I have to admit youre better looking, she said with the hint of a smile.
He was unclipping the neoprene satchel from his belt. You dont 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. Thats quite a... Wait a minute! She stared at him again. I know that face, she said. Ive seen photos. Youre J-Ps new trigger man, Sondermann. From Hamburg. Am I right?
Kurt Sondermann, Bolan said gravely. At your service, Fraulein.
You dont sound German. Coralie was puzzled. You dont have much of an accent.
In my line of business, its 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 Ill tell you, he said.
She hesitated, then thumbed the automatic to safety and thrust it into the pocket of her jacket. But she didnt 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. Id 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 Id never heard of your father. I didnt know Jean-Paul was a buddy of his. I figured Id make it here secretly and find out the score. If it was the same team that tried to waste me, thered 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, hes dead now.
So they tell me. But they didnt tell the guys trying to liquidate me; they didnt 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 didnt like the idea. They wanted to stay the way they were. They were going to get together and... She shook her head. I dont 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 Sanguinettis 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 someones 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. Im 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 facade of the house with a murderous hail of lead.
Try this way! Bolan yelled during a lull in the clamor. There was a shout of surprise from the traverse. At once the muzzle-flashes swung his way. Slugs splatted against the rock, ripped through the flower bed and stung his face with stone chips.
Bolan was ready with the Beretta, the folded-down foregrip snug in his left hand. Aiming above the flashes, he let off four 3-shot bursts, the big auto-loader bucking in his hands.
Somebody screamed and fell. A second figure leaned out into the moonlight and dropped, cartwheeling dizzily down the limestone face.
Enough? Bolan called to the girl. Or do you want to make it a trio?
Okay, I believe you. She sounded angry again.
Glass shattered on one of the upper stories and a heavy object crashed to the floor inside the house. A woman screamed and a man yelled an obscenity.
Jean-Pauls less hysterical voice called from farther along the facade, Cant you flush out these bastards, Smiler? Theres a meeting we have to finish here.
Not as long as they stay where they are, J-P, a hoarse voice replied from the storehouse. Wed be mowed down if we tried to make it across the terrace. You can see...