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  The entire area received instant light, flying debris and whizzing chunks of deadly glass and mortar—and Bolan had another flashing glimpse of frightened eyes as the girl ceased struggling and suddenly lay very still, her head turned to the sound and sight of hell unleashed.

  Flames were whooshing through a hole in the upper wall and unseen men were shrieking in panic. Then the wall bulged out and leaned forward, and Bolan was dragging the girl into deeper safety when the whole thing collapsed, spilling bricks, timber, flaming furniture and human bodies in an avalanche onto the parking lot.

  He pulled the China doll to her feet and roughly shoved her toward the darkness—and his first words to her were an urgent command. “Run!” he growled. “Run like hell!”

  She ran, and Bolan went the other way, into hell, knowing that his assault plan was busted wide open now, his greasegun thrust forward and ready for the inevitable reaction from the enemy.

  It came quickly. Three men staggered from the rear door and into the light of the disaster, and immediately a strangled voice cried, “Jesus Christ, it’s him!”

  The Executioner acknowledged their presence and recognition with a sweeping welcome from the machine pistol, and they all lay down quickly, brothers of the blood for real, now.

  Another man ran into the scene from the front of the building. He slid to a confused halt, then began a flatfooted, backwards dance, crouching and firing at the apparition in black with a snubnosed revolver.

  Bolan calmly stood his ground and zipped the guy with a short burst from the greasegun, the firetrack sweeping up from ground level, splitting the target up the middle and punching him over onto his back.

  The Executioner went on, advancing across the bloodied body, and he met another pair at the corner of the building with a blazing criss-cross burst that sent them rolling along the walkway. A third man from that same group scampered back through the main entrance, evidently preferring the inferno in there to the hell outside.

  And then a new and familiar element was added to the chaotic environment—a police siren was screaming up from the Fisherman’s Wharf area.

  Bolan checked his impulse to follow the fleeing Mafioso into the pagoda and instead whirled about and returned to the parking lot. He paused there long enough to press a marksman’s medal into the limp hand of a fallen gunner, then he fell back along the flagstoned walkway.

  A secondary explosion occurred somewhere inside the joint. A portion of the roof fell in and the flames leapt higher.

  More sirens now… coming in from every direction… and Bolan mentally tipped his hat to the quick reaction by the city—but his numbers had never been more critical, and he knew that a successful retreat was becoming less likely with every step he took.

  A line of automobiles had come to a halt just uprange from the disaster area and a collection of people were standing around in tight little groups and gawking at the spectacular fire.

  One of the onlookers spotted the armed man in black, and he reacted visibly. Bolan stepped back and went the other way.

  A police cruiser flashed across the street down range, and the deep rumbling of fire trucks had now joined the sounds of the night.

  Yeah… he had overplayed his numbers, all right.

  The enemy had regrouped outside the flaming building, and a lot of arm-waving and signal-calling was happening down there now. They would be organized into a hot pursuit, very soon now.

  Sirens were flying all around the area—and Bolan had known what to expect if he dallied too long at the scene of combat. The entire neighborhood would be sealed off—by police and fire equipment—and the Executioner would be contained within a painfully small hunting preserve, with irate Mafiosi turning every rock in a search for their most hated enemy.

  Yeah. So what the hell. It was what a guy could expect when he opened with a wild card.

  But it was the China doll who’d made the difference. Except for her, he would have been free and clear before anyone had realized exactly what happened.

  Bolan was poised there, at the edge of hell, his senses flaring out through the night in an intuitive search for the best road back.

  And then she was there again, moving out of the darkness precisely as she had done before, except that this time she seemed to be targeting directly on the man in black and she was showing him a tiny automatic which somehow managed to look large and menacing in that petite hand.

  He allowed her to gaze into the bore of the greasegun for a second before he told her, “You’re not the enemy.”

  “Worse than that,” she replied in a voice that almost smiled. “I could be a friend.”

  He shrugged and said, “You’ve got about a second to decide which.”

  “That’s your decision,” she told him. “Will you follow me?”

  Bolan hesitated for only an instant—to sample the atmospheric developments about him—and it was all there, all the elements that could spell entrapment, defeat, and the end of a highly important war.

  It had been a good opener, sure. But only if the war remained open.

  “Why not?” he said, in response to the girl’s question. “Let’s go.”

  She spun about and glided gracefully back through the synthetic gardens, keeping to the shadows and moving surely along an arcing path toward the far side.

  Bolan kept her in sight, his weapon at the ready, and his instincts in quivering alertness.

  Whatever and whomever the China doll was, she was at least an unknown factor, a variable. It was more than Bolan could say for anything else awaiting him in that mist-shrouded night.

  Sure, he’d follow her. To his grave, maybe.

  But, then, all of Bolan’s roads led inevitably to that same point, anyway. Maybe this one would be a bit longer, a bit more scenic, than any of the others presently available.

  A guy had to follow his stars.

  And somehow, for openers, this one seemed right. A China doll leading him out of a synthetic Chinese hell.

  But into where?

  Bolan scowled, hugged his weapon, and followed his guide into the unknown.

  At least one thing was certain. He had drawn blood at San Francisco, and soon it would be flowing in buckets—his own very probably included.

  For good or for bad, another Executioner war was underway.

  2: WAR ZONE

  Half of the firefighting equipment in the city seemed to be spotted around the China Gardens. Fire hoses were strung out in precise patterns and firemen swarmed everywhere, many of them wearing asbestos gear and equipped with oxygen masks.

  It was a real scorcher. It was a damned lucky thing that this joint was sitting out by itself this way, or half of North Beach would have gone up with it.

  Detective Sergeant Bill Phillips of the Brushfire Squad paced restlessly about the Life Emergency command post, trying to put the pieces together in his mind and impatiently waiting to get down onto the scene.

  The Life Emergency—LE—people had found very little of life to worry about. Six victims were dead of gunshot wounds, another four had been killed instantly in the blast, and God only knew how many they’d find cremated inside—if they could ever get in there for a look-see.

  Another police cruiser eased through the confusion and came to a halt inside the emergency perimeter. The heavy man in blue who descended from it was the Harbor Precinct boss, Captain Barney Gibson, a tough old cop with many ups and downs in his spotted career.

  Gibson did not like black people—and Sgt. Phillips had a personal radar that detected such feelings, since Phillips himself was a black man—but he joined the Captain immediately and gave him a limp salute, not acknowledged.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder in a brooding silence for a long moment, then the sergeant commented, “You’ve got a messy one here, Cap’n.”

  “Figure it’s a Brushfire?” Gibson sourly inquired.

  The Sergeant cocked his head and scratched absently at his neck. “Don’t know,” he admitted. “Right now it’s
just a damn mess. I happened to be in the neighborhood when the call came down… so I dropped in. It might be a Brushfire. What do you think?”

  Gibson shrugged his beefy shoulders. “This is a mob joint. Or it was.”

  “Yes sir. That’s one reason for all the heat, I guess. Fire Department says the basement of that east wing was a regular liquor warehouse. And I’ll bet every drop of it was contraband.”

  “How many gunshot victims?” Gibson asked, ignoring the other information.

  Phillips sighed. “Six.”

  The Captain whistled through his teeth. “That many.”

  “Life Emergency says another four died in the initial blast. They think it was caused by an explosives charge.”

  “It figures.” Gibson sniffed and swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “Fog’s bad tonight,” he commented.

  “It’s bad every night,” Phillips said.

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “Lt. Warnicke. He’s inside, looking over the victims.”

  Captain Gibson grunted and ambled off toward the LE van. Phillips hesitated momentarily, then followed the veteran cop into the rolling medical center.

  Warnicke was at the far end, in the DOA section, drinking coffee and talking with two white-clad medics. He was a tall, graceful man with a touch of silver at his temples and a deceptively mild set to his facial features.

  The Lieutenant looked up with an expectant grimace as the new arrivals joined the clutch at DOA. “Don’t you ever sleep, Barney?” he greeted the Captain.

  “When I can,” Gibson growled. He elbowed his way forward and helped himself to the coffee as Warnicke and Phillips exchanged grim smiles, then the Harbor boss demanded, “Okay, give me the score.”

  Warnicke stared thoughtfully into his cup and quietly replied, “Joe Fasco, Johnny Liano, Pete Trazini—all very dead, plus seven minor—”

  The Captain interrupted the report with, “I had a talk with Fasco just last week. Told him I couldn’t tolerate much more of this. Told him to clean his joint up or I’d close him down.”

  The two junior officers exhanged glances and Warnicke said, “Well it’s clean now.”

  “Best way to beat the mob is just leave ’em alone, I guess,” Gibson went on. “I been saying that for years. Leave ’em alone, they’re their own worst enemies.”

  A medic grinned and commented, “I was just reading something along that line. A study of violent deaths by mobsters shows that most of them die at the hands of their own kind.”

  “Not any more,” Lt. Warnicke said. He produced a folded cloth from his breast pocket, opened it, and placed it on the table.

  Gibson leaned forward to glare at a metallic object which had been wrapped in the cloth. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “That,” Warnicke told him, “is a military marksman’s medal.”

  “Aw shit,” the Captain said.

  “One of the dead hoods is Greasy Waters. We pried that medal out of his fist.”

  It was an involuntary exclamation from Bill Phillips. “Mack Bolan!”

  “You telling me that goddam guy is in our town now?” Gibson said angrily.

  “It would appear so,” Warnicke replied with a sigh.

  Sgt. Phillips spun about and went rapidly out of there, making fast tracks to his cruiser.

  So Mack Bolan had come to town! And, all of a sudden, the pieces had come together in the Brushfire cop’s head.

  The Brushfire Squad was a special police detail which had been established for quick reaction against organized violence in this age of growing political anarchy—it was, in a sense, a combat team which was fully prepared to take up the defense of any threatened civic institution—or so they hoped. So far their activities had been confined mostly to a defense of their own police stations, but they had also investigated bomb threats, arson cases, campus violence and a variety of other radical threats against the city.

  And if Mack Bolan’s presence in town did not constitute a bonafide.…

  Phillips reached his cruiser and swung inside for a report to his operations center. “This is Bravo Three,” he announced into the special radio net. “Possible Brushfire Alert, repeat, possible alert. I’m coming in for conference.”

  He returned the microphone to its bracket and put the car in motion, picking his way carefully across the disaster zone, and to himself he muttered, “Brushfire, hell. It’s Little World War Three.”

  Capo Mafioso Roman DeMarco, at the age of seventy-two was a bit too old for early morning fireworks—and the testy lines of the usually genial face plainly showed his displeasure over getting dragged out of a warm bed at such an uncomfortable hour.

  The lights were blazing on all three floors of the ancient mansion atop Russian Hill, and the place was filling up fast with the family rank and file as worried faces and angry voices continued to arrive in response to the urgent summons from Don DeMarco.

  The Capo’s strong right arm—enforcer Franco Laurentis—had been among the earliest arrivals. He had come complete with his usual retinue of hard-eyed, silent torpedoes who seemed to have worked out some method of communication which was restricted entirely to eye movements and facial expressions.

  Underbosses Vincenzo Ciprio and Thomas Vericci were also present. They were the demigods of, respectively, the East Bay and the San Francisco Peninsula—and each had brought several lieutenants and their cadres to the big house on the hill.

  A foot patrol of hardmen had been deployed along the streets surrounding the house; others cruised the neighborhood in gunmobiles or sat in solemn stakeouts at various approaches to the family home.

  The Northern California arm of La Cosa Nostra was taking no chances with the wildass bastard in black who had moved his thunder and lightning to their sacred territories.

  The Capo, appropriately clad for the formalities of the night in silk pajamas and a brocade robe with designs in heavy gold thread, was holding court in the library and explaining the seriousness of the situation to the ranking members.

  “So this boy has no doubt come here looking for some more expensive glory,” he concluded. “And I guess everybody here knows that we’re all in for a damn lot of trouble. Unless we can get to this boy first and tear his head off and throw it in the bay.”

  Thomas Vericci, lord of the peninsular area, nervously cleared his throat to inquire, “Can we be sure this really was the guy, Don DeMarco? I mean, what if somebody else just wants to make it look that way? Just to get us off guard or something, I mean.”

  “Either way,” DeMarco replied patiently, “it’s a lot of trouble, and we don’t need any of that.”

  A small dark man who had been almost hidden in the shadow of the Capo spoke up with, “I beg your pardon.”

  “Spit it out, Matty,” the Capo said softly.

  “Well there ain’t no mistaking in my mind. I saw the guy. I saw him with these two eyes right here, and I’m telling you it was him. It was Mack Bolan. He was dressed all in black like a fuckin’—excuse me, Don DeMarco—like a damn executioner. And the way he walked was like a fuckin’—a damn cat—you know a panther or something. I mean that was him! I was as close to him as I am to you right now, Mr. Vericci, and I seen them fuckin’—excuse me, them damn eyes of his, like two chunks of ice, and I guess I’m alive by a grace of God or something.”

  Enforcer Laurentis coldly declared, “What you mean is, you’re alive because you turned your ass to him and ran away, that’s what you mean, Matty.”

  “Yessir, I sure did, and I ain’t ashamed of that. That guy had a fuckin’—a machine gun and he was cutting down everything in sight. I ran back inside to get some more help. He’d already blowed up the goddam joint and set everything on fire. I wasn’t about to face down a guy like—”

  “You shut up, Matty!” Laurentis snarled.

  “Yessir, I beg your pardon, I was just.…”

  “Franco is right, Matty,” the Capo said. “You shouldn’t go around spouting off your mouth like that, a
bout how mean this Bolan is. Our boys are already nervous enough. You watch it what you say. Understand?”

  “Yessir, I’m sorry.”

  “That Bolan is just a lucky punk!” Laurentis said angrily. “He’s got hisself a big reputation just because of talk like that! I don’t wanta hear no more of it!”

  “Yessir,” Matty said humbly.

  The Capo quietly observed, “I’m happy to hear that you’re not nervous about this Bolan, Franco.”

  “I’m not a bit nervous, Don DeMarco.”

  “That’s good, because he’s going to be your worry.”

  The enforcer’s eyes roamed to the other rankholders as he replied, “I wouldn’t stand for it no other way.”

  “Fine, then that’s settled,” DeMarco said, sighing. “Tommy… Vince… I want you both to shut everything down. I mean everything. Understand? Don’t give this guy one little movement to grab onto.”

  Vericci stared at the glowing tip of his cigar and replied, “Even my Montgomery Street operation?”

  The Capo nodded his head. “Even that. You don’t move anything.”

  “I got a big deal, boss, just trembling at the finish line.”

  “Then let it tremble. Shut it down.”

  “We can’t just shut down every thing,” the East Bay boss declared in an unhappy tone. “Like my powder network. We stop supplying horse and we’re going to have a town full of crazy people over there before the sun sets again. The other stuff, maybe okay. But not the horse. Some of those habits are running a hundred bills a day.”

  Ciprio’s Berkeley lieutenant hurried in to support his boss. “That’s right,” he said. “Some of those heads are popping four and five caps a day. We cut ’em off cold, anything could happen. If we freeze the horse, the whole town might go up in smoke.”

  DeMarco drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then he asked Ciprio, “How much dump have you been laying on your retailers?”