One of the detail leaders behind him asked, "Is the smoking lamp lit, Captain?"

"Yeah, smoke, why not," Matchison growled. "Get comfortable, all of you. Get very comfortable for about ten minutes, because it's the last comfort you're going to find for quite awhile."

Bill Phillips believed it. He sank wearily onto a canvas chair and lit a cigarette, then sat there for considerably more than ten minutes listening to Captain Matchison's plans for Mack Bolan.

And when he left that command post with the other detail leaders, Phillips knew that it was a whale of a plan. Not even Mack Bolan, the soldier of the century, would find a loophole of comfort in the determined strategy of Jim Matchison.

And the Wang Dang kid from Able Team knew a terrible and penetrating sadness. Somewhere out there in that city the greatest human being he'd ever known was going to be run-to-ground, and impaled upon the horns of quote justice unquote, or else shot down in the streets like some sort of runaway beast.

It was a hell of a way to run a world, but that was the way the world ran... the only way.

Guys like Mack Bolan didn't stand a chance.

But... and this was the most terrible part... what chance did the world itself stand? — without guys like Mack Bolan.

Bill Phillips was a cop, sure.

He was a tough San Francisco Brushfire cop.

But there were times when he wished to God he wasn't.

He was going to kill Mack Bolan. It was his right, his obligation, and he owed it. He owed it to Mack Bolan.

Able Team would do the job better.

From one of Union Square's more expensive hotel suites, another kind of army was being ordered into the field. The suite "at the top of the joint" represented the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition for "Crazy Franco" Laurentis, the torpedo's torpedo and boss of the silk suit brigade.

"Style," Laurentis enjoyed telling anyone who would listen, "is the only thing makes life worthwhile. A man should live in style. He should eat, dress and screw in style, he even ought to die in style. I'd live in this joint if it took every cent I made just to keep me here."

It took quite a bit. The five room penthouse apartment provided one of the most breathtaking views in a city made famous by its views. From the garden terrace, from the glass-walled living room, or from just about any window in that joint, this silk-suited graduate of such institutions as Sing Sing, Leavenworth and Folsom could gaze out over the toughest town in the west and experience the giddy feeling of domain and lordship. One day he would be commanding that town, he would be holding it in his hands just as surely as he now held it in his vision — and he'd do it all from right here, from the top of the joint — because Franco Laurentis was the tops.

Let Vanity Vince and Tom the Broker have their pipedreams — it was all they would have. With or without old man DeMarco, Franco Laurentis was by God going to have San Francisco.

A death, a simple death, that's all it took. A seventy-two year old man was not going to go on living forever. Death was cheap, of course. It was the cheapest thing going. Franco could buy any life in that town for less than it cost him to live at the top of the joint for a week.

A hit on a Capo, of course, could be a messy business. There would be the eastern coalition of commissioners to explain things to, and they sometimes got their asses high in the air over a hit on a Capo. Even an old, already dying, Capo like Roman DeMarco. Even though Roman had never been too popular in life, his death would bring on a lot of tears and sympathy from the eastern mob.

Franco didn't need any of that.

It was easier to do the thing in style, to just let the old man die his own way, and meanwhile Franco could go on quietly pulling the loose ends together so it would be an easy slide from the wake to the throne.

Sometimes, of course, style took a lot of patience. The old man acted like he wanted to go on living forever. Some guys just never knew when to throw in the towel. So Franco had been very patiently unravelling the goddam towel and throwing it in for him, a thread at a time, and of course he was throwing those threads right into his own pocket.

Franco was not even in the official line of succession. Torn Vericci was first man out, by right of business power and seniority if nothing else. Vince Ciprio was running a close second. Franco wasn't even in the running. If Tom moved up to fill the old man's dead shoes, he'd move some one of his lieutenants right up to fill his vacated shoes. Ciprio would stand still. Franco would stand still. And, worst of all, he'd have to work under the thumb of Tom the Broker. Bullshit, buddy!

Vince, of course, would like to be at the head of the line. But Vince just didn't have the style to be a Capo. Tom, now — Tom the Broker was a hell of a classy guy. Deep down in his bowels, Crazy Franco was a little afraid of Tom Vericci. But not so damned afraid that he wouldn't contract the guy, if it got to that.

Franco Laurentis had the torpedo concession in this town.

Nobody, by God, had better not ever forget that.

Especially Vanity Vince and Tom the Broker.

He could take them both out with a nod of his head, if it got to that. That would make a war, of course. And the eastern coalition got nervous over open wars. It hurt the whole outfit, really. Franco understood that. That's why he continued to work with style.

It would be so much better to just have this understanding, before things ever got to open war.

And Franco was about to weld that understanding into the minds of all who wanted to operate in this town.

Mack the Bastard had come to town... and hell, it had come like a gift from the angels or something.

Some very stylish use could be made of Mack the Bastard. The guy liked to go for the Capos — that was why the organization was so nervous all over the country. They wouldn't be that nervous if the guy was just knocking over a few soldiers here and there. Soldiers were cheap, and soldiers didn't have a hell of a lot to say about how nervous the organization got. It got nervous as hell, though, when the big boys were in trouble. Franco could appreciate that point of view. He was a big boy himself, now. And he was going to get bigger.

Bolan was going to knock over Don DeMarco. That was a pre-ordained fact of life, and Franco knew it. He knew it because he didn't intend to do a damned little thing to stop the guy. For God's sake, why should he?

The time for doing something would come later. Later, after the old man was totally out of the picture. And in the meantime Franco would be in undisputed charge of the town. He was already... practically... in every way that counted. He had the whole town, right in his hands. The dumb bastards Ciprio and Vericci had just handed it over to him. Take it, take it. So he took it, damn right.

Those guys were in for one hell of a shock if they thought he was just going to hand it all back after Bolan was out of the way.

After all, the guy that took out Mack the Bastard deserved some recognition, didn't he? Franco would be the hero of the outfit, all over the world. And Franco's stock would be that much higher when things finally came to the showdown with Ciprio and Vericci. No one would yell too much or too loud at the guy who finally got Bolan — not even the coalition back east. Especially if that guy was already Franco Laurentis.

Thus had been the reasoning of the stylish torpedo from the top of the joint — until approximately eight thirty on that morning of the California Hit. It was at about that time when Don DeMarco himself telephoned Franco to rake him over the coals in a most humiliating and unstylish way.

"You son of a bitch you!" the old man screamed at him. "I give you a special job and what do you do with it? You take it to bed and sleep with it? In that rich cunt-castle of yours up in the sky? Huh?"