Part 3 (1/2)

One of Frank the Kid's foreign bodyguards lurched through the blown door at that very moment, spraying blood from multiple punctures, and ablaze from head to foot. The guy sent a pleading look to the men at the small table, then fell for ward into their midst.

Jules Sticatta tried to wrap the burning man in the tablecloth but the cloth itself ignited, then Sticatta's own clothing began to flame.

Don Stefano and the other lieutenant went to Sticatta's aid while Frank watched in agape horror, stunned by the sickening odor of burnt flesh.

Meanwhile the whole encampment had come alive with the furious crackling of gunshots, joined quickly after the bomb or whatever by the electrifying chatter of a machine gun.

Frank could hear people screaming around outside there, yelling urgent cries and instructions in the old tongue. The inside soldiers were piling up at the patio doors, trying to get a look at what they might be running into before they quit the temporary safety of the dining room.

Frank screamed at them, ” 'ncarugnuti, (s.h.i.+rkers, or cowards) va! va! (get out there!) ”

The ba-loom of a shotgun overhead partially drowned out the emotional command, but the patio door opened and a couple of the Sicilians went scrambling outside, only to return quickly in a sudden shower of gla.s.s from the windows above them.

And then Frank the Kid got a clear, un.o.bstructed look at the big cool b.a.s.t.a.r.d outside, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in black, standing right out in the open and daring them to come get him, blasting away at that crowd in the doorway with a big silver pistol, big heavy booms like that first one sending fantastically whistling slugs hurtling through those gla.s.s doors and splattering everything they touched.

Frank found himself on the floor, with the rest of them, though still shouting that they go out there and get that b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Get him!

Something turned his attention momentarily to the stairway and he later recalled seeing his sister Philippa standing there on the bottom step, leaning against the wall and clasping a bleeding hand to her bosom. Their eyes met and she stammered, ”I-I hit him, I know I did, but h--he didn't go down.”

More urgent considerations were demanding his attention, however, and he took only pa.s.sing notice of his sister who refused to act like a woman.

The malacarni had apparently found their pride, or something, and they were scrambling out windows and doors and racing into that open combat zone. Frank leapt to his feet and shouted them on, then turned back to see about his father.

It had all come so d.a.m.ned fast.

The whole place was shooting flames.

Carmine Drasco was standing at a window overlooking the carport and yelling for somebody to bring the cars around.

Jules Sticatta was stumbling around in his underwear, groaning with pain and being a.s.sisted by Don Stefano. Poor Jules was in bad shape; a single glance was all it took to know that.

They'd all be in a similar spot if they didn't do something quick, that much was also evident.

”What're we doing?” Frank yelled at his father.

”Getting outta here!” the elder Angeletti yelled back. ”You go tell those boys of yours, they scatter before the zafJa (police) come. You tell 'em!”

Frank swallowed hard, got his legs under him, and ventured outside. By some miracle he lucked onto one of the crew bosses right outside the door and pa.s.sed the instruction; then he went back to help Papa get Jules Sticatta to the car.

The other explosions came as they were hurrying into the vehicles, four big blasts that shook the air, sending instant flames rolling skyward, and Carmine Drasco gasped, ”Oh, Jesus, I just saw a bunch of boys run right into that!”

But there was no time to mourn the dying. The big limousine leapt forward and sped across the lawn toward the escape gate at the rear, the tricky secret exit which Frank himself had dreamed up for his Emperor's Key clientele.

Carmine's personal wheelman was driving. Drasco himself and his longtime bodyguard were also up front. Stefano and the painfully injured Jules Sticatta were in the back. Frank and Philippa sat tensely on the jump seats. A backup car of hardmen was right on their rear b.u.mper.

Frank looked back upon the scene of combat as they cleared the gate and shot up the back road. His beautiful f.u.c.king joint was wreathed in flames, burning . . . burning to the f.u.c.king ground.

”So fast,” Frank groaned. ”It happened so fast.”

”How'd he do it?” Drasco's bodyguard muttered, scowling into the rear-view mirror. ”In broad daylight. How'd the guy do it?”

Philippa was pressing a blood-soaked handkerchief against a bullet graze on the back of her hand. She was scared-sure-like the rest of them . . . but more than that, she was stunned, really out of it. ”I hit him,” she was whispering. ”. . I know I hit him.”

”I saw the guy,” Frank announced. ”Plain as day, big as a mountain, I saw him.”

”Big deal,” somebody up front growled in a half-audible sneer. ”He saw him.”

”Shut up!” Papa Angeletti roared from the back seat. ”All of you just shut up! Maybe we ain't out of it yet!”

Frank s.h.i.+vered and glanced over his shoulder for a comforting peek at the loaded crew wagon behind them. Even Don Stefano, the unshakable, the unflappable-even he was scared. When Papa yelled and talked like the streets, yeah . . . Frank the Kid knew, the old man was shook and flapping.

The two-car caravan screeched around a corner, edging out a green panel truck which was angling into that same crossroads. The truck gave them. plenty of room-then they ignored the warning sirens and also beat a procession of fire trucks into the intersection at Germantown Avenue . When they were leveled out and eating pavement toward home, the wheelman lifted his gaze into the rearview to watch the last of the emergency vehicles' disappear.

”Bet I know where they're headed,” he commented quietly.

”Already?” Frank asked under his breath.

How could everything be happening so fast? How could those fire trucks already be. . . ?

He sighed and declared aloud, ”I think we got ourselves a mess.”

”You think, you think,” the Don grumbled. ”Listen, and you mark me what I'm saying! I gonna get his head! I gonna get that wise guy's head and I gonna make me a boccie ball outta it! You mark me!”

Frank the Kid was marking him.

But he was still s.h.i.+vering in his hundred-dollar boots . . . and with no legs, no legs at all, under him.

Frank Angeletti would have s.h.i.+vered even harder if he'd known about the green panel truck which was laying off their tails by about a cool city block and the ice-eyed man in black who, with cold singleness of purpose, was tracking the hit to the next zone of combat.

Chapter 7.

Behind the Numbers.

The firemen were battling to contain the furiously blazing fires and trying to prevent a spread to the other buildings on the property.

Two emergency medical units had pulled into the edge of the fire zone and attendants were hurrying about, checking life signs among the victims.

Uniformed officers cautiously poked about the grounds, while photographers and other police specialists preserved various items of hard evidence.

Captain Wayne Thomkins, Chief of Special Details for the Philadelphia Police Department, stood at the edge of the scene with a small group of state and federal officers. The Captain's face was a study in anger, bafflement-perhaps embarra.s.sment. He asked the FBI representative on the Bolan task force what must have been a purely rhetorical question to all others present. ”Well, what's the verdict? Was it a Bolan hit?”

Agent Joseph Persicone nodded his head and murmured, ”I'd say so. It's fairly typical. He usually leaves a mess like this.”