Point Blank

Mafia Massacre

Four deputy U.S. marshals are slaughtered along with the witness they’re guarding, a former Mafia member set to testify in New York. When it’s revealed the kill order came from a powerful Calabria crime family, Mack Bolan decides it’s time to stop the bloodshed at its source.

After arriving in Italy, Bolan learns trouble has already begun. Killing the witness is not enough; the Mafia is intent on murdering his entire family, including women and children. With local law enforcement on the Mafia’s payroll and spies everywhere, infiltrating the family is nearly impossible...especially as Bolan has been marked for death. Dodging bullets at every turn, he’s got to maximize every strike. The Mafia may have home advantage, but the Executioner won’t stop until he blows their house down.

“My brother is dead. He brought shame on all of us.”

“And you’re being punished for it,” Bolan told the woman. He knew the ground rules of a classic vendetta. No survivors could be tolerated.

“My mother, aunts and uncles, cousins. Everyone. Gianni will not rest while any of us are alive.”

“Gianni Magolino?”

She was staring at him now, eyes narrowed. “You know of him?”

Bolan rolled the dice. “I’m here because of him…because he killed your brother.”

“I asked you if you are polizia,” she accused him.

“And I’m not,” Bolan assured her.

“What, then?”

“Someone who solves problems when the law breaks down.”

Point Blank

Don Pendleton

Crime leaves a trail like a water beetle;

Like a snail it leaves its shine;

Like a horse-mango it leaves its reek.

—Malayan proverb

I’m following a trail to those responsible for countless crimes.

The reek will be the smell of cleansing fire.

—Mack Bolan

For Prosecuting Magistrate Antonio Scopelliti

Assassinated by the mafia on August 9, 1991

THE

LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

Dedication

The Mack Bolan Legend

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Saturday—Shelter Island, New York

Rinaldo Natale felt lucky, and why shouldn’t he? After twenty-odd years of the high life, doing whatever he wanted and thumbing his nose at the law, he’d dodged a guaranteed life sentence by rolling over on his longtime friends and partners. Granted, turning into an informant had its drawbacks, first and foremost being the automatic death penalty it carried. The American agents swore they could protect him, but Natale had his doubts. He’d seen enough informants killed at home, together with their families and friends, to know that no one, anywhere, was absolutely safe.

The good news was that Natale loved no one, except for himself. His wife was dead, they’d had no children and his mistress was already warming someone else’s bed. As for blood relatives, they had disowned Natale when he’d made the choice to save himself and let the syndicate he’d served his entire adult life go to hell. They’d be among the first to kill him, given half a chance.

So much for family values.

The other good news was the safe house his protectors from the U.S. Marshals Service had selected for him. Shelter Island—how he loved the very name! One-third of the island was a virgin wilderness, the Mashomack Preserve. The year-round population was around twenty-five hundred people, many of whom golfed at the island’s two country clubs or cruised around on their sailboats.

If anyone ventured into Smith Cove, on the island’s south shore, they might speculate on who’d rented the rambling shorefront home abutting Mashomack Preserve. If they asked around, all they’d learn was that the place had been transformed into a posh executive’s retreat.

Nonsense, of course, but they’d accept the explanation.

This week, four U.S. Marshals from the Witness Security Program were staying with Natale. They weren’t exactly butlers, but they kept Natale fed and reasonably satisfied—although they’d drawn the line at renting him a woman.

He was planning to discuss that request once again this evening, over his veal parmigiana, wild mushrooms stuffed with ricotta, and red onions roasted under salt. If they refused again, Natale thought he might suggest obtaining several prostitutes, so they could share.

Something to think about.

Natale stepped out of the master bedroom’s spacious shower and immediately felt that something in the house was...different. He listened for the television in the living room and heard the same news channel the marshals always listened to, unless there was a game on ESPN.

The television...but no voices.

Hastily, Natale dressed, sorry he wasn’t allowed to possess any weapons other than the kitchen cutlery. His guards were armed, of course—one pistol each, together with a shotgun and an Uzi submachine gun—but that only helped Natale if they were alive and well when trouble came to call.

Speaking of calling, he could shout to his protectors, find out why they’d gone so deathly still, but some sixth sense advised him not to make a sound.

Should he investigate or flee? Escape meant knocking out a bedroom window screen or creeping through the house until he reached an exit. Either way, if trackers had located him, he’d be at risk.

But staying where he was might mean certain death.

Just nerves, Natale told himself. Not buying it, he reached for the doorknob.

* * *

DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL Leo Torbett didn’t usually care for babysitting duty, but covering Rinaldo Natale on the run-up to his trial appearance had turned into a fairly cushy gig. Torbett enjoyed first-rate Italian food—retrieved by car from Nonna’s Trattoria in downtown Shelter Island—and he couldn’t gripe about the ocean view. He didn’t like the forest looming on the east side of the house, but there was nothing he could do about it, other than remaining on alert.

Torbett and his three men slept in shifts. At least two men were awake at all times, with their weapons ready. He also had a lookout at the ferry dock, which was supposedly the only way to reach the island.

So, sure, it made him nervous when a delivery truck pulled up out front, late afternoon, when he wasn’t expecting a delivery.

“Look sharp, everybody,” Torbett ordered, releasing the thumb-break catch on his Glock 22’s high ride holster.

Natale was in the shower, sprucing up for dinner, but they didn’t need to warn him yet. The delivery could be legitimate. Somebody from headquarters might have simply failed to call ahead, as protocol required. Another possibility was that the driver had the wrong address. It happened.

Or...

“Ed, kill the TV. Gary, get the door,” Torbett said as he watched the delivery truck through one of two broad windows.

Ed Mulrooney switched the television off, while Gary Schuman crossed the living room in long strides, one hand on his Glock. He stooped a bit to watch the driveway through the peephole. “Getting out now, with a package,” he announced.

Torbett could see the driver coming up the front walk and double-checking the address against the parcel he was carrying. He also had one of those pads that registered electronic signatures.

Why would headquarters pay a courier instead of sending someone from the Manhattan office? Torbett was considering that question when the driver seemed to stumble on the walkway’s paving stones. The man got his balance back and pitched the parcel underhand, directly toward the window where Torbett stood.

He tried to shout “Watch out!” but it was already too late. The parcel detonated with a thunderclap that blew the picture window inward, driving shards of broken glass into his face.

* * *

NATALE HEARD THE blast and doubled back into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Damn! No lock! He ran toward the en suite bathroom. Hiding there was futile, but a window was set into the wall above the bathtub that might be large enough for him to squeeze through if he sucked in his gut and was willing to give up some skin.

Hell, yes, when the alternative was death.

Behind him, gunfire crackled, and he heard a man cry out in mortal pain. One of his watchdogs, or a member of the hit team?

In any case, it was clear the feds couldn’t protect him. He was bailing out or meant to give it his best shot, at least. If he could make it to the woods, Natale thought he just might have a chance.

He cranked the bathroom window open wide, then punched its screen out with a quick one-two that left his knuckles raw. The next part would be difficult—crawling up and through the narrow window.

The shooting stopped. Footsteps approached his bedroom door, and someone opened it.

Not a marshal.

Standing in the bathtub, bitterly embarrassed that it had to end this way, Natale watched two men approach with compact submachine guns in their hands. He didn’t recognize them. Why in hell should he?

“This is how a traitor dies,” the taller man told him.

“No shit?” Natale sneered at them and rushed the guns, howling, before they opened up and blew him back into the bathtub. Into darkness everlasting, stained with crimson.

Chapter 1

Tuesday—Catanzaro, Italy

Catanzaro is known for its “three Vs”—Saint Vitaliano, its patron saint; velvet and vento, the wind constantly blowing inland from the Ionian Sea. The capital of Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, teems with tourists in the summer months.

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, had not come to shop for velvet or idle on the beach. He was hunting for members of Calabria’s native crime family, the ’Ndrangheta.

A mainland version of Sicily’s Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta was equally venal and vicious, competing for its share of Italy’s underground economy with the Neapolitan Camorra and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita—the “United Sacred Crown.” Between them, Italy’s thriving syndicates had corrupted government, laundered money and murdered innocents.

None of which was Bolan’s problem at the moment.

He was in Calabria, driving a rented Alfa Romeo Giulietta loaded with illegal weapons, because the ’Ndrangheta had reached across the Atlantic to the United States. Bolan intended to discourage that by any means required and drive the lesson home emphatically enough that it required no repetition.

He was a realist, of course. Bolan harbored no illusions that he could eradicate the ’Ndrangheta, any more than he could wipe out evil from the world at large. What he could do—and would do—was treat the ’Ndrangheta to a dose of cleansing fire and make its members think twice about trying to infest America.

He had flown into Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci– Fiumicino Airport, then shuttled down to Lamezia Terme International, located west of Catanzaro. From there, it was an easy drive into the capital and his appointment with an old auto mechanic who earned more money retailing weapons to the highest bidder than he ever had from tuning engines or relining brakes.

Bolan traveled with a bankroll he’d appropriated from the scavengers who made a mockery of civilized society. He could have tapped the till at Stony Man before he left the States, but robbing thieves and murderers and using their blood money against others like them held a strong appeal for Bolan.

Two birds, one stone.

Furio kept an arsenal on hand in his auto body shop for customers who needed hardware in a hurry without getting tangled in legal red tape. Bolan went for native brands, starting with a Beretta ARX-160 assault rifle chambered in 5.56 mm NATO, equipped with a folding stock, a Qioptiq VIPIR-2 thermal sight and a single-shot GLX160 grenade launcher. He backed that up with a Spectre M4 submachine gun and a Beretta 93R selective-fire pistol—both no longer in production but still deadly. Toss in spare magazines and ammunition, a dozen OD/82-SE fragmentation grenades, a fast-draw shoulder rig for the 93R, suppressors for the pistol and the Spectre, plus an ebony-handled switchblade stiletto sharpened to a razor’s edge, and he was good to go.

Dressed to kill.

His next stop, as the sun set, was on Villa Fratelli Pllutino, where he planned to give some ’Ndrangheta members a preview of hell on Earth.

* * *

“THERE IS NO point in pleading for your life,” Aldo Adamo declared.

“Pleading? Piece of shit!” the woman spat at him. “I plead for nothing.”

“So, defiant to the end. At least you’re not a coward, like your brother. He died whimpering.”

“You lie!”

“I planned to make a video of his last moments, for your education, but we had to reconsider. Customs and the like. You understand.”

“I understand what will become of you, Aldo, when Gianni hears what you have done to me.”

Adamo laughed at that. “You’re such a fool. Who do you think gave me the order?”

Blinking back at him, she hesitated, then replied, “I don’t believe you.”

“Foolish, as I said. Your family is tainted by his treachery. How could Gianni ever trust you—any of you—after the way Rinaldo betrayed him?”

Tears, the first he’d seen from her, shone on the woman’s cheeks. “I’m not responsible for his mistakes,” she said, her voice subdued now.

“No?” Adamo shrugged. “Perhaps not. But you know the rules. You’ve grown up in the ’ndrina tradition. No betrayal can be tolerated. No risk of a personal vendetta may be overlooked. In your position, you could do more damage to the family than your pentito brother.”

“I would never—”

“No, you won’t,” Adamo said. “It’s my job to make sure of that.”

It pleased him to watch as the last vestige of hope drained from her eyes. Her face, although still attractive, had a hollow look about it. She realized her time was running out, and there was nothing she could do or say to help herself.

Too bad, Adamo thought. Perhaps he should have given her some hope and let her try to please him, as she had been pleasing his godfather for the past five years. But no, as the family’s second in command, he had to carry out the orders he received. It was permissible for him to gloat at the whore’s fall from grace, but he would go no further.

Stirring up Gianni Magolino’s wrath at such a time might have dire results, even for him.

Adamo thought she was finished speaking, all her words exhausted, when she asked him, in a small voice, “What about my parents? And my brother?”

“That is for Gianni to decide,” he answered. “Personally, in a case of treason, I prefer to wipe out root and branch.”

She sobbed. “Celino is only a child, ten years old.”

“Old enough to remember. I killed my first man at age twelve,” Adamo said and smiled at the sweet memory.

She glowered at him through a sheen of tears. “Spare them,” she said, “and I will do whatever you desire. I’ve seen the way you watch me when Gianni’s back is turned.”

Adamo saw the trap and skirted it. “Such vanity,” he said, sneering. “Of course, I cannot blame you, trying to employ your only talent, but it’s wasted here.”

“Is it?” She almost smiled now. “Was I wrong about you? Do you prefer men after all?”

She was laughing at him when Adamo slapped her, pitched her from the metal folding chair she occupied and sent her sprawling to the floor. She could not break her fall, hands tied behind her as they were, and when she stared up at him, he was pleased to see blood at the corner of her mouth.

Reaching down, Adamo clutched one of the woman’s arms and hauled her to her feet, ignoring her sharp gasp of pain as he twisted her elbow and shoulder. Planted firmly on her feet once more, she tried to kick him, but he turned aside and slammed a fist into her face. She dropped again, weeping. This time, Adamo left her on the floor.

He pressed a button on the intercom atop his desk, and three of his men entered, barely glancing at the fallen woman while they waited for instructions. “Take her to the pier,” Adamo said. “I have the Mare Strega waiting for you. Go out a mile or two and feed her to the fishes, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” one of them said, the others standing mute on either side of him.

Two of them picked the woman up as if she weighed nothing, supporting her between them as they left Adamo’s office, with the third man bringing up the rear. Still seething from the insult she had hurled at him, Adamo took some consolation from the fact that he would never see her face or hear her mocking voice again.

“Sleep with the fishes,” he advised her fading memory and gladly turned his mind to other things.

* * *

BOLAN WAS PROCEEDING CAUTIOUSLY. The modest block of offices he was looking for, on Via Nuova, listed Aldo Adamo among its tenants. Ranked as number two in the major companies of the ’Ndrangheta, Adamo would make a decent target for the start of Bolan’s blitz. With one stroke, Bolan would send a message, letting every member of the rotten family know that nobody was safe.

Psywar. Or, as the Pentagon was pleased to call it lately, shock and awe. It all came down to killing with a purpose.

Some things never change.

He looped around curving one-way streets to catch Vialle dei Normanni, circling north again to pick up Via Nuova southbound. Streets in Catanzaro were a winding maze, where the traffic alternately surged and stalled. Some drivers kept the pedal down regardless, blaring their horns at anyone who tried to drive the speed limit, while others poked along, searching for addresses they never seemed to find. Trucks were the wild card, belching diesel smoke and straddling lanes or blocking traffic to unload their cargo as the spirit moved them.

Bolan took it all in stride. He had no deadline for his drop-in on Adamo, and he wasn’t even sure the mobster would be there when he arrived, but either way, the Executioner would leave a message for the ’Ndrangheta in a language its goons could understand.

Although the ’Ndrangheta owned the building he was headed for, other tenants could be in the line of fire—most of them innocent—if things got out of hand. Bolan didn’t plan on leveling the place or hosing it with automatic fire, but he thought it would be nice to stop and introduce himself, after a fashion, to the men who thought they owned the city.

The Executioner’s present life had started with a one-man war against the likes of Catanzaro’s parasites—bloodsuckers who infected everyone and everything they touched. Negotiation was impossible with ticks, lice, gangsters—choose your vermin. Bolan couldn’t purge the plague forever, as researchers claimed they’d done with smallpox, but he could provide a dose of topical relief and give the authorities—the decent, honest ones—a chance to do their jobs.

And if the scourge returned, if Bolan survived that long, he could return and do it all again.

Bolan rolled along the snaky path of Via Nuova, following a bus that smelled more like a garbage truck, until he spied the address he was looking for. A side street let him duck through a strip mall’s parking lot and double back to find a parking space that let him watch the building. Bolan checked out security and studied nearby pedestrians for any sign that they were cops or mobsters.

Both posed problems for him, one being a target, whereas the other was an obstacle. At the beginning of his lonely war, Bolan had vowed he would never kill a cop, regardless of the circumstances. Plainclothes detectives were a headache because they might shoot first without announcing who they were, and Bolan didn’t want to take a chance on dropping one of them by accident.

But the building’s entrance was clear—as far as he could see—until three no-neck types emerged, marching a woman toward the street. She sagged between them, and they held her up by her arms, which seemed to be secured behind her back. As Bolan watched, a car pulled up to meet the four, and they deposited their captive in the backseat before climbing in to sandwich her and close the doors.

Game change.

As the sedan rolled out, Bolan gave it a block, then started following.

Why not? If he could sting the ’Ndrangheta with a rescue operation, it was worth a shot.

Besides, he’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress.

* * *

“WHERE ARE WE taking her?” asked Dino Terranova, in the driver’s seat.

“The boat,” Fausto Cortale said. “She’s going for a swim.”

“Too bad,” Ruggiero Aiello chimed in. “Seems like a waste.”

Cortale grunted in response. He had a date lined up for later in the evening, and he did not want to dawdle with their prisoner. Load her aboard the Mare Strega, cruise a few miles out to sea and leave her with a bullet in her head, maybe a gym bag filled with scrap iron tied around her ankles. By the time she floated up again, if ever, there’d be next to nothing left for lab analysis.

And if she was identified someday, so what? A boss’s mistress disappeared and later turned up dead. Who cared? By then, her family would be extinct and life would have returned to normal, as it was before her brother had betrayed the family.

Knowing who had wiped out the Natale clan was one thing; proving it was something else entirely. It was good for word to get around. Making examples was the best way to prevent prospective rats from talking out of turn.

Still, now that he was sitting close to her, their thighs pressing together....

“It’s a waste, all right,” Gitano Malara echoed, resting one of his hands on the prisoner’s other leg. “We ought to stop somewhere and have a little party, eh?”

“You don’t mind, do you, bella?” Terranova asked, angling for a quick look in the rearview mirror.

“She don’t mind,” Aiello said. “Lets her live a little longer anyway.”

“That’s right,” Malara said. “I bet she’d be real grateful.”

“Have you seen a mirror lately?” Cortale asked him.

“Hey!”

But it was getting to him, sitting close to her and hearing all the bawdy talk, knowing they could take her anywhere they wanted, make her do anything, as long as she still wound up feeding fish. Aldo would never know the difference if Cortale swore them all to silence under pain of death.

They wouldn’t even have to deviate from Aldo’s plan. The boat was waiting for them. Once they had put out to sea, there would be nothing, no one, to distract them.

Trying to keep it casual, he let his left hand come to rest on her right thigh. She tried to squirm away from him, but there was nowhere she could go, trapped with Malara to her left. She made a whiny noise but couldn’t even push his hand away because hers were tied behind her back.

The possibilities aroused Cortale, inflaming him.

“Hey, Fausto.” Terranova’s voice cut through his steamy thoughts. “I think we got a tail.”

“The hell you mean, a tail?”

“Just what I said. I’ve had an eye on this one Alfa, trailing us since we left Aldo’s.”

They were rolling southbound, toward the coast, along Viale degli Angioini, and although the flow of cars was still substantial, Cortale knew they’d lost a fair number of the vehicles that had surrounded them as they were leaving Catanzaro.

“We do something, you’d better be damn sure,” he cautioned Terranova. “It comes down to you.”

“I’m sure,” Terranova replied.

“All right, then. Lead him off on Via Solferino when you get there, and we’ll find a place to take him.”

Cortale felt his rutting mood go sour, changing into something else—a killing frame of mind. And that wasn’t so strange. Weren’t sex and death closely related, after all?

* * *

BOLAN HAD NO idea where the mobsters were taking their prisoner, whether their destination lay somewhere in the open countryside south of Catanzaro, or if they were on their way to the coast. Either option offered places to dispose of a body—a shallow grave in some lonely field or a burial at sea. He was gambling that they wouldn’t kill her in the car and risk soiling their clothes or the upholstery, but even that could not be guaranteed.

She could be dead already, maybe finished off with a garrote, as many Old World killers still preferred to do when it was feasible. No noise, no mess to speak of if you did it properly. There was a chance he couldn’t save the lady—that he might only be able to avenge her—but he kept betting that she’d be easier to handle while alive, up to the moment when they’d reached her final destination.

Traffic was thinning as they pulled away from Catanzaro, with commuters peeling off toward their suburban homes, replaced by others on their way down to the seashore. Bolan hung back in the wake of the sedan, knowing they might have spotted him but hoping otherwise. If he was burned, they’d done nothing so far to indicate as much, but he could only wait and see.

When the ’Ndrangheta driver started signaling a left turn just beyond a road sign for the village of Le Croci, Bolan kept his signal off and slowed down to let a van slide in between his Alfa and the car he was pursuing—just a little twist to calm suspicion if the hit team thought they had a tail. He’d follow them, but he didn’t want to tip them off.

Bolan made his turn at the last minute, ignored a bleating horn behind him, and began to track his target on the winding two-lane road. No other vehicles were between them now. He let the mob car lead him by four hundred yards but still knew he was clearly visible behind them if they bothered looking back.

The trick was to keep from spooking them but still be quick enough to intervene when they reached their destination and prepared to dispose of their prisoner. Hanging back a quarter of a mile delayed Bolan’s reaction time, but he’d alert his adversaries in a heartbeat if he roared up on their bumper when they’d stopped to drag the lady from their car. Moving too soon could get her killed. Likewise, moving too late could have the same result.

The land around them now was mostly open, with large homes on multiple acres on the southern side. Beyond the houses, he glimpsed orchards, whereas the fields across the road stood fallow and awaiting cultivation. Not the best place for a firefight, but he was grateful for the open space and scarcity of innocents. If his intended targets led him to a better killing ground, he’d thank them for it.

When the smoke cleared.

And the lady? Bolan hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d seen her and decided he would help her if he could. Beyond that, once he’d freed her from captivity, she could decide what happened next—up to a point. He wasn’t anybody’s nursemaid, and he had no time to care for the woman. If he could find someone reliable to take her off his hands, he’d go with that.

If not...well, he could put her on a plane to anywhere outside Calabria, give her a head start at the very least. It was a better chance than anything awaiting her right now.

Speeding up a little, Bolan reached inside his jacket, checking the Beretta in its quick-draw holster. It was ready, as was he.

The game was on in earnest now. And there was going to be blood.