Vendetta in Venice

by Don Pendleton

  It looked barely capable of remaining erect on its wheels, but the engine turned sweetly, and there were papers in a secret place behind the gaping glove compartment — insurance certificates, bills of sale, an agreement to buy the vehicle for scrap from an East German cooperative and permission to bring it into Italy for breaking up, which had been easy enough since he was a licensed scrap dealer and the yard was his own.

  He drove the Wartburg into the lane, willing himself not to glance at his watch. Time was running out on him and each second counted. Once back on the highway, he floored the pedal, staring anxiously ahead in search of the convoy's red taillights.

  They were only three miles short of the cloverleaf when he caught up with them. The road was twisting through hilly, densely wooded country, and that suited him fine. It was a bonus, too, that all the bikers were riding in front of the riot truck.

  Bolan was sitting with the six soldiers on a bench that ran the length of the truck's rear. No one paid any attention to the ancient East German truck as it rattled abreast of them. The nerve gas from Baracco's expertly lobbed grenade worked so fast that they wouldn't have had time to react anyway.

  All seven of them were out for the count before the Wartburg pulled in again to the right-hand side of the road after passing the Fiat. The men in the cab had noticed nothing.

  Two of the outriders were fifty yards ahead, the leading pair another hundred in front of them. Baracco passed the first couple, gunning the Wartburg's reconditioned engine, and approached the second. He waited until the road dipped into a valley and then he drew level. As soon as he couldn't see the rest of the convoy beyond the crest, he lifted his foot and swung the wheel violently to the right. The nearside fender crunched against the man riding on the outside, smashing his arm and leg. With the handlebars wrenched from the rider's grasp, the bike slewed sideways and cannoned into the second machine, knocking the second rider off balance.

  The second motorcyclist dropped his right foot to the ground, fighting the steering, but the sideways thrust of the collision, added to the momentum of their forward speed, was too much for him. The tires skidded on the wet pavement. Pivoting on his foot, he spun the bike and skated off the road into a screen of bushes, where his left leg was trapped beneath the bike's hot cylinders.

  Ahead of them the Wartburg screeched to a stop. Baracco leaped from the cab, holding a mini-Uzi machine pistol — another of the secrets concealed inside the wreck's decrepit body. Amid the tangle of machines and riders, the guy with the broken arm and leg was pushing himself to his knees, groaning. Beside him the four-cylinder BMW engine, freed of its load, howled up the scale as the rear wheel of the capsized bike spun faster and faster. The engine of the other bike had stalled. The cop was dragging himself out from under, unfastening the flap of his holster with his free hand.

  Baracco was down among the bushes twenty yards away, his 9 mm weapon primed. Light beams probed the night sky, silvered the branches of trees overhanging the road, then swung down to send twin reflections wavering along the rain-wet grade. The second pair of bikers had breasted the rise.

  Baracco was taking a chance. He wanted all four of the outriders in a single group. If he finished off the two fallen cops before the others braked, the second pair might have time to swerve off into the trees and make trouble for him. Waiting, on the other hand, might give the guy going for his gun time to zero in on the Corsican. Because he knew damned well the spill had been no accident.

  Baracco waited.

  The riot truck lumbered over the crest. There were four headlights now, illuminating what looked like a nighttime pileup: the fallen riders, the blood on the road, the damaged bikes and a truck angled crazily into the soft shoulder some yards ahead.

  The second pair of cops skidded to a halt beside the guy with the smashed side. As they dismounted, the man in the bushes yelled a warning. Orange light flickered among the leaves, and a stream of slugs whipped through the branches above Baracco's head. Twigs and fragments of bark were still raining on his head when he opened fire.

  The blast of the mini-Uzi cut through the single reports of the fallen cop's Browning. Both new arrivals were going for their guns when Baracco stitched a lethal figure eight looping from the dismounted cops to the man in the bushes by way of the wounded biker in the road. He triggered the entire 32-round magazine in a single deadly burst, raising the Uzi's barrel at the last minute to pump the final shots through the riot truck's windshield. Behind the starred glass, the driver and the young lieutenant leaned together in a crazy embrace and then slid to the floor of the cab.

  Beyond the Wartburg, the road curled away to the left. But the riot truck went straight on. It bumped over the shoulder, tore off a fender against the trunk of a tree, lumbered into a hollow and then, gathering speed, slammed into a rock outcrop and fell over onto its side.

  Baracco was running noiselessly toward it before the echoes of the crash had died away among the sighing branches overhead. He knew he didn't have to worry about the bikers. He had seen blood and bone splinters in the illumination spilled across the road by the BMW's headlight. But although it was a country road, although it was an isolated area, although there was another hour of darkness before dawn, there was always a chance that an all-night driver, an early-rising farmer, a police patrol, perhaps, might pass. And he had work to do before he split.

  He crawled into the space beneath the truck's crumpled mesh covering and tried to drag Bolan into the open air. A pocket flashlight showed him that there was a bruise on the unconscious man's temple, but otherwise he seemed to be unhurt. He was, however, handcuffed to the guards flanking him, and the wiry Corsican was unable to maneuver all three out together.

  Baracco cursed. He lifted his head and listened. Was there a faint hum of traffic in the distance? Sure, but it was a continuous hum, rising and falling; it was heavies on the mile-away autostrada. Not a single vehicle was approaching along the country road.

  Backing out from beneath the mesh, Baracco loped around to the cab and went through the pockets of the officer and the driver. No keys. He tried the soldiers in back. Negative.

  He bit his lip. Should he simply waste the man here and go home? He shook his head. He hadn't worked his guts out all this time to see his meticulously planned racket collapse at the first push of the first person to penetrate it. He had to get the son of a bitch away and choke the truth out of him, find out how many more snoopers were in on the Cernic deal. Because he knew damned well it wasn't something the guy could have dreamed up all by himself, whoever he was.

  And Baracco had to find out who the others were so that he could eliminate them, too. Find out, as well, just how they had gotten onto him in the first place. Yes, he had to free the imposter so that he could work him over. First, though, get him out of the damned truck and away from the men he was manacled to.

  A memory stirred. The Cernic deal was the first time he had ever fouled up on an escape. Well, not fouled up, but been fooled by some smartass. But it wasn't the first time an operation had gone wrong. No fault of Baracco's, but Conrad and his team had laid an egg with Wünsche, the embezzler from Denmark.

  Baracco flashed his light around the riot truck. He hadn't guessed wrong. There was salvage gear clipped to the back of the cab: a foam fire extinguisher, a shovel, a pick, steel shears. And a small ax.

  He unshipped the ax and crawled back beneath the mesh. Four minutes later he was dragging Bolan into the open air. The Executioner was alone now, but with an empty, bloodstained handcuff dangling from each wrist.

  Baracco dragged him to the Wartburg's cab and propped him up on the passenger side. The dim light from the instrument panel illuminated the unconscious man's dye-streaked features. What was there about the man that seemed so tantalizingly familiar?

  Until he saw the murderer's mug shot in the papers, Baracco had never laid eyes on Cernic. This man looked like Cernic, but he wasn't Cernic. So why, now that he knew that, was the face still reminding him of... Who?
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br />   He fished a rag from the glove compartment, moistened it in the wet grass and wiped the dye from the man's face. He frowned. With one hand he covered the close-cropped hair. With the other forearm he blocked the view of the cheap Czech clothes. He was staring at a determined chin, a strong nose and lips that could be set in an implacable resolve. He thumbed open an eyelid.

  The eye was a cold, hard blue.

  Baracco's breath hissed through his teeth and he swore. The realization hit him with stunning force — Bolan! The bastard who had wasted Conrad's team, poked his nose into the archives of half the police forces in Europe and bested Baracco himself — with a nerve gas just like the one he used himself — after he had lifted him from his hotel in The Hague and ferried him away with the Dutch terrorist.

  Why the hell hadn't he realized before?

  Damn, because he was expecting a tough character with cropped red hair and that's what he got. Because, if he'd thought about it at all, he'd figured Bolan was five countries away.

  And after he had discovered the switch?

  This was the first time he'd really looked carefully. The moment he'd seen the dye, he'd slammed him into the delivery truck, and after that it was all action at the border checkpoint. Baracco couldn't blame himself for that! Baracco could never blame himself for anything. And now that he knew who he had, it was more urgent than ever to get him away from here and make him talk.

  But there was one more chore to handle first. Baracco didn't know how much, if anything, Bolan had said to his guards on the trip south. But he couldn't afford to take chances. It was possible that he had spilled the whole story in an attempt to establish his true identity. And even if they hadn't believed him, a fragment of the real story might stick.

  The Corsican wasn't going to allow that. Those men must die.

  He left the Executioner in the Wartburg's cab — the gas from the grenade would keep him quiet for at least another hour — and hurried back to the riot truck. He recovered the document case with the money in it and the Walther PPK that had been taken from Bolan. Might as well sow the seeds of suspicion that he had somehow overcome the guards and then taken off with confederates who had ambushed the convoy.

  Quickly and efficiently the Corsican strangled two of the unconscious soldiers. Birds flapped angrily away from the treetops in the predawn gloom as the remaining four shots in the Walther disposed of the remaining quartet.

  Baracco threw the gun beside the truck. He was wearing gloves, so the weapon would be covered with Bolan's prints. As an extra hint to the investigators, the Walther, like the rnini-Uzi that had eliminated the bikers and the men in the cab, was chambered for 9 mm parabellum rounds.

  On the way back to the Wartburg, the Corsican heard a low, bubbling groan from beneath the trees. He pushed hastily through the bushes and found that the cop who had opened fire on him with his Browning was still alive. His guts had been blasted apart by the killstream from the mini- Uzi, but his chest heaved in agonized gasps, his lips were moving and the beam of Baracco's flashlight struck a gleam of light from his wide-open eyes.

  He was trying to say something, mouthing some plea, but the Corsican didn't have time to translate. "Friend," he said genially, "I'll do you a favor."

  When the riot truck had fallen on to its side, the impact had split away parts of the rock outcrop. Baracco came back, hefting a ten-pound fragment, and crushed the dying cop's skull.

  By the time the first farm truck stopped by the slaughter that half covered the road, he was four miles away, heading east into the sunrise and aiming for the next junkyard.

  19

  It happened that way sometimes in the hill country north of the low-lying marshes around Venice — storms that had ravaged the mountains all the way from Yugoslavia to the Alps withdrew placidly to the west, leaving a clear sky behind them.

  Bolan opened his eyes and stared upward into limpid blue. His temples throbbed, there was a lump on his forehead and he felt like he was halfway through a king-size hangover. But only halfway.

  He was lying on wet grass. He moved his limbs experimentally. They were free. There were handcuffs on each wrist, but the wrists weren't handcuffed together. He frowned, bending his arms so that the bracelets came into view. An empty cuff dangled from the steel circlet on each wrist, and there was dried blood on the steel.

  Without moving his head, Bolan slid his eyes from side to side. He could see stacks of twisted, rusting metal, an ancient automobile with wide footboards and a rectangular body. There was an odor of diesel and hot engine oil carried on a gust of wind that stirred his hair. Behind him he could hear the ticking of cooling metal.

  Something moved by one of the heaps of wreckage. Squinting — still without moving his head — he located the figure of a man. He was strolling up and down, methodically feeding rounds into an ammunition clip.

  A stocky man with powerful shoulders and a jutting chin.

  Memory flooded back.

  Bolan remembered everything down to the smallest detail, up to the time he was hustled into the Fiat riot truck. He had no recollection at all of the night journey, the Wartburg three-tonner or the gas grenade; he assumed his aches and pains were due to the beating he had received from the carabinieri.

  But what had happened? How the hell had he ended up in Baracco's hands?

  The magazine was loaded. The Corsican shoved the clip into the butt of a mini-Uzi, ramming it home with the palm of his hand. He turned to approach the Executioner's prone figure.

  Bolan decided to play possum, which saved his life.

  He assumed he was expected to be unconscious; he didn't know how he'd gotten where he was or how he'd been knocked cold, but he guessed Baracco was making one of his transport switches. He should have been unconscious: only a man with the Executioner's great reserves of strength, his battle-honed resilience, his determination to keep in shape would have been conscious in that junkyard at that moment.

  After he had eliminated the escort, Baracco had reckoned the nerve gas would keep Bolan out for at least another hour. He miscalculated by fifty percent. It was only thirty minutes since he had steered the Wartburg back onto the country road. Daylight had returned, but the sun hadn't yet appeared over the rim of the mountains to the east. The Executioner was as mentally awake as he had ever been, but he displayed no outward sign.

  As Baracco passed within three feet of Bolan's head, he took in his slack mouth, his stertorous breathing, and went on walking. He circled an old rectangular sedan with the wide running boards, then unlatched and lifted the hood. After manually flooding the carburetor beneath a gravity gas tank, he bent down in front of the radiator and cranked the handle projecting from the front of the engine, which wheezed and choked.

  With shoulders heaving, the Corsican bobbed up and down, spinning the heavy crankshaft. No dice. He went back to the door and moved one of the quadrant levers. When he hauled up on the crank handle this time, the engine caught with a rumble and a roar.

  Once it was idling smoothly, he returned to Bolan, but the Executioner had vanished. Baracco stood stock-still and cursed. It couldn't be possible! Bolan should have been out cold for — automatically he glanced at his watch: strict timetables were the essence of his racket — another twenty-five or thirty minutes.

  Could somebody, some ally, perhaps, have followed them all the way from the frontier and lifted the guy while the Corsican's back was turned? No way. Could one of the guards, a biker cop, have climbed in back of the Wartburg to surface here in this yard and take back the prisoner? Negative. Remembering the roadside carnage, Baracco knew those men were dead.

  Okay, so the impossible must have happened. He had underrated Bolan; the bastard had overcome the effects of the gas quicker than expected.

  The guy had been shamming. So what? He still couldn't be far away. No engine had started, nobody had passed the sedan on the way to the gate. Bolan had to still be in the yard.

  The jaw jutted more aggressively than ever. Baracco thumbed the
mini-Uzi onto full-auto and started to patrol the aisles between the stacks of wreckage. It shouldn't be too difficult: he knew Bolan was unarmed. All he had to do was locate him, flush him out and press the trigger. Nothing permanent, though. He wanted that creep alive. A short burst across the legs should do it. See how far the smartass could run then! But the pain from shattered kneecaps would be nothing, the Corsican thought grimly, to what he had in mind for the Executioner once they reached the end of their journey...

  The machine pistol's stubby muzzle questing left and right, he walked briskly and openly down the center of each aisle. He had nothing to fear. The only defense Bolan would have, could have, would be a length of jagged metal torn from a wreck, or something heavy — a brake drum, a starter motor — that he could throw. And for either of those, Bolan had to be at close quarters to be effective, far closer than the little stuttergun.

  Baracco made a circuit of the whole yard, but found nothing. Okay, he could play the waiting game, too. He had all the cards. He halted near the old sedan. Should he cut the engine and listen, wait to hear some tiny giveaway sound, a shifting of metal, the tinkle of a displaced washer or bolt?

  The hell with it. The heap was difficult enough to start as it was. Why make trouble for himself? Why go through the rigors of swinging that damn engine? Why risk flooding the damned carburetor and have to wait fifty minutes or more while the thing dried out? He left the engine running.

  Bolan had to be somewhere in the yard. He couldn't have made it to the shack at the entrance. True, the watchman wasn't there yet, but Bolan would have had to pass Baracco to get there.

  And he couldn't have left any other way. Unlike some of the car graveyards, this one was surrounded by a high wooden fence, which was quite new. There were no gaps. None of the scrap heaps were near enough to the fence for a man to make the top in a single leap. And climbing it, even if his hands could reach the top, would involve noise as his feet scrabbled for a hold.