“The knockdown power is nonexistent,” she said softly. “But at this range, in experienced hands, it can be lethal. And I assure you I am experienced. I think you had better come with me.”
5
She wore a flame-colored scarf tucked into the neck of her jacket. Her eyes were green and her hair fell softly about her shoulders. She must be, Bolan guessed, all of twenty-two years old.
She was cautious, never allowing the Executioner close enough to make any attempt to disarm her as she maneuvered him back outside the terrace and then into a small summer house on the far side of the pool.
“Sit on that bench,” she said, indicating a seat opposite her, “and tell me why you are eavesdropping on my father’s friends.” She switched on a pink-shaded light in the wooden roof of the building. “Why you
Seeing her in the half light of the gallery, he decided she was even prettier than he had thought. “Who is your father?” he countered.
“The owner of the property, of course.” She sounded irritated. “I am Coralie Sanguinetti.”
“Some friends,” Bolan said. He pulled off the rubber helmet. The girl took in the rakish lines of his face, the blue eyes and determined jaw.
“I have to admit you’re better looking,” she said with the hint of a smile.
He was unclipping the neoprene satchel from his belt. “You don’t mind,” he began.
“Yes, I do mind.” The voice was suddenly hard. “Drop that on the floor — kick it over to me...” She broke off, picking up the satchel. “Just as I thought!”
Keeping her eyes on the Executioner, the little gun steady in her hand, Coralie Sanguinetti unclasped the neoprene container. “A 93-R!” she said. “That’s quite a... Wait a minute!” She stared at him again. “I know that face,” she said. “I’ve seen photos. You’re J-P’s new trigger man, Sondermann. From Hamburg. Am I right?”
“Kurt Sondermann,” Bolan said gravely. “At your service, Fraulein.”
“You don’t sound German.” Coralie was puzzled. “You don’t have much of an accent.”
“In my line of business, it’s best to be as inconspicuous as possible. Know what I mean?”
She was still looking doubtful. “But if you are working for Jean-Paul, why do you have to spy on him? Why not come to the front door and say who you are?”
Bolan had an answer ready in case he was discovered by the hoods themselves. “Put the gun away and I’ll tell you,” he said.
She hesitated, then thumbed the automatic to safety and thrust it into the pocket of her jacket. But she didn’t return the Beretta to Bolan; it lay on the bench within easy reach of her right hand.
Smart, he thought. “Some gorillas tried to stop me from getting here. I’d been tailed. I was set up at a gas station on the expressway. I had to shoot my way out.”
She remained unconvinced. “So?”
“So I heard there was some kind of a meet on this island. But I’d never heard of your father. I didn’t know Jean-Paul was a buddy of his. I figured I’d make it here secretly and find out the score. If it was the same team that tried to waste me, there’d be hell to pay. But as soon as I saw who it was, I knew I had it wrong. I was leaving when you got the drop on me.”
“Who tried to kill you?”
“Guys from an outfit run by someone called Scotto.”
“Oh,” she said contemptuously. “Scotto. Anyway, he’s dead now.”
“So they tell me. But they didn’t tell the guys trying to liquidate me; they didn’t know the boss was long gone, so I was nearly dead, too. How come Scotto was killed, anyway?”
“My father told me that J-P and his friends were going into business with... some foreigners. And it seems Scotto and some others didn’t like the idea. They wanted to stay the way they were. They were going to get together and...” She shook her head. “I don’t really know.”
Bolan knew. The pieces were falling into place. Those four murdered mobsters had to be the splinter group. Yeah, that figured. Scotto, Ralfini and the others had been knocked off because they refused to join the ball game. But the KGB offer was contingent on the Mafia chiefs forming a single organization. If four of them were thinking maybe of forming a rival stay-as-you-are group, the Russian offer would be withdrawn.
That explained why the contracts had been put out in a hurry. Any signs of dissension had to be dealt with before Antonin arrived. So that the racketeers could present a front that at least looked united, with no opposition visible.
Bolan frowned. It followed that the mafiosi gathered together in Sanguinetti’s house had already made up their minds in principle. Details apart, the KGB-Mafia partnership was on.
He was about to ask the girl what part her father was playing in the scheme when they were both startled by a fusillade from the far side of the house.
Bolan grabbed the Beretta. It sounded like heavy-caliber stuff — 9 mm machine pistols or SMGs firing something weightier than the standard 5.56 mm Armalite rounds. “Come on,” he rasped. “It sounds as if someone’s trying to shoot their way into the party.”
Followed by the girl, he sped around the pool and skirted the eastern wing of the house. As he had thought, the gunfire — punctuated now by deeper, heavier reports from single-shot revolvers and the crackle of automatic weapons wielded by the defenders — was concentrated at the head of the stairway leading up from the landing stage.
Reflected light from a gallery bordering the landward side of the house dimly illuminated a paved slope that ran up from the entrance gates to a porch sheltering the main doors. Two formless dark shapes on the porch steps marked the spot where a couple of patrolling guards had fallen. A third lay with outflung arms a few yards from the stair-head gates.
The attackers appeared to be entrenched on the rock steps immediately behind these, on a ledge that traversed the cliff off to one side, and on an open platform of the cable car.
The livid orange and yellow hellfire flashes stabbing the gloom lanced out from these three places and from shrubbery and a storehouse on the far side of the porch. Evidently there were still enough guards alive to prevent the invaders from rushing the house.
But they were too well protected to be picked off one by one, and for anyone trying to get to close quarters, that lethal slope of flagstones meant instant annihilation.
Bolan pulled the girl down behind a row of flowers on the cliff top. Below, in the wan light of a moon that had just risen, he could see the bodies of the two power-launch crewmen stretched out on the stone jetty. A rubber dinghy bobbing beside the white boat showed how the attackers had arrived at the island.
Bolan whispered. “Who are these dudes? Are they gunning for your old man or for his friends?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Coralie murmured. He saw a white blur of her face turn toward him in the milky light. “Better, perhaps. For all I know...” She left the sentence unfinished.
Bolan was amused. “You think I was some kind of advance guard for these creeps? Think again. I’m on your side — yours and that of those other thugs your dad is hosting.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Damn right,” Bolan said easily, as he began to move.
On elbows and knees, he pushed his way between the flowers. On the cliff edge he leaned over and gazed toward the stairway.
The killers perched on the rock traverse were invisible in deep shadow now. Beyond them an overhang in the limestone face hid the men on the steps and at the top of the cable. When he and the girl arrived, Bolan had briefly seen bejeweled women huddled behind the windows under the narrow roof of the gallery. Now the lights had all been extinguished, and he could hear the angry voices of the Mafia bosses shouting orders.
The gunfire, which had died away to a sporadic exchange of single shots, broke out again on both sides with renewed fury. Tongues of flame stabbed the darkness from windows on the upper floors of the building. The hidden guards, who seemed to have received reinforcements, redoubled their rate of fire. The attackers raked the
