"I'm looking. What am I looking for?"

"This is UHF, crystal-controlled stuff. Look at the frequencies he bought."

"I'm looking, Carl, but I still don't..."

"Dammit, Captain, he's covered our Hardcase frequencies!"

Braddock glared tight-lipped at the sheet of paper. Foster half-rose from his chair and craned about to get a look at the parts list.

"Well I'll be a ..." Foster declared in a near whisper.

"How did that son of a bitch get our frequencies?" Lyons inquired angrily.

Braddock was woodenly shuffling through the Intelligence items Foster had placed on his desk earlier. He found the piece he was seeking and spread it out under the desklamp. It was a mug shot, the type of photo used on armed-forces identification cards, of a man with dark skin, thick black hair, and piercing eyes.

"Who is that?" Lyons asked.

"That," Captain Braddock said, "Is an Indian. Not a Cherokee or a Navajo, but a Blackfoot. He was standing right there in my doorway earlier today, said he'd seen the Hollywood rhubarb last night. I sent him on down to the control room to file a written statement. I sent him in there myself."

Lyons could not control the sudden twitching at his facial muscles. Those nervy bastards," he said, grinning. "What're you going to do with nervy bastards like that?"

"I'm going to lock them in a cell and throw away the key, that's what I'm going to do with them," Braddock said. He sighed, staring at the photo of Bloodbrother Loudelk. It's almost a damn shame."

"And a waste," Foster added. Think of what they could do, with those brains and energies, if they..."

"What could they do?" Lyons asked, quietly interrupting. "I mean, really, what could they do? They became men in a different sort of world—entirely different."

They've got to live in this one, though," Brad-dock snapped. His manner clearly implied that the maudlin hour was over. He viciously punched a button on his intercom. "I want all Hardcase personnel on duty immediately. All detail leaders in the control room in thirty minutes. And get me some communications specialists up here right away. What's the latest on that electronics-intelligence outfit from San Diego?"

"The navy is flying them up from Miramer," came the response. "Should get here any minute now."

"With all their gear?"

"Yes, sir, with all their gear."

Braddock released the intercom button and pinned Lyons with a stem gaze. That's what we're going to do with the nervy bastards," he told him. "We're going to beat them at their own game."

Julian DiGeorge did not like this Mack Bolan business, he did not like it at all. He wished there could have been some way to avoid this showdown, some way to be rid of the Bolan nuisance without going back to the old ways. When a man reaches the age of fifty-seven, "Deej" reasoned, he should be able to settle down in a peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of his lifetime of labor. Deej, of course, used the word "labor" in the loosest sense; he had no actual firsthand knowledge of what the term even implied. His father had been a gun-bearer in the early Capone era and had died in a federal prison. Little Deej had matriculated early into gangland circles, serving as a messenger and bag man on Chicago's South Side at the age of thirteen. There had been no labor involved in that occupation nor in the successive moves into numbers, narcotics, prostitution, organized gambling, and finally into the family hierarchy. Labor, to Deej, meant carrying a gun. It meant police roustings and harassment and an occasional short "Vacation" behind bars; it meant worry and anxiety, competition with ambitious opportunists within the family, and living most of his days and nights under police suspicion and scrutiny.

Deej had not labored for quite a few years. He had been "Legit," to all outward appearances, throughout the sixties. He had backed nearly a dozen independently produced motion pictures. He owned three first-class nightclubs and was a behind-the-scenes force in many banking activities. More than one celebrity of stage and screen owed his start to the background maneuvering of this quiet patron of the arts. Understandably, Deej did not like this Mack Bolan business at all.

Many people nowadays, especially those in the upcoming generations, had never heard the words "Mafia" or "Costa Nostra." When they did, it was usually in some fairy-tale setting, a fiction, a legend. Deej himself laughed politely when the words were humorously employed by television or nightclub comics. So, understandably, Deej was highly upset with Mack Bolan. Thanks to Bolan, the words were now being heard everywhere a guy turned—and they weren't being used humorously. Already the President of the country was using this word in official documents sent to the congress. Yeah. Thanks to Bolan, Deej's peaceful enjoyment of a lifetime's fruits was being threatened. Thanks to Bolan, Deej was going to have to crawl from under that very comfortable legit" cover, if only to make sure that it was still securely in place.

There were still many facets of the DiGeorge activities that Deej did not want to see exposed to the public eye. The import business down at the Port of Los Angeles, for instance, and its warehouses bulging with untaxed commodities. The SSPacific Palace, for instance, with its girls and gaming tables. His partial interest in Tri-Coast, for instance, and their recent exposure as a Mafia money drop. There were many vital business and political connections, also, that would be severed for Deej under the Bolan spotlight.

Deej had tried to evade the Bolan showdown. He had offered to put up another hundred thou out of his own pocket to strengthen the open contract on Bolan. He had even suggested that perhaps Bolan could be bought off, perhaps even brought into the family with a full pardon for his sins. But Deej knew, from the wisdom of a lifetime of labor," that he'd just been trying to postpone the inevitable. Bolan would have to be met and squashed. There was no evading the showdown. The guy had a hard-on for the family—it was that simple. They'd have to castrate him; they could not screw him to death or sate him with games of romance. There was only one way to castrate a guy with that big a hard-on. You had to go back to the old ways. You had to get a gun and shove it down his throat and pull the trigger.

Julian "Deej" DiGeorge would have to become a laborer again, briefly. He had already sent his wife and his daughter and his grandchildren to Palm Springs for a quiet vacation. Now Deej would return to the salt mines for a little while. Deej had no choice. He was the big uncle of Southern California. And tonight, the family was coming to council. It would be a death council. For Bolan's death.

Chapter Thirteen

The Council

The Death Squad was waiting for Bolan when he returned from his solitary stroll along the beach. None had left; all were present. Bolan gave no outward sign of pleasure at this development, but his voice was warm and his eyes were sparkling as he said, "All right, let's get on with the briefing."

He produced a stack of Polaroid snapshots, which he handed to Zitka. "Everyone take a good look at these. Pass them around. Brother and I were on site a little while ago, and we tried to cover every angle. Study them carefully. Well be going in under cover of darkness; I want you to have a good idea of the lay of the land.

"The front of the house faces west, away from the street, looking down on a gentle slope. The patio is flagstoned, runs about a hundred feet deep, seventy-five feet wide, on the upper level and is accessible from the ground floor of the house through these French doors, set into a cement-block wall. The other wall, down at the end of the patio, is only about two feet high. Beyond the wall is terraced lawn—not as steep as it looks in these pictures—three levels. The swimming pool is on the first level below the patio. The tennis court is at the south side of the house. Bocci-ball and putting greens on the north side. The driveway, from the street to the parking area at the rear of the house, is about 200 yards. The terrain is slightly uneven but generally level. There are flower gardens and a number of small ponds back there.