Bolan kept to the left and crawled forward. When he reached the first box, he rapped on it with bis knuckle and muttered.
The box moved squeaking, and Bolan rapped again. The lid suddenly popped open and two men stood up. Bolan shot them both between the eyes, one, one, and let them collapse back into the box. He squirmed around, got his back braced against his own heavy MAGO crate, placed his feet against the other and shoved.
The box containing the two deads went off the tailgate and shattered, dumping the two limp bodies across the road.
Bolan simplified matters for himself and reloaded his Beretta clip. Then he rose to his feet, leaned a hip against the side of the swaying truck, drew the .44 Automag with his right hand after taking the Beretta in his left, and shot all the packing cases besides his own full of holes.
At the first crashing report of the .44 Automag, the truck swayed violently, walked back and forth across the crude highway, nearing the precipice on one side, the high cliff wall on the other.
In swift succession, while the driver still whipped from side to side in panic, Bolan shoved and pushed the other crates and toppled them end over end, and sent them off the tailgate, shattering to kindling, leaving bodies strewn.
Bolan punched the magazine release buttons on both weapons and reloaded.
Sidling up to the back window, Bolan looked into the cab.
Besides Turnip, two other armed men crouched in the floor board. Bolan shot them both in the top of the head, one, two. And through the shattered window shouted, "Pull up!"
Turnip switched off the key and with trembling hands guided the truck to a stop. Turnip proved himself not only a man with a ridiculously descriptive nickname and a fan— truckdriver but also a fool. He went for the gun inside his shirt and Bolan blew the front of Rapa's face off, catapulting him down the steep seaside of the highway.
Bolan climbed into the cab, dragged the other two bodies out and tossed them over the cliffside toward the grumbling surf below. He got in under the wheel, switched on, let the truck roll, slipped into high gear on the downgrade, popped the clutch loose and let the engine catch.
In the light of new day, he filled with gas in Catania and turned west.
Beachhead established and consolidated. Issue no longer in doubt.
14
The second table
None of the dons cared to look directly at one another. They all knew they'd been had, and each of them felt so helplessly frustrated with anger, none wanted the job of speaking first — of bringing the subject out.
Finally, the Roman, Brinato said, "Well, whadda we gonna do, sit here with our thumbs up our butts all night?"
"The first thing we gotta do," said Vandalo, "is get Naples back under control. I sent some of my boys — "
"You sent some of your boys?" demanded Ricercato. "And where you get off with that shit? You sent your boys."
"Somebody had to get in there fast, and the rest of you — " Vandalo gestured obscenely. "Sitting around on your asses while the whole organization falls apart."
"Shut up!" Brinato roared in his gravelly voice. "Knock it to hell off!" He glared around the room. "This is just what Bolan wants, us squabbling, fighting amongst ourselves, going to war over Naples." Brinato shot looks of anger at each don around the table; they looked back at him, and shifted uneasily in their chairs. "I say for right now, Naples is open. We got a lot bigger worry on our backs than Naples ... that goddam Bolan!"
Brinato stared at them again. "Now, anybody argue with that?"
No one answered.
"Okay! Now, you, Ruvido," Brinato demanded of the man from Reggio, "what did you find out from that ragazza, that girl Alma, right?"
"Nothing. A dumbass farmer. She didn't even know who she was helping, his name or nothing. She was so dumb she still carried one of them marksman medals in her blouse, didn't know any better."
"But you took the farm apart, just to make sure Bolan didn't double back."
"What the hell you take me for?" Ruvido said, insulted.
"Okay, okay, save the ruffled feathers for later."
"He's on the island," Ricercato said, primly.
"And passed right through your fucking town," snapped Vandalo. "Drove right into Catania and filled up with gas and ate breakfast in plain sight, and then … phutt! Vanished."
"Tell me about it!" snapped Paffuto, the chubby boss of Messina. "Those were my soldiers he blew up, my truck he stole. That bastard." Paffuto's fat hands worked as though he held Bolan's throat in them.
"Let's just cut the crap," Brinato said flatly. "Stop whining about who lost what, and who made this mistake or that fuckup. Okay, goddammit? You guys ready to talk now? You ready to make some plans, use your heads, think!" In a rage, Brinato shoved back from the table so hard his heavy chair upset and clattered halfway across the room. He went to a window and stood before it, breathing deeply. Sons of bitches, Brinato thought, pissing their pants over nickles and dimes and a few dead punks, and conniving over what slice of Naples they might or might not get. While we got a war on our hands!
Brinato lit a cigar. Well, he thought, they could forget Naples, all of them. Naples is mine. I got my own boia, my personal executioner in old Napoli, sorting things out, so Naples don't matter. What matters is that goddam Bolan!
Brinato stared off into the night through the window, eyes going out of focus, trying to envision where Bolan was at that moment, and doing what....
Brinato turned back to the table, picked up his chair, but he did not sit down. He leaned forward on his hands, and once more glared at each of the other men, one by one. "Now! Listen to me. Clear all the cheap penny-ante thoughts out of your minds. All the crap about a slice of Naples, your deads, stolen trucks, all that!"
Brinato flicked ashes from his cigar. "First, we know why Bolan came over here. We know his target." He paused, then growled a grainy coarse laugh. "Does anybody doubt now we are dealing with Bolan? Anybody got more smart ideas about taking down one of our own? It's Bolan and he raped us blind, so now let's get the son of a bitch."
Then with a deceptive mildness that held a sneer of contempt, Brinato said, "Okay? That okay, boys? Anybody disagree?" He had deliberately taken control of the table because he had been the first to call for a vote at Frode's table. For years Brinato had coveted Naples, especially after his recent probes into the territory verified that Frode's underbosses were stealing him blind and Astio Traditore undercutting him more each day, getting ready to make his move for the takeover. And Brinato had already given his best hardman, his boia, the contract on Astio. Bolan, however, had solved that minor problem.
"Okay, who's been in touch with Cafu?" Ricercato asked. "Besides myself, I mean?"
The men from Palermo, Reggio, Messina, Syracuse, and Marsala signified they had been in touch with the boss of Agrigento.
"So what do we know?"
"The truck was found abandoned on the road west of Naro." Ricercato glanced at the truck's owner. "Forget recovering it, unless you're in the junk business."
Paffuto winced, seven thousand U.S. dollars shot to hell.
"What about this crate he was so anxious to move?" Brinato asked.
"His warchest, gotta be."
"Meaning just what?" asked Ruvido. He always was a dumbutt. It took his kind of coarse, heavy-handed, harsh leadership in a sinkhole like Reggio, but that didn't make him any smarter.
"His weapons," Brinato said.
"What the hell," Ruvido said, looking around, "the guy plays cowboy, wears a couple pistols, one with a silencer. What weapons? Was that damned box full of ammo?"
With disgust, Brinato moved away from the table again, puffing furiously at his cigar. "Somebody clue this rural asshole so we can get on with it."
Ricercato began counting off on his fingers. "In the past Bolan has used bazookas, trench mortars, rifle grenades, telescopic rifles, every known land of demolition explosives, automatic and semi-automatic machine-pistols, rifles, submachineguns. He's an exper
t with them all. You dig, all. that's what is in the warchest. Weapons for making war."
"Jesus, then he could stand off, I mean, like way up in the hills somewhere, and rip off Cafu's place."
"What the hell do you think he did in Naples, walk up to the front door and start lobbing those grenades in? Where the hell you been the past four, five years, while this Bolan bastard's been blowing this thing of ours to smithereens from France to Philly?"
"Well, Jesus, I just never figured, you know — here! I mean the guy don't even speak the language, does he?"
"The girl said he speaks some. Enough. Wouldn't you say enough? He went through your town, sacked out in a hayloft all day, got himself laid, walked down to the beach in your town, and swam out to meet the ferryboat coming in. I think he does okay with the goddamn language!"
"That's right," Brinato said with ice-throated anger. "Bicker, snarl and snap at one another, piss away the whole night."
"Okay, okay. Brinato's right Now, what's the plan?"
Brinato pointed his cigar at the various dons who had been in contact with Cafu. "What's the man want?"
Each of them shrugged, mouths turning down at the corners, palms up and open. "Nothing?" Brinato said, startled. "Nothing at all? No soldiers, no weapons, ammunition, a goddam helicopter, bloodhounds, nothing?"
"That's what the man said," Ricercato said, and looked to the other Sicilian bosses for confirmation.
"That can mean only one thing," Brinato said.
"We think so, too."
"He's got something going over there on his own, something he's not sharing, holding out for himself."
"Well, he's got that soldier thing, training soldiers and sending them over to the other side, for a grand a day per man."
"I know about that, and it was never cleared through the commissione. They voted it down cold. Too much chance returning to the old days, Families blowing each other to pieces. We don't never want another blood-thirsty son of a bitch like Anastasia in charge of anything again. Murder, Incorporated, keyrist!
"Dope," said the man from Milan. He was nearest France, dealt more than any of the others with the Corsicans. "He's in dope, if he don't want any help, don't want any of us sniffing around. Dope."
Without exception the men around the table agreed, with a nod, a grunt, a word. Brinato laid it out. "Sure. Why not? Some way, Cafu's got a lock on getting his soldiers into the States, right? I mean seventy-five guys he already had in Philly, right? Only makes sense he would send dope with some of them. That's too good a chance to pass up."
Brinato looked around at the faces, saw the grim lines, thin-lipped mouths, stony eyes. "I'm calling a table for Cafu ... with your agreement, naturally."
Again, without dissent, all the dons agreed.
Brinato went to the door and opened it. He spoke briefly to the man on guard just outside. The soldier nodded and walked away fast. Brinato called out and another man came to the door. A few minutes after Brinato resumed his seat, the door opened and white-jacketed men rolled in tables laden with food and drink.
Even as they dug in, eating and drinking with relish, small-talking and making gross jokes, each man at the table was thinking the same thing. "Officially" their thing had outlawed dealing in dope; dope was too hot now, much, much too heavy. Dope had brought down Don Vito Genovese, for Christ's sake, the boss of all bosses. Each man at the table also knew he had at one time or other violated this "ruling" against dope. It was the fastest and easiest way to make a big score if a guy suffered losses and reverses in some other thing he had going. The morality of dealing in dope had nothing whatever to do with laying off dope. Dope was just too goddam heavy if a guy got taken down. And when one guy went down, everyone in the organization suffered, guilt by association, and heat all over the place, cops running out your ears. So, dope was "officially" outlawed in the Mafia, but it was okay so long as you did not get caught.
And the men at the table were also thinking one other thing, everyone of them: how to get the big slice, maybe all, of Agrigento when they called the table on Cafu and took him down.
Brinato's soldier came fast into the room without knocking, leaned over and whispered in his boss' ear. Brinato spluttered a mouthful of food down his chest, slapped at it angrily with his napkin, swallowed heavily, and shoved back from the table. "What did you say? I mean repeat it for all of us."
"Now, boss, don't get sore at me, okay?" Brinato shook his head violently.
The soldier stared around the faces, shrugged, then blurted, "Don Cafu said . . . 'Tell those guys to go get fucked. And tell them if they come after me I got better'n a hundred soldiers waiting for them.'" The soldier grabbed an empty glass and poured himself a drink of champagne. "He said, 'Tell those greaseballs to go piss up a rope, and if they think they're calling a table on me they're full of shit. I ain't coming, now or ever, and I'll burn down every son of a bitch comes after me.'"
The soldier did not bother with the glass this time. He up-ended the bottle and swigged. Then: "I'm sorry, boss; but that's what he said, just how he said, and I thought you want to know. I mean, did I do right?"
"Sure, sure," Brinato said absently, nodding his head. He patted the soldier on the arm. "You did just fine, son. Go on now, we got to talk. Tell the waiters to come in and clear away all this crap. I ain't hungry no more."
After the waiters had taken away the remains of the feast, which now tasted like sawdust to the dons, Ruvido snarled viciously. "Okay, so the don don't come to the table, we take the table to the don, huh?" He looked around the table for confirmation.
Brinato looked at the man from Reggio, wondering. How the hell did we ever let him get so high up in this thing of ours? A goddam Calabrian was no different than a garlicky greaseball Sicilian, hot-tempered, fast-draw, shoot from the hip, examine the deads afterwards, and hold a beautiful wake upon learning he'd killed his brother-in-law. Christ. Maybe it was the sun, the harsh, unrelenting heat on the jagged desertlike, worthless land made them that way. All the same, kill, kill, kill, and they'd screw anything from a crocodile to a warm exhaust pipe. Sure, Cafu had to go, no question; but Brinato decided Ruvido also had to go. And then he caught himself. God-DAMN! Here he was doing just exactly what that Bolan bastard wanted. Thinking of killing Family. Brinato took a deep breath and calmly peeled the outer brown wrapper from a Cuban cigar and lit it. After a moment, he leaned forward, cleared his throat loudly to quiet the mutterings around the table. When he had the attention of all the dons, Brinato spoke:
"All right, gentlemen, what do you think of this? Our brother Don Cafu does not want our help. He has, indeed, refused our offers of aid. He has likewise refused to come and reason with us. And our only purpose was to offer aid and assistance, correct, gentlemen?"
They nodded, grunted, and most of them began slowly Smiling.
"Then I suggest we let the don have his way. Obviously, he considers himself in no danger. A hundred trained and well-armed soldiers, correct? So what can one man hope to do, even this Bolan?"
Brinato puffed his cigar in the silence, while the others watched him, grinning like sharks. "Of course, there are always the pieces to pick up afterwards." Brinato smiled, a brief lifting of the left corner of his thick lips. "I suggest we adjourn and see what the morrow brings."
Still grinning, the others got to their feet as Brinato rose from his chair. "Now, let's see if we can't find a way to divert ourselves, eh?"
As they filed out of the table room, Brinato signaled to his houseman. The hardguy grinned and nodded and went away. As the dons went into the lavishly furnished private parlor, soft music began issuing from hidden speakers, the lights softened, and the girls came in.
15
Scout
Mack Bolan, The Executioner, was not only a highly efficient practitioner but also a student of military tactics and strategy.
The oldest rule in the book had never changed:
"You must take the high ground,
or you will die in the val
leys."
And wars had been lost because of laziness.
Occupying the high ground took men of stamina, willpower, and commitment. Bolan had discovered in his first day's recon that Cafu's trainees had little else on their minds but $1000 a day and easy living Stateside. They did not like to climb mountains, so they faked it. They did not like roughing it, so they lugged along ten pounds of crap in their rucksacks — liquor, canned foods, reading material, and a few even managed to inveigle some of the local gkls to come along and spend the watch with them.
In that first day, Bolan could have killed nineteen of Cafu's soldier trainees.
But that would only have set the hounds upon him. When the relief men came up to take their positions on the outer rim of the defense perimeter, and found deads, Cafu would have been alerted and doubly defensive.
Bolan kept scouting, and just before noon he located at last what he sought: a soldier trainee who looked like Mack Bolan. Not really, but perhaps enough. Enough so Mack could take the guy down, replace him, hopefully pass himself off as the soldier long enough to get inside.
If his estimate of the reliefs was correct, he would arrive at the base camp near dusk, and in the gloom possibly pass himself off as the trainee.
First, the trainee.
Mack simply circled down through a deadspace where the soldier could not see him, hit the too-well-worn path leading to the observation post, and walked right up to the soldier. The soldier was asleep, a skin-magazine lying across his chest. Bolan kneeled beside the man, chopped him across the throat, drove the larnyx into the man's throat, then held the man down while he suffocated.
Bolan lifted the man up and threw him over his shoulder, carried him a mile farther back up into the mountains, stripped off the "uniform" Don Cafu's trainees wore, then dropped the body down the shaft of an abandoned sulphur mine. Hundreds of such shafts were in view all through the terrain. At one tune, sulphur export had made Agrigento one of the most important cities on the island, with a population of half a million people in over forty villages and the capital city bearing the same name as the province, Agrigento.
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