this man Bolan to carry it out.”
The astounded silence that followed was broken by a high-pitched, wailing scream from Coralie Sanguinetti.
The girl was someplace down the corridor. As all heads turned that way there was a colossal thunderclap from the volcano, and the dark outside was split by a dozen different shades of red.
Bolan didn’t wait to ask himself questions. Jean-Paul was half turned away. Sensing a minimal relaxation of the pressure on his biceps, Bolan pinwheeled both arms violently — back and then over, like a discus thrower — hurling Smiler and Raoul forward above his head to crash heavily to the floor on their backs.
While they struggled, half-stunned, to realize what had happened, Bolan grabbed the Beretta by the barrel and wrenched it from Jean-Paul’s grasp before he could squeeze the trigger. With a long, looping left that carried all his weight — and all his impatience at the enforced inactivity he had suffered — he dropped the French mafioso. Then, before Antonin or any of the assembled mobsters could collect their wits, he shielded his head with both arms and hurled himself through the picture window into the night.
18
The warrior hit the terrace in a combat roll amid a shower of exploding glass, springing up between the two nearest trees to find the whole sky behind the crater above throbbing with orange fire.
The crater lip was a jagged loop of pulsating white heat and from the interior of this hellhole a constant stream of molten rock fountained into the air accompanied by subterranean rumbles as loud and menacing as the detonations of an artillery barrage. Bolan could see a fiery river of lava bubbling slowly downward from some split far up the mountainside.
Racing away, he glanced hastily right and left. This was no time to marvel at the awesome forces that could melt rock to a blazing liquid. Already the mobsters had knocked the last shards of glass from the shattered window and spilled through into the garden after him.
It was quite dark now on the seaward side of the island, a moonless night lit only by the fitful glare from the erupting volcano. Three terraces below the lemon trees shielded the Executioner, a rocky trail girdled the tiny harbor, but there were guards strung along the track, cutting him off from the power launch and the other boats moored there. More men surged out from beneath the arbor as he watched, racing along the lowest terrace to encircle him and block his retreat from the villa.
He could hear Jean-Paul and Zefarelli shouting orders. Dim shapes fanned out at the rear of the buildings, scattering over the higher ground to bar his way to the village.
The only route open to him now was upward — toward the flaming inferno that was boiling from Stromboli’s crater and filling the night with the stench of sulfur.
Bolan scrambled up the stone wall retaining the terrace above him, ran across the narrow strip of black earth and climbed again. Torchlight beams lanced the darkness between the lemon trees below.
Above the house on the village side there was a confused hubbub. Once again he heard Jean-Paul shouting commands, and another voice — Smiler’s? — repeating Etang de Brialy’s name. Suddenly winking points of fire sparkled all around the villa, and a fusillade from rifles and automatics punctuated the roaring explosions from the crater above.
Bolan hurled himself flat... and then realized the shots couldn’t possibly be aimed at him. Not yet. They were in the wrong direction and too far away. He rose cautiously and continued, terrace by terrace, his silent upward progress.
Perhaps Ancarani’s goons had taken the opportunity to open fire on J-P and his men? If so, that was great... but where was Etang de Brialy?
No way of telling. What was certain was that they — or some of them — were still after Bolan. The flashlight beams were probing the hillside now, sending shadows from fruit trees and vines leaping over the old stone walls.
More shots. A cry of agony. From outside the smashed window a stream of orders ending with the words, “Whatever happens, bring in that bastard Bolan dead or alive.”
The soldier was high above the building, threading his way between the wires on a terrace where the vines had long ago run wild, when the lights focused on his position. He ran for the next wall.
It was about six feet high. As he climbed hurriedly, his foot dislodged a stone. Bolan cursed, slipped — and a whole section of the ancient buttress collapsed in a shower of pebbles and dust. In a momentary lull stilling the eruption above, the clatter of falling stone was appallingly loud.
A triumphant shout from below and a volley of shots, this time undoubtedly aimed at him. A near miss ricocheted away with a shrill whine, and several slugs hummed past uncomfortably close.
He was now on a wider strip of land. On the far side, a small, square structure was silhouetted against the flames: a black rectangle blotted from the burning sky.
It was a stone cabin, no more than fifteen feet square, with no windows and an open doorway. Part of the roof was gone now: smoke tinged with scarlet was visible through the gaps.
Bolan crawled in and thumbed off the Beretta’s safety.
This time the auto-loader was fitted with a 20-round box magazine. But those twenty shots were all that stood between Bolan and death. It depended on how long the mobsters continued firing at one another. But there were, he knew, automatic rifles and at least one SMG backing up the handguns down there. Grenades, too, perhaps.
To fire now would reveal his position. And until the moon rose much later, to remain invisible offered the best chance he had of getting out of there.
But the hunt had already been vectored in the right direction by the collapsed wall. It could only be a matter of time before the flashlight beams swept over, and then into, the cabin.
Bolan’s problem now was twofold. He had to figure out some way to get out of there. And fast. Or he could work his way back down in the hope of worsening still more the Mafia position in relation to the KGB.
His brief, after all, was to create discord to the point that the Russians refused to play ball any longer, and he had no means of knowing whether that point had been reached.
He was pondering the alternatives when a familiar voice spoke softly in the darkness behind him.
“It would be best to leave this shack as quickly as possible. Once they know we are here, a single grenade lobbed through that doorway would be more than enough...”
Bolan whirled. “De Brialy! How the hell did you get in here?”
“I was here before you were,” the Frenchman said. “A lot of fellows down there would be happy to see me dead.”
“Why?” Bolan demanded brusquely. “Why did you agree that you sent me to rough up Scalese? You knew damned well that story was a lie.”
“It was on the spur of the moment,” Etang de Brialy confessed. “It occurred to me that I could capitalize on your lie.”
“What do you mean, capitalize? When it meant you’d be run out of the house with three dozen heavily armed gorillas on your tail?”
“That suited me fine. It was just one more piece of Mafia craziness, all that shooting.”
“I don’t get it. What’s your angle?”
The shooting had stopped now. The flashlight beams were stationary. The volcano crater, still pulsing redly, remained silent.
“We run a clean racket in Paris,” the baron replied. “No underage kids in the houses. The shit we push is what we say it is, not cut to hell. The gambling’s honest: there’s no point rigging it — the house wins, anyway. Guys who pay for protection do get it. No bystanders are involved. There are no muggings in our territory: any free lance who steps out of line is very severely... disciplined.”
“Well, great for you,” Bolan said sarcastically. “And so?”
“We work with certain families, but we are not actually Mafia. I think that should be obvious,” the Frenchman said with dignity. “My... associates... don’t go along with this KGB tie-up. Nor do I. We are, after all, first
