The shooting came later. And there were deaths, too.
Each of the two ropes came down twice; each time, four men were hoisted up the shafts to the surface. Bolan and J-P were on the final delivery — and already the horns of impatient drivers blocked outside the tunnel entrance were being drowned by the clamor of approaching sirens.
The air shafts emerged on a barren slope of sun drenched mountainside. The four mobsters manning the pickups had already begun stacking the haul around the hoists projecting over the open shafts. Now they maneuvered the vehicles back toward the dirt trail that had led them there. The path, made some years ago when the expressway was engineered, was too stony and overgrown for the cars that would carry away the hijackers and their spoils: these were parked on a loop of country road far below.
So were the attackers’ vehicles — two jeeps and a 4x4 vehicle. But these were hidden behind a row of oaks, and the first the Marseilles gang knew of the assault was the burst of SMG fire that shattered the windshield of one of the pickups. Behind the crumbling glass the driver and Bertrand, who had climbed in beside him, were cut almost in two, leaving a pattern of blood and brains smeared over the back of the cab.
For a second the mobsters were stunned into immobility. Then the chatter of the gun was repeated from behind the pickup, followed at once by a volley of revolver shots.
Confusion.
Two more of the outside men were cut down, a third fell screaming with a slug through his kneecap, and the driver of the semi blocking the tunnel exit was hurled into the bushes by a heavy-caliber revolver bullet that slammed into his shoulder. Glass shattered and fell from the perforated cab of the second pickup.
“My God, it’s a hijack!” Jean-Paul shouted. “Take cover and kill the bastards!” He flung himself behind a low shelf of rock, a Walther PPK in his right hand.
For the moment there was no target, visible or audible. The first volley seemed to have come from a group of boulders 150 yards uphill, on the far side of the trail, the second from below a limestone outcrop some way to the west. But so far no gunners had showed themselves.
Smiler, Delacroix and the others dived behind bushes, into a ditch beside the trail, among the rocks that littered the slope. Bolan was already prone beneath the first pickup, his Beretta in one hand, the M-16, its launcher discarded, by his side. He had been expecting the attack.
He was responsible for it.
The fact that the woolen helmets, covering the whole head except for the eyes, would make them unrecognizable had given him the idea.
All he had to do was arrange an anonymous tip off to Lombardo, the Toulon capo, that a bunch of free lance amateurs planned to ambush the armored convoy on Mafia territory.
And add the details of the getaway plan.
Fury at the interlopers’ insolence — and greed at the thought of easy money — would surely provoke a hijack situation, Bolan figured.
So there would be an ambush. And whether or not Jean-Paul recognized the attackers while they were making their play, he would never believe that Lombardo had been ignorant of the original holdup teams’ identity.
Open hostility, then, between these two leaders and their gangs.
As to who won the fight and made it with the loot... hell, it didn’t really matter. Bitterness and suspicion would remain on both sides. With luck, some of the other teams, hearing of the screwup, would
He stared out from his hiding place. Jean-Paul’s men were lightly armed. Because of his no-deaths ruling and the fact that they were using gas canisters, they had not expected any opposition; they hadn’t expected any firefight at all.
The Marseilles mafioso’s meager arsenal would not go far against a team armed with SMGs — Bolan figured them for Ingrams or Heckler & Kock MP-5s.
The element of surprise, too, had a demoralizing effect. Some of the guys from the tunnel hadn’t even removed their gas masks when the first shots blasted off.
Jean-Paul himself was doing his damnedest. Three rounds cracked out from the Walther as a distant figure materialized between the boulders. There was a cry of pain. A stone rattled down the hillside toward the ambushed mobsters.
And then abruptly there was firing from all sides, a storm of lead hosing the pickups and the area around the ventilator shafts where the Marseilles soldiers were trapped.
The attackers were advancing now — silhouettes briefly seen as they leaped from bush to bush or wormed their way forward between the limestone outcrops.
Bolan snappped off a 3-round burst from the Beretta and saw a hoodlum fall. Slugs hailed against the steel sides of the pickup above the Executioner’s head and stung rock splinters from the stony ground.
Smiler and Raoul blazed away from behind the other vehicle. Jean-Paul half rose and drilled a killer who tried to sprint down the trail. But the Marseilles chief was too slow ducking back behind his protecting shelf: a single shot from a rifle downhill dropped him. The Walther fell from nerveless fingers and skated into the center of the track.
But the marksman, making his hit, had himself been exposed. Bolan mowed him down with the M-16.
The big guy moved quickly then. On elbows and knees, the 93-R still in his right hand, he shuffled to the rock shelf were J-P had fallen.
The gang leader lay with outflung arms, the balaclava dark with blood. Bolan pulled off the woolen helmet. The white cap of hair was bloodied on one side. But Bolan soon discovered that the wound was not serious: the slug had merely creased the skull above the right ear, knocking the gang boss out cold.
“Is it bad?” the hoarse voice of Delacroix asked from the grasses on the far side of the trail.
“Uh-uh,” Bolan replied. “He’s out of the fight for now. But apart from a headache he’ll be okay tomorrow and on his feet yelling blue murder the day after.”
And not just because of the head wound, the Executioner thought. Then he glanced over the edge of the rock as he sensed movement. There were figures advancing again beyond the pickups. Sudden shapes, dark-clothed in the glaring light, flitting across the gaps between five-foot-high clumps of wild grass.
If they were moving, they couldn’t fire accurately, Bolan reckoned. He made a quick dash back to the pickup, grabbed the M-16 and fired two bursts as the enemy came closer still and death hummed past on all sides.
He scored with both bursts. One of the ambushers fell, clawing at his shredded throat. Another gunman was carried backward by the impact of the high-velocity 5.56mm deathbringers that let the daylight into his rib cage.
The rate of firing increased once more. The air was shrill with ricochets.
Only five men remained now of the original Marseilles dozen: Smiler, Raoul, Delacroix, Bolan and the driver of the second semi.
“We’re gonna have to pull out,” Smiler growled from his foxhole nearby. “There must be ten of the bastards still on their feet.”
Bolan said nothing. It was all the same to him. He’d play the cards the way they were dealt. The vital thing now was that the attackers should be recognized as Lombardo men. Maybe he should tempt one to come close enough...
He didn’t have to.
Smiler was shouting orders. There was a flurry of activity, punctuated by bursts of rapid fire. The guy with the smashed kneecap was screaming again.
The remaining driver had gained the cab of the second pickup. Crouched below the dashboard, he had started the engine. Now, still huddled below the door line, he stomped the pedal and sent the pickup careering over the rough ground toward the trail.
Raoul and Smiler, unleashing all they had at the bushes concealing the attackers, leaped aboard on the near side and crammed into the cab. Delacroix, momentarily shielded by the bulk of the pickup, dragged the body of his unconscious leader from the ground, bundled him over the tailgate and then dived in after him as the vehicle gathered speed.
Bolan was left to race after the open truck, grab the side rails and vault over on his own. He had the
