Assault on Soho

was free and running through the wet wild woods of Londontown.

Chapter Four The closing jungle

Danno Giliamo was a mighty unhappy man. Twice in one night he had set a flawless trap for that Bolan bastard, and twice in one night the bastard had skipped lightly away and left a pile of bleeding bodies behind him.

'The trouble,' Danno complained to his local contact, 'is that I'm trying to do a job with nothing but a bunch of two-bit amateurs. We're never going to nail that guy with this kind of talent.'

Nick Trigger, a powerfully built man about forty-five, thoughtfully chewed the end of an unlighted cigar, and studied the troubled caporegimefrom Jersey. Known earlier by various names—Endante, Fumerri, Woods, to list only the most recent—Nick had been a trigger man with various eastern mobs since the late forties. He had come to England less than a year earlier, with false papers and under the name Nicholas Woods, and with a singular mission to perform for the council of bosses back home in the U.S. In coded communications travelling between the two countries, this veteran triggerman was identified as Nick Trigger, and the code name had stuck.

Nick's mission in England was true to his trade. He had been commissioned to discourage organized competition with the mob's British arm during their entrenchment there. A better man for the task could hardly have been chosen. Tough, tenacious, highly intelligent and coldly merciless, he is thought to have figured directly or indirectly in more than a hundred Mafia executions during his criminal career. Many of these victims had formerly been close associates.

Now, as Nick Trigger, this same assassin was chief British enforcer for the Council of Capo's, reporting directly to the Commissione—and he was not entirely happy with the untidy bundle being edged into his lap by the man from Jersey. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and quietly asked his visitor, 'How many boys you running with, Danno?'

Nervously, Giliamo replied, 'I brought a dozen of my personal crew, and now two of them are hurt. I got about twenty freelancers left, ones I brought with me. Local talent I never know about, it keeps varying. For every one that gets shot, I lose ten to the trembling shakes.'

'Well how many locals you think you got right now?'

'I think maybe a couple dozen.'

Trigger whistled softly. 'Hell, you got a regular army. You can't nail Bolan with all that?'

'You gotta see this guy to believe it,' Giliamo said. 'It ain't numbers that's going to get him, it's talent. Now I got some pretty damn good boys with me, Nick, but I ain't got any in thatbastard's league. As for these tagalong rodmen, it's almost criminal neglect to even put them on the firing line. This Bolan just whacks 'em down and sends for some more. You ought to see what he did to us on this last hit, and I bet he didn't fire a shot hisself. He had my boys shootin' each otherup.'

'He's pretty tricky, eh?'

'Cunning is the word, Nick. This fuckin' boy is cunning.'

Nick Trigger chewed his cigar for another thoughtful moment, then asked, 'Just what is it you want from me, Danno?'

'I thought maybe you'd like to take it over, Nick.'

'This Bolan hit?'

'Yeah. I don't know anybody else off hand could handle this job except Nick Trigger.'

'I hear he put down the Talifero brothers in Miami,' the other murmured.

'Hard, he put them down damnhard, that's right. I was there. I saw it. Not just the brothers got put down. The whole place was a disaster area.'

'The Talifero's are about the two meanest boys around anywhere,' Nick Trigger observed, sighing. 'What the hell, maybe this boy Bolan is as big as his reputation.'

'He is, Nick,' Giliamo quickly affirmed. 'Bigger maybe. He scares the living shit outta my boys, I gotta be honest about that. They're so jittery and keyed-up they start shooting holes in each other if anything moves. I gotta be honest about this. I don't know anybody could take this boy except maybe you.'

The veteran triggerman smiled grimly. 'Don't try buttering me up, Danno. I don't take jobs on butter.'

'I'm just being honest,' Giliamo assured him. 'You know I'm just being honest, Nick.'

'Yeah.' Trigger was thinking about it. 'I been walking a thin line here in England, you know. I mean, a lot's at stake and we don't have things nailed down too good. I have a hell of a big job without all this other trouble.'

'I know, Nick, I know. I was just thinking that…'

'We got a lot of legit money invested around. Hell we got movie companies and theatres, clubs, casinos— hell, we got a lot of money strung out around here, Danno. We even have musical groups and records and that kind of stuff. And it's tight—the competish is tight. Nobody's on the make in this town, neither. I mean the cops, the government people—they don't have any handle to grab hold of. I never saw such an honest damn country as this one.'

'I understood you wasn't involved in the business end of things,' Giliamo said. 'I mean, you're enforcing, right?'

'Yeah you're right, Danno, but what I'm staying is all this makes my job tougher. If you can't buy security then you got to takeit—right? I mean, hell, if the local biggies won't cooperate then you have to carve out a territory the best way you can. And that means I'm busier'n hell, Danno.'

'Well, I figure you could handle this job just one two three, Nick. And it would be a real feather in your cap. I mean, you know, it'd show everybody once and for all that you're two heads bigger than the Talifero boys. Right?'

Nick Trigger let out a tired sigh. He plucked at his tie and pushed a coffee cup in little circles about the table. 'I'd have to clear it with the people back home,' he said.

'That wouldn't be any trouble,' Giliamo assured him. 'They want Bolan more'n they want Manhattan. I'd appreciate it, though, if you'd put it in a way that wouldn't make me look like an ass. You know. Just tell 'em I don't know the town or something, and you'd like to take over and get this Bolan out of your hair real quick. You know. Don't make it look like I'm flat on my ass.'

'Yeah, well, what you say is true, Danno.' Trigger told him. 'Many more open gunfights around here and the whole town will pull up tight. I don't need the CLD swarming around my operation. Those boys are bad news all the way.'

'What's that ODD?' asked the man from Jersey.

'That's what Scotland Yard calls their dick force, Criminal Investigation Division. They're worse news than the feds back home.'

'So that's what you tell 'em,' Giliamo quickly replied. 'Tell 'em you want to take over, and that I'll stick around to help out.'

'Okay. Let me think about it,' the British enforcer said quietly. But he had already thought about it. Bolan would be a real plum, and at just about the right time. Nick Trigger had the British territory in much better shape than he'd let on to Danno Giliamo. Pretty soon he'd be needing to move onward and upward. And it wouldn't hurt a thing to come home looking two heads bigger than the Talifero brothers. Hell no, it wouldn't hurt a thing.

In an imposing building beside the Thames a group of grim faced men were sitting down to a new day with a rather large sized new problem confronting them. They were solemn, some sleepy and obviously newly awake. There was a minimum of conversation. The time was barely four o'clock.

Their leader stood stiffly in front of a wall chart of the city of London, his arms folded against his chest, and waited until all had been seated and the subdued greetings quietly exchanged. Then he dropped his arms to his side, advanced a couple of steps to a small rostrum, fiddled with a paper lying there, and said, 'Well, it's a brisk hour to be starting the day, isn't it? I can see that we're all fired up and anxious to be cracking along, so I'll make this as brief as possible.'