Vendetta in Venice

by Don Pendleton

  From this height, for the first time, he could see Baracco and Mariella. They were crouched by a winch in the middle of the trail, paying out a hawser hooked to an ancient Wartburg truck. And the truck was rolling slowly down the grade toward the viaduct. The squeaking was coming from one of its wheels.

  Bolan's mind raced. They hadn't heard him hammer in the first piton; they would surely hear the second, especially since he was now high enough to be visible. But the higher he rose, the tougher target he would present. He was exposed, but from the winch it would be an extremely fine-angled shot, and the stone parapet would obscure the sightline.

  If the gunners moved out wide, of course, they wouldn't be able to miss. But this was something they couldn't do: they had to remain operating the winch until the truck gained the unsafe central portion of the bridge. If they left the rope and let it run free, the truck might simply come to rest against the parapet... or even go over the edge before it reached the weakened section. And this would at once provoke a suspicion that the man at the wheel hadn't been in control of his senses at the moment of the accident.

  The chosen scenario, on the other hand, was based on the assumption that the victim was driving normally when the viaduct collapsed beneath him. A wrecked truck beneath a structure that was still intact didn't fit the picture at all.

  For Bolan the equation was simple: until he made the old track and was in a direct line of fire, the higher he climbed and the quicker he was, the safer he would be.

  Relatively.

  The sounds of hammering registered over the thrashing of wind and rain as Bolan stepped onto the second piton. He heard a shout from the winch, followed by the bark of a heavy-caliber pistol. But he paid no attention. The squeaking was perilously close. The ancient truck was rolling slowly out over the first arch. He found a crevice and started on the third piton.

  Another shot cracked out. And another. Something that sounded like a large insect hummed through the air behind Bolan's head. Seconds later a shower of sandstone chips lashed his forehead as a slug flattened itself against a block near his right hand. Instinctively he shrank back, and the hammer slipped from his grasp and fell.

  Bolan swore. Was the peg wedged in firmly enough to take his weight? He wrenched the four-pound AutoMag from its holster and tapped the piton with the butt. Two more near misses sent fragments of weathered stone flying from the parapet above him. He reversed the gun and blasted two thunderous shots toward the winch. Baracco and the woman ducked behind the winch.

  And it was then that the warrior's luck held good. The remaining few feet of stonework were so degraded that there was no need to use the last peg. He swarmed up the fissured wall until at last his lacerated fingers grasped the parapet itself. He heaved himself up painfully for the last time to subside facedown on the old railbed beyond the lip.

  The truck, between the second and third arches, was just drawing level with him. Through the grimed window of the cab, he could see the lolling head of Hal Brognola drooped over the wheel. Bolan levered himself to his feet, knees trembling. He launched himself toward the door of the cab, prepared to wrench it open and dive for the hand brake.

  At that instant the guns by the winch opened fire again. Bolan was hit in midleap and flung to the ground. The Wartburg rolled on over the third arch.

  Then two things happened. In the cab, Brognola jerked abruptly upright and blinked his eyes. In back of the truck, a heap of old sacks was thrust aside and Gudrun appeared. She vaulted over the tailgate and dashed for the cab before the astonished pair by the winch recovered enough to fire at her.

  Snatching open the door, she jumped on the running board, leaned in over the awakened Brognola and hauled frantically on the hand brake between the seats. Shuddering, the Wartburg ground to a halt with its front wheels only inches from the section over the central arch. The gravel ballast that had once supported the track was long gone, but on the muddy, weed-grown surface of the viaduct a network of small cracks now appeared, raying outward like the filaments of a spiderweb.

  "Quick!" Gudrun shouted. "For your life's sake, man, drop out the far side and lie underneath. Move!"

  Brognola was tougher than he looked. He had suffered a lot of pain, but he wasn't physically damaged, which explained why the drug effects were wearing off quicker than Baracco had anticipated. And although the clouds veiling his mind hadn't entirely dispersed, he was alert enough to react to the note of command in Gudrun's voice. He shot into action by reflex.

  As she dropped back to the road on her side of the truck, the big Fed threw open the other door and fell out onto the ground. Together they crawled beneath the front wheels, where the angle of the grade protected them from bullets whistling their way from behind the winch.

  "What the hell's going on?" Brognola demanded, the aftereffects of the narcotic still blurring his words. "Where am I? Who are you? What are we doing here?"

  In three crisp sentences Gudrun told him. "But it's your friend I'm concerned about," she finished. "He was hit just before I pushed you out of the cab. Right now he's lying between the offside rear wheel and a kind of platform built out from this viaduct like the flying bridge of a ship."

  "Mack? Where? I'll go get him." The urgency of his old friend's predicament galvanized Brognola. He wormed his way to the rear of the truck, scuttled swiftly out to grab the Executioner's ankles, then dragged him back into shelter as a fusillade of bullets clanged into the ancient vehicle above their heads.

  "Is he hurt bad?" Gudrun asked anxiously.

  It was Bolan himself who replied. "I'm all right. I was knocked over by the impact because I was in midair when I was hit. But it's not even a flesh wound. Just a crease on top of the shoulder. It's hardly bleeding. But I thought I ought to play possum in case they decided to have a second try." He looked up from under the rear axle, wincing as he took his weight on his elbows. "If only I'd been able to make that climb with the Heckler & Koch on my back," he said, aiming the AutoMag at the killers farther up the slope. Gudrun chugged out a burst from the Beretta.

  "You take who you want," she muttered. "I'm gunning for that Czech bitch!" The two guns fired simultaneously. Mariella and the Corsican ducked hastily out of sight behind an old Steyr sedan that was facing back up the grade a few yards behind the winch.

  "If we could keep them pinned down there while Ha! restarts the engine and backs off the bridge..." Bolan began. He stopped talking and looked upward. Rain was falling on his head.

  Baracco had loosed off a volley from behind the sedan and a stray bullet, penetrating the wooden back of the Wartburg's cab, had smashed into the hand brake, knocking it off its ratchet and allowing the truck to resume its interrupted descent. Slowly, inexorably, their cover withdrew, leaving the three of them exposed on the rain-swept viaduct. The truck rolled onto the cracked center section, continued across it... and then suddenly disappeared.

  As soon as it received the full weight of the Wartburg, the arch disintegrated. The entire center, along with the truck, dropped from sight, plummeting downward with a roar like that of the trains the viaduct had once carried on their way. From below, the shattering reverberation of the impact was followed by a cannonade of sandstone blocks and small stones from the raw edge of the chasm. A cloud of choking yellow dust mushroomed up over the gap and blanketed them from sight.

  Through the swirling fog they heard Baracco shouting, "No, no! Don't shoot now! We'll get them alive and drop them over onto the wreckage."

  "All right, Bart," Mariella called. "But how do we..."

  "It's perfect," the Corsican interrupted. "It works in fine with my original plan. Two extra bodies will make the ambush of the riot truck more believable. They'll think Bolan — or Cernic — was on his way back to Austria with the driver!"

  His voice sank to a murmur, and they could distinguish no more words. When the dust had cleared enough for them to make out the winch they could see him standing by the blonde and pointing up the hill toward his property. Mariella nodded. Sh
e climbed into the sedan and Baracco started to run back up the grade.

  Bolan was frowning. "There's a helicopter up at his place," Brognola told him. "They'll be able to take us from two sides at once."

  "Especially if we stay blocked here," the Executioner said tightly. "And look."

  He pointed at the Steyr. Crouched in the driver's seat, Mariella was reversing the vehicle cautiously toward the bridge. She steered around the winch, following the long snake of the hawser that had snapped when the Wartburg had fallen. The rear wheels of the Steyr ran out over the first archway.

  Bolan hesitated. He was conventional enough to hate killing a woman — even if she intended to kill him. Gudrun had no such scruples; she emptied the Beretta's magazine. The sedan's rear window starred. Bolan compromised and fired low. A tire rolled off a wheel rim and gasoline sprayed from the drilled tank below the spare, but the old sedan continued to advance.

  When the vehicle was over the second arch, less than twelve yards away, Mariella stopped and ducked out of sight behind the padded bench seat. Clearly her orders were to block them there, as Bolan had thought, until Baracco arrived with the chopper.

  The rain redoubled in force. Beneath them, they sensed the viaduct tremble in a surge of wind. Then, with no warning, it happened again. Safe enough while the structure was whole, rigid and anchored at each end, the second arch had lost its stability once the viaduct was breached.

  Beneath the car the old railbed appeared to warp. They watched, horrified, as the parapet on one side dipped sickeningly, canting the surface at a crazy angle. The heavy sedan started sliding toward the edge as huge cracks zigzagged across the width of the bridge. They could see Mariella frantically fighting to reach the door on the upper side and open it.

  Then, as thunderous as an artillery barrage, road, parapet, refuge, car and guardrails slumped into nothingness, vanishing in a cloud of dust as dense as the first.

  In the distance they heard the whine of a turbojet and then the clatter of rotors. In a few minutes Baracco would be back gunning for them in the helicopter. And though the Corsican's confederate had vanished, they were in a worse position than ever... vulnerable as ducks in a fairground shooting galley, marooned on a single isolated pillar of the ruined viaduct.

  25

  Gudrun's hair was plastered across her cheek. When the dust had cleared somewhat, she asked with a quaver in her voice, "Is there any... I mean, after all you climbed up... would there be any chance of us climbing down?"

  It was Brognola who peered over the edge into the dizzying depths of the valley. The single pile on which they were marooned, now that it lacked anchorage at both ends, was swaying like a reed in the wind. Every few seconds they could hear another shower of stones break loose and plunge down to add to the two rockfalls strewn across the road, the stream and the floor of the defile.

  He shook his head. "One man climbing up a rigid viaduct was crazy enough. But for three of us climbing down with the pillar rocking like this... We might just as well jump over."

  "When Bart comes back, do you think he?.."

  This time it was the Executioner who answered her. "Once he sees his lady friend's gone — and with her his Mafia link — there'll be no point in his carrying on this plan to take us alive. Like you said, Gudrun, this man's at his most dangerous when he's mad. And he'll be mad as hell now. Remember, too, that he doesn't like to leave witnesses."

  Brognola was about to speak again when Bolan held up his hand. The rotor whine coming from the direction of Baracco's place changed in pitch. Seconds later the chopper skimmed the trees farther up the valley and soared over to circle the pillar.

  They saw the stocky, powerful shape of Baracco slide back the Plexiglas hatch. He leveled the mini-Uzi machine pistol with one hand as he coaxed the chopper nearer and lower with the other.

  Bolan pushed Gudrun and the Fed to the ground and flung himself across them as the rasping stutter of the gun drowned the noise of the rotors. Fragments of rock spurted up from the road and drew blood from the big man's cheek as the line of 9 mm death ripped past perilously close to his head.

  The helicopter turned and prepared for another run. But this time Mack Bolan was ready. Suddenly he, too, was angry — angry at the continuous runaround all over Europe, angry at the waste of time and energy on what should have been a simple mission, angry at his own failure to wrap it up in Venice. He stood upright on the wrecked pillar, seventy-five inches of rugged determination fueled by an ice-cold fighter's brain, a dark angel of death with nothing but a nearly foot-long stainless-steel avenger between him and oblivion.

  Sighting the tall shape half veiled by the driving rain, Baracco's lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl. At last he was going to even the score with the meddlesome bastard who had gotten far too close to him these past few days. And his uncooperative U.S. government friend. And the little bitch who must have given away the secret of his base. The pillar was less than one hundred yards away. Baracco squeezed death from the magazine.

  The "effective" range of the mini-Uzi was said to be 150 yards. In fact, like all quick-fire autoloaders, the gun's rate of climb was such that its "accurate" range was closer to fifty yards. And at that distance the .44 AutoMag, whose 240-grain boattails were capable of drilling through the solid metal of an automobile engine, was at least as lethal.

  As Baracco hosed death from the chopper's doorway, holes in the Plexiglas surrounded his head. Bolan fell, the soft tissue of his left calf cored by one of the Uzi's bullets. But by this time the helicopter was too far beyond the pillar for the Corsican's gun to vector in on the fallen warrior. He lifted the chopper over the lip of the valley, spun it around and swooped back toward the pillar.

  Brognola had taken the reloaded Beretta from Gudrun and was firing at the forward rotor. Bolan lay on his back on the muddy track, his knees drawn up, sighting between them along Big Thunder's barrel, the skullbusting cannon held two-fisted at the full stretch of his arms.

  Baracco's features twisted into an evil grin. For a moment he let go of the chopper's controls, bringing both hands up to steady the stubby machine pistol, the target, forty yards distant, dead center in the sights.

  A shadow crossed the Plexiglas. Incredibly a second helicopter, smaller than the Corsican's, dropped down through the low cloud front. For a fraction of a second, his finger tensed to blow the Executioner away, Baracco's concentration wavered and he glanced upward in astonishment.

  In that timeless instant Big Thunder bellowed. Once, twice, three times Bolan caressed the curved lever that blasted a terminal sentence the Corsican's way. The heavy slugs pierced his forehead and right hand and smashed through his chest.

  The Uzi emptied its magazine. Hurled backward by the impacts, Baracco sprawled across the helicopter's controls, leaving a relief map of blood and brain tissue spattered over the Plexiglas roof. The chopper sideslipped, lurched momentarily upward and then flew straight into the viaduct on the far side of the gap where the central arch had been.

  A burst of fire, so bright that it flickered scarlet on the underside of the clouds, erupted at the point of contact. The undamaged half of the viaduct exploded outward and then fell to the valley floor to form a blazing funeral pyre with the fiery wreckage of the helicopter.

  Gudrun screamed. She was on her knees in the mud, drenched hair clinging to her skull, her wet cheeks streaked with mascara. "I'm... I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I know he tried to kill us, but he was... he used to be... I was very fond of him once."

  "It'll pass," Brognola soothed, putting an arm around her shaking shoulders. "It'll pass. It's over and done with. You have to think of the future now." He gestured skyward.

  The second helicopter was hovering twenty feet above the ruined pillar. A rope ladder dangled from the open hatch to the weathered parapet. A familiar voice hollered over a bullhorn that couldn't disguise the fruity accents of county Cork.

  "Goin' up now, ladies and gentlemen! Goin' up! Networks, settlement of accounts, informati
on. Top floor rescue service. Goin' up now, please!"

  "Tufik! What the hell are you doing here?"

  He had to wait for an answer. Each increasing gust of wind was making the pillar shudder. Hassan, the mustached, sideburned bodyguard who was piloting the chopper, had only just closed the transparent hatch after Bolan had been assisted up the ladder when another fountain of dust rose hundreds of feet into the air and the solitary column from which they had been rescued shivered into fragments on the valley floor.

  "But how did you know what was going on?" Bolan asked again as Gudrun applied an emergency dressing to his wounded calf.

  She looked up and smiled. "I'm afraid that was me," she admitted. "You had lent me the transceiver, remember? I know a little about them. Bart used to..." Her voice faltered, then she continued. "He taught me how to use them. I switched the frequency, called up a friend and asked her to pass on a message. I thought I ought to call up my employer and explain why I was late for work!"

  Bulging over his wheelchair, Tufik allowed himself a fat chuckle. "A fine enterprisin' spirit, Mr. Bolan, don't you agree? As positive an approach as your own, I'd say... or the one I'm employin' here meself at-all. But seein' as how it's well short of four o'clock, you can at least profit from the cheap-rate daytime tariff, you."

  "Daytime tariff?" the Executioner echoed. "Cheap rate?"

  "To be sure, to be sure. For the Vandervell Emergency Escape Service. I'm after startin' a network, you know, a European network to be used for gettin' the boys out of scrapes an' all. Do you not think that's a grand idea?"

  "Tufik, you're too much."

  "Considerin' the distance involved, the rates are very reasonable."

  "Send me the bill."