Coralie looked across the terrace at him as she slid behind the wheel. Is there anything you wouldnt do? she retorted.
9
The raid on the hideout used by gangsters from the Balestre mob was planned and carried out like a military operation, although there were no more than sixteen men involved. They were divided into two teams of three and a ten-man main force.
Jean-Paul had insisted that the attack be restricted to soldiers from his own Marseilles family. Ancarani, the Unione Corse boss from Ajaccio, had offered a large contingent from his own gang, but Jean-Paul had refused. Blood ties, cross-relationships and loyalties were so intermixed on the island, he pointed out, that the risk of a leak, warning Balestres people, would be high if Corsicans were included. Ancarani was angry, but he had to admit it was true.
Another reason unstated, but one that Mack Bolan privately shared was the fact that Jean-Paul was not one hundred percent certain of Ancaranis reliability. Not because he was in sympathy with the Balestre mob, but because he seemed the least impressed of any of the capos by the idea of the KGB tie-up. And a refusal to go along with this had, after all, provoked the death of Balestre himself.
The assault was timed for midnight. Smiler and his two shadows had arrived at Bastia by air from Marseilles earlier in the evening. They were to make their way to the rendezvous in a rented car.
Jean-Paul, Bolan and a seven-foot ex-wrestler named Delacroix were making the trip by air, too... as jumpers, thanks to a bribed helicopter pilot who was supposed to be night-testing a new chopper slated for the Nice-Monaco shuttle. The others were coming by sea.
Corsica, lying eighty miles south of the Gulf of Genoa, is shaped like a fist, with the index finger pointing north at the mainland. The index, protected by five-hundred-foot cliffs, is the twenty-two-mile promontory of Cap Corse. Bastia is located at the base of that finger; Calvi the nearest town to the Balestre hideout is on the other side of the fist.
Between Calvi and the Cap stretches a treeless, uninhabited strip of granite known as the Desert of Agriates. It was here that the seaborne mafiosi were to land.
Inland from this bleak wilderness, Jean-Miguel Balestre had inherited several hundred acres of pasture that began on the far side of the Calvi-Bastia highway and rose toward the foothills of the mountains in the interior.
Bolan was told that the property was a sheep farm. Balestre had made his headquarters in a ranch-style frame house surrounded by dipping pens, a shearing barn and outbuildings. These were spacious enough to accommodate the few workers who tended the flock and the much larger number of villains who looked after his real business.
This had involved the smuggling of liquor, arms and stolen cigarette consignments from North Africa to France and Italy; the distribution of cocaine, heroin and hashish from the Middle East; and the supply to brothels in Ajaccio, Naples and Marseilles of young Arab girls bought in the slave markets of Somali and the Sudan.
Daringly, for there was an elite parachute regiment of the French Foreign Legion quartered in Calvi, the team had used desolate creeks on the deserted Agriates coast for the landing of this merchandise. Much of it was then forwarded to its ultimate destination by supposed tourists using commercial sea, land and air services, and in the false bottom of a high-speed diesel cruiser berthed at St. Florent, between the Agriates and Cap Corse.
For many months the operation had infuriated Ancarani and the other Unione Corse leaders based on Ajaccio, Bastia, Propriano and Bonifacio. If Balestres murder had not been contracted because of his opposition to the KGB-Mafia alliance, it was likely, the Executioner had learned, that he would have been liquidated, anyway, because of the inroads his operation was making on their own business.
Balestres team, working with him ever since he started on his own after the death of his father and a Camorra apprenticeship, were satisfied with the rackets they already controlled. And raking in more money would not compensate them for the loss of autonomy they would suffer as a small unit in a worldwide association.
Bastards are smart, too, Jean-Paul told Bolan in the chopper. Disciplined, crack shots and at least two good enough to lead if the boss is taken out. That pair will be your piece of the action.
Where did Balestre get them? Bolan asked.
Young kids mostly. Trained them himself after hed worked with the Camorra. Unemployment. Poor background. No prospects on the island.
And now, Bolan thought, even fewer prospects, because many of them soon would die. It bugged him like hell, that poverty notwithstanding, they lacked an ethic, a code for living that distinguished between good and bad.
But that was no view he could air in front of the underworld boss from the hottest town in France.
Bolan was wearing his combat blacksuit with the Beretta leathered beneath his left arm, two ammunition belts and half a dozen HE grenades clipped to the webbing of his chute harness. A Husqvarna 561 Express hunting rifle with an IR nightscope leaned against the empty seat beside him.
Jean-Paul, the white cap of hair hidden beneath a black knitted balaclava, was armed with an Uzi SMG and a French police-style Browning automatic. The ex-wrestler carried an Ingram MAC-10, but there was an African knobkerrie a long-shaft nightstick with a weighted spherical head looped to his belt. With his huge frame, abnormal height and a shaven, battlers skull, he looked formidable.
Youre the expert marksman, Sondermann. The gang leader returned to the subject as the chopper overflew the massive red granite fortress that dominated the huddled shingles of the old town and the pale crescent of Calvis pleasure beach. I want you to keep back and, like I say, pick off individual targets as I call them out. Youd be risking your life at close quarters if the boys storm the ranch house. Well find you a good concealed position, not too far away. And only use the pistol if youre threatened, okay?
Its your money, Bolan said. Im only here to carry out orders.
The Frenchman shot him a sideways glance. Just as long as thats understood, he said.
An enigmatic character, Bolan reflected. Their conversation so far had been restricted to banalities: confirmation of details already agreed upon with the real Sondermann through an intermediary; arrangements for where Bolan was to stay; when and where they met; how he was to be paid and what weapons he would need. Yet it was clear that the mafioso from Marseilles was a cut above the other mobsters in the south. He was cultured, intelligent rather than just smart, determined, ruthless... and lacking altogether the crudeness that characterized the others.
Bolan had not been consulted when the raid was planned. He was interested to see how it went. And how J-P reacted under fire.
The moon was already high in the cloudless sky. Bright light shone from the wrinkled surface of the sea.
The coastline slid away behind them as the chopper whined over citrus groves and the geometrical patterns of vineyards. For one of the few times in his life, Bolan was going into battle not giving a damn whether his side won or lost. He viewed the raid totally objectively: morally, each side was as bad as the other. Win or lose, his only concern was the chance that he might find some situation arising out of the operation that could be used to weaken the solidarity of the mobs who intended to combine under KGB rule.
A thin white ribbon of road curled among the patches of cultivation below them. Jean-Paul looked through the plexiglas at a mass of mountains to their right. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder. Down to two thousand and we jump, he said.
Bolan rose from his seat and slung on the Husqvarna. There was no question of serial jumping after a hookup here: it was simply slide back the panel of the blister and go.