Bolan knew she was very near to doing what she threatened to do. He had seen angry women before. He moved toward her slowly, and rested his hand on her shoulder. He patted her gently as she rambled on.

“Hell, I don’t care. I got cheated out of a husband. Somebody who treated me fine in spite of the bitchy things I did to him. That man was a saint.”

Bolan moved closer, speaking softly. He knew she was distraught and any sudden moves on his part could mean the end for both of them.

“Angela, I know things look a little gloomy now,” Bolan coaxed, “but they’ll be better. Think of your children!”

He caught her hand gently and eased the grenade away while holding the arming handle firmly in place.

Bolan leaned away from her, took a roll of black tape from the suitcase on the seat behind them and taped the grenade’s arming handle solidly in position. Then he put it back in the case.

She sighed and broke into tears. “Oh, damn! I have to go back. I’ll tell Carlo that you tricked me and forced me to help you, and that I almost killed you with a grenade. He’ll have to believe me.”

Bolan reached over, touched her chin and turned her face to him.

“Angela, you are a beautiful, sexy woman. Just relax and see how things look in a month or so. You’ll be married again within a year, or I miss my guess.”

She blinked. “You really think so?”

“Yes, besides, killing me won’t accomplish anything. Your children must be important to you.”

“Yes, of course. But I’m important, too.”

He dropped her downtown and watched her get a cab. The women were the real losers within the whole Mafia framework, he thought. The mobsters’ women always lost.

He consulted his watch — not quite noon. There was a little more than twenty-four hours before the mayor’s speech. He had a lot of important work to do before then.

Behind the rented Buick, a man in a rented Thunderbird watched Mack Bolan. The man was large — six foot four and 260 pounds of hardened muscle. He had black flashing eyes, dark hair that crowded his collar and was clean shaven. His name was Vince Carboni and he worked for La Commissione, the high commission of the Mafia bosses of bosses. His only job — to hunt down and kill Mack Bolan.

Vince Carboni snorted as he watched the man he had been hunting for two months. Now he would watch Mack Bolan, get in position and blow him away before Bolan even knew that Vince Carboni was in town.

He had been going to see Carlo Nazarione to warn him not to notify the Bolan Search Center in New York that the bastard was in Baltimore. Turning in at Nazarione’s gate, he saw two people walking down the street. One was a knockout blonde, the other one was Bolan.

Carboni had slowly passed to make certain, then circled the block and followed the pair to a car. They drove around and then stopped and talked. Later they drove downtown, where the woman got out and hailed a taxi.

Pure chance that he had spotted Mack Bolan, but he’d take it.

When Bolan’s Buick pulled away from the curb, Carboni’s Thunderbird followed two cars behind. He had practiced following cars around New York; if you can tail a car in Manhattan, you can stay with one anywhere. Carboni was an expert. As long as the victim did not know he was being followed, Carboni usually stayed three or four cars behind. If the other guy knew, it became a race, not a tail.

Carboni knew at once that Bolan had no idea he was being tailed. The Buick sedan wound through several streets, then stopped near a phone booth. Carboni parked across the one-way street and watched.

He had been waiting a long time for this chance. The commission first came to him a year ago. He had been happy working in New York as an enforcer and “eliminator,” as they called it now. But the commission offered him ten times the money he was making, and his own don urged him to take the job, so there was no problem either way.

He spent two months on weapons, learning everything he could about handguns, all the auto and semiauto submachine guns, and then taking a postgraduate course from an old sapper about gunk, juice, powder and plastic explosives.

For two weeks he spent sixteen hours a day reading everything the commission had collected on the Executioner. They had copies of every story printed in the United States.

Slowly Carboni filtered out fiction from fact, the hype and local paranoia from the reality. He knew more about Mack Bolan, his family, his involvement with the government at Stony Man Farm and his subsequent “disengagement” from Uncle Sam than anyone in the Mafia.

Now he planned to kill Bolan!

Carboni had missed the bastard in Portland, but just barely. This time he would not miss. It was a matter of pride now.

There was only one restraint. Vince Carboni was not going to sacrifice his own life just to get the Executioner. He could not spend that five-million reward if he were laid out in a coffin. Which was why he did not unlimber his .44 AutoMag right then and blast Bolan as he stood in the phone booth. Not with a hundred witnesses to identify both him and the car. He was too smart for that.

Bolan left the phone booth and drove north. He hit the Jones Falls Expressway and continued north across the Beltway. The small town of Brooklandville was ahead. It was almost rural here, a few small farms and acreages. Traffic fell to nothing. Carboni pulled up behind the Buick and leaned out the window. There was no chance now to disguise a tail, but at least there would be damn few witnesses out here.

His first shot blew the left rear tire. The Buick moved sideways, then back, as it stopped on the right shoulder.

Carboni braked the T-Bird to a halt fifty yards behind and ducked. He went out the side door and saw that the Buick’s door was open, too.

Beyond a small ditch was a field of corn, head high. Bolan was out there somewhere.

Carboni jumped back in the car as a small-caliber shot thunked into the door where he had crouched. He went out the door on the other side and stared into the cornfield. Before he could determine a strategy, the boom of an AutoMag broke the silence and the rented Thunderbird rocked as the heavy round crashed into the engine. He heard steam escaping and swore.

His wheels were probably dead! Carboni charged around the back of the car, raced across the ditch and into the cornfield. He paused in the corn, breathing heavily, then held his breath and listened.

All he heard was leaves rustling in the breeze. Where the hell was Bolan? He looked down the row, but the lush growth of the stalks and leaves obscured the view beyond about a dozen feet in any direction. He looked over the top of the six-foot tassels, but saw no one.

Carboni moved deeper into the field toward the spot where he supposed Bolan had to be. All he wanted was one good shot. Just one and he would collect five million dollars!

The hit man eased forward again, then stopped. He heard an engine grind, catch and wheels spin. Carboni screamed and reversed, running wildly through the corn, holding the AutoMag ready.

The damn Executioner had slipped back to the Buick and was moving.

Carboni saw the Buick drive along the shoulder, its back tire flopping. His .44 AutoMag ejected three rounds into the side windows. Then a round hit the gas tank. Gas gushed out but did not explode.

Carboni was running as fast as the car was flopping along. He charged along the ditch, figuring the rig could not move more than three or four hundred yards with only the fuel in the carburetor and fuel pump.

After a hundred yards the Buick wavered, and the engine sputtered and died. Carboni went flat on the ground in the ditch and waited for Bolan to step out and die.