Sunscream

The second coughing explosion. A click of the bolt, the glint of a cartridge case, slam the last round in and at once — now!— fire for the third time.

They both saw it — Raoul via the Zeiss prisms, Bolan through the Balvar scope. Telder fell to the back of the platform, his chair flung aside, a scarlet patch already blooming horribly across the front of his pale jacket. He hit the wall and slid to the floor.

Raoul was giggling. Bolan scooped up the three ejected shell cases and tossed them onto the roofs below. Seconds later he was lashing the rope around the rifle, complete this time with sniperscope and empty magazine, using the leather strap to tie on the binoculars. He lowered the gun into the shaft and began playing out the rope.

When three sharp tugs told him that the janitor had safely received the rifle, he let go the remainder of the coil and allowed it to snake down the tube.

While Raoul, still gri

In the distance, police whistles shrilled. Soon afterward, Bolan heard the crescendo warble of approaching patrol cars and the siren of an ambulance racing to the assembly hall. He hurried back toward the roof and the ladder.

By the time armored-truck details appeared in the courtyard below, Bolan and the mobster were sitting in the painter’s cradle, eating their sandwiches and sharing the wine from the plastic bottle.

13

For Mack Bolan it was one hell of a situation. Correction: two separate hells.

For starters, Bolan was fighting, or pretending to fight, on the side of the savages. And second, instead of riding the crest of that usual one-man wave, the warrior’s own plan forced him to lie low, working in the dark, using the plotters’ own underhand techniques in order to force them to destroy each other.

It was the only way that he could be sure to provoke a rift in the pla

This time the frontal assault, the elimination of enemy key men that Bolan favored, would be useless: there would always be others to take their places. No, the Soviet conspirators had to see the Mafia fighting family against family; they must be made to see the alliance as totally unstable... and therefore unreliable. Only then would they withdraw their support.

And, yeah, the Executioner was the only man who could do it.

From his position of trust he had to engineer a series of deceits and apparent treacheries that would split the syndicate apart like an overripe melon.

Okay, that position was now well established. After the disappearance of three men and the public murder of a fourth, Bolan in his role of the German hit man was well in with the high command of the Riviera Mafia.

But it was only now that the really hard part began.

And there were dangers.

The ever-present threat of a confrontation with Antonin.

The fact that now, as an accepted man in the organization, Bolan would be expected to take part in group operations, in crimes that would be difficult to avoid without blowing his cover or faking them as he had done with Telder.

The Telder operation had been impressive: it was Raoul’s reluctantly admiring report, and the newspaper accounts of this and the other three disappearances, that had finally raised Bolan’s stock ace high in Jean-Paul’s book.

The only tough spot, Bolan reflected, was choosing the moment when Raoul’s attention was distracted so that he never got wise to the fact that the magazine Bolan slammed into the rifle wasn’t the same one that the mobster himself had loaded.

The clip Bolan had shoved in — hidden until then in his pants pocket — carried only one live round and two blanks.

The live round shattered the glass roof of the assembly hall, all right. But it wasn’t, as Bolan had said, to minimize the danger of deflection and make it easy for the next two: it was to tip off Telder that the operation was all systems go and alert his audience that something dramatic was on the way.

All the Interpol man had to do then, once he heard the distant reports of the second and third shot, was hurl himself backward against the wall behind the platform and press the gelatin ball concealed inside his jacket that so convincingly covered his chest with “blood.”

The specially prepared ambulance would then rocket up to the school complex and whip the “body” away before professional medics could make it and blow the plan.

But apart from reinforcing his image as an ace contract artist, all this did was get Bolan off the hook for a while.

His score was zero so far on the seeds-of-discontent chart; he was not even sure what approach to take, what kind of discord to sow. And time was vitally short. Because of the attack on La Rocaille and the need for the expedition to Corsica, Antonin had agreed to wait a little longer for the final response, when the plan would be wrapped up for better or worse. But the Executioner had to start operating in a matter of days — perhaps even hours — if his own plan was to succeed.

What plan, Bolan thought wryly. It would be easier if he had one.

It was the day after Telder’s “murder,” and now Bolan sat above the sea in the Jaguar XJS he had been awarded as a bonus after that successful coup and pondered the problem. He was due to report at Jean-Paul’s house, along with Smiler, Raoul, Bertrand, Delacroix and half a dozen other hoods in the early evening. Something had to be worked out — even if it was only in general terms — before then.

It was hot inside the low-slung car. The afternoon sunlight was glaring and fierce.

Mentally Bolan ran over the unrelated points he had filed away as potentially useful.

Jean-Paul was no birdbrain but he was an autocrat: he didn’t go for anyone except himself making the decisions — and he could lose his cool if they did. The mobster from Marseilles was not one hundred percent certain that he could count on unstinting loyalty when the guy in question was the Corsican boss, Ancarani.

Ancarani himself, together with Lombardo, the capo who ran Toulon, and the Italian Scalese seemed slightly dubious of the KGB offer.

Smiler was an enemy, and would remain one, because Bolan had humbled him in front of his own men.

Raoul’s sadism was likely to fog his judgment in a critical situation.

Coralie Sanguinetti blew hot and cold — but Bolan’s gut reaction was that she would be on his side if she didn’t regard him as a professional killer. And even believing that, she had thought enough of him to sense his mistrust of Antonin and fabricate an excuse to keep him out of the Russian’s way.

Coralie was therefore likely to view any Russian participation — even indirectly — in her father’s business with disfavor.

Could any of these disparate factors, proven and unproven, be threaded together strongly enough to fashion a cord? A cord that could be made into a noose?

Chain, Bolan thought, was a better image. A chain is really as strong as its weakest link, and there were weak links here.

The obvious one was the Ancarani-Scalese-Lombardo trio. Could their doubts be linked with Smiler’s hostility and the temperamental idiosyncracies of Raoul and J-P himself in such a fashion that they threatened the balance of the coalition?

Bolan thought maybe they could.

But he would, after all, flip the problem back into the Pending tray until the meeting with the mobsters was through. Could be a more positive pointer would emerge there.