So, she'd taken off.

So, what the hell, it was her right. She owed Mack Bolan nothing, he owed her nothing, and the quiet disappearance did not necessarily classify her as one of the enemy.

Of course, though, it could.

A whole host of threatening possibilities were standing there at the edge of Bolan's mind... Mary Ching could very well turn into the greatest threat San Francisco had to offer him.

The only thing that he was certain of was that she had left of her own will. She had not been dragged out of there. She had simply released the safety chain, opened the door, and walked away. All the signs attested to that.

But... had she left there as friend or enemy?

Either way, there was no good reason why he should continue his residency of that Russian Hill apartment. It had served all his purposes, and now it had quite suddenly become more of an ominous liability than an asset.

And, as suddenly, Bolan was very tired. It was a weariness not of the flesh, but of the inner man — and the inner man had just about had it.

It was that special brand of weariness often known by a man who is called upon to stand too tall, for too long a time, and too utterly alone.

If there had just been someone else — anyone else — to whom he could say, "Okay, that's it I've had it for now. You take over for awhile."

There was no one like that.

There was no hole deep enough to hide him for more than a brief moment, no sanctuary to embrace him in safety from the largest manhunt in history — there was no God damned place to go, except out to fight.

And Bolan was sick of the sight and smell of blood.

He was wearied with worrying about all the incidental non-combatants who straggled across his battlefield.

And he was fed up with looking at every other human being as a potential jackal who might rip the flesh off of him.

He was tired of mistrust and suspicion — humbled by the reminder that he was just a man, after all — and thoroughly shaken by the idea that he had an entire city to conquer... and not just any city but this particular city.

So... what the hell. It was just another jungle, after all, San Francisco was.

The same rules applied in every jungle.

Kill that enemy son of a bitch, kill him now before he has a chance to do it to you.

Bolan's stomach rolled, and he instinctively understood what was happening to him. It was one of those defense mechanisms of the soul, one of those alert little angels of the inner being that kept sounding the alarms whenever the animal in there became too large, too strong, and too difficult to handle.

It had happened before.

It would happen again... if he lived that long.

It was a point of crisis, he understood that, a crisis of the inner man. But it wasn't a matter of fear or cowardice; it was simply a deep, deep revulsion of what he was doing, of what he had become.

Puke it up, then. Puke it out of your system, Bolan, and then get back out there and fight.

He'd done it in Korea. He'd done it several times in Vietnam. And he'd been doing it quite regularly ever since Vietnam.

Okay. The enemy had not defeated him yet. The righteous wrath of the law had not defeated him yet. He was damned if he was going to defeat himself.

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together.

That line from T.S. Eliot flashed across Bolan's struggling consciousness, and he knew immediately that his inner man had not yet given up the fight.

Call it a subliminal awareness, or call it the computer-like ability of the human brain to reason effectively, or call it that inner angel — Bolan didn't give a damn what anyone called it.

It had provided his answer, and at a time when he needed one the most. And it was not just an answer to himself. It was an answer, also, to the enemy.

Bolan was not leaning together with anyone.

He stood alone — and, of course, that was the only way to fight his kind of war.

The enemy, though — the enemy were the hollow men, the stuffed men, leaning together.

He would, by God, see how well they could stand alone.

The warwagon had been stowed away under tight security in a rented garage a block away, and it was here that Bolan had gone without further dalliance.

The little Ford Econoline van was outfitted with everything required to wage war. It was, in fact, a rolling arsenal. Bolan was not only a highly trained warrior — he was also a master gunsmith and a munitions expert. He could build weapons, modify them, refine them, and improvise a variety of deadly combinations — and he knew how to put all of them to their best use.

Bolan was, in the literal sense, a one man army. He alone was the strategist, the tactician, the logistician; he was G-2, scout, recon patrol, armorer, medic and warrior.

And it was time to get this war in gear.

Bolan's nights had gone into a surveillance of the China Gardens. But his days had mostly been spent on the roof of the "drop" — in excellent binocular command of the DeMarco mansion. He had watched doors, windows and grounds. He had timed arrivals and departures of visitors and of tradesmen; he had made careful notes of the placements and routines of the palace guard; and he had sketched layouts of the probable floor plans for all three levels of the joint. He knew where and when DeMarco slept; he knew where he ate, and a couple of times he had even known what.

And now he was going to bust that joint.

Not wide open, not all the way. All he wanted at the moment was a visible crack or two here and there in the defenses.

He wanted to show DeMarco how hollow he really was.

The warwagon had a shiny new decal on each side. It was now "Bay Messengers, Inc." — and it had been since a few hours after the arrival in the bay city.

That van had been in the DeMarco neighborhood at least twice each day for the past three days; the driver, a tall man in Levi denims and a white wind-breaker, had even attempted to make a parcel delivery to the DeMarco house; it was a mistake, of course — no one by the name of "Lamancha" lived at that address,

At any rate, the DeMarco palace guard had acquired at least a passing familiarity with Bay Messengers.

And now Bay Messengers was going to give them a chance to get better acquainted.

Bolan got into the denims, pulling them on over his blacksuit, and slipped into the nylon windbreaker. Then he carefully stuck on a false mustache and pulled a billed cap low over his forehead.

Most people, even sharp-eyed mob people, were not too much on faces when things appeared to them out of the usual context. Sure, anyone would recognize the Executioner in his combat blacks. But to most of the world Bolan's face was no more than an artist's sketch seen in newspapers and magazines, and maybe a few times on television — and the human eye tended to identify things by setting, role, and other general characteristics.

Mack Bolan was a master at what he termed "role camouflage." He had developed the art in Vietnam and perfected it in such places as Pittsfield, Palm Springs, New York, and Chicago.

It had not let him down yet.

The choice of weapons was the next consideration.

The Beretta would, of course, be at the top of that list. But he needed a grabber, a heavy punch, something that would not unnecessarily encumber him, something that...

His decision focussed around the newest thing in the Bolan arsenal.

He had field-tested the thing two days earlier, and found it awesome.

It came in a handsome little attache-type case and it was such a new item that factory ammo was not yet available. For this honey, Bolan had taken the time to make his own ammo.

It was called "the .44 Auto Mag" and it was the most powerful going in hand guns. It was three and a half pounds of stainless steel — yeah, stainless steel — and measured overall eleven and a half inches. A guy with a small hand wouldn't want to get involved; it took a big strong hand to cope with the recoil from more than a thousand foot-pounds of muzzle energy, and especially long fingers for a comfortable grip and trigger-squeeze.