Sicilian Slaughter by Don Pendleton, Jim Peterson Read Free Book Online

"Sit down."
    He noticed she wore a pants suit. Probably had legs as bad as her face, tits the whole show.
    "When did you come aboard?"
    "While they loaded your crate.
Machinery,
I believe it was stenciled."
    Mack Bolan did not know for sure, quite yet, positively, but he believed he'd have to kill this girl. Her nose was much too long. He answered. "That's right. Machinery."
    "What business are you in?"
    "Well, ah, various. Actually, salvage and demolition are my main specialties."
    "Of what?"
    Mack knew then. He would have to kill her. She played it too clever. Possibly . . . hell,
probably
she had already been down into the cargo hold with a prybar.
    "Is there any booze aboard?" Mack asked, as though the thought had just occurred to him.
    "Anything you wish," the girl said, smiling. She had good teeth. "Not limited to drinks, I might add."
    "So nice to know. If the mood strikes me, dear. What's your name?"
    "Annabelle."
    "Annabelle, who, what?"
    "Just Annabelle."
    "Okay, Annabelle no last name, I'll take a Bloody Mary and go very light on the hot."
    "Right on, Mr. Bo-oh-orzi."
    Well, The Executioner thought, that's a death warrant. My passport and visas and documents and the few travelers' checks he'd bought, all in the name Mike Borzi; but she damned near called me Bolan. And it took her too long to build the drink.
    Bolan winked, faked a sip, reached up and touched, found a hard unyielding silicone stiffness and dropped his hand. She had dropped to her knees beside him, hand going to his belt the moment Mack touched her. He acted as though he understood nothing, unlatched his lap strap and rose to his feet and shoved past her.
    In the cockpit Teaf lazed back in his seat, the aircraft on flight director, a highly sophisticated autopilot. Bolan shot a look at the altimeter. It showed FL 23: Flight Level 23,000 feet. He glanced past the pilot and looked out the window.
    Bolan was not a pilot, though he had flown many hours in Nam and in the Army, in fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. He also had phenomenal eyesight and depth perception. He was not sure they were actually 23,000 feet above the ocean, but knew the airplane was tremendously high.
    Laconically, Bolan said, "Christ, we're so high it looks like a calm lake down there."
    Teaf roused himself, reached forward, rapped the altimeter sharply, and the big marker moved some forty feet higher. Teaf then twisted the knob on the instrument and set the tiny window marker on the left side of the altimeter to read 29.92 inches mercury, the standard setting for over-ocean flights so all aircraft had the same altimeter reading and would, theoretically, if conforming to assigned altitudes, avoid mid-air collisions.
    "We're a little high," Teaf said, but did nothing. The extra forty feet did not seem to bother him.
    "What about oxygen?" Mack Bolan/Borzi asked.
    "Plane's pressurized, sir. No sweat."
    "What if something busts open?"
    Condescendingly, expert explaining to frightened novice, Teaf said, "Still no sweat. Get a might cold before we got down to lower altitude, but we have portable ox-bottles all over the ship. The green ones, stashed in niches, with a mask. Notice them?"
    "Yeah, but what the hell, man. Like it
goes,
I mean all of a sudden?"
    "You mean explosive decompression?" Teaf turned in his seat and grinned at Mack. "No sweat. If you can't reach an ox-bottle soon enough, you might hypoxia, oxygen starvation, and pass out."
    Teaf pointed vaguely at the instrument. "But that would show up here instantly and I'd put her down on the deck. Like I said, Mr. Borzi, no sweat."
    "Unless I happened to be standing next to a door or window that went, huh?"
    With obvious and decided discomfort, Teaf sat up straight in his seat. He did not answer. He took the bizjet off flight director and began flying manually.
    Bolan/Borzi jerked up the armrest of the right side pilot seat and sat down sideways so he could look directly at Teaf. Deliberately, he thumbed the pilot in the