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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.