Assault on Soho

At that precise instant a door opened across the way, dull light spilled forth, and a solitary figure in black stalked out. He halted and framed himself momentarily in the lighted doorway, then he sent a burst of fire from an automatic weapon into the air, and immediately disappeared into the surrounding darkness in a diving leap. The Executioner was no longer 'in there.'

The driver of the Mafia vehicle gasped, 'Well, dig that cool bastard!'

But he was talking to himself. Danno Giliamo had gone to ground behind the car and Nick Trigger was scrambling for cover inside. The automatic weapon chattered again, but not harmlessly into the air this time. The window glass of the big vehicle exploded in an inward shower and Gio Scaldicci's head underwent an explosion of its own, pieces of the skull flying into the rear seat amid bloodied bubbles of brain tissue, and what was left of Gio slumped forward onto the steering wheel. The horn began sounding in an endless wail and presided over the louder booms and staccatos of combat weapons as thunder and lightning enveloped the night outside Museum de Sade.

It had not been an act of mindless bravado that sent Mack Bolan through that lighted doorway. He was angry, yes, and disgusted right down to the shivering center of himself, but the combat specialist had known precisely what he was doing.

The idea was blitz, from the German word meaning lightning war, and the intent was to shock the enemy, disorganize them, perhaps demoralize them, and then destroy them. Bolan knew what he was doing, from the first harmless burst into the air to all that followed.

The lighted car directly opposite his position had been a godsend. Even though he had just come from a lighted environment and his night vision had not been given time to develop, he was of course aware of the men grouped in and about that lit vehicle, and it was a natural target. The second burst from the Uziwent in for maximum effect. He saw Gio Scaldicci's head fragment, he saw the big guy in the rear scrambling for the floorboards, and he saw Danno Giliamo rolling frantically across the square in search of darkness. But heavy fire was already coming back at him from various areas of that darkness, and Bolan wanted to see more.

His third burst was to reach the gas tank and to make frictional .sparks ignite the ready fuel into a bonfire. He was rewarded: the big car went up in a towering fireball and with an explosion that rocked the earth beneath his feet.

But since someone out there had a Thompson, Bolan was not standing still for the thundering sweeps of that big chopper. He moved out with the shock of the explosion, circling deep around the fire and trying to get behind the main force, in the hope of backdropping them against the roaring flames. Someone rose up right in his path, grunting with surprise and fear, and Bolan cut him down with the butt of the Vziwithout breaking stride. He was following the traffic circle now, running along the street and coming around in the general area of the bookshop, moving recklessly through the open. Darkness was nowhere in that square now, the yellow glare of flames licking about in a wavering illumination of the entire area. The whole enemy force was apparently converging on the burning auto, shooting at only God knew what, Bolan didn't, and shouting excited instructions back and forth in a pyramiding scence of confusion.

Bolan reached the position he sought and threw himself to the ground at the curb of the traffic circle. The horizon thus presented was a beautiful one, to a combat infantryman, with the enemy highlighted as well-defined shadows against a blazing background. He emptied three clips into those shadows, grouping carefully and conserving the flow of ammo through the chattering weapon, until suddenly there was nothing left to shoot at.

Bolan lay there for a moment, listening and looking and refueling the Uzi. Utter silence had descended, except for the whooshing of the flames of the burning car. Bolan arose, inviting fire but receiving none, then slowly advanced across the island inside the traffic circle. The dead and the dying were sprawled about, and the hated smell of blood was everywhere he walked.

Too easy, Bolan was thinking, much too easy.

He stepped around a groaning man and found the man with the Thompson submachinegun lying on his back directly opposite the flaming vehicle. The guy was alive, but not very, though he was conscious and still gripping the Thompson to his chest. Bolan kicked the heavy gun away and said, 'What's your name?'

'Get fucked,' the guy whispered, and coughed up a hemorrhage.

'Who did it to the old man inside?' Bolan asked.

'Get… fucked.'

Bolan moved on, peering at faces, trying to spot Danno Giliamo. The burning car was still roaring furiously. The firenght had been incredibly brief. Only now was the first reaction coming from the people inside the museum. Bolan was aware of blinds being whisked back and of faces peering out from the ground level windows.

And then he became aware of something far more menacing. Through the open door of the museum had erupted three men, all armed, one of them carrying a shotgun. Bolan's Vziwas instinctively up and ready but he hesitated, unsure of the identity of the three. They were gaping about at the scene of incredible carnage with disbelief projecting all the way out to Bolan.

The frozen confrontation held for a split second that seemed much longer, then the man with the shotgun gasped, 'It's Bolan!' and made a fatal move. The Vzichattered at the same instant that the shotgun boomed; the man fell back into the entrance hall, zipped from groin to gullet, and Bolan's burst became a blazing figure-eight that swept the other two off the porch. Nothing heavy reached Bolan, but hot little things had dug at his ribs at the moment of the big boom, and he knew that he had picked up some pellets.

He wheeled about and went quickly back the way he'd come. He had just about pushed his luck too far, and it was time to be moving on. The police would be showing up any minute, and there was a familiar warm stickiness under his arm. He crossed the square, went past the bookshop, and on some subconscious impulse paused at the entrance to the alleyway and was swinging the Vziabout when something moved back there in the darkness and a choked voice urged, 'Hey shit, don't, I'm outta bullets.'

Bolan had already dodged back to the corner of the building for cover. He growled, 'Send the gun out first, then yourself, hands on head.'

A pistol hit the cobblestones and slid into view, then a thickset man moved hesitantly out of the shadows and into the flickering light of the square.

Bolan jabbed the muzzle of the TJziinto the man's belly. The guy sucked in his breath and said, 'Hey shit, it's hot. The barrel's hot, huh?'

Bolan withdrew the little chattergun and spun the man around, shook him down for weapons, then pushed him forward. 'Start walking,' he commanded. 'Straight ahead.'

'Where we going?'

'Depends,' Bolan said. 'Who are you?'

'I'm Stevie Carbon. I'm in Danno's crew, under Sal Masseri. Or I was.'

'Are you all done living, Stevie?' Bolan asked in a conversational tone.

'No sir, I sure hope not,' came the strained reply.

They moved swiftly to the corner. Bolan shoved the man down the street toward the Lincoln. 'Okay, Stevie, just keep on walking. Nice and quick and don't look back.'

'Where we going?' the man wanted to know.

'Maybe to hell.' Bolan allowed the neckstrap to support the Uziwhile he probed his ribs with careful fingertips.

'Christ, can you tear things up in a hurry,' the man declared, striving for a buddy-buddy tone. 'I figure I got no arguments with a guy like you. I mean, nothing personal you know.'

Bolan knew a surge of weariness—not of the flesh but of the soul. 'That's the screwy part of this whole thing, Stevie,' he said coldly. 'There's nothing personal in any of it, is there? And then we run into an old man who's been tortured clear out of his body. And suddenly it gets very, very, personal.'

The man stumbled, caught himself, and quickly raised his hands again to clutch the back of his head. 'Uh, tell me straight out, Bolan. Are you gonna kill me or not?'

'That depends, Stevie.'

'On what?'

'On what you can tell me.'

'Look I don't know nothing, Bolan. Besides that, uh, I've taken the oath of silence. You know about that,