Point Blank
“It’s a waste, all right,” Gitano Malara echoed, resting one of his hands on the prisoner’s other leg. “We ought to stop somewhere and have a little party, eh?”
“You don’t mind, do you, bella?” Terranova asked, angling for a quick look in the rearview mirror.
“She don’t mind,” Aiello said. “Lets her live a little longer anyway.”
“That’s right,” Malara said. “I bet she’d be real grateful.”
“Have you seen a mirror lately?” Cortale asked him.
“Hey!”
But it was getting to him, sitting close to her and hearing all the bawdy talk, knowing they could take her anywhere they wanted, make her do anything, as long as she still wound up feeding fish. Aldo would never know the difference if Cortale swore them all to silence under pain of death.
They wouldn’t even have to deviate from Aldo’s plan. The boat was waiting for them. Once they had put out to sea, there would be nothing, no one, to distract them.
Trying to keep it casual, he let his left hand come to rest on her right thigh. She tried to squirm away from him, but there was nowhere she could go, trapped with Malara to her left. She made a whiny noise but couldn’t even push his hand away because hers were tied behind her back.
The possibilities aroused Cortale, inflaming him.
“Hey, Fausto.” Terranova’s voice cut through his steamy thoughts. “I think we got a tail.”
“The hell you mean, a tail?”
“Just what I said. I’ve had an eye on this one Alfa, trailing us since we left Aldo’s.”
They were rolling southbound, toward the coast, along Viale degli Angioini, and although the flow of cars was still substantial, Cortale knew they’d lost a fair number of the vehicles that had surrounded them as they were leaving Catanzaro.
“We do something, you’d better be damn sure,” he cautioned Terranova. “It comes down to you.”
“I’m sure,” Terranova replied.
“All right, then. Lead him off on Via Solferino when you get there, and we’ll find a place to take him.”
Cortale felt his rutting mood go sour, changing into something else—a killing frame of mind. And that wasn’t so strange. Weren’t sex and death closely related, after all?
* * *
BOLAN HAD NO idea where the mobsters were taking their prisoner, whether their destination lay somewhere in the open countryside south of Catanzaro, or if they were on their way to the coast. Either option offered places to dispose of a body—a shallow grave in some lonely field or a burial at sea. He was gambling that they wouldn’t kill her in the car and risk soiling their clothes or the upholstery, but even that could not be guaranteed.
She could be dead already, maybe finished off with a garrote, as many Old World killers still preferred to do when it was feasible. No noise, no mess to speak of if you did it properly. There was a chance he couldn’t save the lady—that he might only be able to avenge her—but he kept betting that she’d be easier to handle while alive, up to the moment when they’d reached her final destination.
Traffic was thinning as they pulled away from Catanzaro, with commuters peeling off toward their suburban homes, replaced by others on their way down to the seashore. Bolan hung back in the wake of the sedan, knowing they might have spotted him but hoping otherwise. If he was burned, they’d done nothing so far to indicate as much, but he could only wait and see.
When the ’Ndrangheta driver started signaling a left turn just beyond a road sign for the village of Le Croci, Bolan kept his signal off and slowed down to let a van slide in between his Alfa and the car he was pursuing—just a little twist to calm suspicion if the hit team thought they had a tail. He’d follow them, but he didn’t want to tip them off.
Bolan made his turn at the last minute, ignored a bleating horn behind him, and began to track his target on the winding two-lane road. No other vehicles were between them now. He let the mob car lead him by four hundred yards but still knew he was clearly visible behind them if they bothered looking back.
The trick was to keep from spooking them but still be quick enough to intervene when they reached their destination and prepared to dispose of their prisoner. Hanging back a quarter of a mile delayed Bolan’s reaction time, but he’d alert his adversaries in a heartbeat if he roared up on their bumper when they’d stopped to drag the lady from their car. Moving too soon could get her killed. Likewise, moving too late could have the same result.
The land around them now was mostly open, with large homes on multiple acres on the southern side. Beyond the houses, he glimpsed orchards, whereas the fields across the road stood fallow and awaiting cultivation. Not the best place for a firefight, but he was grateful for the open space and scarcity of innocents. If his intended targets led him to a better killing ground, he’d thank them for it.
When the smoke cleared.
And the lady? Bolan hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d seen her and decided he would help her if he could. Beyond that, once he’d freed her from captivity, she could decide what happened next—up to a point. He wasn’t anybody’s nursemaid, and he had no time to care for the woman. If he could find someone reliable to take her off his hands, he’d go with that.
If not...well, he could put her on a plane to anywhere outside Calabria, give her a head start at the very least. It was a better chance than anything awaiting her right now.
Speeding up a little, Bolan reached inside his jacket, checking the Beretta in its quick-draw holster. It was ready, as was he.
The game was on in earnest now. And there was going to be blood.
Chapter 2
Monday—National Museum of Crime & Punishment, Washington, D.C.
This has to be a joke, Bolan thought. But Hal Brognola, who worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, had proposed the meeting place, so Bolan handed some bills to a clerk behind the sales counter. He cleared the turnstile and passed through a mock medieval dungeon filled with torture devices into a room where a 1930s-era car sat behind velvet ropes, its windows and its paint job shot to hell.
Bolan ignored the serial killers gallery, slack-jawed faces watching him from eight-by-ten mug shots as he walked by. Hal had suggested meeting at the mob exhibit, and he saw it up ahead. More mug shots and blow-ups of newspaper clippings, an Uzi submachine gun next to a fedora and a photo of the neon sign from the original Flamingo hotel and casino, erected by Bugsy Siegel in Las Vegas. Bolan found the display more in tune with Hollywood’s portrayal of the underworld than anything he’d faced in real life.
Hal Brognola suddenly appeared at his elbow. “Let’s take a walk.”
They left gangland behind and ambled toward the museum’s CSI lab, where a mannequin lay on an operating table. Behind it stood displays on toxicology, dental I.D. procedures and the like.
“This must be like a busman’s holiday for you,” Brognola said.
“It cost me twenty-one ninety-five.”
“I get a discount with my badge.”
“Congratulations.”
“So, what do you know about the ’Ndrangheta?” Hal asked, cutting to the chase.
“One of the top syndicates in Italy,” Bolan replied. “Sometimes they collaborate with the Camorra and the Mafia. When that breaks down, they fight. They’re less well known than the Mafia but just as dangerous.”
“And not confined to Italy these days,” Brognola said. “They’re everywhere in Europe, east and west. They’ve also started cropping up in Canada, the States, down into Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Hell, they’re even in Australia. Worldwide, we estimate they’re banking close to fifty billion annually. Much of that derives from trafficking in drugs. The rest, you name it: weapons, vice, loan-sharking and extortion, public contracts and so-called legitimate business.”
Nothing Hal had said so far was a surprise. Bolan walked beside him, letting him get to the point in his own good time.
“Two days ago, there was a shootout on Shelter Island. Well, a massacre’s more like it. Did you catch the news?”
“Some marshals and a witness,” Bolan said.
“Affirmative. Four deputy U.S. Marshals blown away while watching over one Rinaldo Natale, scheduled to testify next week in New York at the racketeering trial of three high-ranking ’ndranghetisti. Without him, let’s just say the prosecution’s sweating.”
“The time to call would’ve been before Natale bit the dust,” Bolan observed.
“Agreed. But spilled milk and all that. Anyway, we need to send a message back to the Old Country.”
“You know who gave the order?”
“Ninety-nine percent sure I do.”
“Okay,” Bolan said. “Tell me.”
“He’s Gianni Magolino, the capobastone of one of the strongest, if not the strongest, ‘ndrina families in the area.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“His lieutenants are the men awaiting trial in Manhattan.”
“So he has a solid foothold in the States?” Bolan asked.
“Aside from New York, he’s got people in Florida, Nevada, Southern California—and El Paso.”
“Ciudad Juárez,” Bolan replied.
“No doubt.”
The border city, with its countless unsolved murders, was a major gateway for narcotics passing out of Mexico and through El Paso, Texas.
“Any chance of working with the locals in Calabria?” Bolan asked, feeling fairly sure he already knew the answer to his question.
“You know how they are,” Brognola replied. “All good intentions on the surface, and a few hard-chargers in the ranks, but they get weeded out. Their DIA—the anti-Mafia investigators—has had a couple of its top men operating underground for fifteen, twenty years, but no one’s gotten close to Magolino so far.”
“Okay,” Bolan said. “So, I guess you need me out there yesterday.”
“Tomorrow’s soon enough.” Brognola handed him a USB key he’d fished out of a pocket. “Here’s a little homework for the flight.”
* * *
THE TRAVEL PREPARATIONS didn’t take much time. With an afternoon departure from Washington, Bolan made his way to the airport and spent his time there reviewing the information from Hal’s flash drive.
It turned out that the ’Ndrangheta had been operating since the 1860s. Its structure was similar to that of the Mafia, with strong emphasis on family and faith. The sons of members were christened at birth as giovane d’onore, “youth of honor,” expected to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. At age fourteen they graduated to picciotto d’onore—“children of honor”—indoctrinated into blind obedience and tasked with jobs considered “child’s play.” The next rung up the ladder, camorrista, brought more serious duties. Sgarrista was the highest rank of the ’Ndrangheta’s Società Minore and was as far as some members ever advanced.
The next step—into the Società Maggiore—made the member a Santista, or “saint,” the first degree of full membership. Above the saints stood vangelo—“gospels”—quartino, trequartino and padrino. Padrino was the Godfather. Bolan realized much of the ceremony was simply for show. The ’ndranghetisti made a mockery of Italy’s traditional religion and the values normally ascribed to family. For all their talk of sins against the family and stained honor, members of the ’Ndrangheta lived by a savage code of silence enforced by murder. They were no different than any other criminal or terrorist Bolan had confronted in the past, and they deserved no mercy from the Executioner.
Bolan turned his attention to the Magolino family in Catanzaro. Its padrino for the past ten years was one Gianni Magolino, forty-six years old. He had logged his first arrest in 1985, at age seventeen, for attempted murder—a charge dismissed after the victim and four witnesses refused to testify. From there, his rap sheet read like a menu of crime: armed robbery, extortion, aggravated assault, suspicion of drug trafficking, suspicion of gun-running and suspicion of murder (three counts). The only charge that stuck was one for operating an illegal casino. In that case, Magolino had served sixty days and paid a fine of ten thousand lira—about seven American dollars.
That kind of wrist-slap had taught Magolino that crime did pay. He’d clawed his way up to command the former Iamonte family, aided by longtime friend and current trequartino, Aldo Adamo. Four years Magolino’s junior and as ruthless as they came, Adamo was suspected by authorities of more than forty homicides. Most of his victims had been rival ’ndranghetisti, but the list also included two former girlfriends, a cousin and his stepfather. Adamo knew where the bodies were buried, and he’d planted some of them himself.
Together, Magolino and Adamo presided over an estimated four hundred soldiers, with outposts in Spain, Belgium, London, the United States and Mexico. Hal’s digging had turned up a list of friendly coppers in Calabria’s police along with suspected collaborators inside the Guardia di Finanza, a military corps attached to the Ministry of Economy and Finance charged with conducting anti-Mafia operations.
One rotten apple in that barrel could alert ’ndranghetisti to impending prosecutions and allow them to tamper with state’s evidence and mark potential witnesses for execution. Multiply that rotten apple by a dozen or a hundred, and it came as no surprise when top-flight mobsters walked away from court unscathed, time after time.
But living through a Bolan blitz was something else entirely.
As the Maglioni organization was about to learn.
Bolan would be traveling to Italy as Scott Parker, a businessman from Baltimore with diverse interests in petroleum, real estate and information technology. His passport was impeccable, as was the Maryland driver’s license, Platinum American Express card and the matching Platinum Visa. Any background check on “Parker” would reveal two years of military service in his teens, a B.A. in business administration from UM-Baltimore and a solid stock portfolio. As CEO of Parker International, he had the time and wherewithal to travel as he pleased, for business and for pleasure.
This would not be Bolan’s first trip to Italy, by any means. Even before his public “death” in New York City, while Brognola’s Stony Man project was still on the drawing board, Bolan had paid a hellfire visit to Sicily, ancestral home of the Mafia, reminding its godfathers that they were not untouchable. Since then, he’d been back several times, pursuing different angles in the war on terrorism but returning now brought on a flashback to old times.
It never failed. A mention of the Mafia, or any of the syndicates that mimicked it under other names, brought back the nightmare that had devastated Bolan’s family and launched him into a crusade he’d never imagined as a young man. Bolan had been a Green Beret, on track to a distinguished lifer’s career in the military, when he’d lost three-quarters of his family, only his younger brother still alive to tell a tale of murder-suicide provoked by vicious loan sharks. Bolan—already tagged as “The Executioner” for his cold eye and steady hand in battle—had settled that score, then decided personal vengeance fell short of the mark. A whole class of parasites still fed on society’s blood.
Old times, bad times—but what had changed?
Bolan was not religious, in the normal sense. He didn’t shun the notion of a higher power or discount any particular creed at a glance, but if he’d learned one thing from a lifetime of struggle, it was that predators never relented. They might “find the Lord” to impress a parole board, but once they hit the streets again, 99.99 percent reverted to their old ways.
Long story short, the only cure for evil was extinction.
And the Magolino organization’s day was coming.
Bolan’s flight to Rome lifted off from Dulles more or less on time, and it would be eight hours and forty-one minutes from takeoff to touchdown, nonstop. The long flight gave him time to sleep. Downtime was a rare commodity in Bolan’s world, and he took full advantage of it when he could.
As far as planning went, he’d done all he could before his feet were on Italian soil. He had a rental car lined up, along with weapons if the dealer didn’t sell him out. Beyond that, he had targets and certain thoughts on how he should proceed, but plans were always transient in battle. They changed by the day, by the minute, forcing warriors to adapt or die.
And Bolan was a master when it came to adapting.
He’d hit the ground running, begin with a blitz and be ready for whatever happened from there. Take the war to his enemies, grinding them down with no quarter.
Bolan had an hour to kill at the terminal in Rome, before his Alitalia flight took off for Lamezia Terme. Time enough for him to drift along the concourse, eavesdropping on conversations as he passed, translating them with the Italian he had learned while hunting monsters who defiled their race’s ancient, honorable reputation with the taint of crime. When he stopped to order coffee, overpriced but hot and strong, he’d engaged in conversation with the girl behind the counter, raising no eyebrows.
No one in Catanzaro would mistake him for a native, but he could communicate without an interpreter, and that was all Bolan required. Beyond the basics, he would let his weapons do his talking, confident his enemies would get the message.
Hal’s instructions were explicit: crush the Magolino family and leave it beaten to the point that, if it managed to survive, it would refrain from planting any more flags in the States. Drive home that message in the classic Bolan style, while still preserving plausible deniability.
If he was captured, naturally, Hal would have to cut him loose. If Bolan died in battle, there would be no record of him in the files at Stony Man, in Washington, or anywhere at all. His second passing might evoke some tears, but life went on. The fight went on. Survivors couldn’t do their best if they were burdened by the memories of those who’d fallen along the way. It was a soldier’s life, willingly accepted by those few who made the cut.
He had another chance to try out his Italian at the auto rental booth in Lamezia Terme. His second test subject, a young man with a mop of curly hair and the pathetic ghost of a mustache, appeared to have no trouble understanding anything Bolan said. More to the point, his answers to some routine questions, given back in rapid-fire, came through to Bolan loud and clear.
Ten minutes later, he was on the road, eastbound, toward his final destination. One more stop, to arm himself, and he’d be ready for anything.
But was the ’Ndrangheta ready for the Executioner?
Chapter 3
Tuesday—Le Croci, Calabria
“Still with us,” Terranova said.
Cortale swiveled in his seat, ignoring the frightened woman beside him as he peered through the sedan’s rear window at the gray Alfa Romeo that was clearly trailing them.
“Stop, and let’s take him,” Malara said. He’d already retrieved an Uzi from under his seat and was ready to cock it.
“Not yet,” Cortale replied. To Terranova, he added, “Drive on past these houses, along to where we choose left or right.”
Via Solferino was a dead-end road that split before you reached its terminus, each segment leading to a different farm before it simply stopped. There was a point, just at the split, where neither of the two homes was close enough for residents to witness any action on the road or for a fool to get his courage up and try to intervene.
“The rest of you,” Cortale said, “be ready.”
Terranova reached beneath the driver’s seat, took out a lupara, the classic sawed-off shotgun and set it beside him. Aiello drew a Beretta Cougar from its shoulder holster, easing back the slide an inch or so to make sure he had a live round in the pipe.
Cortale, for his part, preferred a larger weapon. Leaning forward, he released a hidden catch that, in turn, released a sort of flap in the seat in front of him. Once opened, it revealed an AKS-74U assault rifle, the Kalashnikov carbine with shortened barrel and folding stock, which still retained the full firepower of its parent AK-74. Cortale lifted out the little man-shredder, retrieved two extra magazines, then closed the hidden hatch. He turned again and saw the Alfa still behind them, hanging back three hundred yards or so but matching every twist and turn they made.
“Who is it?” the woman asked.
“How should I know?”
“Maybe someone Aldo sent to help us,” Terranova offered, though he didn’t sound convinced.
“What help?” Malara challenged him. “We don’t need any help.”
To which the driver simply shrugged.
“More likely, someone from the Gugliero family,” Aiello said with an expression like he had a bad taste in his mouth.
“It’s possible,” Cortale granted.
There’d been trouble off and on for two years now between the Magolino family and Nikola Gugliero’s clan from Botricello. Gugliero’s soldiers had begun to poach on Magolino turf, trying to horn in on the drug trade and the gambling. No blood had been spilled, but tense negotiations had not managed to resolve the problem, either. It was possible that Gugliero had his people shadowing Adamo and the other Magolino officers, looking for ways to undercut them and watching for a chance to bring them down.
“Those assholes need a lesson,” said Malara. “We’re the ones to let them have it.”
“Only one man in the car that I can see,” Terranova reported.
“Merda. The rest are likely hiding in the trunk,” Aiello said.
“Quiet!” Cortale ordered. “Let me think.”
He had a problem. Killing came easy to Cortale, as to all of them, but first he needed some idea of who the target was. Blasting a member of the Gugliero family, although it might be satisfying, could provoke a war. Likewise, if they were being followed by a cop, killing him might touch off a vendetta from the law. And finally, if they were wrong about the Alfa’s driver—if, for instance, he was simply traveling to one of the last homes on Via Solferino—the murder of an innocent civilian could provoke investigation of their presence in the area.
“Well?” Malara prodded him.
“Dino,” Cortale said, “when you reach the fork, stop short and block the road. We’ll see what this bastard wants and then decide what we should do with him.”
* * *
BOLAN HAD CHECKED the Alfa’s GPS and knew he was running out of road. Three-quarters of a mile ahead, the track they were following divided, one part going north a hundred yards or so before it hooked hard right and came to a dead end. The other traveled half as far, due south, before it ended in a cul-de-sac. Whichever fork the four ’ndranghetisti chose, there’d be no turning back.
Which made him wonder, once again, if they’d spotted him.
The Alfa would be difficult to miss, but with the lead vehicle’s tinted windows, Bolan couldn’t tell if they were watching him or not.
Next question: Was the side road they were following the route his targets meant to take, or was Bolan being led into a trap? Did it make any difference? Whatever happened in the next few minutes, Bolan’s goal remained the same. Eliminate the goons and liberate their prisoner.
He left the big Beretta in its holster. Placing it beside him on the vacant seat would make it handy, but a sudden stop could also send it spinning out of reach. Why risk it, when the piece was close enough to draw and fire within a second? As for Bolan’s other guns, they lay behind the driver’s seat in duffel bags, secure but reachable.
And if his targets had a trap in mind, they might be needed any moment now.
The black sedan ahead of him was slowing, no brake lights, the driver lifting off the accelerator as he neared the fork in the road. Bolan followed suit, not closing in as yet, giving the ’Ndrangheta wheelman time to make his choice. Ahead of them, he saw more open fields and orchards and houses in the middle distance, left and right.