Don Pendleton - Sunscream

He tiptoed back to the kitchen. A vacuum cleaner was parked just inside. He unscrewed the hose with its chromed metal tip and carried it back to the open doorway.

The doorway was in deep shadow, the patio outside vibrating in the hot glare of the sun. Bolan balanced the hose on a bookshelf just inside the doorway, arranging it so that the metal tip projected a couple of inches out from the shadow.

He approached the girl from behind. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed, a tall empty glass nearby. She sat up with a gasp when his shadow fell across her face — a platinum blonde with long tapering legs and a bronzed body the color of polished olive wood. She was wearing the briefest of bikinis in silver satin.

Bolan gestured with the gun. “Don’t make a sound,” he warned. “Walk over there and get into the pool.”

Her eyes were wide with terror. “I... I can’t swim.”

“You don’t have to. Stay at the shallow end.”

“No, but... my swimsuit will get wet. It will be ruined.”

She flicked an apprehensive glance over her right shoulder.

Bolan followed her movement and saw a blue canvas awning under which double glass doors led to another part of the villa. That must be where the big shot was holed up, Bolan guessed.

“Look,” he murmured, “I’m in a hurry. All you have to do is get in the pool and sit in the shallow end with just your head showing.” He looked across the pool.

“But if you step out of line my partner over there will see you.” He pointed to the tip of the vacuum hose where it gleamed out of the shadow. “That’s a cannon he has there. One squawk out of you, and he’ll blow your pretty head away. Okay?”

Wordlessly, trembling, she went to the ladder and lowered herself into the tepid water.

Bolan found Scalese in a bright, airy room with picture windows overlooking the sea. He was wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt and white shorts above thin tanned legs. His silver hair was crimped close to his skull and his face was as lined as a yellowed sheet of music.

The Executioner took in the inlaid Renaissance cabinets, nineteenth century oil paintings, a tiger-skin rug, before the gang boss spoke.

“What’s happen? Who are you? How the hell you get inna here?” He was holding an unlit cigar. He didn’t seem angry, only faintly surprised.

“The racket,” Bolan said grimly. “The kid prostitute racket. You’re the brains behind it, the guy places the orders, right?”

Scalese picked a gold cigar cutter from a desk and guillotined his Corona. “So what of it?” he said, shrugging.

“In Paris,” Bolan said carefully, “we don’t go for that. The baron does not approve.”

“Whatsa matter wit’ you? You crazy or something?” The sallow forehead corrugated even more as Scalese’s eyebrows rose. “It’s no business of his. Or yours. What do I care for Paris? I run my family the way I want.”

“If we’re going into business together, we wouldn’t want to be associated with the kind of scum who seeks out deprived kids, tempts them with offers of money, exploits them...” the words trembled in Bolan’s mouth “...and then ruins them for life.”

“You tell your baron he go fuck himself. So what if a few punk kids get laid a coupla years early? They’ll be on their backs soon enough, anyway, and this way they getta some money, too. What so corrupt in that, tell me?”

Bolan had seen the surreptitious jab at the desk button when Scalese picked up his cigar cutter, was aware of the turning spools of the tape deck beneath the windows: if they were being recorded he wanted the connection between the baron, the yellow Ferrari and what was going to happen to Scalese to be clear. “The Baron won’t stand for that kind of filth.”

“Say, how did you get in here, anyway?” Scalese asked.

“You need better security,” Bolan said.

The Camorra boss turned back to the desk and picked up a small bronze conversation piece, a shepherd leaning over a tree stump. The shepherd’s head had been cut and hinged to accommodate a cigarette lighter. “I hope you don’ hurt none of my boys getting through.” He swung around to face Bolan, raised the statuette level with his chest and flicked the lighter. He held the flame to his cigar.

Bolan was alert for any sudden moves. He was off the mark and diving the instant the hidden shutter opened in the base of the bronze piece.

The deadly steel dart ripped the lobe of his ear as it hurtled past him. Bolan rammed Scalese’s chest with his shoulder and carried the two of them back over the polished top of the desk. A black letter case, an inkwell, a jeweled paper knife and a Venetian ashtray crashed to the floor. The two men landed in a heap beneath the windows.

Scalese was quick for his age. A stiletto was already in his hand as he twisted out from under the Executioner. But anger had fueled Bolan’s strength and determination. Ignoring the menace of that flickering point, he went straight for the man’s arm.

The blade slashed the strap of his shoulder rig, pricked blood through the sleeve of his blacksuit and scratched his hand before his fingers closed in on the bony wrist.

Violently, he jerked the arm down against an upthrust knee. The weapon clattered away; the bone snapped dryly as a dead branch in winter.

Scalese screamed.

Bolan picked him up by his ankles and swung him. He whirled the mafioso around like an Olympic athlete winding up a hammer throw, then crashed the old man’s head against one of the picture windows.

Scalese’s skull shattered the glass. The pane exploded with a jangling concussion.

Once more Bolan swiveled. At the completion of the turn, he hurled the Camorra chief savagely out through the broken window.

Blood laced the air as Scalese’s ribboned body dropped fifteen feet in a cascade of razor-sharp fragments to a terrace planted with olives and fruit trees.

He lay groaning feebly, with streams of scarlet fanning out from his broken body to sink into the sunbaked earth. Even if he lived, Girolamo Scalese wasn’t going to be propositioning underage kids for quite some time.

Bolan turned back into the room. A swarthy gorilla in a cream-colored suit was standing in the doorway, his right hand diving between his lapels.

In one fluid movement Bolan scooped up the fallen paper knife by the point and thrust it with murderous aim at the hood. The sharp blade sank into the guy’s throat and he subsided to the floor with a bubbling moan.

Bolan jumped over the body and raced for the patio. Another mobster, attracted by the noise of smashing glass, was running along the passage toward Bolan. The big guy wasted him as he ran, a single shot from the Beretta impacting below his breastbone, pulverizing liver and spleen.

On the far side of the patio, between Scalese’s quarters and the kitchen wing, three more hoods were approaching the Executioner. The girl was still in the pool, her blond hair and frightened face incongruous above the surface of the blue water.

“Keep your head down!” Bolan yelled.

He unhitched a small plastic grenade from the black-suit harness, pulled the pin and threw it across the pool.

A momentary flash dimmed the blaze of the sun. A cracking thunderclap of an explosion. More glass shattered and fell. Masonry dropped and broken tiles slid into the patio from the roof.

A shower of blood stained the walls.

Bolan reholstered the Beretta. “You can come out now,” he told the blonde. “Don’t look behind you... and get the hell out of here.”

He walked around to the kitchen passage and descended the stairs to the garage.

At the end of the driveway he pressed the button to open the electrically operated gates and regained the Ferrari.