Point Blank Read online

  Two minutes in, and Bolan went to work bagging the cash. He appropriated an empty gym bag resting on the safe, stuffing it full of euros that seemed to be banded into bricks of twenty grand apiece. It wouldn’t break the ’Ndrangheta’s bank, but it would sting Don Magolino.

  And for him, the worst was yet to come.

  * * *

  RAF DONDINI GOT the call as he was entering the Paradiso’s lobby, with the concierge and desk clerks peering at him, obviously noting that he carried no luggage. He read the caller’s number then turned around and walked out of the hotel to take the call outside.

  “Where are you?” Aldo Adamo demanded.

  “Checking hotels.”

  “Well, drop that and go to The Flame.”

  “The casino?”

  “Someone hit it,” Adamo informed him. “Get over there. Now!”

  He was gone before Raf could respond, so Dondini walked back to the car where the others were waiting and gave them their orders. Gatti groused, as usual, but Pino got them rolling in the right direction. Some ten minutes later, they were parked a half block south of La Fiamma, watching firefighters coiling their hoses and trooping in and out.

  “Toasted,” Gatti said.

  Dondini could not disagree, though the nightclub’s outer walls looked clean enough, all things considered. Watching the police at work inspired a certain nervousness he could not control, particularly with the heavy weapons barely hidden in their vehicle.

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” Pino inquired.

  “Adamo didn’t say,” Dondini answered.

  “Typical. He thinks just showing up will solve something,” Renni chimed in.

  “We need a witness,” Dondini suggested. “Somebody who saw the shooters.”

  “Go ask the cops,” Gatti said.

  “Shut up. We need someone from the club.”

  “Call Adamo back,” Renni offered.

  “You call him,” Dondini replied as he got out of the car and angled past the police line and toward a cluster of onlookers, some of them dressed for a night on the town. Scanning faces for any brothers he might recognize, Dondini saw none, but he picked out the club’s maître d’ in his tux and approached him by shouldering some of the others aside.

  “Hey, Carlo. Did you see what happened here?”

  The maître d’ recognized him as an ’ndranghetisto. He glanced around, made sure no one else was listening and kept his voice pitched low as he replied. “A big man came in with a machine pistol. He forced his way upstairs. I didn’t see what happened after that, but there was shooting, then some kind of bomb went off and the alarms were going with the sprinklers.”

  “Have they said how many men we lost?” Dondini asked.

  “Not to me, but they’ve been taking bodies out in bags. I’ve counted four so far.”

  “Describe this man to me.”

  “Six feet, about two hundred pounds. Well dressed. Dark hair with an olive complexion. He could have been Italian, but his accent wasn’t right, you know?”

  “Could he have been American?” Dondini pressed.

  “Who knows? Maybe, or else British, maybe French.”

  Dondini removed a photocopy of a driver’s license from his pocket and unfolded it. “Is this the man?”

  Carlo examined it, frowning. “Could be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It looks like him,” Carlo replied, “but not exactly right, you know? Something around the eyes is different. Or maybe it’s the nose.”

  “Thanks for nothing.”

  Carlo shrugged. “What can I say? The Western types all look alike to me. Well, maybe not the Germans.”

  “If you hear something from the cops, call it in, eh?”

  Nodding, Carlo said, “Absolutely.”

  When he got back to the car, the others asked questions until he silenced them, taking the cell phone from his pocket and speed-dialing Aldo’s number. The call was picked up midway through the first ring, as if Aldo had been waiting.

  “Yes.”

  “It was an American,” Dondini said, dropping the part about a Brit or Frenchman. They had been called out to hunt for an American. Nothing else made sense.

  “The same American?” Adamo asked.

  “I showed the picture, but the man who saw him wasn’t sure.”

  “For the love of...” Adamo took a moment, calmed himself, then added, “Who else could it be?”

  “That’s the same thing I was thinking,” Dondini replied.

  “Now all you have to do is find him. What’s taking so long?”

  Guardia di Finanza Headquarters

  SIMPLE SOLUTIONS WERE the best sometimes. Rather than roam the streets with Mariana Natale, seeking a safe place to hide her, Captain Basile had brought her back to GDF headquarters. He planned to discuss her future at his office then decide where she should go. If anyone inquired, she was his cousin from Milan, visiting Catanzaro for a holiday.

  The only worry was that someone could recognize her...someone on Magolino’s payroll. Not impossible, by any means, so he would have to keep her close, bring food and drink into his office from the building’s small army of vending machines and let her use the tiny private washroom that a captain’s rank provided.

  If his efforts failed, Basile knew it could mean both their lives.

  When they were settled in his office, Mariana facing him across the desk and fidgeting, Basile said, “I know your family. I understand that helping the authorities must run against the grain for you, but honestly, I see no other way for you to save yourself.”

  “You can’t just...hide me somewhere?”

  Basile frowned and shook his head. “You’ve heard about the country’s economic woes, I’m sure. I won’t claim to understand it all, but even in the best of times, we never had the funds to simply hide people unless they helped us in some way. It isn’t done, my dear.”

  “So, I must sell my soul.”

  Basile kept the frown in place. “I’m not a moralist,” he answered, “but some people might suggest you’ve done that very thing already, with Gianni Magolino. Now he’s killed your brother in New York and tried to murder you in Catanzaro. It’s time for you to choose a path that will decide your future.”

  “And you hope I’ll choose your side.”

  “Of course,” Basile said. “I’m only human, after all, and though it may seem foolish to you, I still cling to certain guidelines of behavior that demand the protection of the innocent from people like your ’ndranghetisti.”

  “Not mine,” she answered in a small voice. “Not anymore.”

  “Then it should be a relatively easy choice. You want to live, and I want to put your brother’s murderers where they belong. You may be able to assist me. And, if not, an honest effort still should earn a measure of protection for you.”

  “Ah. ‘A measure’?”

  He could only shrug and say, “We’re both adults. Nothing in life is absolutely guaranteed. You know this from experience.’

  “I do,” she said in almost a whisper. “If I agree, what happens next?”

  “I call a magistrate. This lady, I can tell you, I would trust to keep my children safe. It’s something of a miracle, I think, that she has not been murdered yet.”

  “If this is how your reassure informants, it needs work.”

  “I’ll never lie to you,” Basile said. “You, of all people, know that with sufficient effort and the proper motivation, anyone can be eliminated. But without the level of protection we can offer you...”

  He shrugged and spread his hands, letting silence make his point.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. But I may not know as much as you suspect. Gianni did not come to me and boast of crimes as he committe
d them.”

  “Yet you’ve lived with him. The family’s padrino. You have seen him meeting others and overheard him speaking to them, even if it was obscure. Those dates, those conversations, may dovetail with other information from our files to build a case.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “You do your part,” Basile said, “and we’ll do ours. The bargain does not hinge upon a jury’s verdict.”

  “Very well, Captain. You have a new informant.”

  “It is the best decision, I assure you.” Reaching for the telephone, he said, “I’ll make arrangements for you now.”

  * * *

  CARLO ALBANESI’S MIND was in a stew of turmoil. He had no doubt the Magolino family would eliminate him if he failed them—or arrange for his dismissal with a leak about the money he’d received in exchange for aiding members of the cosche. Prison was not beyond the realm of possibility, and Albanesi knew he wouldn’t live a week in custody.

  It was a waking nightmare, and the only way he could escape it was to find Mariana Natale. But how?

  Albanesi considered praying, but there were limits to his hypocrisy. Why would the God he’d been taught to fear even consider helping him destroy another person to preserve his miserable life? The Lord would probably strike him with a lightning bolt and end his pitiful existence.

  Ah, but that was childish fantasy. He’d personally seen the wicked prosper while decent folk suffered. It was enough to cause a loss of faith, assuming he’d had faith to begin with.

  Prayer was out, so he’d have to find another way.

  Lieutenant Albanesi studied every angle he could think of, scanning files on the computer in his office, looking for a clue—a name—that might direct him to the missing woman. Almost instantly he recognized that he was on the wrong track, listing relatives she would be afraid to visit and the Magolino cosche members—once her so-called friends—who would not hesitate to gun her down.

  What, then, was left?

  He could go home and have a drink and try coming up with new ideas away from the GDF offices. Albanesi knew he was already pushing it by working at night when he received no pay for overtime and rarely went an inch beyond the bare minimum required by any task. He might invite suspicion if he kept it up, and that was also dangerous.

  Leaving his office, Albanese locked the door behind him, turned toward the elevator and froze as he spotted Captain Basile at the far end of the hallway, near an access door that opened to the service stairs.

  Basile...and a woman.

  She had tawny hair, streaked blond, and a shapely figure. If he had not known better—

  Could it be?

  He let them pass into the stairwell, neither of them looking back, then hurried after them. Once in the stairs himself, he knew they were descending toward the building’s underground garage. The trick now was to keep from losing them without drawing attention to himself. He wasn’t sure about the woman yet, would still require at least a quick glimpse of her face, but if his first suspicion was correct, salvation had been laid before him on a silver platter.

  Albanesi heard Basile and the woman talking softly as they made their way downstairs. He couldn’t understand a word of what they said, nor did he care. As long as he could hear or see them, they were still within his grasp.

  Then what?

  If the woman was Gianno Magolino’s one-time lover, what could Albanesi do about it? Did he have the nerve to kill Basile and abduct her?

  No. That would require a great deal more than desperation. Call it raving madness.

  He could follow them, however, to find out where they were going and report it to Adamo. That was relatively simple, if he did not make a mess of trailing them.

  Two flights below him, Albanesi heard the door to the garage open and close. When it was shut, he hurried down the final steps, no longer creeping for the sake of silence. Speed was critical. He dared not lose Basile and the woman and thereby lose his last chance at redemption.

  Or damnation.

  Never mind the terminology. He had renewed hope now, and he meant to clutch it like a lifeline thrown out to a drowning man.

  Via Francesco Acri, Catanzaro

  NEAR MIDNIGHT, BOLAN approached his next target—a trucking company. Guarini Transport, a subsidiary of the Magolino family, had been linked to toxic dumping in Calabria.

  Over the past two decades, Italian prosecutors had investigated the suspicious sinking of thirty-odd ships bearing hazardous waste. In roughly half those cases, trucks from Guarini Transport had carried those ill-fated loads to the docks.

  But tonight, the firm was going out of business.

  Bolan had no difficulty getting past the padlocked gate. He wore a cap pulled low over his eyes, thereby defeating the CCTV cameras he’d spotted on the poles supporting floodlights. The cameras wouldn’t catch his face, but they could watch him work and play the action back for Magolino’s entertainment.

  He went with the Beretta ARX-160 once again—or, more specifically, its 40 mm GLX-160 grenade launcher. The launcher was a single-shot, breech-loaded weapon, not the fastest in the world, but in capable hands such as Bolan’s, it did the job.

  Ten seconds on the Magolino property, and Bolan had set one rig ablaze, slamming an HE round into the radiator of a heavy hauler. Most of the trucks on hand were semi rigs, but Bolan also counted three articulated dumpers waiting for a load they would never haul. He worked his way around the lot, under the floodlights, blasting each in turn and leaving them to literally burn the midnight oil.

  He knew the average list price for a big rig hot off the assembly line. A dozen of them going up in flames slapped Magolino with a punishing loss. Retreating to the open gate when he was finished, Bolan paused to eye his work and reckoned it was adequate.

  The only missing feature was credit for the hit.

  Driving away, he called Gianni Magolino, got a flunky on the line and didn’t bother asking for the boss. “Listen and pay attention,” he instructed. “I will not repeat this.”

  “Go ahead,” said the dim bulb on the other end.

  “Send someone to Guarini Transport,” Bolan said. “You’ve got a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Better see it for yourself,” Bolan advised. “And tell your boss that Don Peppino Lanza has a message for him.”

  “Message?”

  “He says, ‘Payback is a bitch.’”

  He cut the link and drove on as midnight passed into the chill and dark of Wednesday morning. Most of Catanzaro’s residents were sleeping now, or on their way to bed, but they’d be waking to hear that hell had come to town.

  The good news: it would only last another day, at most.

  The bad: for some of them, within that span of time, their world would end.

  Chapter 8

  Wednesday—Via Pastaioli, Catanzaro

  Between GDF headquarters and the safe house, Albanesi had nearly lost Captain Basile and the woman twice. He had managed to catch them both times, though, hanging back just enough to be hidden in late-night traffic while still maintaining visual contact. Now that they’d reached their final destination, he was parked a block downrange and peering through a pair of opera glasses he kept in his car’s glove compartment. They were not the best for high-tech surveillance, but they would suffice.

  He saw Basile stop his car outside a modest house and walk around to open the woman’s door. Then Basile led her to the entryway, where two men dressed in inexpensive suits stood waiting to receive them. All four went inside. Lieutenant Albanesi waited, trembling from nervous energy. He could have benefited from a drink—grappa, perhaps—but he had no alcohol on board tonight.

  Making a mental note to remedy that situation, Albanesi watched the house while shooting frequent glances at his side an
d rearview mirrors, anxious about someone sneaking up on him while he was distracted. He considered calling Adamo as soon as the woman was inside the house, but he’d worried she might come out again and drive off with Basile.

  Worse, he worried that Adamo would command him to rush in—one man against the three of them—and snatch the woman for delivery to Magolino. If that happened, Albanesi knew he’d make a mess of it. What if he couldn’t pull the trigger? What if he was terrified and soiled himself?

  No. He had reached the limit of his capability and recognized that fact. He was a sneak, a spy, but not a soldier. Not much of a police officer, either, if he thought about it honestly, but he maintained a more or less professional façade. One had to draw the line somewhere, and although he thought he could kill if threatened—or if he were paid enough, with little risk of being caught—it was too much for him to crash a safe house on his own, like some kind of commando in a movie.

  Half an hour passed, perhaps a little more, before Basile left the house alone and drove away. That told Albanesi all he had to know, and he’d palmed his phone before the captain’s taillights faded out of sight.

  “Hello.”

  He recognized the voice, Adamo’s main houseman. “It’s me,” Albanesi said. “Tell him I’ve found her.”

  “Hold the line”

  Thirty seconds later, Adamo answered. “Where is she?”

  Albanesi rattled off the address, waited for Adamo to repeat it, then said, “Right.”

  “Stay and keep an eye on them,” Adamo ordered. “Call back if they try to move her before my people get there.”

  Albanesi did not want to linger, but he had no choice. “As you wish, sir.”

  The line went dead, Adamo satisfied that he would wait and watch like a faithful dog hoping for a reward. It galled him, but he’d made his choice the first time he accepted money from the ’Ndrangheta. Nothing serious the first time, just some paperwork misplaced, but after that, there had been no refusing them.

  What if the guards did leave with Mariana? He would call, of course, and be ordered to pursue them, helping the appointed killers track their prey. It troubled Albanesi, knowing his actions would condemn two officers he’d never met before, but what choice did he have? It was too late for him to grow a backbone. Defiance would inevitably lead to death—or worse, exposure, with the loss of his career, his reputation, everything. And after he had been humiliated, he’d likely be sent to prison, and he could still be murdered any time Adamo or his master chose to give the order.