Sicilian Slaughter

He searched the man, astonished to find two morphine syrettes wrapped in a handkerchief in one pocket, exactly the same kind of syrettes used by combat medics. Bolan did not hesitate. The pain was too bad. He could not hope to function, keep his senses clear and alert while fighting such intense pain. He peeled back his left sleeve, made a fist, felt with his fingertips and found the vein, slipped the needle in and squeezed the small plastic container, shooting the morphine into his bloodstream.

Within a minute, Bolan felt the pain diminish enough so he could think past it. He also felt drowsy, but knew he could overcome that. He dropped the remaining syrette into one of the leg pockets of his blacksuit in case he absolutely had to use it later on.

Bolan took a compress from his combat med-kit, put it over the bullet-exit hole and clamped his left arm down over it; he put another compress on the hole in his back. With his right hand, Bolan slipped the dead man's belt from the body, then the necktie. Holding his arm clamped to his side, but leaving his left hand free, Bolan tied the belt and tie together, fashioned a loop, slipped it over his head, fitted it across both compresses, then drew it as tight as he could stand, mashing the bandages into place over the wounds. For a moment he rested there on his knees, head hanging, dripping sweat, muzzy and faint. He'd have given almost anything for a cigarette, and the safety in which to enjoy the smoke.

He bolstered the Beretta and drew the dead's submachine gun to him, an MP40/1 Erma — 9mm Parabellum full automatic, fitted with a folding stock made of two metal rods and a buttplate. When full, the long box magazine held thirty-two rounds, so it should still have twenty-nine loads in it, Bolan thought. Even many would-be experts called this weapon a Schmeisser machine-pistol, but it was an Erma even though some of the million-plus made during World War Two had been turned out by Schmeisser under subcontract. Bolan found two more full magazines and slipped them into his carrying pouches just as the front door of the big house flew open and a man stepped out, shouting, 'Who shot? Who fired those rounds?'

No one answered and the man shouted again. 'Check in, by the numbers!'

To Bolan's surprised pleasure, the man shouted in English, and the answers came back likewise. At least some of them were studying their English: Post One, okay; Post Two, okay....

At Post Three the answers stopped. Tony Guida cursed, then shouted viciously, 'Riarso, you son of a bitch! Answer up!'

Bolan knew then who'd shot him, who'd he'd killed, whose Erma he now held.

Guida called for Four, Five and Six, and the soldiers answered at once. 'Okay, scout around. That stupid goddam Riarso shot one of the soldiers coming down from camp, so fan out and find them. The soldier's name is Gino, maybe's he's still alive.'

'Hey, Tony,' one of the guards called, 'you wanna use the jeep?'

'No, you lazy shit, I don't wanna use the jeep. Find that Gino first, dumbhead, scout up the road. I'll personally take care of that buttfaced Drymouth.'

Mack Bolan could hardly believe his luck, except he'd made his luck.

Muttering curses, the hardmen left the house grounds and came out to the road, formed a loose line across it and the drainage ditches, and began moving toward the camp. Bolan watched them go, but he kept track of them by their shouting back and forth even after they vanished in the darkness.

Bolan sprinted across the road and the grounds and came to a halt in the shadows of the house, back pressed against the ancient stone wall a few feet from the front door.

This was not how he'd planned it, but now he had a target of opportunity.

The target of opportunity.

Inside this house, protected by at least one, but probably no more than three hardmen, was the man Bolan had come to Agrigento to kill. The man who'd put a whole new face on 'this blessed thing of ours'; training hitmen, assassins, enforcers, ruthless malacarni who could turn the streets of any American town into a vicious, deadly jungle. Men who could turn back the clock in the States, so that parks, and front lawns and streets became open fire-fields between warring factions. Some dream Frank, The Kid, Angeletti had for himself, seeing himself as Scarface Al Capone, ruling whole cities by armed force, so powerful even the police became powerless — the corrupt bought off, the straight cops blown up.

Bolan slipped to the corner of the house. In the back yard, beside an old-fashioned barn with stone walls and a tiled steep roof, stood a U.S. military jeep. Bolan grunted with satisfaction. If he took the house down quick, fast, right, it wouldn't be so far back to his heavy weapons cache. Now he had wheels.

Bolan stepped out of the shadows and banged on the front door with the Erma muzzle, shouting, 'Hey! Tony! Open up! We got Gino!'

Bolan waited. He heard heels rapping across the tile floor inside. The door snapped open. Tony Guida stood with a scowl on his face, snarling, 'You don't have to wake the whole fu — '

Tony's voice trailed off into choked silence, jaw hanging. Then, as though he finally remembered, his right arm jerked, pulling the P38 machine-pistol up.

Bolan shoved the muzzle almost against Tony's head and pressed the trigger. Ten slugs made obscene wallpaper of Tony Guida's brains and skull and scalp.

Bolan stepped over the body, crouched and ran down the short hallway to an open door on the left. He shoved the submachine gun around the doorframe and ripped off the last nineteen rounds in the clip, dropped the gun and leaped into the room unsheathing both the Automag and Beretta.

Don Cafu looked almost like a withered old woman as he sat frozen with fear in his big chair, staring, unblinking. Without a touch of remorse, Bolan sighted the .44 Automag and blew the don's head off, literally. The cannonlike impact of the big slug took Cafu just under the chin, drilling through the soft skin of his throat, exploding against his neckbone, shredding the muscles and flesh. The head slammed against the high back of the chair, bounced up into the air, came down and landed in Cafu's lap. The pale, thin old hands gripped convulsively, so Cafu held his own head tightly in his own lap, as though demonstrating the most fantastic parlor trick of all time to guests who had failed to show up for the party.

This would show them, the death-grimaced face seemed to say, eyes bulging, lips drawn back, upper denture plate slipped half out, covering the lower lip.

Then Bolan heard the house hardmen returning. One, then another shouted, and one of them fired at a shadow. Bolan ran back to the hallway, then to the front door. He slammed it shut, took a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, placed the grenade against the door and slid a hat-rack over to hold the grenade in place. He rolled Tony's body-over, put another grenade under him, pin pulled, then let Tony's weight back down to hold the spoon in place. He scooped up Tony's P38 after bolstering the .44 Automag. He sheathed the Beretta and recovered the submachine gun, pushed the release and dumped the empty clip, shoved in a fresh one as he ran down the hallway to the back door. He threw the back door open and shots shattered wood around the frame. Bolan backed up, found a small table, pulled it forward, then lifted and hurled it out the door. He saw the muzzle flash from one hard-man's chopper, sighted and ripped off two three-round bursts. The gunman screamed, came staggering out of the shadows gripping his chopper convulsively, spraying bullets in every direction as he spun and finally fell, dead.

Bolan heard others at the front door. He moved behind a wall, heard the crash as the hatrack went flying as the hardmen kicked in the front door, and Bolan counted silently to himself: one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and the grenade exploded.

Bolan heard the screams. He crouched and looked around the edge of the wall. A bloody arm, sheared off at the elbow, shot past him.

The concussive force of the first grenade had lifted Tony Guida's body enough so the spoon flew and ignited the detonator of the second frag. Two more gunmen, not killed by the first blast, charged into the house and down the hallway. The second grenade went off directly under the first man, shrapnel and concussion literally splitting him in half from the crotch up.

The second man was knocked back and down, but he was as tough as he hired out to be. Shaking his head, wiping blood from his eyes that came from a scalp wound, he lunged to his feet. Bolan snap-drew the Automag and blew a hole through tough-guy's chest.

He had two grenades left. He pulled the pins on both, flung one down the hallway to bounce out the front door and wheeled and underhanded the last through the back door.

The first went and he heard screams. Then the second went and while sizzling hot shrapnel still razzled through the air, Bolan charged out the back door, spraying with the P38 until it emptied and he threw it. Never