A huge fire had started in the big house and everything became as light as day, with a yellowish glow. A burst of fire ripped into the rightside seat of the jeep. The hardmen searching for Gino had come running back when Bolan hit the house. Bolan jerked the jeep into low, raced the engine and popped the clutch. He held the Erma by its pistolgrip, extended metal stock's buttplate jammed against his bicep.
A man rose from hiding on the roof, sighted, and Bolan poured a five-round burst of 9mm Parabellum chest dissolvers into the hardman. He reared straight up, and for a moment stood there, then fell forward dead, still clutching his own Erma in his right hand.
Two more armed men ran from the door at the end of the barn as Bolan wheeled around in a circle. Still holding the Erma one-handed, buttplate braced, Bolan drove with his left hand. He emptied the magazine at the two men, saw them staggering and going down as he cleared the yard and drove careening past the fire-roaring big house, dropped the submachine gun in his lap and used both hands to take the corner onto the road leading back toward the soldiers' camp.
He roared into the camp and, for a moment, thought he might pull off a headlong surprise rush and make it through unrecognized, or too fast for any reaction.
He almost made it, but then someone opened up with a long burst. The first rounds went high, crack!—ling overhead. Then Bolan felt and heard slugs hit the back of the jeep. The spare tire blew up with a pow! that made him jump outside his skin. Then another burst got both back tires and the jeep slewed around, almost overturning.
Bolan dived clear and ran, hearing the voices of the soldiers from camp.
The belt or the necktie had broken, the compresses were gone from his wounds. As he ran, Bolan tasted his own blood spraying into his face. It were as though he drank his own life.
He kept running, once more the prey, not the hunter.
17
Stalk
Brinato hung up the radio telephone and closed the door of the safe in which he kept the ultrasecret "hotline" in his Roman villa.
He turned to his boia, Razziatore. "Get the helicopter."
The assassin, who looked like a pink-cheeked all-American college lad, nodded without speaking and went to a desk with four telephones. He picked up the green one, after a moment said, "Bring in the ship, full equipment."
That's what Brinato liked most about the lad. No bullshit. No crap about, "What's up, boss?" He told the kid, "Do this, hit that bastard, bring the girl," and Razz nodded, sometimes smiled, especially if it was a hit, and he did it. No bullshit. And no bullshit afterwards, either. No preening and strutting around like some peacock with his fan spread. Brinato thought the kid was maybe queer, or asexual so that kind of stuff never entered his mind. Whichever, Brinato knew it never interfered. He'd thought about bringing the kid along, giving him experience in shylocking, numbers, muscle stuff along the docks, bagman for cops on the take, giving him an inside view of everything in this thing of ours, but the kid showed no interest. He was a pure out and out fucking killer and that's all there was to it. He didn't even care about clothes. Brinato wouldn't have been seen inside his villa wearing less than half-a-Large worth of raw silk underwear and robe, except when stark naked under the shower; but Razz, Christ, he took any kind of crap off the rack down at the phony high-class clothing shop Brinato had so he could rape the tourists. Trash he wouldn't bury an enemy in, he got two, three hundred bucks (discount for dollars or Deutchmarks) for, because they had counterfeit high-class labels sewed in them. Suckers!
Brinato was dressed in silk almost worth one Large, from the skin out, when he heard the thudding beat of the helicopter blades. He went to the big window and watched the ship settle slowly in atop the reinforced roof of the villa, then said, "Let's go, kid," and they took the elevator up.
According to instructions, standing orders, the pilot had shut down and the blades at rest when the boss and Razziatore came out of the elevator. The boss liked dust blown on him about as well as he liked getting peed on in the face, so the pilot had everything ready — because the boss liked delays even less than he liked dust.
Brinato paused beside the pilot. "You're set, right?"
"Yes, sir!" Donato answered, touching his cap. "The extra fuel tanks topped off, the rockets in place," he touched the seemingly out-sized landing skids which actually served the purpose of being rocket launchers as well as landing gear. "We've got the usual armament aboard. And the other thing, too," the pilot added, swallowing.
"Okay, that you get rid of."
The boss had just made the pilot a happy man. Donato drew a fantastic wage, the equivalent of almost three thousand U.S. dollars a week. But there was a catch to it. His work was not only frequently dangerous, often involving the assassin in some way or other; but also in various smuggling operations, sometimes narcotics. Since the helicopter was completely open— that is, it was openly registered to Brinato under the name of one of Brinato's many interlocking corporations, the helicopter had a self-contained self-destruct device aboard, just in case it was ever seized by the cops in a smuggling operation, most specifically dope.
The device was absolutely fail-safe, but Brinato still didn't trust it, just as he trusted nothing on earth, not even his wife. That's why he had her run over by a truck four years ago.
It took but a few moments to remove the device, then they were airborne, with the pilot going fullballs on direct course toward Agrigento.
Brinato had neglected to advise his fellow dons of this trip. He would let them in on the action, what was left of it, after he took the lean meat and gravy from the remains of Cafu's operation, said don being now deceased. As he lit a fat Havana, Brinato again congratulated himself for having sent a man over to the island when Cafu failed to show up for Frode's table. The hotline call had given Brinato the Word, and probably a several-hour edge on the other dons. Agrigento was a shambles. Cafu dead, his two main underbosses dead, a bunch of grease-balls running around the hills looking for that Bolan bastard. Meantime, what the hell were the other underbosses doing? The shylockers, bagmen, taxi operators, dock-bosses, whoremasters, olive oil monopoly guys . . . all the real, solid, tried and true and proved moneymakers —
The sons of bitches were stuffing their own pockets, that's what, without a boss of bosses. Piss on that assassin school. What was a grand a day for soldiers? Nothing. Brinato's own numbers syndicate, out of the three poorest most poverty stricken slums in Rome, nickle and dime stuff, made twice that, net, on the average. That was net. That was after paying off a standard ten percent for the runners, after fixing the cops, after paying off a few winners, unless he'd rigged it so there were no winners. And the goddam payoff wasn't all the way across the goddam Atlantic and Mediterranean, either. On the other side of the world, for Christ's sake! So you looked up some morning with shit on your face because the Angeletti kid didn't pay off and there wasn't a friggin' thing you could do about it. It was crazy.
And besides that —
The commissione had turned the idea down, absolutely, one hundred percent, unanimously.
All it got Cafu, his big plan, his big moneymaker, was dead. His head in his lap. Brinato shuddered.
You fool, Bolan told himself, you did not come here to die. That's not why you go to war, to die. You go to fight and win, and survive.