And the men at the table were also thinking one other thing, everyone of them: how to get the big slice, maybe all, of Agrigento when they called the table on Cafu and took him down.
Brinato's soldier came fast into the room without knocking, leaned over and whispered in his boss' ear. Brinato spluttered a mouthful of food down his chest, slapped at it angrily with his napkin, swallowed heavily, and shoved back from the table. "What did you say? I mean repeat it for all of us."
"Now, boss, don't get sore at me, okay?" Brinato shook his head violently.
The soldier stared around the faces, shrugged, then blurted, "Don Cafu said . . . 'Tell those guys to go get fucked. And tell them if they come after me I got better'n a hundred soldiers waiting for them.'" The soldier grabbed an empty glass and poured himself a drink of champagne. "He said, 'Tell those greaseballs to go piss up a rope, and if they think they're calling a table on me they're full of shit. I ain't coming, now or ever, and I'll burn down every son of a bitch comes after me.'"
The soldier did not bother with the glass this time. He up-ended the bottle and swigged. Then: "I'm sorry, boss; but that's what he said, just how he said, and I thought you want to know. I mean, did I do right?"
"Sure, sure," Brinato said absently, nodding his head. He patted the soldier on the arm. "You did just fine, son. Go on now, we got to talk. Tell the waiters to come in and clear away all this crap. I ain't hungry no more."
After the waiters had taken away the remains of the feast, which now tasted like sawdust to the dons, Ruvido snarled viciously. "Okay, so the don don't come to the table, we take the table to the don, huh?" He looked around the table for confirmation.
Brinato looked at the man from Reggio, wondering. How the hell did we ever let him get so high up in this thing of ours? A goddam Calabrian was no different than a garlicky greaseball Sicilian, hot-tempered, fast-draw, shoot from the hip, examine the deads afterwards, and hold a beautiful wake upon learning he'd killed his brother-in-law. Christ. Maybe it was the sun, the harsh, unrelenting heat on the jagged desertlike, worthless land made them that way. All the same, kill, kill, kill, and they'd screw anything from a crocodile to a warm exhaust pipe. Sure, Cafu had to go, no question; but Brinato decided Ruvido also had to go. And then he caught himself. God-DAMN! Here he was doing just exactly what that Bolan bastard wanted. Thinking of killing Family. Brinato took a deep breath and calmly peeled the outer brown wrapper from a Cuban cigar and lit it. After a moment, he leaned forward, cleared his throat loudly to quiet the mutterings around the table. When he had the attention of all the dons, Brinato spoke:
"All right, gentlemen, what do you think of this? Our brother Don Cafu does not want our help. He has, indeed, refused our offers of aid. He has likewise refused to come and reason with us. And our only purpose was to offer aid and assistance, correct, gentlemen?"
They nodded, grunted, and most of them began slowly Smiling.
"Then I suggest we let the don have his way. Obviously, he considers himself in no danger. A hundred trained and well-armed soldiers, correct? So what can one man hope to do, even this Bolan?"
Brinato puffed his cigar in the silence, while the others watched him, grinning like sharks. "Of course, there are always the pieces to pick up afterwards." Brinato smiled, a brief lifting of the left corner of his thick lips. "I suggest we adjourn and see what the morrow brings."
Still grinning, the others got to their feet as Brinato rose from his chair. "Now, let's see if we can't find a way to divert ourselves, eh?"
As they filed out of the table room, Brinato signaled to his houseman. The hardguy grinned and nodded and went away. As the dons went into the lavishly furnished private parlor, soft music began issuing from hidden speakers, the lights softened, and the girls came in.
15
Scout
Mack Bolan, The Executioner, was not only a highly efficient practitioner but also a student of military tactics and strategy.
The oldest rule in the book had never changed:
"You must take the high ground,
or you will die in the valleys."
And wars had been lost because of laziness.
Occupying the high ground took men of stamina, willpower, and commitment. Bolan had discovered in his first day's recon that Cafu's trainees had little else on their minds but $1000 a day and easy living Stateside. They did not like to climb mountains, so they faked it. They did not like roughing it, so they lugged along ten pounds of crap in their rucksacks — liquor, canned foods, reading material, and a few even managed to inveigle some of the local gkls to come along and spend the watch with them.
In that first day, Bolan could have killed nineteen of Cafu's soldier trainees.
But that would only have set the hounds upon him. When the relief men came up to take their positions on the outer rim of the defense perimeter, and found deads, Cafu would have been alerted and doubly defensive.
Bolan kept scouting, and just before noon he located at last what he sought: a soldier trainee who looked like Mack Bolan. Not really, but perhaps enough. Enough so Mack could take the guy down, replace him, hopefully pass himself off as the soldier long enough to get inside.
If his estimate of the reliefs was correct, he would arrive at the base camp near dusk, and in the gloom possibly pass himself off as the trainee.
First, the trainee.
Mack simply circled down through a deadspace where the soldier could not see him, hit the too-well-worn path leading to the observation post, and walked right up to the soldier. The soldier was asleep, a skin-magazine lying across his chest. Bolan kneeled beside the man, chopped him across the throat, drove the larnyx into the man's throat, then held the man down while he suffocated.
Bolan lifted the man up and threw him over his shoulder, carried him a mile farther back up into the mountains, stripped off the "uniform" Don Cafu's trainees wore, then dropped the body down the shaft of an abandoned sulphur mine. Hundreds of such shafts were in view all through the terrain. At one tune, sulphur export had made Agrigento one of the most important cities on the island, with a population of half a million people in over forty villages and the capital city bearing the same name as the province, Agrigento.
The uniform did not fit, but it would do; it had not fit the other guy either, being to large for him, and too small for Bolan. But their coloring, general build, enough the same in general so Bolan believed he could pull it off.
Mentally, he shrugged. If he failed, he would have to shoot his way clear, then outrun them. He went back to the OP and waited, lunching sumptuously on chow the now-dead man had carried on Ms back up the mountainside. A hunk of fresh bread, even fresher cheese, a big cut of roast highly seasoned, a water bottle full of excellent white wine. The guy even had American cigarettes, two packs of Camels. Mack lit up and settled back to watch the trail after he'd eaten.