Vendetta for the Saint. (35 page)

“Perfectly. And the scouts report no
other house
near here that
fits it. You can see the beginning of
the road there that leads down to the village, gravel
surfaced as you described it. Another column
is
down there, blocking any
escape that way. We can
go
into action as soon as you are absolutely certain
that this is the right place.”

“Are
all your men in position?”

“On all sides. The mortars should be
down and
sighted by
now, the machine guns set up as well.”

“Shall I go and ring their front door
bell?” Si
mon asked,
straightening up and taking a few steps
into the moonlit clearing.

“Don’t be a fool—get down! They can see
you
from the
house!”

“That is precisely the idea,” Simon
said. “The
people
inside must have heard your trucks, and if they have guilty consciences they
should now be
keeping a rather
jittery lookout.”

He stood gazing intently at the building for
sev
eral seconds, and then
stepped back with exag
gerated furtiveness
behind a thick-trunked tree.

He had gauged the impression he would give,
and its timing, with impudent accuracy. There was
a rattle of gunfire from the house,
and a covey of
bullets passed near,
some of them thunking into the tree.

“That seems to settle it,” Simon remarked
cool
ly. “And
now that they’ve started the shooting, you
have all the justification you need for shooting
back.”

With or without the reassurance of such
legal
istic
argument, some of the deployed soldiers were
already returning the fire. The house
promptly sparkled with more flashes as its occupants ac
cepted the challenge. Bullets whipped leaves
from the trees and keened away in plaintive ricochets.
Someone turned a spotlight on the building,
and before it was shot out they could see that most of the heavy shutters on
the windows were open for
an
inch or two to provide gun slits, and most of
them seemed to be in use.

“Very nice,” Olivetti said,
crouching beside Si
mon and
Ponti, “You ask me to help you make a
raid on some criminals, but you did not tell
me we
should be
fighting a minor battle.”

“Mi despiace, Commandante,”
Ponti said. “I did
not plan it this way.”

“You are sorry? This is the best thing
that could
have happened!
In the summer no skiing, and all
they
do is chase girls and drink. We shall sweat
some of the wine out of them tonight! All I
want to know is in what condition you want those men in
side the house. If it is dead, it will be
easy. Only
there will be a
certain amount of mortar fire necessary, and before entering rooms we would
roll in a grenade or two. That way, there may be very few
prisoners.”

“There are some that I want alive,”
Ponti said.
“The
leaders only. The rest, your soldiers can prac
tise their training upon, and save the courts
much
useless
expense. But I want the men at the top, to
identify them and bring them to a public trial
which will focus the
attention of the whole country.
If
they are only killed here they will become mar
tyrs: the lesser leaders will take over, and
the whole
organization will soon be
flourishing again.”

Simon thought of reminding them that Gina
Destamio might also be in the house, for all he
knew. But if she were, the
mafiosi
themselves
would protect her as much as they
could, if only
until they could use
her as a hostage. And as a mere
possibility
it was too speculative to justify holding
up the assault.

“That is more difficult, but we can
try,” Olivetti
was
saying. “I will blow open the front door and
the ground floor windows, and we will rush
them
from three
directions. We shall have some casual
ties,
but—”

Suddenly headlights blazed on the far side of
the
house, and a
car roared around the driveway and
careened into the road. It was closely followed by
another. Both were large sedans and
apparently well manned, for their windows blazed with a
crackle of small arms.

“Aim for the drivers!” bellowed the
Major, in a
voice that
could be heard easily above the rising
crescendo of gunfire. “Then we can take
the others
alive!”

The leading car drove straight at the front
of the army truck which had been strategically parked
across the road, without slackening speed,
smashed
into it, and
burst into flame. Frantic men tumbled out and stumbled away from the flickering
light.
The second car
braked violently, but not enough to
lose all momentum as it crashed into the rear of the
first. It then became clear that the whole
sequence
was deliberate:
the first impact had slewed the truck around enough to leave a car’s width be
tween its bumper and the bordering stone
wall, and
the second car
was now ramming the burning
wreck of its
companion through the gap.

Soldiers were running in from all sides now,
fir
ing as they
came. It seemed impossible that the sec
ond car could still move: two of its tires
were flat, and gasoline was pouring from its tank. Yet its rear
wheels spun and gripped and it managed
somehow
to plough on,
pushing the first car through with a
horrible groaning and clanking of metal and mak
ing an open path for itself.

“Give
me that!” roared the Major, and snatched
an automatic rifle from a trooper.

He scarcely seemed to aim, but the gun barked
five times and glass flew from the driver’s
window.
The man slumped
over the wheel, and the car ca
reered
wildly down the road and smashed into a
tree. Two passengers scrambled out and fled
into
the darkness.

“I want every one of those thugs,”
Olivetti
shouted.
“But only wounded. They can recuperate
in a prison hospital.”

“I don’t think any of the leaders were in
those cars,” Simon said, coming up beside him. “They were only
creating a diversion or clearing a way.
We must look out for another break.”

The accuracy of his hunch was proven at that
instant by the black bulk of a third
automobile that
surged out of the driveway. It
had obviously been
parked around the same
angle of the building as
the first two
cars, in a courtyard probably flanked
by
former stables, and its occupants had been able
to embark with impunity during the distraction
caused by the
first sortie. In the light of the burning
wrecks
Simon recognized the car that had tried to
chase him down the road after
his escape: it had
reminded him then of a
bootlegger’s limousine
from the
brawling days of Prohibition, and this re
semblance turned out to be more than superficial. As it plunged forward
the soldiers had a perfect target, and streams of automatic fire converged on
it; but the windows were all shut and there were
no
answering shots.

“It’s bullet-proof!” the Major
howled in frus
trated
rage. “The tires—shoot off the tires!”

But even there the bullets had no effect:
the tires
must have been
solid rubber. Not designed to give a featherbed ride, perhaps, but an excellent
insur
ance against
inopportune deflation. The car aimed
at full speed for the space between the wall and the
interlocked truck and trail-blasting sedan,
and
hurtled through
with only a scraping of fenders.
A
storm of bullets dimpled its high square stern
but did not penetrate. It rocketed away down
the road.

“Tenente
Fusco, take my
scout car and get after
that thing!”
yelled the Major, jumping up and
down
with wrath. “Stop it with grenades if you
can, but at least stay
with it and keep in touch with
me by radio.
You others—how much longer must
I
wait for you to clean out that rats’ nest?”

Men with trained reflexes leapt obediently to
their assignments. A mortar, already ranged in, ex
ploded a shell against the front of the building,
and
a yawning hole appeared where one
of the shut
tered windows had been. The scout car was already bouncing
on to the road when Simon grabbed hold of Ponti, who seemed momentarily
petrified with
indecision as to which unit he
should be joining.

“Come with me!” snapped the Saint.
“The sol
diers will take
care of the house—but I bet nobody
is left there who would interest you much.” He
hustled the dazed detective into a run as he
talked.
“The big
shots are in the car that got away—and
the Bugatti has more chance of catching it
than a
Fiat.”

The Bugatti growled with delight as he
aroused it
to life again,
and as soon as Ponti was beside him
he slammed it forward in a bank-robber’s take-off,
using the violent acceleration to swing the
doors
shut. He went
on to justify his boast of its speed by
thundering past Lieutenant Fusco’s command car
while still in third gear,
turning to wave mockingly
as he went by.

The escaping limousine, for all its armored
weight and overworked springing, was harder
to
catch, thereby vindicating
at least a part of the Saint’s prognosis, but after several minutes he
caught it in his headlights as he came around
a cor
ner. As he
started to overhaul it he saw something else, and switched his foot abruptly to
the brake as little tongues of flame spat towards him and were
followed by the whip-crack reports of cordite.

“Very neat,” Simon said. “Real
gang-war stuff.
There is
a firing port just under the rear window, I
saw the gun muzzle when it poked out. Luckily
the
road is too
bumpy for them to have much chance
of scoring at this range, but they could do better if
we came much closer. Now we shall just have
to
keep them in sight from a
safe distance while you
think
of some plan to stop them.”

2

Ponti
muttered curses under his breath, but not far
enough under to deprive Simon of some of the
more picturesque imprecations. He looked back
for the scout car, but they
had already left it far
behind
and were almost certainly increasing their
lead.

“We need grenades, at least. On one of
these
hairpin bends,
we might lob one ahead of them.
Perhaps
we should slow down and wait for Lieu
tenant Fusco.”

“And
maybe never see our quarry again,” re
torted the Saint. “Have you noticed
that the speedometer is reading around a hundred and fifty kilometers most of
the time? At that speed, they only
have to be out of sight for a couple of minutes at
any crossroads, and we should be flipping
coins to help us guess which way they went. That car may look as if it belongs
in a museum, but so does this
one,
and you can see how un-decrepit we are. We
simply can’t afford to fall any farther
behind than
we have to to
avoid stopping a bullet.”

Ponti answered with a short pungent phrase
which summed up the situation more succinctly
than anything printable.

“I thoroughly agree,” said the
Saint sympa
thetically.
“But it still leaves us nothing to do ex
cept follow them. So you might as well relax
on this
luxurious
upholstery until your fine mind comes up
with something more constructive.”

There was obviously no simple solution. They
were in something like the classic predicament of
the man who had the tiger by the tail. There
seemed to be no way to improve the hold; and
al
though letting go might be
less disastrous, it was an
alternative
which neither of them would consider
for a moment.