On Dangerous Ground (29 page)

“Navajo Chieftain waiting outside ready to go.”

“And a good pilot who knows what he’s doing?”

“The best.” Gagini spread his arms wide. “Me, Dillon, didn’t I tell you I was in the Air Force before I transferred to Intelligence work?”

“Well that’s convenient. How long to get there?”

“With the Navajo’s speed no more than fifteen minutes.”

Dillon nodded. “Right. I need half an hour on the ground.”

“Understood,” Gagini nodded. “I’ll come straight back here and join the others in the Lear. By the time we’re landing at Valdini it should be just about right. I’ll go and get the engines fired up.”

Dillon said to Lacey, “I’ll leave you that Beretta in the shoulder holster, just in case.” He picked up the parachute. “Now show me how to put this on.”

Lacey looked shocked. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Don’t let’s argue about it, Flight Lieutenant, just show me.”

Lacey helped him buckle the straps, pulling them tight. “Are you really sure about this?”

“Just show me what to pull,” Dillon said.

“The ring there and don’t mess about, not at eight hundred feet. The Navajo has an Airstair door. Just go down it, fall off, and pull on that ring straight away.”

“If you say so.” Dillon picked up the Celeste machine pistol and slung it across his chest and hung the night glasses around his neck. He turned to Hannah. “Well, are you going to kiss me goodbye?”

“Get out of here, Dillon,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He gave her a mock salute, turned, and went out and across the tarmac to the Navajo where Gagini sat in the cockpit, propellers turning. Dillon went up the steps and turned. Hannah had a last glimpse of him pulling up the Airstair door and then the Navajo moved away.

FIFTEEN

THE NIGHT SKY WAS CLEAR TO THE HORIZON AND alive with stars and in the light of the half moon the countryside below was perfectly visible. They were flying at two thousand feet along a deep valley, mountains rising on either side, and when Dillon looked out of one of the windows he could see the white line of a road winding along the valley bottom.

It was all very quick. Gagini climbed to two and a half thousand to negotiate a kind of hump at the end of the valley and beyond was a great sloping plateau and he started down.

Five minutes later he leveled off at eight hundred, turned and called over his shoulder, “Drop the Airstair door. It’s any minute now and I don’t want to have to go round again, it could alert them. Go when I tell you, and good luck, my friend.”

Dillon moved back to the door, awkwardly because of the parachute. He rotated the handle, the door fell out into space, the steps unfolded. There was a roar of air and he held onto the fuselage buffeted by the wind and looked down, and way over on his left was the farmhouse looking just like the photo.

“Now!” Gagini cried.

Dillon took two steps down holding the handrail and then allowed himself to fall, headfirst, turning over once in the plane’s slipstream, pulling the ring of the rip cord at the same moment. He looked up, saw the plane climbing steeply over on his left, the noise of the engine already fading.

In the dining room of the farmhouse they had just finished the first course of the dinner and Marco, acting as butler again, was clearing them away when they heard the plane.

“What in the hell is that?” Morgan demanded and he got up and moved out on the terrace, Marco behind him.

The noise of the plane was fading over to the right. Asta came out at that moment. “Are you worried about something?”

“The plane. It seemed so low that for a wild moment I thought it might intend to land.”

“Dillon?” She shook her head. “Even he wouldn’t be crazy enough to try that.”

“No, of course not.” He smiled and they went back inside. “Just a passing plane,” he said to Luca and he turned to the Brigadier and shrugged. “No cavalry riding to the rescue this time.”

“What a pity,” Ferguson said.

“Yes, isn’t it? We’ll continue with the meal, shall we? I’ll be back in a moment.” He nodded to Marco and went out into the hall with him.

“What is it?” Marco demanded.

“I don’t know. That plane made no attempt to land, but it was certainly low when it made its pass.”

“Someone sniffing out the lay of the land perhaps,” Marco suggested.

“Exactly, then if someone was approaching by road, they could let them know how the situation looked by radio.”

Marco shook his head. “No one could get within twenty miles of here by road without us being informed, believe me.”

“Yes, perhaps I’m being overcautious, but who have we got?”

“There’s the caretaker, Guido. I put him on the gate, and the two shepherds, the Tognolis, Franco and Vito. They’ve both killed for the Society, they’re good men.”

“Get them out in the garden and you see to things. I just want to be sure.” He laughed and put a hand on Marco’s shoulder. “It’s my Sicilian half talking.”

He returned to the dining room and Marco went to the kitchen where he found Rosa, the caretaker’s wife, busy at the stove and the Tognoli brothers seated at one end of the table eating stew.

“You can finish that later,” he said. “Right now you get out into the garden just in case. Signore Morgan was unhappy about the plane that passed over.”

“At your orders,” Franco Togloni said, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand, and he unslung, from the back of his chair, his
Lupara
, the sawed-off shotgun that was the traditional weapon of the Mafia since time immemorial. “Come on,” he told his brother. “We’ve got work to do,” and they went out.

Marco picked up a glass of red wine that stood on the table. “You’ll have to serve the food yourself, Rosa,” he said, emptied the glass at a single swallow, then took a Beretta from his shoulder holster and checked it as he went out.

The silence was extraordinary. Dillon felt no particular exhilaration. It was a strange black-and-white world in the moonlight, rather like one of those dreams in which you dreamed you were flying and time seemed to stand still, and then suddenly the ground was rushing up at him and he hit with a thump and rolled over in long meadow grass.

He lay there for a moment to get his breath, then punched the quick release clip and stepped out of the parachute harness. The farmhouse was two hundred yards to the left beyond an olive grove on a slight rise. He started to run quite fast until he reached the grove, got down in the shelter of trees on the other side and found himself approximately seventy-five yards from the crumbling white wall of the farmhouse.

He focused the night glasses on the gate which stood open and saw Guido the caretaker at the gate straight away in cloth cap and shooting jacket, a shotgun over his shoulder, and yet he wasn’t the problem. What was, was the large, old-fashioned bell hanging above the gate, rope dangling. One pull on that and the whole place would be roused.

There was a break on the ground to his right, a gully stretching toward the wall perhaps two feet deep. He crawled along it cautiously and finally reached the wall. The grass was long and overgrown at that point and he unslung the silenced Celeste machine pistol and moved cautiously along the wall, keeping to the grass, but it petered out when he was still twenty yards away.

Guido was smoking a cigarette, his back to Dillon, looking up at the stars, and Dillon stood up and moved quickly, out in the open now. When he was ten yards away, Guido turned, saw him at once, his mouth opening in dismay. He reached up for the bellrope and Dillon fired a short burst that lifted him off his feet, killing him instantly.

It was amazing how little noise the Celeste had made, but there was no time to lose. Dillon dragged Guido’s body into the shelter of the wall and dashed through the gate. He immediately left the drive and moved into the shelter of the lush, overgrown semitropical garden. Here too the grass badly needed cutting. He moved cautiously through it between the olive trees toward the house. Quite suddenly, it started to rain, one of those sudden showers common to the region at that time of year and he crouched there, aware of the terrace, the open windows, and the sound of voices.

Marco, on his way down the drive, cursed as the rain started to fall, pulled up his collar, and continued to the gate. It was apparent at once that Guido wasn’t there. Marco pulled out his Beretta, moved outside, and saw the body lying at the foot of the wall. He reached for the rope, rang the bell furiously for a few moments, then ran inside the gate.

“Someone’s here,” he called. “Watch yourselves,” then he moved into the bushes, crouching.

In the dining room there was immediate upheaval. “What’s happening?” Luca demanded.

“The alarm bell,” Morgan said. “Something’s up.”

“Well, now, who would have thought it?” Ferguson said.

“You shut your mouth.” Morgan went to a bureau, opened a drawer to reveal several handguns. He selected a Browning and handed Asta a Walther. “Just in case,” he said and at that moment a shotgun blasted outside.

It was Vito Togloni who, panicking, made the mistake of calling to his brother, “Franco, where are you? What’s happening?”

Dillon fired a long burst in the direction of the voice. Vito gave a strangled cry and pitched out of the bushes on his face.

Dillon crouched in the rain, waiting, and after a while heard a rustle in the bushes and Franco’s voice low, “Hey, Vito, I’m here.”

A second later, he moved out of the bushes and paused under an olive tree. Dillon didn’t hesitate, driving him back against the tree with another burst from the Celeste. Franco fell, discharging his shotgun, and lay very still. Dillon moved forward, looking down at him, and behind there was the click of a hammer going back.

Marco said, “I’ve got you now, you bastard. Put that thing down and turn around.”

Dillon laid the Celeste on the ground and turned calmly. “Ah, so it’s you, Marco, my old son, I wondered where you’d be hiding.”

“God knows how you got here, but that doesn’t matter now. The only important thing is you’re here and I get the pleasure of killing you myself.”

He picked up Franco’s shotgun with one hand and holstered the Beretta, then he called out, “It’s Dillon, Signore Morgan, I’ve got him here.”

“Have you now?” Dillon said.

“This is the
Lupara
, always used by Mafia for a ritual killing.”

“Yes, I had heard that,” Dillon said. “The only trouble is, old son, it’s only double-barreled and it discharged when Franco went down.”

There was one single second when Marco took in what he had said and realized it was true. He dropped the shotgun, his hand went inside his coat to the holstered Beretta.

Dillon said, “Goodbye, me old son.” His hand found the silenced Walther in his waistband under the tunic at his back, it swung up and he fired twice, each bullet striking Marco in the heart and driving him back.

Dillon stood there looking down at him, then he replaced the Walther in his waistband, reached down and picked up the Celeste. He took a step forward, looking out through the bushes at the terrace, then fired a long burst, raking the wall beside the window.

“It’s Dillon,” he called. “I’m here, Morgan.”

Morgan in the drawing room stood by the dining table, Luca on one side, Asta on the other holding the Walther in her hand.

“Dillon?” he called. “Can you hear me?”

Dillon called back. “Yes.”

Morgan went round the table and got Ferguson by the collar. “On your feet,” he said. “Or I’ll kill you now.”

He pushed the Brigadier around the table toward the open windows and the terrace. “Listen to me, Dillon, I’ve got your boss here. I’ll blow his brains all over the room unless you do as I say. After all, he’s what you’ve come for.”

There was a marked silence, only the rain falling, and then incredibly Dillon appeared, coming up the steps to the terrace, the Celeste in his hands. He reached the terrace himself and stood there, the rain beating down.

“Now what?” he said.

Morgan, the muzzle of his Browning against Ferguson’s temple, pulled him back, step-by-step, until he stood at the end of the table, Luca still sitting on one side of him, Asta on the other, her right hand clutching the Walther against her thigh.

Dillon moved into the entrance, a supremely menacing figure in the camouflaged uniform, his hair plastered to his skull. He spoke in Irish and then smiled.

“That means God bless all here.”

Morgan said, “Don’t make the wrong move.”

“Now why would I?” Dillon moved to one side of the table and nodded to Asta. “Is that a gun in your hand, girl? I hope you know how to use it.”

“I know,” she said and her eyes were like dark holes, her face very pale.

“Then move to one side.” She hesitated and he said, his voice harsh, “Do it, Asta.”

She stepped back and Morgan said, “Don’t worry. If he fires that thing he takes all of us and that includes the Brigadier, isn’t that so, Dillon?”

“True,” Dillon said. “I presume the overweight gentleman is your uncle, Giovanni Luca. It would include him too. A great loss to this Honoured Society of yours.”

“There is a time for all things, Dillon,” the old man said. “I’m not afraid.”

Dillon nodded. “I respect that, but you’re living in the past, Capo, you’ve been Lord of Life and Death too long.”

“Everything comes to an end sometime, Mr. Dillon,” Luca said and there was a strange look in his eyes.

Morgan said, “To hell with this, put the machine pistol on the table, Dillon, or I’ll spread Ferguson’s brains over the cutlery, I swear it.”

Dillon stood there, holding the Celeste comfortably, and Ferguson said, “I abhor bad language, dear boy, but you have my permission to shoot the fucking lot of them.”

Dillon smiled suddenly, that deeply personal smile of total charm. “God save you, Brigadier, but I came to take you home and I didn’t intend in a coffin.”

He moved to the table, placed the Celeste down, and pushed it along to the end where it came to a halt in front of Luca.