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

ribs.
    "I don't remember an answer, ace."
    Evidently knowing that both silence and lies had become worthless, Teaf shrugged, sighed, and said, "Okay, sure, at this altitude we are pressurized for eight thousand feet while flying at twenty-three thousand. If we had an explosive decompression — extremely unlikely, mind you! — then anything close to the leak would go."
    "You mean
ME?"
Bolan/Borzi shouted.
    "Oh, no, sir, unless a big, I mean
big hole.
Like a window or door. The chances of that are so remote, hell, I'd give you million to one odds."
    "That's a bet," Bolan said, getting to his feet.
    "What?"
    Bolan did not answer. He returned to the cabin from the cockpit, and as he expected four of the aft seats had been lowered so they made a wide but not too long bed. Immaculately clean, smooth, pale blue silk sheets had been laid across the lowered bed-made seats. Anna-belle lay naked on the pale blue.
    Bitterly, The Executioner smiled.
    He stood at the forward end of the cabin, just outside the cockpit, and called to Annabelle, "Stand up so I can see you. Don't hide such beauty!"
    She rose to her knees, incredible bosoms pointed like twin gunmounts straight at Bolan. "I can't stand up. The overhead's too low."
    "That's fine. That's beautiful."
    She smiled with a brittle, professional brilliance.
    "What did you put in my drink, darlin'?" Mack said, "something to kill me, or only knockout drops?"
    "What?"
    "No, darlin', that's
my
question. What?"
    For a moment Annabelle stood there on her knees, totally defiant. Without a word uttered she told Mack Bolan:
    "I am one of them. I obey the rule. Total silence."
    Bolan whipped the pistol from under his left arm, aimed past Annabelle, fired three shots so fast the sounds came as a single blend of noise.
    The window behind her naked body vanished, explosively.
    Bolan dived sideways to his right, landing on his knees, wrapping his strong long arms around the back of the seat, feeling the decompression whistle past him, carrying with it papers, dust, noise, seat cushions, pillows, seat covers, a candy wrapper, smoke and ashes and cigarette butts, and sucking Annabelle directly into the small window.
    Bolan heard her screams.
    Maybe if she had been standing upright instead of on her knees it would have made a difference.
    As it was, the window lay directly behind her and she went out head first, screeching, stuck for a fraction of an instant, then the window sucked her through — the vast bosom and wide back, then her wide hips slowing movement for another fraction, and then she was gone. The silken blue sheets had vanished. Her clothing, underwear, stockings, shoes.
    She might never have existed, ever.
    Bolan clamped an emergency oxygen bottle on his face and walked into the cockpit, slipping the pistol out of sight. He sat down in the right seat and held out his open palm.
    Teaf pulled his ox-mask from his face long enough to shout, "What the hell, Borzi?"
    "You owe me a dollar. Pay up!"

7
Eddie The Champ
    I am a
man,
Eddie Campanaro thought, without doing a thing to prove his manhood.
    Stolidly, he stood, thick and wide, swarthy, a onetime United States Marine who'd earned a Bronze Star in Korea.
    So, okay, he was getting along, close to forty. No matter. House captain, that was his job. He ran the whole friggin' show.
No
sumbitch got past the door of Don Cafu's pad without Eddie The Champ's okay, the old Mark I eyeball inspection. Day, night, frig it. Four o'clock in the morning, zero four hundred hours, they used to call it in the Crotch.
    That's one of the things Eddie The Champ remembered most vividly about the Marine Corps. Salty bunch of dudes,
men,
but with a capacity to laugh at themselves: USMC, Uncle Sam's Moldy Crotch. The outcasts. Hadn't Cinch himself said so, Truman. Commander In Chief.
    That's what Eddie The Champ remembered, after twenty years. Champ of what? Okay, he had hands. Golden Gloves. A winner. Then the dough. Seventeen pro fights, then six main events. He