If he wanted to get out, he should go. But he could not stand the thought of leaving without a complete takedown. He wanted to see that goddam house — that. . . that castle, yeah, ruler of Agrigento, the late Don Cafu. Bolan wanted nothing left for the sons of bitches to look at but rubble, junk. It's hard to build a legend on trash, difficult to worship the residue of destruction.
He stopped again near the place he had first approached the house. He could see the white shape of Riarso's naked body.
The house was a gutted, still flaming ruin; but it also still stood, big, blocky, stone and mortar, and looking too goddam much like a monument.
Standing in the open, methodically firing one grenade after another with the M79, Bolan sent the stone-crunchers into the foundation, blowing out one corner after four shots, the other after five. He moved farther along so he could see the side of the building. He refused in his mind to call it a home, or even a house, and shot again and again, until his grenades were gone, and the house still stood.
He felt like crying.
He turned to go back to the BAR when a sound slapped past his ear and he whirled around. An ivory white Rolls Silver Cloud came up the paved drive toward the house, and from the back window behind the driver a man was shooting at Bolan.
Bolan dropped, drawing the Automag. He sighted on the driver and squeezed, then threw the shot wide in the last possible instant when a first ray of sun glinted on the badge above the driver's heart. The shot took out the front windscreen of the car and the driver lost control. Bolan fired again and again, punching .44 Magnum holes through every glass of the Rolls.
The door on the far side suddenly flew open and a man leaped out, shouting, "Bolan! Bolan! Wait. I want to talk."
"Okay, stand up and talk." Bolan watched from cover.
The big man rose to his feet in his silk suit, brushing at his sleeves.
"Come out and talk." The man gestured. "We can deal, Bolan."
"Who am I dealing with?"
"Police. Get out Chief. Look, Bolan, we can fix this. Goddam you, Chief, get out!"
The front door opened and the fat policeman struggled from behind the wheel, gasping so loudly, Bolan may not have heard the command if he had not seen the man in silk also move his lips. "Now!"
The back door flew open and a man armed with a shotgun, lying on the floor of the car, let off both barrels at Bolan. One of the slugs caught Bolan below the right knee and knocked him down as he rose. The rest of the deadly double-aught buckshot went wide and low, ripping a long wide hole across the ground.
Bolan discounted the shotgunner. He was an empty gun for the moment. Instead, he shot the burly dude in fancy clothes, through the guts. The .44 Mag folded Brinato in the middle like a wet taco and drove him ten feet backwards until he tripped and fell rolling. He screamed, holding his middle.
"Live with it a while, you mother," Bolan said, "yeah, let's talk." He shot the other man lying on the back floorboard just as the cool bastard shoved in another pair of double-aught loads and snapped the shotgun into battery.
The policeman lay on his side in the dust and Bolan knew he'd finally done it.
Killed a cop.
Stray round, ricochet, whatever. The Executioner would get blamed for it. He dragged the man out of the back and dumped him, dropped a marksman medal on his chest.
"Pleese-a, don't-a keel me, signor."
Bolan whirled to find the cop on his knees.
"I ain't going to kill you, man ..." Bolan breathed deeply again. "Unless by accident, when you scare the living crap out of me!"
"Pleese-a-no, I got-a wife three bambin."
"Forget it, man. This your car?"
"Is your car, you want Take, take all. Here, you wanna some mon." The cop dropped his fat moneyclip on the road and pushed it toward Bolan.
"Where's the helicopter?"
"In-a see-tee. You wan?"
Bolan could hardly hear the cop. That Brinato certainly could scream, gutshot as he was.
"Put it away, copper. I don't want your bread." Bolan went to him. "Come on, get up, get-up!" He jerked and the cop leaped at the same time and Bolan shoved him under the wheel. As they turned and drove down the road toward town, Bolan could still hear Brinato. He certainly could scream. Just went on and on and on, and loud, too. Best screamer I ever heard, Bolan decided.
Epilogue
Handling the pilot had been no problem at all. Once airborne, Donato freely admitted that if he'd known Brinato was lying gutshot and dying up at the big house, he'd have taken off on his own. He wanted no friggin' part of that war he could hear going on up there.
"You're Bolan, aren't you?" Donato asked, shooting a look at the blacksuited Executioner while the man strapped a bandage on a flesh wound below his right knee.
Bolan didn't answer.
"You did a hell of a job, guy, I'll say that. For one man, key-rist, you brought it down."
"Not quite." Bolan jerked his chin.
Donato looked past Bolan, and all he saw was devastation. "I don't get you."
"That goddam house is still standing. I shot the damned foundation from under it, but it's still there."
"And it bugs you, huh, bad."
"Real bad... but I'll get over it."
Donato tapped Bolan's arm. "Look, what are your plans? I mean, what do I have to look forward to? A hole in my guts, too?"
Bolan shook his head: no.
"Okay, then what are your plans. I mean, like, you know, where we going, man?"
"How much fuel do we have?"
Donato didn't answer. He looked at Bolan. After a long moment, Donato said, "You want to deal? I got something you just might go for."
"If it's a trick, let me tell you, the last guy used those words to me was Brinato."
"No way, man." Donato grinned widely. "You want that house down. Okay, dig this, Mack Bolan."
Donato banked the chopper around sharply. He reached up to an overhead panel with a key, unlocked a small door that revealed four switches, the two in the center with red metal safety shields over them. Donato flipped the two unsafetied switches and from the corner of his eye, Bolan saw the front of the landing gear skid peel off and fall away.
When he looked back, Donato had flipped up a plastic plate with gunsight markings on it. He jockeyed the chopper, lowered the nose, increased power, jockeyed again, seemed to settle into a groove, then he said, "Lift the safeties and flip those two switches."
Bolan had caught on by then. He fired the rockets. The house went down like a dynamited smoke stack, flying apart and caving in all at once.
There would be no "monument" to Don Cafu, no Mafia shrine, no basilica for this thing of ours in Agrigento.
"Okay, your deal," Bolan said.
"We've got enough fuel for Algiers." Donato grinned. "They let every other kind of asshole in there, airline hijackers, dope peddlers, Black Panthers, so it's worth a try."
"It sure as hell is."
"And I keep the chopper, right?"
"She's all yours, ace. Wake me when we get there, huh?" Bolan crawled into the back seat and stretched out as best he could, bone-ache tired, wounds washing firelike pain across his chest and down his side, along his leg. Yet, Mack Bolan smiled.
God, that was a beautiful sight, watching that house go down. A man didn't get to see one go like that every day.
Beautiful, just beautiful.
Unknown to Bolan, he was spotted in Algiers less than an hour after he arrived. But instead of a battle resulting, the man who spotted him followed new orders, arrived in his office at midday. After locking his office and pulling the shades, he opened his safe. He took out a locked, steel-covered book that was itself a small safe. Laboriously, because he was unaccustomed to such work, the man encoded a message. He locked the book, returned it to his safe and locked the big box, then slipped out the back door of his office and went immediately to the international wireless office. After the message was sent, the man bribed the operator to recover the company copy of the message, then went outside and burned both his handwritten copy and the one he bought.