Continental Contract

by Don Pendleton

  He had recognized the man instantly, from a photograph on his battle order. He said, “Okay, Vicareau, who else is aboard?”

  “Four men, M’sieur.” The man’s eyes rolled toward the overhead. “Upon the flying bridge, all of them.”

  “Okay, tell the lady to relax,” Bolan whispered. “Maybe you’ve bought yourself something. Get this thing moving, high gear.”

  “Impossible,” the man hissed. “The mooring lines, M’sieur.”

  “Never mind that. Just throw the power to it, all you’ve got.”

  The man swallowed hard and his hand moved to a control. Seconds later the deck was quivering beneath Bolan’s feet and the entire craft was vibrating in the strain to free itself from confinement.

  A muttered curse drifted down from above and the sound of moving feet directly overhead sent Bolan spinning into the open. The four guns were crowding the rail of the flying bridge in an attempt to determine what was happening below. They saw Bolan at about the same instant, but he was readier, and he zipped them in a blazing criss-cross and they went down like wheat before a scythe.

  Bolan allowed the pistolet to hang free and grabbed a fire-axe from the cabin bulkhead and moved swiftly to the bow. A voice down the pier was yelling hoarsely as he hacked the line free. The bow immediately swung outboard and another hail of fire came in as Bolan hurried along the shadows toward the stern.

  There was a mixture of gunfire now, from far back; Bolan supposed that someone had opened fire on the police, and now a full scale battle was raging back there. He chanced a run to the open stern and delivered a smashing chop to the tautly quivering line. It parted halfway through, twanged into a rapid unravelling, and then gave altogether with a loud pop—and the Viviane was loose and surging away from the pier.

  Two men ran into the open on the pier, blazing away at Bolan in a rapid discharge of weapons. His pistolet swung up from his side in a quick retort, the two went down, and Bolan dragged himself back along the deck toward the cabin, his thigh gushing blood again and the arm burning from the exertion with the axe.

  Viviane was about fifty yards clear now and throttling back for better control into the channel, and up ahead two fast police cruisers with searchlights were whizzing toward the fleeing yacht, with a rapid interception already a foregone conclusion.

  Then like out of a pleasant dream Bolan heard the hot-honey voice of Cici Carceaux calling, “Stand-een, stand-een!”

  She was pulling alongside in the sleek little cruiser which Bolan had last seen snuggled into the boat dock at the Cannes villa. As naturally as though he had been rehearsing the scene for years, Bolan climbed the rail and dropped into the cockpit of the cruiser. She went on around in a wide, power-off circle, swinging close to the pier as the yacht charged on into the channel—and as she idled about, Bolan noticed a floating figure in the water not ten feet away, a dark face turned toward the sky and white teeth gleaming in the moonlight in the most tranquil expression Bolan had ever observed on that big beautiful black face.

  He touched Cici in a holding signal and leaned over the gun’l to hiss, “Lieutenant—come on aboard!”

  “Go on, man,” came the quiet reply. “Don’t go messin’ me up now.”

  Bolan gave him a grin and a restrained wave, and Cici notched the powerful engine into a quietly murmuring advance. She hadn’t been kidding; she knew the area like the back of her ’and, evidenced by a skillful navigation in and around and through the orderly rows of anchored craft—and when they reached open sea they were quite alone and unpursued and roaring free.

  Bolan took the wheel then and Cici took over with the first-aid kit. “Oh-kay, drop the pants, stand-in,” she commanded.

  “Hell, I thought you’d never ask,” he told her.

  It was nearing nine o’clock when they reached the sheltered cove between Nice and Cannes. Bolan’s wounds were clean and bound up and adjudged negligible, and Cici had also cleared up a couple of points which were bothering Bolan’s mind.

  The police, she explained, had been at the villa since shortly after Bolan’s departure and had remained until just past Bolan’s telephone call from Monaco. They had connected her with Bolan because of the message she had left for Gil Martin at the hotel in Paris, and had strongly suspected a continuing association due to her abrupt departure from that same hotel—and at about the same time as the police close-in there. They had quit the stake-out, with apologies, and presumably gone on to Monaco to bolster the forces there.

  Her eyes dancing with the excitement of the adventure, she added, “They should ’ave known bettair, no? To leave Cici free to dart to the scene in ’er cruisaire and loosen the jaws of this trap?”

  Bolan found himself entirely reluctant to question her further, but he did ask her about the message-failure regarding the requested cease-fire.

  “But it did not come ovaire,” she explained, “until the vairy moment that you ’ang up the telephone.”

  Bolan left things right there and they huddled together in a silent run for the balance of the trip. They tied up the boat and went arm-in-arm up the stone steps, Cici crutching him a bit as he favored the injured leg.

  Then went into the villa and she undressed him as he stared grimly at a French television play. Then she re-checked both wounds, cleaned them again and applied fresh dressings, and tried to put him to bed.

  He dropped into a chair instead and told her, “Hell I’m not through. If something doesn’t come across that tube for me pretty soon I’m going back out.”

  Cici clucked furiously and threw a blanket over his chair, then went into the kitchen to prepare “a queeck peeck-you-up.”

  Bolan grinned and left the chair momentarily to retrieve his machine-pistol, inserted his final clip of ammo, sat back down with the weapon in his lap, pulled the blanket over him, and continued his grim watch at the TV set.

  A few minutes later Cici delivered a tall glass of mixed vegetable juices, with “jus’ a leetle brandy” blended in. It tasted terrible but Bolan dutifully addressed it and had it half gone when the TV play suddenly blanked off the screen and a dramatic voice began an unscheduled announcement.

  Bolan caught the words “L’Executioner” and “Bolawn.” He sat up alertly and snapped, “What is it, Cici?”

  In a hushed voice, she said, “A moment.”

  Then a picture came on, not very good quality and badly-lighted, but one of the nicest pieces of film Bolan had ever viewed. It was an interior scene, probably a police station, and a group of women were emerging from a passageway and entering a large room. Judy Jones was there, and Madame Celeste, and eight other weeping young women—Bolan counting closely. They looked like they’d been to hell and back, he decided, and probably they had, but thank God they were all there and proceeding under their own steam.

  Bolan found his own eyes misting over and he quietly commented, “Oh hell that’s great. Where is this, Cici?”

  “Marseilles,” she told him. “The police station near the waterfront. The announceire says an anonymous telephone call directed the police to an eempty ware’ouse near the ’arbor. And ’e says they are all well and thankful to be free. They are to be ’ospitalized, jus’ the same, for obsairvation.” She turned to Bolan with glowing eyes and added, “This is wondairful, this thing you ’ave done—no mattair ’ow many rats you ’ad to keel to do it.”

  The weight of the day was now showing in Bolan’s face. With success came also the inevitable letdown, the slowdown of vital juices, the cessation of stubborn determination to push on whatever the price.

  Cici went to the TV set and switched it off, then turned to him with compassionate concern. “You mus’ go to bed now,” she told him. “It is done.”

  It was not, however, quite done. As Cici was crossing the room toward Bolan, the front door opened and a wild looking man stepped into the house. He had a big fancied-up luger in his hand and a circular burn on his forehead and he announced triumphantly, “So I have snared our lion.”

 
Bolan stared at the man through his weariness, and only vaguely heard Cici’s cry of, “Rudolfi, no!”

  Bolan said, “Get out of here, Cici.” He tossed off the balance of the drink she had made him and threw her the empty glass. “Fix me another one of those.”

  “Yes, a last drink would be most fitting,” Rudolfi agreed. “Fix him another of those, Cici, but do not make it too large—he will not have time to finish it.” His pleasure obviously knew no bounds as he told Bolan, “Well, would you not wish to bargain again, M’sieur Executioner? I have sat out there in the darkness awaiting you for many hours, thinking of the many deals we could make. But you sneak in from the sea, eh? I did not consider this—but just as well, the wait makes the banquet sweeter, eh? Tell me, Bolan—what do you offer in exchange for your life, eh?”

  Tiredly, Bolan said, “It’s okay, Cici, he just wants to talk. Go on and fix me that drink. I mean it, go on.”

  Something in his eyes cinched the argument. She went hesitantly to the kitchen door and paused there, glaring at Rudolfi for a moment, then went on through and out of sight.

  Bolan told him, “I got those girls back.”

  Nothing could rob Rudolfi of this supreme moment. He was exultant and almost giddy over his victory, in excellent spirits, and seemingly feeling no ill-will toward anyone, least of all Mack Bolan. He all but fawned over him, in fact, as he replied, “So? Very well. Perhaps this is something we may bargain on, eh?” The cat was teasing the mouse, hugely enjoying the imagined tortures seething through the other mind. “Would you give me back these prostitutes in exchange for your own life?”

  Bolan replied, “No, I went through too damn much to get ’em out. Think of something else.”

  “But no, my friend, it is for you to do the thinking. I will give you until the count of five to think of something. Eh?”

  Bolan shifted wearily beneath the blanket. “I thought you were going to give me a last drink.”

  “But of course! Cici! Bring Monsieur Executioner his final refreshment.” Rudolfi laughed and advanced closer, savoring each ticking second of this, his greatest moment. “The armies of America did not stop you, as I knew they would not. They are street hoodlums, all guns and guts, no mind and no soul.”

  “Oh you’ve got quite a soul,” Bolan said weakly. “It takes more than guns and guts to send young girls to Africa. Yeah, you’re quite a man, Rudolfi.”

  The mad eyes blazed in brief anger, then settled back into a happy contemplation of the victim. He was saying, “Think hard, my friend, before—”

  Cici came in with the glass of juice, interrupting the gloating taunt.

  Bolan told her, “I guess I don’t want that. Put it down, then pull off my blanket and get out of here. I want Rudolfi to see my wounds. Wouldn’t you like that, Rudolfi?”

  The underground ambassador to France was smiling delightedly. “You think I will not shoot a wounded man? What manner of deal is that? What does Rudolfi get from a deal such as this, eh?”

  Cici was withdrawing the blanket. Her eyes fell on the machine-pistol in Bolan’s hands and in a flash she understood his instructions. She tossed the blanket to the floor and ran lightly toward the door.

  Rudolfi was staring at the pistolet as though it were a swaying cobra. Bolan was telling him, in that wearied voice, “This baby has a dead-man trigger on it, Rudolfi. One little twitch of my body and it starts talking. At 450 rounds a minute, that means you wouldn’t catch probably more than twenty or so slugs in the belly. Or you might get zipped if I twitch too much, just a short incision from the crotch to the throat. That’s the only deal I’m offering you, Rudolfi. I’m ready when you are. Go ahead.”

  Triumph, and exultation, and every sign of living spirit sagged out of the man as he once again contemplated his own death. Bolan had known, and Rudolfi knew that he had known—and this, too, showed in the defeated face, the deadened eyes—the gutless, heartless, soul-less shell of a man who had no right to live and even less reason to die.

  The luger wavered, and Rudolfi began moving carefully toward the door, reaching back with the toes and planting them painstakingly in the quiet retreat.

  Before he reached the door, Bolan told him, “Next time I see you, Rudolfi, I’ll kill you. And the next time I hear of young girls being snatched off to Africa, I’ll come here from hell if I have to and I’ll rip through this country like nothing you ever imagined.”

  Without a word Rudolfi backed out of the door and carefully pulled it shut. Bolan left the chair, threw off the lights, and hobbled to the window.

  Cici ran over and joined him there. Bolan told her, “He’s running down the drive. He won’t be back. He just lost his last gut.”

  “I was sure you would keel heem,” Cici said in a choked voice.

  “I did,” Bolan said tiredly. “The worst way possible.”

  He tucked the pistolet under his arm and headed for the bedroom. “Anyway,” he told her, “I couldn’t zip him with you standing there looking on. I mean, I figured I owed you that, Cici You have been working for the guy, haven’t you?”

  She recoiled as though he had struck her across the face. “Non,” she murmured, and helped him to the bed, pulled back the covers, and steered him down.

  “Well,” he sighed, “when you get ready to tell me about it—”

  “I am ready now, Mack Bolan.” She was whisking off skirt and blouse and preparing to slide in beside him. “I will keep you warm, and ’old you while you sleep, and when you are refresh—well, may-bee Cici will discovaire what you do othaire than sit and look, eh stand-in?”

  He was grinning weakly and holding out his good arm for her to slip into, and she was continuing her speech.

  “But for Rudolfi, I did not know until this vairy morning of ’is unsavory eenvolvements, you see. But I do know thees man for many years. My seester, you see, Roxanne Loureau, she is ’is confidential secretary, among othaire things. And Roxanne ’as call me, you see—a vairy smart woman, my seester—she is suspect soonaire than anywan ’oo thees Gil Martin really is, you see—but she fears for her Rudolfi, not for Mack Bolan. And so she desires for Cici to get thees dangerous man out of Paris, you see, but she does not tell Cici ’oo this savage man truly is, you see. And when I found out, I know also now ’oo is truly thees terrible Rudolfi, and—”

  Bolan said, “Shut up, Cici. And welcome to Eden.”

  “What means this?” she asked, rising above his face to peer down into his eyes.

  He pulled her on down, discovering that maybe he was not all that weary, after all—and gave her a nonverbal mouth-to-mouth translation of his message.

  Yeah, yeah. There was an Eden for every man, even for an executioner.

  It could not last forever, of course—but for a man who had learned to live for every heartbeat, a short visit in Eden could seem an eternity. For the moment, Mack Bolan was ready to live and willing to love. And so also, it seemed, was Cici Carceaux.

  Bolan should have known better. Through the window came a reminder from hell itself, in a crash of thunder and the sulphur smell of gunpowder and a nine millimeter projectile streaking so close to the flesh as to lightly singe his belly. The thunder rolled on and things were tearing into the mattress and pillows, something warm and wet was oozing across Bolan’s torso, and Cici’s breath left her in a soft little “Ohhh.”

  His hand was groping on the floor for the pistolet even before his mind realized it and then he was firing from the bed, a blazing X pattern smashing the bedroom window and finding solid impact material just beyond. Something hit the ground out there and threshed about, the firing ceased, and there was mind now only for Cici—Cici, raised to one elbow and dumbly contemplating a flow of blood from her abdomen—Cici, staring at him with the question of life in her eyes.

  Rudolfi’s terrified voice was weakly shrieking pleas for help from somewhere outside Eden, but Bolan had neither time nor inclination to hear or heed. He made a compress of the sheet and pressed it harshly against Cici’s woun
d, guided her hands to it and showed her how to hold the pressure, then he staggered through a red fog to the telephone and summoned emergency assistance. He gathered his clothes and put them on while Cici—brave little sex darling of Europe who was now paying the bill for Bolan’s weakness—watched him with unreproving eyes and pleaded with him to get away from there.

  “There weel be anothaire time,” she assured him.

  He knelt beside the bed and held her until the siren turned into the drive, then he solemnly kissed her goodbye and went out through the rear of the house. Rudolfi lay there on the patio, zipped from right shoulder to left hip, his time fully run out. Bolan stepped over him and went down the steps to the boat landing, started the cruiser, and headed into the Mediterranean.

  Behind him lay not life but death, not victory in any real sense but merely a prolongation of an impossible war. Ahead lay new battlefronts, an endless succession of Rudolfis and Lavagnis—this grim truth softened somewhat by the certainty that there would also be more Martins, Browns, Walkers and … yes, perhaps even another Carceaux. But no … He gave the cruiser full throttle and swept south toward tomorrow’s front.

  No … there would never be another Cici Carceaux. He had come frighteningly close to canceling out the only one around—through his own softness, his own shrinking from an executioner’s destiny and that near-fatal reach for Eden. It would not happen again. The only safe enemy was a dead one. A single plan of action lay now in Mack Bolan’s future—the creation of safe enemies.

  He sighed, lit a cigarette, and turned to gaze back at the rapidly receding shore. He had learned an important truth back there. Yeah. There were no crossovers from hell to paradise.

  Goodbye, Eden.

  Hello, Hell.

  Lookout, Mafia. The Executioner is sweeping on.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Executioner series

  Chapter One

  RECEPTION AT DOVER

  Bolan did not see the enemy but he could sense their ominous presence out there, in the darkness. He had felt that from the moment he stepped aboard the car ferry at Calais, and it had lasted throughout the brief crossing of the English Channel and the landing at Dover.