He touched his .45. It was still in place and loaded. Evidently the godfather had sensed something wrong and called Augie Bonestra in Boston. It would not take them long to discover the hoax and set up a trap of their own.

Bolan saw a crew wagon wheel along the street, moving slowly, with men staring out rolled-down windows.

Maybe next time, the Executioner thought. There was no chance they were going to find him tonight. It might take him a little longer to get back downtown, but he would catch a taxi sooner or later.

As it turned out, it was later.

The men of the Baltimore Police Department swore you could set your watch by the movements of Chief of Police Stephen C. Smith. He arrived at his second-floor office at 07:49 every morning. He went over the status reports on his desk from the past two watch captains, made any recommendations at once and cleared his desk.

By 08:02 he had greeted his front-office staff and had poured a cup of coffee from the communal pot, then started the rounds of his assistant chiefs, looking for any problems they might be having. He had delegated more work assignments than any former chief had ever done. It was working well.

This morning he was up as usual at 06:00. His driver called for him at his suburban home at 07:20 and he had twenty-five minutes to read the New York Times on his ride to work.

The chief’s sedan had just rounded the first corner heading toward the boulevard and eventually the expressway when another car jolted away from the curb and roared toward it.

Patrolman Donald Connors saw the car through his rearview mirror.

“Something’s happening, Chief!” Connors shouted. “Car back there coming up fast. Get down, Chief! Guns are showing out the windows!”

The chief glanced around, saw the long gun aimed at his car and dived to the floor of the back seat.

The black Cadillac behind them raced forward, a shotgun boomed and thirteen double O buck lead slugs slammed with thundering force into the chief’s sedan. They tore through the side windows, blew out the windshield, dug into the heavy side panels of the rear door.

Three of the slugs tore into Patrolman Connors just over the starched shirt collar of his uniform. He slumped over the wheel, dead. The horn was blaring. His foot lifted only slightly from the throttle. The car jumped the curb, knocked down a pair of small trees and rolled across a lawn until it crashed to a stop against the wall of a two-car garage.

Before the Mafia crew wagon could stop, another car raced up behind it and the driver lobbed a contact grenade over the roof so it landed on the black Cadillac’s hood and exploded.

Jagged shards of steel drove through the windshield and decapitated the driver. The second man in the front seat caught burning shrapnel in both eyes.

The driver’s foot lifted from the pedal and the Cadillac ground to a halt. The explosion had blown apart the ignition system under the hood.

Before the surprised hoodlums in the back seat could leave the car, a second grenade ripped open the gasoline tank. The gasoline ignited in a whooshing roar, creating a spectacular funeral pyre for the Mafia killers inside the car.

The man who had thrown the grenades pulled his rented Chevrolet to the curb, leaped out and ran to the chiefs wrecked car.

Chief Smith crawled out the rear door. Bolan helped him, then urged him toward the Chevrolet.

“There are men in that burning car!”

“Not men — Mafia scum,” Mack Bolan said. “And there probably is a backup car. We’ve got to get out of here fast!”

“Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. Is your driver dead?”

“Yes.”

By then they were at the Chevy. Half a block behind them a car spun away from the curb.

“Here they come!” Bolan shouted. He leaped in the passenger side and slid over as the chief jumped in beside him. Then Bolan had the sedan moving. He ground around the first corner he came to, tires screaming. When the Executioner looked behind him, the black Caddy crew wagon was gaining.

“What’s the quickest way out of town?” Bolan asked.

The chief looked behind, then at the grim expression on his rescuer’s face.

The chief told him the turns to make, scowled as Bolan ran two red lights and two stop signs. When they were away from the heavily populated suburbs and on a country road with only a few houses scattered along it, Bolan said, “Look in that suitcase in the back seat. Get out that Uzi submachine gun. You have your service revolver?”

“Yes,” the chief said. He got on his knees in the seat and reached into the back. “Hey! Everything in this suitcase is illegal!”

“Be glad of it, Chief Smith. If we’re lucky and you can use some of those weapons, we might be able to get out of this alive. Can you use that Uzi?”

“I’ve fired them before. In Korea we didn’t have anything quite this fancy.”

Bolan flashed him a grin. “You’ll do.”

The Caddy had been at a disadvantage on the quick turns in town, but on the straight road the big engine made the difference as it came closer and closer. Bolan speeded up, found the spot he wanted on the sparsely traveled country road, then yelled.

“Brace yourself, I’m doing a slide stop. We’ll be sideways in the road, and we both go out your door. Stay low, take the Uzi and some extra magazines and be ready to defend yourself. These Mafia hit men don’t care how they kill you.”

Chief Smith nodded. He grabbed the Uzi, three extra magazines and two frag grenades.

The Chevy screamed into the braking slide and stopped, almost fully blocking the narrow road. The Caddy could pass if it slowed and took it easy on the shoulder, but Bolan did not think the Mafia driver would try.

They left the car by the passenger door. Bolan opened the rear door and pulled the suitcase to the edge of the back seat for easy access.

“Here they come,” Bolan said. “Let’s give them a welcome.”

“They have to shoot first,” the chief said.

“They just killed your driver!”

“That was a different car, different men.”

The Caddy slid to a stop thirty yards away. Four pistol shots ripped into the morning air. Two of them caught body metal, two more went through the front windshield.

Bolan lifted the French army rifle and shattered the crew wagon’s side windows with six rounds.

Bolan’s next burst went between the Caddy’s wheels. When the firing stopped he heard a scream of rage.

“Get behind the front wheel and stay low,” Bolan said.

An answering burst of fire came under the Chevy. He heard one automatic weapon. It had to be an Uzi.

A man sprinted from the Cadillac, angling toward a row of trees and brush at the side of the road.

The chief lifted the Uzi and sent three rounds at him. He missed. He corrected and the next five rounds put the runner down.

Bolan watched as the Mafia soldiers tried to lay down a protective hail of fire. The windows in the Chevy broke into thousands of granules of glass. Bolan scattered two more bursts from the rifle, then reached in the suitcase for a fragger.

“You’ve used these?” he shouted to the chief over the sporadic pistol fire.

The chief nodded.

“Good. Let’s do it. You put one at the front of the car, and I’ll get one to the rear.” They both pulled the safety pins and looked at each other. Bolan bobbed his head. The chief threw first. His grenade hit short and rolled within three feet of the Caddy before it exploded. Before the noise died down Bolan threw his small bomb slightly behind the rig so it would roll just beyond it. The explosion came first, then the screams of pain as jagged steel met flesh.

An Uzi opened up on full-auto, screaming twenty 9 mm parabellums into and under the Chevy. Bolan threw one more grenade and rolled it under the Caddy, hoping it would explode just on the far side.