Continental Contract Read online

  “You are looking very angry,” Cici whispered.

  “I’m not angry, Cici.”

  But he was. He was thinking of another fraud, a refined Englishwoman masquerading as a whore—one who had sought the taste of life in purgatory and who was at this very moment probably descending into the hell of all hells. He was thinking also of a redheaded kid with plump breasts and painted nipples and of an entire line-up of faceless ones who had brushed past him with whispers of “merci.” And an older one with bitterness in her face and spit at her lips for the pains of life. Yes, Bolan was angry. Very shortly now, that anger would be spilling out in the most coldly violent expression of his violent life and the most fearsome experience since the days of the Third Reich would descend upon this international playground—The Executioner in rampage.

  13: Battle Order

  The villa checked out clean and was in every respect ideal for Bolan’s plans. The two-story archetype of Mediterranean architecture stood atop a low bluff overlooking a small private cove and beach. A lock-gate and extensive grounds to either side assured privacy. At the rear, winding stone steps descended from a marble patio to the beach and boat dock, where a sleek cruiser glistened in the Mediterranean sun.

  At Bolan’s suggestion, Cici sent away an old man and his daughter, caretaker and maid—and Bolan immediately went to work. He carried the package from the Safari Shop into the house and broke the big rifle down piece by piece, closely inspecting all critical components—then he oiled and reassembled it. It was a clip-fed Belgian model, accepting .444 high-velocity and sharp-impact steel-jacketed ammo, with a 20-power intense-field scope and range finder.

  Bolan then took the rifle and a belt of ammo to the cove and sighted it in. Cici sat crosslegged just behind the firing line and watched with fingers in ears as he methodically test-fired the big piece at varying ranges, notating the required adjustments as he went.

  This task required about twenty minutes. When it was done she asked him, “Is it a good gon?”

  He smiled and replied, “Yes, Cici, it’s a damn good gon.” He showed her how to sight through the scope and explained the compensations required for drift and drop. She wanted to try a shot herself. He sternly lectured her regarding recoil-absorption, padded her shoulder with his jacket, strapped her into the rig, and allowed her to have at it from a stated position, per her own demand.

  She squeezed off a single shot, missed target and bluff and everything else in view, and toppled onto her back from the recoil. Bolan chuckled and helped her to her feet. She was rubbing her shoulder and giving the rifle a dirty look. “I do not see why anywan would call thees damn theeng a good gon,” she grumbled.

  Bolan helped her out of the strap and bent to playfully kiss her offended shoulder. She caught his face with both hands and steered him to a nicer target and their mouths merged for the first time in a sweet-warm mingling of purest passions. She stepped quickly back, said, “There,” and ran up the steps ahead of him.

  Bolan muttered “Damn!” and followed her to the house. He disassembled the rifle and cleaned and oiled it while Cici made coffee and sandwiches. Her task was concluded ahead of his, and she sat in an almost embarassed silence and watched him put the pieces together again.

  As they lunched, she told him, “Oh-kay, what is the plot? You ’ave murdair on the mind—’oo will be murdaired?”

  “I’m going to get those girls back, Cici.”

  “But ’ow? With that formidable gon?”

  He said, “Yes, that’s how.” He took the spiral notebook from his pocket and placed it on the table. “I have the structure here of the crime combine of Southern France. I’ve put out the word that one of these wheels is going to die every hour until those girls are returned.”

  She showed him a shocked look. “But this is the bluff, no?”

  “Not hardly.” He consulted the notebook, then dug in the envelope for a mug shot. He found the one he sought and threw it onto the table. “There’s my first draft choice, Claude de Champs. Know him?”

  She slowly nodded her head. “Vaguely. He is in the casino crowd. Yachting and that.”

  “That’s just at the surface. He also handles about twenty million francs worth of illegal drugs every year, deals in contraband munitions, and is thought to rake about ten thousand francs a week off the top of various vice operations in Marseilles. What’s the life of a society hood like this worth, Cici? Would you say it’s worth one of those missing girls?”

  “I will ’elp you,” she quietly declared.

  “I was hoping you would,” he admitted. “But in a very limited way. Do you have maps of the Riviera? Good ones?”

  “Yes. I ’ave survey maps, maritime maps, road maps. What do you wish?”

  “I want you to help me locate these people. On the maps, though, just on the maps. I have their addresses.”

  She said, “The Riviera crowd is like one small community. I know most of these men.” She was sifting through the photos. “I am ver’ surprise at some, that they are in this collection. You are sure of your information?”

  He said, “I’m sure.”

  “I ’ave the personal interest to ’elp you, Mack Bolan. I can ’elp in bettair ways than this. Cici knows Riviera like back of ’and. I will, at the ver’ least, be your chauffeur.”

  “Nothing doing,” he growled.

  “Then I will ’ave to blow the wheestle.”

  He said, “I believe you’re serious.”

  “Jus’ try me for serious.”

  He gathered the photos and carried them to the floor. “Get the maps.”

  Cici jumped up and went out the door. Moments later she returned with a stack of maps. Bolan went through them carefully, selecting some and rejecting others, until he had the best representations of the coastal areas. Cici brought pencil and tape; Bolan cut and spliced until he had precisely what he wanted. Then he took a soft pencil and began a methodical cross-sectioning of the coastline from Monaco to Marseilles. In each section he taped a photo, three of them into St. Tropez, and ran triangulations from Cici’s villa to surrounding areas. When he was finished he stood up and told her, “Okay, there’s my battle order.”

  “I see nothing but confusion,” she admitted.

  “I can’t afford to telegraph ahead to my next move,” he explained. “What I mean is, I can’t establish a track. I have to keep mixing it up, reversing ground, zigzagging.” He looked at his watch, studying it. Presently he said, “We start with de Champs. If we can find him, I want to hit him at two o’clock sharp. The alternate target is Vicareau, right down the way here off the Moyenne Corniche. If I can hit either of them, I want to pop up next down here in Zone 4, below Nice. I’ll hit Korvini there, or his alternate Bernard. Then double back to Monte Carlo and our syndicated gambling shill Hebert. Are you getting the picture?”

  Her eyes were a bit sick She said. “Yes, I get the peecture.”

  He went on relentlessly. “These are going to be daylight hits. That means you can see the blood as it explodes out of them. And it’s not chocolate syrup or a trick bag of dye, it’s the real stuff. They don’t get up and have a coke with you when the shooting is over. Bits and pieces of them are missing and sometimes they flop about and yell and cry as they’re going. I make it as clean as possible but sometimes …”

  “I told you oh-kay, I ’ave the peecture.”

  “I let you handle that gun down there mainly so you could see the difference between make-believe and reality. Guns do more than look cool and make a commanding noise. They are very powerful weapons of death, and if you think the kick is hard from the butt end then you better hope you never get in the way of what’s thundering out through the muzzle. The salesman wasn’t kidding when he told you this piece would drop a charging rhino. The muzzle energy is close to two tons—nearly four thousand pounds of concentrated impact, Cici, and when those big .444’s come tearing in, bone and muscle and everything else stands aside and lets it through. It doesn’t make for pretty vi
ewing.”

  Very quietly she said, “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I’m telling you that I am not under any circumstances taking you with me on a hit.”

  “Not even when I promise to blow the wheestle?” she asked meekly.

  “Not even then. If you won’t bug out, then at least resign yourself to staying put, right here, until I get back.”

  “I would theenk you would want me where you could see me.”

  “Why?”

  She delicately shrugged her shoulders. “I ’ave been dishonest with you, no? I do not onderstand if you tell me now that you trost me.”

  He said, “Sometimes a guy just has to trust his instincts.”

  “You trost the instincts then, not Cici?”

  He grinned. “Same thing, isn’t it?”

  She smiled back. “I guess so.”

  “Okay. Help me pinpoint these locations on the map. I need absolute accuracy, so don’t let me down.”

  “I weel not lat you down.”

  Bolan hoped not. Together they put the finishing touches to the battle order, then he began gathering his equipment. “What’s that other car in the garage?” he asked her.

  “It is the American Sting Ray.”

  “In good condition?”

  “Yes. You will use it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She asked, “What if the plan does not work? What if there is nothing any of these men can do to rescue these girls?”

  “They’ll find a way, once the message is in loud and clear.” He looked at his watch. “Which reminds me, can you get the Nice television channel here?”

  She nodded her head and went to the set and turned it on. “Why do you want the television?”

  “It’s about time for the story to break.” He continued rounding up his things and asked her, “Do you have a pair of good binoculars?”

  She replied, “Yes,” and went to a closet, returning with a leather case.

  “Put it with the stuff,” he requested.

  She giggled, a release of nervous excitement. “I thought you would look at the television with them.”

  Bolan laughed and said, “Cici, I want you to …” He let the instruction dangle and followed her intent gaze to the television screen and to himself. He was there in a huge video blowup, backdropping a man at a desk who was reading something in that polished tone used by newscasters everywhere. “What’s he saying?” Bolan asked the girl.

  She waited until the narration ended, then told Bolan, “It is the same as you have told me before. A high criminal will die each hour until the keednapped girls are returned. Thees man say that you are a bloodthirsty killaire, and that the police are determined to prevent you.”

  Bolan grinned and said, “Fine.” He had the miscellany of equipment in his arms, the big gun slung at his shoulder, and was going out the door. He turned back to tell her, “If you want to help, keep watching that channel. I’m supposed to get word there when the girls are surrendered.”

  She ran out the door after him, hopped about nervously as he stowed the gear in the Sting Ray, then grabbed him in a wild embrace. He kissed her, gently pushed her away, and put himself in the car.

  “There is a lamp on the gate,” she told him. “If in daytime and the lamp is burn, or night time and the lamp is not burn—this is warning of dangair within. Oh-kay?”

  “Oh-kay,” he said, grinning. He cranked the engine and spun onto the drive. Moments later he was out the gate and on his way.

  First stop, just south of Monaco.

  Target, Claude de Champs, society hood.

  Weapon, Belgian Safari rhino-stomper.

  Mission, squeeze the enemy.

  Method, execution.

  The Riviera War was on.

  14: On Target

  Wilson Brown came through the doorway with an awed look wreathing his broad face. “Man, did you hear what this Bolan cat is—?”

  “Sure, sure I heard!” Lavagni growled. His hand rested on the telephone, as though commanding it to ring. “I already got most of the boys headed for the airport. Now if Sammy will just check in …”

  Brown was not to be put down. “Well, that’s just the grooviest thing I ever heard of,” he declared. “Man, that Bolan cat is clear outta sight, he’s—”

  “He’s stupid!” Lavagni said. “Leave it to a schnook to get all lathered up over a bunch of whores. We got ’im now, Wils, don’t you worry about that.”

  “That’s what makes it so groovy,” the Negro persisted. “He must’ve known he was exposing his position. But that’s just Bolan. Even over in ’Nam you could always depend on this cat to be the one draggin’ in the sick kids and scared old women, even with a pack of Charlies chasing ’im. I think he actually liked those gooks. I remember one time—”

  “Aw, shut up!” Lavagni yelled. “Don’t gimme no hero stories about that bastard! Have you got yourself packed? We gotta be leavin’ for Nice soon as Sammy checks in!”

  “I’m packed, man,” the black giant, replied, his eyes dulling and seeming to recede into their sockets. He went back out the door, muttering to himself, “… but that don’t say I’m ready.”

  In an earlier age, Claude de Champs would have looked most natural in a powdered wig and holding a jeweled snuff box, perhaps at the court of Louis XIV, or dancing gracefully in the royal ballroom while his less privileged countrymen quietly starved in the streets. This would-be aristocratic Frenchman actually claimed a lineage from The Man in the Iron Mask—a claim difficult to dispute since the identity of the man so grimly punished by the king of France was never historically established.

  Claude de Champs insisted, however, that the man in the mask was a secret son of the crown and half-brother of the grand dauphin, and he often visited the fort at Ste. Marguerite, near Cannes, to stare sadly into the tiny cell where his purported ancestor was imprisoned for eleven years.

  Copies of the iron mask were set into each side of the gates opening onto the de Champs seaside estate, and a massive coat of arms showing the mask beneath crossed swords dominated the ballroom of the castle-like villa.

  The Man in the Iron Mask had never had it so good.

  Nor would have Claude de Champs, except for his robber-baron approach to life. His first handle on personal wealth had presented itself during the German occupation in World War II, when the then young de Champs had discovered that collaboration with the enemy was far more practical and comfortable than resistance. Always the clever opportunist, de Champs had managed to greet the liberating Allied armies with a French underground rifle in his arms and a cache of looted art treasures to tide him through the post-war adjustments. This latter was parlayed into ever-increasing involvements with various illegal trade centers and, by the mid-fifties, de Champs was rather securely established in the higher levels of organized crime in France. As his personal fortunes increased, so also did his social ambitions. At the time that Mack Bolan was matriculating from high school to U.S. Army, Claude de Champs was travelling with the international jet set and had “discovered” his link with a glorious past.

  Perhaps this accounts for the Frenchman’s personal disdain for the Executioner’s ultimatum. As he told his friend and close associate, Paul Vicareau, in the final telephone conversation of his misspent life, “There is no reason for worry, Paul. This is the American way, to make the noise and apply the pressure. It is an empty threat. This man has been in France—for what?—one day? Two? He is being pursued from quarter to quarter and does not dare show his face anywhere. How could he know of us? How could he hurt us?”

  “Perhaps this is true,” came the worried-cultured voice of Vicareau, a true socialite who had fallen onto hard times some years back, and thus into de Champs’ area of influence. “Just the same, I would feel better if we could contact Rudolfi and have done with this mad adventure. Will you try once more to telephone him?”

  “Certainly, Paul, I promise that I will continue until I reach him. The important thing is th
at we remain calm. Fear alone could be our undoing. To act frightened at this time is to confess guilt. Do you understand?”

  Vicareau’s sigh hissed across the connection and he replied, “Tell this to my wife, Claude. I regret the day that Viviane learned of my business involvements. She wishes to shutter the house and to hide in the cellar.”

  De Champs chuckled. “You would do better to regret the day that you took a wife, Paul. Even as beautiful a woman as Viviane—there are too many ripening apples on the tree, no? I will tell you what—when the madman has been apprehended and put away, you will come with me on my yacht to Capri. Eh? But two virile men, in the prime of their attractiveness, with six of the most beautiful young women from Folies Bergere. Eh? Does this not appeal to even the husband of Viviane?”

  Vicareau tiredly replied, “Just find Rudolfi, Claude. I would not presume to argue with him as to his justification for this act—but his timing was extremely bad. Tell him to bring the women back.”

  “Be assured,” de Champs murmured, and broke the connection.

  He walked through his trophy room and a priceless collection of mementoes of his glorious ancestry, and stepped onto the balcony to survey his miniature kingdom. Could a common American hoodlum actually hope to challenge all this? These grounds were the showplace of the Riviera; the ballroom beneath him had entertained the royalty of Europe; his kitchens had pleased the delicate palates of the most prominent of international high society. De Champs was not quite so assured as he had seemed in his conversation with the panicky Vicareau. There existed, of course, a possibility of danger. But Vicareau and his whining … De Champs made a deprecatory sound deep in his throat and leaned against the railing to peer out onto the south grounds.

  He smiled, remembering the conversation with the bleating goat. No, de Champs would not shutter the windows and hide in the cellar, but … The Great Danes were prowling free within the inner fences. He would love to see the cocky American gunman try those fences; he would think that he had fallen into a pit of lions—as, indeed, the effect would be the same.