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  There was no better time, while he must be presumed dead, to call on Massimo Rinaldi.

  Yeah, attack was the best method of defense, the element of surprise accounted for three-fourths of the successful battle, and like that.

  Bolan had no idea how far he was from Laigueglia. He wondered if he could make it in time without transport… and, more important, without running into any of the AFL hit teams sent to ambush him.

  From beneath the jetty he looked around him.

  Sure he could. The killer with the elephant gun had been sent into battle by sea; Bolan would counterattack the same way.

  He waded to a ladder and climbed to the wooden deck of the jetty.

  Surveying the craft moored there, he saw at once that most of them were too cumbersome, too ostentatious for his purpose. In fact the choice narrowed down to two boats — a small sailing dinghy and a dory with a twenty-five-horsepower outboard tilted over its stern.

  The sailboat would be jess obtrusive to get under way, but the breeze was still blowing off the sea. He would have to beat against it part of the way — and once the moon rose the craft's silhouette would be much more noticeable against the reflected light on the water.

  If he used the outboard, on the other hand, there was the risk of discovery when he started the motor. Several large villas overlooked the creek and the noise could alert a suspicious owner.

  He lifted the tarp and saw that there was a pair of oars in the vessel. He decided to take the dory. It would allow him more time at the other end and the course would be more direct.

  Provided there was enough gas in the tank.

  He rocked the small boat experimentally. It sounded as if there was.

  In the shelter of a boat house at the inner end of the jetty Bolan dismantled his Beretta and stripped off his outer clothes. There was no more drizzle and the wind was warm. By the time everything was dried to his satisfaction it was past ten o'clock. The onlookers and their cars no longer choked the road at the head of the creek. Even the flashing blue light on the roof of the police car had vanished.

  He dressed, slipped the 93-R into its shoulder rig and stepped down into the dory. With the tarp folded and left on the dock, he took up the oars and rowed silently across the dark water. Only when the boat was rocking on the swell, clear of the headland on the eastern side of the creek, did he lower the outboard, switch on the fuel supply and jerk the starter cord.

  The engine fired at the third attempt. It sounded every bit as loud as Bolan had expected, but no lights appeared among the villas overlooking the creek; no angry voices shouted. He settled down with one arm resting on the tiller and headed for the distant promontory that masked the lights of Laigueglia.

  Once around the point, he cut the engine and allowed the dory to drift ashore with the tide. He beached the craft between two clusters of rocks beyond the promenade. It was way past midnight: the roadway — long streamers of yellow radiance reflected on the damp pavement beneath the streetlights — was deserted. Bolan hurried across and headed for the dirt road that led up into the hills toward Rinaldi's domain.

  The property ranged over a series of terraces below a small wood. It was surrounded by a high stone wall topped with half a dozen strands of barbed wire. The wooden gates were ten feet high. Beyond them, four towers rose above the tops of ornamental trees that surrounded the house. From the upper windows the ocean would be visible, between two shoulders of the mountain.

  Bolan knew the place would be well guarded. But the only intel he had gleaned from Renzo Gandolfi before he was shot concerned guard dogs, the bodyguard Colibri and three other hoods, and something unfinished about "the wire."

  A rubber-encased pencil flashlight clipped to the inside of Bolan's jacket had survived the wreck of the BMW. He used it now, slanting the thin beam toward the top of the wall.

  He could see nothing special about the barbed wire.

  Ten yards before the gateway, a tall chestnut tree grew on the far side of the dirt road. Bolan hauled himself up among the branches and lodged himself in a fork above the level of the wall. He played the flashlight's beam on the wall.

  Now he could see a primitive but very effective alarm system. Below the inward-leaning wire barrier, a second strand had been strung with small bells too heavy to be actuated by the wind but sensitive enough to register the slightest touch. It would be impossible to cut the wire, blanket the barbs or cross the wall in any way without setting at least one of them jingling. And among the fruit trees planted on the far side of the wall, small microphones hung every few yards.

  Any attempt to enter the property that way would thus immediately be signaled, together with its exact location, to some central listening post inside.

  Bolan guessed there would probably be electronic sensors planted among the trees as well, although how these would operate if there were dogs patrolling he could got guess. He was still evaluating his discovery, trying to work out a way to beat the alarm system, when he heard the sound of an automobile laboring up the grade behind him.

  It was the killer's Mercedes that he had chased along the coast road. The sedan was followed by the dump truck that caused the accident.

  The Mercedes halted with its front fenders inches away from the gates. Bolan couldn't see how many men were in it; he reckoned three. Add the driver of the truck and that made Gandolfi's info accurate.

  The driver signaled with light taps on the horn — three short and two long. The gates swung slowly open. Electronically controlled, Bolan noted, for no sentry was visible.

  Headlight beams showed up a flagstone courtyard, a double flight of stairs curving up to a balustraded terrace, a stable block at right angles to the main building.

  The Mercedes moved forward. Gears grated as the driver of the dump truck shifted into first and prepared to follow.

  The truck was immediately below the tree fork where Bolan was perched. The high cab blocked the view of anyone looking out the rear window of the sedan. Bolan made a sudden decision: the hell with it, he would go into the Rinaldi stronghold with the hired help.

  The steep-sided rear section of the truck was empty. Hanging from a branch at the full stretch of his arms, Bolan was just able to touch the steel tailgate with his feet. He transferred his weight, balanced precariously for a moment on the edge and then lowered himself inside as the truck lumbered forward.

  The two vehicles passed a gate house. By the stone steps the sedan stopped and Bolan could hear the occupants climbing out. Somebody laughed. A door slammed. The truck continued around the corner of the house and parked beneath a eucalyptus tree beside one of the turrets. The driver switched off the engine and jumped down from the cab.

  Bolan leaped onto the man's shoulders and dropped him.

  A forearm across the throat and a savage blow behind the ear with the butt of the Beretta took care of the guy before he could do more than utter a choked-off yelp of alarm.

  Bolan stared up at the dim bulk of the house. In fact, however well guarded the property was on the outside, it was surprisingly easy to break in once you were past the gates.

  The terrace ran around three sides of the building. Bolan pulled himself up and scrambled onto the balustrade. From the top of one of the stone urns set at intervals along it, he could reach the lower branches of the eucalyptus. After that there was another climb of fifteen feet, a stack pipe within easy reach and finally an unsecured skylight in the conical turret roof.

  Bolan moved stealthily down a winding staircase and found himself in a long hallway flanked by bronze busts on plinths. From the floor came the murmur of voices.

  He crept down a second, wider flight of stairs and found himself in an unlit corridor terminated by double doors beneath which a strip of yellow showed. Crouched with an eye to the keyhole, he could see a man who was obviously Rinaldi leaning back in a wingback chair.

  Rinaldi looked to be about fifty years old, with crimped silver hair and tanned features etched with a network of lines. He was wea
ring dark trousers and a short crimson silk smoking jacket.

  Shifting his position slightly, Bolan saw the one-shot wonder with the elephant gun, the back view of another burly hood and a tall, muscular dude he assumed must be Renato Colibri.

  This was one mean character, with small eyes, a slit of a mouth and crew cut blond hair.

  "You're dead sure this person went down with the car?" Rinaldi was asking. "No chance he could have hopped out on the way down?"

  "No frigging way," Colibri said. His voice was as disagreeable as his looks. "We searched the whole goddamn slope and there wasn't a sign. Nobody could have left that heap before it hit the water."

  "And afterward?"

  "It just disappeared. He'll be trapped beneath it."

  "Very well," Rinaldi said. He looked as if there was a bad smell just below his nose. "Now about next week's hit in Modena…" He paused, glanced at the thin gold digital watch on his wrist. "Where the hell's Eduardo? I want you all in on this."

  "He's parking the dumper," the elephant gun man said.

  "He sure takes his time. Giancarlo, go find the lazy creep and tell him to take his finger out."

  The burly man rose from his chair and opened the door of the room. He strode down the passage toward the stairs. The door swung shut behind him.

  Bolan was waiting in the darkness of a half landing. The hardman walked into a rock-solid fist that sank into his solar plexus with all of the Executioner's two hundred sinewy pounds behind it. The breath whooshing from his tortured lungs was blocked in his throat by the edge of a hand, plank hard, that smashed the cartilage of his Adam's apple. He toppled forward into a night that held no tomorrows.

  Bolan caught him before he hit the floor, snaring a gun from the holster beneath his jacket. Unfortunately the guy was heavier than Bolan thought. He was thrown off balance, forced to let go. The hood's body thumped down the remainder of the staircase with a noise like a roll of thunder.

  On the upper floor, a door was flung open. Voices called angry questions. Bolan took the stairs three at a time, lay facedown along the last flight with his elbows resting on the floor of the hallway above.

  Unwilling to trust the rounds in the Beretta after the weapon's saltwater immersion, he was holding the gun he had taken from the hood. It was an M-39 automatic, a well-balanced 9 mm Smith & Wesson creation that lay snugly in the Executioner's big hand.

  Elephant gun stood in the doorway with a similar pistol. In the light streaming from the room he suddenly saw Bolan's head and shoulders low down at the head of the stairs. He spit out an exclamation and raised the gun.

  Bolan fired first. Two shots that momentarily deafened him in the confines of the hallway. The rounds slammed the hood backward, and he hit the wall and slid to the floor with a fist-size hole separating the splintered remains of his fifth and sixth ribs.

  Bolan was already running for the door.

  Surprise had been total. He was flattened against the jamb, the M-39 trained in the direction of the two men left in the room, while Colibri was still halfway to his feet with a hand between the lapels of his jacket.

  "Drop it!" Bolan snapped. "Take it out slow and easy… then drop it on the table."

  Colibri hesitated, face snarling, knees still flexed.

  "Play the odds, asshole. Guess how many rounds left in here," the Executioner warned. He raised the autoloader. "Move!"

  Reluctantly the bodyguard unleathered a long-barreled Walther PPK and laid it on the table.

  "Now unfasten the jacket," Bolan said. As he had expected, there was a broad-bladed throwing knife tucked into the hood's waistband. Bolan gestured threateningly and it joined the gun on the table.

  Massimo Rinaldi had not moved. He leaned back, apparently relaxed, in the wingback chair. "Under the car, at the bottom of the creek, I think you said?" he remarked conversationally.

  "Anybody can make a mistake," Colibri growled.

  "Only once in your case," said Bolan. And then, to Rinaldi, "All right, you, stand up."

  The neofascist boss sighed and rose slowly to his feet.

  "Open up that pretty negligee."

  "I am not in the habit of carrying weapons," Rinaldi said coldly.

  "Open it up."

  In a pantomime of injured dignity, Rinaldi loosened the crimson silk belt at his waist, opened the smoking jacket, raised his hands.

  No knife, no gun, no shoulder rig. Bolan was not surprised. This kind of creep would always be clean; he left the dirty work to the hired help. "Okay, hands on the top of your head, both of you," he ordered. "And stand up straight."

  "I suppose it is pointless to ask the meaning of this puerile charade?" Rinaldi said. "I think, however, that you will live to regret it. If, that is, you live at all."

  "You think so?" Bolan said. "I don't think so. In case you were wondering, all three of your heavies are now out of commission. The big-game hunter, as you know, on the floor behind me, Giancarlo at the foot of the stairs and Eduardo sleeping peacefully by his truck."

  "So what, punk? You think that's all the soldiers we have on call?" Colibri grated.

  "I know, for sure," Bolan lied, "that's all I have to worry about right now. Okay, so now we get down to business, right?"

  "Yes," Rinaldi said, "perhaps you would enlighten us. Maybe we could be favored with an explanation? What right do you have, in a country not your own, to indulge yourself in this orgy of killing? Why must you meddle in affairs that do not concern you, Mr…?"

  "The name is Bolan. As you damn well know."

  "Yeah," Colibri sneered. "The guy who calls himself the Executioner. The one who thinks he's Superman."

  Bolan let that one go.

  "I suppose, like everyone else, you can be bought?" Rinaldi said.

  "Just try me."

  "Very well. What is your price in this particular situation? How much would I need to buy you off?"

  "Money wouldn't help you. I want the answer to two questions, that's all."

  Rinaldi raised his eyebrows. "And supposing we were able to supply the answers you require, what could we expect in return?"

  "I'd kill you quick and easy, instead of drawing it out."

  Rinaldi turned to his bodyguard. "I assume the fellow's joking?"

  "I was never more serious," Bolan said. "Now, enough talk. Where have you sent Suzanne Bozuffi — and why? Those are the two questions."

  "Bozuffi? I don't believe I've had the pleasure," Rinaldi said.

  "Go fuck yourself, big shot," said Colibri.

  Bolan thought quickly. A question-and-answer routine here was going to get him nowhere fast. Rinaldi was an unknown quantity, but with a punk like the bodyguard it had to be the big stick. Bolan had to show who was top dog from the start. Colibri's gutter-bred toughness would only bow before something tougher still. "You heard what I said," he rapped. "I want an answer."

  "And you heard what I said, asshole. I don't aim to waste breath repeating it."

  Bolan raised the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and shot the bodyguard through the palm of his left hand.

  The nickel-jacketed, 9 mm hollowpoint smashed its way through flesh and bone and cartilage, slamming Colibri's arm back against the chair he had left. Blood spurted from the hole and flowed down his wrist. His yell of pain and fury was lost in the ringing echoes of the report.

  "Ready to talk?" Bolan asked.

  Colibri was doubled up with his knees pressed together, nursing his shattered hand in the shelter of his crotch. "Drop… dead, you… bastard," he groaned.

  "For the last time, where and why?"

  The Italian straightened up. Bolan had been right about the knife at his waistband. He hadn't bargained for the second one, strapped to the left forearm beneath the bloody sleeve. Colibri had secretly been working it loose; now he flicked the deadly blade straight at the Executioner's chest.

  Taken by surprise, Bolan barely had time to shift sideways as he saw the bloodstained steel glint in the light. The knife ripped the shoulder of
his jacket, searing the base of his neck as it passed. At the same time Colibri leaped forward and knocked the gun from his hand.

  Bolan lost his cool. It was the second time in less than a week that he had been gashed by the knife-wielding thugs of this damned terrorist group. It was time to even the score.

  Colibri was diving for the M-39. He crashed to the floor with a cry of agony as Bolan leaped on his back.

  The Executioner dragged him upright by the lapels of his jacket. The bodyguard reeled dazedly as a hard fist slammed into his face again and again.

  "Now tell me, where is that girl, and why?"

  Colibri went limp in his grasp. Bolan let him drop and kicked him on the jaw. He placed his heel on the maimed hand. "Why was she snatched?" he snarled.

  "All right, all right," Colibri cried, seeing the foot resting lightly on his hand. "It was just a job. Ask the boss."

  Bolan turned toward Rinaldi, who had remained rooted to the floor, staring in horrified astonishment at the savaging of his second in command. "Just… a job?" Bolan repeated softly. "More than sixty dead, God knows how many injured, and this girl abducted?"

  He picked up the gun, stepped over the squirming Colibri and jammed the muzzle against Rinaldi's belly. "Tell me," he said.

  The terrorist leader swallowed. "You must understand, we are a political organization," he said. "At the moment, because of the corruption sapping the energy of this country, we are forced to lead a clandestine, undercover existence. Until we are… accepted… we have to raise finance where and when we can."

  "Cut the bullshit," Bolan said. "You mean if there's dirty work to be done — an Israeli to be murdered on behalf of the PLO, or an interfering newshawk silenced to please the KGB — you're only too glad to help? Is that what you're saying?"

  "I wouldn't put it exactly like that…"

  "But that's the way it is, right? Okay — who paid you to snatch the Bozuffi girl and organize a train wreck to cover up? Where was she taken after the plane landed in Tripoli?"

  "The affair of the train worked in with our own plans. The destabilization of a society rotten with…"