At the same time and in that same framework of mind, this was no goddam game of touch-tag he was playing. He could not simply roll over and play dead at the first appearance of a dutybound cop. There was a hell of an important war to be fought!

Yeah, it was agonizing. It was a hell of an agonizing real life nightmare.

Sgt. Phillips was realizing with a harsh jolt that neither had the drop on either. He had reacted in pure instinct, with all the training of his adult lifetime focusing into this undiluted moment, this hellishly painful and entirely non-academic moment in the life of a law officer.

The big guy was just standing there, poised in that special way on the balls of his feet, the very mean-looking black Beretta peering up from the gun hand. One side of his consciousness was trying to appreciate the confrontation from a strictly ethereal standpoint, and he actually imagined for one flashing instant that part of him was hovering overhead in a spectator's view of the scene.

Two men, one dressed in black, the other born in black, with a hell of a lot more than the color of skin separating them. One a cop, the other the most wanted "criminal" in the country. Both wearing gasmasks, and each with a trained gun laying down on the other.

And yet there was so goddammed much that these two gladiators shared in common.

The moment came unfrozen, the big guy moved almost imperceptibly, and the Beretta dropped ever so slightly.

"Okay, fire away," Bolan told the law.

"I mean it, Mack. I won't enjoy it, but I'll drop you in your tracks like a Wang Dang Doo."

Gasmasks or not, eight thousand ocean miles and too damn many years between notwithstanding, the message had been sent and received and the Executioner knew his challenger.

The Beretta dropped another inch and the familiar voice said, "Well, damn. Is that you, Bill?"

"That's me." The mask came off but the revolver did not waver. "Don't make me drop you."

Bolan removed his mask and it dropped to the ground. "You might as well," he replied. "I'm a dead man the minute those cuffs go on me anyway."

Phillips felt the flicker of a smile, and he wondered if it had managed to reach the outside of his face. He said, "You hit the old man, eh."

"No. He wasn't the target. It was a tiger hunt."

"I'm going to cuff you, Mack. Throw the gun away and hold that wall up."

The next few seconds occupied a confused kaleidoscope in the mind and the memory of the Brushfire cop.

He certainly was no rookie — and even granted a bit of clumsiness and momentary inattention as he reached for the handcuffs, there was simply no intellectual explanation for the way the big junglefighter turned things upside down on him.

All Phillips knew was that suddenly the Beretta phutted, from the hip, then again and again. All the while Bolan was all over him, manhandling him into a sprawl to the ground, and the Beretta was coughing on in an uninterrupted song of whispering slugs and sighing death.

His own gun was lying at his fingertips and numbly Phillips realized that the zinging little missiles were not tearing into his own flesh, but were seeking more distant game.

Bodies were toppling out there somewhere, in the misty smoke, and the grunts and muffled shrieks of the dying and the grievously wounded served only as a postscript to the booming of opposing weapons as the return fire chewed the turf and whistled screaming tracks in the air above their heads.

The kaleidoscope cleared abruptly. Bill Phillips was back in Vietnam again and his team leader was once again dragging him out of a life and death situation. As he disentangled himself and reclaimed his own weapon, he knew that enemy pursuit had caught them in an open firefight, with a wall at their backs and a regrouped army pressing in from all other sides. Sergeant Bolan was giving 'em hell, throwing everything at them but his own fingers and toes, and giving the rest of the squad a chance to break for cover.

Phillips mumbled, "I'm on you, Barge." Bolan grunted, "About time. Watch that left!" The big silver gun was in Bolan's hand now and the thing was tearing up Phillips' eardrums and totally eclipsing the reports of his own weapon. It served to return him to present time and place, however... and, really, the situation was little different than it had been so many times before. Bolan yelled, "Garage roof! Go! You, then me!" The Brushfire cop reacted instinctively to the command, as he had done to that same voice so many times in the past and with such memorable results. That voice had brought him through Vietnam in one whole piece. He threw a round into a shadowy running figure off to the left, then he flung himself in a wild roll toward the corner of the garage.

Bolan was on one knee and firing the silver hawgleg like an automatic repeater, the big sounds booming, rolling and echoing around the confined area, and guys were still screaming and flopping about out there.

Hot little things zipped through the air about him but Phillips gained the roof in one mad fling, and he found reason to be thankful for all those morning workouts in the police gym. Before his mind even fully appreciated what it was he was trying to accomplish, he was up there at the edge of that roof and throwing a rapid fire into the receding smokescreen, and suddenly Bolan was there beside him and panting, "And a Wang Dang Doo to you too. Let's blow!"

The two ex-partners from another time and another war scrambled to the rear and leaped over the fence into the adjoining grounds.

A moment later they were in good cover and with no visible pursuit from the other side. They lay there for a moment, breathing on each other and chuckling as they'd done so many times before, and presently the cop let out a deep breath and declared, "Well, I damn near got your ass shot up again."

Bolan said, "Do tell."

"If you'd just asked, I could've told you. Rivoli had a stacked deck on you. I mean he had troops all over this damned hill."

"I believe you," Bolan panted. "But I was just about home clean when you jumped in."

"I'm sorry, Mack. They brainwash you in those police academies. A guy gets all hung up on..."

"Forget it. You're right and I'm wrong. Hell, I'm as wrong as a guy ever got."

"Not quite," the cop reminded him. "You didn't throw down on me, brother." He laughed nervously.

"Although, for a minute there, Sergeant, I sure thought you had."

Bolan was breathing raggedly through his mouth and forcing some big ornery-looking bullets into the clip of the silver hawgleg. "You'll have to take me in dead, Bill," he declared quietly.

"Shit I'm not taking you anywhere," Phillips replied. "My gun's empty and I guess I'm at your mercy."

Bolan chuckled.

The Sergeant said, "Did you know that Gadgets Schwartz and the Politician are living here now?"

Bolan's head snapped to attention and he asked, "In San Francisco?"

"Yeah. You haven't been in touch, eh?"

"Hell no. Last thing in the world those guys need now is my touch of death. They holed up?"

"In a manner of speaking, yeah. They've got new names. Gadgets is doing electronics work for a guy down on the marina. Politician is doing something at the Boy's Club. He was always good with kids, you know."

Bolan said, "Yeah." He sighed. "They okay?"

"Yeah, they're great. Worry about you a lot. Keep track of your banzai war, you know."

"They have any money problems?"

"Not that I know about."

Bolan gave his old friend the cold stare and asked him, "You keeping track of my war, Bill?"

The cop said, "Sure."

"It was no accident that you showed up at DeMarco's"

"Course not. I've been sitting there waiting for you to show since three o'clock this morning."

Bolan grinned suddenly and said, "You're the spade cop out at the gate awhile ago."