How will you do it?"
"I have a plan. Obviously his death must be arranged so the authorities believe no other person was involved. I know the ideal place — in the valley less than a mile from here."
"Good. Do we do it now?"
Baracco shook his head. "It'll be dark very soon, and it'll take time. I'll need your help. We'll take him down there and fix it as soon as it's light. Meanwhile we can work out final arrangements to move your three clients."
"Tell me about the plan."
There was a wide, open hearth at one end of the room. The chimney was joined on the floor above by a flue from a smaller fireplace in an empty, unused bedroom. Baracco had never found out, but conversations in the lower room could be heard clearly by someone crouching by the chimneypiece in the upper when no fires were burning. Gudrun, Bolan's transceiver in one hand, was crouched there now.
24
"As you would expect," the voice coming from the transceiver in Mack Bolan's hand reported, "the scheme is quite diabolical. It seems there's an old railroad viaduct that crosses the head of a valley near Bart's place. It was built toward the end of the last century to carry some single-track branch line toward the mountains. But the Austrians cut the track while advancing on Caporetto in World War I, Mussolini tore up the rails to make munitions in the thirties and your people dropped bombs nearby during the German retreat in 1944."
"But the bridge itself is still standing?"
"In a very bad condition," Gudrun confirmed. "It was damaged by blast and shrapnel, wind and frost have eaten away most of the mortar, and it's practically standing on dry-stone pillars now. It could come crashing down at any moment."
"You're beginning to make me feel uneasy."
"The old railbed exists as a rough, weed-grown trail. You can still get a car down it, at least as far as the bridge, but there the track is blocked with barbed wire and the viaduct is closed even to pedestrian traffic. It's too dangerous to use."
"And this diabolical plan?"
"They're going to put your friend in the cab of an old truck. He'll be lightly drugged so that he won't be wise to what's going on, but he won't be bound or gagged. Then they aim to shove the truck out over the viaduct and..."
"Down will come baby, Brognola and all?"
"That's it. The structure is so shaky that a motorcycle could start it crumbling away. A heavy truck will collapse the whole thing — it won't stand the weight."
"I don't get it," Bolan said. "Why not just shoot him?"
"They want it to look like an accident, with nobody else involved. It's far enough away not to be connected with Bart's place. The truck they're using is the one Bart used when he snatched you from the carabinieri. There were a dozen cops brutally murdered in that operation. The investigators will assume your friend was the killer. The tire tracks will match, and there's other evidence."
"They'll think he freed me once I'd been snatched back from the police, that he was on his way back to Austria on some minor route and he figured on taking a shortcut and came to grief on the way. Is that roughly the scenario?"
"That's what I heard," Gudrun said.
"Okay," the warrior continued crisply. "The facts. How are they going to do it? You said shove the truck out over the bridge?"
"Not literally. The wire barriers can easily be moved. And the approach trail is on a downgrade that continues halfway out across the viaduct. They aim to tie a rope to the rear of the truck, give it a push to start it rolling down the slope, then winch it out gradually as it crawls across the bridge. When the weight collapses the bridge and the truck falls, they'll cut the rope... and hurry down to the valley bottom to unfasten the other end."
"Got it," the Executioner said. "The killer killed, making his getaway. It's not the best plan, it won't stand up to expert examination, but it'll get them off the hook at least until State starts making official inquiries. By then they'll be long gone. They don't ever have to use this place again, particularly if the Mafia is buying in."
"What do you want me to do?" Gudrun asked. "Come and join you?"
"No. Stick around there. Hang on until I contact you. I can't be explicit, because I'm going to have to play this one strictly by ear. But keep listening, okay? Meanwhile I need more facts. What time is the 'accident' scheduled for? How far am I from this viaduct, and how do I get there? Because whatever else goes down, Brognola isn't going to die."
There was an icy determination in the Executioner's voice, a steely resolve that masked a cold fury held in check. It was something Gudrun hadn't heard before. "I'll give you a six-figure map coordinate," she said. "Where are you now?"
"Between Nimis and Tarcento, less than ten miles from the Yugoslav border. According to your briefing, I shouldn't have more than a twenty-minute drive."
"That's right. It's cutting it fine, because they're starting as soon as it's light, but they do have preparations to make. You should be there in time if you take the right roads. Do you have the map there?"
"Right in front of me."
"Okay," Gudrun said. "Now here's what you do." She ran over a complex set of directions, and Bolan in his turn roughed out a contingency plan for her to follow. Then he said, "Tell me one thing. You keep saying 'they.' But you told me Baracco was strictly a lone wolf unless he was actually operating an escape. So where does the hired help come from here?"
"It's anything but that." There was a note of rancor in the reply. "It's the woman I told you about, the mobster's daughter from Prague. My... successor." Gudrun laughed bitterly. "She seems to be mistress in more senses than one. She gives the orders, she makes the decisions, she works everything out. She's certainly the boss where Bart's concerned. Yet she keeps on talking about 'my principals' and asking questions, questions, questions, as though she were orried about the credit-rating of his damned network."
"It all adds up to what we thought."
"You'd almost think the cow was trying to buy her way into his business, the way she bought into his bed."
"Yeah," the Executioner replied, "you would, wouldn't you?"
* * *
EARLY risers were fishing on the banks of the Tagliamento River as Bolan started the Land Cruiser and the sky above the mountains turned orange, green then finally blue.
There were willows on both sides of the river and mulberry trees in the fields across the road. Bolan remembered a line he had read once about this part of Italy — "heavy with autumn quiet, and wet from the fall rains." Well, if, like the man said, the rains came, they were certainly coming again! Within ten minutes a cloudbank blowing up fast from the south blotted out the clear sky and heavy drops began splattering against the Toyota's windshield.
By the time the vehicle turned up the sunken road where the stream from Baracco's valley ran into the Tagliamento, the rain was lancing down from a slate-gray canopy to bounce knee-high off the pavement. Bolan saw the brown sail of a barge negotiating a canal behind a line of trees, a low red farmhouse with a big barn, and then he was in the chestnut forest and the valley began twisting up into the foothills northeast of Udine.
As soon as the viaduct came into view, he stopped the off-roader and took a pair of binoculars from the airline bag.
The old bridge, still more than a mile away, spanned a scrub-covered cleft between two belts of forest: seven tall, narrow arches with a revetment at each end and six slender pillars in between. Even from this distance Bolan could see clearly that the small blocks of yellow sandstone had been seriously damaged by erosion.
There were two small observation platforms built out over the third and fifth arches — refuges for linesmen when a train passed — but otherwise the single-track road was guarded only by a solitary iron rail above the shallow parapet.
It was no big surprise, Bolan thought, eyeing the flimsy structure through the binoculars, that they had been forced to bar the approaches.
He drove on and found to his consternation that he had probably made an error when reading the large-scale m
ap of the area. For instead of climbing to the rim of the valley as he had expected, the lane plunged suddenly down and followed the stream along its floor.
A network of dirt roads and forest trails crisscrossed the landscape here, and he had clearly confused two of them in his haste. And so now — although he would arrive at the precise map coordinate that Gudrun had specified — he would be below the viaduct instead of above it.
Agitatedly he traced his path back on the map until he located the point where he had missed the correct route. To regain it, he would have to go back seven or eight kilometers — more than four miles. Could he afford the time?
Once more he focused the glasses on the bridge. It was nearer now. At the higher end he could see something — the cab of an ancient truck above a clump of bushes, the roof of a sedan shining in the rain, figures moving.
He couldn't go back. No way. The macabre stage for Brognola's murder was already set. Not one moment could be lost; the only thing to do was to go on...
The valley road was screened by trees. There was nobody actually on the viaduct yet or visible along the approach. It was just possible that he could run the Land Cruiser up to the arches without being spotted. Anyway, he would have to try.
Overhanging branches and the steepness of the banks prevented him from seeing the ground beyond the lip of the valley and would presumably stop those up there from seeing him until he was within fifty yards of the bridge. But the slope on which the great piles had been built was gentler, the trees had been cut down and the scrub was no more than waist-high. For a short distance on both sides of the viaduct the road — and anything on it — would be visible to anyone above. If they happened to be watching.
Or listening.
The ancient Toyota wasn't the quietest of vehicles. The road was evidently not often used, for there was a line of grass running down its center. A laboring engine at this time of the morning would surely be the one thing guaranteed to attract the attention of Baracco and his Mafia mistress.
Bolan cut the engine and coasted the vehicle to a halt beneath the last of the overhanging trees. He unleathered Big Thunder, grabbed the bag and ran for the bridge, keeping as close to the bank as he could.
The road ran beneath the third archway. He stopped there, panting, relieved for a moment not to have the rain lashing his face, and gazed upward. According to Gudrun, it Was the top of the fourth arch, above the stream, that was in the most dangerous condition.
Bolan reckoned the height of the viaduct there had to be around a 150 feet — a multiple facade soaring skyward on slender piles that tapered slightly toward the top. Now that he was immediately below, he could see how precariously those pillars supported the old railbed. The stonework was cracked and fissured in dozens of places, and there were great gaps at the top of the central arch where chunks of masonry had fallen away. Even the vital keystone seemed to be among the jumble of blocks around which the stream frothed.
He peered around the edge of the pillar and looked up the bank, making out the top of the truck's cab. The slope hid the rest of the vehicle and the people working on it. Any minute now, though, that cab might start moving over the bridge. And that would mean Brognola would be moving too, moving to certain death when the bridge collapsed beneath the vehicle.
There had been no cries of alarm, no panicked shouts from above. So far, so good. He had made it to this point undetected. But what now? Somewhere up there Gudrun would be waiting with the Beretta to help him; he had told her to hide along the approach road and contact him when he appeared. But she was expecting him to appear from above. And time was running out: he dared not wait to call her on the radio and explain. Not anymore. He had to get up there and stop that truck.
Fine. And, yeah, he might be concealed now, but once he emerged from behind the pillar and launched a rescue operation scrambling up the bank, he would rise into view after the first few yards — a target Baracco couldn't miss.
From where he was, deep in the valley, there was only one way to make the top of the viaduct: he would have to scale the weathered face of the pillar itself.
It was an idea born of desperation, but there was a slim chance it might work. In any case, it was his only chance.
And Hal Brognola's.
He could begin the climb on the inner side of the pillar, unseen by the killers above. And when he reached the curvature of the arch and had to move around to the outside, he could at least profit from the fact that the pillar tapered and would thus be leaning very slightly away from him — perhaps no more than two or three degrees, but that was a hell of a sight easier to deal with than a perpendicular face.
To balance that was the disadvantage that he would be in full sight of anyone who cared to look that way during the final part of the climb. And he would have to cope with the rain. Bolan shrugged. There was no point weighing pro and cons. By one of those inexplicable twists of fortune that favor the brave, he had asked Brognola to include four mountain climber's pitons along with the gear in the bag. He stuffed these into his pocket, slid a small, heavy-headed hammer into the waistband of his pants, pushed off the safety on the holstered AutoMag and approached the face of the pillar.
Mack Bolan had carried out a great many dangerous maneuvers in his life as a combatant, and a good many ill-advised ones, too. But the most ill-advised and most dangerous of all was that wild climb in the rain up the crumbling facade of the viaduct near Baracco's retreat in Italy.
For the first twenty or thirty feet the sandstone blocks were fairly large and the interstices between them correspondingly wide. Climbing was simply a matter of wedging in the toes, reaching up to locate a handhold, taking the body's weight on the fingers as a foot scrabbled for a higher toehold — and then repeating the process. But as soon as the blocks grew smaller and the cracks narrower, the trouble began. Rain was gusting across the valley in horizontal drifts, plastering Bolan's hair to his head, weighing down his clothing and rendering slippery the polished surface of the stones. It was also turning the crumbs of old mortar and eroded flakes of sandstone in the gaps into a greasy paste in which fingers and toes skidded more easily than grasped. Under such conditions, climbing up an almost vertical face without a rope was a nightmare.
Every inch became a test of willpower, coaxing the agonized muscles and overtaxed sinews to hang in for just that second longer whiie the exploring foot found a temporary resting place that wouldn't flake away, the groping fingers discovered a crevice that was secure, that wouldn't crumble into nothing the instant any weight was put on it.
When the Executioner was sixty-five or seventy feet from the ground, the face he was climbing began to curl outward over his head: he had reached the curvature of the arch. Now he'd have to move to the outside of the pillar.
Gritting his teeth, he started to edge around the right angle. At one point he was splayed out with his left hand and foot on the inner surface of the pillar, his right clamped around the corner, to the outer. The problem now was to swing the left hand and foot outward and past that edge, without dislodging the right while doing it.
The warrior knew better than to look down. Fleetingly he remembered his hazardous dash across the girder on the construction site in Venice. He was higher up now — perhaps not much higher, but the drop seemed greater. And just as fatal. He had no wish to cast his eyes over a perspective of wet stone plummeting to the road and the stream far below. But he did have to look up.
The pillar, rising from the bank, wasn't as high as the two supporting the central arch, but there was still more than thirty feet of smooth, damp stonework to traverse before he made the parapet. His glance raked the whole wide expanse of the bridge, the low clouds scudding across the sky above. As they streamed out of sight behind the parapet, it appeared that the clouds were stationary and the bridge moved... leaning over toward him, forcing him back, back.
Suddenly the niche supporting his left toe crumbled away. His foot shot into space. He plunged downward.
The shoc
k of the fall tore his left hand away from its hold and his right foot from around the corner. For a breathtaking moment his body dropped to the full extent of his right arm and he hung giddily over the void supported only by the four fingers of that hand. The air was torn from his lungs in a frantic gasp. From below — seconds later, it seemed — he heard the patter of rubble on the road.
He fought for purchase, pressing himself as close to the wet stone as he could to minimize the strain on those fingers. At last his foot found a ledge, the ledge held firm, and then his fingers groped for and found a crack level and solid enough to hold him.
Beads of sweat mingled with the rain streaming down his face, but for the moment the panic was over. With laboring breath he resumed the climb.
The next crisis came when he was no more than ten feet from the top. Perhaps it was because he remembered his near-fall when he'd left the girder, perhaps because he recalled the French and Italian belief that disasters always come in threes — but suddenly he could go no farther. The rain increased in fury, half blinding him; the rising wind plucked at his sodden pants; his muscles finally refused to drag his weight against the pull of gravity anymore.
Spreadeagled between heaven and earth, the Executioner pressed his face to the cold stone. His breath gasped hoarsely in the extremity of his exhaustion. There were points beyond which even his iron will was unable to drive him. He was, after all, no superman — just a highly trained specialist in excellent shape. But even for such individuals there are limits. And for Bolan the limit had been reached: if he was to continue he would have to use the pitons and risk the attention the noise of the hammering would draw.
Warily, leaning as hard as he could against the slight incline of the pillar, he withdrew one from his pocket, shoved it into a crevice where his fingers could also retain a hold and freed his other hand to hammer it in. Raising his right foot, he stepped up and rested his weight on the steel peg. He was about to hammer in the next one when he heard from somewhere above a rhythmic squeaking he couldn't at first identify. Turning his head slowly to the right, he squinted along the line of the viaduct toward the top of the bank and the abandoned railbed leading down to it.
Vendetta in Venice Page 20
