It was like putting a car in passing gear. Going past full-speed-ahead, asking for maximum revs the engines could make.
Mack picked up the captain's binoculars and looked back at dockside. He saw brave Alma standing among the littered deads, waving. Bolan owed that girl plenty, and somehow he would see she got paid. He knew that by now if the "members" or the gunsels had not looted her milkcan, the street punks of Reggio had. He vowed to square it with her.
In the meantime, thanks to his ragazza, his girl Alma, he'd made a cleansweep: Reggio Repulisti!
13
Crossing & beachhead
No more than fifty passengers had managed to board the ferry before Bolan ordered the lines cut and all-ahead flank. There was one policeman aboard, an "airplane" as the carabinieri were called because of their hats, which looked like slick shellacked sailplanes about ready to lift into flight on the outspread wings. Bolan had determined that the captain of the ferry spoke passable English, the kind of English many fishermen working boats out of San Francisco, California spoke.
That was to say, he understood every word, and the inflection Bolan placed upon every word; but he did not speak good English because he was ashamed of his accent.
At Bolan's command, the captain called the airplane to the wheel house. When the carabinieri stepped into the cramped quarters, still quite neat and stylish despite his ordeal, Bolan put the cold wet muzzle of the .44 Automag in the airplane's ear. The man stiffened and raised his hands high above his head, and Bolan disarmed him of his submachine gun and belt pistol.
Bolan asked the captain. "You have a raft?"
"Certainly."
"Are these waters dangerous this time of year."
"Not at all."
"Have a man break out a raft. Supply it well with water and some food. Drop it over the side on a tow line. Put this airplane into the raft safely, then proceed."
Bolan smiled nonchalantly. "I'll kill the first man moves wrong. You first, Captain."
"Not worry!"
Three minutes later a furious, disarmed carabinieri wearing nothing but his underwear and his hat floated alone in the darkness of the Strait of Messina. In an enraged fury of anger, the policeman ripped off his hat and threw it with all his strength. To his amazement, the hat flew like a goddam airplane! All his career he'd resented the whispered defamatory term, "airplane," and now in the moon and starlight he found it true.
The goddam hat skimmed out across the dark water, caught an updraft, spun round and round, rose to a hundred, then perhaps a hundred-and-thirty feet, sailed, and finally vanished from the policeman's sight in the darkness. The only thing he could see was the diminishing lights of the ferryboat. With the magnificent Latin philosophical attitude, knowing he could do nothing whatever about the ferry and the huge man who'd taken command, the airplane got to his feet, steadied himself, and peed over the side.
Finished with his business, he lit a cigarette and made himself comfortable. It was a long time till daylight.
Mack Bolan wished for a night fifteen hours long, instead of one so short as this night in late spring so near the equator. He spoke to the captain. "How long for the crossing?"
The captain shrugged, with the kind of Lathi eloquence Bolan tried earlier to imitate, not especially successfully.
"It depends, signor, upon the wind, the seas, the tide."
Bolan showed the captain the Beretta.
"There are no tides in the Mediterranean."
"Ah, so, yes. But in the Strait, she is different. Huh? Meeting our Tyrian Sea with the Med."
"Old man," Bolan said flatly, ruthlessly, without remorse, "I can see the island now. Sicily. The big vast dark shape rising out of the sea." Bolan paused, and laid the icy cold iron along the side of the shipmaster's face. "There is no way I can miss it. Agreed?"
"Si, signor."
"Surely you have no stupid idea of dying on my account. I've harmed no crewman, set the airplane free, have not even inquired about your safe, correct?"
"Assolutamente, signor! Absolutely, sir!"
"You have valuables in the safe?"
The captain hesitated just a fraction of a second too long, so when he answered, Bolan knew the captain lied. "No, no valuables."
"You lied. But no matter. Take them for yourself and blame it on me." Bolan laughed coarsely. "What else, eh?"
The captain did not reply.
"Now, you are on course, correct?" Bolan asked. Then sarcastically — "Allowing for the tide and winds and so forth, naturally."
"I am on course."
"Stay so and you have nothing — listen to me! Nothing to worry about, understand?"
"Si, signor."
"I am leaving the wheelhouse now, scouting around; but you saw the devastation of this gun I hold. Now, you son of a bitch are you going to maintain course for Messina or what?"
"Straight on course, absolutely."
"Or the ship has a new captain."
And before the ship's master was sure the black-clad big man was gone, he was alone.
Bolan slithered across hatches and found the aft hold. He lifted the cover and squirmed down inside. With a penlight he located his crate. Sweating and struggling, he shifted the cargo so the crate would be first unloaded, then he went back topside. The lights of Messina had come into view.
Bolan found his peasant clothing, rolled it into a bundle and covered it with a large plastic bag, moved to the port railing, drew the .44 Automag and sent a thundering shot through the wheelhouse, deliberately wide, missing the captain, but sending along the message.
Then he rewrapped the Automag in protective covering and secured it and fell off the port rail, landing on his back. Twenty minutes later Bolan was ashore. In the brittle starlight and late cast of the dying moon, he could look almost straight up and see the snow-capped towering loom of Mount Etna.
He found a hidden cavelike cove amongst the rocks, dragged in driftwood and built a fire. He stripped off his skintight black combat garb, removed the ammo, maps, emergency rations and other equipment, and stood before the fire to warm. He checked his watch. Plenty of time. He broke open a kit of rations, ate the concentrated vitamin/high-protein bars, then allowed himself the luxury of a single cup of coffee while he smoked a cigarette.
Then he lay on the sand with his feet to the fire, set his mental never-fail alarm, and slept until an hour before dawn. In six minutes Bolan was up and moving, having erased every trace of his landing, of his existence. As the blood-red rising sun rose upward across the eastern horizon, Bolan squatted in hiding beside the Messina-Catania road, wearing the rough, ill-fitting, impressed peasant costume over his weapons and black combat suit.
There was hardly any traffic. Bolan had to accustom himself to that. As he'd done in Calabria. Christ, back in the states in Metropolitan New England/New York/D.C. — all along the Atlantic Seaboard between Boston and Virginia, it was a lousy 24-hour-a-day scramble. He'd seen people who couldn't afford a $7 taxi fare to Manhattan wait two and a half hours in a stone buzzard at La Guardia for a bus: fare, two bucks.
On the other hand, it simplified Bolan's problem.
He knew the name of the freighter. He had the manifest wrapped in oilskin in his pocket. He had chosen the crest of a long grinding grade for his watchpoint. Bolan chuckled to himself, remembering when he'd done his research on Sicily. Some professor writing for one of the encyclopedias dismissed the Mafia with a single sentence: