All in all, the battle had lasted less than two minutes. Zitka took a blackened briefcase and a metal box from the passenger compartment of the Rolls. The heavy weapons and the spoils were tossed into the Jeep. Andromede jumped behind the wheel and sped off toward the rear of the needle.

Zitka told Bolan, There's a guy still alive back there. In the tank."

Bolan sent Zitka and Harrington on to the vehicles and went to investigate Zitka's report. He found a frightened young man cringing on the smoldering rear floor of the still-smoking Rolls, tightly gripping a bleeding shoulder.

"I-I'm just his bookkeeper," the casualty moaned.

Bolan bolstered his .45, reached into his first-aid pouch and tossed a sterile compress onto the seat. "Know nothing, see nothing, say nothing," Bolan growled. That way you may live awhile."

The bookkeeper jerked his head in a vigorous assent. Bolan spun away and ran to rejoin the others. The jeep was already inside the van, and Harrington was pacing nervously alongside the retractable ramps. "Anything else for the horse?" he yelled, as soon as he noted Bolan's approach. "Not yet," Bolan replied. "Pick up the wagon down at the blacktop. Then head for home—the long way."

"Gotcha." Harrington was already rolling the ramps into the van. Andromede hastened to assist him. Bolan and Zitka sprinted to the Corvette.

Zitka was reaching for the radio as Bolan spun the sportster around. "How do you say, Eagle?" he demanded into the transmitter.

"Clean, man, clean," Loudelk's drawl came back. "And I missed all the fun."

"Okay, split," Zitka told him.

"Affirm, I am splitting."

Bolan glanced at Zitka and said, "Tell Deadeye about the wagon."

Zitka nodded and again spoke into the radio. "The wagon goes in the horse," he said. "Backboard regroup in the Mustang and head for the stable."

"Roger," responded a strained voice. "Is anything wrong with Maestro?"

"Naw, I'm just riding shotgun and radio for him. God, it went great, great, and I think we got another boodle."

"I see your dust," Washington reported. "Glad it went good. Next time I want up front."

Bolan grinned and reached for the radio. He depressed the transmitter button and said, "Good show, group, all of you, but play it cool now until we're home clean. Radio silence, beginning right now, except for emergencies. Read?"

"Read," replied Deadeye Washington.

"Gotcha," said Harrington.

"Affirm," reported Bloodbrother Loudelk.

"Wilco," Blancanales responded.

Chapter Seven

Face to Face

Captain Braddock was perturbed. Worse than that, he was beginning to feel a bit unsure of himself. He turned away from the large map on the wall of his office and faced his Hardcase-detail leaders. The two lieutenants and four sergeants who stared back at him had been carefully selected for this project. Each was an outstanding officer with an unblemished record of police efficiency.

"All right," Braddock said quietly, "what went wrong?"

Lieutenant Andy Foster cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. He and Braddock had been friends since police-academy days. "We underestimated the guy," he flatly declared.

"He did it so smoothly, I didn't even realize I'd been sucked in," spoke up a young sergeant, Carl Lyons. "Not until I started putting the pieces together."

"There was a confusion factor," Foster explained, as though to soften Lyon's admission. "First off, Giordano comes out in two vehicles. Somewhere along the line, God knows where, he added a third. Carl had no way of identifying the players. Cars were jumping into that procession all the way down to the freeway. It was pretty obvious that Giordano was trying to provoke a fight, and we simply had no way of determining which of those vehicles were Giordano's, which were Bolan's if any, and which were just unwitting participants. I ordered Carl to simply stay on Giordano's tail and report developments."

"I kept looking for a sudden strike," Lyons admitted. I guess I really wasn't thinking in terms of a Bolan tail. I was just trying to hang in there on Giordano. We hit the freeway, and I tried to tighten it up some. Then, zot!—I'm trapped into the cloverleaf of the interchange with another car hung on my rear bumper."

"And you immediately reported your trouble?" Braddock inquired.

"Sure. I was in contact with Lieutenant Foster the whole time."

"I realized we'd lost Giordano," Foster said. "It was 3:30 the peak period was beginning, and the freeways were beginning to pack. We're spread too thin, Tim. If we'd had three times our capability, we still couldn't have covered all possibilities—not short of a general alert. I had to cover the Golden State, the San Bernardino, the Santa Ana, and I couldn't even positively write off the harbor."

"Yeah," Braddock grunted. His guts were faintly churning.

"And remember, we had no way of knowing that Bolan was even interested in Giordano at that particular time. If I'd punched the panic button and sent all the Hardcase vehicles scurrying after Giordano, that would have left the rest of the possibilities free and clear for Bolan to tap. You said he was a brilliant tactician. I had to assume that..."

"Of course, Andy," Braddock interrupted. "You played it right. No criticism there."

"I played it safe, not right," Foster muttered. "I alerted the neighboring communities and asked them to put out a soft watch for the Giordano vehicles, and then I stewed and chewed my nails and waited for a contact report."

The other lieutenant present, Charlie Rickert, joined the discussion at that point. The man unofficially referred to as "the twenty-four-hour cop" said, The biggest goof was our failure to tail Bruno Scarelli. I think that was dumb. He was our one sure lead to Giordano's destination."

Carl Lyons flushed a deep scarlet. "I had to make a decision, and I made it," he said. "I detained Scarelli as long as I could, without tipping our hand. Couldn't tail him myself, not with that rear fender buckled in on the wheel. When one of those big cars tap your butt, you damn well know you've been tapped." He rubbed the back of his neck and scowled at Rickert.

"I sent a car to cover Scarelli," Foster reported, tight lipped. "Got there about thirty seconds late and lost him right back at that same damn interchange."

"I still think..."

Rickert's knife-twisting rejoiner was interrupted by the appearance of a uniformed officer in the doorway. "Got that report from the Riverside lab, Captain," he announced.

"Let's hear it," Braddock clipped.

"It was an armor-piercing projectile, all right. Probably fired from a bazooka. Slammed into the Rolls just forward of the doorpost, angling in from the rear. Instant death for the two men in front. The other scars were made by steel-jacketed slugs from a fifty-caliber machine gun. Each of the vehicles was pretty thoroughly worked over by that fifty."

"Thanks, Art," Braddock replied. The uniformed officer smiled and went away, shaking his head. "Full-scale warfare," Braddock growled.

"And the neatest ambush I've ever ..." Foster commented, his voice trailing off into quiet speculation.

Rickert reached into his pocket, withdrew a long metallic object, and tossed it onto Braddock's desk. "There was a small mountain of these fifty-caliber casings in the rocks over against the butte," he said.

Braddock picked up the casing and absently turned it end over end in his big hand. "They had that jeep out there, that's certain," he concluded. "Now somebody tell me how they can run around in an armed jeep without arousing curiosity? Where are they getting this heavy stuff—the bazooka and all that crap? How the hell did they move that heavy boulder onto the road? How the hell ... ?