Gio Scaldicci, the wheelman, swivelled about with a grin. "Right, Mr. Giliamo. I got ears that don't hear nothin' that's not spoken to 'em."
The two men in back settled into an uncomfortable silence, then Nick Trigger said, "Well, I'll ride back with you, Danno. Let's get out of here."
"We gotta wait, I got Sal out on the street makin' his rounds. Hell be back in a minute."
The three Mafiosisat through a protracted silence, then a front door opened and a fourth man hastily entered the car. This was Sal Masseri, one of Danno's crew leaders. In a choked voice, he announced, "We got three dead soldiers out there, Danno."
"What do you mean?" the New Jersey caporegimegrowled.
"I mean Willie Ears and Jack the Builder and Big Angelo are dead as hell, that's what I mean. No blood or nothing, they're just laying there dead. I think their necks are broke or something."
Giliamo was speechless. He gaped at his companion in the rear, then made a lunge for the door. Nick Trigger quietly restrained him and asked Masseri, "How long have those boys been dead, Sal?"
"I'd say no more'n ten or fifteen minutes. I went on around and warned the other boys. Nobody's seen nothing, though, Nick, not a damn thing."
"Ten or fifteen minutes," Trigger repeated musingly. "That means he could have hotted it straight over here and…"
Giliamo slid forward to the edge of the seat and craned his head for a tense inspection of the hulking outline of the museum, just around the square from their position. In an angered tone, he declared, "That cuts it! That bastard has found some way to get in and out of there without being seen. I'll bet he's in there right now." He tapped his driver on the shoulder and commanded, "Pull around there slow and quiet, Gio. Park in front of that bus stop."
The car moved quietly around the corner and eased to the designated spot, directly across the street from the museum.
"Are we going back in there?" Massed asked nervously.
"Bet your ass we are," Giliamo barked. "You get out there and pass the word along."
Before Massed could react, two men ran quietly up to the vehicle. Giliamo lowered his window and thrust his head outside. One of the new arrivals breathlessly reported, "We just wanted to tell Sal that we found something. Over there." He pointed to the opposite side of the square. "A book store. The back door has been jimmied open. It could mean something."
"Awright, take some boys and check it out," Giliamo commanded.
The men jogged away. Masseri said, "Maybe I oughta go see what they got, Danno."
Nick Trigger chuckled coldly. "I think Sal is awful anxious to stay out of my little playhouse," he observed.
"As a matter of fact he is," Giliamo answered for his man. "And that goes for me double, but that don't cut any ice. You stick right here, Sal. We'll give Stevie a chance to check out that store, and then we're gonna be moving."
"Well, I don't like it either," Trigger growled, "but I guess not for the same reasons. There'll be too many people in there now. That means too many witnesses.
Besides that, we're messing up the sweetest little operation I ever walked into."
Gio Scaldicci turned toward the rear seat and asked, "How'd you ever get onto a creepy joint like that, Mr. Trigger?"
The London enforcer shrugged his shoulders. "You learn to use what's available, kid, and don't forget that. Don't ever forget that. That creepy joint as you call it has given our thing a clean sweep in this part of the world. I just hate to see it getting messed up, that's all. Especially over a crumb like this Bolan."
The four men sat in a strained silence for another long moment, all eyes glued to the building across the street. Presently a man approached from the other side on a dead run. He pulled up panting beside the vehicle and reported, "Stevie's found a tunnel! He wants to know should he go on through!"
"O' course he should go on through!" Giliamo snarled. "Tell 'im to goddammit be careful and remember who he's going against!"
The messenger sped back into the night.
Giliamo said, "Well, well."
Nick Trigger produced a revolver and swung out the cylinder to check the load. He sighed and clicked it into place and said, "I guess we better go in just the same, Danno."
Sal Masseri swung outside with a Thompson sub under one arm, then leaned back in for a word to his boss. "I'll bring the other boys over, Danno," he said tightly.
"Do that."
"Uh, listen Danno. Big Angelo was a good boy. Anybody can have any part of Bolan they want, but when we get 'im, I get the target practice on his nuts."
"Sure Sal, I know how you feel," Giliamo told him.
Massed walked off into the darkness, the Thompson cradled casually in his arms.
Nick Trigger opened his door and slid his feet to the ground, remaining seated in the open doorway, no longer concerned about the dome light. He said, "I've got a feeling."
"Me too," Giliamo replied. He opened his door and stepped onto the street, then paused to glare across the roof of the car toward the museum. "He's in there, I know it."
At that precise instant a door opened across the way, dull light spilled forth, and a solitary figure in black stalked out. He halted and framed himself momentarily in the lighted doorway, then he sent a burst of fire from an automatic weapon into the air, and immediately disappeared into the surrounding darkness in a diving leap. The Executioner was no longer "in there."
The driver of the Mafia vehicle gasped, "Well, dig that cool bastard!"
But he was talking to himself. Danno Giliamo had gone to ground behind the car and Nick Trigger was scrambling for cover inside. The automatic weapon chattered again, but not harmlessly into the air this time. The window glass of the big vehicle exploded in an inward shower and Gio Scaldicci's head underwent an explosion of its own, pieces of the skull flying into the rear seat amid bloodied bubbles of brain tissue, and what was left of Gio slumped forward onto the steering wheel. The horn began sounding in an endless wail and presided over the louder booms and staccatos of combat weapons as thunder and lightning enveloped the night outside Museum de Sade.
It had not been an act of mindless bravado that sent Mack Bolan through that lighted doorway. He was angry, yes, and disgusted right down to the shivering center of himself, but the combat specialist had known precisely what he was doing.
The idea was blitz, from the German word meaning lightning war, and the intent was to shock the enemy, disorganize them, perhaps demoralize them, and then destroy them. Bolan knew what he was doing, from the first harmless burst into the air to all that followed.
The lighted car directly opposite his position had been a godsend. Even though he had just come from a lighted environment and his night vision had not been given time to develop, he was of course aware of the men grouped in and about that lit vehicle, and it was a natural target. The second burst from the Uziwent in for maximum effect. He saw Gio Scaldicci's head fragment, he saw the big guy in the rear scrambling for the floorboards, and he saw Danno Giliamo rolling frantically across the square in search of darkness. But heavy fire was already coming back at him from various areas of that darkness, and Bolan wanted to see more.
His third burst was to reach the gas tank and to make frictional .sparks ignite the ready fuel into a bonfire. He was rewarded: the big car went up in a towering fireball and with an explosion that rocked the earth beneath his feet.
But since someone out there had a Thompson, Bolan was not standing still for the thundering sweeps of that big chopper. He moved out with the shock of the explosion, circling deep around the fire and trying to get behind the main force, in the hope of backdropping them against the roaring flames. Someone rose up right in his path, grunting with surprise and fear, and Bolan cut him down with the butt of the Vziwithout breaking stride. He was following the traffic circle now, running along the street and coming around in the general area of the bookshop, moving recklessly through the open. Darkness was nowhere in that square now, the yellow glare of flames licking about in a wave
ring illumination of the entire area. The whole enemy force was apparently converging on the burning auto, shooting at only God knew what, Bolan didn't, and shouting excited instructions back and forth in a pyramiding scence of confusion.
Bolan reached the position he sought and threw himself to the ground at the curb of the traffic circle. The horizon thus presented was a beautiful one, to a combat infantryman, with the enemy highlighted as well-defined shadows against a blazing background. He emptied three clips into those shadows, grouping carefully and conserving the flow of ammo through the chattering weapon, until suddenly there was nothing left to shoot at.
Bolan lay there for a moment, listening and looking and refueling the Uzi. Utter silence had descended, except for the whooshing of the flames of the burning car. Bolan arose, inviting fire but receiving none, then slowly advanced across the island inside the traffic circle. The dead and the dying were sprawled about, and the hated smell of blood was everywhere he walked.
Too easy, Bolan was thinking, much too easy.
He stepped around a groaning man and found the man with the Thompson submachinegun lying on his back directly opposite the flaming vehicle. The guy was alive, but not very, though he was conscious and still gripping the Thompson to his chest. Bolan kicked the heavy gun away and said, "What's your name?"
"Get fucked," the guy whispered, and coughed up a hemorrhage.
"Who did it to the old man inside?" Bolan asked.
"Get… fucked."
Bolan moved on, peering at faces, trying to spot Danno Giliamo. The burning car was still roaring furiously. The firenght had been incredibly brief. Only now was the first reaction coming from the people inside the museum. Bolan was aware of blinds being whisked back and of faces peering out from the ground level windows.
And then he became aware of something far more menacing. Through the open door of the museum had erupted three men, all armed, one of them carrying a shotgun. Bolan's Vziwas instinctively up and ready but he hesitated, unsure of the identity of the three. They were gaping about at the scene of incredible carnage with disbelief projecting all the way out to Bolan.
The frozen confrontation held for a split second that seemed much longer, then the man with the shotgun gasped, "It's Bolan!" and made a fatal move. The Vzichattered at the same instant that the shotgun boomed; the man fell back into the entrance hall, zipped from groin to gullet, and Bolan's burst became a blazing figure-eight that swept the other two off the porch. Nothing heavy reached Bolan, but hot little things had dug at his ribs at the moment of the big boom, and he knew that he had picked up some pellets.
He wheeled about and went quickly back the way he'd come. He had just about pushed his luck too far, and it was time to be moving on. The police would be showing up any minute, and there was a familiar warm stickiness under his arm. He crossed the square, went past the bookshop, and on some subconscious impulse paused at the entrance to the alleyway and was swinging the Vziabout when something moved back there in the darkness and a choked voice urged, "Hey shit, don't, I'm outta bullets."
Bolan had already dodged back to the corner of the building for cover. He growled, "Send the gun out first, then yourself, hands on head."
A pistol hit the cobblestones and slid into view, then a thickset man moved hesitantly out of the shadows and into the flickering light of the square.
Bolan jabbed the muzzle of the TJziinto the man's belly. The guy sucked in his breath and said, "Hey shit, it's hot. The barrel's hot, huh?"
Bolan withdrew the little chattergun and spun the man around, shook him down for weapons, then pushed him forward. "Start walking," he commanded. "Straight ahead."
"Where we going?"
"Depends," Bolan said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Stevie Carbon. I'm in Danno's crew, under Sal Masseri. Or I was."
"Are you all done living, Stevie?" Bolan asked in a conversational tone.
"No sir, I sure hope not," came the strained reply.
They moved swiftly to the corner. Bolan shoved the man down the street toward the Lincoln. "Okay, Stevie, just keep on walking. Nice and quick and don't look back."
"Where we going?" the man wanted to know.
"Maybe to hell." Bolan allowed the neckstrap to support the Uziwhile he probed his ribs with careful fingertips.
"Christ, can you tear things up in a hurry," the man declared, striving for a buddy-buddy tone. "I figure I got no arguments with a guy like you. I mean, nothing personal you know."
Bolan knew a surge of weariness—not of the flesh but of the soul. "That's the screwy part of this whole thing, Stevie," he said coldly. "There's nothing personal in any of it, is there? And then we run into an old man who's been tortured clear out of his body. And suddenly it gets very, very, personal."
The man stumbled, caught himself, and quickly raised his hands again to clutch the back of his head. "Uh, tell me straight out, Bolan. Are you gonna kill me or not?"
"That depends, Stevie."
"On what?"
"On what you can tell me."
"Look I don't know nothing, Bolan. Besides that, uh, I've taken the oath of silence. You know about that, huh."
"You can die with that oath then, Stevie, if that's the way you want it."
"You know I want to livewith it, Bolan. You know that."
They walked on in silence, Bolan two paces behind his prisoner. Police sounds rose up in the distance, and Bolan felt like this was where he'd come in. They reached the Lincoln. Tiredly, Bolan commanded "You drive."
"Where to?"
"Like I said, Stevie, maybe clear to hell."
They got into the car and the man said, "I'll talk to you, Bolan."
"Start the car, then you can start your mouth," Bolan told him.
Though he was cold as ice on the outside, Bolan was experiencing an inner glow which meant that things were definitely beginning to look up. He had himself a prisoner of war, and not just an ordinary POW, either.
Bolan had no idea who Stevie Carbon was, or had been… but he knew who he was not. He was not the man seated next to him.
The Executioner had grabbed off a caporegime.
His POW was none other than Danno Giliamo.
Chapter Twelve
The interrogation
Nick Trigger, in all his years of gunbearing for the brotherhood, had never suffered such personal humiliation. He felt defeated, disgraced, and deeply dismayed at his own cowardly reaction to imminent death. He was alive, though. He kept telling himself that he was still alive, and that surely this counted for something. There was no profit for the family in a dead hero. When a guy saw how things were going, when he saw that nothing he could possibly do would change anything—then surely staying alive was more important than dying. Death was such a final damn thing—it never really seemed possible that a guy could actually cease to exist, not until he came face to face with death. Then he knew, yeah shit, boy, he really knew.
And what could he have done against that Bolan at a time like that? An act of God, that's what, had spared him from cremation in that damn car. He shivered violently in the mere remembrance of it. Another second, just one more second if he'd stayed with that car, and there'd be nothing left of Nick Trigger right now but a little pile of ashes. If he hadn't had sense enough to get the hell out of there when he did…
Nick was rationalizing his actions, and he was conveniently forgetting the fact that sheer revulsion, not combat sense, had driven him out of that car. Gio Scaldicci's blood and brains were all over the back seat and floor, and Nick had found himself lying face down in the mess. He had flung himself on through and out, and he'd been no more than ten feet away when the explosion came. Then he lay there stunned and half unconscious while Bolan chopped up Danno's hunting party. He had lain there also and watched the bastard in black walking quietly among the dead. He had heard him try to question Sal Massed, and still Nick had lain there, his gun no more than a couple of feet away from his outstretched hand, and he'd played dead, and he had ev
en said a couple of prayers.
He hadn't moved a muscle until after Bolan had struck down Stevie Carbon and the two boys he'd taken through the tunnel with him. Then, as Bolan walked back across the square, Nick slithered away in the other direction. He hadn't gotten to his feet until he was completely clear of the square, and then he'd jumped up and started running… running!
He was appalled at himself, despite the rationalizations. Nick was beginning to understand, though, why Mack Bolan had remained so long alive against everything the brotherhood had thrown at him. He understood why Danno had seemed so awed of the guy, so willing to humble himself and ask for help from someone outside his own family. When that Bolan bastard made a hit, he didn't fool around with no light feints. He didn't just hit, he broke hell all around a guy. For Christ's sake, who wouldn't lose his head at a time like that?
Well, something had to be done about him. Some thing that hadn't been tried before maybe, some new wrinkle. They couldn't let that guy get away with that kind of shit. Until a few minutes ago, Bolan had been just a name to Nick, something to hit, just another name on a contract and another job and maybe another rung up the ladder of rank. That was all changed now. He had seen at first hand what Bolan could do.
Nick himself had brought death to more than a a hundred men, yet it had remained for a guy like Mack Bolan to introduce Death to Nick Trigger, to make it a personal experience that Nick Trigger could understand. He understood it now, all right, and he wanted more than anything else to share that understanding with Mack the Bastard Bolan. He would, too, he decided.
The luckiest part of the whole fiasco, for Nick, was that nobody else knew. Apparently only Nick had survived. Nobody would ever have to know that Nick Trigger had played dead and watched the bastard turn his back and walk away, nobody would have to know that Nick had even been there when it happened.
Yeah, that was the luckiest part of all. Or so Nick Trigger thought.
They were rolling slowly up Tottenham toward Regents Park, and the conversation was accomplishing very little in the way of intelligence. Giliamo was glibly avoiding direct answers to sensitive questions, playing his role of dumb street soldier to the very hilt. Bolan had decided to let him play… for awhile. They swung onto Marylebone and up to Park Road.
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