Sicilian Slaughter

was the kind of thing cops and criminals alike automatically watched for — something out of the ordinary. Like a skinny, hinky dude skating along the bricks with sweat pouring off him while he wore a long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs buttoned. To hide the needle tracks from heroin injections on the veins inside his elbows. Bolan had to get out of the coat.

He crawled over the back of the wagon seat and dropped down between it and his crate, unholstered the Beretta and put his cap over it, shucked out of the coat and stripped off the shoulder rig, rolled it and stuffed it into one coat pocket, got the Beretta in his right hand, slapped his cap back on. Holding the pistol with the coat draped over it, he climbed back up beside Alma, smiling reassurance.

Again with gestures and a few words, Bolan got it across to Alma that he wished to buy her lunch and also pay her for helping him. He also needed a place to unload his crate and rest for a while. The last suggestion brought a fresh-blooming blush to her round tanned cheeks and feeling like a bastard because he was using her, Bolan put his arm around the girl and hugged her tightly, big hand sliding up under her arm along the rich firm curve of her bosom. He nuzzled her neck until she giggled and pulled away, talking fast. He had no idea what she said, except, Wait, wait!

She drove to the creamery and Bolan helped her unload the milk, then stood by and watched in amusement and some astonishment as Alma turned from the shy, ripe, virginal milkmaid into a tough and experienced haggler with a raucous machinegunning voice, and finally she evidently got her price because the dockboss suddenly threw up his hands as though giving his heart, soul and wife and children and every lira he owned to a perfect stranger, probably Satan in disguise. After a moment, he returned from his office and carefully counted out the money. Alma counted it again, then shoved it down between her breasts while the dockboss leered. She sniffed at him, then emptied her milk cans into a large vat, rinsed the cans clean under a nearby faucet, then put the empties back on the wagon.

The odors of manure and ammonia rose so strongly from the stableyard, Bolan seemed to be lying in a tub filled with them. But of the three places Alma showed him, Bolan chose this one because it afforded him the best protection against sudden attack, and the best observation post.

He had a wide open view down the sloping street toward the dock where the ferry tied up. His back was protected by another building jammed against the stable and hayloft. Alma's horses had rolled in the thick dust, drank from the water trough, and now munched thin feed in the shade.

Bolan heard a sigh behind him and turned from the window. He felt more like a bastard than ever when he looked at the girl. Despite her extremely well-developed body, she could not be more than twenty. When he took her he'd felt like a ruthless cradle-robber, except that he'd been taken as much as he took. And though he discovered this had not been her first time, it was hardly more than the second or third, she was so trembly and awkward, yet frantically eager. She sighed again in her sleep, totally satiated. Bolan returned to his watch.

So far he had spotted six of them, four local, cheap gunsels, who like the others watching the road into town, spent most of their time imitating themselves. The other two, though, were real hardguys. While the gunsels strutted and preened, the hardmen prowled unobtrusively, or took up posts along the most likely approaches and rested in the shade, conserving themselves.

And then each time the ferry came across the Strait of Messina, only two miles wide at its narrowest, from 'Messina to Reggio, Bolan watched a dozen more hard-men and that many or more gunsels working through the crowd gathered to catch the ferry.

Upon each docking, Bolan watched carefully; and the routine never varied. Not one of the gunmen ever gave a single glance toward the incoming vessel, nor paid any attention to the disembarking passengers.

Now Bolan had his battle ops worked out. He went to the bed, lay down beside Alma, not awakening her, set his never-fail mental alarm, and slept until evening. When he woke, Alma sat on a stool beside a large crockery basin, bathing herself with a cloth. She smiled whitely as Bolan sat up, turned more to face him, naked and gleaming. Bolan grinned at her, and she rose and came to him.

Afterwards, Bolan told her what he wanted her to do. He dropped the pose and used all the Italian at his command, considerable since he'd dealt so intimately with Mafia types for so long. He saw that the change in him frightened her, but she was so thoroughly taken with him, she questioned nothing he said.

She got dressed and went out. Bolan went down to the crate, opened it, and in the gloom of the stable's back stalls, he dressed in his black combat garb. He wrapped the Beretta and .44 Automag in waterproofing, as well as extra ammo clips. He started to take along two frags, then put them back. The dockside became thickly crowded and all a grenade would do was take down innocents.

Mack slipped Ms peasant disguise back on, closed the crate, went out and met Alma as she returned. He helped her harness the team to the wagon, then took the paint can and brush she had bought and climbed up into the wagon. He addressed the crate to himself, MAGO BOEMO, The Bohemian Magician, will call, at the office of a freight company Alma told him had offices in Catania. For a moment, Bolan wryly considered addressing the crate to himself as Il Boia: The Executioner. But he had survived so far in his war against the Mafia because he refused to underestimate his enemy, no matter how many of them had fallen under his guns and grenades, his blitzing attacks across the U.S. and parts of Europe.

While Alma went inside to pay the stableman, Bolan opened one of the milk cans and dropped a thousand dollars in Mafia money down into the can, then sealed it tightly. When she returned, he made her go through the instructions again.

She was to haul the crate to the dock, pre-pay its passage to Messina on the ferry, then by truck to Catania. She was to sling in an appropriate puntale or 'bustarella'— tip, bribe, to insure the magician's box got preferential treatment.

Alma returned thirty minutes later with the manifest, and Bolan lied to her: 'I have to see some men in the city. I'll be back before eleven.' He took her elbows and held them tightly. 'Listen to me. Listen exactly. Whatever you do, stay-away-from-the-truck. Understand? Do not touch the truck.'

Bolan knew that by this time Astio had sent scouts up the roads leading from Reggio, and by now they had found and booby-trapped the truck. He wished he had time to go back to it and blow it up himself. One hit from the .44 Automag would jar off the detonators.

But maybe not. When they saw the crate gone . . . and surely the truckdriver, Fretta, had told Astio about the crate . . . they would not plant the truck, maybe. Bolan hoped to Christ not.

Bolan kissed her one last time, and then before Alma knew or even saw, the big man vanished into the evening gloom. She felt wet on her face, and realized she was crying. She knew he would never be back, when she thought about his return at eleven. Wearily, with a sorrow that stuck in her throat and felt like a knife in her guts, she climbed upon the wagon seat and slapped the lines across the horses' rumps. She could be home well before eleven, and he was never coming back, and the cows were by now standing at the waterlot gate, bawling with thirst and hunger and swollen udders. She wondered who he was, and shifted her weight on the rough seat as something seemed to stick her in the thigh. She felt and found a metal object in the pocket of her apron and took it out It was a cross unlike any she had ever seen before. She looked at it until her vision blurred with tears, then she wiped her eyes, kissed the cross and dropped it between her breasts, where she would wear it forever.

She had driven to within sight of the last street lights on the road out of Reggio when they took her.

A man came from each side of the road, out of the shadows, and in the same instant, two climbed over the endgate; all had guns. One, who looked like a frog, laid his gunbarrel upside her jaw and in reflex action she slammed him in the face with her fist, putting her shoulder and all hundred-forty pounds of work-hardened farm girl behind the punch. Frog went off backwards and landed on bis head in the street, convulsively clenching his hands, and shooting the left horse of Alma's team through the heart. The horse lunged, sprayed blood through both nostrils, then dropped in his tracks. The other horse spooked, lunging and kicking, almost upsetting the wagon.

One of the gunsels lost his head and clubbed Alma across the top of her skull with his pistol, just as Ragno shouted, 'No!' But it was too late.

Alma went slack as a dead and toppled out of the wagon.

Ragmo caught her, but her weight bore his gangly frame to the ground. A car pulled from a narrow street and two men jumped out, grabbed Alma and threw her inside. Ragno, The Spider, rose shakily to his feet and climbed in behind them. The driver knelt beside Rana, feeling his pulse. He shrugged and picked up The Frog's gun, and started back to the car. The gunsel, still on the wagon seat, shouted, 'Hey, what about me? I got her. I got pay coming.'

From the car a voice issued a command.