Don Pendleton - Sunscream

Jean-Paul stopped in midspeech. “What the hell?.. ”

“What kind of shit are you bastards trying to pull?” the guy who looked like Scalese’s son shouted. “Where the hell does this mother get off...” the two men surged toward Jean-Paul, furious and menacing “...sending in his goddamn gorilla to break up my old man’s place, trying to crease the old guy?”

“All right. Cool it, damn you.” Two angry spots of color burned on J-P’s cheeks. “What do you mean by busting in here like this! Who the hell are you talking about?”

“De Brialy, that’s who,” Scalese Jr. yelled. “Where is the creep? I’ll tear him to pieces!”

Pandemonium all around the patio. Some of the hoods were protesting, some laughed, some stood up to see better. There was a sudden increase of noise as the helicopter passed low over the villa and hovered above the landing stage.

De Brialy rose slowly to his feet, small, prim, gray. “Just what exactly am I supposed...” he began.

“My old man may not live: his skull is cracked, his bones are broken, he’s all busted up inside,” Scalese raved. “Seven of his housemen are wasted. And all because of some crap relating to cathouse kids. Don’t deny it, you frog bastard: it’s all on the tape.”

The guy with the bandaged throat obviously found it too painful to speak, but he nodded violently, gesturing with his gun at Etang de Brialy. One or two of the mafiosi had unobtrusively circled behind the two intruders and now they were covered on all sides.

Jean-Paul sighed. “Maybe it would be better if we continued this indoors,” he said.

Together with the two enraged Italians, Etang de Brialy and a handful of the other capos, he hurried toward a colonnade running outside Sanguinetti’s quarters along one side of the patio.

Passing the arch that led to the second courtyard, Scalese’s companion looked up and saw Bolan sitting among the gorillas. He froze, tugging at Scalese’s sleeve as he croaked something unintelligible in a raucous ghost of a voice. Scalese whirled. “That dude? He’s the bastard did the job?”

Bandaged-throat nodded, his own eyes murderous.

The barrel of the PPK swung up.

“Cut that out!” Hard as a plank, J-P’s hand chopped down on Scalese’s wrist, knocking the gun to the ground. At the same time Etang de Brialy twisted the other Walther away from the bandaged hood.

“This is a time for talking, not shooting,” the Marseillais rapped sharply. He glanced up as a shadow swept across the patio. Swooping low above the building, Antonin’s chopper was about to set down. “And a damned awkward time it is,” Jean-Paul muttered.

He looked across at the inner courtyard. “Sondermann, you’d better come along, too, until we get this whole mess sorted out.”

Bolan was already on his feet. Time for the showdown, yeah, just as he had expected. He flipped open the single button of his jacket for easier access to the shoulder rig, but from behind two hands closed in on his biceps and Smiler’s voice drawled: “Not so fast, Fritz. I always did think there was something creepy about you. Now I smell a rat — a rat with a not-quite-strong-enough German accent.”

Chuckling to himself, Raoul snared the Beretta from its armpit rig and the two of them marched Bolan indoors after the others. “Better for the boss he should be in no danger when he gets wise,” Smiler rasped.

Inside the villa they crowded into a wide, low-ceilinged room with huge windows looking out onto a terrace of black volcanic ash planted with orange and lemon trees. The branches of the trees thrashed as the helicopter settled down between the terrace and the landing stage.

Jean-Paul stood with his back to a vast marble chimneypiece. The remainder of the mafiosi stood awkwardly among the cane tables and chaise longues furnishing the room.

“Okay,” Jean-Paul said tightly. “Now let’s have it. One guy at a time. One idea at a time. And it better be good.” He turned to the Camorra boss’s son. “Scalese?”

Before the young man could reply, Otto Schuyler, the Dutchman, erupted into the room. “Just a minute!” he shouted. “Did I hear you call this guy Sondermann? Kurt Sondermann, from Hamburg?” He strode up to Bolan and stared into his face. “Well, you’re being taken for a ride. This ain’t Sondermann. I know the dude: I worked with him. There’s a resemblance, sure, but this ain’t him!”

There was a sudden silence in the room. Bolan tensed.

The grip on his biceps tightened. “Here’s where you get yours, asshole,” Smiler’s voice snarled gleefully in his ear.

Jean-Paul stepped forward. His eyes had a puzzled look. Obviously he was recalling Bolan’s help during the tunnel raid, his support in the fight with Lombardo that followed, the four hits he had carried out. He seized the lapels of the Executioner’s jacket.

“If you’re not Sondermann, who the hell are you? And you have one chance to come across with the truth….”

Jean-Paul paused, looking over his shoulder.

Footsteps clacked along the stone corridor leading from the room to the villa gardens. Dimitri Aleksandrevitch Antonin stood in the doorway, resplendent in the dress uniform of a colonel in the KGB, his shaven head gleaming in the dim light.

He took in the scene at a glance, frowned and then centered his gaze on the group before the chimneypiece and in particular on the tall, muscled guy held by Jean-Paul and his two henchmen.

This time his eyes widened in recognition.

“What the devil are you doing with that man here?” he shouted. “How did he get in? Don’t you have any sense at all, any of you? That’s the capitalist mercenary, Mack Bolan.”

“Bolan!” It was clear from Jean-Paul’s stupefied voice that the name meant plenty to him. He fell back a pace, half releasing his grip. As he opened his mouth to speak again, a long, shivering tinkle agitated all the china on the chimneypiece behind him.

The air in the room trembled. The ground shook.

There was a continuous, low rumbling roar that crescendoed in a distant explosion. It was followed by another.

The volcano on Stromboli was flexing its muscles.

For a moment there was silence in the big crowded room. Then everyone began to speak, some denouncing Bolan, others concerning Antonin, most of them scared by the eruption.

Coralie Sanguinetti ran in from the servant’s wing. “Papa,” she said breathlessly, “it’s spitting fire up there. There’s a huge cloud of black smoke, with sparks and flames underneath. Maria and Giancarlo and the others are frightened; they want to go back to the village.”

“Let them go...” Bolan had not noticed the industrialist before: he was sitting in a cane chair by the windows “...they should be familiar enough with Stromboli by now: no harm will come to them.”

The brunette stared at him for a moment, glanced briefly at the tableau that had Mack Bolan as its centerpiece and then left the room.

“Well, Bolan? If that is who you are?” Jean-Paul resumed as though there had been no interruption. “Like I said: I want an explanation.”

He stepped forward and struck the Executioner viciously across the face, backhand and forehand, with the full sweep of his arm. The blows were strong enough to rock the big guy’s head on his shoulders and leave livid welts marking his cheeks. But he remained rigid in the grip of J-P’s two goons, staring unflinchingly and expressionlessly at the gang boss.

“I don’t like people who try to make a fool out of me,” Jean-Paul growled. “That’s something you’re gonna regret for sure. But before you suffer, believe me, you’re gonna sing.”

At Bolan’s ear there was a shrill, infantile giggle. “He’s gonna sing for his suffer!” Raoul sniggered.