Sicilian Slaughter

rain talking to him. Teaf's stiffly starched white shirt had turned to clammy glue against his skin, his fancy black shoulder boards with wide gold stripes dripped, and he knew the large wings above his left shirt pocket would need cleaning and polishing because they were brass, not gold.

The thing was, the big bastard with the chilly eyes had a big fist full of money. But the guy had not let go of any of it yet. Teaf could hardly keep his eyes off the green. He knew it had to be some kind of smuggling job. That did not bother Teaf at all. He'd been there before. Except dope. Dope was too heavy. Dope was in now, The Big Thing, with the feds, state and city and county cops, DAs; dope was Big, on TV, in the papers, so to hell with dope.

Some creep might cave in his wife's skull for cheating on him and he'd hit the bricks an hour later on $1500 bond. Some college punk with a half-kilo of grass went so far back in the slammer they had to pipe air to him, $25,000 bond. So no dope, no matter how much money the big bastard offered.

Christ, the big son of a bitch looked like he could snap a man in half with his bare hands, and he had a presence — brutal, as though he had cracked a few spines, crushed some ribs, snapped a neck or two.

'Cut the crapping around and answer me,' Bolan said. 'What's the charter rate, long-range jet, to Italy?'

The company would hang Teaf if he lied. 'I can't kid you, mister. Or lie to you. Against company rules. Commercial carrier is cheaper.'

'If I wanted that, Teaf, I wouldn't be here.'

The big bastard fanned out the wad. If he had a dime he held twenty grand in those big hands. And how the hell does he come to know my name?

'Okay, mister, I've told you. The airlines are cheaper. You dig?'

'I dig. Talk to me.'

'I don't know what you want yet, so I can't quote a price firm.'

'Look, ace, I didn't come here to stand in the rain and bullshit. You dig?'

Before Teaf could answer Bolan said, 'I want a private, long-range jet charter to Naples. For starters. There may be more work. I can give you a ten grand deposit. Will that get you moving?'

'Just one thing, mister. No dope. Absolutely nothing involving dope.'

'I ought to break your face.'

'Okay, okay, get hot, but just so you understand.'

'The ten Large do it?'

'Well, depends on the party, baggage, freight if any, crew, maybe a particular kind of stew you want — ' Teaf leered.

'Get cute one more time, ace, and watch me vanish.

This airport's full of grounded airplanes and non-flying pilots.'

'Deal!' Captain Teaf said fast.

'Okay, I'm the only passenger. I have one crate of cargo and some personal baggage. No other crew. You alone.'

'When do you wish to leave, sir?'

'I don't want the crate opened by Italian customs. That's why I came to you. It's not dope. You know that. Nobody carries crap from the outhouse to the bedroom, right?'

'Can it sting me?'

'Heavy, cap. That's what the bonus is for.'

'I've seen no bonus.'

Bolan peeled ten hundred-dollar bills from the wad and stuck them between the bottom two buttons of Teaf's shirt. He peeled another Large out and let Teaf have a look at it, then stuffed that inside the captain's shirt.

'There's another three G after we get the crate past customs.'

Teaf nodded. 'Like I said, deal.' Teaf placed his hand on his belly and rubbed, feeling the green against his skin under his wilted shkt.

'When do you want to depart, sir?'

'Now.'

'You mean right now?'

'Exactly.'

'No way, man.'

'Hand the bread back, ace.'

Teaf backed away. 'Wait! I mean you need a passport, visa, innoculation certificates, all that stuff.'

'I've got them.'

'You ... have?'

'My baggage and freight's ready to load.'

'Well, Jeez. I can't believe this. I mean only ten days ago I lucked out ... I mean a trip to Rome, some rush job for an oil company — '

'So, what are you saying?'

'Hell, man, I'm ready, too. I got all the papers. For myself and the aircraft. I mean, Jeez, it's like some kind of miracle, you know?'

'Not exactly,' Mack Bolan said. 'I shopped around.'

It was the only way to go.

As Mack Bolan had told the treacherous doctor: The Executioner did not go naked in the world, unarmed. Doing so invited certain death. The Mafia, the Outfit, the Organization, Cosa Nostra, whatever the media called it this week or today, still had a $100,000 bounty on Mack Bolan's head. Since he not only double, or was it triple- crossed them, sending their Wild Card's head back to them in a sack, maybe the ante had gone up.

You get what you pay for.

Pay cheap, get cheap.

Blank check, expect the best. And have the right to demand it, by god!

The Executioner knew the bounty had gone up. The sum he did not know, only that the Outfit would never stand for what he'd done, panic in Philly. Once more, he'd rigged it so the Families became involved in unremitting warfare against each other. The last thing in the universe they wanted.

What am I worth to them now? Bolan wondered.

A quarter mill?

A half?

The whole wad?

One million dollars?

Why not? Even the most conservative 'experts' claim organized crime milks the U.S. public of $40 billion a year. A billion is a thousand million.

'I can't think,' Bolan wrote in his journal, 'of figures that size. They are an endless number of zeroes to me, unreal, meaningless, and yet actual. Nickles, dimes, quarters, dollars, entire paychecks, into hock, into shylocking, vigorish, trapped, becoming prostitutes, numbers runners, pimps, drug pushers.'

Bolan had been there.

He had a dead father, and mother, and sister, and maimed brother to show for it. And a girl he loved that he dared not go near, for fear he might be followed.

Once already the bastards had kidnapped his brother Johnny, and Valentina. To get them back alive, he blitzed Boston — a real old-fashioned lightning war, and eventually exposed a man in the highest possible influential circles, social and governmental, as just one more asshole.

That's what the cops called criminals. Assholes.

Mack Bolan could think of no better or more descriptive word, when he really thought about what happened around that particular area of the human anatomy.

Of course, Bolan had expected his documents source to betray him, after his experience with Dr. Wight