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  He did not complete the instruction, nor did he need to do so. April understood.

  “Be careful,” she said quietly.

  “Always,” he replied, lying in his teeth.

  Impossibly, it seemed, the big man had been with her for less than a minute. He was no dawdler—and moments like these sometimes seemed to expand infinitely. The audio sensors were just beginning to growl into a lock-on. April quickly manipulated a control at the console to refine the fix. Deep-well rumbles began issuing from the monitor: a metallic click and thump, as though a door or iron gate had been opened and closed; a snarling whine, definitely canine; ghostly mutterings of male voices in unreadable conversation.

  “I can’t clarify that,” she told Bolan.

  “Fog refraction,” he explained. “Or terrain factors. Maybe both. Did you hear a dog?”

  She jerked her head in a curt nod. “Definitely a dog.”

  He sighed and went aft again to select another weapon from the armory—and then, without a word, he was out the door and lost in the mists.

  April fought a lump in her throat as she set the timer and began preparing for her own EVA. The emotions inside that vehicle had been as thick as the fog outside—yet out he went without a word. But she was beginning to understand that facet of the relationship, also. It had something to do with “staying hard.” Like sleeping with the eyes open. Like loving without touching. Economy! That was the word! Mack Bolan was a very economical man—in everything but war. He could not afford the emotional seepage; he needed it all where the moment was poised between life and death.

  Sure. April understood. And she was weeping silently without tears as she watched the spot where the man of her dreams had entered the mists. What a hell of a waste.

  “Live large, big fella,” she murmured to the mists. She understood that one, too. In Mack Bolan’s game, it was the only alternative to dying small.

  CHAPTER 4

  PORTENTS

  The fog was as much a hindrance as a help. Even though it cloaked Bolan in virtual invisibility, the heavy atmosphere also precluded any realistic reconnaissance except by touch and feel. The graveled private drive angled into what appeared to be a shallow box canyon less than a hundred yards removed from the main road. Beyond a chainlink fence with a padlocked vehicle gate loomed the ghostly outlines of a house in low profile. Apparently every light in the place was turned on, but only a pale luminescence seeped through the windows into the enshrouding mists. A security floodlight mounted on a high mast added very little to the visibility factor, imparting only a muted glow to the saturated air immediately surrounding it.

  Bolan delicately probed the fence for electrical currents and sensors, then quickly scaled it and dropped lightly to the ground inside, Tran-Gun in hand and ready. The dog appeared immediately, lunging at him from the mists with fangs bared and snarling into the attack.

  He met the charge with an upraised foot to the breast and, rolling with it, sent the dog hard against the fence. The impact dazed the animal momentarily. He lay there whimpering and trying to get his legs synchronized for another charge. The air pistol sneezed quietly, imbedding its knockout dart into the fur just below the throat. It was like throwing a switch; the animal instantly curled into a furry ball and drifted peacefully toward doggy dreamland.

  Bolan gingerly retrieved the small hypodermic and went on. Two cars were parked abreast on the drive at the side of the house. The one that had brought him here yielded no meaningful identification, but the other was registered to a James Portillo with a San Francisco address. The name touched an elusive little coder in Bolan’s mental mugfile but it would not surface. Even so, the San Francisco connection was interesting enough.

  He continued on to the house, a smallish frame structure nestled into the hillside. A patio window yielded quickly to his touch. Too quickly, maybe. He left it and went on around in a cautious recon, checking windows and peering into the lighted interior for a reading of the situation there. The reading was “temporary camp.” There were no curtains or blinds. Walls and floors were bare. Furnishings were minimal and simple. Each of the three bedrooms contained an air mattress and an open suitcase. One boasted a folding camp chair. A single large room served as living room, dining area, kitchen. It held only a portable TV resting on a wooden box, a couple of chairs and a small table. The kitchen appliances were built in. Two men stood at the stove, conversing with great animation. And instantly Bolan had his make on “James Portillo.”

  He returned immediately to the patio window and entered the house through a bedroom. Three steps along a narrow hallway took him to the living room. The guys were still going at it, both talking at once with raised voices and heated words.

  Bolan moved on in with the big silver Auto-Mag leading the way and was halfway across the room before his presence there was noted.

  A pregnant silence descended abruptly as two disturbed faces turned to an inspection of the warrior.

  Portillo was a big beefy guy with graying hair and cherubic face, maybe forty, smooth-looking—a politician type. He’d come up in the Cleveland Mob and gone west with the flow of black bucks from that area, figuring prominently for a number of years as Cleveland’s liaison man with the burgeoning western empires. The dapper front man had disappeared from public view at about the same time as Bolan’s San Francisco campaign. Rumors from both sides had him either dead or retired in Central America. But the name kept popping up in intelligence reports. Bolan had heard it mentioned in a contemporary reference as recently as the Arizona adventure.

  In Mob parlance, Portillo was known as a “grease merchant”—a man with important connections into the business and political sectors.

  The other guy was a nonentity. About twenty-five, maybe Sicilian and maybe not, tightly kinked hair worn in a neat Afro style, mean eyes.

  The differing reactions to the Bolan presence told the tale of contrasting types. Portillo met the threat with a tentative smile and hands raised limply to shoulder level. Mean-eyes was not quite so intelligent. He made a break for gunleather and tried a spinout. Neither move bought him more than a couple of ticks of the heart. The AutoMag thundered once to dispatch 240 grains of splattering death whistling up the guy’s nose. The top of his head exploded and sprayed fragments onto the wall behind, the body falling back into the startled arms of the grease merchant.

  Portillo shuddered and withdrew support from that gruesome horror, dancing clear while hastily showing that his hands were high and unencumbered.

  “Jesus!” he groaned, eyes glazing on the big silver pistol.

  “Kiss it goodbye, Jimmy,” Bolan said coldly.

  “Why?” the guy pleaded. “What’ve I done to offend you?”

  “You exist. That’s offense enough.”

  “Wait! Hold it!” Jimmy the Grease was coming apart rapidly, from the inside. “I know you! I know who you are!”

  “Congratulations,” said ice-eyes. “So you know why.”

  “But you’ve got it wrong! I’m clean! I’m retired!”

  “Tell it to McCullough,” Bolan said.

  Portillo’s frantic gaze bounced hopelessly off the walls for several seconds, then he muttered, “Who? I don’t …”

  The AutoMag thundered again. The lobe of the guy’s left ear disappeared. He howled and fell to his knees, frantically pinching at the wound to halt the flow of blood.

  Bolan calmly told him. “The next one takes the lip. So you better use it while you can.”

  “I swear I didn’t send them!” Portillo howled. “You should know better! You know I’m not into that kind of stuff!”

  “What are you into these days?” Bolan inquired, the tone almost conversational.

  “Nothing! I told you I’m …” Reality had suddenly grabbed hold of the guy. Bolan could see it settling into the eyes, even before that shaking voice continued. “Okay—no—you’re right. It’s no time for word games, is it? I swear I don’t know why I’m here. I was told to come and wait. I would b
e told when to make my move.”

  “What move?”

  “I wasn’t told that, either. But you’re right. It had something to do with McCullough.”

  “But you don’t know what.”

  “That’s right. I don’t know what. I’d tell you if—”

  “A guy with your brains can put it together. Put it together for me, Jimmy, while you’ve got brains to put with.”

  “I guess—I guess it has something to do with—political, I guess.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Probably, yeah. That’s my specialty, of course. I spread the grease, ease the slide.”

  “You can’t spread it for McCullough if he’s dead.”

  “You’ve got it. That’s right. So I guess I—after—after McCullough.”

  “After he’s dead.”

  “I think so.”

  “Who’s taking him over?”

  “God I don’t know. I don’t know, Bolan.”

  “Who sent you?”

  The guy’s eyes were starting to bounce off the walls again. He was in a hell of a predicament. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  Bolan sent some quick reinforcement to the sagging memory. Another thundering round blew from the ventilated silver barrel and buried itself in the floor between fat knees. Samples of scorched fabric and shrieking skin went with it.

  Portillo screamed and fell onto his side, both hands shakingly exploring for damages. He shuddered and very quietly reported in. “Arthur Bloom sent me.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Arthur called and said they wanted me to come here and wait.”

  “Who is Arthur Bloom?” Bolan asked, just as quietly.

  “He’s in Sacramento.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Same as me. But he’s a registered lobbyist. Lawyer. Represents many interests.”

  “Mob interests,” Bolan said flatly.

  The guy sighed. “Them too, yes.”

  “So Arthur Bloom sent you.”

  “Well it was—message, messenger, he just passed the message along.”

  “From who?”

  “From … them.”

  Bolan coldly inquired. “Would you like one square through the knee, Jimmy?”

  No, Jimmy certainly did not want that. Very quickly he replied, “It’s the new bunch—the new—I don’t—you busted California all to hell, you know. Wasn’t much left after Frisco. Hell. These guys just moved it in, slick and easy. Nobody knows for sure who they are.”

  “From back east?”

  “I doubt that. No. That’s why I—see, I got no connections now—I mean family. That’s all gone. Has no meaning now. Know what I mean? I mean, not like the old days. It’s all new. All changed. Well, mostly. Mostly new.”

  “So now you just jump to any fingersnap, eh?”

  Portillo gave him a hurt look. “Well no, not—leave me some dignity, huh? I know who sent me. But I don’t have any names for you. See, that’s uh, it’s the new concept.”

  Bolan felt the hair rising along his neck. “The California Concept,” he said quietly.

  “Right. Nobody knows nobody and nobody knows nothing. Like invisible, but it’s there just the same and everybody is watching his own ass. That’s the way it is now. They say do it and you better damn well do it. ’Cause you really don’t know where it’s coming from. You do it or you get a bullet and a burial at sea.”

  “We’re still talking about the boys, Jimmy.”

  “Sure, it’s still the boys. But which boys? That’s the kicker, see. Listen, they don’t have to worry about omerta anymore ’cause there’s nobody to omerta for. Tell you the truth, Bolan, it’s better this way. You can’t talk if you don’t know what to say. Right?”

  “Wrong,” Bolan said. “You’re talking fine. Keep on.”

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “McCullough.”

  Portillo sighed. “McCullough is doomed. They missed once. They may even miss twice. But sooner or later they—how’d you get onto this?”

  Bolan ignored the question. “Why is he doomed?”

  “I swear I don’t know that. Except he obviously has something they want. That’s why I’m here. Not to take it but to grease the slide for them when they take it over.” He sighed again, the sigh ending as a faint sneer. “But these guys—these punks …” His gaze slid to the dead triggerman, then bounced quickly back. “They know even less than me. Like that trained dog out there. Say hit and he hits. He doesn’t ask why and he doesn’t care who. Same with these punks. No more than guided missiles. Do you know, I don’t even know this poor boy’s name? They called him Junior. Supposed to be a hotshot driver. That’s all I know. It’s all I wanted to know. I’m not one of these, Bolan. You should know that. I never killed a man in my whole life.”

  Bolan could believe that. But killing was not necessarily the worst of crimes.

  He took a small first-aid box from his belt and dropped it onto Portillo’s thigh. “You bought yourself some time,” he told the guy. “Spend it wisely.”

  “I’m dead if I do and dead if I don’t,” Portillo replied quietly.

  “You’ve been dead all your life,” Bolan said disgustedly.

  He went out of there, returning to the mists.

  The fog, he knew, was almost portentous of the Terrible Tuesday he was going to find in California.

  He had an inkling, now, of what this new “concept” was all about.

  It meant fog—ultra-concealment—invisibility—a truly “secret society” of thugs getting set to plunder and loot the great Golden State.

  And Mack Bolan himself was still enveloped in the mists. But maybe not for long.

  CHAPTER 5

  ECHOES

  Bolan knew this territory well. Very well. He had come here early in his war to visit death and destruction through hill and dale, from shore to desert, in a titanic struggle to shake down the bloated empire of Julian “Deej” DiGeorge, then undisputed boss of everything west. Despite what had gone before, in Pittsfield, the battle for Los Angeles and environs had marked the moment when Mack Bolan’s homefront effort truly attained the stature of all-out warfare. It also marked a point of maturity for the warrior himself. He had come to Los Angeles with little more than a hope and a prayer, the hounds of hell hot on his scent and closing for the kill. He’d taken his baptism in hell there, emerging a much stronger and far wiser warrior—seeing clearly for the first time the true dimensions of the task he’d set for himself. Undaunted by that vision of hell everlasting, he’d gone on from the Southern California victory to slash at other tentacles of the Mafia octopus, which was strangling the world—never once daring to believe that a final victory would be his, or even possible.

  Yes, the warrior had matured here. In a sense, he had died here. It was hallowed ground for Mack Bolan.

  And Portillo’s sensing of the changes in the California Mafia was just a bit awry. The knockout punch had been delivered not in San Francisco but in Los Angeles. The later operations to the north, as well as south in San Diego, had been mere peripheral actions when viewed in the total context of the California problem. The real battle had been fought here. And there had been no truly effective Mob movements in the area since the fall of Julian DiGeorge. Until now. And … now … well, now it seemed that someone had found a new handle and was busily rebuilding the crime machine. Bolan’s immediate task—to be accomplished in a matter of mere hours—was to find that handle, tear it loose, and dismantle the new machine. It was not an enviable task … but it was the one at hand, the only game in town for Mack Bolan.

  He had made a start.

  Now he could do little more than hope for a positive reaction from the other side … and to be there when it came. For that, he was depending upon the technical abilities of April Rose.

  She was tense and fidgeting at the communications console when Bolan returned to the cruiser. “How’d it go?” she asked, the voice barely more than a husky whisper.

  “You’ll have to
tell me that,” he replied, immediately stepping aft to shed himself of the combat rig.

  “You were gone so long,” she complained. “I counted three shots and—I wish you’d carry a radio.”

  Bolan smiled and said, “Okay. Next time I’ll try to find room for one. What have you got?”

  She waited until he came forward before replying. “So far, not a thing. But the patch is good. I know it’s good.”

  “If the guy was leveling with me,” Bolan mused, “he could have nothing to move with. He could decide to just hot it out of there. So let’s watch for that, too.”

  The lady tried and failed to make it sound like a casual inquiry: “What’s happening, Mack? What are we doing?”

  “Don’t ask,” he replied quietly.

  “But I am asking. Don’t you think I should? …”

  He sighed as he dropped into the command chair and lit a cigarette. “You’re right, April. Sorry. Sure you need to know. Guess I’ve forgotten how to work with a partner.”

  “Am I a partner?” she asked, those great eyes flashing at him from the midships console.

  He chuckled and replied, “Junior partner, sure. The guy you wired is Jimmy Portillo. He came west on the heels of the big postwar wave from the eastern families. This was open territory, then—from the Rockies to the Pacific. No one family had domain. DiGeorge was just getting his hooks into Southern California. Don DeMarco was quietly mining the San Francisco area. Bugsy Siegel had opened Las Vegas and was moving in on the movie industry. Then comes Portillo. The guy had no rank, no visible power base. But he probably did more than any single man to organize the west and to consolidate most of the power under DiGeorge. DeMarco managed to hang onto his little empire up north, but everything else belonged to Deej. Thanks largely to that guy in there, Jimmy the Grease. When things went to hell around here, though, Jimmy quietly dropped out of the picture. He’s a politician, not a fighter. And his party was out of power. I believe they’re trying to get it back. That would make Portillo a very important man again.” Bolan grinned at the lady. “And we lucked onto him. Your wires, m’lady, could save the day.”