Put it all together and call it Rockport, Mass.—and you’ve discovered one of the most beautiful spots on the American continent.
Artists, mariners, and merchants congenially rub elbows and constitute the stable population—or those who call the place home through good times and bad. Tourists by the thousands throng here during the summers, and some even brave the harsh New England winters to sample Colonial America at off-season rates.
And, yeah, even at one-thirty on a hellish morning at the edge of winter, Rockport could be a nice place to find yourself. Bolan had been there once before, as a kid on a rare weekend at the seashore, and except for a new motel here and there he could find no signs of change to conflict with that sharply etched memory of a far happier time and visit.
According to Bolan’s intelligence notebook, there were no Mafia activities here—not in any business sense. But Harold the Skipper was known to have a weekend retreat up near Pigeon Cove—and there was some interesting history connected with that fact which would not be found in the ordinary textbooks.
The underworld strongman of Chelsea had once operated a charter boat in the area for sportsfishermen—and once he had unsuccessfully tried to muscle a shakedown racket on the commercial fisherman of Rockport and neighboring Gloucester. That had been in the old days, when Harold Sicilia was just a small time hood with bigtime ambitions.
He’d received his first big shot in the arm shortly after World War II when he negotiated a “disposal contract” with the Mafia bosses of Boston. The Italian Mob was in a big war with the Irish Gang at that time, with Boston up for grabs and the Italians grabbing harder and faster than the opposition. There were a lot of dead ex-enemies to be disposed of during that brief but very hot war, and talk around Greater Boston at the time had it that Skipper Sicilia was burying more bodies at sea than the U.S. Navy.
At a Senate Committee hearing on organized crime in the early ’50’s, a witness declared: “I’ll bet you’d find more concrete at the bottom of Sandy Bay than you’ll see around Boston Common.”
No one had ever dragged the suggested area for evidence, but it was common knowledge that burial at sea had made Harold the Skipper a big man in local underworld circles. He had quickly expanded from the realm of mere disposal to the much more profitable field of murder by contract, completing the circle; his operation became a package deal, a murder-disposal monopoly which he parlayed into an ever widening circle of encroachment into the local rackets.
When the acknowledged Big Boss of Boston, BoBo Binaca, abruptly disappeared from the scene, Sicilia moved in on Chelsea and proclaimed himself “coordinator” of all that moved and breathed in that city’s underworld, as well as “enforcer” of all Greater Boston.
Nobody had contested Skip’s claims to Chelsea.
But many neighborhood bosses in the Boston area openly dared the fisherman from Rockport to try any enforcing in their territories.
It was this situation, many observers felt, which produced the latest round of gang wars to plague the Boston area. Sicilia, forever the ambitious opportunist, had tried to move into the vacuum created by Binaca’s disappearance and establish himself as the de facto boss of Greater Boston.
Others had different ideas.
Most notably, the national council of Capo’s did not go along with Sicilia’s designs. Enforcer maybe, sure—but under a man with some real stature. Harold the Skipper was admirably equipped to run the muscle franchise in Boston. But he was not a Capo. Moreover, he would never be a Capo.
Al 88 had been brought into the picture and his identity kept a carefully guarded secret, especially from the local contestants. And the national council had provided him with a force of gunners to equal Sicilia’s elite cadre of assassins.
And then the Boston wars had started in earnest—but never as an open contest between La Commissione and Sicilia—things were not done this way. The old men at the national level believed in finesse. They would never openly challenge a local power or use obvious muscle to settle local disputes. The thing could always go sour. Their chosen opponent could emerge as a popular favorite of the locals, and that could lead to a very embarrassing situation. So the counter-war on Harold the Skipper was engaged in with considerable “finesse” and intrigue.
Sicilia, then, had backed down a little … but just a little. The tensions remained, Al 88’s strong hand upon Boston remained, a surface peace developed, political connections were re-established and strengthened, new clout routes into the scandalized police organizations were quietly established … and through it all Harold the Skipper had cooled it, quieted it and awaited the next golden opportunity.
He sent his wife on an extended tour of Europe and tucked his only kid away in a private school, far removed from the sounds of warfare, then he gathered his forces around him like a protective shield and waited for a break.
Sicilia was not a particularly intelligent man, but he was a wily and a clever one—and he had good survival instincts. If the nationals did not admire Skip Sicilia, at least they had to respect him as a strong force on the local scene. This they did. And they also cooled it—and waited and watched.
The Skipper remained a marked man on the national level, however. He would not prosper, he would not grow and he would not live much beyond the duration of the present stalemate.
Much of this information Bolan gleaned from his interrogation of Books Figarone during that tense 90-minute drive to Rockport. He also learned that several of the local bosses plus the mysterious Al 88 had early leaped to the conclusion that Sicilia was behind “the Bolan snatch.”
Doubts had quickly arisen, though, that the Skipper from Rockport had the necessary “class” to execute such a flawless tour de force against the man whom all Mafiadom regarded with awe—Mack Bolan; and the final verdict held that Sicilia was not the engineer in question. Tentative investigations in that direction only served to confirm that feeling—and not even Al 88 was too keen on invading the fisherman’s territory without a bit of firm evidence to back him up.
As for Figarone … he had been a popular arbiter between the Skipper and dissident Boston factions. He had, in effect, functioned as an unofficial consigliere, or trusted adviser, throughout the Boston wars. This, he explained to Bolan, accounted for the fact that the besieged neighborhood boss finally came clean with him and agreed to accept his “help” in this present red-faced situation.
Bolan was not so positive that Harold the Skipper had actually “agreed” to anything. The guy seemed to fit too close in a mold which Bolan had come to recognize as a classic pattern for street-corner punks made good.
They weren’t so smart, no—in some cases, they were actually stupid—but these guys had come through the jungle of survival the hard way, and you could not simply charge it all off to luck. There was another force at work in the lives of such men, a jungle cunning combined with a total disregard for any rules, their own included—they lived their lives by ear, and they responded to an instinct which was as old as life on earth.
And they were very, very dangerous predators.
Figarone represented a different variety of Mafia mentality—the cold, shrewd, business approach to survival. A man like Figarone would carefully weigh alternatives and plot out a course of action, which—though as unconscionable and vicious as any—also contained certain elements of rational thought and logic.
Books Figarone had never been a street punk. He’d grown up in the suburbs, without the daily pressures of mere survival. He’d had the benefit of a good education, an exposure to the social graces, and he generally behaved as a respectable citizen—on the surface, at least.
The attorney had probably never pulled a trigger on another human being. His hands were “clean”—only his soul was dirtied, stained by scores of wrecked lives and ruined careers, and damned to hell by more sins against humanity than any book could record.
Of the two types, Bolan felt that the Figarone variety were far more. dangerous to society as a whole
. Not, of course, in a man-to-man fight. This type folded up quickly and stole away when violence began bouncing back at them. They had not learned the game of physical survival in an uncertain arena—and they had, in fact, no belly at all for such games.
Harold the Skipper would be an entirely different item. He would be hanging in there until the last gasp, until the final drop of blood had leaked out of him, and he would be fighting back all the while. That was the way of the jungle predator.
No … Bolan was not all that certain that Sicilia had “agreed” to anything.
And his blood ran cold every time he thought of Johnny and Val as being subject to the dubious mercies of a hood like Harold Sicilia.
Bolan had never felt a stronger challenge nor a more pressing cause. And he was more than a little uneasy about the new turn of events.
The rear seat and the trunk of the rented vehicle were loaded with a hastily acquired arsenal. There had been no time to transport his “war wagon”—a Chevy panel job fully equipped for blitzkrieg—to this new war zone.
Weapons were highly important to a one-man army.
They were the only difference that equalized the odds, that provided the hellfire beneath which he could wage an effective campaign.
And Bolan was not at all satisfied with the weaponry he’d been able to pick up on that hurried shopping expedition through Boston.
There was a bag of fragmentation grenades, a few smoke bombs, a package of incendiary flares, a couple of satchel charges which were too old to really be relied upon, a pound and a half of “goop”—plastics explosives.
He’d used up all the mortar rounds on the hit at Shot’n Feathers, and he’d abandoned the piece there.
He had the Beretta and the AutoMag hawgleg; he had the heavy chopper and a lighter machine-pistol—with plenty of ammo for all those.
And that was all he had.
It would have to be enough.
Maybe he would not need any of it.
Maybe it never snowed in Boston in the wintertime, either.
Bolan knew better. He would need every damned thing he could get his hands on, and more.
Harold the Skipper was not the kind of guy to simply give up and walk away.
Bolan could only hope that, from it all, Johnny and Val would walk away from it, whole and healthy, alive and happy.
But there was one hell of a cold ball nestling in the center of his chest, and he had learned to recognize the feeling.
Death was hovering close by. Death … and more than death. Hell itself was yawning, somewhere across the trail ahead.
Bolan knew it.
He, too, was a product of that human jungle … and he was a predator who preyed only upon predators.
And that required a motif of entirely another sort.
10: Madness
Bolan was at the wheel, Figarone perched tensely beside him and acting as navigator. They had not talked much during the preceding thirty minutes. Bolan had picked the Mafioso’s brains of what he’d wanted; from that point he preferred the company of his own thoughts.
He had mentally reviewed all the events and intelligence of the previous tension-packed 24 hours, then he’d rechecked his conclusions and his angle of attack—and found not too much of comfort in the results. It was the best he had, sure, and the only way he had to go … but there was such an awful lot at stake here … this was not a routine hit on the enemy.
He would not—could not—entrust the safety of Johnny and Val to any third party or parties. It was not that he regarded himself as the only competent one in the field—it was simply that the thing was too delicate for casual handling. It had to be done just right—with just the right feel—and Bolan knew that no one else had his feel for the task at hand.
If Sicilia was still feeling tricky—and Bolan had to plan his own actions as though that were an established fact—then the guy could not be given a single option.
It had to be quick, decisive—and Bolan would have to hold all the aces.
He intended to do just that, if it were humanly possible.
A low overcast was lying over the entire area, and there was a darkness in that land such as can only be experienced on those remote New England coasts. A stiff wind was coming off the sea, and Bolan knew that it would be churning the surf and flinging it high into the rocks.
He had put the light topcoat on over his black suit and pulled a snapbrim hat low across his forehead. Tinted lenses in wire frames covered his eyes. For a few seconds, anyway, he could pass as a Figarone hardman.
And a few seconds were all he would need.
That was all it would take to jam the Beretta Belle into Sicilia’s throat and offer him a quick alternative to sudden death. It would be the sort of alternative a man like Harold the Skipper would readily understand.
And that was the whole plan … as simple as that. At such a time, the simpler the better.
It was not, however, destined to work out quite that simply.
They had come in via Highway 128 to Gloucester, then onto Route 127, which entered Rockport as the main drag.
It was 1:30—they had arrived thirty minutes early, per Bolan’s intent. At that hour the little village was rolled up and tucked in tightly. As they rolled on toward Dock Square, not another moving vehicle was in sight or sound. Only here and there did a light show from a dwelling. The street lamps along the square did little to dispel the heavy darkness.
Bolan sent the big sedan cruising through the square and onto Granite Street, the main coastal road. Just north of the village he turned around in the drive of a luxury motel which was closed for the season, then picked his way back through the village and onto South Street, moving casually in a quiet recon of the area.
By the time he eased to the curb just downrange from Motif #1, the famous red wharf, Bolan had a fair feel for the lie of this possible battleground.
The time was twenty minutes before two o’clock.
Gruffly, Figarone asked him, “Mind if I light a cigar?”
Bolan replied, “Go ahead. Do whatever you’d naturally do.”
The lawyer got the cigar going, then he said, “You going to tell me what you’ve got in mind?”
“I’m going to grab the Skipper,” Bolan told him. “Then I’m going to trade him his life for their’s.”
Figarone grunted. “Kill him when you’ve done with him. The others, too—all his boys. Otherwise your deal with me has no meaning.”
“What deal?” Bolan growled.
The lawyer chewed furiously on the tip of the cigar for a moment, then he said, “You led me to a certain understanding. I expect you to honor that.”
Quietly, Bolan informed him, “I led you to nothing. I give you the same lead now that I gave you then. I’ll let you live awhile, Books. I’ll let you live past me. But I’m not taking you on as a lifetime assignment.”
“I don’t need your whole lifetime,” the lawyer muttered. “I just need a few more minutes of that willing gun of yours.”
“My gun is not for hire,” Bolan replied flatly. “And a few minutes could be my lifetime. I take it a minute at a time, counselor. Maybe you should do the same.”
“That’s a hell of an attitude,” the attorney complained. “I put myself out on a limb for—”
“Knock it off,” the Executioner commanded, the death voice sliding back into focus. “You put yourself on that limb twenty years ago—so don’t start reminding me of my obligations. I’m trying very hard, in your case, to forget my obligations.”
“Okay, okay,” Figarone replied meekly.
“And I suggest that you breathe very carefully for the next twenty minutes or so unless you want a whole new deal.”
The Cambridge boss chose to not respond to that suggestion. Instead he peered at the luminous dial of his wristwatch and said, “Skip could have gotten here by now. He lives only an hour away. I wonder what he’s doing.”
“Tell me again about the place at Pigeon Cove.”
“S
ure, well, it’s just a shack now. Keeps his boat there. It’s only a mile or so from here. He doesn’t go there much, anymore, or so I’m told. Used to be a small warehouse for some lobster fishermen. Skip inherited the place from an uncle, along with his original boat. That’s how he got into the business in the first place. I guess he keeps it now mainly for sentimental reasons.”
“Or as a good place to stash hot merchandise,” Bolan mused.
“Yeah, that too. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s where he’s got them. Or else on the boat. I don’t understand why you don’t just crash on in there and take them.”
“It’s no time to be crashing anywhere,” Bolan said tiredly. “You remember that, too. You play it cool, Books—very damned cool.”
“Depend on it,” the lawyer murmured.
Depend also, Bolan was thinking, on me not crashing in any place where Johnny and Val could fall into the line of fire. There were better ways for such delicate missions.
The two men sat in silence for another twenty minutes.
At five minutes past two, Figarone suggested, “Maybe we should pull on up there, by the wharf. Maybe they’re sitting back somewhere waiting for us to show first.”
Quietly, Bolan said, “There hasn’t been a car move in this town for half an hour, except this one.”
“So maybe they got here first.”
Bolan sighed, silently agreeing with the attorney. He cranked the engine and slowly moved the car along the curb until they reached the appointed rendezvous.
He left the headlamps on and the engine running, and he told Books Figarone, “Pray, counselor.”
It had grown cold in the vehicle during the long wait, but the disbarred attorney from Cambridge was perspiring freely. He said, “You can’t hold me responsible if the jerk doesn’t show, Bolan.”
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