New York was a familiar battleground to Bolan. He had visited the Families from time to time, before and since the interlude at Stony Man, reminding them as necessary that their chosen lifestyle had a price attached. A more impatient warrior might have given up, become frustrated with the New York syndicate's refusal to collapse, but Bolan recognized his private war as something of a holding action, a containment of the enemy. No victory was guaranteed forever in the kind of war he fought; no threat was finally eradicated while a single enemy survived. The capo that he killed today would be replaced next week, next month, and he would have to do it again. But the reality of everlasting war did not discourage Bolan. Going in, he had known the long odds and there could be no turning back.

Today at least he had the opportunity to make a difference, and the streetwise soldier took his opportunities as they arose.

Downrange, an armored Lincoln nosed along the boulevard, its driver and the shotgun rider scanning windows, cars parked along the curb. They didn't bother with the rooftops, trusting years of grim experience to let them spot an ambush on the street as they had spotted others in the past. A lurking Cadillac was trouble, or a curtain drawn too hastily, but no one put his shooters on a roof. Invisible behind the tinted glass, their passenger was confident that he had hired the best available, that they would see him safely to his rendezvous and back again. Three days was three damn days too long, and he did not intend to keep the lady waiting.

Bolan shifted slightly, reaching for the Marlin lever-action rifle with its massive twenty-power scope. At fifty yards, the scope was hardly necessary, but it would allow him to shake hands with Fratierri, look him in the eye and count the fillings in his teeth before he squeezed the trigger. Chambered in .444, the weapon held six rounds and hurled the big 240-grain projectiles at 2,440 feet per second. At his present range, the slugs would spend 2,000 foot-pounds of explosive energy on impact with the target. Bolan could have dropped a charging elephant at twice that range, and George Fratierri had no chance at all.

All things considered, it was more than he deserved.

The shotgun rider scrambled clear and stood beside the Lincoln for a moment, scanning empty sidewalks in a ritual that had become routine. His face filled Bolan's telescopic sight, an angry pimple clearly visible below the jawline, flecks of dandruff clinging to his sideburns like an early fall of snow.

The soldier grinned.

"You need some Head and Shoulders, guy."

Bolan scanned along the Lincoln's roofline, followed the shooter as he backtracked and opened the door for Fratierri. There, the salt-and-pepper hair and ruddy ears, a flash of profile as the would-be Boss of Bosses muttered something to his bodyguard. The shooter grinned and nodded, eagerly confirming that the boss was always right.

He waited, letting Fratierri clear the Lincoln, straighten his jacket, smooth wrinkles from the ride uptown and double-check cuffs to verify that they revealed the proper quarter inch. Another comment to the shotgun rider, and the capo turned away, proceeding up the steps to Marilyn DuChamps and momentary freedom from the worries of an emperor-in-waiting.

Bolan brought the crosshairs of the scope to rest on Fratierri's collar, just below the hairline, at a point where vertebrae connected with the skull. He eased the Marlin's safety off, inhaled to fill his lungs, released half of the breath and held the rest. Another second now, just one more step...

He squeezed and rode out the rifle's massive recoil to verify the hit. The telescopic sight put Fratierri almost in his lap, and Bolan saw the capo's skull explode on impact, spewing blood and bone and brains as if the dreams inside had grown too grandiose to be contained. It took a heartbeat for his headless body to receive the message, fold in upon itself and slump to the sidewalk, but the soldier was already tracking in search of secondary targets.

Gaping at the mess, Fratierri's bodyguard was having trouble with reality. It wasn't every day that you saw your boss decapitated on the street, and by the time he recognized the heavy-metal thunder of a big-game rifle, it was far too late to save himself. The gunner swiveled toward the Lincoln and thought of the armor plating, knowing he could never draw his piece and find a target in time to make a difference. Bolan shot him in the face, round two impacting on his upper lip and crumpling his face like something sculpted out of Styrofoam. The gunner vaulted backward, sliding on the pavement in a slick of blood and bile before he came to rest against a decorative hedge.

The driver had already disappeared beneath the dashboard — what had been good enough for Paulie Castigliano's wheelman should be good enough for George Fratierri's — and the soldier left him there, intent on disengaging before some startled neighbor got around to calling the police. The urban noninvolvement syndrome worked in the expensive neighborhoods as well, but here the paranoia was sufficient to produce a phone call — possibly anonymous — when gunfire broke the stillness of a sleepy Saturday.

Fratierri's seat was henceforth up for grabs, and Bolan smiled as he imagined the subordinates responding to another sudden vacancy. Their eagerness might lead to war, and Bolan wished them well. It would be helpful if the savages would kill one another for a while, and leave him to strike on other fronts, at other enemies.

He stowed the Marlin in a camo duffel bag, retreating through the access hatch that he had used to reach the roof and slipping out through finely manicured backyards the size of postage stamps to find his rental car. He dropped the rifle in the trunk and put the place behind him, satisfied for now.

But somewhere down the line, the soldier knew, he would be called upon to do it again. If not here in New York, then in Chicago, or Los Angeles, or Philadelphia. No victory was constant in his everlasting war. You kept the lid on tight by hammering a few nails every day, year-round, as need arose. His next stop might be San Francisco or Miami, Vegas or Duluth. When he had cleared the present battle zone, it would be time to test the wind and see where he was needed.

He could have used some R and R, and for a moment, Bolan thought of his brother, Johnny, and the security provided by his strongbase in San Diego. He could call ahead or just show up on Johnny's doorstep, and either way he was assured of being welcome, being safe for the duration. It had been too long since he had seen his brother, shared his company and yet...

A homesick warrior was in trouble from the start, he told himself. Besides, the San Diego basin wasn't home. For Bolan, "home" meant memories of blood and pain, all mingled with the good times and the laughter from his childhood. Home was Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the syndicate had squeezed his father dry and turned his sister out to work the streets, where Bolan's father had eventually cracked beneath the strain and turned the family home into a slaughterhouse. It was a miracle that Johnny had survived, and Bolan had refused to let his brother have a piece of warfare everlasting, until the war had come to Johnny independently. Once blooded, there had been no turning back for Johnny Bolan, and the brothers were together now, in spirit and in fact.

The elder Bolan liked the sound of San Diego at this moment, had almost decided on a visit to his brother when he spied a phone booth. He had a call to make before he left New York, and this would be as good a time as any.

Bolan punched the private number up from memory and waited until Leo Turrin answered in D.C.

"I'm calling for La Mancha," Bolan told him.

"Go ahead."

The breach of regular security, the sudden tension in his contact's voice, alerted Bolan to a crisis in the making. Normally, the man from Wonderland would take his number, find a different phone and call him back within five minutes, thus evading any possibility of taps or bugs. For Leo to accept the call unscrambled on his private line could only mean that he, or someone close, was in a world of trouble.