"All right," he snarled, "so what's it gonna be?"
* * *
"Your head," Mack Bolan told him simply.
"Yeah?"
There was a tremor in the mafioso's voice, but he stood firm, pressing his pistol tightly against Eritrea's skull.
"Suppose I give you this one and we call it even, eh?"
"No sale."
"Who's picking up the tab on this?"
"I've done a lot of business with your family," the soldier said. "Let's call it interest due."
The capo frowned, and he was looking for an answer in the middle of the maze when Dave Eritrea came out with it.
"Holy savior. Bolan."
Marinello shook his hostage violently.
"Cut out that shit," he growled. "You nuts, or what?"
But he turned to the warrior, and his cold eyes narrowed, searching Bolan's face. It was a face that neither he nor Dave Eritrea had ever seen before, and yet...
There might be something there, around the graveyard eyes...
The recognition hit him like a fist above the heart. Marinello lurched backward, dragging his human shield along for the ride.
"You're dead," he told the man in black.
"That's two of us, I guess."
The sweat on Marinello's brow glistened in the light.
"You took the old man out."
Bolan nodded. "Sorry you weren't there to see it."
"So am I. We could have saved some time."
"No time like the present, Ernie."
Marinello swallowed hard, searching for his voice and finally dredging it up from somewhere in his bowels.
"You want this piece of shit?" he asked, nodding toward Eritrea. "I'll give him to you for safe passage."
"I don't need safe passage," Bolan told him.
"Goddamn it, you know what I mean!"
"And I told you already, no sale."
Marinello's face was a study in stunned disbelief. "You'd kill him, just like that?"
The soldier shook his head. "You'll kill him. And then I'll kill you. Just like that."
Bolan ignored the whimpering sound coming from Dave Eritrea, concentrating on the Colt in Marinello's fist. He had the hammer down, but it was double action, and his mind was on the trigger pull, the time and energy that it would take to send a bullet burrowing into the captive's brain.
If he was swift and smooth enough...
The mafioso's face was going mottled, as if he was about to choke on something lodged in his throat.
"You don't leave me much choice," he whispered.
"None at ail."
The move, when it came, had been sharpened to perfection in his mind before it was executed. A lifetime on the firing range and in the killgrounds was there behind it. The marksman was grimly determined as he crouched, extended the AutoMag in front of him and pointed at Marinello.
The first slug gored through his shoulder with all the impact of a rifle shot and would have come close to Dave Eritrea had he not collapsed to the floor. The would-be boss of bosses hurtled backward, glancing off the fender of a Mercedes and recoiling, falling to his knees, the six-inch Colt wobbling, spinning from his gun hand.
Bolan stood above the son of Augie Marinello, clearly panic-stricken, looking for some vestige of the father in his face — the old defiance, the bottled hatred, the desperation, the fiery vengefulness.
The old man wasn't there.
He never would be.
Bolan raised the AutoMag, sighted down the barrel and squeezed off three rounds in rapid fire. Marinello's face and eyes were vaporized on impact, and the headless straw man toppled slowly backward, folding in upon himself.
The Executioner stepped back, put the AutoMag down. Then he helped Dave Eritrea to his feet. At first the informer kept away from him, then saw the empty hand, accepted it, surprising Bolan with his strength, the firmness of his grasp.
"I never thought I'd see those eyes again," he said.
"You haven't," Bolan told him simply, making sure Eritrea understood.
"Right. Okay."
"Let's go," he said at last. "Your wife's waiting for you."
"Sure. And thanks."
Just that, no more. Nothing more was necessary, right.
Sarah Eritrea would be waiting for her husband, of course. Maybe there would be someone waiting for Mack Bolan, too.
The soldier thought of Sally Palmer. With any luck at all, they might now have time for that debriefing. God knows that it was overdue, for both of them.
And maybe this time they would get it right.