Mafia Massacre

Four deputy U.S. marshals are slaughtered along with the witness they’re guarding, a former Mafia member set to testify in New York. When it’s revealed the kill order came from a powerful Calabria crime family, Mack Bolan decides it’s time to stop the bloodshed at its source.

After arriving in Italy, Bolan learns trouble has already begun. Killing the witness is not enough; the Mafia is intent on murdering his entire family, including women and children. With local law enforcement on the Mafia’s payroll and spies everywhere, infiltrating the family is nearly impossible...especially as Bolan has been marked for death. Dodging bullets at every turn, he’s got to maximize every strike. The Mafia may have home advantage, but the Executioner won’t stop until he blows their house down.

“My brother is dead. He brought shame on all of us.”

“And you’re being punished for it,” Bolan told the woman. He knew the ground rules of a classic vendetta. No survivors could be tolerated.

“My mother, aunts and uncles, cousins. Everyone. Gianni will not rest while any of us are alive.”

“Gianni Magolino?”

She was staring at him now, eyes narrowed. “You know of him?”

Bolan rolled the dice. “I’m here because of him…because he killed your brother.”

“I asked you if you are polizia,” she accused him.

“And I’m not,” Bolan assured her.

“What, then?”

“Someone who solves problems when the law breaks down.”

Point Blank

Don Pendleton

Crime leaves a trail like a water beetle;

Like a snail it leaves its shine;

Like a horse-mango it leaves its reek.

—Malayan proverb

I’m following a trail to those responsible for countless crimes.

The reek will be the smell of cleansing fire.

—Mack Bolan

For Prosecuting Magistrate Antonio Scopelliti

Assassinated by the mafia on August 9, 1991

THE

LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

Dedication

The Mack Bolan Legend

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Saturday—Shelter Island, New York

Rinaldo Natale felt lucky, and why shouldn’t he? After twenty-odd years of the high life, doing whatever he wanted and thumbing his nose at the law, he’d dodged a guaranteed life sentence by rolling over on his longtime friends and partners. Granted, turning into an informant had its drawbacks, first and foremost being the automatic death penalty it carried. The American agents swore they could protect him, but Natale had his doubts. He’d seen enough informants killed at home, together with their families and friends, to know that no one, anywhere, was absolutely safe.

The good news was that Natale loved no one, except for himself. His wife was dead, they’d had no children and his mistress was already warming someone else’s bed. As for blood relatives, they had disowned Natale when he’d made the choice to save himself and let the syndicate he’d served his entire adult life go to hell. They’d be among the first to kill him, given half a chance.

So much for family values.

The other good news was the safe house his protectors from the U.S. Marshals Service had selected for him. Shelter Island—how he loved the very name! One-third of the island was a virgin wilderness, the Mashomack Preserve. The year-round population was around twenty-five hundred people, many of whom golfed at the island’s two country clubs or cruised around on their sailboats.

If anyone ventured into Smith Cove, on the island’s south shore, they might speculate on who’d rented the rambling shorefront home abutting Mashomack Preserve. If they asked around, all they’d learn was that the place had been transformed into a posh executive’s retreat.

Nonsense, of course, but they’d accept the explanation.

This week, four U.S. Marshals from the Witness Security Program were staying with Natale. They weren’t exactly butlers, but they kept Natale fed and reasonably satisfied—although they’d drawn the line at renting him a woman.

He was planning to discuss that request once again this evening, over his veal parmigiana, wild mushrooms stuffed with ricotta, and red onions roasted under salt. If they refused again, Natale thought he might suggest obtaining several prostitutes, so they could share.

Something to think about.

Natale stepped out of the master bedroom’s spacious shower and immediately felt that something in the house was...different. He listened for the television in the living room and heard the same news channel the marshals always listened to, unless there was a game on ESPN.

The television...but no voices.

Hastily, Natale dressed, sorry he wasn’t allowed to possess any weapons other than the kitchen cutlery. His guards were armed, of course—one pistol each, together with a shotgun and an Uzi submachine gun—but that only helped Natale if they were alive and well when trouble came to call.

Speaking of calling, he could shout to his protectors, find out why they’d gone so deathly still, but some sixth sense advised him not to make a sound.

Should he investigate or flee? Escape meant knocking out a bedroom window screen or creeping through the house until he reached an exit. Either way, if trackers had located him, he’d be at risk.

But staying where he was might mean certain death.

Just nerves, Natale told himself. Not buying it, he reached for the doorknob.

* * *

DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL Leo Torbett didn’t usually care for babysitting duty, but covering Rinaldo Natale on the run-up to his trial appearance had turned into a fairly cushy gig. Torbett enjoyed first-rate Italian food—retrieved by car from Nonna’s Trattoria in downtown Shelter Island—and he couldn’t gripe about the ocean view. He didn’t like the forest looming on the east side of the house, but there was nothing he could do about it, other than remaining on alert.

Torbett and his three men slept in shifts. At least two men were awake at all times, with their weapons ready. He also had a lookout at the ferry dock, which was supposedly the only way to reach the island.

So, sure, it made him nervous when a delivery truck pulled up out front, late afternoon, when he wasn’t expecting a delivery.

“Look sharp, everybody,” Torbett ordered, releasing the thumb-break catch on his Glock 22’s high ride holster.

Natale was in the shower, sprucing up for dinner, but they didn’t need to warn him yet. The delivery could be legitimate. Somebody from headquarters might have simply failed to call ahead, as protocol required. Another possibility was that the driver had the wrong address. It happened.

Or...

“Ed, kill the TV. Gary, get the door,” Torbett said as he watched the delivery truck through one of two broad windows.

Ed Mulrooney switched the television off, while Gary Schuman crossed the living room in long strides, one hand on his Glock. He stooped a bit to watch the driveway through the peephole. “Getting out now, with a package,” he announced.

Torbett could see the driver coming up the front walk and double-checking the address against the parcel he was carrying. He also had one of those pads that registered electronic signatures.

Why would headquarters pay a courier instead of sending someone from the Manhattan office? Torbett was considering that question when the driver seemed to stumble on the walkway’s paving stones. The man got his balance back and pitched the parcel underhand, directly toward the window where Torbett stood.

He tried to shout “Watch out!” but it was already too late. The parcel detonated with a thunderclap that blew the picture window inward, driving shards of broken glass into his face.

* * *

NATALE HEARD THE blast and doubled back into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Damn! No lock! He ran toward the en suite bathroom. Hiding there was futile, but a window was set into the wall above the bathtub that might be large enough for him to squeeze through if he sucked in his gut and was willing to give up some skin.

Hell, yes, when the alternative was death.

Behind him, gunfire crackled, and he heard a man cry out in mortal pain. One of his watchdogs, or a member of the hit team?

In any case, it was clear the feds couldn’t protect him. He was bailing out or meant to give it his best shot, at least. If he could make it to the woods, Natale thought he just might have a chance.

He cranked the bathroom window open wide, then punched its screen out with a quick one-two that left his knuckles raw. The next part would be difficult—crawling up and through the narrow window.

The shooting stopped. Footsteps approached his bedroom door, and someone opened it.

Not a marshal.

Standing in the bathtub, bitterly embarrassed that it had to end this way, Natale watched two men approach with compact submachine guns in their hands. He didn’t recognize them. Why in hell should he?

“This is how a traitor dies,” the taller man told him.

“No shit?” Natale sneered at them and rushed the guns, howling, before they opened up and blew him back into the bathtub. Into darkness everlasting, stained with crimson.

Chapter 1

Tuesday—Catanzaro, Italy

Catanzaro is known for its “three Vs”—Saint Vitaliano, its patron saint; velvet and vento, the wind constantly blowing inland from the Ionian Sea. The capital of Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, teems with tourists in the summer months.

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, had not come to shop for velvet or idle on the beach. He was hunting for members of Calabria’s native crime family, the ’Ndrangheta.

A mainland version of Sicily’s Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta was equally venal and vicious, competing for its share of Italy’s underground economy with the Neapolitan Camorra and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita—the “United Sacred Crown.” Between them, Italy’s thriving syndicates had corrupted government, laundered money and murdered innocents.

None of which was Bolan’s problem at the moment.

He was in Calabria, driving a rented Alfa Romeo Giulietta loaded with illegal weapons, because the ’Ndrangheta had reached across the Atlantic to the United States. Bolan intended to discourage that by any means required and drive the lesson home emphatically enough that it required no repetition.

He was a realist, of course. Bolan harbored no illusions that he could eradicate the ’Ndrangheta, any more than he could wipe out evil from the world at large. What he could do—and would do—was treat the ’Ndrangheta to a dose of cleansing fire and make its members think twice about trying to infest America.

He had flown into Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci– Fiumicino Airport, then shuttled down to Lamezia Terme International, located west of Catanzaro. From there, it was an easy drive into the capital and his appointment with an old auto mechanic who earned more money retailing weapons to the highest bidder than he ever had from tuning engines or relining brakes.

Bolan traveled with a bankroll he’d appropriated from the scavengers who made a mockery of civilized society. He could have tapped the till at Stony Man before he left the States, but robbing thieves and murderers and using their blood money against others like them held a strong appeal for Bolan.

Two birds, one stone.

Furio kept an arsenal on hand in his auto body shop for customers who needed hardware in a hurry without getting tangled in legal red tape. Bolan went for native brands, starting with a Beretta ARX-160 assault rifle chambered in 5.56 mm NATO, equipped with a folding stock, a Qioptiq VIPIR-2 thermal sight and a single-shot GLX160 grenade launcher. He backed that up with a Spectre M4 submachine gun and a Beretta 93R selective-fire pistol—both no longer in production but still deadly. Toss in spare magazines and ammunition, a dozen OD/82-SE fragmentation grenades, a fast-draw shoulder rig for the 93R, suppressors for the pistol and the Spectre, plus an ebony-handled switchblade stiletto sharpened to a razor’s edge, and he was good to go.

Dressed to kill.

His next stop, as the sun set, was on Villa Fratelli Pllutino, where he planned to give some ’Ndrangheta members a preview of hell on Earth.

* * *

“THERE IS NO point in pleading for your life,” Aldo Adamo declared.

“Pleading? Piece of shit!” the woman spat at him. “I plead for nothing.”

“So, defiant to the end. At least you’re not a coward, like your brother. He died whimpering.”

“You lie!”

“I planned to make a video of his last moments, for your education, but we had to reconsider. Customs and the like. You understand.”

“I understand what will become of you, Aldo, when Gianni hears what you have done to me.”

Adamo laughed at that. “You’re such a fool. Who do you think gave me the order?”

Blinking back at him, she hesitated, then replied, “I don’t believe you.”

“Foolish, as I said. Your family is tainted by his treachery. How could Gianni ever trust you—any of you—after the way Rinaldo betrayed him?”

Tears, the first he’d seen from her, shone on the woman’s cheeks. “I’m not responsible for his mistakes,” she said, her voice subdued now.

“No?” Adamo shrugged. “Perhaps not. But you know the rules. You’ve grown up in the ’ndrina tradition. No betrayal can be tolerated. No risk of a personal vendetta may be overlooked. In your position, you could do more damage to the family than your pentito brother.”

“I would never—”

“No, you won’t,” Adamo said. “It’s my job to make sure of that.”

It pleased him to watch as the last vestige of hope drained from her eyes. Her face, although still attractive, had a hollow look about it. She realized her time was running out, and there was nothing she could do or say to help herself.

Too bad, Adamo thought. Perhaps he should have given her some hope and let her try to please him, as she had been pleasing his godfather for the past five years. But no, as the family’s second in command, he had to carry out the orders he received. It was permissible for him to gloat at the whore’s fall from grace, but he would go no further.

Stirring up Gianni Magolino’s wrath at such a time might have dire results, even for him.

Adamo thought she was finished speaking, all her words exhausted, when she asked him, in a small voice, “What about my parents? And my brother?”

“That is for Gianni to decide,” he answered. “Personally, in a case of treason, I prefer to wipe out root and branch.”

She sobbed. “Celino is only a child, ten years old.”

“Old enough to remember. I killed my first man at age twelve,” Adamo said and smiled at the sweet memory.

She glowered at him through a sheen of tears. “Spare them,” she said, “and I will do whatever you desire. I’ve seen the way you watch me when Gianni’s back is turned.”

Adamo saw the trap and skirted it. “Such vanity,” he said, sneering. “Of course, I cannot blame you, trying to employ your only talent, but it’s wasted here.”

“Is it?” She almost smiled now. “Was I wrong about you? Do you prefer men after all?”

She was laughing at him when Adamo slapped her, pitched her from the metal folding chair she occupied and sent her sprawling to the floor. She could not break her fall, hands tied behind her as they were, and when she stared up at him, he was pleased to see blood at the corner of her mouth.

Reaching down, Adamo clutched one of the woman’s arms and hauled her to her feet, ignoring her sharp gasp of pain as he twisted her elbow and shoulder. Planted firmly on her feet once more, she tried to kick him, but he turned aside and slammed a fist into her face. She dropped again, weeping. This time, Adamo left her on the floor.

He pressed a button on the intercom atop his desk, and three of his men entered, barely glancing at the fallen woman while they waited for instructions. “Take her to the pier,” Adamo said. “I have the Mare Strega waiting for you. Go out a mile or two and feed her to the fishes, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” one of them said, the others standing mute on either side of him.

Two of them picked the woman up as if she weighed nothing, supporting her between them as they left Adamo’s office, with the third man bringing up the rear. Still seething from the insult she had hurled at him, Adamo took some consolation from the fact that he would never see her face or hear her mocking voice again.

“Sleep with the fishes,” he advised her fading memory and gladly turned his mind to other things.

* * *

BOLAN WAS PROCEEDING CAUTIOUSLY. The modest block of offices he was looking for, on Via Nuova, listed Aldo Adamo among its tenants. Ranked as number two in the major companies of the ’Ndrangheta, Adamo would make a decent target for the start of Bolan’s blitz. With one stroke, Bolan would send a message, letting every member of the rotten family know that nobody was safe.

Psywar. Or, as the Pentagon was pleased to call it lately, shock and awe. It all came down to killing with a purpose.

Some things never change.

He looped around curving one-way streets to catch Vialle dei Normanni, circling north again to pick up Via Nuova southbound. Streets in Catanzaro were a winding maze, where the traffic alternately surged and stalled. Some drivers kept the pedal down regardless, blaring their horns at anyone who tried to drive the speed limit, while others poked along, searching for addresses they never seemed to find. Trucks were the wild card, belching diesel smoke and straddling lanes or blocking traffic to unload their cargo as the spirit moved them.

Bolan took it all in stride. He had no deadline for his drop-in on Adamo, and he wasn’t even sure the mobster would be there when he arrived, but either way, the Executioner would leave a message for the ’Ndrangheta in a language its goons could understand.

Although the ’Ndrangheta owned the building he was headed for, other tenants could be in the line of fire—most of them innocent—if things got out of hand. Bolan didn’t plan on leveling the place or hosing it with automatic fire, but he thought it would be nice to stop and introduce himself, after a fashion, to the men who thought they owned the city.

The Executioner’s present life had started with a one-man war against the likes of Catanzaro’s parasites—bloodsuckers who infected everyone and everything they touched. Negotiation was impossible with ticks, lice, gangsters—choose your vermin. Bolan couldn’t purge the plague forever, as researchers claimed they’d done with smallpox, but he could provide a dose of topical relief and give the authorities—the decent, honest ones—a chance to do their jobs.

And if the scourge returned, if Bolan survived that long, he could return and do it all again.

Bolan rolled along the snaky path of Via Nuova, following a bus that smelled more like a garbage truck, until he spied the address he was looking for. A side street let him duck through a strip mall’s parking lot and double back to find a parking space that let him watch the building. Bolan checked out security and studied nearby pedestrians for any sign that they were cops or mobsters.

Both posed problems for him, one being a target, whereas the other was an obstacle. At the beginning of his lonely war, Bolan had vowed he would never kill a cop, regardless of the circumstances. Plainclothes detectives were a headache because they might shoot first without announcing who they were, and Bolan didn’t want to take a chance on dropping one of them by accident.

But the building’s entrance was clear—as far as he could see—until three no-neck types emerged, marching a woman toward the street. She sagged between them, and they held her up by her arms, which seemed to be secured behind her back. As Bolan watched, a car pulled up to meet the four, and they deposited their captive in the backseat before climbing in to sandwich her and close the doors.

Game change.

As the sedan rolled out, Bolan gave it a block, then started following.

Why not? If he could sting the ’Ndrangheta with a rescue operation, it was worth a shot.

Besides, he’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress.

* * *

“WHERE ARE WE taking her?” asked Dino Terranova, in the driver’s seat.

“The boat,” Fausto Cortale said. “She’s going for a swim.”

“Too bad,” Ruggiero Aiello chimed in. “Seems like a waste.”

Cortale grunted in response. He had a date lined up for later in the evening, and he did not want to dawdle with their prisoner. Load her aboard the Mare Strega, cruise a few miles out to sea and leave her with a bullet in her head, maybe a gym bag filled with scrap iron tied around her ankles. By the time she floated up again, if ever, there’d be next to nothing left for lab analysis.

And if she was identified someday, so what? A boss’s mistress disappeared and later turned up dead. Who cared? By then, her family would be extinct and life would have returned to normal, as it was before her brother had betrayed the family.

Knowing who had wiped out the Natale clan was one thing; proving it was something else entirely. It was good for word to get around. Making examples was the best way to prevent prospective rats from talking out of turn.

Still, now that he was sitting close to her, their thighs pressing together....

“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.

The dwellings gave him pause. If this had been the hit team’s destination from the start, there would likely be more men, more guns, waiting at whichever house they pulled up to. Conversely, if this was a trap, they could be drawing innocents into the line of fire. It was a problem either way, but one he’d have to work around. Retreating now, leaving the woman to her fate, was not an option.

He was considering a run-up toward the lead car, something that would force their hand, when the sedan stopped short and turned to block both lanes. Its doors flew open and disgorged four men with guns in hand. They left the woman in the backseat, pale face peering out at him with frightened eyes.

The four ’ndranghetisti fanned out in a skirmish line, advancing toward the Alfa like gunfighters in a spaghetti western. Bolan weighed his options, drawing the Beretta 93R from its holster, then thumbing the selector switch to go with 3-round bursts. Its magazine held twenty rounds, with one more in the chamber, and he trusted that would be enough.

But first, a little something to disorient the enemy.

He gunned the Alfa’s engine, charging toward the staggered line of gunmen in his path. Their faces told him they’d expected something else—perhaps that he’d retreat or step out of the Giulietta with his hands raised in surrender. What they hadn’t counted on was some two thousand pounds of steel accelerating toward them with a hungry snarl.

They scattered, running for their lives. One slower—maybe more courageous—than the rest, stood his ground just long enough to rake the Alfa with a burst of automatic fire. Bolan ducked below the dash, pebbles of glass raining over him, and held his charger steady on its course. A solid thump denoted impact, then the tardy goon was airborne, glimpsed in passing as he soared over the car and fell somewhere behind it.

Braking short of contact with the lead car, Bolan cranked his steering wheel hard left and veered off pavement toward the nearest cultivated field. A moment later, he was out and moving, ducking bullets as the three men who were still upright laid down a screen of fire.

* * *

CORTALE SAW THE speeding car clip Terranova, launching him into a somersault that carried him over the Alfa Romeo and dropped him behind it. He landed with an ugly crunch on the pavement. From his cries and jerky movements, Terranova clearly was not dead, but there was no time to assist him now—Cortale was busy hammering the gray car with a burst from his Kalashnikov.

Where was the driver, damn it? The man was down below his line of fire, so Cortale ripped another burst across the left-hand doors and hoped the bullets reached him, while the Alfa left the roadway, plowing into a nearby field. He strafed the car with another burst, Malara and Aiello joining in, before a rising cloud of dust obscured the vehicle.

Somewhere amid that cloud, the driver rolled out of his seat and started firing back. He had an automatic weapon, rattling 3-round bursts that sounded like 9 mm rounds. Cortale ducked and veered to his left, putting the bullet-punctured Alfa between himself and whoever it was that seemed intent on killing him.

And why?

He had no time to think about that, only to flank the son of a whore and kill him before they lost any more men. If they couldn’t—

The woman!

Remembering her in the midst of chaos, Cortale risked a glance toward his sedan, its four doors standing open, and saw no one left inside. Snarling obscenities, he almost went to look for her but realized he couldn’t take that risk. The woman mattered less now than disposing of their enemy.

And if she got away? What then?

Cortale could not bear to think about it. He was focused on surviving in the moment. He would deal with Aldo in his turn, explain as best he could, and—

To his right, Malara cursed and ripped an empty magazine out of his Uzi’s pistol grip, fumbling inside his jacket for another. He retrieved it and was about to load the little submachine gun when a triple-tap from their opponent ripped into Malara’s left shoulder and spun him like a ballerina through an awkward pirouette. Malara sat down hard, a red mist from his wound painting his startled face, trying to raise the SMG one-handed from his lap.

Cortale fired another long burst at the bastard who was slaughtering his men, and then his own damned magazine was empty. Running for the nearest cover, a weed-choked roadside ditch, he dived headlong into its dusty sanctuary, the Kalashnikov digging into his ribs. Cortale rolled onto his back, feeling the seconds slip away as he released the empty magazine, discarded it, replaced it, and then jacked a round into the carbine’s chamber.

Ready!

But for what?

Out in the open, Ruggiero Aielo was stalking their prey, shouting taunts and insults to provoke him. Terranova and Malara were still alive, after a fashion, though Cortale could not count on either one of them right now. The woman could be anywhere, escaping while he lay there in the dirt, his Armani suit a filthy mess of dust and briars.

“Curse her rotten soul,” he muttered.

And what about the neighbors? They had telephones, no doubt, but would they risk a call to the authorities? Speaking to the police was dangerous in Italy, but some high-minded citizens still clung to what they thought of as their civic duty. If the cops turned up with the firefight still in progress, Cortale was prepared to kill them, too.

Why not? They should know better than to interfere. If they hadn’t learned that much from history, or on the job, they were too stupid to survive.

Cortale raised his head, risking a glance across the roadway, looking for his enemy. Instead, he saw Malara rising slowly, painfully, using his Uzi as a prop while struggling to his feet, blood drizzling on the pavement from his wounds. Behind him, fifty feet or so away, Terranova was crawling toward their car, dragging one limp and twisted leg behind him, teeth clenched in a snarl of agony. Aiello was still hunting, edging closer to the Alfa, his slacks now pale with dust from the knees down. He’d stopped calling to their enemy and clutched his pistol in a good two-handed grip, ready to fire at the first glimpse of movement.

Suddenly embarrassed, Cortale rolled out of the ditch and rose, moving to join his men.

* * *

THE FOUR ’NDRANGHETISTI were legitimate tough guys; Bolan conceded that. One shot, another knocked ass over teakettle at fifty miles per hour, and they both had fight left in them yet. The other two were coming on as if they didn’t have a worry in the world: no fear of bullets, witnesses, police, nothing. Some mobsters he had known—and killed—would have been running for their lives by now, but the Magolino goons were going out with style.

So let them go.

First, Bolan focused on the soldier who’d been stalking him, trying to lure him out with insults, firing random shots to cover his approach. That method had a fatal flaw, which the mobster discovered when the slide locked open on his pistol’s empty chamber and he had to swap magazines out in the open, with nowhere to hide.

Bolan rose and hit him with a 3-round burst at center mass, knocking him backward. This one was a solid kill, no doubt about it from the thrashing of his legs, then the stillness as he lay sprawled on his back.

And that left three.

The other one still fit to fight was coming hard at Bolan, firing from the hip with a Kalashnikov. No one who’d ever had an AK fired in their direction could mistake its sound or minimize the danger of exposure to its raking fire. Bolan went down as if he’d been hit, lay prone and fired from that position, knowing he might not score a fatal shot but doing what he could with what he had.

Two of his three rounds ripped into the shooter’s pelvis, drilling guts and shattering the heavy bone to break him down. Legs folded, and the screaming mobster slumped into his line of fire to take the next burst through his jaw and throat, face shattered, brain stem severed as he dropped.

Two down and out.

Bolan had fired five bursts, which meant he still had six rounds left to go. Rising, he saw the gunner he’d wounded moments earlier trying to raise an Uzi with his one functioning hand. Barely functioning, apparently, because it wasn’t working out for him. The skinny gangster saw death coming, cursed it and went down as Bolan shot him in the chest.

Last up, the man who wasn’t quick enough to dodge his Alfa at the start of their engagement, crawling like a crippled beetle on the blacktop. Bolan sent him mercy from a range of thirty feet and watched him slump facedown, no longer dangerous to anyone.

Reloading on the move, Bolan surveyed the battleground and couldn’t see the woman. She’d escaped, and he could let it go at that, if it was what she wanted. He retreated to the bullet-riddled Alfa, knew it wasn’t going anywhere and got his bags out of the car. Bolan turned back to the undamaged black sedan still idling where its passengers had bailed to start the firefight.

“I’m going now,” he called out, speaking in Italian. “Good luck.”

He made it to the mobsters’ car and had stowed his guns and settled in the driver’s seat before she called out to him from behind a bristling roadside hedge. “Please wait!”

He waited while she made her cautious way to the sedan and peered in at him through a window. Overcoming fear at last, she asked, “Can you take me somewhere?”

Bolan holstered the Beretta as he said, “All right. Get in.”

Catanzaro

ALDO ADAMO LISTENED to the caller’s words, feeling his stomach clench. “What do you mean, you haven’t seen them yet?” he asked.

“Just what I said,” his man aboard the Mare Strega answered. “There’s no sign of them, and Cortale hasn’t called.”

“They should have been there—” Aldo studied his Movado TR90 watch, scowling “—almost an hour ago.”

“It’s why I’m calling.”

“All right. Wait there. I’ll call you back.”

Adamo cut the link and tried Cortale’s cell phone, waiting through five rings before it went to voice mail. Knowing that his number must have been displayed on Cortale’s phone and that his soldier was not fool enough to miss the call deliberately, Aldo switched his phone off without leaving a message.

Something was wrong.

Adamo began to consider reasons why his people had not reached the boat. The first that came to mind was logical enough: they might have stopped somewhere along the way to play a little with the woman. He had not forbidden it, specifically, but Cortale should have been intelligent enough to do his business with her after they were all safely aboard the Mare Strega, out at sea. They would have privacy and all the time they needed.

But even if his soldiers had been stupid and had stopped along the highway leading south, Cortale would not turn off his phone or dodge a call from his superior. A santista, Cortale was on call around the clock. His time—indeed, his very life—was not his own.

Adamo’s cell phone chirped at him, a soft sound, but it almost made him drop the instrument. Recovering, he answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Signore Adamo? This is Lieutenant Albanesi.”

One of their men within the Guardia di Finanza, Albanesi never called unless there was some trouble in the offing—an indictment, for example, or a raid pending against some Magolino enterprise.

“Yes, Lieutenant. How may I assist you?” Aldo was going through the motions, as if they were simply friends and he was there to serve the fat little policeman.

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” Albanesi said. “We have found four of your men outside Le Croci. They’re dead.”

“Dead? All four?”

“Regrettably. Yes, sir.”

“What happened?”

“They were shot. It also seems that one of them was struck by a vehicle.”

Adamo knew he must be careful with his next question. “Were they alone?”

“Yes,” the officer confirmed. “Were you...expecting someone else?”

“No, no. I only thought, if there was shooting...”

“Ah, of course. They did return fire, but we’ve found no evidence so far that it accomplished anything. I wonder, sir, if you could say what sort of car they had?”

“Their car?” Adamo had to think about it for a moment, thrown off base by Albanesi’s unexpected question. “It was a black Lancia Delta.”

“And would you know the number of its license plate by any chance?”

“I couldn’t say. It’s registered commercially,” Adamo answered. “To our winery, if I am not mistaken.”

“Never mind,” the lieutenant said. “I can check that myself.”

“Why do you ask about the car?” Adamo pressed him.

“Ah. Because we found one at the scene, damaged by gunfire. It’s a rental, from the airport at Lamezia Terme. It was hired out today, in fact, to someone named...um...Scott Parker. Is that name familiar to you, sir?”

“It is not,” Adamo said. But it will be, he thought.

“An American, it appears, if we may trust his operator’s license and the credit card he used to hire the car. We will be tracing both.”

“Of course. Please keep me informed of any progress, and advise me when the bodies may be claimed for burial. Their families...”

“Under the circumstances,” Albanesi said, “I’m afraid the magistrate will certainly demand autopsies. The delay in their release may be substantial.”

“Do the best you can,” Adamo said. “Your efforts are appreciated, Lieutenant.”

Meaning that he owed the little troll another envelope of cash, with more to come if Albanesi could identify the killer and deliver him to the family.

But the main headache for Adamo now was the missing woman.

A headache he was about to share with his padrino.

Bracing for the storm to come, Adamo made the call.

Chapter 4

“I need to ditch this car,” Bolan informed his silent passenger. “As soon as possible.”

“Of course.” She answered dully, as if they were discussing the weather.

The police would find his rental car sometime within the hour, if they weren’t already at the shooting scene. That meant they’d trace it to the airport and discover his I.D. An all-points bulletin was sure to follow, with a photocopy of his driver’s license and a tight watch on his credit card in Scott Parker’s name.

Bad news, but he was not prepared to call it a catastrophe.

The I.D. was disposable. Once he’d placed a call to Hal, inquiries into Scott Parker would collide with cold stone walls, all record of the man erased, leaving police—and anybody else who tried to trace him in the States—without a clue. As far as money went, he had enough on hand to see his mission through, and he could always pick up more by ripping off the ’Ndrangheta.

But his enemies would be looking for the car he’d borrowed. Whether they passed on its description to the cops or not, all eyes beholden to the syndicate would be wide open, watching for the black Lancia Delta.

Too bad, Bolan thought. It was a nice ride, but every minute he spent behind its wheel brought him closer to danger. Losing the car in Catanzaro shouldn’t be a problem, but his best bet for a quick replacement was the long-term parking lot at the same airport where he’d rented the Alfa Romeo. Maybe he could put the woman on a flight out of Calabria at the same time.

“You saved my life,” the woman said, as if the thought had just occurred to her.

“Happy to do it,” Bolan replied.

“But why?”

“Why not?”

She hesitated. “Are you...’ndranghetisto?”

“No,” Bolan said. “Not even close.”

She tried again. “Police?”

“I’m strictly unofficial,” he said. She looked confused. “You are not Italian.”

“No.”

“ American, I believe.”

“Does it matter?” Bolan asked.

“No, I suppose not. I simply want to understand.”

“I saw an opportunity to help and took it. Let it go at that.”

“What happens now?”

“First, I find another set of wheels, and then I make arrangements that will keep you safe.”

That brought a bitter laugh. “Where on Earth will I ever be safe?”

“I have some friends. They’ll think of something.”

“Oh, yes. That’s what they told my brother. Now he’s dead and I am hunted like an animal.”

“Your brother?”

“Rinaldo,” she answered. “Rinaldo Natale.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Bolan said. “He was—”

“An informant, yes. He brought shame onto all of us.”

“And you were being punished for it.”

Bolan knew the ground rules of a classic vendetta. No survivors could be tolerated.

“Not only me,” she replied. “My mother, aunts and uncles, cousins. Everyone. Gianni will not rest while any of them are alive.”

“Gianni Magolino.”

She was staring at him now, eyes narrowed. “You know of him?”

He rolled the dice. “I’m here because of him. Because he killed your brother in the States.”

“I asked if you are police,” she said, her tone accusatory.

“And I’m not,” Bolan assured her.

“What, then?”

“Someone who solves problems when the law breaks down.”

“What will you do with me?”

“I told you. Find someplace where you’ll be safe.”

“There’s no such place in Italy. No such place in the world.”

“You’d be surprised.”

She laughed at that. “I’ll be surprised if I wake up alive tomorrow, Signor... What should I call you?”

“Scott Parker,” Bolan said. At least for now, he thought.

“And I am Mariana.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“How will you save me then?” she asked.

“First thing, we find new wheels. Then I need to make a call.”

Le Croci

CAPTAIN NICOLA BASILE stepped out of his Fiat Bravo, surveying the crime scene on Via Solferino. Off to his left, a bullet-riddled Alfa Romeo sat in a farmer’s field. The pavement before him was bloodstained, with police trying to step around the evidence while taking measurements and photographs. Basile frowned as he saw Lieutenant Carlo Albanesi approaching, face cracked by a smile.

“Captain, you’re here.”

“Where else should I be, Lieutenant?”

Albanesi blinked at him. “I simply meant—”

“I understand four dead ’ndranghetisti. True?”

Albanesi took the interruption in stride. “That is correct.”

“Their names?”

Albanesi took a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. “Ruggiero Aiello, Gitano Malara, Fausto Cortale and Dino Terranova.”

“So, the Magolino family,” Basile said. “And no one else?”

“No one.”

“Their car?” Basile nodded toward the Alfa in the field.

“No, sir. We think theirs was stolen. This one is an airport rental, hired by an American.” Albanesi’s eyes went back to the notebook. “A Scott Parker of Baltimore. Examination of flight records is proceeding at Lamezia Terme as we speak.”

Basile would have praised most any other officer for that report, but he could not bring himself to congratulate Albanesi. The lieutenant was a dirty cop—reputed to be a bagman for the ’Ndrangheta. He’d been untouchable so far because the cash he collected flowed to higher-ranking officers within the Guardia di Finanza. Even so, Basile—who had never touched a bribe in twenty-seven years—refused to treat him with respect and was constantly on watch for ways to bring him down.

“What about the dead men’s vehicle?” Basile asked.

“We’re looking into it,” Albanesi said. “No description yet.”

“Have you asked Gianni Magolino?”

Yet another blink from Albanesi as he answered, “No. Why would I?”

Smiling vaguely to himself, Basile answered, “Why? To question him about his poor santisti, cut down in their prime. Why else?”

“I thought it more important to get after the American,” Albanesi said. “And I did not wish to trespass on your territory.”

“Mine?”

The fat lieutenant shrugged. “A man of Magolino’s stature. Surely he deserved a captain, eh?”

“Perhaps you’re right, Lieutenant. Why insult him by sending a lackey?”

Albanesi stiffened, color rising in his jowls, but whatever tart response had come to mind, he wisely kept it to himself.

Basile eyed the cartridge casings scattered around the scene and said, “The dead were armed, I take it?”

Albanesi nodded silently, still simmering.

“With automatic weapons, it appears.”

“An Uzi, a Kalashnikov, some pistols.”

“Good. Perhaps Signore Magolino can explain where his employees got that kind of hardware in Calabria.”

A scornful snort. “You think he’ll tell you?”

“I hope not,” Basile said.

He’d confused the fat lieutenant once again. Not difficult, but satisfying.

“You hope not?”

“When he refuses, or pleads ignorance, I may have grounds for a search warrant. Possession of unlicensed firearms is a serious offense. Distribution of such arms to others, much more so.”

Albanesi shrugged, as if to say Basile was free to waste his time should he choose to. Both knew his application for a warrant might well be rejected by one of the several magistrates who banked on Magolino money for a posh retirement. In any case, Basile thought, the odds of finding Magolino personally in possession of illegal arms were slim to none.

But irritating the padrino

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