For the cons in the tank, the cop had to go just on general principles.
Inside the Mafia, identified, Bolan had to go because no man, no organization, including the United States Government — and all its enforcement agencies, FBI, Bureau of Narcotics, Customs, Alcohol & Tobacco Tax Unit, and the Department of Justice Organized Crime Task Force — none of them, nor all of them combined, had taken down as many mafioso as this one single man, Mack Bolan, The Executioner.
The bastard Bolan was an earthquake, a timebomb, an off-duty cop, a drunk driver bent upon suicide all in one package — totally unpredictable and no way, no-fucking -way! To get handles on the guy. To figure him. His next move. Christ, how do you make plans for a bastard who goes through San Diego like water through a hose and a couple of days later wipes out Frank Angeletti's soldier barracks in Philadelphia? Then shows up inside Don Stefano's home impersonating Wild Card Cavaretta so well the son of a bitch sleeps, actually sleeps in the don's house, before taking the whole fucking place down!
Perhaps the "members" could have understood better if one of them had ever had a look at Mack Bolan's journals!
I'm already dead. In old Norse mythology, so I understand, there is a place called Valhalla. All the great warriors gather there nightly to dine and drink and be entertained, and then fight to the death. Guts ripped out, heads lopped off, blinded and maimed— And yet the next night, they return whole and well, to dine and drink and fight again.
They are dead but don't know it.
Am I in my own personal Valhalla...?
It doesn't matter. I will keep on fighting until I can fight no more, the way I have always fought, and for the same reasons. The Law cannot do the job, hamstrung and handcuffed by red tape, rules, regulations, books, court decisions. I am not and will never be. So long as 1 last, I will continue the fight.
Bolan found the portside aft head, stepped inside and stripped off after locking the door. He wrung out his outer clothing, checked his weapons and ammo and found them safely dry, dressed again, then came out on deck as the ferry slowed and began swinging around, stern toward the dock, using the Mediterranean moor, a device the U.S. Navy had made so popular. When ships tied-to with their sterns to the dock, they could get underway in seconds, without delicate dockside maneuvering or using tugs to come alongside or depart. The "Med moor" also saved a hell of a lot of docking space, quayside.
As the ferry swung around, stern toward dock, Bolan moved toward the bow. He let his narrowed gaze rove over the crowd, picking out the mafiosi and the gunsels he'd spotted earlier in the day. He spotted the gunsels as easily as before. A gun gave some types of guys a lot of balls. He felt his hackles bristle again. Where was Rana, the frog-faced dude? He'd been obviously in charge of the dockcrew, all during the day while Bolan watched from the hayloft room. Now he was gone.
Then Bolan saw them.
Alma had a huge jawbust lump on the left side of her face, and a glob of red showed on the top of her bonnet. On her left stood a gangly spiderlike man with his hand in his right pocket, bulging. On her right stood Astio, and Bolan saw his lips moving.
Alma shook her head.
As though there were no one, much less the more than a hundred people on the dock, disembarking and waiting to board the ferry, Astio turned and almost casually drove his right fist into Alma's face and broke her nose. Blood sprayed, and Bolan saw her buckle at the knees under the force of the deliberately smashing punch. Then she shook her head, raised her chin, and spat a mouthful of blood into Astio's face.
Somehow, someway, Mack Bolan vowed to himself, he would make it up to that girl. He would find a way, by God. Alma, it meant soul; and she had it, from the core out.
First, though, he had to save her life. Astio would never stand for that spitting in his face.
Almost reluctantly, Mack pulled the Beretta, checked that the silencer was screwed firmly in place, rested his elbows on an engine-room blower stack, sighted, and shot Astio Traditore through the head. He swung a fraction to his right and shot Spider between the eyes.
Immediately, the wheelman leaped from the car, gun drawn, staring around. He moved around the front of the car and Bolan shot him through the throat.
Without discipline, eager only for heroics and a big payday, the gunsels came to Astio's "rescue." Then stood in a muttering gang, looking about, seeking a target.
The people of Reggio paid them no attention. Since time began, the old stories and even the Bible itself told of such happenings in the streets of Reggio, Rome, Bethlehem, along the ancient Appian Way.
There were people in the crowd who would have traded places with the deads, despite their abject suffering poverty.
The priests had warned them that pain and torture and suffering beyond imagination awaited those who suicided themselves. So the people of Reggio plodded onwards, unseeing. That men had achieved a walk on the moon meant absolutely nothing to them. Most of them did not know. Of those who knew, nearly all did not believe. Blood running in the streets was Reggio. Was Calabria. Italy. They walked on past, looking neither right or left, minds purposely blank.
The dockworkers, too, accustomed to oppression by Mafia labor bosses, knowing the less seen and heard the better, simply went about their work as though three dead men and the gunwaving gunsels did not exist. Mack watched, and saw the bustarella, the little bribe, tip, had worked. Bolan's crated warchest was first aboard.
Then it was tune to break it up and let Alma out. The cheap gunsels had started some big behavior. In a ludicrous imitation of the real merchandise, one gunsel twisted up a handful of Alma's hair and jerked her head back so the cords in her neck stood out like cables and her outsized bosom seemed ready to burst through her dress.
Bolan saw the longshoremen return to dockside after loading his crate. He holstered the Beretta and drew the .44 Automag. He shot the gunsel holding Alma. The big, high-impact slug went in just under the gunsel's chin, hit with crushingly expanding force, and tore the man's head from his body. It rolled down the slight incline toward the dock, and became lost among the shuffling feet of the people who refused to look, refused to acknowledge they walked between the front lines of a war between two opposing forces.
Bolan fired again, twice more, shooting lower now, taking the guts out of the cheap thugs who'd come ganging around Alma. He wanted them to have a look at what it was all about, this hiring out cheap, packing heat, strutting before the girls, bragging it up. Bolan wanted their brothers and sisters and all their relatives to see what it cost. Working a dirt farm in Calabria wasn't much of a life, and grubbing for coins along the waterfront little better; but they did not get you dead like mixing with "that thing of theirs" did. It didn't get your bloody yellow guts slopped out on the quay with a hole the size of a football in your back where the .44 Magnum emerged, spraying bone splinters, sticky wet red, slimy yellow.
Bolan got them all, a cleansweep. A Reggio Repulisti!
In Messina, in Catania, and for damned sure in Agrigento the "membership" awaited him, Bolan knew. But right now he was on the way ... to the Mafia's homeground, its birthplace. Sicily. Because he went into the wheelhouse and told the captain, "Get underway."
The captain shouted just three words, slowly, so there would be no misunderstanding. "Cut all lines."
He looked at Bolan, and The Executioner nodded. With the "Med moor" all the captain had to do was call the engine room and order, "All ahead flank."