Free Sicilian Slaughter by Don Pendleton, Jim Peterson

was a simple matter of economics. If the ship's owners wanted the vegetables unloaded and sold in Italy, then they paid. So what? It jacked up the street price, and the poor went without greens, let'm eat cake! The room behind Carlo darkened, as though someone had stepped into the doorway and blocked the light.
    Carlo turned, "Hey, get outta — " His voice died in his throat and he tasted a vile bitterness as he bit his cigar in half and the soggy wet end lodged halfway down his gullet.
    The man in the door stood over six feet tall and wore a black commando uniform. The man's left hand moved and a small piece of metal sailed across the room, landing at Carlo Maligno's feet. Entranced, Carlo looked down, and in the dim light he saw what he recognized as a marksmanship badge from the days when the Yanks came through during the Big War. Then Carlo went blind, because The Executioner shot him through the top of the head.
    Twenty minutes later, as Vassallo Flaccido sat in his tilted-back chair outside the garbage collectors' union hall, guarding the door because the bosses had a meeting going, so they could raise the rates again, Vassallo suddenly found himself sitting in mid-air. He landed hard on his fat rump, shook his head and stared up, felt his overworked heart pump too hard and a ripping pain shoot across his chest and down his left arm when his eyes saw the huge man in black with the gun in his hand.
    Bolan stepped over the coronary case, opened the door, went catlike up the union-hall steps, opened the door and stepped inside. Only one light in the room, bright, a chipped green shade over it. The garbage union bosses conducted their meetings with considerable style and minimum formality. Six men sat around a poker table covered with green velvet. On side trays stood bottles and glasses, coldcuts, sliced fresh vegetables. Vivace Lena briskly riffled the cards, shuffled them, offered them for a cut, began dealing a hand of five-card draw poker. When the cards were out, Lena put the deck down and placed a coin atop it. "Okay, who opens?"
    A metallic object came out of the gloom beyond the hanging light and landed with a smack, dead-center in the table. Then a flat, toneless voice said, "I open, and play the hand I've got."
    Bolan got Lena through the forehead first shot, then ticked off three more as they froze for a moment before bursting into frantic action. Bolan opened the door and backed out, flipped a grenade, then leaped down the stairs. He was almost a half-block away when the delay-fuse set the grenade off and blew out every window in the upstairs room, killing the last two bosses.
    One man survived the attack long enough to make a telephone call, but the man he called did not believe him. He laughed, said, "You're drunk again, Immondo," and hung up. He rolled back over and placed his dark, black-furred paw on the blonde's vast bosom. Jeeez-usss, thought Vistoso Mezzano, there's nothing like these Kraut and Dane and Swede babes, once our Corsican pals get them tamed down and broken in!
    The girl's milk-white skin still showed faint bruise marks, and high inside one thigh the cigarette burn scars had healed but still showed plainly. This one said her name was Hilde and she had gone to Paris with her sister on vacation, the both of them school teachers in Bavaria, and one night a truly distinguished looking but slightly threadbare man offered to guide them on a tour: those parts of Paris the ordinary visitor never saw. Of course it wasn't dangerous, what a thought! And they could take pictures, too — eh? Eh? They went first to a dingy place full of hashish smoke, stinking of sweat and vomit, and watched a pair of Apache dancers abuse one another, then to another place where other women and some men sat around a large glass. Some of them had cameras. When Hilde sat down she could see that under the glass was a room. In the room was a bed. On the bed lay a man and two women. Hilde watched in astonished fascination for