The Executioner was still stretched out along the lip of the cliff, the barrel of the Beretta now supported on his left forearm. The gun stuttered the moment the marksmen on the traverse opened up in the direction of Smiler’s voice.
An SMG spewed a load of hate uselessly at the sky as another of the killers slammed down on his back, his clothes stitched to his ribs with 9 mm thread.
But now they had located Bolan’s position. He was forced to retreat to the other side of a hedge as a savage storm of shot pulverized the limestone where he had been lying.
Shouts now from the far side of the house. The gunfire — swelled by shooting from the defenders — increased in rapidity and volume. “Your guys in back will be swamped and the dudes on this side taken in the rear and wiped out if we can’t waste the squad at the stair head,” Bolan said fiercely to Coralie. “That storehouse over there — what’s in it?”
“Oh, mostly junk, gardening stuff, chemicals,” she said.
“Do they store fuel there?”
“Yes. There’s a tank of diesel for the launch, and I think...”
“Diesel’s no good. Is there any gasoline?”
“Not much, but we keep a couple of cans for the outboard.”
“Can you get to the store? Through the house, without crossing the line of fire? Good. Get me a couple of bottles. Knock off the necks, throw out the wine and replace it with gasoline. Bring them back to me with two corks and some newspaper. Make it fast.”
For a moment the girl stared at him uncomprehendingly, then she turned obediently and ran into the dark.
While she was away, Bolan reloaded the Beretta. He was acting in support of the Mafia. That was a laugh. He had spent years of his life successfully eliminating most of that sinister brotherhood in his own country! The soldier shrugged. The thought had occurred to him in the gallery above the conference room that from there a single magazine fired from an Ingram MAC-11, or even a couple of clips from his own Beretta, could wipe out the whole damned roomful and save the world from a new threat. But a massacre of unsuspecting men, even evil ones, was not the Executioner’s way.
And again he had wondered, in a brief moment of self-doubt when he and the girl had arrived at the cliff top, if perhaps her suspicions ought not to have been well-founded, if he shouldn’t have been helping the attackers rather than the defenders.
Yeah, but that was a question of the devil you knew. And he didn’t know who the thugs storming the fortress were. Could be they were even worse than the mafiosi meeting here. There was no way of knowing; better to wait and find out the full extent of the plan masterminded by Antonin before confronting the guys who were to carry it out.
And it was better, for the moment, to remain Kurt Sondermann, arrived on the scene in time to help his new boss.
The girl was beside him again. She held two bottles filled with pinkish fluid and an old newspaper. Bolan sniffed the aromatic odor of gasoline. “I didn’t have to break the necks,” Coralie said. “There was a stack of empties in the store.”
“Good. Did you get the corks?”
She nodded, fishing them out of her jacket pocket and handing them over. Bolan took a bottle, twisted a double sheet of newspaper into a funnel shape, wedged a cork down into the narrowest part and stoppered the bottle so that the paper stood above the neck like a fan. He took a lighter from the neoprene sack.
“What are you doing?” Coralie whispered.
“Wait and see.”
He prepared the second bottle in the same way and handed it to the girl.
Using one hand as a shield against the breeze, Bolan flicked the lighter and set fire to the paper above his bottle. He gave the lighter to Coralie. “Light yours and hand it to me as soon as I’ve tossed mine,” he told her.
Blue flames curled the edge of the paper and then the whole mass flared brightly. Boland drew back his arm and hurled the bottle high into the air, toward the stairway.
The girl lit the paper above the second bottle.
Bolan stood. Firing two-handed, he tracked the flaming missile and ripped off a 3-round burst as it began to drop from the sky.
One of the slugs struck home and the bottle exploded. The burning paper ignited gasoline and vapour with a thumping report, showering the hoods on the stone steps with liquid fire.
Bolan reached for the second bottle, lobbed it in a lower trajectory, over the traverse along the cliff. The 93-R chattered again and the bottle disintegrated, igniting the volatile liquid with a dull roar. Once more the night was torn apart with shrieks of pain and panic while the hell-fire rain splashed over the trapped gorillas.
Two of them spiraled flaming into the sea. A third clasped scorched hands to the blistered ruin of his face and yelped like a wounded dog. The others beat vainly at their clothes and rolled against the rock in an attempt to extinguish the terrible fire.
It was the same scene on the stairway: writhing bodies, incandescent clothes and hair, animal howls. The guys on the cable-car platform were luckier. Only two of the five men there had been licked by the blazing gasoline and a couple of their comrades manhandled them on the wooden floor, trying to smother the flames.
The last man was on his feet shouting, firing an SMG blindly toward the house. Bolan raised the Beretta, squinted along the sights in the flickering light and dropped him with the last three rounds in the magazine. He tumbled over the edge of the platform and bounced all the way down the rocky slope to the jetty.
Bolan ran out from behind the flowers, calling to the astonished guards hiding in and around the storehouse, “Come on, you guys: all we have to do now is zap those bastards trying to take us from the other side!”
Four or five men in jeans and dark sweaters emerged from the shadows and followed him as he dashed through the shrubbery. There was a crispness, the decisive tone of the born leader, in the Executioner’s voice that commanded instant respect and obedience.
But one guy — the guard Jean-Paul had addressed as Smiler — was ready to query Bolan’s authority. Smiler came out of the storehouse toting a Smith & Wesson M-76 subgun — a tall, swarthy man with two heavies in tow. “Just a minute, you,” he snarled. “Who the fuck you think you are?”
“Sondermann,” Bolan said, not pausing in his stride.
“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m the guy gives the orders around here — remember that. Where d’you think you get off, orderin’ the boys like some sonovabitch four-star general?”
One of the other men unslung an M-16 from his shoulder. “Aw, hell, Smiler,” he protested, “the dude wasted those punks holed up above the jetty, after all.”
“I don’t care how many creeps he wasted. I’m still the number-one gun in this neighborhood.” He strode after Bolan and tapped him on the shoulder. “You hear me?”
Bolan whirled and seized the front of the hood’s sweater in one steely hand, half lifting the hardman off his feet. “No, you hear me, loudmouth,” he growled. “I work alone and I don’t aim to take nobody’s place. Jean-Paul hired me personally, so I don’t reckon to be bugged by no smartass provincial gorilla, understand?”
He thrust Smiler away with force enough to make him stumble.
Choking with fury, the hood moved his hand involuntarily toward his SMG, but Bolan had already hurried down to join a couple of guards lying behind the rampart of flat stones bordering the sunken garden.
Badmouthing J-P’s number-one enforcer in front of his soldiers would have made Sondermann an enemy, for sure. Good, the Executioner thought. As yet he had no clear plan how he would approach the Mafia-KGB threat. But the more discord he could sow around here the better. If he was unable to conceal his dislike and contempt for carrion like Smiler it could at least provoke some kind of future action. And Bolan was a firm believer in mixing it and waiting to see what happened.
Right now it seemed that the battle for the island was damned near through. Most of the raiding party climbing up from the inlet had already been blown away by guards posted behind the house.
<
br /> At least he need worry no longer about the body floating in the pool and the guy he had killed on the terrace: the attackers would be blamed for those.
He crouched near one of the guards sheltering behind the stones. The remainder of the invading force seemed to be holed up behind the summerhouse where he had first talked to Coralie Sanguinetti.
“How many d’you reckon?” he asked the man.
“Three or four,” the hood replied. “Maybe a couple more inside the shack. Some of the boys are making it through the plantation...” he nodded toward a clump of trees on the seaward end of the isle “...and take ’em from the rear.”
“We don’t have to wait,” Bolan said. He noticed a grenade hooked to the man’s belt. “Mind if I borrow this?”
“Go ahead,” the hood said. “But you’ll never make it, guy. That cabin’s more’n a hundred yards away. You can’t throw that far on target.”
“I don’t figure on trying,” Bolan said. “Give me covering fire, okay?”
He rose, holding the grenade in his right hand. Then, as the guard and his companions opened fire with a motley collection of shotguns and carbines, he dashed, bent double, through flower beds and rows of dwarf azaleas to dive headfirst into the pool.
He swam underwater to the far end, surfaced and pulled the pin from the grenade.
The gunners behind the summerhouse, who had opened up as soon as he began his run, were raking the patio with automatic fire.
Bolan braved the death hail and climbed the ladder. He flung the grenade with all his force over the shingled roof of the building, judging the throw accurately so that the deadly missile dropped among the raiders taking cover behind it.
The bomb exploded with a shattering roar, a vivid flash that momentarily lit the flowers and shrubs with an unnatural glare. There were no more gunshots.
The instant’s silence that followed was broken by a man screaming. At the same time a heap of dead brushwood and garden refuse ignited by the explosion burst into flame behind the hut. Within seconds the flimsy wooden back wall was ablaze.
Flames shot skyward, fanned by the breeze. The rafters caught. Tiles fell and then the whole roof collapsed.
Two men ran out from the miniholocaust and were shot down at once by the guards. In the gory shambles behind the burning shack, one body still writhed.
“Bring him inside — and keep him alive until he’s talked,” Jean-Paul called from the terrace.
Lights came on all around the house. The gangsters’ women, huddled together, could be seen anxiously peering through the windows. The capo from Marseilles stepped down into the garden and approached Bolan. “It seems we have to offer you a vote of thanks, guy,” he said. “Like twice this same night.”
“Part of the job.” Bolan made his voice gruff. “That’s what you’re paying me for, isn’t it?”
“Paying you?..” Jean-Paul stared at the wet-suited warrior, his brow knitted into a frown. Then suddenly the handsome face cleared. “Sondermann!” he exclaimed. “You’re Kurt Sondermann, right?”
“When I’m not playing with fire!” Bolan said.
6
The man in the cellar was screaming again. Marcel Sanguinetti walked to the stereo and turned up the volume. He snapped his fingers at a white-coated waiter, ordering him to circulate more rapidly with his tray of champagne-filled glasses.
Conversation among the wives and mistresses of the gang bosses became shriller, boosting the pretense that they had heard nothing.
The wounded raider had cried out often enough as he was manhandled into the house from the gutted cabin. But that was because of the pain from the burns and injuries he had suffered in the bomb blast. Now the screams had a more desperate note. Smiler and his two buddies were in the cellar exercising their sinister skills on the nerves and flesh of an already ravaged body.
Bolan stood outside a huge salon. Scalese, Ancarani and the Toulon capo, Pasquale Lombardo, were standing by a window in a haze of cigar smoke. Borrone huddled with the three other Americans and the Parisian baron. Only Sanguinetti and the Sicilian, Arturo Zefarelli, were making any attempt to mix with the women.
The Executioner had declined to join the party on the excuse that a frogman suit was hardly ideal wear for a social occasion — even one that had been interrupted by an armed assault that he himself had been largely instrumental in repelling. His real reason was the fear of being recognized by the KGB colonel, Antonin.
Jean-Paul had introduced them when the attack was over, but Bolan had already pulled the helmet on again and the Russian had hardly glanced at him.
Bolan sipped a glass of champagne in the passageway between the salon and the bar. The waiter passed in and out with foaming bottles, hors d’oeuvres, fresh glasses.
Jean-Paul returned to the big room with Antonin in tow. Bolan figured they had been below to check out the information acquired by Smiler. “A few minutes more, Colonel,” the gang boss had promised within Bolan’s earshot.
Antonin nodded and turned to talk to a group of the younger women.
Jean-Paul moved among the guests, his thick white hair and tanned, handsome face conspicuous above the glare and glitter of the underdressed and overpainted females. The Executioner observed that Scalese, Ancarani and Lombardo stopped speaking as the capo from Marseilles approached them.
Bolan recalled that the Toulonnais boss had been the least enthusiastic of the hoods during the conference he had overheard, and the other two, besides throwing out the most challenging questions, had from time to time been whispering to each other.
Maybe their sudden silence now was due to fear. Or even politeness. But he filed the fact away in his mind for future reference.
Coralie Sanguinetti emerged from the kitchens and approached him. She was stuffing her small gun — it was a twenty-four ounce Semmerling LM-4 with a cobblestone Hogue combat grip — into her purse before she joined the party.
“It’s a good professional lightweight,” Bolan told her as she passed. “Looking at the guests, I reckon you’d be wiser keeping it handy.”
She swung around and stared at him. “Herr Sondermann,” she said coldly, “you may have assisted us in a material way, but please remember you are a guest in my father’s house. If you don’t like the company, you are quite free to leave.”
Bolan was amused by the way this girl blew hot and cold. “Sorry to disappoint you, ma’am,” he said, “but I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I’m employed by one of your father’s, uh, friends. I can’t leave until I get his go-ahead.”
She gave him a contemptuous look. “Is that why you are lurking in the servants’ entrance?”
Before Bolan could think of a suitable reply, Jean-Paul himself came toward them. “My dear,” he said, taking the girl’s arm in a proprietorial way, “your father needs some help entertaining the guests.”
“Whatever you say, darling,” Coralie replied with a defiant glance at the Executioner. Tossing back her long hair, she strode into the salon.
Bolan shrugged. It was understandable that she would have been hostile, catching a stranger eavesdropping in her father’s house. But she had seemed friendly and efficient during the firefight outside. But now the battle was won, suddenly he was bad news again.
No matter. He’d figure it out later. Jean-Paul interrupted his thoughts.
“You better come downstairs, Sondermann. Our bird is singing all right, but I want you to hear the last verse: you might need to learn some of the words.
They crossed the crowded room, threading their way among the guests. One or two of the hoods, and most of the women, stared curiously or appreciatively at the Executioner’s tall, muscled, blacksuited physique. Antonin paused with his champagne glass halfway to his lips. This time, as he saw Bolan’s blue eyes and the dark hair without the helmet, his brow creased in a frown. Then he turned away, and continued talking to Borrone.
Bolan was glad when they left the brightly lit room for the passageways honeycombing the ext
raordinary house.
Smiler met them at the door of the cellar. There was blood on his hands. “I’m sorry, boss,” he apologized after a suspicious glance at the Executioner. “The bastard croaked on us. Maybe he was too far gone to start with.”
Bolan looked beyond the hardman into a room with stone walls, part of which had been hollowed out of bedrock. The wounded attacker’s end had not been pleasant.
“Reckon there was no more to tell, anyway,” one of Smiler’s henchmen told Jean-Paul. “We know who an’ why an’ how. Since you and the Russian left, we learned a little about this bastard’s buddies and what they aim to do.”
Bolan looked enquiringly at the gang leader. He was not supposed to know the background; it was reasonable that a new arrival should want to be filled in.
“We are about to start a new... project,” J-P explained. “The details are not important. But I will tell you that certain hostile elements have been trying to wreck it. We thought we had eliminated them... but it seems we were mistaken. There are still some around.”
“Would these be from the same stable as the gorillas who jumped me on the way down?” Bolan asked. He had given the Marseilles boss a full rundown on the gas-station ambush.
“Neighbors,” J-P replied. “The soldiers you wasted there were Scotto’s boys. These punks tonight were the tail end of a small time outfit run in Paris by a guy name of Secondini. Or so this loser said.” He nodded toward the corpse.
“There’s more, J-P,” one of the hoods said.
“Such as?”
“There ain’t no more Secondinis. But there’s another team aiming to make it. They figure if you was outta the way and the plan with the Comrades fucked up, they could muscle in to your manor. Not worldwide... just your territory down here.”
“Who?” Jean-Paul’s voice was rock hard.
“The Corsicans. Balestre’s old mob.”
Jean-Paul slammed one fist into his other palm.
“Can’t trust anyone, can you, boss?” Smiler said with a shake of his head. “I fixed that guy myself, personal. There wasn’t even a piece of rope left after that buoy blew.” His small, mean eyes flicked over Bolan as if he wished the Executioner and not the young Corsican had been his victim.
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