April keyed a video display on the pilot console, punching up a miniature projection of the city's winding streets, checking her position in relation to the harbor. The Laser Wagon's on-board computer banks contained identical intelligence on every European capital, and perhaps a hundred major cities in the United States and Canada. It was a vast, sophisticated road atlas, ever ready at the pilot's fingertips.
April found her position and was preparing for a turnoff at the next major cross street when she heard the sound of sirens closing on her flank. A speeding convoy of police cruisers passed her on the left, lights flashing, sirens drowning out the other sounds of traffic. Something did a slow barrel roll inside of April, and she sensed that she should follow.
It was a hunch, but she had learned from Bolan to respect gut instincts.
She slipped in behind the speeding squad cars, hanging back a block or two. The lights and sirens simplified her job, helping herkeep the other cars in sight without attracting undue attention to herself.
They were leading her away from down-town Monte Carlo, leaving the casino and the harbor behind. If her hunch was wrong, she would lose any chance of picking up Bolan inside the city, but she toughed it out, staying with the hounds.
And she was with them when they slowed, cutting a hard right into a narrow side street that opened up between attractive shops. Other officers were already on the scene, deployed to traffic duty, trying to untangle the inevitable snarl of gawkers.
As she rode the brake, creeping toward the intersection, April saw an ambulance emerging from the side street, running with its lights and siren off. As it passed her going south, she caught a glimpse through the side windows of bloody bundles in the back.
April made the intersection, rubbernecking like a tourist, taking in as much as possible before the gendarmes waved her on. Uniformed police and plainclothes detectives sifted around the scene, taking notes and picking up the pieces from the urban battlefield.
Two cars—a black Mercedes and a small sedan—were parked together near the corner, and the smoking ruin of a third machine was visible inside the cul-de-sac.
Cameramen were snapping photographs of everything, and white-frocked attendants from a second ambulance were busy bagging bodies.
April did a double-take, searching for the Citroen. It was nowhere in sight, and she nearly choked on the sudden rush of relief.
Her soldier was gone, but he had been there, and recently. April Rose was certain of it. A Bolan hit was unmistakable.
Whatever else the carnage in the cul-de-sac might indicate, she knew that Bolan was continuing his mission, driving toward his rendezvous with Paradine. Nothing short of death would hold him back.
A traffic officer was motioning her on, and April waved back at him, rolling the almost-black battle wagon across the intersection, heading north. Her mind was working overtime, crowded with a rush of vital questions jostling for priority. She wondered who had tried to intercept the ransom, whether Paradine could be involved. If he was not, how had John Phoenix's mission been exposed?
Was Mack safe?
April knew the answer. Even if he left the battlefield unscathed, he was anything but safe as long as Paradine survived—he was merely passing out of danger and into evengreater peril. There was nothing April Rose could do to stop him.
But there might be something she could do to help him.
She concentrated on the sensitive receiver of the battle cruiser's tracking system, with the video display of Monte Carlo and environs still visible. If the Citroen was anywhere within three miles, she would be able to detect him and plot his course.
A slight delay and then she had him, a blip running north and east along a road away from Monte Carlo. His present course would take him through the mountains into Italy—and somewhere beyond the border he would find a spider waiting in the center of its lethal web.
April meant to be there when he made the final confrontation. She would stand with him, and fall beside him if it came to that.
April Rose would not have it any other way.
10
IN ITALY HE HAD BEEN KNOWN as Il Bòia, a rough translation of The Executioner, and Mack Bolan felt a sense of anticipation as he began his third visit to the troubled nation. He steered the Citroen north through hilly Lombardy, climbing steadily, leaving the foothills of the northern Apennines behind. Bolan was revisiting a land that had already presented him with two battlefields.
His reputation had preceded him the first time, putting Old World Mafiosi on alert to stop the blitzing bastard who was slaughtering their brothers in America. They were waiting for him, but they were far from ready. It was Bolan's task to teach them a bloody lesson in proper preparation.
A new invasion of America was being planned when the Executioner arrived. Trained gradigghia , the seasoned killers also known as malacarni , were being shipped as reinforcements for the dwindling stateside ranks.
Italy, her soil steeped in seven centuries of gang-related bloodshed, was home for the Honored Society. When the Executioner arrived in Naples to confront the Boss of Bosses, Don Tronfio Frode, more blood had been spilled as he blitzed the city and left the Frode family in smoking ruins. But Bolan's primary target had been elsewhere, to the south, in Sicily's Agrigento province. There, at Naro, he had written the end to Don Cafu's Scuola Assassino, the assassins' school that was flooding North America with Mafia reinforcements.
On his second visit to Italian soil, the Executioner had come as the reborn Colonel John Macklin Phoenix. Bolan and his ally, Leo Turrin, met with terror in Tuscany, and once again Bolan applied the cleansing flame of righteous anger.
Now he was back, risking it all again. Bolan was not looking for the Mafia or any other local savages this time—but he would take them when and where he found them. If the Brotherhood tried to interfere with his mission, he would gladly tear through them on his way to Paradine.
It would be the Mafia's misfortune.
The American warrior reached Chiasso on schedule. He circled the outskirts of the picturesque border town, sizing up the placebefore he sought his checkpoint on the central square. By the time he arrived at the square, the Executioner had marked his exit points, each prioritized for suitability in different emergencies.
Chiasso is not a tourist town, despite the beauty of its alpine surroundings, and foot traffic on the square was light, without the fevered crush of Monaco. People moved with purpose and deliberation.
An ornate hotel, decorated as a Swiss chalet, was the village centerpiece. Other buildings on the square were shops surmounted by living quarters on the second story. Bolan felt the curious villagers watching him discreetly, checking out the stranger and his bullet-punctured vehicle. If there was a constable in town, he would quickly be apprised of Bolan's arrival. The warrior knew that time was short; he could not explain the Citroen's condition, and he did not intend to try.
Bolan circled the square twice before he spotted Paradine's ambassador. Emerging from the hotel lobby, the man was waiting for Bolan. He looked out of place in a business suit. He acknowledged Bolan with the bare suggestion of a nod, and began to follow the Citroen along the block until they reached a side street. Bolan found a parking space and waited by the car as his contact approached.
A muscular physique and holstered weaponry were evident beneath the gunner's business suit.
"Welcome to Chiasso, Mr. Phoenix. You have something for the People's Army." Bolan noted the German-accented English.
"I have something for the chief," the Executioner corrected him. "Delivery is strictly one-on-one."
The German guncock scowled at him, narrow lips compressed into a slit."I have orders to inspect the merchandise and verify its authenticity."
Bolan recognized the logic. He knew that if he balked, he would abort the mission and doom the hostages to certain death.
"I'd like a little privacy," he answered, glancing up and down the narrow street.
"I have rooms at the hotel," sai
d the contact. "You are armed?"
The guy knew the answer, and Bolan did not even try to bluff it out. He gave the terrorist a narrow smile.
"Relax," Bolan said. "I'm not here to hold you up."
His contact frowned, plainly uncomfortable with the thought of taking on an armed opponent.
"Come," he said at last, and started off in the direction of the square.
Bolan got his satchel from the Citroen's trunk, then fell in step behind the terrorist. As he walked, the warrior kept his free hand inside the open flap of his coat, fingers locked around the mini-Uzi submachine gun at his waist. His jacket was primed with grenades, hidden at stomach height in the lining, available by reaching into slits.
THE WAITING HAD BEGUN TO TELL On Giovanni Goro. Essentially a man of action, he had never taken well to stakeouts. If there had been a choice, he would have opted for a hit-and-run guerrilla war, his force forever on the move from one encounter to another.
But idleness and waiting were the necessary evils of an urban terrorist's existence. Opportunities did not present themselves with clock-work regularity, and hardmen in the field spent more time hiding, lurking in the shadows, than they ever did in combat. Sometimes, Goro felt thatboredom was a greater peril than the able gunmen of the GIS. Each year, he lost a score of soldiers to defection, seeking other outlets for their revolutionary rage; and others lost it all, breaking beneath the strain, and sacrificed themselves in suicidal violence.
Anything to end the waiting.
Sometimes, however, the prize was worth it. Today was such a time. The hijack ransom payment, once they liberated it from the delivery boy, would put the failing Red Brigades in fighting trim. Indeed, they might at last secure financial independence from the Mafia, finally wash their hands of petty crime and kidnapping for ransom.
Giovanni Goro did not see himself as having anything in common with the standard criminal. The hoodlum, be he Mafioso or the lowest sneak thief on the street, was a parasite, drew nourishment from working men the way a leach devours blood from healthy animals. The Red Brigades, in contrast, were political fighters. They were artists of terror. They were merchants who dealt in the commodity of ideology—the taking of the human mind, and, regrettably but necessarily, the taking of human life.
If the revolutionaries sometimes imitated Mafiosi in their tactics, even joined the Honored Brotherhood for special projects, it was all a matter of expediency. In time, when they achieved their victory, the gangster allies would be swept away with all the other vermin—priests and private businessmen, the capitalists and fascists who were guardians of the hated status quo.
A change was coming, yes, and taking longer than the Red Brigades had first believed. The people, ignorant of politics in general and revolution in particular, were squeamish still about the necessary tactics Goro and his troops employed—but they would come around in time.
A healthy cash reserve would fill the army's ranks and arsenals, speed up the schedule of their revolution. Soon, perhaps within the hour, Giovanni Goro would have everything he needed to ensure a victory.
Across the street, his secondary target was returning with the courier in tow. Giovanni marked the German—face remembered from a former failed alliance with the BaaderMeinhof gang—and automatically dismissed him, concentrating on his tall companion. At a glance, he knew the waiting was about to end.
The new arrival was a tall man, broad across the chest and shoulders. Goro could read nothing in his face—neither fear nor any vestigil excitement—and the stranger seemed at ease, as if he had prepared himself for anything and knew that he could cope with it when it arrived. His open coat might easily conceal a weapon.
But it was the satchel in his hand that riveted the terrorist's attention. Black and obviouslyheavy, though the big man carried it without apparent effort, it contained the secret of Goro's future. Giovanni and his troops had travelled from Milan at great risk to life and liberty, had staked out the old hotel for hours, all with the aim of picking off this courier, and relieving him of his valise for once and all.
They would succeed today, or they would die in the attempt. Goro was committed beyond all choice. If they failed, there could be no retreat. There would be nowhere to retreat to.
He watched the German and his new companion reach the hotel's double doors and disappear inside. Another hostile soldier watched the lobby; he had been sitting there since early afternoon when Giovanni crossed the narrow street and went inside to check it out, pretending he was lost and looking for a non-existent tenant.
That made three guns inside, another two in back of the hotel. The hijackers were covering themselves, but they were counting on victim cooperation, never thinking that an outside force might try to intervene.
It was a small mistake, as fatal ones so often are.
Giovanni Goro turned from the second-story window, nodded to the clutch of gunners waiting by the door.
"We go."
Passing by the folding card table, he retrieved his squat Beretta submachine gun, racked the bolt back and eased the safety off. Another moment, two or three at most, and all the waiting would be over. He could taste the new excitement, feel it mounting in him as they reached the stairs and started down. A hard, unfeeling smile was etched across his face.
He smelled the victory, could feel it just within his grasp. The ransom was as good as his, but taking it away would be half the pleasure.
BOLAN'S CONTACT LED HIM through the hotel lobby. As they entered, Bolan saw a second hardman seated by the door.
Up one flight of stairs, Bolan and the guide reached a narrow corridor, rooms off either side. A lookout was waiting for them in the hallway, his wooden chair kicked back against the wall, hard eyes tracking Bolan's every move. The German opened a door and led the way inside. Bolan found himself inside a comfortable suite. He noted double windows opposite the door, offering a view of the alley below.
Bolan left his satchel on the coffee table and chose a chair that let him watch both thedoor and window. He was not expecting trouble from the German, but the Monte Carlo suck had shown him the degree to which danger lay on every side.
His contact opened the satchel. Cautious, hesitant, he stirred the diamonds with a finger, quickly estimating numbers. He selected three diamonds, lined them up in front of him and fished a jeweller’s loupe from an inside jacket pocket. Bolan watched him as he picked up the first stone and held it up against the light for scrutiny.
The German seemed to know his business. He examined the stones professionally, verifying authenticity and quality. Finally satisfied, he dropped them back inside the satchel, closed it and pocketed the loupe.
"Very well," he said. "You may proceed with the delivery as planned."
"Where and when?"
"Your final checkpoint is at Udine, near the Yugoslav border. You'll be met at the Cafe Vittorio and given your directions to the drop."
"Time?"
The German checked his watch, calculating.
"Three hundred fifty kilometers. You should be at the café by six o'clock. Enjoy your supper."
Bolan gave the terrorist an icy smile. He was on his feet and reaching for the satchel when he heard the sound of muffled gunfire. Somewhere on the floor below, a pistol opened up, automatic weapons quickly joining in and drowning out the first reports. A rising scream was smothered by the rapid-fire explosions.
The German terrorist was rising, groping for his holstered weapon, but the Uzi got there first. Nosing through the open flap of Bolan's overcoat, muzzle inches from the gunner's face, it commanded complete attention.
"One second, one chance," Bolan snapped. "What's going down?"
There was confusion mingled with terror on his captive's face, and the German spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
"A trap. I don't know . . ."
Pounding footsteps reached the landing and moved along the corridor. Outside, the sentry in the hallway raised a warning cry and automatic weapons answered, bullets s
macking into flesh and plaster. Something heavy struck the door and rebounded with a crash.
Bolan heard voices arguing in rapid-fire Italian. The doorknob jiggled, and a boot heel slammed ineffectually against the solid door.
Then weapons thundered in the hall, bullets eating up the wood and latch mechanism.
The German terrorist rushed past Bolan in a flash, sprinting for the window and freedom. Bolan, helping him along with a short burst between the shoulder blades, saw the hardguy sail on a hard collision course—he hit the window squarely and burst through, taking glass and sash bars with him in his headlong plunge.
Bolan pivoted and held the mini-Uzi's trigger down, tracking across the room from left to right. Steel-jackets drilled through the lathe-and-plaster wall and cut a ragged figure eight across the door. Another body hit the boards outside, and the hostile fire momentarily faltered.
Bolan grabbed his satchel from the coffee table and stitched another line of holes across the door as he backpedalled toward the window. Swinging the satchel, he cleared some shards of glass and clambered through. He saw the platform of a fire escape immediately below him.
Bolan high-stepped over the dead thug, heading for the metal stairs. His foot was on the top rung when bullets chipped masonry above his head.
His enemies had the back door covered.
Bolan spotted two bastards crouched behind a large trash bin below. Both wore ski masks and olive-drab fatigue jackets.
Autoloading pistols were finding the range.
Bolan drove them under cover with a long burst and used the breathing room to fish a thermite grenade out of an inside pocket. He yanked the pin and made his pitch, dropping the deadly egg directly in the trash bin.
It detonated with a hollow roar, the shock wave knocking both gunners off their feet. Chemicals and garbage combined in a fiery mushroom, superheated comets streaking off in all directions, raining down around the Executioner on his perch.
Bolan skipped the stairs and vaulted high across the railing of the fire escape. He saw the plug men busy fighting for their lives, beating at the flames with burning hands. He took them out with a single burst that silenced screaming, ended pain.
Executioner 055 - Paradine's Gauntlet Page 6
