Bolan felt him winding down.

"I need a handle, Toro. Anything at all."

The Cuban hesitated, finally spoke.

"There may be something I can do," he said. "But from in here..."

His shrug was eloquent, and Bolan got the message. Loud and clear. He scanned the possibilities in something like a second flat, arriving at a swift decision.

"We can work it out," he said.

John Hannon set the telephone receiver down and kept his hand on top of it, as if to keep it from escaping. Or to keep his hand from trembling. He had been expecting anything, but even so the deep familiar voice had sent a tremor down his spine.

It was a voice from somewhere out beyond the rim of Hell.

A warrior's voice.

There had been doubts, despite the blood-and-thunder meeting that had saved his life, but Hannon was not doubting now. He was convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He had just been talking to a dead man.

Hannon had pursued the soldier's holy war in the urban jungle of Miami. He had followed the commando's hellfire course across a continent and back again, until the fiery climax on a sodden afternoon in New York's Central Park.

The former captain of detectives had expected some reaction, anything — except the sudden sense of loss.

The soldier's death had left a void behind... in Hannon.

But the soldier was not dead in faraway New York. He was alive and fighting in Miami. Fighting, very probably, for life itself.

And for what else?

The morning call had been abbreviated, cryptic. The warrior had dropped a code name, listened stoically as Hannon came up empty, promised he would keep in touch.

Oh, yes. John Hannon had no doubt on that score.

In the meantime, all he had to do was trace a faceless Cuban hiding somewhere in Miami or environs, pinpoint his location, set him up — for what?

He frowned. No doubt on that score, either.

This commando was not known for taking prisoners.

Hannon pushed the morbid thought away. The war had come to him; he had not sought it out, but once involved, there was a single course available. The captain of detectives would continue until he caught a glimpse of daylight at the other end or hostiles stopped him dead.

Right now his limited objective was a Cuban stoolie known as Jose 99. And finding him could be a problem, unless...

He lifted the telephone receiver, punched a number up from memory, identified himself and waited while the patch was made. Another moment and a second strong familiar voice addressed him.

"Morning, John. How are you?"

"Hanging on. Taking it easy."

"That's a good way to take it," Captain Robert Wilson told him earnestly.

It was apparent Wilson would have liked to ask him more about last night's fiasco. Hannon had worked long enough with Wilson out of homicide division to interpret tones, inflections in his voice. His was a homicide detective first and foremost, but he was also Hannon's closest friend.

"I need a favor, Bob."

"So, shoot."

"I'm looking for a Cuban, and he may be in your files. I've only got a street name."

"Yeah?"

"He goes by Jose 99. It isn't much, I know..."

Suspicion crept into the homicide detective's voice. "Would this have anything to do with last night's shoot-up?"

Hannon hated lying to his friend, but it was unavoidable. He tried to sound sincere.

"It's unrelated. I've been working on a skip-trace and I'm getting nowhere fast."

"I see." The skepticism carried in his voice across the wire. "I'll run it through, but don't expect too much."

"Appreciate it. Listen, Bob, I wish I could help you with this other thing."

"Well, if you don't have any information...."

Wilson left the statement dangling, giving him a chance to spill, but Hannon held his peace.

"You know if there was anything at all I'd let you in on it."

"I hope so, John."

And there was something very much like sadness in Bob Wilson's voice.

"If you come up with anything on this Jose..."

"I'll call you," Wilson told him. "In the meantime, why not take some time off? Get yourself some rest."

"I'm way ahead of you. Just have to clear a few things up before I take the time."

"Uh-huh. John?"

"Yeah?"

"Watch your ass."

The former captain of detectives smiled.

"I always do."

Bob Wilson rocked back in his swivel chair and glowered at the silent telephone. He felt an urge to call John Hannon back, but dismissed it. There was no time for playing wet nurse, not with metropolitan Miami in the middle of a sizzling crime wave. Manila folders piled on his desk bore mute testimony to the work load facing Homicide these days.

It used to be John Hannon's desk... John Hannon's office. Wilson owed the older man a lot, he realized. The former captain of detectives taught him most of what he knew about survival on the streets — the things they never mentioned in police academies. And Hannon literally saved his life on one occasion. Yes, there could be no forgetting that.

They had been working on a string of hooker killings that made Jack the Ripper look humane. The evidence was slim, but through a string of lucky breaks they had finally narrowed the field to one substantial suspect: big and bad, a six-time loser, psychopathic woman hater with a string of brutal incidents behind him. Rumors on the street said he had taken up the knife to do a little twisted civic renovation on his own.

They had traced him to a seedy rooming house and Hannon took the front, with Wilson riding shotgun, uniforms staked out to cover the retreats. Before they had a chance to reach the subject's room, he met them on the dingy, narrow stairs, a psycho's sixth sense warning him of danger, driving him to the attack.

The memories of that desperate battle in the darkness still made Wilson queasy. He had been moving up the stairs, a step ahead of Hannon, when a snarling human monster loomed ahead of him, airborne. Talon-fingers had locked around Wilson's windpipe, and the butcher knife was flashing toward his face when Hannon's roaring Magnum brought the curtain down.

So he owed John Hannon, right. He worried when the old man courted danger. Not that Hannon could not pull his weight, but this time his ass was hanging out a mile. He was dabbling in some deadly business now, and never mind the crap about some hoodlums trying to avenge an old arrest. Bob Wilson was not buying that one for a second, and if Hannon had been lying to him, there must be something he was bent on hiding.

Now this Cuban thing — what was it? Jose 99. A street name, sure, designed to hide the true identify of someone who was dealing weapons, drugs, or simple information. Any one of those commodities could' get you butchered in a hurry.

The Cuban scene these days was lethal. Sprinkle in the Haitians and Colombians, a hefty dash of coke and heroine, and start the blender. What came out the other end was sudden death, and there were bodies filling up the county morgue to prove it.

Hannon could get blown away without even trying. All he had to do was ask the wrong question — or the right one, of the wrong person. He could wind up in a gutter or feeding 'gators in the Everglades. It happened every day around Miami.

Still, he owed the captain one, and Wilson would inquire about the Cuban for him. If he stumbled over something he could use along the way, well, so much the better.

He would do that much for Hannon, right. And, maybe, with a little luck, he could preserve a friend's life in the process. Maybe.