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  Albanesi drew his pistol, taking comfort from its firm weight in his hand. He checked the mirrors once more, then settled in to watch the silent house, hoping the targets would not budge before Adamo’s soldiers came to root them out.

  And if he made it out and went home to sleep, Lieutenant Albanesi prayed he would not dream.

  Via Veraldi, Catanzaro

  BOLAN’S NEXT STOP was a clothing warehouse. Not his normal kind of target, but this warehouse was stuffed to the rafters with counterfeit designer duds—Dior, Fendi, Gucci, Versace, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, take your pick. Cheap knockoffs tagged with fake designer labels swamped the markets in America and Europe, ripping off the public and designers alike. Fashion meant less than nothing to the Executioner, but when it helped to keep a crime cartel afloat, he took an interest.

  Like now.

  The warehouse was a nondescript facility. Its name—Trapani Products—gave no hint of what might lie within or who the owners were, but it had turned up on his list of ’Ndrangheta properties in Catanzaro. The bogus merchandise represented several million euros for the Magolino family.

  About to be an ashen memory.

  He went in through the back door, used the tire iron from his Fiat Panda on the padlock, then slipped the tool through his belt. His 40 mm launcher was loaded with an XM1060 thermobaric round, the ultimate incendiary, known in common parlance as a fuel-air bomb. The warehouse would be nothing but a giant tinder box.

  For Bolan’s purposes, he didn’t have to trespass far inside the building. All he needed was a clean shot toward the rear, beyond the countless cartons filled with fabric. No guards had surfaced to confront him, but if any were concealed inside the warehouse, maybe sleeping on the job, they had a rude awakening in store for them.

  Bolan aimed his launcher toward the far wall of the warehouse, approximately a hundred feet away. Precision wasn’t necessary; hell, he didn’t really have to aim at all—just point and let it fly. The launcher made a muffled pop, and the projectile struck down range, exploding on impact, a rising, roiling ball of flame advancing swiftly toward the spot where Bolan stood.

  He didn’t hang around to greet it, exiting the place as rapidly as possible, feeling the heat on his back and scalp. A few more seconds wasted, and he would have been consumed along with Magolino’s knockoff garments.

  Out in the fresh night air, the back door slammed behind him, Bolan jogged to his waiting car and stowed the ARX-160 in the space behind the driver’s seat. He risked another moment at the curb, the Panda’s engine humming softly, while he watched the warehouse start to glow from the inside until it had the aspect of a giant lantern. When the first flames finally erupted through a row of skylights, Bolan put the Fiat in gear and rolled out.

  Despite the time he’d spent with Mariana, getting her squared away, his blitz was more or less on schedule. Running slightly later than anticipated, he was still on track to have the campaign finished in a day, at most. Then he could turn his thoughts to getting out of Italy and back Stateside.

  As usual, Bolan traveled with a backup passport and supporting documents, although he had not seen a need to use them yet. He’d save them for the day he booked a new flight from Calabria to Rome, probably switching airports to avoid Lamezia Terme.

  Which still, of course, assumed he’d survive the Catanzaro mission.

  That was never guaranteed, but Bolan liked to take the positive approach whenever possible. In this case, he was positive that Wednesday would be worse than Tuesday for the Magolino family.

  He would bet his life on that.

  * * *

  THE CALL HAD come at half past midnight, drawing Raf Dondini and his soldiers from their aimless scouring of city streets to a specific house on Via Pastaioli. When they got there, Dondini saw a pair of headlights flash ahead of them, and he had Arturo Pino pass the target dwelling, creeping forward till his open window was directly opposite the driver’s window of a Fiat Bravo parked against the curb.

  He did not recognize the nervous-looking man behind the Bravo’s wheel, but he knew a cop when he smelled one. “What’s the story?” he inquired before the cop could speak.

  “You took a damn long time to get here,” the fat policeman said.

  “Just be glad we’re here at all,” Dondini replied. “Is she inside the house?”

  The porky face bobbed once in affirmation. “With at least two men.”

  “Who are they?”

  A shrug this time. “They could be GDF. Maybe Carabinieri.”

  “When you say, ‘at least two men...’”

  “I saw two. There may still be more inside.”

  “All right, we’ll handle it. Get out of here.”

  Dismissing the fat stranger, he told Pino, “Drive around the block and park short of the house.”

  Pino did as he was told without any dramatic screech of tires or racing of the engine that was likely to alarm their targets in the safe house. That was almost laughable, Dondini thought, believing anyplace in Catanzaro could be safe from members of the Magolino family.

  That was a grave mistake. Fatal, in fact.

  Adamo’s orders were specific: kill whoever had been left to guard the woman and retrieve her—alive and fit for rigorous interrogation. Failing that, Adamo wanted cell phone photos proving she was dead, once and for all. Dondini liked the second option best, but he would try to give Adamo what he wanted.

  One live whore trussed up for the slaughter.

  As they parked, his soldiers checked their weapons one last time, then crawled out of the vehicle and stretched their legs, standing together in the dark between two widely separated streetlights.

  “Nothing fancy,” Dondini advised them. “We go in and do the job. The woman lives, if possible. No hasty ‘accidents,’ unless you want to deal with Aldo personally. Renni and Gatti, slip around in back. You’ve got two minutes, then I’m going through the front door with Pino. Everyone, be sure of who you’re killing when you pull the trigger, eh?”

  They nodded at him, silent, all of them on edge, then Renni and Gatti moved off into darkness, circling quietly around behind the target house. Dondini checked his watch and started counting down the time until they made their move. One minute in, he led Pino down the sidewalk, then turned right and crept on to the only porch he’d seen with no light burning.

  It was strange, he thought, how people trying not to draw attention so often did one thing that had the opposite effect.

  At the two-minute mark, Dondini raised his Styer AUG and fired a muffled three-round burst into the door’s deadbolt, then kicked it in and charged through, Pino on his heels with the Franchi SPAS-15.

  They caught two men rushing to intercept them, one emerging from the kitchen and the other from a sort of parlor to their left, where he’d been watching Naked News on TV. Dondini shot him in the chest and left the chef to Pino.

  By then, Renni and Gatti were through the back door and had started scouring the other rooms. Dondini moved to join them, but they found the girl almost immediately. The two men grinned as they dragged her from a bedroom out into the hallway.

  She was trembling and tearful, but she marked Dondini as the leader and returned his stare without flinching, seemingly prepared to die. “Get on with it,” she spat at him.

  “Relax,” he told her, putting on a smile. “We’re going for a little ride.”

  * * *

  CAPTAIN BASILE STOOD outside the house and watched the second body bag emerging on its gurney, navigated by a pair of ambulance attendants whose vitality and good looks painfully reminded him that he was middle-aged. No, scratch that. Middle age meant halfway through a normal life span, and at fifty-four, Basile had to grant that he was well past it.

  Two dead, both honest men with families, and no trace remained of Mariana Natale. Basile wondered why the
damned ’ndranghetisti had not simply killed her on the spot, but that thought led him onto darker paths that turned his stomach, so he focused on the better question.

  How had they discovered where she was?

  Basile had taken every precaution to keep Mariana secure, bypassing his superiors, arranging for a pair of officers he trusted to watch over her, assigning them that duty with last-minute calls that brought them from home. The homes he would be forced to visit now, breaking the grim news to their wives and children, facing their grief and rage.

  Two men, besides himself, had known where Mariana was, and both of them were dead now. Had one of his two trusted friends betrayed Basile, dooming himself in the process? It was possible, of course, but so unlikely Basile put the prospect out of mind.

  How else could Mariana have been traced?

  His telephone at headquarters was more or less secure. Basile swept it periodically for taps and checked his office for illicit microphones, but so many devices were on the high-tech market nowadays, he couldn’t keep up with them all.

  Another possibility: he’d been seen with Mariana at headquarters, either coming in or going out, and followed to the safe house. That seemed most likely, but Basile thought he’d been careful on the drive to Via Pastaioli. Was it possible he’d been distracted by the woman or by thoughts of her American rescuer and the battle plans he’d laid for Catanzaro?

  Maybe.

  Probably.

  Basile cursed himself and dug fingernails into his palms but found no sanctuary in the trifling pain. Perhaps a drink would help. Leave the forensics team to sweep the house, and come back in a half hour or so to receive their report.

  Basile turned from the house and almost collided with Carlo Albanesi, waddling up the walkway from the street.

  “I heard the call about officers down,” Albanesi said. “It there something I can do to help?”

  “Nothing that comes to mind, Lieutenant. Were you still at headquarters?”

  “Just leaving to go home. Who have we lost?”

  “Two men from GICO,” Basile answered, referring to the GDF’s organized crime investigators. “I doubt you knew them.”

  “A loss all the same. Our brothers, eh, Captain?”

  Brothers. Basile nodded silently and told his overweight subordinate, “You may as well go home.”

  “Well, if you’re sure...”

  “Go on. You’ll hear enough about this later, at the office.”

  “All right then. Good night, Captain.”

  “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

  At least Basile would be rid of Albanesi for a while. He still wanted that drink, or several, but he’d reconsidered. It was best to keep his mind clear as he tried to work out who had managed to betray him, killing two good men while they were at it.

  When he had the answer to that question, then Basile would be faced with a decision. In the meantime, though, he needed help.

  Who could he trust in Catanzaro now?

  Someone who had not been corrupted by the ’Ndrangheta, by the Mafia or by any other source of vile contagion. Someone new and unfamiliar to the enemy.

  He thought of Scott Parker, realizing instantly that he had no means of contacting the American. Or did he?

  Glancing at his watch, Basile subtracted six hours to get the current time for Washington, D.C. If he could reach the man who’d called him earlier that evening asking for a favor, he might get one in return. Basile would not know until he tried.

  Retreating from the murder house to stand beneath a nearby streetlight, Basile found the number in his call log, hit REDIAL, and waited for someone to answer at the other end, nearly five thousand miles away.

  Via Alessandro Turco, Catanzaro

  BOLAN WAS TWO blocks from his next target when the sat phone hummed at him, a breach of protocol so startling that he snatched it up before it had a chance to sound again. He didn’t recognize the number on the LED screen and frowned as he answered cautiously.

  “Hello?”

  “I hope you will accept my most sincere apology,” the caller said.

  “Captain Basile.”

  “Yes. The very same.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “From a friend we have in common, I believe,” the captain said. “In Washington?”

  Bolan pulled over to the curb and left the Fiat Panda’s engine running. Trying to imagine how the captain could have got his number without asking Hal, he came up blank. Because the sat phone had no GPS device installed, he felt secure in chatting with Basile at the roadside, but he meant to keep it brief, regardless.

  “What can I do for you?” Bolan asked.

  “I’m afraid I have bad news,” Basile said. “I must apologize once more for being negligent.”

  “You want to spell that out for me?”

  “With Mariana. She has been abducted.”

  “How?” Basile couldn’t miss the cutting edge of steel in Bolan’s voice.

  “We still don’t know. I took precautions and chose my closest and most trusted friends to guard her. They are both dead now, and she is...gone.”

  Bolan swallowed his first response. Cursing the captain would accomplish nothing. Thinking rapidly, he asked, “How long?”

  “The shooting was reported to us—” A pause, likely Basile looking at his watch “—one hour and three minutes ago.”

  A lifetime. Mariana could be dead by now or hurt so badly that she was praying for death. The good news, if it was good news: the hit team had not killed her on the spot. Which meant someone higher up the ’Ndrangheta food chain wanted her alive, if only for interrogation or a savage payback.

  So, there might be time. And he was wasting it.

  “Here’s what you do,” he told Basile. “Go back over every move you made between the garden and your safe house. Make a list of anyone who might have seen the two of you together, even if it seems improbable.”

  “I could—”

  “Just make the list,” Bolan said. “Handle the cops yourself. Interrogate them any way you can. As for civilians, call me back with names and tell me where to find them.”

  Basile didn’t question that but asked him, “What will you be doing in the meantime?”

  “Burning down Gianni Magolino’s world,” Bolan replied before he cut the link.

  He wasted no time second-guessing himself. He and Mariana had discussed her options, and she’d voted for protective custody. Unfortunately, Bolan couldn’t let it go at that. He’d rescued Mariana once, so simply dismissing her to any fate that Magolino had in mind was not an option he could live with.

  The bottom line: retrieving Mariana now, alive, might be impossible. But punishing her captors was a game Bolan had played before. In fact, he was a master of reprisals, as the Magolino family was just about to learn.

  It even fit into his program, more or less. His goal had been disruption of the ’Ndrangheta and elimination of its Catanzaro leadership. Full speed ahead on that score, but he had to put a new twist on the game.

  Bolan could not kill Magolino or his second in command until he’d sent a message and they’d had an opportunity to answer him. He would negotiate for Mariana’s freedom, see if Magolino played along and still feel free to double-cross the mobster when it suited him. For all the rhetoric about the ’Ndrangheta’s honor, Bolan found that integrity was nonexistent in the underworld. And because he played by their rules, for the most part, lying to a gangster did not trouble him at all.

  The gangsters also would be lying when they dealt with him.

  But they would have incentive to deliver Mariana, even if she only served as bait.

  Bolan pulled into traffic, on his way to blitz Gianni Magolino’s world.

  Chapter 9

  Viale Al
varo Corrado, Catanzaro

  “You have done well, Aldo. I am pleased,” Gianni Magolino said.

  Adamo let himself relax a little, still not smiling openly but starting to believe he had redeemed himself. It was a stroke of luck that had probably saved his life.

  As if reading his thoughts, Aldo’s padrino asked, “How did you manage it?”

  A lie at this point would be perilous, but he could always shade the truth. “One of our people at the GDF saw Mariana with a captain. On my orders, the cop followed them. From that point, it was simple.”

  “Two dead policemen,” Magolino said, then shrugged. “It is a small price for our family’s security. I won’t forget this, Aldo.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Magolino smiled. “You are too modest.”

  “Well...”

  “Your men must be rewarded for their service also.”

  “As you say, padrino. I shall see to it.”

  “But not too highly, eh? We don’t want to inflate their egos.”

  “No, sir,” Adamo replied, smiling at the little joke.

  “I must see Mariana now,” Magolino said. “We have so much to discuss.”

  “Of course, padri—”

  The house man, Gino Zucco, barged into Magolino’s office. “Excuse me, padrino,” he said, extending a cordless phone to Magolino.

  “Who is it?” the boss demanded.

  “He won’t say, but he knows about the woman and our dead brothers.”

  “Does he?” Magolino took the phone, handling it gingerly, as if it might explode. Putting on a stoic face, he spoke into the instrument. “Who’s this?”

  Adamo could not hear the caller’s reply, but he saw Magolino stiffen slightly, knuckles blanching as his grip on the telephone tightened. His side of the conversation grew stilted. “Yes...I see...What makes you think...You are assuming...No...I can’t agree to that, since...Very well, then. Do your worst.”