wasted those punks holed up above the jetty, after all.”
“I don’t care how many creeps he wasted. I’m still the number-one gun in this neighborhood.” He strode after Bolan and tapped him on the shoulder. “You hear me?”
Bolan whirled and seized the front of the hood’s sweater in one steely hand, half lifting the hardman off his feet. “No,
He thrust Smiler away with force enough to make him stumble.
Choking with fury, the hood moved his hand involuntarily toward his SMG, but Bolan had already hurried down to join a couple of guards lying behind the rampart of flat stones bordering the sunken garden.
Badmouthing J-P’s number-one enforcer in front of his soldiers would have made Sondermann an enemy, for sure. Good, the Executioner thought. As yet he had no clear plan how he would approach the Mafia-KGB threat. But the more discord he could sow around here the better. If he was unable to conceal his dislike and contempt for carrion like Smiler it could at least provoke some kind of future action. And Bolan was a firm believer in mixing it and waiting to see what happened.
Right now it seemed that the battle for the island was damned near through. Most of the raiding party climbing up from the inlet had already been blown away by guards posted behind the house.
At least he need worry no longer about the body floating in the pool and the guy he had killed on the terrace: the attackers would be blamed for those.
He crouched near one of the guards sheltering behind the stones. The remainder of the invading force seemed to be holed up behind the summerhouse where he had first talked to Coralie Sanguinetti.
“How many d’you reckon?” he asked the man.
“Three or four,” the hood replied. “Maybe a couple more inside the shack. Some of the boys are making it through the plantation...” he nodded toward a clump of trees on the seaward end of the isle “...and take ’em from the rear.”
“We don’t have to wait,” Bolan said. He noticed a grenade hooked to the man’s belt. “Mind if I borrow this?”
“Go ahead,” the hood said. “But you’ll never make it, guy. That cabin’s more’n a hundred yards away. You can’t throw that far on target.”
“I don’t figure on trying,” Bolan said. “Give me covering fire, okay?”
He rose, holding the grenade in his right hand. Then, as the guard and his companions opened fire with a motley collection of shotguns and carbines, he dashed, bent double, through flower beds and rows of dwarf azaleas to dive headfirst into the pool.
He swam underwater to the far end, surfaced and pulled the pin from the grenade.
The gunners behind the summerhouse, who had opened up as soon as he began his run, were raking the patio with automatic fire.
Bolan braved the death hail and climbed the ladder. He flung the grenade with all his force over the shingled roof of the building, judging the throw accurately so that the deadly missile dropped among the raiders taking cover behind it.
The bomb exploded with a shattering roar, a vivid flash that momentarily lit the flowers and shrubs with an unnatural glare. There were no more gunshots.
The instant’s silence that followed was broken by a man screaming. At the same time a heap of dead brushwood and garden refuse ignited by the explosion burst into flame behind the hut. Within seconds the flimsy wooden back wall was ablaze.
Flames shot skyward, fanned by the breeze. The rafters caught. Tiles fell and then the whole roof collapsed.
Two men ran out from the miniholocaust and were shot down at once by the guards. In the gory shambles behind the burning shack, one body still writhed.
“Bring him inside — and keep him alive until he’s talked,” Jean-Paul called from the terrace.
Lights came on all around the house. The gangsters’ women, huddled together, could be seen anxiously peering through the windows. The capo from Marseilles stepped down into the garden and approached Bolan. “It seems we have to offer you a vote of thanks, guy,” he said. “Like twice this same night.”
“Part of the job.” Bolan made his voice gruff. “That’s what you’re paying me for, isn’t it?”
“Paying you?..” Jean-Paul stared at the wet-suited warrior, his brow knitted into a frown. Then suddenly the handsome face cleared. “Sondermann!” he exclaimed. “You’re Kurt Sondermann, right?”
“When I’m not playing with fire!” Bolan said.
6
The man in the cellar was screaming again. Marcel Sanguinetti walked to the stereo and turned up the volume. He snapped his fingers at a white-coated waiter, ordering him to circulate more rapidly with his tray of champagne-filled glasses.
Conversation among the wives and mistresses of the gang bosses became shriller, boosting the pretense that they had heard nothing.
The wounded raider had cried out often enough as he was manhandled into the house from the gutted cabin. But that was because of the pain from the burns and injuries he had suffered in the bomb blast. Now the screams had a more desperate note. Smiler and his two buddies were in the cellar exercising their sinister skills on the nerves and flesh of an already ravaged body.
Bolan stood outside a huge salon. Scalese, Ancarani and the Toulon capo, Pasquale Lombardo, were standing by a window in a haze of cigar smoke. Borrone huddled with the three other Americans and the Parisian baron. Only Sanguinetti and the Sicilian, Arturo Zefarelli, were making any attempt to mix with the women.
The Executioner had declined to join the party on the excuse that a frogman suit was hardly ideal wear for a social occasion — even one that had been interrupted by an armed assault that he himself had been largely instrumental in repelling. His real reason was the fear of being recognized by the KGB colonel, Antonin.
Jean-Paul had introduced them when the attack was over, but Bolan had already pulled the helmet on again and the Russian had hardly glanced at him.
Bolan sipped a glass of champagne in the passageway between the salon and the bar. The waiter passed in and out with foaming bottles, hors d’oeuvres, fresh glasses.
Jean-Paul returned to the big room with Antonin in tow. Bolan figured they had been below to check out the information acquired by Smiler. “A few minutes more, Colonel,” the gang boss had promised within Bolan’s earshot.
Antonin nodded and turned to talk to a group of the younger women.
Jean-Paul moved among the guests, his thick white hair and tanned, handsome face conspicuous above the glare and glitter of the underdressed and overpainted females. The Executioner observed that Scalese, Ancarani and Lombardo stopped speaking as the capo from Marseilles approached them.
Bolan recalled that the Toulonnais boss had been the least enthusiastic of the hoods during the conference he had overheard, and the other two, besides throwing out the most challenging questions, had from time to time been whispering to each other.
Maybe their sudden silence now was due to fear. Or even politeness. But he filed the fact away in his mind for future reference.
Coralie Sanguinetti emerged from the kitchens and approached him. She was stuffing her small gun — it was a twenty-four ounce Semmerling LM-4 with a cobblestone Hogue combat grip — into her purse before she joined the party.
“It’s a good professional lightweight,” Bolan told her as she passed. “Looking at the guests, I reckon you’d be wiser keeping it handy.”
She swung around and stared at him. “Herr Sondermann,” she said coldly, “you may have assisted us in a material way, but please remember you are a guest in my father’s house. If you don’t like the company, you are
