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  Sicilian Slaughter

  ( The Executioner - 16 )

  Don Pendleton

  School for Assassins!

  The hot and arid island of Sicily is infamous as the birthplace of the Mafia. From this Mediterranean spawning ground the deadly forces of evil and corruption have spread to all points of the globe. In the U.S. the Mafias influence has become as sophisticated as it is powerful. . . virtually no city is free of the mobs grip, hardly an industry is untouched by their sinister operations.

  Now, after a long and bloody wipeout trail across our country, Mack Bolan must lash out at the very root of the Mafia monster. Sicily has seemingly been quite remote from the underworld activities on our shores in recent years, but Bolan has discovered that a top Mafia family in the U.S. has masterminded the formation of a small army of killers in Sicily. They are undergoing intensive training in a small village practically in the shadow of Mount Etna.

  The purpose of their mission is secret. Bolans initial reconnaissance indicates that they are well into final preparations for what could be a major crime campaign. To strike where? And for whom? There is no time to learn more, or even to warn U.S. authorities. Bolan must go it alone, and face an army of assassins!

  Don Pendleton

  Sicilian Slaughter

  Prologue

  Besides panic, death, destruction, and total disorganization of local mafiosi, The Executioner left oceans of blood behind in Philadelphia, including too much of his own.

  By the time he crossed the George Washington Bridge in "Wild Card" John Cavaretta's forty-thousand-dollar Maserati, Mack Bolan felt his strength and vitality at a dangerously low ebb.

  He had gunshot wounds in the left leg, his face, and — most dangerous of all his wounds — Bolan still carried a slug in his side. With gently probing fingertips, he could feel the damned thing. The wounds in his leg and side still leaked red. Bolan had seen men die of shock, knew its symptoms intimately, and finally acknowledged to himself he must have help — fast.

  As though his condition were not problem enough, he also sat behind the wheel of an automobile so distinctive and readily identifiable the Maserati might as well have been painted Day-Glo orange.

  The man from hell ground wasn't worried about the cops so much as the Taliferi, the New York City "Family" whose soldiers had invaded Don Stefano Angeletti's Philadelphia estate. The same people who'd sent "Wild Card" Cavaretta to Philly for the express purpose of eliminating Mack Bolan from the face of the earth.

  But Johnny Cavaretta's headless body now lay in Don Stefano's basement, along with the bodies of almost thirty other dead soldiers, and the don's son had stupidly and treacherously gone off to the Commissione with the Wild Card's head in a sack, to sell it as Mack Bolan's and collect the $100,000 bounty that was the standing offer that had been put on The Executioner's head soon after Sgt. Mack Bolan, formerly of the United States Army, declared his personal war upon the Mafia.

  Sergeant Bolan had been in Vietnam on his second tour of duty, a weapons specialist, incredibly adept at infiltrating VC and NVR lines for "taking out" high ranking officers, political commissars, spies, and double agents. His invariably successful missions earned him the title of The Executioner; then he was abruptly given emergency leave and sent home ... to bury his mother, his father, and beautiful younger sister, and arrange for the care of his permanently maimed younger brother.

  Mack Bolan's father — a steady, sensible, hard-working man — had one night suddenly gone totally berserk, gotten out his old Smith & Wesson revolver, killed his wife, Elsa, his seventeen-year-old daughter, Cindy, and shot his son, Johnny. Then he'd gone into the bedroom and killed himself.

  Sgt. Mack Bolan could not live with it. He'd known his father too well. When he talked privately to Johnny, Mack discovered how right his feeling had been. The old man had fallen into the clutches of local Mafia shylockers — loan sharks; and through illness, fell behind in his "vigorish," the fifty percent plus hike on his loan.

  The local Mafia prostitute recruiter enticed Mack's sister, Cindy, into his call girl racket as a "way to help out the old man."

  The old man discovered Cindy's activities and blew his stack. He left a dead wife and daughter, a crippled son, and extinguished his own life.

  In the journal Sgt. Mack Bolan kept, he wrote: "It looks like I have been fighting the wrong enemy. Why defend a front line 8,000 miles away when the real enemy is chewing up everything you love back home? ..."

  So Sgt. Mack Bolan gave himself a discharge from the United States Army and declared his personal war upon the Mafia.

  He made no excuses for himself or his totally unlawful acts. Unlawful according to the books. But the books kept the Law from liquidating the Mafia. With their limitless financial resources — illegally gained from extortion, prostitution, gambling, shylocking, takeovers of unions, and drug smuggling and distribution — the Mafia Families diverted billions of dollars into their secret coffers, many of them legitimate fronts. First, because the ruthlessly all-powerful Capone in Chicago got flattened by the income tax guys. Then the man whom all mafiosi thought utterly untouchable — the Main Man who had the fix in— got busted, Charley Lucky Luciano. Thirty years in the joint. Yeah — he made a deal, which still makes plenty of people wonder, but he got out, only to be deported. That he remained the Main Man until his death no one with any knowledge of the Mafia doubted.

  But the survivors learned their lessons fast. Get a front, get nine fronts — a couple restaurants, parking lots, laundries, best of all a junkyard. Anything that does a lot of cash business, with a minimum of paper . . . like canceled checks!

  Because the Law, tied in knots by the books, rules, restrictions, court decisions, could not get the job done. The Executioner, therefore, dedicated himself to unrestricted warfare. That he fought his war, with total commitment, absolute and unwavering belief, made the difference. War is very personal to the fighting man.

  It may be logistics, strategy, tactics, or rolls of bum-wad to rear-echelon types, but to the man at the point of the spear assaulting the blockhouse, dodging the sizzling hot steel, coming hand-to-hand with the enemy, war has no restrictions if the man expects to survive. The man kills . . . any way he can: stabs, shoots, burns, poisons, ambushes, garrottes, backshoots with a shotgun, or snipes from concealment. That is what war is: to be fought relentlessly and without compromise, and former Sgt. Mack Bolan — The Executioner — was an expert in personal, man-to-man warfare. He would fight his enemy as it had never been fought before.

  To that, the Mafia could testify . . . those left alive in Pittsfield, Los Angeles, Frisco, France, London, New York City, Chicago, Vegas — even in their private hideaways on privately owned Caribbean islands. Boston, even the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., San Diego, and utter panic in Philadelphia.

  But Mack Bolan had learned something in Philly that scraped his guts hollow.

  The Executioner had not been notching his gunstock, keeping score; but he had eliminated well over one thousand mafiosi. He'd believed he'd started thinning them out, only to learn Frankie Angeletti, Don Stefano's faggy "legless" son had imported — smuggled into the U.S. — seventy-five Sicilian gradigghia: seventy-five trained, disciplined, badass dudes straight from Sicily; also called malacarni. No dictionary defined the word, but Mack Bolan knew what it meant. They were guys who'd shoot your guts full of holes while grinning in your face, and kick your head off as you fell to the ground.

  Some old stud capo named Don Cafu was supposed to be recruiting, then training these soldiers up to high proficiency and then teaching them some basic English-language skills before shipping them Stateside. Homeplate, Bolan knew, rested somewhere in the Sicilian province Agrigento. The nam
e meant nothing to Mack Bolan. Sicily and the city of Palermo were but dots on a map. It ail needed research, he thought hazily.

  His first need, though, was medical attention and, even before that, disposal of the sharklike Maserati ... if he didn't pass out from shock and loss of blood.

  1

  The doctor

  The doctor Mack Bolan knew never asked questions. His business consisted of tending people able to pay for his professional services. The fees were extremely high, for the doctor .edged himself beyond the law every time he admitted a patient to his rooms. His license to practice medicine had long since been lifted. Curiously, he'd been kicked out of the medical profession and convicted of a crime that was no longer a criminal offense in the state of New York, abortion. During the short tune he spent in the joint, he'd become acquainted with every type of criminal felon, from baby rapers to safecrackers, hijackers and dope pushers, cheap thieves who popped open soft-drink machines for nickle and dime change, and loft burglars who'd made $200,000 scores hitting a fur vault.

  As a former licensed Doctor of Medicine, used to an annual income exceeding $50,000, Wight Byron had no thought whatever upon his release from Sing Sing of acquiring a new trade. Besides, he had customers — Byron called them clients — awaiting: call girls with various professional ailments, friends, or friends of friends he'd made in the penitentary, with gunshot, stab, razor and other wounds, including broken faces and crushed ribs suffered in hit-and-run auto collisions and other incidents of the violent life.

  The first thing, of course, upon his release from prison, Byron had to find a source of supply for drugs. Not only dope and painkillers, but antibiotics. Nothing had been easier, because he'd made the proper connections. In fact, he found that he had to distribute his business among half a dozen various pharmacists in order to keep them all happy.

  As a front, so the beat cops and precinct sergeants wouldn't get too nosy, Byron opened a secondhand bookshop on the ground floor, with a considerable supply of skinmags, all kinds. This drew crowds. "Clients" in the know had the recognition signals necessary to get past the stud guarding the elevator to the upper rooms, fading from amongst the tit gawkers without notice.

  Leo Turrin, the double agent from Pittsfield, had tipped Bolan to Dr. Byron.

  Byron stood six feet three, red freckled face, bushy eyebrows, almost colorless gray eyes. He simply nipped the skin along Bolan's ribcage and the slug popped out into his palm. "Ah, yes — "

  "Meaning what?" Bolan demanded. "Infected."

  "Of course. How long has it been in there?"

  "Long enough to become infected. Can you fix it?"

  "I would imagine — "

  "No, that's not what I asked. Can you fix it? Now."

  "I'll have to call for certain medication."

  "No phone calls, doc." With singular effort of will, Bolan pushed himself up from the dressing table, rested a moment, head swimming dizzily, swung his legs off and sat resting a moment longer. He gazed hazily around the cubicle, finally focused his eyes on the glass-fronted cabinet with shelves holding bottles. He slid off the table, staggered, caught his balance, lunged across the narrow space and caught his balance again, and once more through sheer effort of will focused his eyes.

  He reached up slowly and slid back one of the glass doors. He reached inside and pulled down a bottle holding thick yellowish, creamlike liquid — antibiotics.

  Bolan clutched the bottle, fell around with his weight pinning him against the table below the glass case. He held the bottle forward. "Give me a hit, doc. I mean a hit, a massive injection."

  "It could kill you."

  "It will kill me if I don't. I can smell it now. The wound's gone septic."

  Byron nodded.

  "You still want to make a phone call, doc?"

  "I should."

  "Why?"

  Wight Byron shrugged, just one tiny fraction too elaborately so Bolan knew. He knew. A conscienceless doctor would not hesitate to collect $100,000. And this dude had a setup he could never have unless he'd "mobbed up" while in the joint. Mobbed up meant Mafia, Cosa Nostra, whatever the hell they called it nowadays.

  Bolan breathed deeply, and again, and twice more, hyperventilating, pumping his bloodstream full of oxygen. His vision cleared and he felt strength returning to his tired, aching legs. "How you like it, doc?"

  Genuinely puzzled, Byron asked, "Like what?"

  "Life. Living. Booze and broads and feeling safe, like it'll last forever. You'll never grow old, be bald, need eyeglasses, being a Main Man."

  "I don't understand." Once more the just slightly too elaborate shrug.

  "Man, listen to me. I don't go naked in the world. You hit me a massive dose of this medication, or I'll blow you up where you stand."

  Wight Byron felt the icy blue gaze sink holes through his face, and knew he'd die in his tracks if he failed to oblige this big, broad, scarred deadly man, who should by every logic be dead, wounded as he was. The bastard was shot to pieces. Leg, face, torso. Christ!

  Byron moved to the table, carefully. He took up a syringe. He held it before his body in plain sight so the big bastard saw the tube and needle clean. He took the bottle from Bolan's big bony fist, inserted the needle, drew off a massive dosage of the creamlike medication.

  Without instructions, Bolan made it to the dressing table and bent over it. He watched Byron over his shoulder. The doc slapped Bolan's butt a stinging smack, and immediately thereafter, when the muscle relaxed, Byron shafted the needle to the hilt and pushed the plunger.

  Bolan climbed back up on the table and let the doctor dress his leg wound. He took a smear of stinging Merthiolate, then sulfa salve on the face wound, and a big dressing. That would help conceal his identity, possibly. Something like the clear-lensed, big, dark-framed eyeglasses he sometimes wore, and the moustache and bleached hair.

  Bolan lay for a moment resting, and then knew he had to kill the man.

  Maybe it was the man's basic character. Possibly those things he'd learned in the joint. Maybe Byron just had consuming greed.

  A hundred grand was a hell of a lot of money, tax free.

  The man from hell ground felt a drowse come upon him, and he fought with every last bottom gut he had. Someway, somehow, despite Mack Bolan's scrutiny, Dr. Byron had hyped him, the lousy son of a —

  Bolan forced himself upright. He swung his legs off the table. On the table below the glass case, four feet from him, he saw an open medical instrument tray. He launched himself with all his superior strength, scrabbled for a scalpel, and just as Byron said, "Hello," into the wall telephone, Mack Bolan plunged the point of the razorlike blade into the base of the man's skull.

  Wight dropped dead instantly.

  Leaning against the wall, Bolan groped for the telephone, listened a moment, then in the best imitation of Byron's voice he had off the cuff, The Executioner said, "Never mind," and hung up.

  Bolan locked the door. Fighting the effects of the unknown drug Byron'd hyped him with, he staggered across the room to the single window. He raised it, looked down into a concrete well littered with trash, thirty feet below. Bolan went back to the dressing table. His efforts and physical movements seemed to overcome the drug's effects. He peeled the sheets off the table, took one and tied it around the table with a square knot. He took the second sheet, tore it into big strips and tied them to the first sheet around the table. He shoved the table to the wall directly under the window, and tossed the loose end of the linen "rope" out of the open window. He flopped, belly-down on the table and slithered out the window, gripped the dangling sheet and began easing himself down. He'd gone ten feet when the cloth in his hands began ripping. In an instant he dropped three feet. Then the fabric held. Gingerly, Bolan went down, hand under hand, and the sheeting ripped again, dropping him another breathless four feet. He hung on, waiting. There was nothing else to do but wait.

  The sheet held. Bolan went hand under hand down again, one, two, three —

  And
then, with the razzling sound of a burpgun's ripping burst, the sheeting ripped apart and dropped him free-fall to the bottom, smashing into the unyielding concrete.

  2

  Snake

  As a lad born and raised in a Massachusetts metropolitan area, The Executioner, also known as Mack Bolan, knew virtually nothing of serpents, whether tame or wild, harmless or deadly.

  After some twelve years in the army, and two tours in Nam where poisonous snakes killed men in the jungles, and huge tigers carried them off clamped between saber-like teeth, Sgt. Mack Bolan became educated.

  Men in his command helped, the kids off Arizona ranches, New Mexico farms, Texas cotton patches.

  The way a man's absolutely sure he's killed a snake as it makes an effort to slither silently, unnoticed, with deadly intent into a man's sleeping bag, is by cutting off the head.

  Chop it, with a K-Bar knife. Or an entrenching tool.

  Stomp it, if you have the guts and can move that fast.

  Use a long-bladed machete.

  Or just shoot the son of a bitch.

  But you have to get the head.

  Maybe it was . . . and perhaps it was not. . . some old hill-country or backwoods tale: if you chopped a snake apart but left his head, his brain, alive; he could — and would— grow another, new, bigger, better, more powerful length.

  Fantasy. Fiction. Truth.

  Mack Bolan did not know. He had all he could handle with the problem of personal survival.

  When the ripped sheet dropped him free-fall, he'd expected death. But the drug the treasonous doctor had given him affected Mack's depth perception. He fell perhaps ten feet. He was not sure. He sprained slightly the ankle on the same leg where the wound from Philly stung like fire. Otherwise, he got away clean. For five blocks.

  It may be true you can never find a cop when you want one, and it may be true, Bolan thought, you always have one belch down your throat when a cop's the last thing on earth you hope to see. But there he stood. The word was big.