"Bolan don't use no triggermen," Lucasi said quickly, a hint of fire returning to his voice.

"He did this time. There were two of them. Come up on me just like a couple of G.o.dd.a.m.n shadows. I didn't know from nothing, boss. Just ail of a sudden here was this d.a.m.n Beretta looking down my throat."

"The guy works alone, alone, you dumb s.h.i.t!" Lucasi shouted. "Now you get your story straight!" you dumb s.h.i.t!" Lucasi shouted. "Now you get your story straight!"

"Jesus, I swear, it happened just like I said," Simonetti moaned.

Lucasi turned his back on the courier and, to no one in particular, commanded, "Take Sammy outside and get his story straight."

A large man who had been lurking near the door opened it and gave the nod to Simonetti. "Let's go," he growled.

The black-money courier's eyes rolled; he started to give an emotional protest to the boss, then quickly changed his mind and stumbled out the door. Another man fell in behind him, solemnly pulling the door closed behind their exit.

Lucasi was flipping the marksman's medal like a coin, staring past it unseeingly, his eyes characteristically locked into a dead focus while his mind whirred.

Presently he said, quietly, "Somebody could be shooting us full of juice, Diver."

The large man at the door, Lucasi's house captain, replied, "Could be. I been wondering when somebody would try something like that. Those marksman's medals can be picked up most anywhere."

"It doesn't sound like a Bolan hit," Lucasi said.

"No, it don't, Ben."

"You were back east last month. How many of the boys did you run into?"

The large man shrugged. "I guess a dozen or two. Why?"

"New York boys?"

The man nodded. "Yeah. Them too."

"Did you talk to one-just one one-who'd ever seen Bolan face to face?"

The big man just grinned.

"Of course you didn't," Lucasi said, smirking. "The only boys who've seen Bolan, you'd have to go to h.e.l.l to talk to them. Right?"

The house captain jerked his head in agreement. "He don't f.u.c.k around much, the way I hear it. He just hits and splits, and when he's gone, there ain't n.o.body around to tell what happened."

"Exactly." Lucasi tossed the medal again and deliberately let it fall to the floor. "So who's got my G.o.dd.a.m.n hundred thou, Diver?"

"It sounds fishy, all right," the captain agreed.

"You go out and help talk to Sammy."

The large man grinned sourly and went out.

Lucasi lit a cigar and worked furiously at it until the tip was glowing fiercely, then he walked stiffly out of the room, along a short hallway to his sleeping quarters.

He went directly to the bed and whipped the covers away from the nude woman who was sleeping there. He yelled, "Outta that rack, you lazy b.i.t.c.h!"

Dorothy Lucasi sleepily sat up, swinging the long Vegas-showgirl legs over the side of the bed. "Are you crazy, Bennie?" she inquired in a practiced monotone. She often asked him that, in the same tone of voice.

His wife stood a full head taller than Lucasi. He glowered at her as she lurched to her feet and looked about dazedly for her dressing gown. Instead of helping her find the wrap, he yelled, "Yeah, I'm crazy to have married a floozy like you!" Lucasi often said that, also.

"You get some clothes on that million dollar meat and hustle it into the kitchen. It's seven o'clock and I G.o.ddammit want something to eat!"

She was sleepily complaining, "Why can't Frenchy fix ... ?" when her chin dropped and the words quit coming.

Lucasi thought at first that she was looking at him in some new way he'd never yet seen, then he knew that her transfixed gaze was going beyond him and onto something behind him.

A chill seized his spine and shook it, and he turned slowly to find the object of his wife's rarely undiluted attention.

A big tall guy was just standing there against the wall, next to the window-and he must have been there all the while. He was dressed all in black, with guns and belts and things strapped all over him, and that face was like carved out of Mount Rushmore, except for the peculiarly hot-icy eyes that smouldered out of that deepfreeze.

Yeah. Bolan had come to town, all right.

Lucasi felt himself crumbling inside.

His voice sounded high and squeaky to himself as he told the impressive apparition in black, "So. Sammy had it straight."

The guy wasn't even holding a gun on him ... the wise c.o.c.k. He was just standing there, sort of relaxed, staring a hole through Ben Lucasi.

The seconds ticked away, silently. Dorothy sat back down on the bed and modestly covered her lap with a sheet. It was the first act of modesty on her part that Ben Lucasi had ever been aware of. He found himself wondering about the effect this guy had on the dames.

Presently Lucasi cleared his throat and said, "Uh, what do you want, eh?"

"Harlan Winters," the guy replied, and it was a voice straight out of h.e.l.l.

"Who?" the Mafia chieftain nervously inquired.

Dorothy giggled, like some nut. "Harlie Winters," she said, very helpfully.

"He ain't here," Lucasi declared quickly, wishing he could bust that broad right in the nose.

"He's dead," the big guy said.

Lucasi whispered, "G.o.d I'm sorry, I didn't know that."

"Friend of yours?"

The guy sure didn't use many words.

"Uh, well... in a way. We, uh ... met once or twice." He snapped a quick glance toward his wife. She was wearing a shocked face. He hoped to G.o.d she'd keep her flannel mouth shut and he kept right on talking to edge her out, just in case.

"Winters was a nice man, G.o.d-that's terrible. How'd he die?"

"The hard way," the cold voice intoned. "Scattered all over his study."

Lucasi shivered. What kind of cat and mouse game was this? Why G.o.d why had he sent Diver and the other boys outside to ask dumb questions of poor Sammy?

So, he had to stall the guy as long as possible, that was the only thing left. G.o.d, he didn't even have a gun in here.

He took a deep breath and said, "Look, I don't know why you're coming telling me this. Uh ... you're Bolan, right? I knew that, I knew it right away. Look man, you're barking up a hollow tree this time. I got no beef with you at all, nothing. So you knocked over one of my messengers, okay. h.e.l.l with it, easy come easy go, easy come easy go, that's the way I look at it. I mean, I got no beef. So you hit this Harlan Winters, okay, like I said, I met 'im once or twice, no big deal. No beef. Now, way I see it...." that's the way I look at it. I mean, I got no beef. So you hit this Harlan Winters, okay, like I said, I met 'im once or twice, no big deal. No beef. Now, way I see it...."

Bolan said, "Save your breath." The cold gaze flicked to a watch at his wrist. "You've got twenty seconds."

"For what?" what?" Lucasi cried. Lucasi cried.

"I'm looking for tracks, Bennie."

"What kind of tracks?"

"Who wanted Winters dead?"

"What? You mean you didn't ... ?"

"I didn't," the icy b.a.s.t.a.r.d clipped back. "Who did?"

Lucasi pa.s.sed a shaking hand over his face. He sighed. Then he said, "h.e.l.l, I can't imagine. Why don't you ask Thornton. Maxwell Thornton, the big shot. Yeah. Ask him."

Bolan a.s.sured him, "I will." Another quick glance at the wrist.w.a.tch, then, "You and the lady get out of here. Close the door behind you."

"You mean that's ... ?"

"Yeah, that's all for now." Something that might have been a smile flickered across those cold features. "Be seeing you, Bennie."

Lucasi muttered, "Yeah," in a choked voice as he grabbed Dorothy and shoved her out the door. He followed quickly and pulled the door firmly shut, then he left her standing there stupid naked in the hallway and ran shouting into the main part of the house.

Then he saw them through the sliding gla.s.s doors to the patio-all his boys-with their tails on the cement and their hands clasped atop their heads.

A couple other guys, dressed just like Bolan, were just then disappearing over the wall... and Ben Lucasi knew that he had been very neatly had all the way.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h had just walked in and taken over!

And for what?

For what tracks?

His G.o.dd.a.m.n khaki Mafia, for G.o.d's sake!

But what tracks? what tracks?

5:

THE MISSION.

They had departed the Lucasi neighborhood on diverging routes and regrouped ten minutes later on a bluff overlooking Mission Bay Park, the city's most popular water playground.

Blanca.n.a.les still drove the bread truck he'd used in scouting the Winters home. Schwarz had coverted Bolan's "warwagon," a Ford Econoline van, into a mobile electronics workshop-and this remained as his base of operations.

Bolan himself was driving a "hot scout"-a speedy, high-maneuverable, European sports car.

This was their first chance to regroup and report since the hit on Sammy Simonetti at the airport. Each man dismounted from his vehicle and they held a council of war beside Bolan's roadrunner while they pulled concealing coveralls over their combat outfits.

"Sammy's bread is in the bread truck," Blanca.n.a.les reported, grinning. "It counts out to exactly a hundred and five thousand. What do I do with it?"

"Keep it for the warchest," Bolan replied. "That's one of your problems for this operation. Anything Gadgets and I need, we'll come to you. You make all the buys. Less chancey that way."

Blanca.n.a.les nodded. "Okay. How'd it go in Lucasi's palace?"

"d.a.m.n near disastrous," Bolan said. "The little man walked in while I was sounding his bedroom. You guys did a neat job outside, thanks. Probably saved the day."

"Did you get the bedroom bug planted?" Schwarz wondered.

"Yeah." The man from blood smiled. "In the headboard of his bed, while his wife slept. He's married to a kid ... but oh, what a kid!"

Blanca.n.a.les snickered. "Maybe we could sell the tapes to an underground movie outfit."

Schwarz, all business, wanted to know, "Where'd you put the relay stations?"

"Window ledges, outside," Bolan reported. "All aligned at one-five-zero magnetic, per your instructions."

"Then we should have him snookered," Schwarz said. The gadgets-genius glanced at his watch and jotted a note in his surveillance log. "I'll have to cruise by and drain those storage banks in four hours. That's maximum storage, sorry."

Bolan had to grin. It was typical of Gadgets Schwarz to be "sorry" that he could not improve upon perfection. The little devices which he'd designed and built for this job were just about the ultimate in electronics surveillance, to Bolan's mind.

The pickup unit, consisting of a mike and a miniature radio transmitter, was about the size of a lady's wrist.w.a.tch. The life in the tiny power cell was sufficient to provide 72 hours of continuous operation.

The "relay station," somewhat bulkier but still small enough for easy concealment, received and recorded the continuous broadcast from the pickup unit.

Upon command, the transmitter in the relay station would "unreel" the entire recording disc in about sixty seconds. That command would come from Schwarz's mobile console in the warwagon; he could cruise casually past the house once each four hours and "collect" the intelligence stored in the relay station ... four hours of electronic surveillance compressed into a sixty-second transmission keyed from the warwagon.

The re-recording, appropriately slowed and automatically performed within the master console, screened out all the silent zones or 'lapses" in the four-hour recording, preserving only the "audibles" for fast monitoring in the re-play. And Gadgets was "sorry" about that. They had followed Sammy Simonetti from the airport and used the courier's unhappy arrival at the Lucasi household as a diversion for their own penetration.

While Lucasi and his palace guard focused on the implications of Simonetti's busted play, Able Team slipped quietly in and wired the whole joint for sound.

"You've got four relays plus the phone tap," Bolan reminded Schwarz. "Can you collect them all on one pa.s.s?"

"No," Schwarz told him. "I could probably squeeze in two per pa.s.s but I'd rather not. A hundred yards is about the maximum reliable range for those relays. That gives me a hundred coming and a hundred going away, strict line-of-sight. I read that as one collection per pa.s.s, unless I just pull up and park."

"Pull up and park, then," Bolan suggested. "Change a tire, fiddle with your engine-anything that will cover. But I don't like five times past that house in the same vehicle."