Sunscream (13 page)

Bolan gestured with the gun. “Don’t make a sound,” he warned. “Walk over there and get into the pool.”

Her eyes were wide with terror. “I... I can’t swim.”

“You don’t have to. Stay at the shallow end.”

“No, but... my swimsuit will get wet. It will be ruined.”

She flicked an apprehensive glance over her right shoulder.

Bolan followed her movement and saw a blue canvas awning under which double glass doors led to another part of the villa. That must be where the big shot was holed up, Bolan guessed.

“Look,” he murmured, “I’m in a hurry. All you have to do is get in the pool and sit in the shallow end with just your head showing.” He looked across the pool.

“But if you step out of line my partner over there will see you.” He pointed to the tip of the vacuum hose where it gleamed out of the shadow. “That’s a cannon he has there. One squawk out of you, and he’ll blow your pretty head away. Okay?”

Wordlessly, trembling, she went to the ladder and lowered herself into the tepid water.

Bolan found Scalese in a bright, airy room with picture windows overlooking the sea. He was wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt and white shorts above thin tanned legs. His silver hair was crimped close to his skull and his face was as lined as a yellowed sheet of music.

The Executioner took in the inlaid Renaissance cabinets, nineteenth century oil paintings, a tiger-skin rug, before the gang boss spoke.

“What’s happen? Who are you? How the hell you get inna here?” He was holding an unlit cigar. He didn’t seem angry, only faintly surprised.

“The racket,” Bolan said grimly. “The kid prostitute racket. You’re the brains behind it, the guy places the orders, right?”

Scalese picked a gold cigar cutter from a desk and guillotined his Corona. “So what of it?” he said, shrugging.

“In Paris,” Bolan said carefully, “we don’t go for that. The baron does not approve.”

“Whatsa matter wit’ you? You crazy or something?” The sallow forehead corrugated even more as Scalese’s eyebrows rose. “It’s no business of his. Or yours. What do I care for Paris? I run my family the way I want.”

“If we’re going into business together,
we
wouldn’t want to be associated with the kind of scum who seeks out deprived kids, tempts them with offers of money, exploits them...” the words trembled in Bolan’s mouth “...and then ruins them for life.”

“You tell your baron he go fuck himself. So what if a few punk kids get laid a coupla years early? They’ll be on their backs soon enough, anyway, and this way they getta some money, too. What so corrupt in that, tell me?”

Bolan had seen the surreptitious jab at the desk button when Scalese picked up his cigar cutter, was aware of the turning spools of the tape deck beneath the windows: if they were being recorded he wanted the connection between the baron, the yellow Ferrari and what was going to happen to Scalese to be clear. “The Baron won’t stand for that kind of filth.”

“Say, how did you get in here, anyway?” Scalese asked.

“You need better security,” Bolan said.

The Camorra boss turned back to the desk and picked up a small bronze conversation piece, a shepherd leaning over a tree stump. The shepherd’s head had been cut and hinged to accommodate a cigarette lighter. “I hope you don’ hurt none of my boys getting through.” He swung around to face Bolan, raised the statuette level with his chest and flicked the lighter. He held the flame to his cigar.

Bolan was alert for any sudden moves. He was off the mark and diving the instant the hidden shutter opened in the base of the bronze piece.

The deadly steel dart ripped the lobe of his ear as it hurtled past him. Bolan rammed Scalese’s chest with his shoulder and carried the two of them back over the polished top of the desk. A black letter case, an inkwell, a jeweled paper knife and a Venetian ashtray crashed to the floor. The two men landed in a heap beneath the windows.

Scalese was quick for his age. A stiletto was already in his hand as he twisted out from under the Executioner. But anger had fueled Bolan’s strength and determination. Ignoring the menace of that flickering point, he went straight for the man’s arm.

The blade slashed the strap of his shoulder rig, pricked blood through the sleeve of his blacksuit and scratched his hand before his fingers closed in on the bony wrist.

Violently, he jerked the arm down against an upthrust knee. The weapon clattered away; the bone snapped dryly as a dead branch in winter.

Scalese screamed.

Bolan picked him up by his ankles and swung him. He whirled the mafioso around like an Olympic athlete winding up a hammer throw, then crashed the old man’s head against one of the picture windows.

Scalese’s skull shattered the glass. The pane exploded with a jangling concussion.

Once more Bolan swiveled. At the completion of the turn, he hurled the Camorra chief savagely out through the broken window.

Blood laced the air as Scalese’s ribboned body dropped fifteen feet in a cascade of razor-sharp fragments to a terrace planted with olives and fruit trees.

He lay groaning feebly, with streams of scarlet fanning out from his broken body to sink into the sunbaked earth. Even if he lived, Girolamo Scalese wasn’t going to be propositioning underage kids for quite some time.

Bolan turned back into the room. A swarthy gorilla in a cream-colored suit was standing in the doorway, his right hand diving between his lapels.

In one fluid movement Bolan scooped up the fallen paper knife by the point and thrust it with murderous aim at the hood. The sharp blade sank into the guy’s throat and he subsided to the floor with a bubbling moan.

Bolan jumped over the body and raced for the patio. Another mobster, attracted by the noise of smashing glass, was running along the passage toward Bolan. The big guy wasted him as he ran, a single shot from the Beretta impacting below his breastbone, pulverizing liver and spleen.

On the far side of the patio, between Scalese’s quarters and the kitchen wing, three more hoods were approaching the Executioner. The girl was still in the pool, her blond hair and frightened face incongruous above the surface of the blue water.

“Keep your head down!” Bolan yelled.

He unhitched a small plastic grenade from the black-suit harness, pulled the pin and threw it across the pool.

A momentary flash dimmed the blaze of the sun. A cracking thunderclap of an explosion. More glass shattered and fell. Masonry dropped and broken tiles slid into the patio from the roof.

A shower of blood stained the walls.

Bolan reholstered the Beretta. “You can come out now,” he told the blonde. “Don’t look behind you... and get the hell out of here.”

He walked around to the kitchen passage and descended the stairs to the garage.

At the end of the driveway he pressed the button to open the electrically operated gates and regained the Ferrari.

Turning the roadster so that he could go back the way he had come, he backed up into the villa entrance. The hood with the paper knife in his throat could still be alive; there might be other guys on Scalese’s payroll in other rooms; the girl might be watching. Whatever, he wanted to be quite sure somebody saw him leaving in that yellow-and-black car.

With their reports, and the evidence on the tape, whether Scalese himself lived or died, Baron Etang de Brialy was going to have a lot of explaining to do when the story broke on his arrival on Stromboli.

And nobody was going to believe some fool story about his Ferrari having been stolen. Not when it would be found tomorrow right where it should be, in the dockside parking lot, with the keys in the harbormaster’s office!

Bolan wore a satisfied smile as he floored the pedal, heading for Naples and Rome.

Sanguinetti’s yacht was in the Onassis class. Below the streamlined stack that funneled the vapors from its twin 1200 hp diesels into the sky, three promenade decks accommodated a dining room, a lounge, a bar and sleeping quarters for thirty-two people. Two of the latest powered self-righting lifeboats were stowed aft of the wheelhouse and bridge, and there was a small helipad with a Dassault chopper above the crew’s mess hall.

Perhaps in ironic allusion to his own name — or even to the activities of his friends — Sanguinetti had christened his sixty-million-dollar status symbol
Bloody Mary.

Neither the richness of the appointments nor the elegance of
Bloody Mary’s,
thoroughbred line drew Mack Bolan’s attention after he had left the Jaguar in Reggio and come aboard on the afternoon of the day following his visit to Scalese. It was something much more mundane that attracted him to the luxuriously equipped bar on the upper promenade deck.

A giant-screen television set sat above the rows of bottles and glasses.

He had heard the initial news flash on the car radio, but he was anxious for the fuller version that TV would provide. And there it was! Seven people were dead and a dozen injured after a street battle in downtown San Francisco.

Gunmen from the East Coast had invaded the city’s dock area in a fleet of cars and shot up local racketeers in a running battle that had lasted more than an hour. Among the dead was an underworld boss named Luigi Abba.

A handful of mobsters sprawling in the soft seats around the bar stopped drinking long enough to comment jeeringly on the bulletin. “Just like old times,” one of them guffawed. “Hey, Sondermann, is that the way they run things where you come from, too?”

“At least we try to keep our private quarrels off the TV screen,” Bolan said.

A dispute over Mafia “territory” was thought to be at the root of the dispute, the newscaster said. Vincente Borrone, one of the leading New York mafiosi, was being held as a material witness although he denied any knowledge of the affair.

Bolan took in the pictures of bullet-riddled sedans and the chalked sidewalk outlines of corpses and nodded with satisfaction.

He looked out beyond the forested masts and rigging of the harbor, to the open sea that lay on the far side of the narrow passage separating Reggio de Calabria from Sicily.

Stromboli and the seven other islets comprising the Lipari group were forty nautical miles away. With the power churned out by
Bloody Mary’s
twin screws, they should be there in less than two hours.

There would be absences, though. Apart from Borrone and Abba. Bolan figured from his knowledge of the mob scene Stateside that the bosses from Chicago, Detroit — and maybe New Orleans and Florida, as well — would be too anxious to put their weight behind the remnants of Abba’s gang, too busy trying to chisel themselves a piece of the action, to make the trip. Barrone’s nationwide stranglehold on the organization was not popular.

Still, it was kind of ironic — the Executioner permitted himself a grim smile — the role he himself was playing.

Instead of his usual hellfire attacks, his anti-Mafia tactics here were based on thinking that paralleled the worldwide strategy favored by the KGB: precisely in the style of that evil organization, having laid his plans, he was standing aside and allowing his adversaries to destroy themselves from the inside!

Bolan didn’t know it, but he wasn’t going to be allowed to remain on the sidelines much longer.

Marcel Sanguinetti’s property on Stromboli satisfied the same desire for privacy that was apparent at La Rocaille. It was separated from the houses of the island’s one poor fishing village by a low headland of black volcanic basalt that ran out under the sea.

The villa was in the style peculiar to the islands: square, flat roofed, spread over many terraces and approached beneath an arbor of grapevines supported on lime washed masonry pillars. A rough track led there from the village: the arbor was directed toward an expensive landing stage.

The volcano on the island, no more than three thousand feet high, is active, liable to erupt at any time.

As they neared the island, the boatload of mafiosi saw with some trepidation that a wisp of dark smoke curled upward from the crater.

“Hell,” a minor mobster from Marseilles exclaimed. “The bastard’s gonna puke hot rocks and bury us all!”

“Nah!” commented one of the bodyguards accompanying Zefarelli, the Sicilian chief. “She’s always blowin’ a little steam — nothing to worry about.”

Some of the hoods laughed. One or two looked as dubious as the guy from Marseilles. Otto Schuyler, a hood from Amsterdam who had not been at the original meeting in Marseilles, scowled and spat on the floor. “Hell, I thought this was supposed to be a goddamned get-together of guys with guts,” he sneered.

Bolan listened to the interplay and wondered what was the best way to capitalize on such paranoia that it would complete the disintegration he himself had started.

Right now, he had to let the subject drop. There was a long rattling rumble as
Bloody Mary
dropped anchor.

Jean-Paul walked into the bar with Sanguinetti and the Sicilian boss. “Okay, you guys,” he called, “break it up. We’re going ashore.”

Antonin’s chopper was due before dusk. Before that, Coralie Sanguinetti, who had arrived on the island the previous day, organized an open air meal prepared and served by locals, on a huge patio.

It was suffocatingly hot on that windless afternoon. The sun glared from a sky the color of hammered pewter, the sea scarcely stirred and the wisp of smoke veiling Stromboli’s crater remained motionless.

Jean-Paul had decided to deliver a last-minute pep talk on the necessity for a united front. He strode up and down among the senior mafiosi — Bolan, along with strongarm men, was being fed in an adjoining courtyard — brandishing a leg of cold chicken as he urged the vital importance of total agreement.

He was emphasizing how essential it was for Antonin to be convinced that there was not the slightest hint of discord, when the clatter of an approaching helicopter floated over the murmur of voices around the patio.

Almost at once the rotor whine was itself drowned out by the rasp of a powerboat surging in toward Sanguinetti’s private landing.

For an instant Jean-Paul paused, and then he resumed his harangue. He had hardly spoken when hurrying footsteps echoed along the stone walk beneath the arbor that led from the harbour.

Two thickset men burst onto the patio, each carrying a Walther PPK automatic. One of them wore a white hospital bandage around his neck.

Through the archway separating the two courtyards, Bolan recognized the hood whose throat he had pierced with the paper knife. The other guy looked as though he could be Scalese’s son. Surreptitiously Bolan checked that the Beretta slid easily in its leather.

Jean-Paul stopped in midspeech. “What the
hell?..
”

“What kind of shit are you bastards trying to pull?” the guy who looked like Scalese’s son shouted. “Where the hell does this mother get off...” the two men surged toward Jean-Paul, furious and menacing “...sending in his goddamn gorilla to break up my old man’s place, trying to crease the old guy?”

“All right. Cool it, damn you.” Two angry spots of color burned on J-P’s cheeks. “What do you mean by busting in here like this! Who the hell are you talking about?”

“De Brialy, that’s who,” Scalese Jr. yelled. “Where is the creep? I’ll tear him to pieces!”

Pandemonium all around the patio. Some of the hoods were protesting, some laughed, some stood up to see better. There was a sudden increase of noise as the helicopter passed low over the villa and hovered above the landing stage.

De Brialy rose slowly to his feet, small, prim, gray. “Just what exactly am I supposed...” he began.

“My old man may not live: his skull is cracked, his bones are broken, he’s all busted up inside,” Scalese raved. “Seven of his housemen are wasted. And all because of some crap relating to cathouse kids. Don’t deny it, you frog bastard: it’s all on the tape.”

The guy with the bandaged throat obviously found it too painful to speak, but he nodded violently, gesturing with his gun at Etang de Brialy. One or two of the mafiosi had unobtrusively circled behind the two intruders and now they were covered on all sides.

Jean-Paul sighed. “Maybe it would be better if we continued this indoors,” he said.

Together with the two enraged Italians, Etang de Brialy and a handful of the other capos, he hurried toward a colonnade running outside Sanguinetti’s quarters along one side of the patio.

Passing the arch that led to the second courtyard, Scalese’s companion looked up and saw Bolan sitting among the gorillas. He froze, tugging at Scalese’s sleeve as he croaked something unintelligible in a raucous ghost of a voice. Scalese whirled. “That dude? He’s the bastard did the job?”

Bandaged-throat nodded, his own eyes murderous.

The barrel of the PPK swung up.

“Cut that out!” Hard as a plank, J-P’s hand chopped down on Scalese’s wrist, knocking the gun to the ground. At the same time Etang de Brialy twisted the other Walther away from the bandaged hood.

“This is a time for talking, not shooting,” the Marseillais rapped sharply. He glanced up as a shadow swept across the patio. Swooping low above the building, Antonin’s chopper was about to set down. “And a damned awkward time it is,” Jean-Paul muttered.

He looked across at the inner courtyard. “Sondermann, you’d better come along, too, until we get this whole mess sorted out.”

Bolan was already on his feet. Time for the showdown, yeah, just as he had expected. He flipped open the single button of his jacket for easier access to the shoulder rig, but from behind two hands closed in on his biceps and Smiler’s voice drawled: “Not so fast, Fritz. I always did think there was something creepy about you. Now I smell a rat — a rat with a not-quite-strong-enough German accent.”

Chuckling to himself, Raoul snared the Beretta from its armpit rig and the two of them marched Bolan indoors after the others. “Better for the boss he should be in no danger when he gets wise,” Smiler rasped.

Inside the villa they crowded into a wide, low-ceilinged room with huge windows looking out onto a terrace of black volcanic ash planted with orange and lemon trees. The branches of the trees thrashed as the helicopter settled down between the terrace and the landing stage.

Jean-Paul stood with his back to a vast marble chimneypiece. The remainder of the mafiosi stood awkwardly among the cane tables and chaise longues furnishing the room.

“Okay,” Jean-Paul said tightly. “Now let’s have it. One guy at a time. One idea at a time. And it better be good.” He turned to the Camorra boss’s son. “Scalese?”

Before the young man could reply, Otto Schuyler, the Dutchman, erupted into the room. “Just a minute!” he shouted. “Did I hear you call this guy Sondermann? Kurt Sondermann, from Hamburg?” He strode up to Bolan and stared into his face. “Well, you’re being taken for a ride. This ain’t Sondermann. I know the dude: I worked with him. There’s a resemblance, sure, but this ain’t him!”

There was a sudden silence in the room. Bolan tensed.

The grip on his biceps tightened. “Here’s where you get yours, asshole,” Smiler’s voice snarled gleefully in his ear.

Jean-Paul stepped forward. His eyes had a puzzled look. Obviously he was recalling Bolan’s help during the tunnel raid, his support in the fight with Lombardo that followed, the four hits he had carried out. He seized the lapels of the Executioner’s jacket.

“If you’re not Sondermann, who the hell are you? And you have one chance to come across with the truth….”

Jean-Paul paused, looking over his shoulder.

Footsteps clacked along the stone corridor leading from the room to the villa gardens. Dimitri Aleksandrevitch Antonin stood in the doorway, resplendent in the dress uniform of a colonel in the KGB, his shaven head gleaming in the dim light.

He took in the scene at a glance, frowned and then centered his gaze on the group before the chimneypiece and in particular on the tall, muscled guy held by Jean-Paul and his two henchmen.

This time his eyes widened in recognition.

“What the devil are you doing with that man here?” he shouted. “How did he get in? Don’t you have any sense at all, any of you? That’s the capitalist mercenary, Mack Bolan.”