Pendleton Don. San Diego Siege

   "Sounds like a bell-ringer," the secretary commented.
   "You better believe it. Oh — and when you're talking to Sergeant Lyons — tell him if s a Hard-case."
   "I thought Hardcase was dead."
   "Not yet," Braddock growled into the intercom. "It's apparently alive and well ... in San Diego."
   Thank God.
   Thank God it was not Braddock's problem this time.

7
Danger's folly

   They were supposed to have gotten underway at seven o'clock and here it was eight already. If they were going to cancel these goddamn things, why the hell didn't somebody have enough thought about them to let a guy know it was off?
   Gene (the Turtle) Tarantini paced the glistening deck of the flying bridge and ranted inwardly at the sorry way things had been going lately with this chicken outfit.
   He'd rather be back in the navy ... almost. Not quite. But there wasn't much difference ... when a guy got to thinking about it. Same damn chicken outfit. Guys pulling rank all the time, giving out orders right and left, expecting you to snap-shit every time they stepped aboard.
   Let Tony Danger run his own fuckin' navy!
   He stepped over to the voice tube and blew into it to attract attention down below, then he announced, "Hear this, you fucking muddy-water sailors. The admiral has not been piped aboard and it don't look like he's coming. Secure the fucking engines — hey wait, belay that. I think his imperial lateness has finally arrived."
   A guy was coming down the steps from the sun deck of the marina's lounge. White bell bottoms, deck shoes, knit shirt, bright yellow nylon wind-breaker and the inevitable skipper's hat. Dark sun glasses. Carrying a briefcase.
   The Turtle turned back to the voice tube and passed the word to his two-man crew. "Look alive, you know how his feelings get hurt if we don't show no sideboys."
   Then he picked up the binoculars and took a closer look.
   Hell, that wasn't Tony Danger.
   Too tall, too big all over. Too much of everything.
   But the guy was sure headed for Danger's Folly, no doubt about that. And he sure looked like the real article. That briefcase was chained to his wrist.
   Tarantini put down the binoculars and swung into the cockpit of the big cruiser. He pulled a .38 revolver from the chart case, checked it, spun the cylinder, and replaced it.
   "Watch it," he growled down to the two men who were just then emerging from the cabin. "Something's not exactly kosher here."
   Bolan had picked up the outfit at the Mission Bay "Mariner's Shop" — and he suspected that Tony Danger had bought his seagoing togs at the same place; there'd been no difficulty whatever in duplicating the outfit, right down to the fancy sunglasses with little anchors at the posts.
   He spotted the guy watching him through binoculars from the cruiser and knew that he was being closely scrutinized.
   It was a beautiful hunk of seagoing mahogany, definitely in the yacht class. Powerful, sleek. Must have cost a bundle.
   By the time he reached the gangway, two more guys in spotless T-shirts and white ducks were standing at the rail in a sort of self-conscious parade-rest stance. Each wore a navy-style white hat, rakishly cocked over the eyes, the sidebands flaring out in the center like wings.
   Bolan stepped aboard and gave the sailors an impatient toss of his head. "We're late," he growled. "Cast off, haul that gangway in."
   A voice from above him snarled, "I give the fucking orders aboard here, sir."
   Bolan angled his gaze toward the flying bridge and told the little guy up there, "You'll be giving orders up your ass if you don't get this tub moving."
   The guy grinned at him and, in a much milder tone, asked, "Where's Mr. Danger?"
   Bolan did not return the smile. His voice was softer, though, in the reply. "Something's rumbling. There might be trouble. Tony's sitting this one out with th' boss. He shook the briefcase. "Do we go or don't we?"
   The man on the bridge raised a bos'n's pipe to his lips and tootled a shrieking command through it.
   Bolan grinned on that one and watched the crewmen scramble expertly through the casting-off exercises. A moment later the cruiser was moving smoothly through the smallcraft harbor and heading for open water.
   He went up and joined the man at the conn, watched him in silence for a moment, then told him, "I'm Frankie Lambretta. Who're you?"
   The guy gave him a dazzling smile and replied, "I'm Gene Tarantini. Mr. Danger started calling me "Turtle" — now everybody does. You may as well, too."
   "Okay." Bolan ran his hands along Tarantini's body in a quick frisk, then growled, "Hey, I told you there might be trouble. Where the hell's your hardware?"
   The guy glanced toward the chart case and said, "In there."
   Bolan commanded, "Wear it!"
   "Yessir."
   "Do your boys have hardware?"
   "Yessir, we keep it down in the quarters."
   "I can handle the wheel for a minute," Bolan said. "You go tell those boys to get dressed."
   Tarantini flashed another big smile, turned the wheel over to his passenger and descended quickly to the main deck. He was back seconds later, reaching into the chart case and tucking a revolver into the waistband of his trousers. He said, almost shyly, "You're a real torpedo, aren't you."
   Bolan relinquished the conn and growled, "Yeh."
   "I knew it the minute I saw you. I ain't seen a dude like you since Manhattan. You don't take no orders from Mr. Danger, do you?"
   Bolan made a derisive sound.
   "I thought not. You're class, Mr. Lambretta ... real class."
   "Thanks," Bolan said. He was silent for a moment, then he told the impressionable Mafioso, "Listen, Turtle, I might be sliding into something very uncomfortable. You know?"
   "Yessir. I already figured that."
   "I'll appreciate some close support from you and your boys, if things get to that."
   "Yessir, you can count on that."
   "Okay. You've got a sharp crew here. Stay that way."
   "You offer odds on that, Mr. Lambretta."
   Bolan punched the guy lightly on the shoulder and went below to the main deck.
   The Ventura Boulevard bridge was just ahead.
   In a few minutes they would be in open sea.
   Where to from there?
   It was a wild-ass play he was making. He knew that. So ... why change the name of the game now? His entire life had become a wild-ass play.
   He walked toward the stern and reached into his armpit to activate the miniature shoulder phone, then turned his face to the side and shielded his mouth with a hand as he spoke into the sensitive microphone. "Gadgets."
   "Yo."
   "Anything?"
   "Plenty. Are you clear?"
   "For the moment. What do you have?"
   "Our young lady called a lot of people and said a lot of screwy things. The one you'll be most interested in is a guy she called Max. You tie that?"
   Bolan replied, "I tie. Our VIP. That's a fast bingo."
   "Yeah. Faster than you'll follow until you've screened this stuff. It's too much for a quick report. Where are you?"
   "Aboard Danger's Folly, heading for open sea."
   "God! What's the tie?"
   "I decided to make that buy for Tony."
   "God! Hope you know what you're doing."
   "Me too, Gadgets. Off. Don't beep me. I'll check in soon as I'm back on dry land."
   "Do that. I'll be monitoring."
   Bolan repeated, "Off," and deactivated the radio. He lit a cigarette and strolled casually toward the bow.
   He noticed the two crewmen perched tensely at the rail on the starboard side, each displaying the butt of a revolver in the waistband of their bell-bottoms, watching him as though he were a prize exhibit at some zoo.
   He went on to the bow and leaned out to watch the water swirling past.
   Yeah.
   He hoped he knew what he was doing.
   In all truth, though, he had not the faintest idea of where he was going or what he would do when he got there.
   Danger's Folly, hell!
   It was very possibly going to prove Bolan's folly... and that was the brutal truth of that.

8
The buy

   They'd been underway for nearly an hour and — to Bolan's best calculation — on a due-west heading. There'd been no conversation between Bolan and the crew. He had not encouraged any, but spent the early time prowling the boat to get the feel of it.
   The main cabin — marked "Salon" with a brass plaque above the doorway — was done up for solid creature comforts. It was not overly large, but a lot of entertaining could be done in there. Couches and chairs, he noted, converted to sleeping arrangements for eight.
   The engine room was crammed full of the most impressive-looking power plant Bolan had ever seen. It was quietly and smoothly propelling the big boat through the heavy swells of the open sea at a very respectable cruising speed.
   The crews' quarters were housed in a small cabin behind the engine room. Four bunks, adequate headroom, small galley and lounge area — all of it clean and neatly shipshape.
   The familiarization completed, Bolan sprawled into a deck chair on the fantail and watched the churning wake billow out beneath him.
   They must have been twenty-five miles or so out when Bolan spotted the other boat. It was a classy speedster, deep draft, done up for sports fishing and flying a line of pennants from the mast.
   He left his chair immediately and headed casually toward the bridge. Tarantini was inspecting the other boat through binoculars. He lowered the glasses as Bolan walked up and handed them to him.
   "That's her," Tarantini announced. "And ready to deal."
   They were still about a mile away.
   Bolan growled, "How do you know?"
   "Those pennants. It's a signal meaning everything's okay. If the Coast Guard or anything else suspicious had been in the area recently, she'd be flying a warning signal."
   Bolan nodded. He said, "Okay, let's go."
   They were running on the other boat's beam, passing to the rear now.
   "We're going," Tarantini assured his passenger. "We don't just run right up to them, y'know. But you can relax. I don't see no signs of trouble."
   "You won't until we get there," Bolan warned. "Tell your boys to stay alert. And you run with my play. Understand?"
   The Turtle smiled soberly. "You expecting some kind of double-cross?"
   "Maybe something like that," the Executioner replied, and turned his full attention to a binocular surveillance of his target.
   Five minutes later Danger's Folly was coming alongside the other boat, sliding in from the starboard quarter. She was marked Pepe and, beneath the name, Ensenada. A Mexican registry.
   Undoubtedly the rendezvous was taking place in international waters.
   Bolan had to give Tarantini due credit. He knew his boat handling. It was a delicate maneuver; boats in open sea did not handle like rolling objects on a stable surface. They slid, wallowed, lunged and leaped. Both boats were maintaining sufficient headway for maneuverability, moving along at a speed of about ten knots. Horizontal separation was only about twenty feet, but both were maintaining station beautifully.
   Bolan counted four Mexican crewmen, including the guy at the wheel. Standing beside the Mexican skipper was a beefy, red-faced man wearing slacks and a gaudy sports shirt, no hat, partially bald. American ... or European.
   The sailors were throwing lines across and setting up a transfer operation, the usual nautical bit of pulleys and control lines.
   Tarantini's full attention was being absorbed by the demanding job at the wheel. Without looking at Bolan, he told him, "Okay, we're on station. You can do your thing now."
   Bolan had already noticed that his counterpart aboard the Pepe was moving toward the main deck. He took his cue from that and descended the ladder, dropping beside the two crewmen near the transfer lines. One of them silently handed him a battery-powered megaphone.
   Bolan growled, "Watch those bastards." The crewman nodded understandingly and stepped aside.
   The guy on the Pepe's dealing deck had a bullhorn also. He called across, in a strong French accent, "Where is M'sieur Danger?"
   "Couldn't make it," Bolan horned back. "You got the stuff?"
   "My arrangement was with M'sieur Danger." "Then go deal with him," Bolan replied. He raised the attache case. "But what counts is right here."
   "You have one hundred American?" "That was the deal, wasn't it," Bolan called back.
   "And five for the Pepe."
   "Yeah, sure. I gotta check the stuff first, though."
   The Frenchman dug into a rubberized bag and produced a small packet which he passed to a seaman beside htm. The sample went into a transfer basket and moved smoothly across the twenty intervening feet of Pacific.
   Bolan removed it from the basket and opened the small plastic bag. He touched his tongue to the white powder in there. It was pure heroin, or damned close to pure. A hundred-thousand worth of the stuff would produce a million-buck's worth of street junk.
   He raised the bullhorn and demanded, "Let's see the rest of it."
   "I would see the color of your American first."
   Bolan obligingly opened the attache case and pulled out a packet of bills. He dropped them in the basket and gave the signal to the sailors. As it was making the transit, he called over, "That's the five for the Pepe. The rest is just like it." The guy was already inspecting the money. He was smiling as he announced, "Okay. We have the deal. Send over the hundred." "You send over the stuff first." The smile evaporated as the Frenchman, visibly upset, called back, "This is not the way. M'sieur Tony Danger has never done business this way. You pay, I deliver. This is the way." Bolan replied, "So I'll pay." He reached into the attache case again, but this time his fist came out filled with a big silver pistol, the .44 AutoMag, and it spoke instantly in a big rolling boom as the magnum missile dissolved the distance between the Executioner and his target. The Frenchman received his payment at the rail and his head exploded in receipt.
   The Mexican seamen stood in stunned stupor and watched the lifeless body spin over the rail and into the water between the boats.
   The AutoMag was at full extension and staring down on them when Bolan's taut voice again crackled through the bullhorn: "You amigos have your five thousand American and that's all you were in it for! Do the smart thing and send that junk on over here!"
   The skipper of the Pepe, like the American skipper, had his hands full with the delicate job of maintaining station. He had undoubtedly seen little of what had transpired between the two boats, but obviously he had heard enough. A shouted command in Spanish came down from the bridge and the stunned sailors reacted instantly, stuffing the Frenchman's rubberized bag into the transfer basket and hauling away on the line.
   A Folly sailor snatched the precious cargo from the basket.
   Bolan yelled, "Cast off and haul ass!"
   Turtle was akeady into the play, however. The Folly swung suddenly to starboard and the lines parted with a twanging snap as they veered away from the other boat's course.
   A moment later, two unbelieving American sailors watched "Frankie Lambretta" slash packet after packet of high grade heroin and scatter the precious powders into the blue Pacific.
   "Trash," he told them, when the job was completed. "The guy was trying to sell us trash."
   And one hour later, when he was making his goodbyes to the admiring crew of Danger's Folly, he told Turtle Tarantini: "You run a tight ship, Skipper. Ill mention it to the boss."
   With a look approaching open adoration, the Mafioso told the Executioner, "Mr. Lambretta, you're the classiest guy I've ever had the pleasure to meet."
   Yeah.
   So okay.
   It hadn't turned into Bolan's Folly, after all.
   And the world would hardly miss an international junk salesman and a million bucks worth of human misery.
   The mob would, sure.
   And that, of course, was the name of the immediate game: Siege. He would lock them out and shut them out at every turn.
   And then, maybe, something interesting would come up over the hill. A target, maybe, in the Big Middle.

9
Discovery

   "Where the hell you been with my boat?" Tony Danger screamed from the pier as Dangers Folly came alongside.
   Tarantini ignored the emotional greeting while he completed the docking procedure, and not until she was tied-up and the engines secured did he move to the wing of the bridge to grin down at his boss on the pier.
   "Come on aboard, sir," he called down. "Mr. Lambretta left you a report."
   Anthony Cupaletto, or "Tony Danger" as he had become known in mob circles, was not a man given to vague fears or unreasonable worries. He had started in the business fifteen years earlier as a paid-gun guarding the person of Julian DiGeorge, then boss of the Southern California underworld. His cool efficiency and loyalty to the great man had not gone unnoticed or unrewarded, and Tony Danger had moved quickly along the happy road to wealth and prestige in the DiGeorge organization. The thirty-five-year-old was now regarded in ranking circles as the ambitious young man to watch out for in the ever-shifting power structures of the times.
   Cool, shrewd, hard, dependable — Tony Danger seemed destined to go a long way in the business.
   So, no, he was not normally a fearful or an anxious man.
   At this particular moment, however, he was both.
   He ignored the gangway which the crewmen were emplacing, leapt onto the deck of his pride and joy, then went quickly up to join his skipper on the bridge.
   "Mister who left me what?" he growled at Tarantini.
   "Mr. Lambretta," the Turtle repeated. The look on the boss's face was destroying his self-confidence and his voice was showing the stress. "You know ... Frankie Lambretta, Mr. Lucasi's hard arm. Hell, you should've seen that guy operate."
   The name meant something to Tony Danger ... Lambretta ... wasn't that ... ?
   It hit him then and — his worst fears suddenly surfacing in the pit of his gut — Danger covered his consternation by shoving a cigarette between his lips and leaning into the lee of the flying bridge to light it.
   Sure. That was what he'd called himself at Palm Springs. Frankie Lucky. Frankie Lucky Lambretta.
   Mack fuckin' Bolan!
   The San Diego caporegime exhaled a gusty cloud of smoke and quietly asked his skipper, "What the hell are you telling me, Turtle?"
   "You didn't know about it?" Tarantini asked nervously.
   "About what?" Tony Danger growled, working hard to control his emotions.
   "He said he was supposed to make the buy at the Pepe. He said there was trouble, and he was going instead of you. He said — "
   "Fuck what he said!" Tony Danger yelled. "What did he do?"
   Tarantini took a retreating half-step in the face of that rage and choked out: "Hell I thought you knew. I thought it was cleared through you. The Frenchman tried to pass some bad stuff. Mr. Lam-bretta drilled him and dumped the junk."
   "He did what?" Tony Danger screamed.
   Turtle Tarantini looked about ready to run. Instead he thrust forward a heavy manila envelope, pushing it towards his boss. "I guess it's all in here," he said weakly. "He said give this to you."
   Tony Danger accepted the "report" but his eyes remained hot and unbelieving on his skipper. "Where is this guy right now?" he wanted to know.
   "He had us drop him on the other side. Said his car was over there."
   "When?"
   "Five, maybe ten minutes ago."
   Tony Danger did not wish to open that envelope.
   He knew, he thought, what was in there.
   He muttered, "He dumped the stuff?"
   "Yessir. It was trash. He paid the Pepe for their run, but he put a bullet right between the Frenchman's eyes. Mr. Danger, that guy knew what he was doing. Believe me."
   "Fifty kilos," Tony Danger muttered. "A million bucks on the streets. He dumped it?"
   "I told you, it was trash. I thought you knew all about that. I thought...."
   "You think too much, Turtle," Tony Danger told his uncomfortable skipper. He was opening the envelope — slowly, delicately. "You're gonna fool around and think yourself into an early grave. You think about that."
   Turtle Tarantini's eyes clearly did not understand his boss's reaction to the superb job Frankie Lambretta had done for him.
   "Too many people give orders around here," he muttered defensively.
   Tony Danger did not hear the remark. He was staring into the brown manila envelope. He dug a finger into a small sample of white powder in there and touched it to his tongue. "Trash, eh?" he commented miserably. Then he withdrew the little iron cross with a bull's-eye in its center and showed it to his skipper. "That's your Frankie Lambretta," he said in a flat voice.
   "I don't believe it," Tarantini whispered. "You'd better," Tony Danger quietly told him. "You'd damn sure better believe it."
   He turned away to conceal the quivering of his lips and quickly descended the ladder to the main deck.
   Damn right.
   Everybody had better start believing it.
   Hell had finally come to San Diego.
   Bolan established a radio contact with Gadgets Schwarz to set up a rendezvous where he could screen the intelligence from the telephone tap on the Winters residence, but Blancanales broke into the conversation with an urgent report of his own.
   "Been hoping you'd check in pretty quick," the Politician told his C.O. "All hell is breaking around here. My subject has had people coming and going ever since I reached station. It smells of a build-up and I want you to look at some pictures I took with the Polaroid."
   Bolan had a vast respect for the judgement of the combat-intelligence expert. His decision was quick and positive. "Change the game plan," he replied. "Remain on station and cover Gadgets for his intel run. Gadgets, start your drain operation in exactly ten minutes. Pol, follow him out. Ill be covering from Station Charlie. Regroup with all caution at Point Alpha."
   It was beginning to size up as a rather short siege.
   The enemy, it seemed, was already gearing for the break-out.
   The emergency conference had been shaping up for better than an hour. The key men from Mexico had arrived and the boys from the California desert interior were expected at any moment. Additionally, a four-point telephone conference was being set up on scrambler circuits with New York, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
   Ben Lucasi was not letting any Bolan dust settle on him. Maybe the other bosses around the country were reluctant to yell for help when the bastard came crashing in on them — not Big Ben Lucasi. He had been accorded the "Big" tag not by virtue of his physical dimensions but by the size of his ambitions and ideas.
   And Big Ben Lucasi did not take this brand of crap from anybody.
   When the telephone sounded off, he'd thought it to be the scrambler conference coming through … but it was only Tony Danger.
   "What th' hell, hang up," Lucasi ordered. "I'm expecting the national wire."
   "Here's something maybe you weren't expecting," his lieutenant advised him. 'That goddam Bolan came out here and conned my boat crew into taking him out to sea. He hit our French connection, bumped the guy, scattered the shipment on the high seas. Whattaya think of that, Ben? A million fuckin' bucks giving the fishes a thrill."
   "Th' rotten bastard!" Lucasi muttered angrily. "What the hell d'you think he's pulling this crap for?"
   "Well, he's not just tweaking our noses," Tony Danger assured the boss. "Bet your ass, he's got something very serious on his mind."
   "Awright, you get it on over here!" Lucasi demanded. "We're about ready to go to council. Listen, Tony, we're going to put an end to this bullshit here and now. You say he killed Beloit?"
   "Yeah. And there went four hard months of sweat and tears. I tell you, Ben, this stuff is getting hard to come by. We just can't afford to lose good brokers this way."
   "I know, I know," Lucasi replied, commiserating with his favorite lieutenant. "Well look, get it on back here. We'll take care of Mr. Smart-ass for good and all."
   "Be there in ten minutes," Tony Danger promised, and hung up.
   The delegates to the convention were all in the game room, quietly consoling their ruffled nerves with the best booze from the Lucasi liquor closet. He told his house captain, the Diver, "I'll be in there with the boys. That call comes through, you send it right in on the squawk box."
   "I just come in to tell you," Diver said, "that something funny is going on outside."
   "What d'you mean, funny?"
   "If you got just a second, I'd like to show you."
   Lucasi followed his chief bodyguard to the patio, his guts shivering just a little under this new "funny" business.
   The big guy was pointing up the street. "See that bread truck up there ... up inna next block?"
   Lucasi growled, "Yeah. So what?"
   "So it's been in this neighborhood for the past two hours."
   "Is the guy making deliveries?"
   "Seems to be. But, hell, how long can a guy spend in one neighborhood?"
   "Depends," Lucasi replied, with a stab at humor, "on how many stud-hungry housewives he's servicing, I guess. Is that what you brought me out here for?"
   "That's not all." The Diver swiveled about to sight along his outstretched arm in the opposite direction. "See that up there?"
   "I see a little green truck," the boss replied, with some irritation. "So what?"
   "So I seen the same damn truck over on the next street earlier this morning. Right after we got hit."
   Lucasi was attempting to appear unruffled. He drawled, "All right, I never accused you of bad instincts, Diver. What d'you think is so funny about this?"
   "I think maybe we're being watched."
   "Oh?" Lucasi thrust a cigar between his teeth and chewed on it for a few seconds, then said, "There was sure something funny about that hit here this morning. You thinking that, too?"
   The Diver soberly nodded his head. "It just isn't like Bolan."
   "He hit the Pepe awhile ago," Lucasi confided, sotto voce. "Bumped Beloit and dumped our shipment in the ocean."
   "Sounds like he's getting smarts somewheres," Diver muttered. His eyes were roaming the exterior of the house. "He could've bumped you, Mr. Lucasi, as easy as anything. I keep wondering why he didn't."
   "I guess maybe he just wasn't ready to," Lucasi replied in a strained voice. The tension was wearing through again. He loudly cleared his throat and added, "I guess he had something else on his mind." Lucasi was following the scan of his house captain's gaze. The hairs rose along the back of his neck. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he growled.
   "Well, we know he's not working alone this time," Diver quietly replied. His arm rose and he pointed toward a second-floor window. "Do you see something up there? On that ledge there, by the window?"
   Lucasi's blood almost stopped flowing. "Shake this fuckin' place down," he commanded, almost choking with the effort at speech. "I mean good and fast!"
   The house captain took off on a run, loudly calling his boys together as he went.
   Lucasi hurried after him, tremblingly intent upon clearing that open area with all speed.
   "Suckered!" he muttered to himself. "Sonuva-bitch!"
   For damn sure. The bastard had suckered him with the oldest trick in the books.
   But maybe it wasn't too late to pull the fat out of the fire. Maybe, by God, Mr. Smart-ass would find his own fat searing in the flames this time.
   "Those trucks!" he screamed. "Get out there and grab them trucks!"

10
Point blank

   Bolan was watching from a high point of ground which was several blocks removed from the Lucasi home, following the play there with powerful binoculars.
   He had been on station and waiting when Schwarz began his intelligence run in the war-wagon, had watched him pull up to within fifty yards of the target and dismount, open the hood over the engine, step inside the van.
   He saw Blancanales, also, another hundred yards or so downrange, inching along in the bread truck.
   Bolan spoke into his shoulder-phone to advise, "Pol, the ears are out."
   "Roger, I have him in sight," came the instant reply. "How's it look from station Charlie?"
   "Peaceful," Bolan said, then: "Whup! Couple just came out the side door. It's ... Lucasi. And the big houseman. Something has their interest."
   The focal field of the binoculars covered only the two men and several feet of turf to either side of them.
   "I believe they're looking at you, Pol. And … Gadgets! Are you in?"
   "I'm here," came a strained reply.
   "They've spotted both of you, and I'd say are jumping to conclusions. I can feel their little minds a'whirring. Yep. Yep."
   Lucasi's weasel face was sharply etched in the focal field, wondering, worrying, discovering ...
   Bolan commanded, "Break off! They're wise. Break now!"
   Schwarz protested, "I only drained two banks."
   "Got the phone tap?"
   "Getting it now."
   "Stay with it," Blancanales urged. "I'm covering."
   Bolan concurred, though with misgivings. Numbers were all-important in this sort of game. He snapped, "Thirty seconds more, then you haul it I Pol, start your move!"
   "Rolling," came the response from Blancanales.
   Bolan released the binoculars and reached for his power sniper, the Weatherby Mark V. Using .460 Magnum soft-nose mini-bombs, the big piece gave him better than a thousand yards of kill — much more than he would need for this mission. He fitted his eye to the scope and began reading ranges.
   Yeah ... this mission would be just about point-blank.
   The Diver sent three of his boys out to intercept the bread truck and another two to check-out the green van, then he sent the remaining palace guard scurrying through the house searching for bugs.
   Ben Lucasi ran into the game room to caution everyone there to "keep quiet, stop talking, not a fucking word!" — then he snatched up a double-barrel shotgun and dashed toward the upstairs window where he'd spotted the suspicious-looking package.
   He arrived there just in time to see the bread truck picking up speed for a run past the house.
   Three of Diver's boys were chasing along beside it, waving pistols and shouting at one another.
   A burst of fire from an automatic weapon lanced away from the cab of the truck and the three boys went down sliding in their own blood.
   The truck had slowed again, almost coming to a complete halt near the front of the property, and the automatic-weapon fire was sweeping into the house itself as that damned guy down there methodically raked the whole joint. Window glass was breaking and crashing all over; Lucasi could hear yelling and stampeding feet as his visitors sought cover. Above it all, the loud commands of big Diver could be heard as the veteran house captain tried to get his forces deployed against the unexpected assault.
   Without even realizing what a foolish thing he was doing, Lucasi shattered his window with the shotgun, leaned out, and let go with both barrels into that bread truck.
   The double ba-loom of his own retort was echoed instantly far away by the powerful reports from a big-game piece. Something tore the shotgun out of Lucasi's grasp and sent it spinning to the ground; something else smacked into the window frame a fraction of an inch from his eyes and tore a foot of it away.
   Lucasi fell back quickly into the safety of the room, his hands still tingling from the hit on his shotgun, and he knew that he'd come as close to sudden death as he ever wanted to get.
   He scrambled down the stairway yelling, "Diver! Diver!"
   But the Diver was already outside, leading his pack of triggermen in a hard run across the yard, taking the battle exactly where Mack Bolan probably wanted it.
   "Don't go out there!" Lucasi wailed.
   Too late.
   Another rattling sound from up the street signalled the entrance of a second automatic weapon into the battle, and the rolling cra-acks of that big-game piece were now coming end-to-end, almost sounding as one.
   Yeah, Lucasi knew it. It was too damn late now.
   Bolan had been watching for a response to Blancanales' stutter-pistol attack, and he saw the shotgun the moment it presented itself outside that upstairs window.
   He immediately acquired that target in his cross-hairs and sighed into the squeeze-off, realizing as he did so that he was at least a heartbeat behind the other guy's trigger. His own piece bucked into his shoulder at the same instant that the report from the shotgun reached him; he rode the recoil and hung into the eyepiece for another quick round into the same general target area.
   The intense magnification of the big scope provided a field of vision measuring in inches but he saw the shotgun take the hit and spin away, and he had a milli-second glimpse of Ben Lucasi's frightened visage jerking away from a splintering windowframe.
   He paused then for an area-evaluation with the binoculars.
   Blancanales had abandoned the bread truck. Apparently the shotgun blast had disabled the vehicle.
   Two men were in the street, about midway between the house and Schwarz's position with the warwagon. At the moment they seemed to be torn between their original assignment and the obvious need for their presence back at the house.
   Bolan barked into the shoulder-phone, "Pol, Gadgets, report!"
   Blancanales came in immediately, a bit winded, "I'm grounded, two o'clock from the front of the house, behind the little rock wall."
   "I'm done," Gadgets announced calmly. "Get ready, Pol, I'll pick you up."
   "Negative!" Bolan commanded. "You do a one-eighty and haul out of there. I'll spring the Politician."
   "Too late," Schwarz replied. "Here come the reserves."
   Bolan snarled, "It still goes. You break and haul — backwards!"
   "Aye aye."
   "I'm okay," Blancanales assured everybody.
   With his naked eye Bolan could see that the Politician would not be "okay" for long.
   A swarm of hardmen were pouring out of the house and making a cautious advance toward the street.
   As he was leaning into his eyepiece, he heard the stutter of Schwarz's weapon and got a peripheral glimpse of the two men in the street as they dived for cover. One of them did not dive quite soon enough; Bolan saw him flop and roll, then he sighed into his own targets. Gadgets, he knew, could take care of himself.
   As for those guys down there in that yard ... at this range, with this piece, it was almost a shame. Even scrambling, they were sitting ducks.
   He was in a tight spot, and the Politician damn well knew it.
   The little NATO machine pistol had jammed on him and there was no time to work on it. He had a damn revolver and six lousy rounds between him and about fifteen guys who were moving across that lawn over there.
   His closest help was damn near one hundred yards away, and he had been ordereed out of the area.
   The Sarge, of course, was laying-in with the big precision piece — and that fact would not prove at all comforting to anyone moving into those cross-hairs.
   Blancanales had confidence in Bolan. If the guy said he'd spring him, then he'd spring him. Still ... this was not the most enviable of all possible circumstances for a life-loving dude like Rosario Blancanales. And he had not seen the Sarge at work for quite awhile. A guy, even a Mack Bolan, could sometimes lose his numbers.
   He watched a group of hardmen splinter off from the main force and start a movement toward Schwarz in the warwagon just as Gadgets opened fire on the two guys already up there. Then the big booms from Bolan's Weatherby began rocking the air again.
   The guy could sure tickle a trigger.
   Hell, he was firing from about three blocks away but those people over there were going down like clockwork. Blancanales watched them depart the field of combat forever — one, two, three, four — like a cadence count — and those who were left were already beginning to get a whole new slant on the art of warfare.
   Some guy was standing in a doorway over there and screaming at them to get back inside.
   Bolan's cool voice came through his shoulder-phone then: "Make your move, Pol. Fall back to the next street behind you and hold there. Gadgets, circle around and pick him up."
   "Aye, aye," said Gadgets.
   "Wilco," Blancanales responded, sighing.
   Hell. He'd known all along that the Sarge would spring him. He hadn't lost any damn numbers.
   The big question now, of course, was could the Sarge spring himself.
   The wail of police sirens was beginning to crowd the area, boring in from several directions.
   Two more big booms erupted from that distant firing-drop and Blancanales, glancing over his shoulder, saw the bread truck explode into flames.
   He grinned, aware that Bolan was simply adding a confusion-factor to the scene.
   Sure. The guy would spring himself.

11
War zone

   Captain Tatum threaded his way through the congregation of official vehicles and came to a halt at the edge of the war zone.
   There was no better way to describe the scene there.
   The shattered and burning vehicle in the middle of the street.
   Bullet-riddled house, shattered glass, abandoned weapons lying about.
   A team of medics moving grimly among the dead and the dying.
   Firefighters and uniformed policemen everywhere the eye could see.
   The uniformed watch officer spotted the Captain, then came over to offer a report. Tatum recognized him as George Gonzales, a twenty-year veteran with the department — a good man.
   "Hell walked through here," Gonzales told the homicide chief. "Seven dead, four stretcher cases, two walking wounded. House is pretty well shot up." He glanced toward the gutted bread truck. "Lot of toast in there, but nothing else. We haven't found the driver. So far all of the victims have been identified as Lucasi's people. Somebody really hit 'im hard, Captain."
   "What does the little big man have to say about all this?" Tatum asked musingly.
   "He's reserving comment until his attorney arrives. Also refuses to step outside the house — or to show himself at any window ... with a hundred cops walking around here...."
   "He get hurt?"
   "No sir, just his dignity. I'd say he's working his way toward a stroke or something, though."
   Tatum quickly squelched a wry smile and instructed the watch officer, "Let me know as soon as the lawyer gets here."
   "Yes sir. Well be making charges?"
   "You find anything yet to make a book?" the Captain inquired.
   "No sir, frankly nothing. It was a one-sided battle, by all appearances. All the firing seems to have come from the other side, whoever they were. Rival gang, looks like. But I haven't even found a weapons violation on Lucasi. All his people are duly licensed as security personnel."
   That last was obviously a sore point with Tatum. He screwed his face into a scowl and said, "Yeah, that's nice and neat. How about witnesses?"
   "We're working the neighborhood now. So far only one has voluntarily come forward. Lady directly across the street, a Mrs. Bergman. Saw part of it from a bathroom window. Said a man in a white uniform of some kind was crouched behind her wall — " Gonzales paused to point out the spot. " — directly across, there. Said he ran through her property toward the rear just about the time the shooting stopped."
   Tatum was scowling toward the burned-out truck, obviously trying to draw conclusions. A small two-way radio at his waist beeped and he reluctantly took time out to answer the call.
   "Air Ten has picked up the L.A. special advisor at Lindberg and now has him aboard," was the report. "Do you want him up there?"
   "Yeah," Tatum growled. "Give the pilot the general area and tell him to just look for the battleground. He can't miss it."
   Gonzales was staring at the Captain as though he wished to know more about this development. Tatum was not yet ready to turn the thing into a circus, however. He knew how the press loved to latch onto a Bolan hit, and he was not quite prepared to go that route. He smiled thinly at the watch officer and told him, "Could be some connection between this and a case up in L.A. awhile back. We're getting a consultant."
   This explanation seemed to satisfy the uniformed officer.
   The police helicopter was already in sight, wheeling up from the southwest. Tatum watched the little bird come in and settle onto the front lawn, then he went forward to greet the tall young man who had been dispatched from Los Angeles.
   The self-introductions were perfunctory and curt, being shouted above the din of the helicopter — but Tatum was sizing up Sgt. Carl Lyons of L.A.'s Organized Crime Division, and he liked what he saw ... intelligent, quick, a lawman with a personal commitment.
   As soon as the helicopter and its noise had departed the area, Tatum told the new arrival, "I'm only a minute or two ahead of you so we're starting off even." He introduced Gonzales, who brought Lyons up to date on the preliminary report, then the three of them took a walking tour of the battleground.
   They halted beside a sheet-draped lump on the front lawn and the Captain knelt for an inspection of the victim. He pulled the sheet away, studied the corpse for a moment, then went on to the next. After the fourth stop, he commented, "Right through the head, all four of them."
   "Massive wounds," Lyons added.
   "You said seven dead," Tatum told the watch officer. "Where're the other three?"
   Gonzales pointed toward the street. "By the truck."
   "Head wounds like these?"
   "No sir. Multiple body hits from a small calibre weapon. Looks like they got zipped with a light chopper." He swiveled about to point up the street. "Found two more in the next block, lying along the curb in the street. Not dead yet, but damn near. Same type of wounds, they were zipped."
   "You said six wounded," Tatum reminded him.
   "Yes sir, the others were hit inside the house. They just got unlucky. Wrong place at the right time."
   Lyons had moved off to the side and was doing a 360-degree survey of the surrounding terrain.
   His attention became riveted to a pair of distant hillocks.
   Tatum and Gonzales ambled over to join Lyons, and the watch officer advised, "Forgot to mention, I sent a car up on Sunset Circle to check out a firing report."
   Tatum drawled, "Yeah...." He was sighting toward the high ground which was occupying Lyons' attention. "That would be the western knoll," he informed the out-of-towner. "A guy with a telescopic sight and a good rifle could command this whole neighborhood from up there."
   "And looking right along the street," Lyons murmured.
   "Is Bolan really that good?" Tatum asked him.
   "He's that good," the L.A. cop replied.
   The watch officer's eyes had flared at the mention of Bolan's name. In a subdued tone he commented, "It'd take a lot of self-confidence to go for the head from that distance. Did I hear you right? Are you saying this is the Executioner's work?"
   "That's what we're trying to determine, George," the Captain replied. "Don't talk it around, though. Sergeant Lyons has tangled with the guy before. Hopefully he can give up a jump on identifying the problem." He grinned without humor. "And I guess the Sergeant has good reason to want to nail Bolan, himself."