“You are crazy!” Nino said. “The first time they try to shoot those weapons they’ll find out they have no firing pins.”

“Let’s hope it isn’t too soon. Right now I need you to show me three more vital spots where I can hide these little surprise packages of C-4.”

“Plastic explosives? Just be sure to tell me before you light the damn fuses.”

They put the other three plastic bombs in hidden places around the mansion. The last one went in a small niche in the wall opposite Nazarione’s office.

They walked outside in the soft Maryland evening.

A horn bellowed on the ground.

“Bolan alert!” Nino explained. “Let’s go!”

They ran for the crew wagon near the basement door. Bolan got in the first car and Nino the second. When they were filled, the big Cadillacs roared out the driveway, barely waiting for the gate to completely open before racing through.

“Where is he?” Bolan asked the Mafia soldier wedged in the back seat next to him.

“Damned if I know,” he said.

The driver explained that some big dark guy supposed to be Bolan was busting up a gambling spot uptown.

When they got there, the ruckus was still going on. Two of them covered the rear door and five others, including Bolan, stormed into the club and spotted the troublemaker. He held a chair in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. The five converged on him; he swung the chair at Bolan.

The Executioner grabbed the chair, jerked it forward, throwing the man off balance. As he flailed his arms and dropped the knife to regain his balance, one of the Mafia soldiers slammed into him with a shoulder block that carried him to the wall. They grabbed his arms, twisted them behind him and marched him out the back door.

The man was about twenty, blond and blue-eyed.

He gave his name and it checked with the ID he carried.

“Can’t be our man,” one of the hoods said. “Too young, too blond — no way.”

Ten minutes later the Caddy was heading back toward the Nazarione mansion. The man at the club had been enraged at losing his week’s pay on the gaming tables and tried to even the score by breaking up the place. The on-site security swore up and down the guy was Bolan and they were not going near him without shooting first.

“Hell, he was no more the Executioner than I am,” said one of the soldiers beside Bolan.

“Yeah, or me,” Bolan said.

The goon looked at him and laughed. “You look about as much like his picture as that dude we left in the alley back there with his arms broke.”

Bolan had not been able to stop the “penalty” the young man underwent for smashing up two tables in the club. He could have stopped it, but it would have blown his cover.

One man swung up an Uzi submachine gun. He shook his head. “Damn, I wish to hell that ammo had arrived. I’d have greased his ass good with thirty rounds and never let up on the trigger.”

Bolan watched the man caress the gun. The odds were two to one its firing pin had been removed. The Executioner still did not like the odds. He would get to the third Uzi if he could before he bailed out of the place.

He had learned part of what he wanted to know about the enemy camp. They were “up” for this battle with Mack Bolan. They had some good equipment, and some of the men were sharper than he had seen before in the average Mafia goon squads.

When they got back to the mansion, there was a general meeting of fifteen soldiers and one lieutenant as they talked about the operation that afternoon when Chief Jansen got away.

“How did he get the two guards outside?” the lieutenant asked.

“Shot them, the radio said,” one of the hoods volunteered.

A man named Frank was the leader of the discussion. Now he looked around.

“The whole idea is to learn from that mistake. If you’re put on guard, do it! Your life depends on it. If we got a job going down and you’re out there, the guys inside depend on you. So make damn sure nothing and nobody gets at you or past you. With this Bolan bastard, you don’t ever get a second chance. Just ask Big Jake or Tony L. Their funerals will be day after tomorrow. Only the families of the men are to attend.”

That quieted them for a moment. Frank saw the mood.

“All right. So next time we get him, and then all of you can go to his funeral!”

They cheered, Bolan with them, then they quieted.

“You might wonder about another try for Assistant Chief Jansen who we missed today. Don Nazarione just decided we blow him away. It’s all we can do now. Okay, that’s all for tonight. You guys will be getting more briefings. We think the more you know about what we’re doing, the better you can help get it done.”

Bolan got next to Frank as they walked out of the recreation room. He had been introduced before.

“Frank, I got to make a phone call. Augie said contact him tonight sometime. He said be careful about the line. What’d he mean by that?”

“You’re reporting back to Augie Bonestra in Boston, right? I’ll check, but I’m damn sure what he meant was not to call from any phone inside this place. The cops have a way of putting two and two together. Wait a minute — I’ll check with somebody.”

Bolan went up to the first floor with Nino and waited around the TV set until Frank came back.

“Yeah, Lonnie, I was right. Call Augie, but do it from a pay phone down at the shopping center. It’s a mile straight down the road. Harder to trace calls from a pay booth.”

“Wheels?”

Frank went outside with Bolan and whistled up a crew wagon. The driver bailed out, and Bolan thanked him and drove to the front gate. It opened automatically. Frank had called the gate guard telling him to let the next car through.

Bolan grinned as he wheeled down the road. He knew there was no way he could have sneaked out of Don Carlo’s armed fortress without somebody getting suspicious. He also knew that Nazarione would not want a long-distance call from his house to another Mafia family don. They had to let him go outside to make the call.

At the shopping center Bolan parked and walked across half a block of parked cars to a phone booth. He called the Baltimore police department and left a message for Chief Jansen. He told them, “I have a tip that Carlo Nazarione is going to try to shoot down Chief Jansen in the next twenty-four hours. Tell him to lie low for two or three days.” Bolan hung up before they could trace the call. Even if they had the automatic readout of the calling number on their system, the Executioner would be miles away before any radio-dispatched police unit could arrive at the pay phone.

He wasted another half hour, then rolled back toward the big house that Mafia money had built.

The Executioner pulled up to the entrance. The heavy iron gate stood open. Unusual. He drove ahead, saw no one in the guardhouse. More lights were on now in the drive and in front of the big house than before, when he had driven away. Trouble. Bolan put the rig in gear, angled the car down the middle of the drive, kicked the lights up to bright, then hunched low and jumped out and sprinted fifteen feet into the shrubbery at the side of the drive.

In the darkness, he ran for the gate. It was a trap. He turned and saw the car swerve toward one side of the drive, but it recovered and rolled slowly into the lighted section in front of the house.

Twenty shots barked into the quiet evening, then a dozen followed, and soon more gunfire ripped and punctured the heavy car, blasting out all the glass, killing the engine, blowing out the tires. Somebody wanted to be sure that the driver wound up with his head in a bucket.

Mack Bolan sprinted out the front gate, which was still unmanned, and ran down the winding roadway toward the first lights at the corner a block away. Just as he turned into the next street, he heard tires squealing at the gate. The Executioner ran into the dark driveway of the second house and stepped behind the attached garage.