It was a bloodmobile.

Bolan's battle plan was simple in conception but delicately complex in its execution. A lone man in a frontal assault could never hope to overcome the staggering array of forces pitted against him; Bolan held no illusions in this respect. He had known from the beginning that the one hope for success lay in his ability to exploit their weakest points, to incite confusion and fear, and to keep the enemy reeling and off balance long enough for the Executioner to take his toll of their leadership.

Jake Vecci, boss of the Loop, had emerged as Bolan's bonus baby, the big wallop of the battle order. Greed and fear, the human factors that had combined to create the Cosa Nostra, were now being recombined in Chicago — in only the slightest variation of the original formula — to destroy it. Bolan was the chemist, Chicago was his laboratory, and the most primitive ills of mankind were his materials.

And yes, he just might shake this kingdom down, after all.

The nagging worry in Bolan's mind at the moment, however, was that the larger enemy, the truerot that had drawn him magnetically to this troubled old city, actually lay outside the kingdom — that is, outside the family organization itself. Wherever Bolan had gone in the past to battle the syndicate, he had found a condition wherein the mob seemed to be both the cause and the effect of organized evil. This did not appear to be the case at Chicago.

The Stein intelligence bothered Bolan. Oh, the mob was well represented in those notes, okay — they were just as busy in Chicago as anywhere, manipulating and looting and raping their human environment with all the gusto characteristic of Mafiaentrenchment everywhere.

But... Bolan could not shake the growing conviction that the mob's position at Chicago was a unique one. This was a "made" city, yes, but the Cosa Nostrahad not made it. They were simply a part of the fix and, Bolan suspected, a relatively small part. Actually, it seemed, the city had "made" the mob, not vice versa. The iron grip of power that held this town in virtual slavery did not appear as a typical exercise in Mafia domination. Mafiosiwere not astute politicians, they did not have the finesse nor even the interest required for the delicate maneuverings that kept a political machine functioning and self-perpetuating.

When the mob really got their hooks into a town, they simply raped it, sucked it dry, and left it writhing in ruin. Like Reading, Pennsylvania, when the Philadelphia mob descended upon it. They bought practically the entire city administration, from the mayor on down, and cowed those they couldn't buy. Before the local citizens could realize what was happening, this quiet heartland of the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside was transformed into the sin mecca of the Atlantic Seaboard, featuring the largest red-light district and the grandest gambling establishment in the East. The most active illegal still since the repeal of Prohibition was operated directly off the city water supply, municipal improvements slowed to a halt, industries began moving out, and the downtown area fell into ruin. The helpless and bewildered citizenry were not even aware of the leeches at their throats until it was too late to save the situation, and Reading was sucked dry before the feds could step in and put an end to the rape.

So why hadn't Chicago been sucked dry, if the mob had truly been in charge here for so many decades? The answer, in Bolan's troubled mind, was that the mob was simply operating a franchise in this town. So okay. Who issued the franchise? Who was the actual "Mr. Big" of this fantastic empire of corruption and clout, an empire which — according to the Stein intelligence — was powerful enough already to dominate bothpolitical parties in some areas of the state, send handpicked men to Congress and to the legislature and city councils, install federal judges, and even strongly influence the national political organizations and conventions.

Cosa di tutti Cosi, eh? Bolan smiled wryly to himself. It was a mere imitation, a second-generation blueprint. Chicago, it seemed, already had its own version of The Big Thing — and Chicago did not belong to the Cosa Nostra.

The Executioner sighed regretfully and shook venal Chicago out of his thoughts. Somewhere he had read that "a people have the government they deserve." Bolan would let the people of Chicago worry about Chicago — and maybe, he decided, people all over the country should start worrying about Chicago. His job was impossible enough as already laid out — and his war was with the Mafia, not with an entire American city and a political way of life.

This shaking-out process helped. A little, It defined the battle-ground and put the enemy in better focus. Bolan did not now "want" The Big Four — he merely wanted the syndicate member of that cartel, "Don Gio" Giovanni. And he had very suddenly lost interest in many of the "nine names" he had requested of Leopold Stein. His guns would be tracking on the hierarchy of the syndicate itself. Let the wage-earning "pigeons" put down their own rotten labor bosses. Let the purchasing-power pigeons put down the gouging businessmen. And let the ballot-marking pigeons handle their own smelly garbage at the polls. All of that was something the people could do for themselves. It was a job for civilians. Bolan had a hot war to fight.

The supper club known as Giovanni's occupied a piece of ground which rightfully belonged to the people of Cook County. Some years earlier the county had acquired, at considerable expense, several sections of unimproved land in this sparsely settled neighborhood for development into a public park and golf course. A particularly choice piece in the northeast corner of this development provided access to the Des Plaines River, and the original park planning called for the construction of a water-recreation facility in that spot.

Through some mysterious reasoning, it was later decided that the water-recreation plan was "unfeasible" — and, by an equally mysterious set of circumstances, the plot of parkland which fronted the river was "acquired" from the county by a recently incorporated firm identified as Club's Management, Inc. for the ostensible purpose of constructing and operating a public entertainment facility at that location.

The "public entertainment facility" which emerged was, of course, Giovanni's. No one could complain that the new club was not available to the general public. It was open to anyone who could wangle a table reservation and shell out an average of fifty dollars per head for an evening's entertainment. Patrons were required to observe a strict "dress code" and the joint was "first class" all the way — from the tie-and-tail waiters and headline entertainers in the dining room to the black-tie dealers and table men in the private back room casino.

Just south of Gio's stolen grounds lay the promised but only half-completed (nine holes) public golf course; directly west and across a specially constructed road lay the park proper, covering eight hundred and sixty acres of mostly unusable and therefore unused scrubland. With the river at Ms back, Don Gio had a rather secluded setting for his night time playground. Only to the north did he have neighbors, a straggling line of upper middle class "estate-ettes" which Don Giovanni contemptuously referred to as "the wealthy man's ghetto" — and which were suitably screened from Giovanni's place by a thick stand of timber.

The club itself was an imposing structure of American colonial architecture which, under standard construction procedures, would have cost perhaps a million dollars to build and outfit. It had not cost Arturo Giovanni nearly so much. Manipulation of building-trades unions and outright ownership of building materials and decorating firms could work economic miracles, and Don Gio was not a man to overlook such important details of smart business procedures. He would pay fifty dollars for a cigar without batting an eyelash, but "give a crummy plumber ten dollars an hour — never!"