Sicilian Slaughter by Don Pendleton, Jim Peterson

like a bastard than ever when he looked at the girl. Despite her extremely well-developed body, she could not be more than twenty. When he took her he'd felt like a ruthless cradle-robber, except that he'd been taken as much as he took. And though he discovered this had not been her first time, it was hardly more than the second or third, she was so trembly and awkward, yet frantically eager. She sighed again in her sleep, totally satiated. Bolan returned to his watch.
    So far he had spotted six of them, four local, cheap gunsels, who like the others watching the road into town, spent most of their time imitating themselves. The other two, though, were real hardguys. While the gunsels strutted and preened, the hardmen prowled unobtrusively, or took up posts along the most likely approaches and rested in the shade, conserving themselves.
    And then each time the ferry came across the Strait of Messina, only two miles wide at its narrowest, from "Messina to Reggio, Bolan watched a dozen more hard-men and that many or more gunsels working through the crowd gathered to catch the ferry.
    Upon each docking, Bolan watched carefully; and the routine never varied. Not one of the gunmen ever gave a single glance toward the incoming vessel, nor paid any attention to the disembarking passengers.
    Now Bolan had his battle ops worked out. He went to the bed, lay down beside Alma, not awakening her, set his never-fail mental alarm, and slept until evening. When he woke, Alma sat on a stool beside a large crockery basin, bathing herself with a cloth. She smiled whitely as Bolan sat up, turned more to face him, naked and gleaming. Bolan grinned at her, and she rose and came to him.
    Afterwards, Bolan told her what he wanted her to do. He dropped the pose and used all the Italian at his command, considerable since he'd dealt so intimately with Mafia types for so long. He saw that the change in him frightened her, but she was so thoroughly taken with him, she questioned nothing he said.
    She got dressed and went out. Bolan went down to the crate, opened it, and in the gloom of the stable's back stalls, he dressed in his black combat garb. He wrapped the Beretta and .44 Automag in waterproofing, as well as extra ammo clips. He started to take along two frags, then put them back. The dockside became thickly crowded and all a grenade would do was take down innocents.
    Mack slipped Ms peasant disguise back on, closed the crate, went out and met Alma as she returned. He helped her harness the team to the wagon, then took the paint can and brush she had bought and climbed up into the wagon. He addressed the crate to himself, MAGO BOEMO, The Bohemian Magician,
will call,
at the office of a freight company Alma told him had offices in Catania. For a moment, Bolan wryly considered addressing the crate to himself as
Il Boia: The Executioner.
But he had survived so far in his war against the Mafia because he refused to underestimate his enemy, no matter how many of them had fallen under his guns and grenades, his blitzing attacks across the U.S. and parts of Europe.
    While Alma went inside to pay the stableman, Bolan opened one of the milk cans and dropped a thousand dollars in Mafia money down into the can, then sealed it tightly. When she returned, he made her go through the instructions again.
    She was to haul the crate to the dock, pre-pay its passage to Messina on the ferry, then by truck to Catania. She was to sling in an appropriate
puntale
or
"bustarella"
— tip, bribe, to insure the magician's box got preferential treatment.
    Alma returned thirty minutes later with the manifest, and Bolan lied to her: "I have to see some men in the city. I'll be back before eleven." He took her elbows and held them tightly. "Listen to me. Listen exactly. Whatever you do, stay-away-from-the-truck. Understand?
Do not touch the truck."
    Bolan knew that by this time Astio had sent scouts up the roads leading from Reggio, and by now they had found and booby-trapped