Bruno and the other four occupants of the rearguard Continental did show up about thirty minutes after Giordano's arrival. The grillwork of the expensive automobile was misshapen here and there, and the glass was missing from the headlamps.

"We got into an accident," Bruno reported, his voice muted in the face of his employer's towering rage.

"We got into an accident," Giordano mimicked in a mealy-mouthed twang. "You son of a bitch you! I oughta kill you! I oughta kill you!"

"Christ's sake, 'Milio, it could happen to anybody," Bruno protested.

"It don't not supposed to happen to you!" Giordano screamed in tongue-twisting rage. "What if those bastards'd jumped me? Huh? Huh? Where was Bruno when those bastards jumped 'Milio, eh? I oughta ..." He stepped forward and delivered a stinging slap to Bruno's face, then hit him with the other hand.

The bodyguard stoically accepted the indignities, though paling somewhat with suppressed anger. "I couldn't help it," he muttered. "We got into a tangle on the freeway, and we got hooked onto a cop's rear bumper."

"A cop? A cop?"

"Yeh. That's why we were delayed so long. Had to show our licenses for the hardware; then they had to make out this full report on the accident, and ... well, the cops were pretty damn pissed off, too. I thought for a minute there..."

"Spare me," Giordano groaned. "Spare me the dumbhead details. Get inna car. Get inna goddamn car! We're goin' back. Well start all over again." He summoned the briefcase bearer with a wave of his hand, then shoved him roughly toward the Rolls.

The ranch manager was standing nearby, a strained expression on his face. "Lookit this," Giordano fumed, turning to the manager. "I go to all this planning, I even bring my shakin' bookkeeper with twenty-five thou just to make the armed guard look legit for the cops, we come all the way out here—and for what? For what? For Bruno the Brilliant to lock bumpers with a cop car? Huh? Is that what it was all for?" His rage was quickly wearing itself out. "How much is in the exchange box?" he asked the manager.

"Seventy thou," the manager replied. "You want to pick it up?"

Giordano nodded. "With my luck today, sergeant dumbhead will wander in here lost, an hour after I leave, and decide to knock the joint over." He swiveled about and called Bruno. "Hey, Brains. Go get the box."

Bruno got out of the car and followed the manager into the office. Giordano called after him, "Try'n carry it to the car without having an accident, eh?"

Minutes later, the small caravan was headed back along the dirt road, the white Rolls sandwiched between the two black Continentals, and this time with Bruno's vehicle leading. The bookkeeper sat quietly alongside Giordano, the briefcase on his lap, a small metal box between his feet.

"Hey, kid, I'm sorry I lost my temper, eh?" Giordano said quietly.

"Sure, Mr. Giordano. I understand."

"Just one of those damn days, I guess," Giordano muttered. "Guess it couldn't get much worse, eh?"

"I guess not, sir."

But it did, very shortly.

"Motorcade on the trail," Loudelk reported calmly.

"Roger," Bolan replied. "Anything to our rear?"

"Negative," Loudelk said, from his high observation point. "All clear."

"Last thing through the wye was the dented Detroit black," Washington reported.

"Roger. You set, Horse?"

"Horse is set," Harrington's voice reported.

Then roll it."

The whine of a motor-driven winch broke the stillness. A big boulder at the side of the roadway began to dance with vibration, then tilted and rolled abruptly onto the roadway. The winch was silenced. Zitka and Andromede ran out to the boulder, freed a network of cables, and dragged them into the shadow of a high butte.

The death squad could not have found a better location for an ambush. They were about midway between the blacktop county road and the citrus grove, at a point where the private dirt road curved abruptly to thread between two high-ridged rock formations. The roadblock was dropped directly into the eye of this needle, halfway through and just beyond a ninety-degree curve. The jeep had been unloaded from the horse and was angled into the shadow of the butte just beyond the roadblock, with its big fifty caliber commanding the situation there. Andromede was manning the fifty.

Zitka had the left flank, Bolan the right, both with light automatic weapons and with good cover on high ground that allowed a good triangulation of firepower.

Gunsmoke Harrington was at the front end of the needle, ahead of the roadblock. His six-guns were strapped low, and a light automatic was slung at bis chest. He would plug any attempted retreat.

"Coming up on one mile," Loudelk reported.

Bolan thumbed the transmitter and snapped, "Roger." Then, "Backboard, start your move. Hold at the junction of the dirt road."

He received acknowledgements from Blancanales and Washington, then tossed the radio aside and waited.

They came on fast, as if they knew the road was their very own, the dust from the lead vehicles all but obscuring the third car in the file. Bruno swung the big Continental expertly into the curve, as he had done so many times before, and then was frantically grabbing for more brake pedal than he would ever find. Bolan could see electrified alarm replace the dreamy smile on the handsome face; he could see Bruno's body stiffening and the tightened fingers clawing at the steering wheel.

It was a long microsecond. Then the Continental was trying to climb the barricade and failing to do so as three tons of hurtling metal met sixteen tons of unmoving rock. The grinding crash sent a bodyless head arcing through the shattered windshield, to bounce along the quickly shriveling hood. The passenger compartment continued moving briefly after the forward part had come to rest, telescoping into the flattened engine compartment—and then the armored Rolls smashed into the rear, brakes screaming and horn blaring inanely. Almost instantly the third crash came as the rear Continental plowed into the Rolls.

To this bedlam was suddenly added the staccato chopping of the big fifty as Andromede began spraying the wreckage with steel-jacketed projectiles. A man staggered out of the third car, firing blindly into the rock walls with a pistol. A higher-pitched chatter responded immediately from both sides of the trap, and the man was flung backward, and down, and dead.

Incredibly, fire was being returned from the Rolls, and the heavy vehicle was rocking forward and backward, the powerful engine straining mightily as the driver fought to extricate the armored car from the jamming smashup.

It's a tank, all right," Bolan grunted to himself, noting the battering-ram writhing of the Rolls. He snatched up his radio and barked into it, "Gun-smoke! Bring up the big stick!"

All three members of the fire team were now concentrating their assault on the Rolls, Andromede from almost point-blank range. Still it snorted and struggled like an enraged bull elephant caught in a bog, and still a sporadic return fire issued from it. Then Bolan caught a glimpse of Harrington sprinting around the curve, a long tube like object hefted onto his shoulder. He watched him approach to within 100 feet of the Rolls, then drop to one knee and sight in the bazooka. An instant later the familiar whoosh, fire, and smoke of the armor-piercing rocket was introduced to the Battle at the Buttes, the enraged bull elephant was enveloped in a deafening explosion, and its struggles immediately ceased.

"Awright, awrightl" a voice screamed out a moment later. A thickset man staggered out of the smoke and into the open.

Bolan sprang atop the rock that had served as his cover and called down, Time to pay the tab, Giordano."

"Dumbhead!" the Maffiano screamed. His arm jerked up, and the .38 reported three times. The third report, however, was no more than the spasmodic reflex of a quickly dying muscle. Bolan had fired from the hip in one rapid burst that split the rackateer's body from groin to skull, and Il Fortunato was dead on his feet.