While Alma went inside to pay the stableman, Bolan opened one of the milk cans and dropped a thousand dollars in Mafia money down into the can, then sealed it tightly. When she returned, he made her go through the instructions again.
She was to haul the crate to the dock, pre-pay its passage to Messina on the ferry, then by truck to Catania. She was to sling in an appropriate puntale or "bustarella"— tip, bribe, to insure the magician's box got preferential treatment.
Alma returned thirty minutes later with the manifest, and Bolan lied to her: "I have to see some men in the city. I'll be back before eleven." He took her elbows and held them tightly. "Listen to me. Listen exactly. Whatever you do, stay-away-from-the-truck. Understand? Do not touch the truck."
Bolan knew that by this time Astio had sent scouts up the roads leading from Reggio, and by now they had found and booby-trapped the truck. He wished he had time to go back to it and blow it up himself. One hit from the .44 Automag would jar off the detonators.
But maybe not. When they saw the crate gone . . . and surely the truckdriver, Fretta, had told Astio about the crate . . . they would not plant the truck, maybe. Bolan hoped to Christ not.
Bolan kissed her one last time, and then before Alma knew or even saw, the big man vanished into the evening gloom. She felt wet on her face, and realized she was crying. She knew he would never be back, when she thought about his return at eleven. Wearily, with a sorrow that stuck in her throat and felt like a knife in her guts, she climbed upon the wagon seat and slapped the lines across the horses' rumps. She could be home well before eleven, and he was never coming back, and the cows were by now standing at the waterlot gate, bawling with thirst and hunger and swollen udders. She wondered who he was, and shifted her weight on the rough seat as something seemed to stick her in the thigh. She felt and found a metal object in the pocket of her apron and took it out It was a cross unlike any she had ever seen before. She looked at it until her vision blurred with tears, then she wiped her eyes, kissed the cross and dropped it between her breasts, where she would wear it forever.
She had driven to within sight of the last street lights on the road out of Reggio when they took her.
A man came from each side of the road, out of the shadows, and in the same instant, two climbed over the endgate; all had guns. One, who looked like a frog, laid his gunbarrel upside her jaw and in reflex action she slammed him in the face with her fist, putting her shoulder and all hundred-forty pounds of work-hardened farm girl behind the punch. Frog went off backwards and landed on bis head in the street, convulsively clenching his hands, and shooting the left horse of Alma's team through the heart. The horse lunged, sprayed blood through both nostrils, then dropped in his tracks. The other horse spooked, lunging and kicking, almost upsetting the wagon.
One of the gunsels lost his head and clubbed Alma across the top of her skull with his pistol, just as Ragno shouted, "No!" But it was too late.
Alma went slack as a dead and toppled out of the wagon.
Ragmo caught her, but her weight bore his gangly frame to the ground. A car pulled from a narrow street and two men jumped out, grabbed Alma and threw her inside. Ragno, The Spider, rose shakily to his feet and climbed in behind them. The driver knelt beside Rana, feeling his pulse. He shrugged and picked up The Frog's gun, and started back to the car. The gunsel, still on the wagon seat, shouted, "Hey, what about me? I got her. I got pay coming."
From the car a voice issued a command.
The driver turned and aimed with Frog's gun and shot the gunsel through the head. "Paid in full, stupid."
In the car, pulling away, the wheelman asked, "She dead?"
"No, damned lucky for us. Astio'd have our balls roasting over a slow fire."
"She broke Frog's neck, knocking him off right on top of his head."
"You sure she's the one?"
"Who helped Bolan? Who the hell knows? She is the one the boss said watch for. From that farm just beyond where he left the truck."
"Okay, hook it up. The boss is getting antsy as hell."
The wheelman drove toward the dock.
12
Reggio Repulisti
Bolan went into the water a mile and a half above the ferry dock, swimming easily in the warm waters of the Strait. His clothing and the weight of the weapons and extra ammo hindered him, but he'd given himself plenty of time and swam without tiring himself.
The ferry was still hull down on the horizon of the sea when he entered the water, only its truck light showing, but as he swam, the running lights came into view, then the lighted deck, and Bolan began easing in toward the ferry's course. He was almost a mile offshore when he turned and added power to his even strokes and came across the bow, treaded water and let the boat pass, then fell in its wake, pouring it on. The same line he had observed three times earlier in the day still trailed carelessly in the water off the port stern, and Bolan caught it. He worked his way up the rope, hand over hand against the force of the boat pulling him through the water, wrapped his right leg around the trailing slack, drew the leg up and caught the slack, and in a moment had a bowline-on-bight in the line. Mack slipped his right foot into the non-slip loop, passed the line under his right arm, across his back, under his left arm, and in a sort of cradle, he rode along buffeting in the foaming wake.
When the ferry slowed, Mack instantly used his right hand as a rudder and swung his body out to the side and looked past the ferry. The Reggio landing was less than two hundred yards away.
Bolan went hand over hand, fast, up the rope to the side of the ferryboat, placed his feet against the slippery sea-slick hull, and climbed. As he knew they would — it was only natural — everyone aboard faced the dock and the city. What was there to see back across the Strait? In a moment, he was aboard.
Thanks to his ragazza, his girl Alma from Reggio, Bolan was on the ferry to Sicily, and in a few minutes his warchest, the Bohemian Magician's crate, would also be aboard. A mile or so out of Messina on the crossing, he would drop over the side and swim ashore, then cut inland to the Messina-Catania road, flag a bus or wagon, or hire a taxi, hole up in Catania until his warchest arrived, then across the island along the base of snowcapped Mount Etna, to Enna, then the road southwest from the junction at Caltanissetta, through Canicatti and Naro, and then —
Then he would have to see. Another long-range penetration behind enemy lines. He would be in Indian country at Naro, Agrigento Province, and somewhere back in the convulsively upthrust mountainous and canyon-slashed boondocks, he would find Don Cafu's Scuola As-sassino, School for Assassins.
It was becoming so ridiculously easy, Mack Bolan felt the hair on his neck bristle in warning. It had become too easy.
He was a known and hunted man in a foreign country on a mission of death and destruction, and since leaving Naples airport it had all gone his way, virtually without a hitch. Bolan was good and knew he was good and he'd survived because he was better than good, because he was The Executioner, man with a mission, and incomprehensibly efficient, to the Mafia's bitter knowledge and experience. He was so good that more than once the "membership" had sent the word out: come and reason with us, join us.
When you can't beat 'em, join 'em....
Bolan knew he'd have lasted inside the Mafia about as long as a crooked cop in the regular jail lockup. Until he was exhausted and had fought as long as he could. Then they would make pulp of his head with their heels.