Bolan himself was hardly more than a shadow moving across the field of white, an instinctive creature of the night now, homing on the target of targets for the grand-slam clincher of this mob wipe-out. He gained the rear corner of the building — so carefully noted during his earner pass — and abandoned the snapbrim hat and overcoat in a snowdrift.

The Thompson went across his shoulders and he began the difficult and dangerous hand-over-hand ascent to the roof, using windowsills and cornices and whatever precarious handhold presenting itself.

The weakened shoulder protested and once threatened to quit altogether, but he issued stern inner commands and pressed on — and then the railing of the private sundeck was his and he was up and over and moving swiftly across the wind-drifted snow of that upper porch. The French doors gave quickly and with only a light snapping sound to the sudden pressure of Bolan's boot, and he was moving silently across a small room that smelled of liniments and leather and maybe a trace of human sweat lost without labor.

Suddenly the sounds of murmuring voices were rising to meet him, unreal and ghostly against the louder background of the hell let loose outside, and Bolan realized that he was standing at the head of a short circular stairway. Across a metal railing and just below could be seen the silhouettes of several figures standing carefully at a wall and peering obliquely through a window upon the landscape of swirling action outisde.

Bolan swung the Thompson into ready-mode and tossed a small personnel flare toward the center of that room down there. It sizzled into brilliantly flickering patterns of light — and the Executioner knew at once that he had reached the home stand.

The figures at the window — four of them with that prosperous-cheap look of the street hood become boss of all that moved and breathed — whirled about in that awakening which most men find but once in a lifetime. A personal awareness of death-arrived. A weapon flared down there and a chunk of metal tore through the air close enough for Bolan to feel the passage. Already, though, the deadly Thompson was bucking in his grip and he was sweeping that group with a tightly-locked figure-8 burst that flung the entire bunch into the wall and oozing toward the floor.

Another weapon was unloading on him from across the room, and furious chunks of bi-impact stompers were dislodging plaster from the ceiling just above his head. Bolan was working the Thompson in a quick sweep toward that challenge when something hard and heavy crashed into his bad shoulder. The arm fell and the big gun with it, then another blow glanced off the base of his neck and he went tumbling headfirst along the short stairway.

Bolan reached the bottom in a sliding sprawl, fighting to get a hand inside the jumpsuit — but too late. A big guy was slowly descending behind him, pinning Bolan in the spot of a powerful flashlight, and a big nasty Colt .45 was peering at him in a way Bolan knew to be entirely professional.

A breathless voice from across the room, brittle with age and breathless with the excitement of the moment, cried, "Save 'im, Turk, save 'im for me!"

"I'm saving him, Don Gio," Larry Turk panted. The .45 was waggling in a silent command that needed no words to back it up. Bolan came groggily to his feet and stood there swaying in the flickering light from the flare, blinded by the powerful spot in his eyes.

"Hands onna head!" the big guy commanded.

Bolan complied, willing his head to be still and his mind to find its place. The war was not over yet, he kept telling himself — he was still alive and functioning.

"Turn around, hands against the wall, feet wide apart!"

Bolan knew the routine. But he also knew that he was not going to give up the Beretta without a murmur. "Go to hell," he snapped.

The old man cackled with delight. "You didn't knock all the fight out of him yet, Turk. Who is that, is that?.."

"Yessir, it's Bolan," Turk said, the voice edged with gloating triumph. "Big bad Bolan. We don't want to knock all the fight out of him at once, do we Gio? A minute at a time, an hour at a time, we'll just drain it out of him slow'n easy." To Bolan, he yelled, "Turn to th' wall, dammit, or do I turn you with a foot in the nuts!"

A new sound of warfare, a somehow different quality of sound, was rising up in the air out beyond that window. An amplified voice was carrying across the grounds and, although Bolan could not make out the words, that official tone of authority was clear and unmistakable. He told Turk, "You'd better make your move, turkeymaker. The cops have joined the party."

The old man stepped to the window, taking care to keep his distance from the prisoner, and declared, "He's right, Turk." He stepped back, distastefully eyeing the bloodied dead at his feet, and added, "Look at that, Turk. Look what this rotten bastard did to our friends."

Turk's eyes were beginning to waver and flicker rapidly from side to side. With only the merest telltale trace of nervousness to his voice, he said, "Those cops, Gio. How do we?.."

"Maybe we better turn this boy over to them," Giovanni replied, thinking the words carefully. "For the time being, anyway. It would save a lot of explaining."

"Yeah I..."

A loud commotion was taking place outside the door on the far side of the room. Someone was pounding on the door and an excited voice was yelling, "Open up, lemme in, I got the finky shit!"

Giovanni sighed and declared, "That's Pete the Hauler." His eyes took on a new craftiness and played briefly on Larry Turk. The old man's .45 swung to bear on Bolan and he told his field general, "Go let him in, Turk. I'm getting an idea."

Turk said, "Watch it, I ain't shook him down yet," and reluctantly turned his prisoner over to the Capowhile he crossed quickly to the door. He fumbled with the override mechanism for the electronic lock and swung the door open.

Pete Lavallo stumbled through, dragging with him a dishevelled and bleeding Joliet Jake, overlord of swinging downtown. At that same moment the lighting in the sanctum flickered and came to life with a dull, yellowish glow.

Turk muttered, "Don't tell me they finally got that generator't'going."

Lavallo, wild-eyed and panting, gasped. "There's cops lining up all up and down that road out there. They must be hundreds of 'em." He slapped his wounded prisoner with the back of his hand and growled, "Walk, dammit, and stand up like a man. You're in the presence of your Capo."

Joliet Jake did not seem to know where he was nor why. The old fellow was groaning with a shattered arm and bent almost double, clutching the arm to his belly and making whimpering little sounds of deepest remorse.

Lavallo said to Larry Turk, "Gimme a hand with this..."

Then he saw Bolan, standing tall and stiff against the far wall, and Pete the Hauler promptly lost all interest in his own prisoner. He half ran across the office, drew up beside Giovanni, and gasped, "It's him! It's that rotten shit of a Bolan!"

"It's him all right," the Don replied smugly.

Larry Turk was steering the grievously wounded underboss of the Loop to a lounge chair. Lavallo was eyeing the focal point of all his fears and hatreds, and he must have been thinking that his guy, this rotten bastard, was responsible for all the unspeakable indignities which had befallen Pete the Hauler this day. Don Giovanni was looking like the cat which was just about to dine upon a canary.

And then Pete the Hauler "lost his mind" and forgot where he was and why. He gave an enraged bellow of frustrations released, and "the magnificient fuckup" threw himself upon the object of his pinpointed hatreds, chopping at Bolan with the little revolver and apparently intent on smashing his head in.

And it was all Bolan had needed. He smoothly went inside the attack, turned Lavallo effortlessly around and held him there as a shield. Meanwhile the Belle of the Ball was whisking clear of her sideleather.