demands often made upon prostitutes; and she knew she could never stand all that, and spending her last final days as a diseased, wrinkled, useless commodity performing unspeakable acts with animals before drunken sailors in Tangiers, Marseille, or Port Said.
She wondered what was in the crate. Dio, how heavy! Alma watched the beautiful man get an old pasteboard suitcase from the cab of the truck, and then with the lithe grace of a panther, climb up beside her on the seat, smiling. She unwound the reins and clucked the horses into motion, wondering why the man did not remove his old shapeless coat; it was such a fine warm morning.
Bolan saw the first pair of them waiting for him from almost a half-mile away. Local toughs Astio had hired. My thinking was right, anyway, Bolan thought. Astio called the dons' table on his one-tune boss, and took him down. But Astio had moved fast! Bolan knew the truck driver had dropped his mud. Probably they hadn't even questioned Teaf. In fact, the pilot probably had gotten his ass out of Naples and on the way home in one hell of a hurry. A creep and totally greedy asshole Teaf was, but stupid he'd proved himself not.
The Reggio local freelancers gave themselves away by their actions. They displayed themselves by imitating hardguys. Look at me, Ma. Got a gun. Showing off in front of the babes.
Bolan felt sure that if they recognized him, they had orders not to shoot. Astio would want Bolan for himself, and Astio would engineer a way to get Bolan's head in a sack and collect the bounty money, too. Putting it all together damned nicely.
Humped over as though ill, cap pulled low across his eyes, Alma driving the team at a slow, regular, unconcerned pace, Bolan passed the outer guards unnoticed.
But as Alma drove deeper into the city, wending through the narrow streets, Bolan noticed the close attention every person with possible Mafia connections paid to all traffic. Taxi-drivers ignored fares for closer looks at old trucks, waiters stood in the doorways of cafes, bartenders looked out windows, and twice, then three times Bolan saw the gazes of men inspect him, travel on, them come back for another, closer look.
Bolan knew it was the coat. Everyone else in shirtsleeves, the day growing hotter by the moment. The coat was the kind of thing cops and criminals alike automatically watched for — something out of the ordinary. Like a skinny, hinky dude skating along the bricks with sweat pouring off him while he wore a long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs buttoned. To hide the needle tracks from heroin injections on the veins inside his elbows. Bolan had to get out of the coat.
He crawled over the back of the wagon seat and dropped down between it and his crate, unholstered the Beretta and put his cap over it, shucked out of the coat and stripped off the shoulder rig, rolled it and stuffed it into one coat pocket, got the Beretta in his right hand, slapped his cap back on. Holding the pistol with the coat draped over it, he climbed back up beside Alma, smiling reassurance.
Again with gestures and a few words, Bolan got it across to Alma that he wished to buy her lunch and also pay her for helping him. He also needed a place to unload his crate and rest for a while. The last suggestion brought a fresh-blooming blush to her round tanned cheeks and feeling like a bastard because he was using her, Bolan put his arm around the girl and hugged her tightly, big hand sliding up under her arm along the rich firm curve of her bosom. He nuzzled her neck until she giggled and pulled away, talking fast. He had no idea what she said, except, Wait, wait!
She drove to the creamery and Bolan helped her unload the milk, then stood by and watched in amusement and some astonishment as Alma turned from the shy, ripe, virginal milkmaid into a tough and experienced haggler with a raucous machinegunning voice, and finally she evidently got her price because the dockboss suddenly threw up his hands as though giving his heart, soul and wife and children and every lira he owned to a perfect stranger, probably Satan in disguise. After a moment, he returned from his office and carefully counted out the money. Alma counted it again, then shoved it down between her breasts while the dockboss leered. She sniffed at him, then emptied her milk cans into a large vat, rinsed the cans clean under a nearby faucet, then put the empties back on the wagon.
The odors of manure and ammonia rose so strongly from the stableyard, Bolan seemed to be lying in a tub filled with them. But of the three places Alma showed him, Bolan chose this one because it afforded him the best protection against sudden attack, and the best observation post.
He had a wide open view down the sloping street toward the dock where the ferry tied up. His back was protected by another building jammed against the stable and hayloft. Alma's horses had rolled in the thick dust, drank from the water trough, and now munched thin feed in the shade.
Bolan heard a sigh behind him and turned from the window. He felt more like a bastard than ever when he looked at the girl. Despite her extremely well-developed body, she could not be more than twenty. When he took her he'd felt like a ruthless cradle-robber, except that he'd been taken as much as he took. And though he discovered this had not been her first time, it was hardly more than the second or third, she was so trembly and awkward, yet frantically eager. She sighed again in her sleep, totally satiated. Bolan returned to his watch.
So far he had spotted six of them, four local, cheap gunsels, who like the others watching the road into town, spent most of their time imitating themselves. The other two, though, were real hardguys. While the gunsels strutted and preened, the hardmen prowled unobtrusively, or took up posts along the most likely approaches and rested in the shade, conserving themselves.
And then each time the f
erry came across the Strait of Messina, only two miles wide at its narrowest, from "Messina to Reggio, Bolan watched a dozen more hard-men and that many or more gunsels working through the crowd gathered to catch the ferry.
Upon each docking, Bolan watched carefully; and the routine never varied. Not one of the gunmen ever gave a single glance toward the incoming vessel, nor paid any attention to the disembarking passengers.
Now Bolan had his battle ops worked out. He went to the bed, lay down beside Alma, not awakening her, set his never-fail mental alarm, and slept until evening. When he woke, Alma sat on a stool beside a large crockery basin, bathing herself with a cloth. She smiled whitely as Bolan sat up, turned more to face him, naked and gleaming. Bolan grinned at her, and she rose and came to him.
Afterwards, Bolan told her what he wanted her to do. He dropped the pose and used all the Italian at his command, considerable since he'd dealt so intimately with Mafia types for so long. He saw that the change in him frightened her, but she was so thoroughly taken with him, she questioned nothing he said.
She got dressed and went out. Bolan went down to the crate, opened it, and in the gloom of the stable's back stalls, he dressed in his black combat garb. He wrapped the Beretta and .44 Automag in waterproofing, as well as extra ammo clips. He started to take along two frags, then put them back. The dockside became thickly crowded and all a grenade would do was take down innocents.
Mack slipped Ms peasant disguise back on, closed the crate, went out and met Alma as she returned. He helped her harness the team to the wagon, then took the paint can and brush she had bought and climbed up into the wagon. He addressed the crate to himself, MAGO BOEMO, The Bohemian Magician, will call, at the office of a freight company Alma told him had offices in Catania. For a moment, Bolan wryly considered addressing the crate to himself as Il Boia: The Executioner. But he had survived so far in his war against the Mafia because he refused to underestimate his enemy, no matter how many of them had fallen under his guns and grenades, his blitzing attacks across the U.S. and parts of Europe.
While Alma went inside to pay the stableman, Bolan opened one of the milk cans and dropped a thousand dollars in Mafia money down into the can, then sealed it tightly. When she returned, he made her go through the instructions again.
She was to haul the crate to the dock, pre-pay its passage to Messina on the ferry, then by truck to Catania. She was to sling in an appropriate puntale or "bustarella"— tip, bribe, to insure the magician's box got preferential treatment.
Alma returned thirty minutes later with the manifest, and Bolan lied to her: "I have to see some men in the city. I'll be back before eleven." He took her elbows and held them tightly. "Listen to me. Listen exactly. Whatever you do, stay-away-from-the-truck. Understand? Do not touch the truck."
Bolan knew that by this time Astio had sent scouts up the roads leading from Reggio, and by now they had found and booby-trapped the truck. He wished he had time to go back to it and blow it up himself. One hit from the .44 Automag would jar off the detonators.
But maybe not. When they saw the crate gone . . . and surely the truckdriver, Fretta, had told Astio about the crate . . . they would not plant the truck, maybe. Bolan hoped to Christ not.
Bolan kissed her one last time, and then before Alma knew or even saw, the big man vanished into the evening gloom. She felt wet on her face, and realized she was crying. She knew he would never be back, when she thought about his return at eleven. Wearily, with a sorrow that stuck in her throat and felt like a knife in her guts, she climbed upon the wagon seat and slapped the lines across the horses' rumps. She could be home well before eleven, and he was never coming back, and the cows were by now standing at the waterlot gate, bawling with thirst and hunger and swollen udders. She wondered who he was, and shifted her weight on the rough seat as something seemed to stick her in the thigh. She felt and found a metal object in the pocket of her apron and took it out It was a cross unlike any she had ever seen before. She looked at it until her vision blurred with tears, then she wiped her eyes, kissed the cross and dropped it between her breasts, where she would wear it forever.
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.
12
Reggio Repulisti
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.
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